Moriarty from Midland emails another statement

"Last week, the dean told me to straighten my tie.  I wanted to punch him.  I'm a professor, not a clothier."

This Is the Way the College ‘Bubble’ Ends [The Atlantic]

The flava:

For the past few decades, the unstoppable increase in college tuition has been a fact of life, like death and taxes. The sticker price of American college increased nearly 400 percent in the last 30 years, while median household income growth was relatively flat. Student debt soared to more than $1 trillion, the result of loans to cover the difference.

The article:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/07/college-bubble-ends/534915/

justice? free speech? academic flounce? etc. . . .

A few thoughts on leaving academe:

. . .  Whatever I end up doing, I will maintain the spirit of noncompliance that defined my time in academe. If you take any lesson from my ouster, please don’t let it be fear or caution. Docility is a gift to those who profit from injustice. Academe can no longer afford this luxury.

--Steven Salaita

Big Hungry

If you could ask your school's president anything (and actually get an honest answer), what would it be?

The upcoming total solar eclipse of 2017 August 21, by Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno

[Above: Public-domain image by Luc Viatour of the total solar eclipse of 1999 August 11, which I saw through a hole in the clouds near Augsburg, Germany. Totality does look just like this.]


On 2017 August 21, the first total solar eclipse will be visible from the 48 contiguous United States (or CONUS) since 1979. In a solar eclipse, the Moon casts a shadow on Earth. Between 2-5 solar eclipses (with at least partial phases) occur somewhere on Earth every year.

Aside from occurring in the CONUS, what will make the eclipse of 2017 August 21 special is that, along a narrow track only about 50 miles wide, the Moon will completely blot out the Sun’s bright surface, or photosphere, for a maximum of 2 minutes 40 seconds. This is called a total solar eclipse, and they generate great excitement.

Outside this path of totality, the Moon will not blot out the Sun’s bright surface completely. Still, the partial phases will be visible throughout the CONUS. Here is a map of the eclipse track that includes partial phases:

http://www.americaneclipse2017.org/observing-the-eclipse/weather-prospects/

The partial phases are as different from totality as day is from night—respectively and quite literally. If you meet someone who only “thinks” they've seen a solar eclipse, they've seen a partial.

It isn't for nothing that a total solar eclipse is called “Nature's most awe-inspiring phenomenon.” As Brian May has noted, “The first time you see totality, you really understand where you are, on a piece of rock hurtling around the Sun. It’s an awesome feeling—a life-changing experience.”

He's right: it looks and feels like the end of the world. There is a noticeable temperature drop, of as much as 15 degrees F. Night turns into day for 2 minutes throughout Oregon, where I will be, and at most 7 minutes 40 seconds anywhere during totality at any eclipse. Subjectively, this will feel like about 30 seconds: all total solar eclipses feel much shorter than they are.

There are surrealistic shadows in an eerie twilight, unlike any other. You can see the Moon's shadow coming before totality, and moving away afterwards. There are sunset colors all the way around the horizon. People scream. Dogs howl. Birds come out and sing afterwards, because they think it’s morning.

"summer melt"

 "The rate with which kids who are college-intending do not actually get to college in the fall is surprisingly high," says Lindsay Page, an education researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. "In one sample that we looked at in the Boston area, we find that upwards of 20% of kids who at the time of high school graduation say that they're continuing on to college — about 20% of those kids don't actually show up in the fall."

Researchers call this phenomenon "summer melt" — and for universities, it has long been a puzzling problem. Because these are the kids who made it: they've taken the SATs, been accepted to a college of their choice, applied for and received financial aid. Why wouldn't they show up for college on day one?


Source:
http://www.npr.org/2017/07/17/537740926/why-arent-students-showing-up-for-college

a comment about comments

Three things to keep in mind about comments:

1. The recent comments have been genuine and good-natured.  I haven't received any mean emails about them.  The commenters here are such decent, conscientious folks.  But if anybody regrets having made a comment, it seems that most (or all?) commenters are able to delete their own comments.  If you want to delete a comment and are unable to do so, please feel free to email me a note stating unequivocally that you want the comment deleted--I'll do it if I can.

2. Even though a comment might be deleted, it can still live on for a very long time in the Google cache or on archive.org or somewhere else.  That's one good reason to count to ten before clicking "publish."

3. We're all just people (or horses or ducks).  This pasture can be a humbling place.  I'll do my best.  And I continue to appreciate you all.

Sincerely,
Your Real Gosh-darned Moderator

Fab On His Mood.

My mood about the profession continues to plummet. I probably haven't mentioned it, but I've been the department chair for the last two years. I choose to anonymize as much as possible about my actual job, but this is integral to the story.

At the end of last semester a colleague went on at length at the end of the semester faculty meeting about grade inflation. About how sick he was of new and untrained faculty giving out grades like they were cookies to placate the students.

He was not wrong. But this past week I received a number of aggregated statistics for my department, and the same faculty member had the highest GPA in the entire department. In an average class he was giving 75% As, 20% Bs, and then the rest were failures from withdrawal.

We don't use these stats in any real way; they just come to us through whatever giant tool they use. I will occasionally meet with a new or grad student instructor if the numbers are way out of line with our departmental averages.

But in this case it's a tenured faculty member who holds himself up as a bastion of rationality, morality, high societal standing, and educational superiority. He wants it both ways: to appear as if he alone holds the line against the horde, and to please his students with soft and unearned grades.

I have another year to serve as chair but as I've shared a bit over the past while, I cannot get my head around the profession like I once could. Students, faculty, staff, and administration all just annoy me, and I know it's not healthy, not with the official start of the semester just a month away.

This has all happened so fast.

Monday Magic in July

If you could wave a magic wand and make tomorrow the ideal day at your school, what would be most noticeably different from last week?

Mistakes were made.

"Oops.
I seem to have misplaced billions of dollars.
Or was that you?
Who's on first?"
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/17/business/dealbook/student-loan-debt-collection.html

Link and question, submitted by a kind American reader

Hi Zooze,

Has anyone heard of this?

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/06/conservative-student-wants-court-to-change-her-grade-from-f-to-a-after-she-refused-to-read-gay-poets

I know students have done lots of things to get failing grades removed, but I've never heard of actually suing the proffie.

Thanks for keeping the pasture open.

Big Thirsty

True or False:

Colleges and universities are the conscience of the culture.


Circle one:

T

F

In Which Bella Submits an Update, and Contemplates Empathy

Hello to my friends in the pasture!  This past February, I shared with you all my darling Boy's troubles, and I wanted to update you, as so many of you were kind and sympathetic and caring.

First, let me say that I am in no way sure of anything.  This latest experience in parenting has taught me, more than any other, that I know nothing with any certainty.  But here is my update, interspersed with some thoughts about empathy (and surety).  I feel it in my mind as a list, and who am I to go against a gut feeling. So here goes:

• 1.  My boy has gone through ups and downs.  He ended up having to withdraw from all his classes, but since we waited so long to do it he had failed all his classes. No hope for the W.  My son is a convincing liar---it is a "gift" if you can call such a thing that.  He had us convinced he was doing better, and as such, his final decline before he finally came home resulted in a last, desperate suicidal call to me and admit all to me (and then kill himself---which he did not do, and maybe never really intended to, but he thought he would).  I love my kid, with my whole life's force----but I wished, sometimes this past year, he would sometimes reach out to his Dad?  Haha (a little humor never hurts, right?).  What a painful, painful thing, to go through a call like that with him once again.  This time he called just as I was getting on the highway to go home, in horrible traffic, having left late.  He had told me he was doing better. I had spent Spring Break and the following week with him, helping him complete his work, talking to him, planning with him.  But it did not work---and he was in despair, having to tell me this.  Poor, poor boy.  So, we talked through the rush hour traffic, he did not kill himself, and I bought a ticket to bring him home in late April.
• 2.  As we had had him committed (twice), and as he had been (finally) seeing both a therapist and a psychologist, it was suggested we apply for a Medical Withdrawal.  Before he left for home, he did so.  And the secretary in the office where such things are filed sneered at him.  Told him that he could not expect to just blow off his classes and get them paid for.  Told him that students who deserved to fail should and would just fail.  When he called me (during class----I was in a state and had my phone on and took the call, having a standby plan in place just in case) to tell me this, I told him 'Don't worry honey bun!  It's just a Hail Mary pass anyway---who cares' and he seemed to feel better.  And I seethed, just seethed, at that secretary!  Who the fucking hell was she?  And then, almost simultaneously, I thought---she's just a person who's seen a lot of shysters.  I do think she should be fired (at best) but I also worry that I have been guilty, never of actually saying such things, that much I know, but of allowing my feelings to show if I have judged a student without  being able to guess what they have been going through.

chance

I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
--Chief Justice John Roberts

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
--King Solomon

Luck was by far the biggest contributor to the success of my job search. Unlike many of my fellow job candidates, I didn’t go through graduate school planning to become a professor. And I was far from being a “model” grad student of the sort that professors in my department would proudly groom into “future faculty material.”
--Professor Philip Guo

Chance may appear as an obstructor and an irritant in our daily life, but chance can also help and create. We have now learnt to put chance to work for the benefit of mankind.
--C. Radhakrishna Rao

Who won the poster?

Ovreductd won the poster!

:-)

To seek truth or to advance social justice? [theatlantic.com]

Last year, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argued that recent conflicts at institutions of higher education are rooted in conflicting assessments of their telos, or core purpose.

Is it to seek truth or to advance social justice?

Those missions aren’t always at odds. But in Haidt’s view, they are presently coming into conflict often enough that the status quo is unmanageable. . . .

Source:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/a-college-student-seeks-to-learn-rather-than-to-teach/531594/

A playlet with Dr. Jekyll and Prof. Hyde: In which the divide between faculty and administrators is explained

Dr. Jekyll:  Say, Hyde, I have found another illustration of the difference between faculty and administrators.

Prof. Hyde: Do tell.

Dr. Jekyll:  Independence Day is a holiday on our campus as you know.  Yet, I found myself in the office anyway along with a number of my colleagues.

Prof. Hyde:  That sounds like a sickness right there.

Dr. Jekyll:  Yes, I suppose you would know.  As I was saying, I was in the office on Independence Day.  The air conditioning was on its "vacation" setting, meaning that it was just barely tolerable if you weren't moving too fast.

Prof. Hyde:  So, no problem for you then.

Dr. Jekyll:  After a while I acclimated with the help of a fan.  However, when I went to our main office, I noticed quite a difference.  As you remember, all the administrators of our college are in one large suite of offices.  Their office suite was cool and comfortable at its normal air conditioning setting.  And naturally, no administrator was there.

Prof. Hyde:  And you once again found yourself questioning your life choices.

Dr. Jekyll: No more so than you.

a few comments from the pasture

1. I apologize to Frod for somehow jumbling up some words in his post last night.  That was my fault. I corrected it after only about an hour or so, but that still felt like too long.  If you're one of the people who read his post around 9:00 p.m. CDT, please go back and give it another read.
   
2. I don't mind--and sometimes even greatly appreciate--receiving messages from people saying, "I think maybe something is not right with [the 2nd paragraph in Frod's post, the 3rd link in Cassandra's post, TubaPlayingProf's avatar, etc.]."  
3. I am thankful for some of the recent emails (e.g. from Bella, Sawyer in Student Services, and so on).  They have been kind, humorous, smart, etc. . . .
4. One reader recently wrote, "I am not associated with any of the URLs required to comment. Is there an alternative?"  I'm under the impression that most people here comment by logging in with their gmail accounts, but perhaps someone would like to recommend OpenID or Wordpress accounts or something else?
5. Whether you're celebrating Independence Day or Queen Sonja's birthday today, know that there's a horse in Orange, TX, thinking about you and appreciating you.

Sincerely,
Your Real Gosh-darned Moderator

You’re telling me it’s not an uplifting story! by Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno

Frankie Bow made some excellent points in her post on June 26. As you, Gentle Readers, no doubt know, I do plenty of complaining about my university. Nevertheless, here in glorious socialist state of California, I am glad my university has campus child-care programs. Since they were founded in 2011, I've never had a student bring a child under 12 to class. I used to allow this anyway, since how could I possibly not? Many of my students struggle so, economically.

Still, one aspect of being a half-crazed (OK, fully crazed) mad scientist is that no one expects me to take care of their kids. Indeed, once parents get done asking about whether I can give their kids free tutoring so they can score higher on the AP exams or have research jobs in my lab, they don’t appear to like me to get closer than 3 meters. Suits me fine. Other jobs that university administrators often enjoy having faculty do even though they really shouldn’t be faculty responsibilities include physician, psychiatrist (including psychologist, counselor, or therapist), special-ed teacher, immigration officer, police officer, and 24/7 tech consultant. Considerations about each include:

Physician: I had a student ask me if he could remove an article of clothing, so I could see why he didn’t do his homework, I told him STOP: I don’t want to see it. I don’t have a medical degree, and I’m not qualified to diagnose or treat any ailment. I told him he should go to the campus health center, and get a physician’s note, a copy of which I may keep to prevent me from being accused of being unfair, since what he was really requesting was for me to make an exception for him that other students may not have.

Psychiatrist, psychologist, counselor, or therapist: Again, I refer any students who want, or mention the need for, these services to the campus health center. I don’t need to know the precise nature of what’s causing issues for them. All I need to know is that a qualified professional will certify that it’s sufficiently significant to merit being excused from class work.

Special-ed teacher: I have no training in this whatsoever. Often, I am not even briefed that I will be expected to function in this way. I particularly hate it whenever someone from the disability office thoughtlessly yells at me “Provide accommodation!” even though they won’t even tell me what the nature of the accommodation needs to be.

Immigration officer: My university has large populations of immigrant and international students. Many of them are very anxious about recent changes, and threats of changes, to government policy about immigration. Our university president was raised locally, is of Mexican-American ancestry, and was a first-generation college student. He has made it loud and clear that it is not the faculty’s job to be immigration officers. Suits me fine.

Police officer: How the hell should I know what to do about an active shooter, aside from RUN! Good thing they won’t allow me to carry a firearm to return fire.

24/7 tech consultant: Every time a new piece of technology for education is foisted upon us faculty, using it as part of any class instantly transforms our so-called “tech-savvy, digital native” students into all-thumbs Luddites. Since much of this technology is rubbish anyway, I find it’s usually best to avoid new technology, unless it’s actually useful for education.

P.S. I just got finished reading "The Case of the Defunct Adjunct," by Frankie Bow. Great job, Frankie!

—-Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno