Triple Jeopardy in College Sexual Assault Case Ends an N.F.L. Career [NYTimes]

The flava:
His mother lives in a trailer. He amassed excellent grades and excelled in sports. None of this inoculates him against the terrible vagaries of human nature. I can’t say what happened in that dorm room on that early evening in March 2015.

I know only this. A prosecutor decided not to bring charges, and a university investigation found Mumphery was not responsible. The only investigation that found him guilty did so apparently without his knowledge and without his offering a defense.


The article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/sports/keith-mumphery-michigan-state.html

Colleges Are No Match for American Poverty [theatlantic.com]

The flava:
He was unshowered and unshaven, in the same secondhand clothing the whole weekend. By Sunday morning, the humiliations had undone him. When a family heading to church crossed the street to avoid him, he hollered out, “I’m a fucking college president, you can look at me!”

The family hustled away. But Lowery-Hart is, in fact, a college president. And he was on the streets to find a better way to lead a school where poverty intrudes into the classroom every day.

The article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/05/college-poor-students/560972/

Admiral McRaven: Our biggest national security issue is pre-K through 12.

"I'm often asked when I am sitting in various forums, and we start to turn to national defense and national security issues and somebody in the audience will invariably ask me what I think the biggest national security issue is, and my answer's the same every time: It's pre-K through 12. Which surprises them, they think I'm going to say North Korea or they think I'm going to say Iran.  But the fact of the matter is, my biggest concern is: Are we educating the youth of America well enough so that in 10 years, 20 years that these young men and women will be great citizens of the United States, that they will be ready to come to college? That they will be ready to serve in industry and in technology? And I don't know that I think we have found the right answer to that yet. So the thing that keeps me up at night is making sure that the state of Texas – or hoping that the state of Texas – and the nation is investing in our pre-K through 12 in a way that will put our young men and women in a position to be successful."
     --William Harry McRaven, Chancellor of The University of Texas System, Retired United States Navy Admiral

Source:
https://www.texastribune.org/2018/05/29/bill-mcraven-ut-system-chancellor-texas-higher-education/

student presents senior thesis in underwear [a post by Uggy from Utica]

http://cornellsun.com/2018/05/06/student-presents-thesis-in-underwear-after-professor-questions-choice-of-clothing/

1. It's true that there is no magic outfit that will make your audience, or people in general, respect
you.

2. But am I the only one who thinks you should wear clothes--some kind of clothes--when you're doing a thesis presentation? If you can't shop in a grocery store or be served in a restaurant without shirt and shoes, why should you be allowed to present the capstone of four years of college work in your underwear?

3. Would the professor have been justified in failing the student? If I were the professor, I would have been sorely tempted.

4. The need to wear clothes while in public is one of the frequently recurring subjects parents have to address with two-year-olds.

Cheers,
Uggy

Jerry Brown: Higher Ed Should Be Like Chipotle [insidehighered.com]

The flava:
California Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, is in his last year in office, and he got in some swipes at higher education during a speech Wednesday at the California Chamber of Commerce. "What I like about Chipotle is the limited menu. You stand in the line, get either brown rice or white rice, black beans or pinto beans. You put a little cheese, a little this, a little that, and you're out of there. I think that's a model some of our universities need to follow," Brown said, according to an account in The Sacramento Bee.

The article:
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/05/25/jerry-brown-higher-ed-should-be-chipotle

Oh, the Places You’ll Go! What the selectiveness of your college says about where you’re likely to move after. [slate.com]

The flava:
Studies show that the percentage of young, college-educated adults moving between states has fallen from 12.7 percent in 2005 to 10.4 percent in 2015, of a piece with the nation’s larger reluctance to move. Nearly 1 in 3 recent grads are moving in with mom, up from 1 in 5 in 2005. Those who do move out of state aren’t likely to move far.

The article:
https://slate.com/business/2018/05/college-graduates-are-moving-out-of-state-less.html

500,000,000 vs 1,362,100,000 vs 84,600,000,000

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/opinion/michigan-state-will-pay-500-million-to-abuse-victims-what-comes-next.html

https://msu.edu/state-transparency-reporting/assets/documents/2017-18Budgets.pdf

http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-about-warren-buffett-2016-12

Thoughts, submitted by Compound Cal

Fast approaching 60 years of age, I'm a trailing spouse who has a mixture of tenured, t-t, visiting, and part-time positions in a 30+ year career. Still like/love the classroom for the handful of students willing to take a chance, open their brains, and get after it.

But my current 3 year position is a crush of 80 freshman every term. Nothing but the same intro class over and over, some long days, and an amount of grading I didn't even do as a young man.

I've finished year one but have told the chair I can't come back and do another one. Because of this grumpiness and my age, the powers that be have tried to lure me back with a reduction of teaching from 4 to 2 sections per semester in exchange for a bunch of nebulous administrative work - assisting a terrific and interesting director. It's lousy money, 70% of what I used to make in my 30s at a far better school, but it's the only job I have in front of me.

I've decided I can't do another year of the straight 4/4 load of freshmen. But I fear - honestly - that my intractability will make it hard to work in administration FOR someone else. In all of my previous administrative work, I was in charge. I assessed the program, set a plan, organized the resources, found the money, and followed through.

This would not be that. This might include pushing a cart of bagels across campus, making some photocopies, and occasionally doing a little twirl in the ring on a topic with which I have experience.

There is no grand nest egg, though my spouse still works and could support us - I might have to switch to the lesser quality gluten free cookies. I don't have any appreciable other skills - my golf game has gone to shit after a surprising and long winter.

I sometimes feel like I'm staring at the retirement finishing line - oh so close - but with not enough steam to get to it. I'd like to do 4-6 more years of good work. But this opportunity - my only at this point - doesn't feel like it.

--Compound Cal

'A Conversation with Bill Gates' live at Harvard's Science Center

His College Knew of His Despair. His Parents Didn’t, Until It Was Too Late. [nytimes]

The flava:
In the days after her son Graham hanged himself in his dormitory room at Hamilton College, Gina Burton went about settling his affairs in a blur of efficiency, her grief tinged with a nagging sense that something did not add up.

She fielded requests and sympathy notes from the college, promising the dean of students a copy of his obituary “so you can see how special Hamilton was to him.” This was why his suicide “makes no sense,” she added in a puzzled aside. The next day, Ms. Burton accepted condolences from the college president, and assured him “how right a choice Hamilton was” for her son.

But two weeks later, she read her son’s journal and everything changed. Mr. Burton, a sophomore, wrote that he was flunking three of his four classes and called himself a “failure with no life prospects.” He had struggled to sleep, missed classes, turned in assignments late. The college had known of his difficulty, he wrote, but had been slow to offer help and understanding.

The article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/12/us/college-student-suicide-hamilton.html

recycling test questions

"We represent a number of TCU students who were recently suspended from the University on allegations of 'academic misconduct' after using Quizlet — a public online study guide used by millions of students worldwide. While preparing for an exam, the students located and studied previously posted materials readily available on Quizlet — not knowing these items would be on the exam. Some students were even directed to these materials by TCU employed tutors. As it turned out, the professor responsible for the exam recycled test questions from past semesters. The 'cheating' accusations stem from the professor's belief that students should notify professors if they recognize exam questions. The knee-jerk suspensions have far-reaching and lasting implications for the students involved. The sanctions are being vigorously appealed.  In this modern day, it is incumbent for Universities to adapt to changes in technology and for professors to change their tests. It is our sincerest hope that after TCU officials review the cases in full, cooler heads will prevail and the sanctions will be reversed."
--Letty Martinez, Fort Worth lawyer

To what extent did your schooling interfere with your education? By Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno

I got interested in science when I was in Kindergarten. It wasn’t until 11th grade that I would finally get science teachers who knew more science than I did. During those long years in between, the main message I got from my teachers was “SHUT UP!” I still felt obliged to tell my 8th grade teacher that Saturn was the one with the rings.

In 9th grade, an incompetent guidance counselor told me, “Girls take typing. Boys take wood shop!”  Being unable to type was a bad disadvantage in college. During this same meeting with this guidance counselor, I was not allowed to take Algebra I, the rationale for this given as “That’s too much math.” It sure made things interesting in Algebra II the next year. My high-school physics teacher was an affable, inconsequential, old bit of fluff who gave us organized, well-prepared lectures on physics all of twice during the entire school year. He didn’t cover electricity at all. It put me at a disadvantage in calculus-based physics as a first-year undergraduate.

In college, I was not allowed to take public speaking for credit, even though I was at a university with famous theatre and film departments. My undergraduate education was badly marred by institutional conflict between the astronomy and the physics departments, who had been merged “in a shotgun marriage no one wanted,” as my undergraduate advisor told me. He hadn’t done research in 20 years, and taught how to develop photographic plates, which had been obsolete about that long. The words “electronic imaging” never passed his lips, although there was a revolution in it happening exactly then.

It is nice to know that my students can’t be fouled up by some of the things I struggled with. They all take typing (more properly, keyboarding) quite young, and public speaking is a common undergrad general-ed course now. There are still other problems, though. To what extent did your schooling interfere with your education?

–-Froderick Frankenstien from Fresno

Editorial: Keep the final exams in finals week [pittnews.com]

The flava:
In spite of tradition and the week’s name itself, a substantial number of professors decide to conclude their courses during the 15th week of instruction, requiring students to take exams, submit final work and catch up on content before the two-day reading period for finals even begins. But while educators and administrators might think they’re doing us a favor by giving us our exams early, they have exactly the opposite effect.

The article:
https://pittnews.com/article/131049/opinions/editorial-keep-the-final-exams-in-finals-week/