I couldn't believe it myself...you'd think I was making it up... [from Canadian Crotchety Crank]

In a world of supposed 'Digital Natives', this month I've come across two students new to post-secondary that,

• despite completing the required online enrollment and 
• initializing their institutional email and
• accessing the institutional courseware system

did not / will not / don't look at their 'school' email.

Why? They say just prefer to use their personal email account.

No problem right?            Wrong.

As I was helping each navigate this new term's expectations, all of which I'd shared via school email, we (each student and I) discovered that they were in danger of being unenrolled from their courses because of loan/fee/payment issues... issues that the Registrar had communicated to them, VIA SCHOOL EMAIL.

Needless to say, they were shocked and embarrassed, and we stopped working on the course communications and I sent them off to speak F-2-F with those that could 'fix' their $$ issues.

I will ask them later, if they have 'Googled' how to set up the their school email to automatically forward missives to their personal email.

Oh me.

--Canadian Crotchety Crank

Monday Magic in September

The number of international students in U.S. colleges hit its peak (approximately 900,000) during President Obama's last year in office.  There are different methods for estimating the number, but it seems to have been decreasing since then.

What's your favorite anecdote about an international student?  Do you wish your college had more of them?

Moriarty from Midland sends in another statement

After a committee meeting Friday during which my dean endorsed the President's statement that, "I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities...." . . . I just felt sick.  I no longer believe that higher education in America is about pursuing truth, social justice, or making the world better.   It's about something else.

--Moriarty from Midland

Mis-sold, expensive and overhyped: why our universities are a con [The Guardian]

The flava:
They are making one of the biggest purchases of their lives, shelling out more on tuition fees and living expenses than one might on a sleek new Mercedes, or a deposit on a London flat. Many will emerge with a costly degree that fulfills few of the promises made in those glossy prospectuses. If mis-selling is the flogging of a pricey product with not a jot of concern about its suitability for the buyer, then that is how the establishment in politics and in higher education now treat university degrees. The result is that tens of thousands of young graduates begin their careers having already been swindled as soundly as the millions whose credit card companies foisted useless payment protection insurance on them.

The article:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/sep/20/university-factory-failed-tony-blair-social-mobility-jobs

weekend levity

"Professor whats his nuts"

A pair of polls, from Wombat of the Copier

Can people teach a college course if they themselves are incapable of passing said course?

a) Yes, give everyone an answer key and they can read it out loud in class like the 1800s when teachers were whoever the fuck the town council hired to teach whether they knew the subject or not.

b) Yes, but don't give anyone an answer key until after you've told them 14 times "I prefer you try the questions on your own first so you are fully prepared not just to check answers, but help students solve the problems during class" - incompetence is fine as long as they're tenacious.

c) Of course fucking not!  If they're already stymied converting inches to centimeters without a god damned answer key then the students are surely going to be super fucked by the time they're doing redox-titrations.

I was an adjunct elsewhere for a decade and never even thought to ask for an answer key, let alone did I ever receive one.  A new adjunct at one of the former institutions once complained that we didn't get answer keys and we all looked at her like she was fucking nuts.  Here I say "make your own but if a question stumps you, it may be poorly worded so ask me and I'll help you with it" and everyone looks at me like I'm fucking nuts.

Ok - that was the catharsis poll, now for the developmental poll:

How can I recruit better instructors?

--WotC

"brief screed" from Southern Bubba, Ph.D.

I'm so drunk and maybe I will regret having submitted this very brief screed to you, but I feel so strongly right now that 95% (or so) of the employees at my school are just eking out an existence.  I'm not destitute myself, but there's something about the bitterness and struggle being so perilously close at all times and palpably feeling the desperation and anxiety.  We live in this world in which twentysomethings are "self-made" billionaires.  Mon dieu.  POTUS seems so utterly unconcerned about handing over money and intellectual property to Russia, China, etc. . . . Pearson, BlackBoard, Canvas, and the others hold so much sway on campuses.  I wonder how the adjuncts cannot or do not foment an uprising.  Every day is mind-boggling.  There seem to be more liars than ever.  It just seems like something's going to snap.

--Southern Bubba, Ph.D.

the difficulty

"Reading both social media and blog conversations among philosophers, I often feel demoralized.  The people who speak most and most insistently seem not only to be absolutely clear about what they think, but think there is no other legitimate, respectable, or even moral way to think."
--Amy Olberding

"I now think that online discussions of difficult issues tend to do more harm than good."
--Jennifer Mather Saul

"There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas."
--Susan Cain

"The only thing I know is that I know nothing."
--Socrates

at the very tail end of Labor Day in the U.S. . . .

Are you a laborer?

Are you fortunate enough to have supervisors not abusing their power over you?

Want to share?