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