Whither U: Education in the Time of a 2-tiered System

These tiers are not about tenure (for a change) but not unrelated: the reference is to the increasingly tiered economy, global and domestic and its implications for higher ed. 

Posts in progress, "year of the dangerous meme" and "grow your own" are in drafts. Not the usual ~ after all there are so many calls in so many disciplines and Penn to meet your notification needs, but I have a call to post, plus personal but education related notes on experimental open online courses I am taking, a busman's holiday but covering developments that could change higher ed as we know it. MOOCs may not have that MLA cachet but they make Digital Humanities and HASTAC look retro. 

There's NFM news too, a few items not in time to make the Newsletter, which should be appearing in a few days. I'm one of the BoD you'll meet in this issue's "Meet the NFM Board" feature. Eventually, you'll meet all of us. In the meantime, catch up on back issues in the Newsletter Archives while you are waiting. Otherwise, as a former student at the American University at Cairo, I am consumed with following #Egypt. Back to the newsfeeds...

The Rise of the New Global Elite

Chrystia Freeland, The Atlantic, February 2, 2011.

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This is going to have to be fixed before education is fixed. Because education can't fix this: 

New to the higher ed beat? Read this.

links from the Educated Reporter blog for following higher ed news. No, you may not agree with the editorial stance of every source listed. So what. Since when did depending on mainstream corporate media and cherry picking sources for consensus constitute good research?

I'd add academic, labor and other blogs to the source list but that's another post. What sources would you add? The Educated Reporter, Linda Perlstein, public editor for the Education Writers Association, writes, 

Last week I posted resources I think are helpful for K-12 reporters to stay abreast of national issues. Today, here is what I recommend to new higher ed reporters: 

• —You simply cannot cover the beat without signing up to receive daily bulletins from Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education. It would be like obsessing over celebrities without reading People and Us. Touring Provence without visiting Aix or Arles or Avignon. (Oh wait, I did that once, but I had my reasons.) Everything on IHE is free, and the Chronicle gives journalist free subscriptions and is very generous about lifting you over the paywall for links and such.
• —Lumina Foundation send out links to the day’s higher ed headlines—unfortunately, only the headlines, but it is something.
• —Blogs worth reading: Joanne Jacobs on community colleges at Hechinger, Quick and the Ed, the New America Foundation blogs, Mike Kirst’s College Puzzle, Center for College Affordability and Productivity, and, if you are into admissions issues from a consumer perspective, The Choice at the New York Times.

What am I missing? 

Comment:

Other worthwhile bulletins:

• _University Business Magazine's daily newsletter, which thoroughly rounds up higher-ed news stories sandwiched between job postings, new product announcements and contracts: http://bit.ly/awGikF
• _ The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities compiles top headlines and links daily ... even though today its Twitter feed promoted an opinion piece in a North Dakota newspaper that badly distorted a recent AP story on collegiate learning. www.naicu.edu/rss/newsroom.asp
• _ The American Council on Education's Division of Government and Public Affairs sends out headlines/links twice a week: http://bit.ly/i2Rgpr 

You won't miss much if you get these.

via educatedreporter.com  and x-posted to The New Faculty Majority  via email from Academentia

Learning Analytics: a foundation for informed change in Higher Education

Agreeing with the methodology, validity or purpose of Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining is not necessary.

What is necessary: not ignoring them or their implications for the future of higher ed. Consider them tools you too can use.

故曰：知彼知己，百戰不殆；不知彼而知己，一勝一負；不知彼，不知己，每戰必殆。

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss.

If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose.

If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

Learning Analytics: EDUCAUSE

View more presentations from gsiemens.

So what is to be done? Learn. Try LAK11, the MOOC.

Critical University Studies: Chris Newfield reports

Not the MLA but from across the Freeway: Notes on the Counter-conference... cheerfully cribbed from Chris' excellent and often recommended Remaking the University (utototherescue). This time heed the recommendation: bookmark the blog, add the feed to your rss reader, follow Chris on Twitter, @cnewf. Visiting and posting a comment would be nice too. Chris has another blog, Chris' Blog Archives, more like a spare blog closet (I could use one of those too for all the notes and links stashed about). 

. . . actually more like tweets, organized around themes not presentations and slighting all sorts of good stuff from a full Merrifield amphitheatre (image above) at Loyola Law School:

the state of higher education

...segues into obligatory season version of the ubiquitous "whither U" conversation ~ whether rant, lecture or dialog. Our New Year's resolution (another obligatory seasonal genre) should be moving it from rant and lecture to inclusive dialog. By inclusive, I mean not leaving adjuncts, contingent and NTT academic labor out of the national discussion and decision make. Don't just toss an occasional hush puppy panel or even all day bone to the noisy dog.

Anthony Grafton reviews Higher Education? by Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus and Crisis on Campus by Mark Taylor. Is going to an elite college worth the cost? The sluggish economy and rising costs of college have only intensified questions about whether expensive, prestigious colleges make any difference. Michael Konczal on the 21st-century retreat from public higher education. The academy as a commodity: What if the market has already devalued the knowledge on which the entire operation of accountability is based? From Arcade, Gregory Jusdanis on the oppression of peer review. Academics have long been criticised for being out of touch with the real world; many make great efforts to dispel ivory tower attitudes, but others believe such habits will never disappear. An interview with Phillip Brown, Hugh Lauder, and David Ashton, authors of The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes. The disposable academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time. Can Tolstoy save your marriage? Cultural classics offer vital lessons about how to live, but our universities don't teach them that way. An interview with Martha Nussbaum on the value of the humanities (and more). Victor Davis Hanson writes in defense of the liberal arts: The therapeutic Left and the utilitarian Right both do disservice to the humanities. We're all conservatives now: Academics from the left and right blame each other for the state of higher education, but they're in agreement more than they realize.

via bookforum.com

Our part is to come to table stunningly well informed: homework done, all sides researched ~ add well articulated objectives to the list. Hence the timeliness of yet another review.

Coming up in this seasonally appropriate Janus series: an adjuncts' top 10 list for 2010, maybe even best and worst lists. Then if not resolutions, directions and realistic objectives for 2011.

What's on your list?

Posted via email from Academentia

(Counter) Conference Announcement

LA 2011 IS MORE THAN MLA 2011

BUT ALSO

A Counter-Conference: Strategies for Defending Higher Education

Conventions and conferences abound in academia. You could even say they are a convention of the profession. It's time to be unconventional, break with convention, call unconventional counter-conferences. When better to schedule one than during the annual MLA Convention? 

The announcement below comes courtesy of organizer Bob Samuels, UC-AFT President, blogging higher ed and UC at Changing Universities. 

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Please circulate this announcement to any of your faculty groups or departmental lists.

A Counter-Conference: Strategies for Defending Higher Education

This counter-conference will take place during the annual MLA Convention in Los Angeles, January 8th, 2011 from 1-5 at Merrifield Hall, Loyola Law School (919 Albany St, 4 blocks north of the Marriott). While thousands of people will be meeting at the traditional convention, we will hold a one-day event centered on discussing actual strategies for making higher education more just.  Speakers will be presenting short papers on topics like the death of tenure, the corporatization of the university, the possibilities of unionization, direct social action, the use and abuse of graduate students, organizing contingent faculty, and taking back shared governance. 

Schedule

1:00-1:45 - Remaking the University of California, (after Chris Newfield's similarly named blog, Remaking the University): Catharine Liu, UC Irvine; Chris Newfield (author of Unmaking the Public University), Joshua Clover, UC Davis

1:45-2:30 - Defending the Humanities and Shared Governance: Cary Nelson, President AAUP; Jeffrey Williams, Carnegie Mellon; Michelle Masse, LSU

2:30-3:15 - Organizing Labor and the Academic Class War: Marc Bousquet, Santa Clara University; Maria Maisto, New Faculty Majority; Joe Berry, Chicago COCAL, School of Labor and Employment Relations at UI Urbana-Champaign

3:15-4:00 - 

Graduate Students and Precarious Labor: 

Annie McClanahan, Harvard (UAW bargaining unit); 

Jasper Bernes, GSOC, UC Berkeley; 

Stephanie Seawell, UIGEO, Champaign-Urbana; 

Kerry Pimblott,  

UIGEO, 

UI Champaign-Urbana

4:00-4:30 - Quality, Access, and Affordability: Murray Sperber, Professor Emiritus, IU Bloomington; Bob Samuels, UCLA, President UC-AFT

4:30-4:55 - Open Discussion on Strategies for Changing Higher Education
RSVP by emailing bobsamuels_us@yahoo.com or at the Counter-Conference Facebook Event page if you plan to come. $10 donation suggested but not required. You do not have to be a member of MLA to attend. 

Bob Samuels, President, UC-AFT

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What Happens if the Charter School Companies Win?

Among the arguments made by advocates for charter schools is that they expand consumer choice and that given the state of education in many inner-city minority communities experimentation with alternatives can only help the situation. As buzz words, choice and experimentation always sound good. After all, we know about the disappointing performance of many students in inner-city schools under the current educational system so why not try something else?

Unfortunately, we already know what will happen if private-for-profit charter school companies take over K-12 education in the United States because for-profit proprietary companies have already successfully invaded what used to be called "higher education." These companies have defrauded the government, left families deep in un-repayable debt, and cheated students out of an education.

via huffingtonpost.com

Higher ed and K-12 are connected ~ what goes down in one, affects the other; "innovations," policies, programs, etc. implemented in one domain will eventually come home to roost in the other, trickle up or trickle down. It behooves each to trend watch the other.

Posted via email from Meanderings

The Future of Work

this bit of research on the Gartner site; while it dates back to August has some interesting speculation about the Future of Work.
“People will swarm more often and work solo less. They’ll work with others with whom they have few links, and teams will include people outside the control of the organization,”
“In addition, simulation, visualization and unification technologies, working across yottabytes of data per second, will demand an emphasis on new perceptual skills.”
-       Tom Austin, Vice President and Gartner Fellow
Gartner points out that the world of work will probably witness ten major changes in the next ten years. Interesting in that it will change how learning happens in the workplace as well. The eLearning industry will need to account for the coming change and have a strategy in place to deal with the changes.

via upsidelearning.com

So much of this applies as much to teaching and learning possibilities.
"De-routinization" of work (or teaching) could return to autonomy to teachers, already implied in Downes. Work swarms and teaming fit in at PLENK 2010 but seem less likely candidates for the entrenched academic mind.
And on down the list. Just because it could happen doesn't mean it will though.

Posted via email from Meanderings

BYOP: Many Thumbs Up for Movie of the Week

This week, who else but...  Eva von Dassow, professor of Classics and Near Eastern Studies, our new film star. Move over Mary Beard...

The MN Regents meeting "movies of the week" come in long and short versions, plus a full transcript of Eva's comments.  Hear the dean of the Carlson School, the usual admin sycophants, and a few speakers that voice criticism of the administration (in particular, AFSCME's Cherrene Horazuk and FRPE's Eva von Dassow)





An earlier encounter of President Bruininks and Professor von Dassow is also available on YouTube - The Gospel According to Robert, Part II.  And now, just a few of the many, many fan links (to which we add our names)

• A Critique of  the Cuts ~ Inside Highered
• My new hero ~ More or Less Bunk
• It's the faculty who define a university ~ Pharyngula , Science blogs
• She's on fire ~ Thorstein Veblen blog 
• Speaking Truth to Power ~ The Periodic Table
• Drop Kick me Jesus ~ University Diaries

I'm pleased to note that FRPE, Faculty for the Renewal of Public Education, is on our reader, posts tweeted, before movie fame... knew them when. FRPE participated in the March 4th Day of Action (and will no doubt be there for October 7). It would be an honor to join them. 

March4 with Bob Samuels and Twitter

UCLA Fights Back!: Demands for #March4 (Bob Samuels in HuffPo)

"A UCLA coalition of students, faculty, community members, and unions has worked together to come up with a set of demands to present to the administration and the media for March 4th."

The first set of issues deals with fighting the privatization of the university. Another group addresses budget transparency, shared governance, and democratic participation. Samuels explains,

"It is important to stress that when students and workers say they are fighting the privatization of the university, they are resisting six inter-related trends:

1) the shifting of costs from the public to the individual; thus while the state reduces funding, the individual students are being asked to make up for the differences through higher fees;

2) the university is being run more like a private profit-centered business than a not-for-profit public institution; in this structure, costs are socialized, while profits are privatized through the rise of an administrative class;

3) the move from a peer review system for public workers to a private model of free agent contract negotiations;

4) The move to individualized, online learning;

5) The student focus on earning individual grades over social learning and collaboration; and

6) the move to have private donors and private corporations fund the research mission."

March 4th sources are picking up. In addition to blogs, mainstream media and several March 4 groups with Facebook presences supplementing their blogs and Ning platforms, Twitter searches may be be the best and most efficient way to search fast breaking updates. Just search the hashtag #march4. Nor is all the action in California.

Where Should We Go After the Fee Hikes?

Where Should We Go After the Fee Hikes?: "legitimacy and the great public absence"  ~ cross-posted from Chris Newfield’s Remaking the University, 11/21/09, guest post by Kris Peterson, UC Irvine:


I just finished watching a YouTube video of Regents Bonnie Reiss and Eddie Island make a quick get-a-way to their vehicle at UCLA - just after they voted to increase student fees by an unprecedented 32%. They were surrounded and followed by students chanting, "Shame on you!" Reiss represents the banking and finance industry; and Island, a retiree of McDonnell-Douglas, represents the defense industry.  So, given that these two industries, with their ballooned subsidies and profits, have done nothing more than take this country down over the last several years, I'm thinking a lot about legitimacy. Not legitimacy related to governance. Rather, legitimacy in terms of representation and intent.


Let me go back in time. Between 1952 and 2007, UC had a vibrant relationship with its patron, the weapons industry. Over the years, some found this relationship egregious, as the public was concerned about nuclear proliferation and Cold War military conflicts throughout the world. Culminating in the 1970s, student protests against UC-managed Labs indexed these global events. Yet despite all this, the one thing that the weapons industry, and indeed the US military, had in common with a stellar, highly endowed, multi-campus, public university was the priority of research. Whether it was about NSEP language grants, private sector-federal government partnerships, or DOD and NSF funding that blurred the lines between foreign policy and military interests, a strong interdisciplinary research institution, writ large, was good for this industry.


But now we have a new relationship that constitutes a mix of patronage and competition. It's been built with the finance industry, commercial real estate – Big Business generally – all of which the Regents represent.

Do Professors Matter?

Also bookmarked under Whither-U .... relevant to our mission, which is also about teaching and the quality of higher education

Do Professors Matter? from Inside Higher Ed, 10/30/09

The movement to minimize the faculty role in higher education needs to be resisted, in part by explaining to the public why the role is crucial, writes Peter Katopes.