The Fora: A Higher Education Community

From "Where Did All the Students Go?" at The Chronicle:

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA)

Yep. 

I had to chuckle at this line, not that it doesn't make sense, but because virtually everyone already thinks they have been doing this all along:

"Instead, it requires the attention of every member of every university community coming together to think less about our own self-interest and more about the common good of our institutions and society."

Quote from: spork on October 03, 2019, 03:16:56 PM
From "Where Did All the Students Go?" at The Chronicle:

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA)

Well, no, I reject the idea that college education should be designed solely to get students a job. Or more accurately that it should fit some narrow conception of what students think will get them a job. I still have these old stupid ideas about how you might be able to get people to think more broadly and deeply about the world and their place in it.

Quote from: Caracal on October 03, 2019, 06:21:40 PM

Quote from: spork on October 03, 2019, 03:16:56 PM
From "Where Did All the Students Go?" at The Chronicle:

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA)

Well, no, I reject the idea that college education should be designed solely to get students a job. Or more accurately that it should fit some narrow conception of what students think will get them a job. I still have these old stupid ideas about how you might be able to get people to think more broadly and deeply about the world and their place in it.

+1,000 000 000 000...

M.

That's nice.  So what happens to your job when "everyone" votes with their feet to do something else instead of going to expensive, irrelevant college that takes far too long and still doesn't help achieve goals like finding one's place in the world?

If the issue is just the declining birth rate, then schools going out of business can be seen as just a market correction. Painful but necessary and foreseen. (If you're paying attention.)

In my field the problem is a mismatch between what students want and what they really need to do to get a decent job.
Nowadays, the latter includes way more math than the former. I wonder how much time will pass before we will be able to shed math-light image.

Quote from: Caracal on October 03, 2019, 06:21:40 PM

Well, no, I reject the idea that college education should be designed solely to get students a job. Or more accurately that it should fit some narrow conception of what students think will get them a job. I still have these old stupid ideas about how you might be able to get people to think more broadly and deeply about the world and their place in it.

I wouldn't be as bothered by the idea if the people advocating it were responsive to evidence.

Long ago there was a joke about someone flossing while a tiger was charging at them to make a point about missing the big, urgent problems.

Things are bad for universities because

• Tuition is extremely high and growing faster than incomes
• There are plenty of jobs for new high school grads
• There are fewer high school grads
• There is a new aversion to student loan debt

Let's fix all that by offering a new class. Excellent strategy!

Well, if plenty of jobs for new high school graduates is bad news for colleges, why should the fate of colleges be a matter of general concern? They aren't all going away.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 04, 2019, 03:20:58 AM
Well, if plenty of jobs for new high school graduates is bad news for colleges, why should the fate of colleges be a matter of general concern? They aren't all going away.

That statement describes the situation well. In the economic cycles, you expect a smaller proportion of high school graduates to go to college when the unemployment rate is low. And vice versa.

That fluctuation is generally accommodated by having many schools that can adjust their capacity a lot. The model would have them appointing temporary instructors when enrollment peaks, and letting those folks go when enrollment dips.

We also have schools that are not able to adjust their enrollment. Some schools have a fixed number of dorm beds and classrooms, and try to run at 100%. They vary their admission rate instead. If they are attractive enough, students' quality and ability to pay will remain adequate.

Another way fluctuation in overall numbers is accommodated is for some schools to close when enrollment dips. New ones open when enrollment peaks (in the previous boom, we saw a lot of for-profits open to supply that demand).

Sorry about the OT reply for this thread.

Quote from: Caracal on October 03, 2019, 06:21:40 PM

Quote from: spork on October 03, 2019, 03:16:56 PM
From "Where Did All the Students Go?" at The Chronicle:

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA)

Well, no, I reject the idea that college education should be designed solely to get students a job. Or more accurately that it should fit some narrow conception of what students think will get them a job. I still have these old stupid ideas about how you might be able to get people to think more broadly and deeply about the world and their place in it.

This implicit dichotomy really bugs me. While education can (and should) do more than "solely" prepare them for a job, if 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars don't make them substantially more employable than before, there's something seriously wrong.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 03, 2019, 06:42:36 PM
That's nice.  So what happens to your job when "everyone" votes with their feet to do something else instead of going to expensive, irrelevant college that takes far too long and still doesn't help achieve goals like finding one's place in the world?

What is happening here is that people are seeing a real problem, but then using it to advance ideas about what colleges should teach which really don't relate to the problem

First, there's the issue of credentialing and degrees. There is a huge wage gap between people who get college degrees and those who don't. The incentive to go to college is quite high, but the price is high too. Basically, students are presented with this high stakes wager. The Expected Value (gambling term) is high enough usually that its a bet they should make, but it a risky bet and if you don't finish college or if you do and aren't able to realize those expected returns in higher wages, you end up in a bad place. Partly this is about student loans and tuition, but really this is about inequality. It would be nice if the bet was less risky, but it also wouldn't be incentivized in the same way if people could get more jobs without a college degree and if those jobs paid better. In this imaginary world, people graduating high school would be able to make reasonable decisions about college that factored in their capacity and desire to go.

What drives me nuts is that you see administrators and others look at this state of affairs and think "ok, students are making this risky bet, so what we need to do is reshape everything to try to make it more likely that the bet will pay off." In theory, that sounds fine, but higher education was never meant to do that and will never do it well. Colleges will never be able to predict and teach the exact skills that will be needed for jobs. Sure, there are certain kinds of pre professional programs where that model might make sense, but not everyone is equipped to be a nurse or a PT and most jobs don't require that kind of specialized training. Colleges are never going to be able to singlehandedly give students "what they want and need" to "find their place in the world," or get a job or any of that. It won't work. What might result is that you make college into a deadening experience where students plod through courses that are supposed to help them succeed in the world, but don't do anything to give them a broader perspective or challenge their thinking.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 04, 2019, 05:27:49 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 03, 2019, 06:21:40 PM

Quote from: spork on October 03, 2019, 03:16:56 PM
From "Where Did All the Students Go?" at The Chronicle:

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191006-A-Crisis-in-Enrollment?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emgxnn9QOIW3Fpm6CVxW3bB7WvCo0v5kNyHv4ArKljGafvRmVhWURjelM5ZThGRDloVE05Y2FqOTFSeDBqSUFoYlQ1cHAxcGdYREFINA)

Well, no, I reject the idea that college education should be designed solely to get students a job. Or more accurately that it should fit some narrow conception of what students think will get them a job. I still have these old stupid ideas about how you might be able to get people to think more broadly and deeply about the world and their place in it.

This implicit dichotomy really bugs me. While education can (and should) do more than "solely" prepare them for a job, if 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars don't make them substantially more employable than before, there's something seriously wrong.

The thing is, it's the colleges that went the route of jacking up tuition as high as possible and they got away with it by marketing it as an investment. It's not that there's a change to focusing on college as a ticket to a job. Colleges already went there so that they could get every last dollar (including loans) out of the pockets of students. And it's not faculty salaries that cause universities to charge $40,000 a year for eight classes.

Quote from: Hibush on October 04, 2019, 04:03:53 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 04, 2019, 03:20:58 AM
Well, if plenty of jobs for new high school graduates is bad news for colleges, why should the fate of colleges be a matter of general concern? They aren't all going away.

That statement describes the situation well. In the economic cycles, you expect a smaller proportion of high school graduates to go to college when the unemployment rate is low. And vice versa.

That fluctuation is generally accommodated by having many schools that can adjust their capacity a lot. The model would have them appointing temporary instructors when enrollment peaks, and letting those folks go when enrollment dips.

We also have schools that are not able to adjust their enrollment. Some schools have a fixed number of dorm beds and classrooms, and try to run at 100%. They vary their admission rate instead. If they are attractive enough, students' quality and ability to pay will remain adequate.

Another way fluctuation in overall numbers is accommodated is for some schools to close when enrollment dips. New ones open when enrollment peaks (in the previous boom, we saw a lot of for-profits open to supply that demand).

Sorry about the OT reply for this thread.

They could also adjust by cutting tuition and fees to attract more students. They could get rid of bureaucracies that are there to make them look cool and up to date, like diversity and inclusion staff. Or the people that drop in on your department meetings and want to improve our language, i.e. talk about 'persons who identify as female' etc.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 04, 2019, 05:27:49 AM


This implicit dichotomy really bugs me. While education can (and should) do more than "solely" prepare them for a job, if 4 years and tens of thousands of dollars don't make them substantially more employable than before, there's something seriously wrong.

Well, the unemployment rate for college grads is more than three times lower than that for people who only graduated high school. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/05/yes-even-young-college-graduates-have-low-unemployment/

We don't have control group here, but this is a pretty stark difference. Where people get into trouble is with this idea that if this is why people go to college then colleges need to find some way to have college teach the exact skills needed to get some high paying job. But, colleges will never be able to do that part well, because they were never designed to.

Quote from: Caracal on October 04, 2019, 06:12:39 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 03, 2019, 06:42:36 PM
That's nice.  So what happens to your job when "everyone" votes with their feet to do something else instead of going to expensive, irrelevant college that takes far too long and still doesn't help achieve goals like finding one's place in the world?

What is happening here is that people are seeing a real problem, but then using it to advance ideas about what colleges should teach which really don't relate to the problem

First, there's the issue of credentialing and degrees. There is a huge wage gap between people who get college degrees and those who don't. The incentive to go to college is quite high, but the price is high too. Basically, students are presented with this high stakes wager. The Expected Value (gambling term) is high enough usually that its a bet they should make, but it a risky bet and if you don't finish college or if you do and aren't able to realize those expected returns in higher wages, you end up in a bad place. Partly this is about student loans and tuition, but really this is about inequality. It would be nice if the bet was less risky, but it also wouldn't be incentivized in the same way if people could get more jobs without a college degree and if those jobs paid better. In this imaginary world, people graduating high school would be able to make reasonable decisions about college that factored in their capacity and desire to go.

What drives me nuts is that you see administrators and others look at this state of affairs and think "ok, students are making this risky bet, so what we need to do is reshape everything to try to make it more likely that the bet will pay off." In theory, that sounds fine, but higher education was never meant to do that and will never do it well. Colleges will never be able to predict and teach the exact skills that will be needed for jobs. Sure, there are certain kinds of pre professional programs where that model might make sense, but not everyone is equipped to be a nurse or a PT and most jobs don't require that kind of specialized training. Colleges are never going to be able to singlehandedly give students "what they want and need" to "find their place in the world," or get a job or any of that. It won't work. What might result is that you make college into a deadening experience where students plod through courses that are supposed to help them succeed in the world, but don't do anything to give them a broader perspective or challenge their thinking.

I agree with much of what you've laid out as the problem and background, but I disagree with the proposed solution. 

From my perspective "What might result is that you make college into a deadening experience where students plod through courses that are supposed to help them succeed in the world, but don't do anything to give them a broader perspective or challenge their thinking" is exactly the current situation with much of the general education requirements that are so heavily weighted towards the humanities for people who are in college to do something else.

Over the years, I've read many articles that insist that current math requirements are too high and are blocking people who could do quite well in some fields with minimal math.  A recent example is https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/09/03/california-state-university-considering-adding-quantitative-reasoning.

However, where I live outside the university, the hardest positions to fill are those that require in-depth specific knowledge that builds on substantial fluency in math before we can even do anything in the field.  Calculus I is essentially the same as Greek 101, Latin 101, or French 101 decades/centuries ago when only the clergy, lawyers, and elites went to college.  People who can't come up to proficiency in math on the timeline provided end up with nothing they can take in their major because they are functionally innumerate.  We have prerequisites because people really must be numerate to go on to the next step in the same way that people really must be literate at a high level to benefit from a liberal arts education.  For example, by junior year, someone who cannot think through a problem, set up the relevant partial differential equations and boundary/initial conditions, and then let the computer crank through the actual solution is akin to someone who can't read a whole Harry Potter book.

However, we're not doing the equivalent of dental assistant training to earn a bachelor's degree in engineering.  We can't limit ourselves that way because we need people who can function effectively in changing conditions where only the physical laws remain constant.  However, taking a couple humanities classes is generally far less useful to getting a broader perspective and challenging one's thinking than being on a real project working with people of all kinds of backgrounds and having to square one's textbook knowledge of the physically possible with the needs and desires of actual people who have to live with the results of the project. 

The humanities knowledge from history, philosophy, and even novels can be very relevant to the situation at hand, but a random selection of courses is probably less useful than some targeted reading before shipping out to rural Guatemala or urban St. Louis.  Knowing generically about how power structures work can be valuable if that causes the team to interact with the locals to determine who the real decision-makers are, not just who has the expected title, but that's much less likely to happen if the humanities courses someone was forced to take focused more on a couple specific power structures and how to assign the desired *ist names.

The internships, co-ops, and undergraduate research projects in a good engineering program will challenge people's thinking outside of theory and textbook solutions.  The human aspects of effective teamwork and how to really communicate (what's important?  Who needs to know?  Can it wait for the next scheduled report or should someone hit the stop button now and run to the project manager?) are an integral part of the education.  Again, a humanities class, no matter how fabulous, is no substitute for really doing the work in a situation where theory will be insufficient and one has to have a broad knowledge of all the science underpinning standard engineering practice.

To be clear, we absolutely need people who focus and become experts in the humanities and all fields of knowledge.  My life has benefited greatly from being a voracious reader who continues to read all kinds of things.  However, at some point, people have to be allowed to specialize and go forward in early adulthood on paths that have absolute prerequisites that cannot be sidestepped or waived.  We cannot, as one recent article proposed, make "everyone" get a liberal arts college degree that barely scratches the surface for the mathematics and the math-based sciences to then spend another 4-6 years in a post-graduate program.  That's not going to work out for us as a society.

The inequities about how K-12 education is ripping off many students do drive me nuts as well.  Some of the students who get to college really only have an 8th grade education or less.  Those are the students who need college the most, but are unlikely to finish or to finish in such a way that their investment pays off.  People who have a solid high school education and can choose to not attend college because they have other options by virtue of their social capital tend to do fine.  The problem is exactly the continued ripping off of bringing the 8th grade-educated students all the way up to a high school education by the time those folks finish college.  One of the saddest things I've seen is people who now have that shiny college degree and don't realize they can't get a middle-class job in their hometown nor are they competitive in the national market because they aren't highly educated and they don't have the social networks that will get them into a middle-class job outside of the formal application process.

If anything, I would have more people doing paid internships and co-ops with whatever path a given student thinks they might want to have then continue to double down on more general education classes to have people explore the world.  Ideally, we'd all have done much of that exploration in K-12, as do most other first-world nations.

Someone who is educated with a solid understanding of math, the science that depends on math, and the teamwork, time-management, and other soft skills that one picks up as a successful engineering graduate tends to do well in the world, even if they don't end up in a job with the title of engineer.  Indeed, one of the continuing frustrations all around is how many recent engineering graduates don't go into engineering so that, even with engineering graduation rates up, we're still short on the high-level knowledge that one only acquires through several years of working after school.  Grad school isn't really the same other than the time one racks up on projects doing the actual research as part of the team.

Quote from: Caracal on October 04, 2019, 06:12:39 AM

[. . .]

make college into a deadening experience where students plod through courses that are supposed to help them succeed in the world, but don't do anything to give them a broader perspective or challenge their thinking.

You've pretty much described the undergraduate business major.

"We cannot, as one recent article proposed, make "everyone" get a liberal arts college degree that barely scratches the surface for the mathematics and the math-based sciences to then spend another 4-6 years in a post-graduate program.  That's not going to work out for us as a society."

Polly_mer, I think you must mean a humanities degree?  A liberal arts degree includes math and science.  For instance, my dictionary defines "liberal arts" as "academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences as distinct from professional and technical subjects."  So for instance math is liberal arts, engineering is technical.

At my university, a mediocre R1, only 13% of our students are majoring in the liberal arts.  For the rest it's business, advertising, engineering, sports physiology, and the like.  Even liberal arts majors, such as biology major, are required to take only three semester-long humanities courses.  That's three courses out of a total of 32.  That doesn't seem like such a high number that airy-fairy humanities requirements are going to disable the potential technical prowess of students at this university.

Quote from: Hegemony on October 06, 2019, 01:53:08 AM
"We cannot, as one recent article proposed, make "everyone" get a liberal arts college degree that barely scratches the surface for the mathematics and the math-based sciences to then spend another 4-6 years in a post-graduate program.  That's not going to work out for us as a society."

Polly_mer, I think you must mean a humanities degree?  A liberal arts degree includes math and science.  For instance, my dictionary defines "liberal arts" as "academic subjects such as literature, philosophy, mathematics, and social and physical sciences as distinct from professional and technical subjects."  So for instance math is liberal arts, engineering is technical.

Yes, I'm aware that a true liberal arts degree includes math and science.  However, the term "liberal arts" as used down at the lower tiers of institutions tends to be very humanities heavy and very light on math and the science that uses math at moderate to high levels (i.e., generally only physics and math itself will clear the bar and the small physics programs have been closing in droves). 

I managed to refrain from laughing and crying during a reprioritization in which the chair of the board of trustees asked if we could get some of those STEM degree programs and the provost waved me over to explain that we'd first have to start offering calculus all the way through at least ordinary differential equations when we weren't even offering calculus at the time.  I see I neglected the link in the quoted post: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/24/author-discusses-his-book-purpose-college.  It's pretty damn clear that the author really doesn't mean serious math and the related computer science that now goes with it the way my colleagues and I know math.  He waves towards physics, but he doesn't mean modern physics that is computational intensive (i.e., CS and engineering related knowledge) or experimental intensive with modern equipment that will get someone a job in the field with a bachelor's degree.

Quote from: Hegemony on October 06, 2019, 01:53:08 AMAt my university, a mediocre R1, only 13% of our students are majoring in the liberal arts.  For the rest it's business, advertising, engineering, sports physiology, and the like.  Even liberal arts majors, such as biology major, are required to take only three semester-long humanities courses.  That's three courses out of a total of 32.  That doesn't seem like such a high number that airy-fairy humanities requirements are going to disable the potential technical prowess of students at this university.

Biology is often held up as the poster child of why the push should not be STEM because a generic biology degree is so very, very light on math (may not even require calculus) and is already so oversupplied at all levels that people can't get jobs.  A very readable article is https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/why-the-s-in-stem-is-overrated/279931/ and the situation has done nothing to improve in the past few years.

The problem I see in higher ed isn't "airy-fairy humanities requirements" so much as the lack of math requirements up to the point of being able to do something useful and then the physics/chemistry/computer science/engineering that are the something useful requiring math.  The problem is more one of opportunity cost (if someone takes one course, then what aren't they taking that same term?).  The social sciences that are an increasing part of the general education requirements that aren't calculus-and-higher-math-based are contributing every bit as much to a lack of people with the math/physics/CS skills we need out here. 

The requirements may only be 3 humanities courses, but I bet there are at least 21 other credits (7ish other courses) that are also part of general education that probably wouldn't be included in the curriculum if the goal were focused on, say, biology knowledge.  I further bet that few to none of those general education credits include 9-12 credits (lab courses are often 4 credits) of a useful programming language, enough math to need that useful programming language, and enough calculations in some course to use that math and useful programming language to become proficient instead of doing a sad march through a handful of problems to check a box related to a nebulous job-readiness goal.

For example, in engineering, the credits required are often well above 120 because of the extra general education requirements.  Some very good institutions have flat out stated their engineering degrees are a 5-6 year program to make the typical semester load reasonable.  Other excellent institutions simply rely on students coming in with enough AP/IB/dual credits that most people will be able to focus on the major instead of the background and gen ed requirements.

My employer has taken to hiring PhDs in math and then teaching them the relevant physics/engineering/computer science because that's been easier than trying to figure out how to get enough H1B holders through the US citizen process to be able to work in the areas we need the most knowledge.  We're recruiting high school students to pay their way all the way through grad school in another effort.

Our competitors are likewise so very short on people with the relevant knowledge that has a background in math, then the science/engineering that needs the math, and then the programming including algorithm development to solve the equations we can now write.

A business degree, sports physiology, or advertising doesn't help us at all when we need people for whom a set of partial differential equations is as easy to read as an English sentence and writing that set is not much harder than writing a decent research article in their native language.

We really, really don't need STEM at the expense of humanities; we do continue to need EM by people who have the ability and interest and the support all the way up so we're not losing people from the pipeline by virtue of being born in the wrong neighborhood or other irrelevancy.  Putting extra barriers in front of those folks because the liberal arts are a different good is a very, very bad idea if the goal is to maintain a comfortable society for all of us.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 06, 2019, 06:16:32 AM
I managed to refrain from laughing and crying during a reprioritization in which the chair of the board of trustees asked if we could get some of those STEM degree programs and the provost waved me over to explain that we'd first have to start offering calculus all the way through at least ordinary differential equations when we weren't even offering calculus at the time.  I see I neglected the link in the quoted post: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/09/24/author-discusses-his-book-purpose-college. It's pretty damn clear that the author really doesn't mean serious math and the related computer science that now goes with it the way my colleagues and I know math.  He waves towards physics, but he doesn't mean modern physics that is computational intensive (i.e., CS and engineering related knowledge) or experimental intensive with modern equipment that will get someone a job in the field with a bachelor's degree.

Oh, but he does:

Quote
I simply think one should go to college to pursue a liberal education. After that, if one wants job training, they should go to a technical college, participate in an apprenticeship or go to graduate or professional school. But college itself is not to prepare for specific jobs.

There you go. All of that "other stuff" can be easily picked up after the degree in one of those other places. How could it be that hard to become a nuclear physicist after getting a history degree? Probably it would take 6 months, tops.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 05, 2019, 10:08:39 AM
However, taking a couple humanities classes is generally far less useful to getting a broader perspective and challenging one's thinking than being on a real project working with people of all kinds of backgrounds and having to square one's textbook knowledge of the physically possible with the needs and desires of actual people who have to live with the results of the project. 

The humanities knowledge from history, philosophy, and even novels can be very relevant to the situation at hand, but a random selection of courses is probably less useful than some targeted reading before shipping out to rural Guatemala or urban St. Louis.  Knowing generically about how power structures work can be valuable if that causes the team to interact with the locals to determine who the real decision-makers are, not just who has the expected title, but that's much less likely to happen if the humanities courses someone was forced to take focused more on a couple specific power structures and how to assign the desired *ist names.

Sigh, this is pretty frustrating. You just told us that people in engineering need to know the math or they won't be able to manage, yet apparently if someone wants to go "ship out" to Guatemala or St. Louis, they just need some quick "targeted reading" and they'll be able to figure out everything they need to know. This is basically like telling this engineer that they can skip the rest of the math in college and just read about some quick targeted calculus and then they'll be able to fix that bridge problem once they get there.

The world is filled with people who think they can just do some quick reading and then they'll understand everything they need to know about those pesky locals and they can get on with the building of their bridge. But, without various skills in interpreting sources and understanding them, they won't know how to evaluate whatever they read about Guatemala. They won't know if the arguments make any sense and most likely they'll be given something that just reinforces whatever existing ideas they have about Guatemalans and they won't have developed the skills to think more critically about any of this.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 06, 2019, 06:50:46 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 06, 2019, 06:16:32 AM

Oh, but he does:

Quote
I simply think one should go to college to pursue a liberal education. After that, if one wants job training, they should go to a technical college, participate in an apprenticeship or go to graduate or professional school. But college itself is not to prepare for specific jobs.

There you go. All of that "other stuff" can be easily picked up after the degree in one of those other places. How could it be that hard to become a nuclear physicist after getting a history degree? Probably it would take 6 months, tops.

That's not remotely what he's saying, of course. You can't become a nuclear physicist in six months with a physics degree (which is also a liberal arts degree) either. You have to go to...grad school. Poly has just been telling us that engineering programs aren't doing a particularly good job of training people to get jobs in engineering fields.  I'm guessing that the reason these math majors might do better is because they are people who have a good grounding in certain fundamentals and understand how to think through problems in a rigorous way. Pre-Professional programs might not be doing that because they are too focused on particular skills and aren't building up the sort of basic competencies which are more important. Seems like a good argument for the liberal arts to me...

Quote from: mahagonny on October 03, 2019, 04:39:58 PM
I had to chuckle at this line, not that it doesn't make sense, but because virtually everyone already thinks they have been doing this all along:

"Instead, it requires the attention of every member of every university community coming together to think less about our own self-interest and more about the common good of our institutions and society."

This is the kind of vague, moralistic, oratorical statement one makes when one has no practical suggestions----which probably reflects the predicament for everyone involved at this point.

I work at the kind of institution Polly is talking about, where:

• General education requirements include three credits of math, which doesn't even have to be calculus or statistics. Many students fulfill this requirement with a "math concepts" course (I'm not sure what the actual content is, because the catalog description is word salad). They don't take any other math course as undergrads. (Which means they won't be in any mathematically-oriented field should they go to graduate school.)
• The nursing majors take a single statistics course.
• Biology majors take only calculus I, while chemistry majors take calculus I, II, and III. I don't see any kind of prerequisite in statistics or computational skills for the genetics course.
• There is an Intro to Python course in the catalog, but I have no idea who takes it or what the enrollment is. I think that is it for courses on programming languages.

What I do see is plenty of boutique courses that can fulfill general education distribution requirements where faculty teach their favorite subjects and expect students to be enthralled by them. Yet the students themselves have a very transactional attitude about post-secondary education. They assume that the curriculum in X makes them well prepared for a career in X when, except for perhaps nursing, it doesn't. When a major's webpage says "we prepare you for a career in business, law, government, teaching, journalism, and social services," it really means "we don't really prepare you for any career, if you were motivated and self-directed enough to know how to get what you really needed you probably wouldn't be here, but in the meantime we're happy to take your tuition money."

Quote from: Caracal on October 06, 2019, 12:03:43 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 06, 2019, 06:50:46 AM

Quote
I simply think one should go to college to pursue a liberal education. After that, if one wants job training, they should go to a technical college, participate in an apprenticeship or go to graduate or professional school. But college itself is not to prepare for specific jobs.

There you go. All of that "other stuff" can be easily picked up after the degree in one of those other places. How could it be that hard to become a nuclear physicist after getting a history degree? Probably it would take 6 months, tops.

That's not remotely what he's saying, of course. You can't become a nuclear physicist in six months with a physics degree (which is also a liberal arts degree) either. You have to go to...grad school. Poly has just been telling us that engineering programs aren't doing a particularly good job of training people to get jobs in engineering fields.  I'm guessing that the reason these math majors might do better is because they are people who have a good grounding in certain fundamentals and understand how to think through problems in a rigorous way. Pre-Professional programs might not be doing that because they are too focused on particular skills and aren't building up the sort of basic competencies which are more important. Seems like a good argument for the liberal arts to me...

As Polly pointed out, at one time it may have been the case that a physics degree would have been considered a "liberal arts degree", in the modern usage physics would be identified as a STEM degree, and a liberal arts degree would refer to something non-STEM.

Quote from: spork on October 06, 2019, 02:22:19 PM
What I do see is plenty of boutique courses that can fulfill general education distribution requirements where faculty teach their favorite subjects and expect students to be enthralled by them. Yet the students themselves have a very transactional attitude about post-secondary education.

This is the critical point that is ignored: No matter the subject matter, if students aren't engaged with it they will learn next to nothing. Neither a "liberal arts" degree or a "professional" degree will be of any use to someone who doesn't care enough to put in the work. There is no "one program to rule them all", despite what many would like to believe.

One of the micro-essays to which this thread's first post links begins with the assertion that "college enrollment is down 1.7 percent nationwide."  If that really is the extent of the problem, no changes are necessary . . .

. . . which is good, because none are forthcoming. 

As for me, I have twenty more years of working ahead of me.  Surely my middling, anonymous university can make it that long.  Afterwards, the whole system can go to hell for all I care.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 06, 2019, 04:14:14 PM


As Polly pointed out, at one time it may have been the case that a physics degree would have been considered a "liberal arts degree", in the modern usage physics would be identified as a STEM degree, and a liberal arts degree would refer to something non-STEM.

Well you'll have to tell all of the liberal arts colleges around the country that they need to stop offering science courses then. More generally, I think the distinction is really about politics and the attempt to classify STEM classes as useful knowledge and humanities ones as fluff.

Quote from: writingprof on October 06, 2019, 04:52:19 PM
One of the micro-essays to which this thread's first post links begins with the assertion that "college enrollment is down 1.7 percent nationwide."  If that really is the extent of the problem, no changes are necessary . . .

. . . which is good, because none are forthcoming. 

As for me, I have twenty more years of working ahead of me.  Surely my middling, anonymous university can make it that long.  Afterwards, the whole system can go to hell for all I care.

Hey that sounds like of those examples of long term commitment to the health and success of the institution that characterizes the tenure track, and is so tragically lacking in part time faculty.

Quote from: Caracal on October 06, 2019, 05:18:57 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 06, 2019, 04:14:14 PM


As Polly pointed out, at one time it may have been the case that a physics degree would have been considered a "liberal arts degree", in the modern usage physics would be identified as a STEM degree, and a liberal arts degree would refer to something non-STEM.

Well you'll have to tell all of the liberal arts colleges around the country that they need to stop offering science courses then. More generally, I think the distinction is really about politics and the attempt to classify STEM classes as useful knowledge and humanities ones as fluff.

...And I aaallmmoost...but not quite...want to suggest that, behind those distinctions, is the haunting echo of "science and math are for the boys and English and art history are for the girls," and THAT is fascized into the Polarity Bundle of "Boy are Strong, and Productive, and Important, while girls are silly and frivolous and don't even play Mommy very well..." thereby justifying a return to the "old" status quo, and defunding of "all those girly things", and ...I dunno....where's Mr. Ed when you need him?

M.

The truth is that we have a terrible problem with K-12 math in this country.

I'm a math professor.  I think at least 75% of our secondary math education graduates are simply not good enough at math to stand in front of a high school classroom and teach it.  They're simply not quick enough on their feet to be able to respond when students come up with potential alternate methods to solve problems, and hence they can only teach math as following the prescribed procedure that they know, rather than as a variety of legitimate methods for which any legitimate use could get to a solution.

And - of course - the 25% who are capable find out how poorly they are paid and how poor their working conditions are, and, unless they are really dedicated, they realize they are smart and can do better compensated things with their lives.

Quote from: Caracal on October 06, 2019, 11:43:23 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 05, 2019, 10:08:39 AM
However, taking a couple humanities classes is generally far less useful to getting a broader perspective and challenging one's thinking than being on a real project working with people of all kinds of backgrounds and having to square one's textbook knowledge of the physically possible with the needs and desires of actual people who have to live with the results of the project. 

The humanities knowledge from history, philosophy, and even novels can be very relevant to the situation at hand, but a random selection of courses is probably less useful than some targeted reading before shipping out to rural Guatemala or urban St. Louis.  Knowing generically about how power structures work can be valuable if that causes the team to interact with the locals to determine who the real decision-makers are, not just who has the expected title, but that's much less likely to happen if the humanities courses someone was forced to take focused more on a couple specific power structures and how to assign the desired *ist names.

Sigh, this is pretty frustrating. You just told us that people in engineering need to know the math or they won't be able to manage, yet apparently if someone wants to go "ship out" to Guatemala or St. Louis, they just need some quick "targeted reading" and they'll be able to figure out everything they need to know. This is basically like telling this engineer that they can skip the rest of the math in college and just read about some quick targeted calculus and then they'll be able to fix that bridge problem once they get there.

The world is filled with people who think they can just do some quick reading and then they'll understand everything they need to know about those pesky locals and they can get on with the building of their bridge. But, without various skills in interpreting sources and understanding them, they won't know how to evaluate whatever they read about Guatemala. They won't know if the arguments make any sense and most likely they'll be given something that just reinforces whatever existing ideas they have about Guatemalans and they won't have developed the skills to think more critically about any of this.

The solution is to assemble teams of experts who can work together to solve problems, not insist that the engineers have to learn all the humanities, social sciences, and everything else as well as engineering while somehow people with just a bachelor's degree in the humanities are on a good path.

The engineer doesn't have to be an expert on all of Guatemalan history to learn something useful regarding the two villages being connected by the new bridge.  Getting distracted in all the detail is probably the worst thing to do instead of getting a handle on the couple hundred people who are directly affected and figuring out what they need and want in terms of a bridge.  The people who do a lot of world traveling need to know much more how to interact with normal people in this area to address their needs than those traveling engineers need all the gory details of a thousand years of history and politics.  The frustrating part for me is knowing people who travel all the time for projects so that any three humanities classes N years ago are seriously insufficient today and are less useful than a constant stream of reading with some targeted reading as the next project is assigned.

That's a good thing, because no one is becoming an expert in all the world areas by taking the three humanities electives that Hegemony mentions.  Oh, and people do become experts in local knowledge all the time with a little reading and then a lot of listening to the locals themselves.  Being able to speak multiple human languages is much more useful than almost any other part of general education.  However, again, one doesn't have to take a ton of formal classes to get going on the language and actually learn it when other humans are around and interacting on what needs to be discussed instead of what someone somewhere thought would be nice to teach.

I don't remember having to pass a test to go to foreign countries and start interacting.  I just went and learned along the way.

Quote from: mamselle on October 06, 2019, 07:40:00 PM

Quote from: Caracal on October 06, 2019, 05:18:57 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 06, 2019, 04:14:14 PM


As Polly pointed out, at one time it may have been the case that a physics degree would have been considered a "liberal arts degree", in the modern usage physics would be identified as a STEM degree, and a liberal arts degree would refer to something non-STEM.

Well you'll have to tell all of the liberal arts colleges around the country that they need to stop offering science courses then. More generally, I think the distinction is really about politics and the attempt to classify STEM classes as useful knowledge and humanities ones as fluff.

...And I aaallmmoost...but not quite...want to suggest that, behind those distinctions, is the haunting echo of "science and math are for the boys and English and art history are for the girls," and THAT is fascized into the Polarity Bundle of "Boy are Strong, and Productive, and Important, while girls are silly and frivolous and don't even play Mommy very well..." thereby justifying a return to the "old" status quo, and defunding of "all those girly things", and ...I dunno....where's Mr. Ed when you need him?

M.

What is this?  No one is saying that women are unimportant or that studying the humanities is unimportant.

What we're saying is that many people want something other than studying the humanities as a post-high-school experience.

A corollary is saying flat out that formal classroom experiences frequently don't result in the knowledge and wisdom that we want people to gain from those experiences, especially when people are forced into taking classes they don't want and see no use in taking.  How many of those who "took calculus" while undergrads could integrate by parts or do a u substitution in the next hour?  Who can balance a chemical equation or apply Newton's second law or do anything resembling that lab course you took?  Who wants to tackle a round of which European higher ed systems have anything resembling US general education requirements and why they by-and-large don't? 

It must again be time for the story that I took 5 undergraduate classes in math and 5 undergraduate classes in philosophy.  One of these results in me having jobs that pay well and one of them means that people keep telling me that I'm wrong for applying what I learned in those classes to things I read and experience and then dare to tell people what I see.

The distinction isn't men/women or even useful/not useful as some global category; the distinction is to what extent we continue wasting everyone's time by refusing to accept that individual humans have their own thoughts and goals and that formal classes don't work all that well for students who don't want to learn that topic.

As a faculty member at a liberal arts colleges, my experience is that the modern "liberal arts" want students majoring in the sciences to take more humanities, arts, and social science courses. And that's great- I'm a science faculty that pushes for it frequently.

But what I don't see is my colleagues in the humanities pushing their majors to get similar grounding in the mathematical and natural sciences portions of the liberal arts. In fact, I see them helping students avoid taking those "classes they don't really need" as much as possible.

My current university requires one quantitative course that does not even have to be math, and a natural science course. That is not going to lead to a liberal arts degree for someone in the humanities, in my opinion.

On the other hand, it requires courses in the arts, social sciences, history, several writing courses, several semesters of languages and courses the explore culture.

The imbalance between those requirements seems stark, to me.

"there is often a disconnect between those who believe urgent and dramatic action is needed (generally trustees and presidents) and those who believe that what the institution offers is of such value or of such long-standing duration that it will be fine (often longtime faculty members and some administrators). Some people in the latter group believe the problem is that the institution just isn't marketing the excellence that they are certain they offer . . . In embracing the status quo, however, they ignore the national trends that are often creating circumstances beyond their control."

From https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/07/advice-institutions-facing-impending-financial-challenges-opinion (https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/07/advice-institutions-facing-impending-financial-challenges-opinion).

Quote from: spork on October 07, 2019, 03:40:34 AM
"there is often a disconnect between those who believe urgent and dramatic action is needed (generally trustees and presidents) and those who believe that what the institution offers is of such value or of such long-standing duration that it will be fine (often longtime faculty members and some administrators). Some people in the latter group believe the problem is that the institution just isn't marketing the excellence that they are certain they offer . . . In embracing the status quo, however, they ignore the national trends that are often creating circumstances beyond their control."

From https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/07/advice-institutions-facing-impending-financial-challenges-opinion (https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/07/advice-institutions-facing-impending-financial-challenges-opinion).

Well, the problem is that the people who believe urgent and dramatic action is required usually don't have a well thought out plan. Instead they have a series of hackneyed cliches borrowed from people in business schools. Usually their dramatic action is going to do nothing but take out what is left of the underpinnings of the school and turn "struggling rural liberal arts college" into "pointless pre professional annex."

The whole discussion seems to involve conflating different sorts of problems. The schools that are in trouble because of structural factors are usually small private, non-elite  liberal arts schools. There's a whole discussion that could be had about this, but it is really a sort of niche issue. Then there are state schools which are in trouble because politicians want to defund higher education, often because they think the humanities or, sometimes, even the sciences, are basically worthless endeavors.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 05:50:54 AM
The whole discussion seems to involve conflating different sorts of problems. The schools that are in trouble because of structural factors are usually small private, non-elite  liberal arts schools. There's a whole discussion that could be had about this, but it is really a sort of niche issue.

It's a niche issue until one starts adding up all the jobs lost, which tends to be about 100 per school and then all the related jobs in the community that relied on having those 100 people as well as several hundred students.  Turning the Midwest and Northeast into the Mountain West so that only urban people have nearby post-high-school education options is going to leave a huge mark on society that won't heal. 

It's niche until you realize we're talking several hundred of these bitsy schools that will increase the widening divide between those who insist that a college education is for everyone and those who see a college education as disconnected from their lives.  The rural/urban/suburban split on who goes to college is looking pretty grim nationally.

People voting with their feet for something other than the small college experience that focuses heavily on the humanities is just one indicator of why the current system is broken.  When fewer people went to college, more of those folks were satisfied with their small college experience of  having classes spread as about 1/3 major, 1/3 general education, and 1/3 electives.  The world has changed and that's no longer sufficient for many people when the goal is having a solid enough foundation that one can do lifelong learning to read up on something and acquire new skills as the world continues to change at a rapid pace.

Continuing to provide education that would be recognizable to the students of more than 50 years ago and holding that up as the ideal is a losing argument to convince people who already have pretty good critical thinking skills and are using their unprecedented-in-human-history access to information to draw conclusions relevant to their lives.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 05:50:54 AM
Then there are state schools which are in trouble because politicians want to defund higher education, often because they think the humanities or, sometimes, even the sciences, are basically worthless endeavors.

I'm going with opportunity cost again.  The question in my mind remains: how many people do we need specializing in certain areas of human knowledge when we have so many other needs in society that are falling through the cracks?

When we do prioritization of all the needs and what's required to have people who can address those needs, the generic 4-year college experience where people explore big ideas for mostly personal gain falls pretty low on the priority scale.  That's not the same as worthless, but it does mean someone who can plan and allocate resources according to priorities is generally going to prioritize something other than a liberal-arts-in-name-only college education (i.e., not even going to provide the benefits of a liberal arts degree because the standards have slipped and math/science are not equal parts of the endeavor) for the masses.  The K-12 experience in some places is shockingly inadequate; doing remediation at that level has to be a higher priority than magically trying to provide a true college education to people who don't have the foundation to benefit.

When we go with wants and desires of real human beings who are choosing educational experiences, many of those folks want a good enough job where they can live inside, eat regularly, and have sufficient free time to spend with friends and family.  To the extent that a standard college education meets those needs, people will choose a standard college education.  However, the evidence is pretty clear in many quarters that just having a college degree is insufficient to move people into the middle class.  People who have social capital including a good network can be much less strategic about their time right after high school because something will probably work out and those folks will remain middle class.  People who are relying on education to bring them into the middle class don't have to do too much research to determine that the system as advertised doesn't work for people like them.

Higher education is one part of society.  With only 30% of the US adult population having a college degree and many of the things that need doing requiring specialized experience (formal classroom or otherwise) continuing to insist that a university system of one-offs is fine means wasting resources that won't fix the actual problems that ideally that university degree would help fix.

One of the recurring strong arguments against the generic value of a humanities-based undergraduate degree for everyone is the recurring saga of the death-marching adjuncts who insist they cannot do any other job by being unqualified.  It's nice that people can say the words related to how valuable a liberal arts education is; the evidence, though, is a good many people who claim to have a liberal arts education and are promoting a liberal arts education for everyone else are clearly just trying to keep their job.

A second recurring strong argument is personal experience being forced to take general education courses that are pretty clearly for the benefit of the person teaching and not for the students.  I continue to be amazed at the educational equivalent of insisting that because everyone must eat, we all must enjoy cooking gourmet meals that take hours that could be spent doing something else we'd enjoy more.  That doesn't work and contributes to even college-educated folks wondering how to modify the system to account for all the ways that people acquire knowledge and skills.  Many politicians have college experience, if not a full college degree.  They are drawing on that experience when they underfund the state branch school that should be smaller anyway in favor of targeted funding for different educational endeavors like certificates and apprenticeships.

To be clear, yes, people should be able to study the humanities and arts; we need experts with that knowledge.  However, we also need experts in other areas and cannot afford to waste resources making everyone expert enough in the humanities at the college level when the effort should have been at K-12 to teach enough history, literature, languages, etc. for a competent adult to continue reading up and benefit from that reading up.  The goal should be people who want to learn more and will make an effort to read up. 

Many people are discouraged from even attempting college because it's so clear that some types of college education are a racket not designed for people who really want to learn a specific area and that cannot even deliver on the sales pitch of helping people think deeply about the world and their place in it.

Quote from: mamselle on October 06, 2019, 07:40:00 PM

Quote from: Caracal on October 06, 2019, 05:18:57 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 06, 2019, 04:14:14 PM


As Polly pointed out, at one time it may have been the case that a physics degree would have been considered a "liberal arts degree", in the modern usage physics would be identified as a STEM degree, and a liberal arts degree would refer to something non-STEM.

Well you'll have to tell all of the liberal arts colleges around the country that they need to stop offering science courses then. More generally, I think the distinction is really about politics and the attempt to classify STEM classes as useful knowledge and humanities ones as fluff.

...And I aaallmmoost...but not quite...want to suggest that, behind those distinctions, is the haunting echo of "science and math are for the boys and English and art history are for the girls," and THAT is fascized into the Polarity Bundle of "Boy are Strong, and Productive, and Important, while girls are silly and frivolous and don't even play Mommy very well..." thereby justifying a return to the "old" status quo, and defunding of "all those girly things", and ...I dunno....where's Mr. Ed when you need him?

M.

I'd guess you've never seen science recruitment up close. Trying to recruit women for natural science has been a big deal for AGES; I was involved in a program here about 20 years ago to encourage girls in high school to consider science, and there have been numerous initiatives since*.  I think you'd be hard pressed to find many dinosaurs who still oppose women in STEM. However, that doesn't change the fact that many capable young women choose other things, and even in science, tend to go for life sciences rather than physical sciences.

*All kinds of universities have "women in engineering" and "women in math", etc. events regularly. It's pretty mainstream kind of stuff at this point.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 07, 2019, 06:12:39 AM
When fewer people went to college, more of those folks were satisfied with their small college experience of  having classes spread as about 1/3 major, 1/3 general education, and 1/3 electives.  The world has changed and that's no longer sufficient for many people when the goal is having a solid enough foundation that one can do lifelong learning to read up on something and acquire new skills as the world continues to change at a rapid pace.

Continuing to provide education that would be recognizable to the students of more than 50 years ago and holding that up as the ideal is a losing argument to convince people who already have pretty good critical thinking skills and are using their unprecedented-in-human-history access to information to draw conclusions relevant to their lives.


When we go with wants and desires of real human beings who are choosing educational experiences, many of those folks want a good enough job where they can live inside, eat regularly, and have sufficient free time to spend with friends and family.   People who are relying on education to bring them into the middle class don't have to do too much research to determine that the system as advertised doesn't work for people like them.

A few quick points.

1. The world is filled with people who have read four things about some places, gone there and messed everything up. Most of what I try to get students to understand in my gen ed courses is that things are complicated, history matters context matters and that you need to be able to think critically about sources. Its a way to try to process knowledge and question yourself and others. I'm glad you think that's just a pet project, but I don't agree, I think it is particularly crucial right now.

2. There actually never was a point where college gave people some particular set of skills that prepared them to get a job and have a satisfying life. Seriously, never. The whole thing wasn't designed that way. Basically, the valuable end result of a college degree is the credential. That's always been true. That credential has become increasingly important at the same time it has become increasingly expensive. What you're basically trying to do is retrofit a college degree so it somehow matches the importance of that credential and the cost of it. I don't think that's going to work, because colleges have never been able to provide that and aren't set up to do it. I'm not even sure it would be possible for any institution to do it well. The way to tackle the larger problems is by trying to deal with the cost and the over importance of the credential.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 07:41:17 AM


2. There actually never was a point where college gave people some particular set of skills that prepared them to get a job and have a satisfying life. Seriously, never.

Um, the 4 faculties in the ancient universities were Law, Medicine, Theology, and Philosophy. The first 3 led to careers in law, medicine, and the church. Philosophy covered everything else. So unless you have a very strange definition of "never", the statement above is clearly false.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 07, 2019, 07:53:05 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 07:41:17 AM


2. There actually never was a point where college gave people some particular set of skills that prepared them to get a job and have a satisfying life. Seriously, never.

Um, the 4 faculties in the ancient universities were Law, Medicine, Theology, and Philosophy. The first 3 led to careers in law, medicine, and the church. Philosophy covered everything else. So unless you have a very strange definition of "never", the statement above is clearly false.

I don't really know enough about the history of medieval colleges. I was talking about colleges in the United States where basically the whole thing broke down pretty quickly. Colleges were designed to produce an educated clergy, but before long most of the people going to college had no intention of becoming clergymen. The law wasn't something you needed to go to college for, and Galenist medicine lost a lot of prestige.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 05:50:54 AM
Well, the problem is that the people who believe urgent and dramatic action is required usually don't have a well thought out plan. Instead they have a series of hackneyed cliches borrowed from people in business schools. Usually their dramatic action is going to do nothing but take out what is left of the underpinnings of the school and turn "struggling rural liberal arts college" into "pointless pre professional annex."

This is true. It would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. "Business people" think they're experts on everything. Yet big, previously successful businesses are routinely run like crap until they shut down. Should universities be taking advice from the people that ran myspace? How about yahoo? A lot of the advice they give is given in ignorance and is, if we're being charitable, nothing more than an uneducated guess that has little chance of success. The mistake I see the most is that we should change strategy at a moment's notice to "move into a better market". They think you can force students to take online courses in an attempt to save money. They think you can drop "unprofitable ventures" and add "profitable ventures". No, it's not that easy, but then those are the same business people that sit on their couch and offer the same simple solutions for their favorite NFL teams to win the Super Bowl. It's nothing but a game for them.

The difference above may be between "job" or "career" and "profession," i.e., the deeper, broader, more-higly-considered life of the mind tied to constant efforts to grow and absorb new information throughout ones life, and knowing how to apply those efficaciously.

-=-=-=-

I actually have tracked female entry into the sciences for quite awhile. One of my first editing jobs, while still an undergrad at THEOSU was for an astrophysical engineer who was proud of having helped get 3 young women admitted to the School of Engineering in c. 1974, I believe.

He also may have been the first to put one of their names first on a joint article they did, and to emphasize other womens' contributions to the field in the next few years after that. (His student may also have been the first, or one of the first few, females to have named a radio star that she discovered.)

In the 1990s I did tape transcription for an NHS funded project on women in engineering, and was interested to see that some progress had indeed been made. But the newly-founded college that went out of its way to seek admission parity by gender had to settle for 35-40% women admitted, because even by dropping the test score requirements about 10 points (to adjust for previous lack of role models and encouragement in high schools for women in the sciences) they couldn't reach 50% female acceptances.

Those reflect, earlier, a large state school, and later a newly founded private school (still going, I hear).

But I was thinking more broadly of the (still, in this day and age, I know) mostly older guys in long-term tenure within state legislative committees, holding the purse strings and voting their benighted votes against so much that would help to improve the things under discussion.

They're not the ones celebrating the star named by a woman, still. They're not interested in seeing if the private women's school that started it's own engineering program is outfitting its grads for doctoral work in the competitive schools down the road, or just doing "engineering lite for ladies"--or if the former, how that affects their state school's need to get on the ball (one of the study's search points when it began, I think.)

And I've worked as an AA and later, EA, in both large private schools and corporate pharma and software development offices where the balance of female hires is better--for the lab bench rats-- but still not as high for the exec levels, cross-corporation-wise. (And I've heard a couple very highly-placed CEOs say things you wouldn't believe about some of those females)

So, actually, while it's been a form of side-employment for quite awhile, I'm more in touch with it than a French medieval/ American colonial liturgical arts researcher and music teacher might otherwise be expected to be....

Why, just yesterday, I took pictures of the gravestone of one of Maria Mitchel's ancestors...

;--}

M.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 08:09:41 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 07, 2019, 07:53:05 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 07:41:17 AM


2. There actually never was a point where college gave people some particular set of skills that prepared them to get a job and have a satisfying life. Seriously, never.

Um, the 4 faculties in the ancient universities were Law, Medicine, Theology, and Philosophy. The first 3 led to careers in law, medicine, and the church. Philosophy covered everything else. So unless you have a very strange definition of "never", the statement above is clearly false.

I don't really know enough about the history of medieval colleges. I was talking about colleges in the United States where basically the whole thing broke down pretty quickly. Colleges were designed to produce an educated clergy, but before long most of the people going to college had no intention of becoming clergymen. The law wasn't something you needed to go to college for, and Galenist medicine lost a lot of prestige.

But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Sometimes,

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 07, 2019, 08:27:03 AM
those are the same business people that sit on their couch and offer the same simple solutions for their favorite NHL teams to win the Super Bowl.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 07, 2019, 09:12:23 AM


But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Well, the first universities in British America were in New England. The majority of men were literate there. And it wasn't professions, it was profession. The puritans thought ministers needed to be educated, which mostly meant reading classics in Greek and Latin. Only certain denominations remained convinced that this kind of training for ministers was even desirable and as ministerial training became less important, nothing replaced it. You didn't need a college degree to be a lawyer in 19th Century America, or a Merchant or anything else really. Medicine is a possible exception, but classically trained Galenist doctors didn't have a monopoly on practice or respect.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 10:03:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 07, 2019, 09:12:23 AM


But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Well, the first universities in British America were in New England. The majority of men were literate there. And it wasn't professions, it was profession. The puritans thought ministers needed to be educated, which mostly meant reading classics in Greek and Latin. Only certain denominations remained convinced that this kind of training for ministers was even desirable and as ministerial training became less important, nothing replaced it. You didn't need a college degree to be a lawyer in 19th Century America, or a Merchant or anything else really. Medicine is a possible exception, but classically trained Galenist doctors didn't have a monopoly on practice or respect.

This makes the point that the system wasn't designed according to what was good for "the masses". (Contrast that with the public school system.) So continuing to try and preserve a system for the masses that wasn't even created for them in the first place is not at all obvious as a good idea.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 10:03:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 07, 2019, 09:12:23 AM


But post-secondary education in British colonies (including the US) was modeled after those universities. When the populous was mostly illiterate, there were certain professions which needed a more educated workforce. So universities started out as  "professional schools" and only later became sort of "advanced high school" for the wealthy.

Well, the first universities in British America were in New England. The majority of men were literate there. And it wasn't professions, it was profession. The puritans thought ministers needed to be educated, which mostly meant reading classics in Greek and Latin. Only certain denominations remained convinced that this kind of training for ministers was even desirable and as ministerial training became less important, nothing replaced it. You didn't need a college degree to be a lawyer in 19th Century America, or a Merchant or anything else really. Medicine is a possible exception, but classically trained Galenist doctors didn't have a monopoly on practice or respect.

Ummm... it's a bit more complex than that.

That line on the entry gate about educating ministers is from "First Fruits," a retrospective history romanticizing the reasons for the foundations of HC.

The college was founded to attract people to the area to man the expected garrison that would protect Boston from an upriver siege by royal troops sailing up the Charles.

And lawyers, doctors, and professors--as well as prospective ministers-- all learned the same Latin and Greek texts at the outset of their careers.

I can't pull up all the citations now, but there's at least one, maybe 2 or 3, detailed studies of pedagogy, curriculum, and their correlations in the 17th and 18th c. with professional degrees. (And not only most men--possibly 90%--were literate, but possibly up to 70% or more of the female population were also literate in the area by the 1700s)

Ministers from other denominations did indeed dispute the relative value of education over a specific experience, but that was later. (See my long screed on this awhile back.... ;--》)

Most Dissenters were still, like the Congregationalists that the Puritans and Separatists merged (essentially, after the 1647/9 Second Synod's platform) to form by 1651, expected to have a strong working knowledge of the Latin commentaries as well as the Hebrew and Greek originals of the Scriptures.

Law offices (at least two sites can be identified) near the school (within 2-3 blocks) functioned to give young clerks training beyond their education but in concert with it, not despite it. Ministers and doctors, some of whom practiced both professions simultaneously (see Rhoden's "Angelical Conjunction") couldn't have read Galen or Augustine without a pretty stiff Latin preparation.

C. Donahue and B. Bailyn and O. Handlin would be people to start reading on this. Also H. Stout.

M.

Quote from: quasihumanist on October 06, 2019, 07:50:19 PM
The truth is that we have a terrible problem with K-12 math in this country.

I'm a math professor.  I think at least 75% of our secondary math education graduates are simply not good enough at math to stand in front of a high school classroom and teach it.  They're simply not quick enough on their feet to be able to respond when students come up with potential alternate methods to solve problems, and hence they can only teach math as following the prescribed procedure that they know, rather than as a variety of legitimate methods for which any legitimate use could get to a solution.

And - of course - the 25% who are capable find out how poorly they are paid and how poor their working conditions are, and, unless they are really dedicated, they realize they are smart and can do better compensated things with their lives.

I can see this, sort of second hand. If I had children in the elementary grades, I certainly wouldn't want any of the elementary ed majors I'm familiar with trying to teach them math. Or science. Or reading (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-radical-case-for-teaching-kids-stuff/592765/). Like the U.S. national average, ours are at or near the bottom in terms of academic ability.

But while inadequate preparation in K-12 (for everything from tech-heavy manufacturing jobs to basic information literacy) means college for many equates to grades 13 to 16, there is still the problem that many undergraduates, even the college-capable ones, encounter a curriculum that doesn't achieve whatever its professed outcome is supposed to be.

Quote from: spork on October 07, 2019, 03:25:24 PM

Quote from: quasihumanist on October 06, 2019, 07:50:19 PM
The truth is that we have a terrible problem with K-12 math in this country.

I'm a math professor.  I think at least 75% of our secondary math education graduates are simply not good enough at math to stand in front of a high school classroom and teach it.  They're simply not quick enough on their feet to be able to respond when students come up with potential alternate methods to solve problems, and hence they can only teach math as following the prescribed procedure that they know, rather than as a variety of legitimate methods for which any legitimate use could get to a solution.

And - of course - the 25% who are capable find out how poorly they are paid and how poor their working conditions are, and, unless they are really dedicated, they realize they are smart and can do better compensated things with their lives.

I can see this, sort of second hand. If I had children in the elementary grades, I certainly wouldn't want any of the elementary ed majors I'm familiar with trying to teach them math. Or science. Or reading (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/the-radical-case-for-teaching-kids-stuff/592765/). Like the U.S. national average, ours are at or near the bottom in terms of academic ability.

But while inadequate preparation in K-12 (for everything from tech-heavy manufacturing jobs to basic information literacy) means college for many equates to grades 13 to 16, there is still the problem that many undergraduates, even the college-capable ones, encounter a curriculum that doesn't achieve whatever its professed outcome is supposed to be.

The same is true regarding English education graduates, at least in the estimations of college English faculty.   

So if college isn't for jobs and never was, then what's the problem with essentially shuttering most colleges and universities and starting new with something else that does help people plan for jobs as well as careers?

If the point of college is to serve a very small portion of the population who can handle the big ideas and have the luxury to do so, then where's the call by the most educated to restrict entrance to those who can benefit and want to benefit?

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 07, 2019, 05:19:35 PM
People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Well, that depends partly on how pretty one thinks it is now. Sometimes when things fall apart it's an opportunity for a different approach.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 07, 2019, 05:19:35 PM
So if college isn't for jobs and never was, then what's the problem with essentially shuttering most colleges and universities and starting new with something else that does help people plan for jobs as well as careers?

If the point of college is to serve a very small portion of the population who can handle the big ideas and have the luxury to do so, then where's the call by the most educated to restrict entrance to those who can benefit and want to benefit?

People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

It is wonderful that institutions of higher education are able to adapt to the current situation, based on their strengths. From Harvard to Southern New England, schools are changing to meet the needs of the contemporary student.

For readers not from southern New England, I chose to schools that are familiar to locals. One is tradition-bound and exclusive (one of the best in the region as they say), the other modern and chasing after every new trend and paying student. Similar examples can be found across the world.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 07, 2019, 06:41:59 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 07, 2019, 05:19:35 PM
People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Well, that depends partly on how pretty one thinks it is now. Sometimes when things fall apart it's an opportunity for a different approach.

I agree.  So what's with all the angst during the change, other than people who are losing their current jobs?  I understand that angst, especially if one has devoted decades to educational endeavors where getting a job was not a prime consideration.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 08, 2019, 05:27:16 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 07, 2019, 06:41:59 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 07, 2019, 05:19:35 PM
People are voting with their feet away from many places and it's not going to be pretty when it turns out that the university structure becomes irrelevant even for credentialing for anything other than academic employment.

Well, that depends partly on how pretty one thinks it is now. Sometimes when things fall apart it's an opportunity for a different approach.

I agree.  So what's with all the angst during the change, other than people who are losing their current jobs?  I understand that angst, especially if one has devoted decades to educational endeavors where getting a job was not a prime consideration.

I can answer you but I will be seen as beating a dead horse. But I don't care about that, because I consider the horse to have been not beaten to death but stillborn. That is, no one ever cared enough properly about the right issues.

Here goes: In short, academia has a workplace, worker/employer mismatch, and the effects are everywhere.

I understand that angst, especially if one has devoted decades to educational endeavors where getting a job was the prime consideration.

In terms of fitting the right job with the right worker, the current thought process is (1) some people want to be college professors for a living, therefore they want to put themselves through the lengthy, dicey, prone-to-toxicity and politics no-turning-back ordeal of tenure. After which they will be, like forty something years old already, and finally have a job, and (2) some people want to spend years and tens of thousands earning a PhD so they can have a *fun job* in their spare time that isn't secure and hardly makes any money, and is controversial.
So, among other of my reactions, I submit that people who spend their spare time fighting little-guy unions, promoting the sanctity of tenure and defending and upholding a structure that arbitrarily combines these two extremes, to the inconvenience and detriment of many, deserve to have their bus run into a ditch and get stuck there, and to be identified with the calamity.

I work at a university which has managed to keep its head above water by essentially becoming open enrollment.  I think the major mismatch at my university is between students who have entirely unrealistic expectations of the sorts of careers they are likely to have and the skills they bring to the table.  A friend of mind jokes about how everyone in her poli sci class introduces themselves by saying "I'd like to be the Secretary of State one day,"  not quite comprehending that there's only one secstate and about a million people who would like that job. 

We have:

students majoring in international business who have never lived abroad and who speak no foreign languages
people majoring in psychology who cannot pass an introductory statistics class, etc.
STudents who struggle with college-level reading who think they're going to law school

I think most Americans have a really poor understanding of their own skills and levels of ability as well as what's a realistic career path.

I get so angry when I realize that our admissions recruiters are essentially lying to our students about BOTH whether or not our degrees are going to prepare students for the careers they wish to have, as well as whether the students who go to a school as poorly ranked as ours are actually equipped (and dare I say smart enough) to actually get the jobs that they aspire to, even with the degrees we are selling them.

It's a bit like someone who majors in piano at a small commuter school in an obscure small town somewhere in the middle of the country.  With any luck, maybe at the end of your training you can get a job as a church pianist, accompanying the choir, or maybe you can teach piano lessons in your living room.  But it's not Julliard and you're not going to be soloing with the Boston Symphony.  Whoever is taking your money and nurturing that fantasy in you is lying to you and stealing from you.

I have no problem with a college claiming that it's preparing you for employment, but they shouldn'lt be selling people these fantasies about how currently you drive a truck, but after you get that assocaite's degree in English you can run for Congress, etc.  It's cruel and manipulative to do so.

Quote from: Morris Zapp on October 08, 2019, 06:34:36 AM
I think most Americans have a really poor understanding of their own skills and levels of ability as well as what's a realistic career path.

I get so angry when I realize that our admissions recruiters are essentially lying to our students....

I have no problem with a college claiming that it's preparing you for employment, but they should

Thanks for a great post, Morris Zapp!  Higher ed needs more people like you who observe what's going on and talk about it.  The general public needs to be better-informed about what's happening in higher ed.  Increasingly, people are raising important questions.

You didn't mention student debt.  So many students accruing tons of debt that may never be paid back and not finding jobs that make their degrees worth it.

Re: the title of this thread, students often don't know what they need and higher ed is aware of that vulnerability.

Quote from: mamselle on October 07, 2019, 12:04:32 PM

That line on the entry gate about educating ministers is from "First Fruits," a retrospective history romanticizing the reasons for the foundations of HC.

The college was founded to attract people to the area to man the expected garrison that would protect Boston from an upriver siege by royal troops sailing up the Charles.

And lawyers, doctors, and professors--as well as prospective ministers-- all learned the same Latin and Greek texts at the outset of their careers.

I can't pull up all the citations now, but there's at least one, maybe 2 or 3, detailed studies of pedagogy, curriculum, and their correlations in the 17th and 18th c. with professional degrees. (And not only most men--possibly 90%--were literate, but possibly up to 70% or more of the female population were also literate in the area by the 1700s)

Ministers from other denominations did indeed dispute the relative value of education over a specific experience, but that was later. (See my long screed on this awhile back.... ;--》)

Most Dissenters were still, like the Congregationalists that the Puritans and Separatists merged (essentially, after the 1647/9 Second Synod's platform) to form by 1651, expected to have a strong working knowledge of the Latin commentaries as well as the Hebrew and Greek originals of the Scriptures.

Law offices (at least two sites can be identified) near the school (within 2-3 blocks) functioned to give young clerks training beyond their education but in concert with it, not despite it. Ministers and doctors, some of whom practiced both professions simultaneously (see Rhoden's "Angelical Conjunction") couldn't have read Galen or Augustine without a pretty stiff Latin preparation.

C. Donahue and B. Bailyn and O. Handlin would be people to start reading on this. Also H. Stout.

M.

Ok, this is what I get for straying into the 17th century in New England and way out of my wheelhouse and forgetting I don't know nearly enough about colonial New England to be babbling about it. 

I'd still say the basic point holds, though. You didn't actually need to know Latin or Greek to study Law. I'm also assuming that these studies were only vaguely relevant to the actual jobs which most ministers were doing. What was important was the credential. If you were going to get a job as minister of some church somewhere you needed to have a college degree, and this might have been mostly true in New England for lawyers too, although I know it wasn't in Virginia.

There's a whole crisis of education in the 19th century US and it is mostly because you don't actually need the credential for much, besides being a minister of certain denominations. I wouldn't be shocked, if New England lagged behind in this trend, but in the South and the West, it was really only Presbyterian ministers who needed to get a college degree. To become a lawyer you just needed to pass the bar, for example. So, students don't really care if they graduate and they have riots and drink a lot and all the rest...

The larger point is that most of the tangible value of a college degree has always been the credential.

Quote from: Caracal on October 08, 2019, 10:26:03 AM

The larger point is that most of the tangible value of a college degree has always been the credential.

No, rather the reverse. In the 17th century, Latin and Greek were real essential skills for certain professions. Isaac Newton's "Principia" ,like many other scientific documents, was written in Latin. Catholic masses were conducted in Latin until the 1960's or so, I believe. (Anyone able to confirm/deny that?) In the 19th century, more people (i.e. sons of the rich) wanted to be "educated" so they got the credential. In the 20th century, as post-secondary education got expanded to women and the middle and eventually working classes, more people got the credential. Things like Latin and Greek went by the boards as the degree became more of a credential.

So the education that started out providing required skills for certain professions eventually became more of a credential as many more people started entering the system.

If the whole system collapsed, and it was redesigned from the ground up for a 21st century population, it would undoubtedly look much different than it does now, because it wouldn't be driven by job-preservation for those employed in the system.

Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

Two I'd suggest would be statistics, and a scientific literacy course, which could be taught by someone from any one of a number of scientific disciplines, so it wouldn't need to favour any specific department.

We all applaud Morris Zapp for being honest. BUT, how often are we even allowed to be so truly honest with our students?
     Like many of us, I work at an institution where the average student will not be a doctor, or a lawyer. But heaven forbid that I actually point this fact out to the students failing my Bio101 course! That is the fastest way I know to have student complaints being send directly to the president and real career issues even if you are tenured. You can't possibly crush Suzy Snowflake's dream of being a pediatric oncologist! And it's always some advanced level doctor that they want to be. No matter she doesn't understand the difference between a bacterial and a human cell and cant multiply by powers of 10 without a calculator.
   So until we are all honest with everyone about the need for more MATH, and the need for more rigor at K-12, and honestly assessing everyone's ability; people will still be unsatisfied that college did not magically provide the dream job right out of graduation.
   

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

Composition and speech. Communication skills are critical, and in addition these courses promote deep thinking and reflection. Personal finance. European and US history courses covering the last 3000 or so years. I'm being specific because those are the ones someone in the US needs. Something related to computing, the internet, and online privacy. Time and project management. Mental health. In our modern world, any college educated person should know these subjects - not the latest Javascript framework.

Quote from: mythbuster on October 08, 2019, 01:02:23 PM
We all applaud Morris Zapp for being honest. BUT, how often are we even allowed to be so truly honest with our students?
     Like many of us, I work at an institution where the average student will not be a doctor, or a lawyer. But heaven forbid that I actually point this fact out to the students failing my Bio101 course! That is the fastest way I know to have student complaints being send directly to the president and real career issues even if you are tenured. You can't possibly crush Suzy Snowflake's dream of being a pediatric oncologist! And it's always some advanced level doctor that they want to be. No matter she doesn't understand the difference between a bacterial and a human cell and cant multiply by powers of 10 without a calculator.
   So until we are all honest with everyone about the need for more MATH, and the need for more rigor at K-12, and honestly assessing everyone's ability; people will still be unsatisfied that college did not magically provide the dream job right out of graduation.
   

You shouldn't be crushing their hopes IMO.

Tux, would you say the same about a student who dreams of pitching in the majors, but can't get a ball going faster than 35mph? That's the level of discussion I'm talking about.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 08, 2019, 01:43:13 PM

[. . .]

You shouldn't be crushing their hopes IMO.

In many if not most cases, not attempting to stop their delusional thinking means the students take 15-60 credits worth of courses that they get Cs and Ds in, because they simply aren't capable of learning the material, and then either 1) graduate with a meaningless degree in (for example) biology and are unable to get a job that requires functional proficiency in biology (or even requires a bachelor's degree), 2) finally get the message that the delusion ain't becoming reality and graduate with a mish-mash of courses that qualifies them for a degree in (for example) liberal studies, still with a terrible academic record and the post-graduation outcome of (1), or they get frustrated and drop out, without a degree but heavily in debt.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 08, 2019, 10:26:03 AM

The larger point is that most of the tangible value of a college degree has always been the credential.

No, rather the reverse. In the 17th century, Latin and Greek were real essential skills for certain professions. Isaac Newton's "Principia" ,like many other scientific documents, was written in Latin. Catholic masses were conducted in Latin until the 1960's or so, I believe. (Anyone able to confirm/deny that?)

Newton was an academic. I mean my college experience is directly relevant to my job too, but that isn't the the norm.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM

If the whole system collapsed, and it was redesigned from the ground up for a 21st century population, it would undoubtedly look much different than it does now, because it wouldn't be driven by job-preservation for those employed in the system.

As long as any group of people becomes identified as 'the truth' (torch bearers for academic freedom; sorry, members only) funny stuff can happen, like others being being sacrificed.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

This is the wrong question.  The human knowledge and skills I consider highly important are better done for years at the K-12 level so people can specialize during tertiary education.

Story time:

I studied two languages in high school and have used both of them in conversation and reading in the past month.  I currently live where one of those languages is spoken and written almost as frequently as English in the community.  One thing Caracal didn't mention is how hard reading up on a topic can be when the relevant material is not in a language one reads.  In the past year, I've had to work with a translator to get a crucial publication translated into a language I do read to do my technical work.  This is not the first time that the by-guess-and-by-golly lore around an article turns out to be askew because people cite cherry-picked summaries of summaries instead of going back to the original article in the non-English version.

A couple college-level classes will not provide the language proficiency that starting from an early age and using the language as a normal part of life will.  However, that is the proficiency that enhances people's lives and lets them delve deeper into what's truly going on in the world.  That proficiency often comes with additional cultural proficiency so that one can use critical thinking to see what's really a "law" of human nature and what's an artifact of a specific localized way of doing things.

I studied music in K-12 and spent years playing various instruments; I was often part of the orchestra for the school musicals as well as marching band.  I don't have the time any more to keep up the music as a hobby to be good enough that I can stand to listen to myself.  However, in the past week, I paid money to attend a dance show for a culture that isn't mine with songs in a language I don't speak and I had a great time.  I've put next year's show on my calendar already.  In K-8, I was in every school play that was offered.  This week, I also attended a play and had a great time. 

However, I took no performing arts or music classes of any kind in college, although I did attend shows of various types.  Again, taking a mandatory class or two in college is not at all the same as having years of performing arts being part of one's life.  My K-8 experience required doing art with lessons on perspective, color, and a whole host of other things I've forgotten along with various techniques.  The only positive memory I have from that is the joy of using acid to etch a mirror after about 10 iterations on a pattern because I was informed that my pattern was unacceptable due to lack of artistic vision.  At one point in my adult life, I would visit art museums every time I traveled to a city big enough for that afternoon to be worthwhile, but I've stopped now because doing that was not nearly as rewarding to me as visiting a local bookstore.

In the past week, I have been so far off the grid that we had to use paper maps and then wore my hard hat, steel-toed boots, and a belt with an emergency respirator in case something went wrong down hole in the mine during our visit.  I came home to the joy of a new bookcase because we keep buying books and have literal tons in the house.  We have had a formal library with card catalog and non-fiction shelved by Dewey decimal number in our dwellings for more than 20 years because we have so many books.  I average reading about 5 books per week all the way through with additional targeted non-fiction reading to support my interests in the bigger world as well as my technical work.  Going places with a partially empty suitcase so I can acquire books while I'm on travel is par for the course.

Again, I'm hard pressed to see how three fabulous college-level classes in the humanities will bring someone up to that level of bookwormness and desire to learn about the world.  Instead, years at K-12 showing people the joy and helping them incorporate informal education in their lives seems more productive.  Just because an engineer or someone else focuses on technical aspects for their tertiary education doesn't mean that person is necessarily uncultured and in-curious about the world.  I will write it again: most of the rest of the first world doesn't have college general education requirements the way the US does because they put most of that education before high school graduation.  The people who tend to succeed at college in the US also already have that solid K-12 background upon which to draw.

In summary, I'd much, much rather put more resources into better K-12 education so people can specialize in job training or professional education of some sort in their late teens instead of continuing a failed march through the trappings of an education without the substance of any kind of education.

I think we should continue to have the humanities and fine arts offered at the college level for those who want them.  My frustration is not having those things done well at the K-12 level so that individual humans can make a good choice post-high-school about what further education they need to enhance their lives.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 09, 2019, 04:21:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

This is the wrong question.  The human knowledge and skills I consider highly important are better done for years at the K-12 level so people can specialize during tertiary education.

I agree. My point in asking the question was that people who argue for a "general" (i.e. non-job focused) post-secondary education are very hard to take seriously when the most vital courses that should be part of it just happen to be in their own discipline.

Quote from: Caracal on October 08, 2019, 06:22:50 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 08, 2019, 10:26:03 AM

The larger point is that most of the tangible value of a college degree has always been the credential.

No, rather the reverse. In the 17th century, Latin and Greek were real essential skills for certain professions. Isaac Newton's "Principia" ,like many other scientific documents, was written in Latin. Catholic masses were conducted in Latin until the 1960's or so, I believe. (Anyone able to confirm/deny that?)

Newton was an academic. I mean my college experience is directly relevant to my job too, but that isn't the the norm.

But the point is that in the 17th century people were still writing in Latin, so it wasn't like studying Klingon today. Furthermore, in the 17th century, it was possible for a person to learn all that was known in a discipline (or several!) within a few years. (For instance, all of Newtonian physics is now covered in first year.) In the 18th century a person could learn all of the known physics, chemistry, and mathematics within the time for a single degree. So a "general" education covered a great deal of several fields.

That's not a "credential" by any means.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 05:30:23 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 09, 2019, 04:21:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

My discipline is Business, and I am a flaming neoliberal capitalist. And, I believe education is incomplete without...

• Political Science, to understand how the world works and interests intersect.
• History, to learn how individual people can, and do, make a difference.
• Literature, to understand how stories and information are presented and manipulated.
• Environmental or biological science, to understand the ground and world around them.
• Art and Art History, because human beings are visual creatures and communicate and respond through visual media.

And so on...

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 06:42:26 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 05:30:23 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 09, 2019, 04:21:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

My discipline is Business, and I am a flaming neoliberal capitalist. And, I believe education is incomplete without...

• Political Science, to understand how the world works and interests intersect.
• History, to learn how individual people can, and do, make a difference.
• Literature, to understand how stories and information are presented and manipulated.
• Environmental or biological science, to understand the ground and world around them.
• Art and Art History, because human beings are visual creatures and communicate and respond through visual media.

And so on...

Sure, but the point is, if you were going to propose a general degree for everyone, with something like a total of 40 courses, you'd have to make hard choices about which to include and which to reject. And a single introductory course to many of those things would hardly provide any useful grounding, (as Polly indicated).

I'm not arguing that there isn't value in all kinds of disciplines, but if there's a core beyond high school that everyone should get, it needs very careful consideration to have any observable outcome. ( I believe it was the book "Academically Adrift" that documented how most students get very little out of an undergraduate degree.)

Quote from: mythbuster on October 08, 2019, 01:57:17 PM
Tux, would you say the same about a student who dreams of pitching in the majors, but can't get a ball going faster than 35mph? That's the level of discussion I'm talking about.

It's all a matter of how you handle it. If you tell the student they need to be able to pitch at least 90 mph to even get a scout to look at them, they'll give up on their own after working six months and topping out at 40. I wouldn't tell anyone they're not good enough now so they should give up and do something else. That's a decision they need to make. Sometimes you just have to let other people make bad decisions.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 07:30:24 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 06:42:26 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 05:30:23 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 09, 2019, 04:21:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

My discipline is Business, and I am a flaming neoliberal capitalist. And, I believe education is incomplete without...

• Political Science, to understand how the world works and interests intersect.
• History, to learn how individual people can, and do, make a difference.
• Literature, to understand how stories and information are presented and manipulated.
• Environmental or biological science, to understand the ground and world around them.
• Art and Art History, because human beings are visual creatures and communicate and respond through visual media.

And so on...

Sure, but the point is, if you were going to propose a general degree for everyone, with something like a total of 40 courses, you'd have to make hard choices about which to include and which to reject. And a single introductory course to many of those things would hardly provide any useful grounding, (as Polly indicated).

I'm not arguing that there isn't value in all kinds of disciplines, but if there's a core beyond high school that everyone should get, it needs very careful consideration to have any observable outcome. ( I believe it was the book "Academically Adrift" that documented how most students get very little out of an undergraduate degree.)

Define "outcome." And "observable."

Because what people get out of college is not so much what they studied, but the "ways of knowing" of a particular discipline. And, the norms, disposition and cultural touchpoints of the educated professional class by spending 4 years prostrate to the higher mind, in the words of the Indigo Girls.

Was recently at a conference with a guy around my age who was a Trump lover and boasted that his degree was in Economics so he thought Trump was "brilliant." I said "Yeah, my degree was also in Economics. And 30 years ago what we learned about Economics has changed. The USA is no longer an economic hegemon as it was when we were in college. China and India and Russia have joined the developed world. The EU has unified. The USSR has split though is trying to rebuild. Global economies are much more integrated now than they were in the past."

I suggested he pop into an Econ class at the Community College where he worked and get a bit more current.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 08:47:45 AM

Because what people get out of college is not so much what they studied, but the "ways of knowing" of a particular discipline. And, the norms, disposition and cultural touchpoints of the educated professional class by spending 4 years prostrate to the higher mind, in the words of the Indigo Girls.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm, or just pompous bafflegab. There are no "ways of knowing" in calculus. There is only "Can you differentiate or integrate this function?" You don't have to be "prostrate to the higher mind" in physics; you just have to calculate the trajectory of the stupid projectile!!!!

No-one teaching in those disciplines cares if you learned the material from them, only that you know it.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 08:47:45 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 07:30:24 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 06:42:26 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 05:30:23 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 09, 2019, 04:21:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 08, 2019, 11:16:52 AM
Here's a challenge for forumites: What courses would you consider highly important which are NOT from your own discipline? In other words, what do you think is worth having even if it won't preserve your job or the jobs of your colleagues?

My discipline is Business, and I am a flaming neoliberal capitalist. And, I believe education is incomplete without...

• Political Science, to understand how the world works and interests intersect.
• History, to learn how individual people can, and do, make a difference.
• Literature, to understand how stories and information are presented and manipulated.
• Environmental or biological science, to understand the ground and world around them.
• Art and Art History, because human beings are visual creatures and communicate and respond through visual media.

And so on...

Sure, but the point is, if you were going to propose a general degree for everyone, with something like a total of 40 courses, you'd have to make hard choices about which to include and which to reject. And a single introductory course to many of those things would hardly provide any useful grounding, (as Polly indicated).

I'm not arguing that there isn't value in all kinds of disciplines, but if there's a core beyond high school that everyone should get, it needs very careful consideration to have any observable outcome. ( I believe it was the book "Academically Adrift" that documented how most students get very little out of an undergraduate degree.)

Define "outcome." And "observable."

Because what people get out of college is not so much what they studied, but the "ways of knowing" of a particular discipline. And, the norms, disposition and cultural touchpoints of the educated professional class by spending 4 years prostrate to the higher mind, in the words of the Indigo Girls.

I agree. Because i would have said 'literature, because "behind every book there is a man" [or a woman, but the point is, a soul].'

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 07:30:24 AM

[. . .]

a single introductory course to many of those things would hardly provide any useful grounding, (as Polly indicated).

[. . .]

Basically what we have now with distribution model gen ed requirements. Totally useless.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 09, 2019, 09:05:56 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 08:47:45 AM

Because what people get out of college is not so much what they studied, but the "ways of knowing" of a particular discipline. And, the norms, disposition and cultural touchpoints of the educated professional class by spending 4 years prostrate to the higher mind, in the words of the Indigo Girls.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm, or just pompous bafflegab. There are no "ways of knowing" in calculus. There is only "Can you differentiate or integrate this function?" You don't have to be "prostrate to the higher mind" in physics; you just have to calculate the trajectory of the stupid projectile!!!!

No-one teaching in those disciplines cares if you learned the material from them, only that you know it.

There are ways of breaking down and approaching a problem that vary across disciplines.

There are cultures within discipline that value certain traits, such as the ability to generalize or the ability to tease out specific details, which are emphasized when choosing approaches to problems.

Google jokes about mathematicians, physicists, historians, astronomers and the like. There is truth to these.

+1 What Polly said.

Quantity has a Quality All Its Own.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 09, 2019, 03:02:38 PM
There are ways of breaking down and approaching a problem that vary across disciplines.

There are cultures within discipline that value certain traits, such as the ability to generalize or the ability to tease out specific details, which are emphasized when choosing approaches to problems.

Google jokes about mathematicians, physicists, historians, astronomers and the like. There is truth to these.

Yes, I agree about ways of knowing because it's usually pretty clear who was educated as a mathematician, engineer, physicist, or chemist even when working in the same field on similar problems.  The approaches are different.

However, successfully acquiring those ways of knowing tends to require years of guided practice in a community of experts.  Taking a couple intro classes in college is a very poor substitute and does not inculcate the desired ability to function as a member of a discipline community.

Likewise, becoming acclimated to the norms of the professional class is generally not accomplished by attending an Nth-tier institution for a generic degree disconnected from a profession.  One may have a very good formal education in a profession or specific liberal arts field at a variety of institutions.  However, again, taking a random mix of formal classes to result in a degree is not the same as essentially serving an apprenticeship in the relevant network of professionals to acquire their norms and have people who will be assisting with the next step for one of their own.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 10, 2019, 06:01:28 AM


Yes, I agree about ways of knowing because it's usually pretty clear who was educated as a mathematician, engineer, physicist, or chemist even when working in the same field on similar problems.  The approaches are different.

However, successfully acquiring those ways of knowing tends to require years of guided practice in a community of experts.  Taking a couple intro classes in college is a very poor substitute and does not inculcate the desired ability to function as a member of a discipline community.

It isn't supposed to be a substitute. The idea is that understanding how other disciplines approach and think about the world will give students a broader perspective that will be valuable to them even as they narrow their focus later. That broader perspective is vital and often missing in our world. Many people know a lot about one thing and assume that knowledge can be applied to everything. They don't have a sense of other perspectives and approaches and thus, they don't know when they are profoundly ignorant about something.

I took a class on Old English literature in college. It was really hard and involved things I wasn't used to doing. I wasn't particularly good at it and it certainly didn't make me an expert. I'd have to go to grad school for that and I doubt I'd have the skills for it even then. But, the approach to language and translation I experienced has continued to shape the way I think in all kinds of ways.

I think this is a demonstration of selection bias. We -- academics -- are a group that is supposed to be, by definition, interested in and capable of learning to think well. I doubt that for the average undergraduate in the USA an assortment of 100-level intro courses produces lifelong awareness of or changes in "ways of thinking."

I'd be happy to admit being incorrect if someone has data demonstrating otherwise.

Edited to add: I think a more useful approach would be, instead of gen ed requirements that are in reality a list of boxes that students check off before graduation, a requirement that students take maybe 3-5 courses in a single field that is completely different from the subject they are majoring in. Something representing a student's "side interest," which they would explore in some degree of depth. But this would mean institutions of < ~ 3,000 undergrads would need to identify which "side programs" would be offered. E.g., "we have the standard academic programs in A through G, but students choose a concentration in X, Y, or Z in addition to one of the A-G majors." But faculty don't want to do this.

and a p.s.: what marshwiggle says below.

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 07:55:12 AM


It isn't supposed to be a substitute. The idea is that understanding how other disciplines approach and think about the world will give students a broader perspective that will be valuable to them even as they narrow their focus later. That broader perspective is vital and often missing in our world. Many people know a lot about one thing and assume that knowledge can be applied to everything. They don't have a sense of other perspectives and approaches and thus, they don't know when they are profoundly ignorant about something.

I realized that the term "ways of knowing" bothers me because of the certainty it implies. And the implication above is that "knowledge" is somehow wrong in certain situations. It may be irrelevant, but that doesn't make it incorrect. I'd be much happier with "ways of investigating" or "types of evidence" because they are process-oriented. The implication that each discipline somehow gets to decide what is "true" is ridiculous.

Quote from: spork on October 10, 2019, 08:28:55 AM
I think this is a demonstration of selection bias. We -- academics -- are a group that is supposed to be, by definition, interested in and capable of learning to think well. I doubt that for the average undergraduate in the USA an assortment of 100-level intro courses produces lifelong awareness of or changes in "ways of thinking."

I'd be happy to admit being incorrect if someone has data demonstrating otherwise.

I dunno, what's the standard. I took two semesters of Italian and learned almost nothing because I was bad at it and didn't try, but does that mean we ought to scrap the foreign language requirement too? Part of the problem is that if we keep pretending that getting a college degree is about acquiring a particular set of skills that will then allow you to get the job you want, anything we do is going to seem inadequate. We will keep getting more and more specialized and it won't get results, because that's a bad model for education. Some students won't get anything out of some classes, maybe some of them won't get anything out of the whole thing, but that doesn't mean the whole enterprise is worthless.

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 08:52:27 AM

Quote from: spork on October 10, 2019, 08:28:55 AM
I think this is a demonstration of selection bias. We -- academics -- are a group that is supposed to be, by definition, interested in and capable of learning to think well. I doubt that for the average undergraduate in the USA an assortment of 100-level intro courses produces lifelong awareness of or changes in "ways of thinking."

I'd be happy to admit being incorrect if someone has data demonstrating otherwise.

I dunno, what's the standard. I took two semesters of Italian and learned almost nothing because I was bad at it and didn't try, but does that mean we ought to scrap the foreign language requirement too? Part of the problem is that if we keep pretending that getting a college degree is about acquiring a particular set of skills that will then allow you to get the job you want, anything we do is going to seem inadequate. We will keep getting more and more specialized and it won't get results, because that's a bad model for education. Some students won't get anything out of some classes, maybe some of them won't get anything out of the whole thing, but that doesn't mean the whole enterprise is worthless.

But the less specific skills are expected out of post-secondary education, the more it just becomes "doing what high school should have done", and the more the high schools can give up on. My mother had to learn Latin and trigonometry in high school about 80 years ago. Many (most??) people didn't finish high school then. Now, no-one has to do "hard" stuff like that in high school so most people graduate. I bet the people who finished high school in my mom's day had about the level of "soft skills" of most university graduates today, because they had to in order to pass. The way things are going, in a generation (or less), people will have to complete graduate school to get the same level of skills as high school graduates a few decades ago.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 08:59:07 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 08:52:27 AM

Quote from: spork on October 10, 2019, 08:28:55 AM
I think this is a demonstration of selection bias. We -- academics -- are a group that is supposed to be, by definition, interested in and capable of learning to think well. I doubt that for the average undergraduate in the USA an assortment of 100-level intro courses produces lifelong awareness of or changes in "ways of thinking."

I'd be happy to admit being incorrect if someone has data demonstrating otherwise.

I dunno, what's the standard. I took two semesters of Italian and learned almost nothing because I was bad at it and didn't try, but does that mean we ought to scrap the foreign language requirement too? Part of the problem is that if we keep pretending that getting a college degree is about acquiring a particular set of skills that will then allow you to get the job you want, anything we do is going to seem inadequate. We will keep getting more and more specialized and it won't get results, because that's a bad model for education. Some students won't get anything out of some classes, maybe some of them won't get anything out of the whole thing, but that doesn't mean the whole enterprise is worthless.

But the less specific skills are expected out of post-secondary education, the more it just becomes "doing what high school should have done", and the more the high schools can give up on. My mother had to learn Latin and trigonometry in high school about 80 years ago. Many (most??) people didn't finish high school then. Now, no-one has to do "hard" stuff like that in high school so most people graduate. I bet the people who finished high school in my mom's day had about the level of "soft skills" of most university graduates today, because they had to in order to pass. The way things are going, in a generation (or less), people will have to complete graduate school to get the same level of skills as high school graduates a few decades ago.

So much for teacher tenure keeping rigor in the courses. It doesn't.

Quote from: spork on October 10, 2019, 08:28:55 AM
I think this is a demonstration of selection bias. We -- academics -- are a group that is supposed to be, by definition, interested in and capable of learning to think well. I doubt that for the average undergraduate in the USA an assortment of 100-level intro courses produces lifelong awareness of or changes in "ways of thinking."

I'd be happy to admit being incorrect if someone has data demonstrating otherwise.

No data, but strong disagreement. The selection bias works in the opposite direction IMO. Academics will learn on their own. They'll study all these other subjects online, in the library, by sitting in on classes by colleagues. The average student in a rural, public directional university will get their only exposure to these alternative ways of thinking in their 100-level intro courses.

I don't think exposure, on average, has any positive effect. At high tier institutions with truly selective admissions, maybe, but at the place I work, trying to get students to understand very, very basic concepts like cause and effect is often an uphill battle. The common attitude is "tell me the formula that I need to memorize to solve this one very narrowly-drawn, simplistic example."

Quote from: spork on October 10, 2019, 09:48:40 AM
I don't think exposure, on average, has any positive effect. At high tier institutions with truly selective admissions, maybe, but at the place I work, trying to get students to understand very, very basic concepts like cause and effect is often an uphill battle. The common attitude is "tell me the formula that I need to memorize to solve this one very narrowly-drawn, simplistic example."

This is the thing:  a highly motivated student with a basic introduction to a topic will be able (and perhaps willing) to engage in and out of class to benefit. An unmotivated student will not. And the more courses students have* to take, the fewer of them who will be motivated.

*Just to be clear; a student who has chosen a major will likely at least be somewhat engaged in compulsory courses in the major, since they chose the major, if not the specific courses.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 10:01:16 AM

This is the thing:  a highly motivated student with a basic introduction to a topic will be able (and perhaps willing) to engage in and out of class to benefit. An unmotivated student will not. And the more courses students have* to take, the fewer of them who will be motivated.

*Just to be clear; a student who has chosen a major will likely at least be somewhat engaged in compulsory courses in the major, since they chose the major, if not the specific courses.

Students aren't "motivated" or "unmotivated." They vary in their engagement and motivation depending on the course, but even through the course of the semester. I see students who have been totally checked out all semester suddenly get really engaged in a particular topic or reading. I'm assuming that happens all the time in less obvious ways. There's something pretty depressing about all this pessimism about students. I don't share it. Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

It's not that it's a "lost cause"; the question is whether, with a finite amount of resources, this is the best way to allocate them. (And those resources include the students' time. Is 4 years of a person's life reasonable to spend on this? For everyone?)

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 10:01:16 AM

This is the thing:  a highly motivated student with a basic introduction to a topic will be able (and perhaps willing) to engage in and out of class to benefit. An unmotivated student will not. And the more courses students have* to take, the fewer of them who will be motivated.

*Just to be clear; a student who has chosen a major will likely at least be somewhat engaged in compulsory courses in the major, since they chose the major, if not the specific courses.

Students aren't "motivated" or "unmotivated." They vary in their engagement and motivation depending on the course, but even through the course of the semester. I see students who have been totally checked out all semester suddenly get really engaged in a particular topic or reading. I'm assuming that happens all the time in less obvious ways. There's something pretty depressing about all this pessimism about students. I don't share it. Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

Motivation is not a function of the college's selectivity or student aptitude. I have had disengaged A students who went through the motions and super motivated C students who couldn't quite get their homework done but were still among the liveliest and most insightful.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 11:10:51 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

It's not that it's a "lost cause"; the question is whether, with a finite amount of resources, this is the best way to allocate them. (And those resources include the students' time. Is 4 years of a person's life reasonable to spend on this? For everyone?)

Define "finite" resources. We live in a global, information and knowledge-based economy where we need to make sure our 18+ year-olds are exposed to a variety of hard and soft skills in order to participate.

Other countries are figuring out a way to make sure higher education is available to a growing set of the population. Wealthy people make darn sure their kids are getting to college.

Why is the rest of America letting itself slide behind?

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 10, 2019, 11:17:27 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 11:10:51 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

It's not that it's a "lost cause"; the question is whether, with a finite amount of resources, this is the best way to allocate them. (And those resources include the students' time. Is 4 years of a person's life reasonable to spend on this? For everyone?)

Define "finite" resources. We live in a global, information and knowledge-based economy where we need to make sure our 18+ year-olds are exposed to a variety of hard and soft skills in order to participate.

Other countries are figuring out a way to make sure higher education is available to a growing set of the population. Wealthy people make darn sure their kids are getting to college.

Why is the rest of America letting itself slide behind?

And are those countries pushing a broad-based higher education, or is it more targeted towards professional programs?

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 11:10:51 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

It's not that it's a "lost cause"; the question is whether, with a finite amount of resources, this is the best way to allocate them. (And those resources include the students' time. Is 4 years of a person's life reasonable to spend on this? For everyone?)

Seems like part of this particularly American belief that you can fix everything through education, oddly married to consistently underfunding the same educational systems that are supposed to fix everything. The underlying problems are inequality and lack of opportunity. I don't see how remaking the entire college education system based on the unproved benefits of more focused job training is likely to help much.

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 11:34:11 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 11:10:51 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

It's not that it's a "lost cause"; the question is whether, with a finite amount of resources, this is the best way to allocate them. (And those resources include the students' time. Is 4 years of a person's life reasonable to spend on this? For everyone?)

Seems like part of this particularly American belief that you can fix everything through education, oddly married to consistently underfunding the same educational systems that are supposed to fix everything. The underlying problems are inequality and lack of opportunity. I don't see how remaking the entire college education system based on the unproved benefits of more focused job training is likely to help much.

Hall of Fame!

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 11:34:11 AM
Seems like part of this particularly American belief that you can fix everything through education, oddly married to consistently underfunding the same educational systems that are supposed to fix everything. The underlying problems are inequality and lack of opportunity. I don't see how remaking the entire college education system based on the unproved benefits of more focused job training is likely to help much.

Here's an interesting paradox: The disciplines that have the most serious adjunct problem are the humanities fields; i.e. ones where an undergraduate degree is not supposed to be "job training". It appears that people who get a degree, and don't see job opportunities, double down for a Master's and then triple down for a PhD.

So in other words, in fields where a degree is NOT "job training", you have the biggest problem with people desperate to find employment which requires their degree.....

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 12:58:24 PM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 11:34:11 AM
Seems like part of this particularly American belief that you can fix everything through education, oddly married to consistently underfunding the same educational systems that are supposed to fix everything. The underlying problems are inequality and lack of opportunity. I don't see how remaking the entire college education system based on the unproved benefits of more focused job training is likely to help much.

Here's an interesting paradox: The disciplines that have the most serious adjunct problem are the humanities fields; i.e. ones where an undergraduate degree is not supposed to be "job training". It appears that people who get a degree, and don't see job opportunities, double down for a Master's and then triple down for a PhD.

So in other words, in fields where a degree is NOT "job training", you have the biggest problem with people desperate to find employment which requires their degree.....

I'll disagree here. I live in an area that has a deep economic interest in the oil and gas business. During a recent downturn in that market, a large number of chemical and mechanical engineers I know were laid off. Among those I personally knew, one of them took a job at a dog-washing service, another went to work for Pier 1, and a third became a cashier at an upscale grocery store. That last applied for an ASM position at that store, but didn't get it. Two years later, none of them have rejoined the oil business, and not for lack of trying. Their laments of "I don't know how to do anything else" isn't all that different from those desperate people you mention.

Quote from: RatGuy on October 10, 2019, 01:08:40 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 12:58:24 PM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 11:34:11 AM
Seems like part of this particularly American belief that you can fix everything through education, oddly married to consistently underfunding the same educational systems that are supposed to fix everything. The underlying problems are inequality and lack of opportunity. I don't see how remaking the entire college education system based on the unproved benefits of more focused job training is likely to help much.

Here's an interesting paradox: The disciplines that have the most serious adjunct problem are the humanities fields; i.e. ones where an undergraduate degree is not supposed to be "job training". It appears that people who get a degree, and don't see job opportunities, double down for a Master's and then triple down for a PhD.

So in other words, in fields where a degree is NOT "job training", you have the biggest problem with people desperate to find employment which requires their degree.....

I'll disagree here. I live in an area that has a deep economic interest in the oil and gas business. During a recent downturn in that market, a large number of chemical and mechanical engineers I know were laid off. Among those I personally knew, one of them took a job at a dog-washing service, another went to work for Pier 1, and a third became a cashier at an upscale grocery store. That last applied for an ASM position at that store, but didn't get it. Two years later, none of them have rejoined the oil business, and not for lack of trying. Their laments of "I don't know how to do anything else" isn't all that different from those desperate people you mention.

And how many of those unemployed engineers are going back for Masters' and PhDs' in engineering to get teaching jobs?

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 10, 2019, 12:04:02 PM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 11:34:11 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 11:10:51 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 10:37:59 AM
Just because our students can't just have information and ways of thinking downloaded to their brains, doesn't mean the whole idea of a broad based education is a lost cause.

It's not that it's a "lost cause"; the question is whether, with a finite amount of resources, this is the best way to allocate them. (And those resources include the students' time. Is 4 years of a person's life reasonable to spend on this? For everyone?)

Seems like part of this particularly American belief that you can fix everything through education, oddly married to consistently underfunding the same educational systems that are supposed to fix everything. The underlying problems are inequality and lack of opportunity. I don't see how remaking the entire college education system based on the unproved benefits of more focused job training is likely to help much.

Hall of Fame!

Higher ed has already fixed the 'problem of being chronically underfunded' to its own satisfaction. Instead of closing they went for a bonanza of temporary hiring, then told the public they are using a few faculty who don't need money. And therefore are in no position to ask for/be trusted with more. Public funding is as likely to decrease as increase going forward. Not to mention, makes little effort to befriend republican voters.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 12:58:24 PM


Here's an interesting paradox: The disciplines that have the most serious adjunct problem are the humanities fields; i.e. ones where an undergraduate degree is not supposed to be "job training". It appears that people who get a degree, and don't see job opportunities, double down for a Master's and then triple down for a PhD.

So in other words, in fields where a degree is NOT "job training", you have the biggest problem with people desperate to find employment which requires their degree.....

Nice try but..."for young people (aged 25-34) in the US, the unemployment rate of those with a humanities degree is 4%. An engineering or business degree comes with an unemployment rate of a little more than 3%." And those jobs are fine mostly, he median salary levels for humanities majors (with and without graduate degrees) was about $7,000 lower than those with similar degree attainment, but well above the $42,000 average for all American workers. "

And humanities majors on average say they're just as happy with their jobs as STEM majors. Which is also relevant. So, to summarize. No, you're wrong.

Two different points:
1.  It ain't so much that those laid off engineers are whining about not being able to do anything else, but rather that mostly employers won't consider hiring them for professional or managerial jobs outside their educational experience, witness the one who's cashiering but couldn't get the assistant mgr job there.  This is likely also why these MAs and especially PhDs in engineering won't bother to go back to school for a teaching credential, as they likely realize that most principals would almost certainly shy away from hiring them, viewing them as vastly overqualified.
2. Wrt the remedial reading class I'm teaching this semester... Most of the native speakers of English I have are grads of crappy inner city hss, woefully underprepared for college, and many are, as someone said in the thread I started about this course, pretty clearly unmotivated and/or resentful of having to take it.  I haven't figured out what to do about this, but I have no reason to suspect that any of them aren't capable of college success, if they can hang in to acquire the reading and study success skills I am teaching them.  But it wouldn't do to downplay this issue, nor to think on what potential solutions thereto there might be.

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 10, 2019, 06:16:43 PM
Two different points:
1.  It ain't so much that those laid off engineers are whining about not being able to do anything else, but rather that mostly employers won't consider hiring them for professional or managerial jobs outside their educational experience, witness the one who's cashiering but couldn't get the assistant mgr job there.  This is likely also why these MAs and especially PhDs in engineering won't bother to go back to school for a teaching credential, as they likely realize that most principals would almost certainly shy away from hiring them, viewing them as vastly overqualified.

It may sound strange to humanities folks, but very few people who earn graduate degrees in engineering want to teach at any level, although mentoring is fairly common.  Only about 10% of the qualified folks go into academia and almost none of them will be found at institutions where research is a minor part of the job.  Thus, going back for a 8-12 teaching certificate is not even on the radar.

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 10, 2019, 06:16:43 PM
2. Wrt the remedial reading class I'm teaching this semester... Most of the native speakers of English I have are grads of crappy inner city hss, woefully underprepared for college, and many are, as someone said in the thread I started about this course, pretty clearly unmotivated and/or resentful of having to take it.  I haven't figured out what to do about this, but I have no reason to suspect that any of them aren't capable of college success, if they can hang in to acquire the reading and study success skills I am teaching them.  But it wouldn't do to downplay this issue, nor to think on what potential solutions thereto there might be.

One thing that is overlooked by many faculty at the college level is that first-year college students usually already have 13 years of formal education.  Many of those students have drawn conclusions from their extended personal experiences that are in conflict with what professors desire in their students.  The lower the academic standards for previous educational experience and the more the experience was "mandatory" box-checking, the less likely the students came to college eager to learn for even more general education that repeats much of what they didn't acquire earlier.

When I was teaching in Appalachia, I was stunned when I checked with my colleagues in local high schools to find out that the assertion that teachers can't fail students who have made any discernible effort and committed minimal acts of violence was true.  That situation was why students were in my college classroom unable to multiply by 10 without a calculator and unable to read a whole page of instructions in under 10 minutes.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 11, 2019, 04:49:36 AM
One thing that is overlooked by many faculty at the college level is that first-year college students usually already have 13 years of formal education.  Many of those students have drawn conclusions from their extended personal experiences that are in conflict with what professors desire in their students.  The lower the academic standards for previous educational experience and the more the experience was "mandatory" box-checking, the less likely the students came to college eager to learn for even more general education that repeats much of what they didn't acquire earlier.

When I was teaching in Appalachia, I was stunned when I checked with my colleagues in local high schools to find out that the assertion that teachers can't fail students who have made any discernible effort and committed minimal acts of violence was true.  That situation was why students were in my college classroom unable to multiply by 10 without a calculator and unable to read a whole page of instructions in under 10 minutes.

+1. And this is why my non-passing rates at Big Urban College typically hover at no more than 50%. We have a very high percentage of students who don't seem to want to be here, are not eager at all to learn, just want a degree as fast as possible, and are angry that their random box-checking on my assessments is not magically resulting in them getting A's and B's like it did in whatever passed itself off as K-12 education for them. The majority of high schools in my state are rated as "failing" and/or given "D/F" designations. Only the wealthy, the out-of-staters, and a few lucky students attending the handful of regional "A/B" rated schools seem to be well prepared for even basic-level college work.

Quote from: Aster on October 11, 2019, 12:07:23 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 11, 2019, 04:49:36 AM
One thing that is overlooked by many faculty at the college level is that first-year college students usually already have 13 years of formal education.  Many of those students have drawn conclusions from their extended personal experiences that are in conflict with what professors desire in their students.  The lower the academic standards for previous educational experience and the more the experience was "mandatory" box-checking, the less likely the students came to college eager to learn for even more general education that repeats much of what they didn't acquire earlier.

When I was teaching in Appalachia, I was stunned when I checked with my colleagues in local high schools to find out that the assertion that teachers can't fail students who have made any discernible effort and committed minimal acts of violence was true.  That situation was why students were in my college classroom unable to multiply by 10 without a calculator and unable to read a whole page of instructions in under 10 minutes.

+1. And this is why my non-passing rates at Big Urban College typically hover at no more than 50%. We have a very high percentage of students who don't seem to want to be here, are not eager at all to learn, just want a degree as fast as possible, and are angry that their random box-checking on my assessments is not magically resulting in them getting A's and B's like it did in whatever passed itself off as K-12 education for them. The majority of high schools in my state are rated as "failing" and/or given "D/F" designations. Only the wealthy, the out-of-staters, and a few lucky students attending the handful of regional "A/B" rated schools seem to be well prepared for even basic-level college work.

Is sounds as if there is only a small area of overlap among the three content areas (what students want, what students need, what you want to teach). For some students, perhaps none. How do you select what to teach (as distinct from what to grade)?

At Big Urban College, professors don't really get much flexibility in choosing instructional content. Nor do we really need such freedom. We are a typical state community college, with the typical community college narrow offerings of the mostly generic, easily transferable, lower division course types.

College Calculus I is College Calculus I. Physical Geology is Physical Geology. Our instructional formats are mostly standardized to conform with most public universities. We're pretty much cookie cutter for what we choose to teach. In some ways this is nice. Students really can't complain that we're teaching the wrong courses, or that what we're teaching is wrong or useless. We let the 4-year universities take the heat for that, ha ha.

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 04:14:40 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 12:58:24 PM


Here's an interesting paradox: The disciplines that have the most serious adjunct problem are the humanities fields; i.e. ones where an undergraduate degree is not supposed to be "job training". It appears that people who get a degree, and don't see job opportunities, double down for a Master's and then triple down for a PhD.

So in other words, in fields where a degree is NOT "job training", you have the biggest problem with people desperate to find employment which requires their degree.....

Nice try but..."for young people (aged 25-34) in the US, the unemployment rate of those with a humanities degree is 4%. An engineering or business degree comes with an unemployment rate of a little more than 3%." And those jobs are fine mostly, he median salary levels for humanities majors (with and without graduate degrees) was about $7,000 lower than those with similar degree attainment, but well above the $42,000 average for all American workers. "

And humanities majors on average say they're just as happy with their jobs as STEM majors. Which is also relevant. So, to summarize. No, you're wrong.

Marshy seldom knows what he/she is talking about.  I ignore.

From The New York Times:

Radical Survival Strategies for Struggling Colleges (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/education/learning/colleges-survival-strategies.html).

I don't see anything truly radical in the examples contained in this article.

Quote from: spork on October 15, 2019, 02:40:34 AM
From The New York Times:

Radical Survival Strategies for Struggling Colleges (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/10/education/learning/colleges-survival-strategies.html).

I don't see anything truly radical in the examples contained in this article.

I agree there's nothing radical in that article.

Yes. Most of these sound like they were retrieved from the garbage can of past failed ideas.

Mergers? I thought that this had generally not worked out for most failing colleges. Weren't there recent articles about this?

Partnerships with for-profits? Ditto that.

Employment guarantees? Isn't this one of the biggest things that got so many of the large for-profits into bad legal trouble over the last few years?

Accelerated programs? There is a very limited enrollment market with that. And everyone knows about accelerated programs. They are already trying them, about to try them, or lost time and money trying to do it.  Hint: If you're advertising on the radio and freeway billboards about your "elite accelerated online executive MBA", it is anything but elite.

Rebates on early graduation? Yeah, good luck with that one. I recommend consulting with a human behaviorist on how college students think. Students graduate when they graduate. Asking them to plan on passing all of their courses and perfectly following their degree plan to ensure a 4-year graduation time? Someone outside of Higher Ed brain-farted this one up. Probably a politician...

Corporate Training? Finally something legit. But this is not only an old idea, but a continuously churning application. I would guess that at any given time, every college in the U.S. is either directly doing this already or proposing to do this. Everyone already has this burger and is eating it.

Lowering prices of college? Good, the article actually brings up how this a very bad idea. +1. The idea that colleges are making tons of profits is patently stupid. Most colleges barely get by.

The Graduate-School-As-A-Money Maker Idea. Wow. This is as old as Moses. I also prefer honesty. This is a Diploma Mill strategy. The more you churn out, the more valueless the degree becomes. There is limited value in saturating your local and regional area with an oversupply of online MBA's and EdD's.

Outreach to minorities? Yes, a good idea. And pretty fresh. +5.

This New York Times article mostly pisses me off. I get the distinct impression that the author just ran a bunch of internet searches, copy/pasted whatever popped up, and then found someone to provide a sound bite for each topic. And this article is way too long a read. It should have been cut in half. There's plenty to cut.

But I did very much enjoy the Comments section.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 12, 2019, 10:27:39 AM
Marshy seldom knows what he/she is talking about. I ignore.

That's why I often ask questions, or say things which invite explanation.

Quote from: Caracal on October 10, 2019, 04:14:40 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 10, 2019, 12:58:24 PM


Here's an interesting paradox: The disciplines that have the most serious adjunct problem are the humanities fields; i.e. ones where an undergraduate degree is not supposed to be "job training". It appears that people who get a degree, and don't see job opportunities, double down for a Master's and then triple down for a PhD.

So in other words, in fields where a degree is NOT "job training", you have the biggest problem with people desperate to find employment which requires their degree.....

Nice try but..."for young people (aged 25-34) in the US, the unemployment rate of those with a humanities degree is 4%. An engineering or business degree comes with an unemployment rate of a little more than 3%." And those jobs are fine mostly, he median salary levels for humanities majors (with and without graduate degrees) was about $7,000 lower than those with similar degree attainment, but well above the $42,000 average for all American workers. "

And humanities majors on average say they're just as happy with their jobs as STEM majors. Which is also relevant. So, to summarize. No, you're wrong.

This is why I am puzzled. If humanities graduates have similar employment rates and satisfaction to other graduates, why is the adjunct problem so much more acute in the humanities?

• Cost-cutting administrators should be just as wiling to replace full-time faculty positions with part-time ones in all disciplines for the money saved.
• There's no discipline-specific reason I can see which makes it less possible in the humanities to teach a single course alongside full-time employment than in other fields.
• The availability of grad students and retired faculty to teach individual courses should be pretty similar across disciplines.

So I ask my question again: Why is it that the proportion of courses taught by part-time faculty who don't have full-time jobs is so much higher in certain disciplines in the humanities? As Caracal has pointed out, evidence suggests that humanities graduates have employment prospects similar to that of other disciplines, and as I've said, I don't see why administrators (who come from all kinds of disciplines themselves) would go out of their way to protect certain disciplines from "adjunctification".

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM
So I ask my question again: Why is it that the proportion of courses taught by part-time faculty who don't have full-time jobs is so much higher in certain disciplines in the humanities? As Caracal has pointed out, evidence suggests that humanities graduates have employment prospects similar to that of other disciplines, and as I've said, I don't see why administrators (who come from all kinds of disciplines themselves) would go out of their way to protect certain disciplines from "adjunctification".

Free will is a bummer in some situations.  People who take their BAs and go do something interesting are generally happy and are paid middle-class wages.

People who deep in their souls know they were meant to be academics and cannot possibly do anything else except as a stop-gap to pay the bills now while they await their real lives may end up as death-marching adjuncts. 

We did a back-of-the-envelope calculation a few years ago and ended up with perhaps 50k people involuntarily part-time faculty.  It's not that the numbers are so large so much as the people who are unhappy tend to be of a writing bent and have the ability to get first-person narratives published all over the place about how unfair the system is.

People who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM
If humanities graduates have similar employment rates and satisfaction to other graduates

I'm not aware of the source of that assertion, but remember that the unemployment rate being low doesn't imply that the employment rate is high. Someone getting additional education, staying at home to take care of children, or otherwise not actively seeking employment is not unemployed. You can be working fewer hours or for less money, but you're still employed. Job satisfaction also does not necessarily tell us anything about the quality of the job. You might be doing charity work for low pay (which you can afford to do because you're married to someone with a job that pays the bills) and have very high job satisfaction. A philosophy major that needed to take a real job because they're single might hate that job because they have to do things they hate.

I'm not taking a position because I don't know about the source of the data, but it seems implausible that humanities degrees are just as good for the job market, on the basis of many conversations with humanities majors and faculty that think the job market is terrible.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 17, 2019, 06:40:02 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM
So I ask my question again: Why is it that the proportion of courses taught by part-time faculty who don't have full-time jobs is so much higher in certain disciplines in the humanities? As Caracal has pointed out, evidence suggests that humanities graduates have employment prospects similar to that of other disciplines, and as I've said, I don't see why administrators (who come from all kinds of disciplines themselves) would go out of their way to protect certain disciplines from "adjunctification".

Free will is a bummer in some situations.  People who take their BAs and go do something interesting are generally happy and are paid middle-class wages.

People who deep in their souls know they were meant to be academics and cannot possibly do anything else except as a stop-gap to pay the bills now while they await their real lives may end up as death-marching adjuncts. 

We did a back-of-the-envelope calculation a few years ago and ended up with perhaps 50k people involuntarily part-time faculty.  It's not that the numbers are so large so much as the people who are unhappy tend to be of a writing bent and have the ability to get first-person narratives published all over the place about how unfair the system is.

QuotePeople who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Adjunct staffing is highly controversial even without anything said about it by adjuncts. I met the chair's wife twenty years ago. She was a professor in another department. She asked me 'how do you like your job?' I said 'Fine.' She said 'in our department they treat the adjuncts terribly.' People talk. It's part of the deal of entering the arena you voluntarily entered when you became a college administrator.
Your back of the envelope calculation is a guess. No one should believe it.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 17, 2019, 10:05:47 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM
If humanities graduates have similar employment rates and satisfaction to other graduates

I'm not aware of the source of that assertion, but remember that the unemployment rate being low doesn't imply that the employment rate is high. Someone getting additional education, staying at home to take care of children, or otherwise not actively seeking employment is not unemployed. You can be working fewer hours or for less money, but you're still employed. Job satisfaction also does not necessarily tell us anything about the quality of the job. You might be doing charity work for low pay (which you can afford to do because you're married to someone with a job that pays the bills) and have very high job satisfaction. A philosophy major that needed to take a real job because they're single might hate that job because they have to do things they hate.

I'm not taking a position because I don't know about the source of the data, but it seems implausible that humanities degrees are just as good for the job market, on the basis of many conversations with humanities majors and faculty that think the job market is terrible.

Illumination on these issues is a simple Google search away.  Most of what Tux is talking about is, indeed, perception.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/07/study-finds-humanities-majors-land-jobs-and-are-happy-them

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-13-as-tech-companies-hire-more-liberal-arts-majors-more-students-are-choosing-stem-degrees

https://blogs.yu.edu/news/are-there-jobs-for-humanities-majors/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-humanities-face-a-crisisof-confidence/567565/

Quote from: polly_mer on October 17, 2019, 06:40:02 AM

People who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Back to this, are we?

Well, they could and they should be.  Everyone would benefit.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 17, 2019, 06:12:19 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 17, 2019, 06:40:02 AM

People who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Back to this, are we?

Well, they could and they should be.  Everyone would benefit.

I didn't say that was a wrong perception; I stated that people will continue to make that push.

I'm now favoring cutting the general education requirements and eliminating most of those courses and the concomitant jobs as being irrelevant to what most students want and need.  That's a different position than insisting the demand really exists because we can see all those courses on the schedule being taught by ones and twos instead of as consolidated fours.

The point of teaching is for students to learn, not for faculty to have jobs.  Fewer students means fewer teaching jobs.

The point of research is for faculty to have jobs doing research.  Even then, the question remains regarding how many individuals we can support in each area and why one specific individual should be supported over any other specific individual in the pool.  Society has plenty of needs beyond research for the sake of research and resources are limited.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 18, 2019, 06:04:44 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 17, 2019, 06:12:19 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 17, 2019, 06:40:02 AM

People who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Back to this, are we?

Well, they could and they should be.  Everyone would benefit.

I didn't say that was a wrong perception; I stated that people will continue to make that push.

Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM


So I ask my question again: Why is it that the proportion of courses taught by part-time faculty who don't have full-time jobs is so much higher in certain disciplines in the humanities? As Caracal has pointed out, evidence suggests that humanities graduates have employment prospects similar to that of other disciplines, and as I've said, I don't see why administrators (who come from all kinds of disciplines themselves) would go out of their way to protect certain disciplines from "adjunctification".

It has to do with administrative priorities which is connected to a general tendency to underfund humanities departments. There's also just a supply and demand issue. Someone in an Economics department was telling me the other day what they adjuncts and it was jaw dropping. If you taught a 4 course load every semester you'd be close to making six figures. I assume this just has to do with the other job opportunities readily available to economics phds. Nobody is arguing that a humanities doctorate is going to command similar earning power. I assume if you have to pay that much for adjuncts, it really changes the cost benefit analysis involved in hiring full time faculty to cover courses.

The adjunct numbers on the humanities side really aren't that high. In history, it looks like only about 17 percent of people who get doctorates end up teaching on the non tenure tracks and that includes lots of people who aren't adjuncts.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 06:34:14 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 18, 2019, 06:04:44 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 17, 2019, 06:12:19 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 17, 2019, 06:40:02 AM

People who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Back to this, are we?

Well, they could and they should be.  Everyone would benefit.

I didn't say that was a wrong perception; I stated that people will continue to make that push.

Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

I advocate for unions doing what unions have long done, that is their legitimate business. Fair, transparent evaluation of work done. Better compensation and terms for dismissal that involve due process. No interference/meddling from administration in the legitimate organizing and ratification processes. And the same degree of acceptance that tenure track unions have had.

Your union makes the push to convert part time faculty to full time and you protest (at least here on the forum). I am pretty sure your position has been that part time teaching  jobs should be held only by people who do not expect, hope for, or advocate for reforms to hiring practices.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 17, 2019, 10:05:47 AM
but it seems implausible that humanities degrees are just as good for the job market, on the basis of many conversations with humanities majors and faculty that think the job market is terrible.

Yes, and a lot of this is the result of pretty systematic attempts by politicians to argue that humanities degrees are worthless. Once an idea sticks, you get a confirmation bias. I also wonder if part of it is about what faculty see and don't see. I remember years ago someone wrote on here about how terrible they felt seeing former students working at the grocery store after they graduated. It might be true that because a humanities major doesn't have quite the same clear track as other majors do, that humanities majors might take a little longer to find jobs and might initially work at fill in jobs. A year or two later, these people have probably gotten a job and their professors don't see them anymore, aren't serving as job references and don't know that things ended up fine.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 07:32:44 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 06:34:14 AM
Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

I advocate for unions doing what unions have long done, that is their legitimate business. Fair, transparent evaluation of work done.

I can't recall hearing you specify how you think this should work, especially with regard for choosing the best person to teach a course based on the quality of their work to date. My experience is that unions value seniority. Period.

Quote
Better compensation and terms for dismissal that involve due process. No interference/meddling from administration in the legitimate organizing and ratification processes. And the same degree of acceptance that tenure track unions have had.

Your union makes the push to convert part time faculty to full time and you protest (at least here on the forum). I am pretty sure your position has been that part time teaching  jobs should be held only by people who do not expect, hope for, or advocate for reforms to hiring practices.

No, my position is that people shouldn't buy a motorcycle and then complain that it doesn't have the cargo space of a minivan. (Or buy a minivan, and then complain it doesn't have the acceleration of a motorcycle.)

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 07:54:09 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 07:32:44 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 06:34:14 AM
Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

I advocate for unions doing what unions have long done, that is their legitimate business. Fair, transparent evaluation of work done.

I can't recall hearing you specify how you think this should work, especially with regard for choosing the best person to teach a course based on the quality of their work to date. My experience is that unions value seniority. Period.

Our union has worked with administration to agree on a student evaluation of teaching, and the questions asked. Seniority should have some weight. That way instructors are better able to predict what their workload will more likely be in the near future and plan for it.

QuoteNo, my position is that people shouldn't buy a motorcycle and then complain that it doesn't have the cargo space of a minivan. (Or buy a minivan, and then complain it doesn't have the acceleration of a motorcycle.)

Our union doesn't pry into the private lives of its members.

Quote from: Caracal on October 18, 2019, 07:51:00 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 17, 2019, 10:05:47 AM
but it seems implausible that humanities degrees are just as good for the job market, on the basis of many conversations with humanities majors and faculty that think the job market is terrible.

Yes, and a lot of this is the result of pretty systematic attempts by politicians to argue that humanities degrees are worthless. Once an idea sticks, you get a confirmation bias. I also wonder if part of it is about what faculty see and don't see. I remember years ago someone wrote on here about how terrible they felt seeing former students working at the grocery store after they graduated. It might be true that because a humanities major doesn't have quite the same clear track as other majors do, that humanities majors might take a little longer to find jobs and might initially work at fill in jobs. A year or two later, these people have probably gotten a job and their professors don't see them anymore, aren't serving as job references and don't know that things ended up fine.

It's terrible for PhD's who want a tenure-track job in the humanities.

It's great for someone who can read, write, communicate, understands a professional environment.

My niece has been working in retail since she graduated with a BA in (something fun) and realllllyyyyyyy wants to work (at a place that does that fun stuff). Those jobs are competitive, even for people with Master's degrees. But she still works in retail and applies to jobs in hoping for a break, internship, something.

Meanwhile when you mention to her that there are great careers in retail and her company where she works shifts folding jeans has a well-regarded management training program and there are good salaries to be made... well, she sniffs.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:03:30 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 07:54:09 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 07:32:44 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 06:34:14 AM
Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

I advocate for unions doing what unions have long done, that is their legitimate business. Fair, transparent evaluation of work done.

I can't recall hearing you specify how you think this should work, especially with regard for choosing the best person to teach a course based on the quality of their work to date. My experience is that unions value seniority. Period.

Our union has worked with administration to agree on a student evaluation of teaching, and the questions asked.

Does that evaluation actually have quantifiable weight in hiring? For instance, can a person with less seniority but better evaluations be hired over someone with weaker evaluations but more seniority?

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:06:40 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:03:30 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 07:54:09 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 07:32:44 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 06:34:14 AM
Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

I advocate for unions doing what unions have long done, that is their legitimate business. Fair, transparent evaluation of work done.

I can't recall hearing you specify how you think this should work, especially with regard for choosing the best person to teach a course based on the quality of their work to date. My experience is that unions value seniority. Period.

Our union has worked with administration to agree on a student evaluation of teaching, and the questions asked.

Does that evaluation actually have quantifiable weight in hiring? For instance, can a person with less seniority but better evaluations be hired over someone with weaker evaluations but more seniority?

Define 'better evaluation' if you can please (I admit, it's not easy). There is at least one tenure committee experienced forumite who says 'I like to see a few negative comments and evaluations, signifying that the professor is not inflating grades' or some such.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:09:40 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:06:40 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:03:30 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 07:54:09 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 07:32:44 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 06:34:14 AM
Except, I believe, for Mahagonny, who doesn't seem to advocate for that. (Although I honestly I'm not clear on why.)

I advocate for unions doing what unions have long done, that is their legitimate business. Fair, transparent evaluation of work done.

I can't recall hearing you specify how you think this should work, especially with regard for choosing the best person to teach a course based on the quality of their work to date. My experience is that unions value seniority. Period.

Our union has worked with administration to agree on a student evaluation of teaching, and the questions asked.

Does that evaluation actually have quantifiable weight in hiring? For instance, can a person with less seniority but better evaluations be hired over someone with weaker evaluations but more seniority?

Define 'better evaluation' if you can please (I admit, it's not easy). There is at least one tenure committee experienced forumite who says 'I like to see a few negative comments and evaluations, signifying that the professor is not inflating grades' or some such.

What's the point of having evaluations at all if you can't distinguish between a "good" one and a "bad" one????

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:17:45 AM

What's the point of having evaluations at all if you can't distinguish between a "good" one and a "bad" one????

Probably in our case, to have the option to set the minimum numerical score requirement for continued employment higher to  punish adjuncts for unionizing. But I do not read minds. The administration implemented them as one point.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:33:07 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:17:45 AM

What's the point of having evaluations at all if you can't distinguish between a "good" one and a "bad" one????

Probably in our case, to have the option to set the minimum numerical score requirement for continued employment higher to  punish adjuncts for unionizing. But I do not read minds. The administration implemented them as one point.

I thought your union agreed on it. What was the purpose for them?

Quote from: polly_mer on October 18, 2019, 06:04:44 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 17, 2019, 06:12:19 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 17, 2019, 06:40:02 AM

People who are angry, good enough writers, and who possess enough social capital to bring attention to the situation will get media attention for their situation far more than people are mostly satisfied with their lot and feel no need to go to the press.  A physicist or chemist who didn't get the desired faculty job or R&D job tends to cry for a bit and then take some other middle-class job.  A part-time faculty member who is quite sure that the many part-time jobs could be consolidated into fewer, but better, full-time jobs will keep advocating for a change in status through media exposure, especially now that everyone and the dog can have an online platform.

Back to this, are we?

Well, they could and they should be.  Everyone would benefit.

I didn't say that was a wrong perception; I stated that people will continue to make that push.

I'm now favoring cutting the general education requirements and eliminating most of those courses and the concomitant jobs as being irrelevant to what most students want and need.  That's a different position than insisting the demand really exists because we can see all those courses on the schedule being taught by ones and twos instead of as consolidated fours.

The point of teaching is for students to learn, not for faculty to have jobs.  Fewer students means fewer teaching jobs.

The point of research is for faculty to have jobs doing research.  Even then, the question remains regarding how many individuals we can support in each area and why one specific individual should be supported over any other specific individual in the pool.  Society has plenty of needs beyond research for the sake of research and resources are limited.

Alright.  I think I see where this is headed. 

I will disagree about gen eds, admitting as I go that I automatically value the broader educational / liberal arts and always have (even as a not-so-brainy undergrad), and that I have a stake in the game. 

You know that there are plenty of employment-centric schools which focus on the perception that they define "what students want and need."  Most are in big trouble with the federal government and accreditors right now.  Want to skip those unnecessary liberal arts?  Become a Phoenix!  Sing a Cappela!  Get a shingle from the Pignuckle Business School next door to the Shoe Carnival off I-95.

That'll show'em!

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:42:13 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:33:07 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:17:45 AM

What's the point of having evaluations at all if you can't distinguish between a "good" one and a "bad" one????

Probably in our case, to have the option to set the minimum numerical score requirement for continued employment higher to  punish adjuncts for unionizing. But I do not read minds. The administration implemented them as one point.

I thought your union agreed on it. What was the purpose for them?

I'm not a bargaining team member. Just  a union member. Individual adjunct faculty I have talked to have expressed

1. Student evaluations are reliable
2. They're very flawed and shouldn't be used
3. They are useful when interpreted correctly.

However, our administration does nothing to inform us of what their interpretation is. All they do is return them many months later.

My best guess is the union bargaining team took the temperature of the provost, et al and determined that they really, really like student evaluations and the most efficacious way to proceed would be to settle for having some input into how they are implemented. But I could also see one or two faculty potentially saying,'sure! Bring it on! I win when student evaluations are looked at.'

Let's keep in mind that no student evaluations of faculty performance and no observing of your classroom teaching/syllabi/grading by a third party would not mean there is no evaluating going on. The instructor is evaluating himself.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:56:55 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:42:13 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:33:07 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:17:45 AM

What's the point of having evaluations at all if you can't distinguish between a "good" one and a "bad" one????

Probably in our case, to have the option to set the minimum numerical score requirement for continued employment higher to  punish adjuncts for unionizing. But I do not read minds. The administration implemented them as one point.

I thought your union agreed on it. What was the purpose for them?

I'm not a bargaining team member. Just  a union member. Individual adjunct faculty I have talked to have expressed

1. Student evaluations are reliable
2. They're very flawed and shouldn't be used
3. They are useful when interpreted correctly.

However, our administration does nothing to inform us of what their interpretation is. All they do is return them many months later.

My best guess is the union bargaining team took the temperature of the provost, et al and determined that they really, really like student evaluations and the most efficacious way to proceed would be to settle for having some input into how they are implemented. But I could also see one or two faculty potentially saying,'sure! Bring it on! I win when student evaluations are looked at.'

Let's keep in mind that no student evaluations of faculty performance and no observing of your classroom teaching/syllabi/grading by a third party would not mean there is no evaluating going on. The instructor is evaluating himself.

So do these qualify as "fair, transparent evaluation of work done" as you mentioned above?

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 09:06:53 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:56:55 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:42:13 AM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 18, 2019, 08:33:07 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 18, 2019, 08:17:45 AM

What's the point of having evaluations at all if you can't distinguish between a "good" one and a "bad" one????

Probably in our case, to have the option to set the minimum numerical score requirement for continued employment higher to  punish adjuncts for unionizing. But I do not read minds. The administration implemented them as one point.

I thought your union agreed on it. What was the purpose for them?

I'm not a bargaining team member. Just  a union member. Individual adjunct faculty I have talked to have expressed

1. Student evaluations are reliable
2. They're very flawed and shouldn't be used
3. They are useful when interpreted correctly.

However, our administration does nothing to inform us of what their interpretation is. All they do is return them many months later.

My best guess is the union bargaining team took the temperature of the provost, et al and determined that they really, really like student evaluations and the most efficacious way to proceed would be to settle for having some input into how they are implemented. But I could also see one or two faculty potentially saying,'sure! Bring it on! I win when student evaluations are looked at.'

Let's keep in mind that no student evaluations of faculty performance and no observing of your classroom teaching/syllabi/grading by a third party would not mean there is no evaluating going on. The instructor is evaluating himself.

So do these qualify as "fair, transparent evaluation of work done" as you mentioned above?

If they ask me how I think things are going, I will tell them.

Maybe she doesn't want to become a retail manager.  Granted they do make more than the clock punchers who spend their time folding jeans, but the job just ain't that great nonetheless.

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:22:34 AM
Maybe she doesn't want to become a retail manager.  Granted they do make more than the clock punchers who spend their time folding jeans, but the job just ain't that great nonetheless.

Fair enough. Still, at some point her identity will shift from almost-doing-fun-thing-while-folding-jeans-to-make-a-few-bucks to being oldest-jeans-folder-in-the-shop.

I request that discussion of unionization be moved to another thread. Create one if need be.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 18, 2019, 02:41:47 PM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:22:34 AM
Maybe she doesn't want to become a retail manager.  Granted they do make more than the clock punchers who spend their time folding jeans, but the job just ain't that great nonetheless.

Fair enough. Still, at some point her identity will shift from almost-doing-fun-thing-while-folding-jeans-to-make-a-few-bucks to being oldest-jeans-folder-in-the-shop.

Many departments at universities have adjuncts who fit this description.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 18, 2019, 06:04:44 AM

I'm now favoring cutting the general education requirements and eliminating most of those courses and the concomitant jobs as being irrelevant to what most students want and need.  That's a different position than insisting the demand really exists because we can see all those courses on the schedule being taught by ones and twos instead of as consolidated fours.

The point of teaching is for students to learn, not for faculty to have jobs.  Fewer students means fewer teaching jobs.

[. . . ]

Agree wholeheartedly with this. From where I sit -- medium- to low-tier non-profit university -- it's obvious that much of the curriculum exists solely to suck eight semesters worth of tuition from students who would be much better served learning basic to intermediate literacy and math skills at the K-12 level and then focusing on some area of interest and capability at the post-secondary level.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 18, 2019, 06:04:44 AM

The point of teaching is for students to learn, not for faculty to have jobs.  Fewer students means fewer teaching jobs.

The point of research is for faculty to have jobs doing research.  Even then, the question remains regarding how many individuals we can support in each area and why one specific individual should be supported over any other specific individual in the pool.  Society has plenty of needs beyond research for the sake of research and resources are limited.

If I posted this it would be construed as a bitter attack against tenure.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 18, 2019, 06:04:44 AM
The point of research is for faculty to have jobs doing research.  Even then, the question remains regarding how many individuals we can support in each area and why one specific individual should be supported over any other specific individual in the pool.  Society has plenty of needs beyond research for the sake of research and resources are limited.

In my state, at the public universities, the point of research is to support economic development. Bringing in research funds is economic activity in itself, but the bigger impact is to keep the industries of the state competitive. The legislators are not subtle about their intent. 

As an applied scientist, I don't have a problem making a deal that works for everybody. But those doing what we call "curiosity based" research need partners.

Sorry for the OT post. Alt hed: "It's time to prioritize what legislators want and need over what we want to study."

Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors. 

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 18, 2019, 08:55:32 AM
I will disagree about gen eds, admitting as I go that I automatically value the broader educational / liberal arts and always have (even as a not-so-brainy undergrad), and that I have a stake in the game. 

The question still remains: how much true liberal-arts education do people really get out of being marched through a box-checking process at the college level when those people aren't actually college ready and have hordes of faculty doing the minimum to keep their crummy academic jobs without the support the faculty need to give those struggling students the necessary support to succeed as students?

Like Spork, I want the resources put into K-12 to have everyone possible college ready who can then choose what they want to do.

I will also mention the trends are to "get gen ed requirements out of the way" prior to entering college for the good students.  The rise in dual enrollment, dual credit, and AP/IB programs means fewer students arrive at college needing the gen eds.  Add in the push in some quarters for starting at community college where the gen eds are cheaper and then transferring to the big state school and those faculty jobs teaching gen eds continue to be pushed down to the poorest paying, least-stable community colleges.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 18, 2019, 08:55:32 AM
You know that there are plenty of employment-centric schools which focus on the perception that they define "what students want and need."

Why is the choice always

(a) pitiful shadows of a liberal arts education through checkbox general education at a resource-strapped regional comprehensive

or

(b) flat out garbage from a for-profit?

A decent engineering education acquired by people who are college ready and learn all the background information is a pretty good education that generally results in people who can do many things that society needs and have a pretty good personal life.  These are generally people who could have decided to go a liberal arts route and decided to do something else.  A small portion are people who cannot love the liberal arts because they love tinkering and exploring science so much more.  As a society, we cannot afford to continue to lose the tinkerers because of irrelevant general education requirements that should have been completed in K-12.

Likewise, someone who really buys into teaching and education as a professional skill set, not just liking kids and looking for a job for a few years until one's family is ready, tends to get a pretty good education that allows them to do many wonderful things through their lives.  Again, putting irrelevant hoops in place instead of nurturing the guided experience of being in the classroom as the instructor is a way to continue to be short on the good teachers.  People who have a solid K-12 education need the teaching skills and the sociology of human thought, not more content for content's sake.

One can indeed spent about a year acquiring certificates for many jobs.  Again, the days when someone with a strong back and a weak mind could do those jobs is basically over.  Instead, one needs to be literate, numerate through algebra, and able to learn how to deal with the computer that will be doing much of the work or how to deal with the changing legal requirements for contracting.  These are not jobs for dummies; the ones that pay pretty well are jobs for people who have a good mind, but aren't bookish people. 

However, no one can do any of the good professional programs, a true liberal arts education, or a lucrative certificate program without a solid K-12 education.  Remediating at the college level is too little too late for most people who could have risen to the occasion.  The rare exception is the person who blew their crummy K-12 school out of the water and needs a little support to come up to speed since they only have a middle-school education, but are eager to do more.

Quote from: Hibush on October 19, 2019, 05:23:27 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors.

That is because 99% of those who major in History, Art History, English, and Philosophy don't end up working in museums, as writers or philosophers. They use their visual and communications skills to become managers in the jeans-folding industry.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 19, 2019, 07:39:58 AM

Quote from: Hibush on October 19, 2019, 05:23:27 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors.

That is because 99% of those who major in History, Art History, English, and Philosophy don't end up working in museums, as writers or philosophers. They use their visual and communications skills to become managers in the jeans-folding industry.

Many of these studies also lump together everyone who earned a specific degree so that the benefits at mid-career tend to also include that MPA, MBA, or law degree earned by the BA holder who decided that jean-folding was only fun for a year or two. 

The people who go to elite colleges tend to do well because they don't spend too many years folding jeans and instead start climbing some career ladder with a middle-class-or-higher income.

I fully expect that some of the results for humanities BA holders is more the result of who gets those degrees (generally people with something on the ball who had enough stability to not drop out) and less the value of the degree itself.  The Grinnell graduate who did good networking and is willing to move to any of the metropolitan areas in the US is far better off in terms of a high-paying job than the Compass Point State graduate in history who wants to go back home to the town of 2500 people and have a bill-paying job.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 08:07:04 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 19, 2019, 07:39:58 AM

Quote from: Hibush on October 19, 2019, 05:23:27 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors.

That is because 99% of those who major in History, Art History, English, and Philosophy don't end up working in museums, as writers or philosophers. They use their visual and communications skills to become managers in the jeans-folding industry.

Many of these studies also lump together everyone who earned a specific degree so that the benefits at mid-career tend to also include that MPA, MBA, or law degree earned by the BA holder who decided that jean-folding was only fun for a year or two. 

The people who go to elite colleges tend to do well because they don't spend too many years folding jeans and instead start climbing some career ladder with a middle-class-or-higher income.

I fully expect that some of the results for humanities BA holders is more the result of who gets those degrees (generally people with something on the ball who had enough stability to not drop out) and less the value of the degree itself. The Grinnell graduate who did good networking and is willing to move to any of the metropolitan areas in the US is far better off in terms of a high-paying job than the Compass Point State graduate in history who wants to go back home to the town of 2500 people and have a bill-paying job.

Exactly. That is why the BA/BS is a social/cultural marker and not an educational marker. That is why so many jobs want someone with the BA/BS even though the "skills" technically don't require one.

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

Working retail does get old, but it can be pretty great if you're in your early 20s. Older people tend to forget that by the end of college, graduates have spent most of their lives on an academic schedule. It can feel pretty great after that to spend a few years at a job that you completely walk away from at the end of the day.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 08:07:04 AM


Many of these studies also lump together everyone who earned a specific degree so that the benefits at mid-career tend to also include that MPA, MBA, or law degree earned by the BA holder who decided that jean-folding was only fun for a year or two. 

The people who go to elite colleges tend to do well because they don't spend too many years folding jeans and instead start climbing some career ladder with a middle-class-or-higher income.

I fully expect that some of the results for humanities BA holders is more the result of who gets those degrees (generally people with something on the ball who had enough stability to not drop out) and less the value of the degree itself.  The Grinnell graduate who did good networking and is willing to move to any of the metropolitan areas in the US is far better off in terms of a high-paying job than the Compass Point State graduate in history who wants to go back home to the town of 2500 people and have a bill-paying job.

Well, sure but the studies also include all the people who got a BS and then went to Med School, Nursing, School or got a masters or a PHD. I also can't imagine enough students are getting degrees at elite schools to skew the numbers that much.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 19, 2019, 07:39:58 AM

Quote from: Hibush on October 19, 2019, 05:23:27 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors.

That is because 99% of those who major in History, Art History, English, and Philosophy don't end up working in museums, as writers or philosophers. They use their visual and communications skills to become managers in the jeans-folding industry.

Yes, exactly. There are plenty of management jobs that can use a reasonably smart, motivated person with a good education.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
The question still remains: how much true liberal-arts education do people really get out of being marched through a box-checking process at the college level when those people aren't actually college ready and have hordes of faculty doing the minimum to keep their crummy academic jobs without the support the faculty need to give those struggling students the necessary support to succeed as students?

I was marched through a "box checking process" in basic science for my humanities degree.  I didn't want to take geology 101, but it was the only thing available. 

Did it change my life?  Yes.  It is a small change overall, but it was also profound for my understanding of the world and my appreciation for science.

Would I have been an unsuccessful lump of a human being had not taken geology 101?  No.  But it certainly helped my brain.  And it certainly helped my understanding of the scientific process----so when my consciousness is approached by some scientific controversy, like global warming, how and what I think has definitely been altered for the better.

This cookie cutter / bow-checking business is far from perfect, but it works. 

And "crummy academic jobs"?  My God but you are arrogant.  I'd love to see your old teaching evals, my dear, and I am tempted to use a phrase best left to teenagers who drive idiotically----but I won't.  Most academics I know work very hard at their classes, certainty not all, but most I have known do.  Perhaps you just taught at a really crummy school and that has warped your perceptions (which makes me think again I should put you on my ignore list...).

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
Like Spork, I want the resources put into K-12 to have everyone possible college ready who can then choose what they want to do.

Suuuuuuure.  You and Spork can figure out how to pay for that for the 26K+ secondary schools with 13M+ students in the U.S. 

And the point of college is that students "choose what they want to do."  Or didn't you know that?

Personally I'd like to see all levels of education receive better funding; people like you and Spork do not help.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
I will also mention the trends are to "get gen ed requirements out of the way" prior to entering college for the good students.  The rise in dual enrollment, dual credit, and AP/IB programs means fewer students arrive at college needing the gen eds.  Add in the push in some quarters for starting at community college where the gen eds are cheaper and then transferring to the big state school and those faculty jobs teaching gen eds continue to be pushed down to the poorest paying, least-stable community colleges.

Great.  And I applaud this push.  Let's bring the brightest high school students to the college campuses----chronological age is not always the best way to designate level of study, and I have had some really excellent secondary students in my lower and upper division classes. 

Let's bolster and stabilize those CC jobs. 

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
Why is the choice always

(a) pitiful shadows of a liberal arts education through checkbox general education at a resource-strapped regional comprehensive

or

(b) flat out garbage from a for-profit?

Because that IS the choice, Polly.  Emphatically, that is the choice.  MIT----the premier technical school in the world---- has bachelors in both Literature and Philosophy, and it has a humanities, art, and social sciences requirement.

They all do.

Find me a single legitimate college or university that does not have a "pitiful shadows of a liberal arts education" (arrogant much?) built into its curriculum.  Go ahead.  I dare you.

You know which "universities" don't?  U of Phoenix.  Capella University.  Pig Knuckle Business College.  (And even these make a show of teaching the classes in question.)

Students don't always know what they "want" and they seldom know what they "need," at least in the practical sense.

You and Spork are greatly outnumbered.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
As a society, we cannot afford to continue to lose the tinkerers because of irrelevant general education requirements that should have been completed in K-12.

What are you even talking about? 

If they ain't smart or driven or dedicated enough to fulfill a lower-div gen ed degree then we have lost nothing.  Who do you think you are talking about, anyway?  Our society is chock-full of tinkerers.  And "irrelevant" gen eds?  Mein Gott you are arrogant.  I'd ask for a specific example...but I am starting to lose interest.

The rest of that is almost unreadable.  Perhaps you should have studied harder at your "irrelevant" composition classes.

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 08:09:41 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 07, 2019, 07:53:05 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 07, 2019, 07:41:17 AM

2. There actually never was a point where college gave people some particular set of skills that prepared them to get a job and have a satisfying life. Seriously, never.

Um, the 4 faculties in the ancient universities were Law, Medicine, Theology, and Philosophy. The first 3 led to careers in law, medicine, and the church. Philosophy covered everything else. So unless you have a very strange definition of "never", the statement above is clearly false.

I don't really know enough about the history of medieval colleges.

I do, and the statement you were responding to is wrong.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 19, 2019, 09:54:03 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
The question still remains: how much true liberal-arts education do people really get out of being marched through a box-checking process at the college level when those people aren't actually college ready and have hordes of faculty doing the minimum to keep their crummy academic jobs without the support the faculty need to give those struggling students the necessary support to succeed as students?

I was marched through a "box checking process" in basic science for my humanities degree.  I didn't want to take geology 101, but it was the only thing available. 

...

Since we're being personal, I have a fabulously cool job using my degree that I would recommend to anyone. My child attends a public school that makes national lists of good schools. I have a very nice house filled with books and enough free time to enjoy them.  As soon as I stopped working in academia and let people pay me for my skills, I more than doubled my salary by moving back to the part of the country in which I want to live.

Please, tell me again, how I really should have gone to an Nth rate regional comprehensive for my undergrad to check a bunch of minimal liberal-arts-like boxes instead of an excellent engineering school from which I graduated with zero debt and that let me do a variety of interesting things with my adult life, even if some of them didn't pay all at well at during the time.  Tell me again how my education is inferior despite currently working in a building filled with graduates from MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and other elite schools where we all have the same job here in middle age.

How's life going for you with those fabulous box-checking gen eds?  Any strong recommendations for having all 18 year olds follow your life path?  Remember how long we've known each other and the full back story.

Go ahead and wave away all those first-person narratives by adjuncts who are in very hard situations working long hours for minimal pay because I'm arrogant in wanting people to have my very good life  even when money was tight instead of one of those lives.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 20, 2019, 06:18:21 AM

Go ahead and wave away all those first-person narratives by adjuncts who are in very hard situations working long hours for minimal pay because I'm arrogant in wanting people to have my very good life  even when money was tight instead of one of those lives.

I really don't understand what this discussion has to do with adjuncts. The number of people who get humanities degrees is pretty large. The number who go on to get doctorates is tiny by comparison.

I'm also not really quite sure why adjuncts are this source of pity and contempt for you. Most of us are fine.

Quote from: Caracal on October 20, 2019, 07:58:47 AM
I'm also not really quite sure why adjuncts are this source of pity and contempt for you. Most of us are fine.

Yes, many adjuncts are fine. 

That doesn't stop the continuous stream of writing in a variety of outlets read by educated people by all the adjuncts who are not fine and yet somehow won't quit their death-marching and do something else that would be fine for their lives.

As I wrote recently, possibly on this thread, people who are generally happy with their lives don't tend to write at great length about how the system is broken and needs to change for their personal convenience. 

However, we have voluminous evidence of people who are unhappy with the results of their education who will flat out state that they can't get any other professional level job with their education other than stringing together poorly paid part-time faculty jobs.  Must I list some of the names over the years from these fora as individuals we know who are in pain?

That's not a heavy sigh that one has a pretty good life with that bachelor's degree and an interesting detour with the graduate studies; that's human pain that we should be taking seriously (50k unique individuals who have their own pain) and yet you want to ignore them because most people are fine?

Interesting.

It's also interesting that the assertion is how few people go to graduate school at a time when about a third of the US adult population has a bachelor's degree with about a third of them also having a graduate degree (e.g., a significant fraction of people who have a college degree also have a graduate degree). 

When I look at English and remember the statistic that about 50% of those who go to grad school drop out without the desired degree: 1.4k PhDs and 9k MAs awarded as an average for recent years(https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_ref.asp) when the BA awards have been slightly above 50k for decades (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/14/study-shows-87-decline-humanities-bachelors-degrees-2-years) looks an awful lot like about half of BA graduates going on to graduate school in recent years.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 20, 2019, 06:18:21 AM
Since we're being personal, I have a fabulously cool job using my degree that I would recommend to anyone. My child attends a public school that makes national lists of good schools. I have a very nice house filled with books and enough free time to enjoy them.  As soon as I stopped working in academia and let people pay me for my skills, I more than doubled my salary by moving back to the part of the country in which I want to live.

Please, tell me again, how I really should have gone to an Nth rate regional comprehensive for my undergrad to check a bunch of minimal liberal-arts-like boxes instead of an excellent engineering school from which I graduated with zero debt and that let me do a variety of interesting things with my adult life, even if some of them didn't pay all at well at during the time.  Tell me again how my education is inferior despite currently working in a building filled with graduates from MIT, Caltech, Stanford, and other elite schools where we all have the same job here in middle age.

How's life going for you with those fabulous box-checking gen eds?  Any strong recommendations for having all 18 year olds follow your life path?  Remember how long we've known each other and the full back story.

Go ahead and wave away all those first-person narratives by adjuncts who are in very hard situations working long hours for minimal pay because I'm arrogant in wanting people to have my very good life  even when money was tight instead of one of those lives.

I will tell you none of that stuff. 

I told you none of that stuff. 

You went whole-hog straw(wo)man on me there. 

Having nothing to actually say, you simply made stuff up you wish I'd posted.

You told me stuff that, at best, only has a tangential relationship to the question of gen eds----carefully avoiding your own gen ed background. 

If you are happy, I am happy for you.

But if you are making stuff up in a panic instead of responding to actual commentary you have lost that particular argument.

I will tell you that, for a scientist, you sure rely on personal anecdotal evidence to make your case instead of finding me a legitimate institution of higher learning which elides the liberal arts or admitting that this "box-checking" business has a legitimate function...or admitting your STEMy arrogance. 

But since we are being personal, I will tell you about my cousin the environmental engineer who studied A Midsummer Night's Dream in his box-checking intro to lit as an undergrad and then wanted to discuss it with me because, hey, he actually found it interesting.  He knew something about the world which he otherwise wouldn't have.  He had a broader, more interesting, better trained mind that he would have had he simply studied civil and environmental engineering.  His world was more interesting, and he was smarter, no matter how minutely, than he would have been otherwise.

And I will again tell you that "Geology 101" changed my life.  It is impossible to know how I would view the world had I not been forced to take that class (at that point in my life I simply wanted to graduate and had no pretensions to an intellectual lifestyle) but I can tell you that I have been profoundly grateful to the University of Wahoo for making me take it.  I always found science interesting, and (having a number of scientists in my family) I probably would have had a depth of respect for the sciences---but there is no replacing first person experience, and that field-trip to look at a strike-slip boundary is one of the clearest memories I have of my education.

Oh yeah, and it's amazingly ironic and un-self-aware for you to post "wave away all those first-person narratives by adjuncts who are in very hard situations" after many of things we have posted to each other.

Give the adjuncts full time jobs.  The gen eds are too important not to.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 20, 2019, 10:44:22 AM

Give the adjuncts full time jobs.  The gen eds are too important not to.

So would this be by consolidating several adjunct positions into a few full-time ones, putting many out of work entirely, or by requiring vastly more "required" courses for everyone to make work for those now-full-time former adjuncts?

Quote from: polly_mer on October 20, 2019, 08:31:30 AM

Interesting.

It's also interesting that the assertion is how few people go to graduate school at a time when about a third of the US adult population has a bachelor's degree with about a third of them also having a graduate degree (e.g., a significant fraction of people who have a college degree also have a graduate degree). 

When I look at English and remember the statistic that about 50% of those who go to grad school drop out without the desired degree: 1.4k PhDs and 9k MAs awarded as an average for recent years(https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_ref.asp) when the BA awards have been slightly above 50k for decades (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/14/study-shows-87-decline-humanities-bachelors-degrees-2-years) looks an awful lot like about half of BA graduates going on to graduate school in recent years.

What? None of this follows. A graduate degree includes JDs, MDs, MBAs and a million other things that aren't doctorates in the humanities.

Then the numbers for English make no sense at all. First off, you're hopelessly muddling things by throwing Doctoral and Masters Degrees together. That 50 percent number is for doctoral degrees, I couldn't find anything with a number for masters degrees, but I'd be pretty shocked it it isn't lower. You're also double counting. About 1.5k of those MAs are going to people who are going to get a PHD. Some unknown number are also going to people who started a doctoral program, but ended up just getting an MA. There also are a fair number of people who do an MA program one place and then enter a doctoral program somewhere else. You actually are triple counting these people. I don't really know what the number of people who start a grad program in English is but it is nowhere near 25k when you take out all the double counting and spurious multiplying. At the absolute highest it could be 15k, but I bet it is lower.

But this is still silly because we are talking about really different degrees. An MA in most humanities fields isn't usually a great idea, but a lot of the people getting it are doing it because they think it will help them in a field they are already in. Mostly secondary teaching, but other stuff too. The point is that most of these people are not going to end up as adjunct instructors nor is their goal to teach at the college level. Those people are the 3k or so who enter doctoral programs and might be about 6 percent of English graduates.

I'd also point out that these numbers are probably higher for English than other fields because more people usually go from History or Political Science to law school, but whatever.

You know, we are kind of piling onto poor Polly here after her little temper tantrum, but on edit I missed this one...

Quote from: polly_mer on October 20, 2019, 06:18:21 AM
How's life going for you with those fabulous box-checking gen eds?  Any strong recommendations for having all 18 year olds follow your life path?  Remember how long we've known each other and the full back story.

...and felt I had to respond.

Life right now is going pretty well, Polly.  I worked very hard and stayed the course and it has paid off----not in lottery dollars, but in good enough dollars to make it worthwhile.  You most certainly DON'T know my backstory, dearie. 

I worked for a number of corporations after college which would be target national companies, the kind of places my business students aim for----positions attained with my lousy humanities bachelors.  That's right, my friend, I was making it just fine as a corporate monkey with a liberal arts degree in my back pocket, no problem.  I could easily have stayed.  I could easily be in the $100K a year or more club by now.  I would probably would have gone home one evening, fed the dog, closed my bedroom door, and blown my brains out. 

Ya'want money?  Ya'want security?  Ya'want success?  Be my guest.  Take my career.  Please.

I traded that security for a roll of the academic dice, and while it has been a bumpy road, I have yet to regret it. 

I try to dissuade talented young people from getting their PhDs entirely because of the job market with the caveat, "Do it only if there is nothing else in your life you can see yourself being happy doing," and so far everyone I have talked to has likewise rolled the dice.  They know the odds, they simply don't want a soulless, boring, existential existence.  I don't blame these kids----I blame people like you.

So my life with those fabulous box-checking gen eds is going fine, thank you. 

Could people please strain out the hooks and bites before posting? This bitter sarcasm is hard to read.

It may feel good to type it, but maybe just save that text to some file you keep for forum stuff, and re-write or edit, aiming for a gentler tone?

For starters, the little "dearies" and "my friends" are neither endearing nor friendly....it would be nice not to have to wade through the zingers to get to the content...

Thanks.

M.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 20, 2019, 04:37:42 PM

positions attained with my lousy humanities bachelors.  That's right, my friend, I was making it just fine as a corporate monkey with a liberal arts degree in my back pocket

[. . .]

But a bachelor's degree in a humanities field is the opposite of being forced to take a random assortment of one-off courses in different disciplines, often delivered by contingent low-paid labor, from a prescribed menu of gen ed requirements. There is no in-depth study leading to a bachelor's degree in any of those disciplines.

People are assuming their own experiences are representative of the majority of undergraduates. They're not. As a college student, I changed my major from engineering to a social science in my junior year. But I had the characteristics of a person who was likely to succeed regardless of major. That's probably true for nearly everyone who reads a discussion board about academia.

Like it or not, the vast majority of undergraduate students are pursuing bachelor's degrees for very transactional reasons. If they can easily opt-out of being forced to pay large amounts of money for something they see as non-relevant to their short- or long-term objectives, they'll do so -- hence the growth of AP, dual enrollment, and community college transfer credit that wipes out a large portion of general education requirements of traditional bachelor's degree programs at far lower cost.

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 03:04:26 AM
But a bachelor's degree in a humanities field is the opposite of being forced to take a random assortment of one-off courses in different disciplines, often delivered by contingent low-paid labor, from a prescribed menu of gen ed requirements. There is no in-depth study leading to a bachelor's degree in any of those disciplines.

This is a good chunk of my point.

Someone who had a good K-12 science education would not be gaining much of anything by taking Geology 101.  A good K-12 science education covers variants of the scientific method and would have included labs along the way.  Taking non-math-focused science in college doesn't add much to anyone's education.  Life-changing by taking one distribution class is then acquiring a major, a minor, or a few years working in the field doing something interesting.  Otherwise, it's much like bragging about how much one watches The History Channel and therefore loves history.

Someone who takes an interesting class may indeed wish to talk about it.  However, let's step back again.  Why do all those politicians think the humanities and certain other fields aren't valuable?  One reason is being force-marched through one-off classes that are clearly more about checking a box than learning something worth knowing.  80 adjuncts from who knows where teaching at a regional comprehensive to ensure students can check the box is not setting the stage for a fabulous experience.

For those who can't do math, 15k on 45k is a non-negligible fraction of people going on to graduate degrees.  Surveys of college students indicate that about half of them plan to continue on for a graduate degree and that fraction has increased over the years.  You may not like the details from a back-of-the-envelope, but the fact remains that many people are going for graduate degrees in fields where the primary market for that graduate degree is academic jobs.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 03:04:26 AM
Taking non-math-focused science in college doesn't add much to anyone's education. 

Counterpoint: A field-trip heavy course in ecology, botany or entomology for non-majors adds quite a bit. Not a bit of math, but scientific knowledge that often lasts a lifetime.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 19, 2019, 09:54:03 PM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 05:37:09 AM
The question still remains: how much true liberal-arts education do people really get out of being marched through a box-checking process at the college level when those people aren't actually college ready and have hordes of faculty doing the minimum to keep their crummy academic jobs without the support the faculty need to give those struggling students the necessary support to succeed as students?

I was marched through a "box checking process" in basic science for my humanities degree.  I didn't want to take geology 101, but it was the only thing available. 

Did it change my life?  Yes.  It is a small change overall, but it was also profound for my understanding of the world and my appreciation for science.

The question is not whether some students will find some benefit in courses they didn't want to take; it's how much value breadth has relative to depth. With an undergraduate degree involving about 40 single term courses, if there are more than 40 disciplines in the university then it isn't even possible for a student to have a single course in every discipline, even though undoubtedly there are people who benefited from an introduction to any conceivable subject.

I would argue against requiring students at university to take courses in any discipline I teach. While a few who are forced into it will benefit, and realize the fact, many if not most will not, and some will create hassles for faculty, staff, TAs, and other students by their attitudes and actions along the way.

High school should, by definition, encompass the body of knowledge that "everyone" in society needs to have; that's why it's free and compulsory. What choices people make after that should be based on their own goals, whether it is preparing for a career or pursuing personal enrichment.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 17, 2019, 06:03:58 PM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 17, 2019, 10:05:47 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM
If humanities graduates have similar employment rates and satisfaction to other graduates

I'm not aware of the source of that assertion, but remember that the unemployment rate being low doesn't imply that the employment rate is high. Someone getting additional education, staying at home to take care of children, or otherwise not actively seeking employment is not unemployed. You can be working fewer hours or for less money, but you're still employed. Job satisfaction also does not necessarily tell us anything about the quality of the job. You might be doing charity work for low pay (which you can afford to do because you're married to someone with a job that pays the bills) and have very high job satisfaction. A philosophy major that needed to take a real job because they're single might hate that job because they have to do things they hate.

I'm not taking a position because I don't know about the source of the data, but it seems implausible that humanities degrees are just as good for the job market, on the basis of many conversations with humanities majors and faculty that think the job market is terrible.

Illumination on these issues is a simple Google search away.  Most of what Tux is talking about is, indeed, perception.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/07/study-finds-humanities-majors-land-jobs-and-are-happy-them

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-13-as-tech-companies-hire-more-liberal-arts-majors-more-students-are-choosing-stem-degrees

https://blogs.yu.edu/news/are-there-jobs-for-humanities-majors/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-humanities-face-a-crisisof-confidence/567565/

I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 17, 2019, 06:03:58 PM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 17, 2019, 10:05:47 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 17, 2019, 05:48:52 AM
If humanities graduates have similar employment rates and satisfaction to other graduates

I'm not aware of the source of that assertion, but remember that the unemployment rate being low doesn't imply that the employment rate is high. Someone getting additional education, staying at home to take care of children, or otherwise not actively seeking employment is not unemployed. You can be working fewer hours or for less money, but you're still employed. Job satisfaction also does not necessarily tell us anything about the quality of the job. You might be doing charity work for low pay (which you can afford to do because you're married to someone with a job that pays the bills) and have very high job satisfaction. A philosophy major that needed to take a real job because they're single might hate that job because they have to do things they hate.

I'm not taking a position because I don't know about the source of the data, but it seems implausible that humanities degrees are just as good for the job market, on the basis of many conversations with humanities majors and faculty that think the job market is terrible.

Illumination on these issues is a simple Google search away.  Most of what Tux is talking about is, indeed, perception.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/07/study-finds-humanities-majors-land-jobs-and-are-happy-them

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-11-13-as-tech-companies-hire-more-liberal-arts-majors-more-students-are-choosing-stem-degrees

https://blogs.yu.edu/news/are-there-jobs-for-humanities-majors/

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/08/the-humanities-face-a-crisisof-confidence/567565/

I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM


For those who can't do math, 15k on 45k is a non-negligible fraction of people going on to graduate degrees.  Surveys of college students indicate that about half of them plan to continue on for a graduate degree and that fraction has increased over the years.  You may not like the details from a back-of-the-envelope, but the fact remains that many people are going for graduate degrees in fields where the primary market for that graduate degree is academic jobs.

Ok, this is longer than it should be, but it bugs me when stats are misused this way, and then you keep moving the goalposts. The thing is there is obviously an agenda here. Clearly you would like us to believe that "many" people who get a B.A in the humanities end up end in the academic job market or intend to. I have no idea what "many" means, but first you threw M.As and PHDs in one bucket, double and even triple counted a lot of people, made a bunch of speculative assumptions allowing you to double this incorrect number,  and then told us that it was about half.

It isn't anywhere near half. If you combine PHDs and MAs, which you shouldn't, it might be around 25 percent, but even that is probably high. Whatever, though 25 percent, 50 percent, all the same I guess?

But, you're more wrong than that, because you are making assumptions about what people are planning to do with MA degrees that have no real basis. This sent me into a look at a study of MA programs in history that was actually kind of interesting, but actually there isn't good data on much of this and the problem is that MA programs in history vary enormously in purpose and concentration. I assume the same is true in English, but I don't know. But lots of the people getting an MA in history are secondary teachers or intend to become one, or are in Public History or are trying to go into it. There are also some who want to go on to a PHD program or would like to teach at a 2 year college. There doesn't seem to be any real data on the numbers here, but I strongly suspect that of people pursuing a terminal MA, fewer than half are planning to get an academic job in higher education. I'm avoiding the temptation to do numbers, because they are all so speculative and I'm trying to get out of this rabbit hole. The point is that you wanted to claim that almost half of majors in English go on to grad school planning to teach in higher education and that number is way, way, way off, and probably somewhere more in the range of 8-20 percent.

And then you keep saying things like "surveys of college students indicate that about half of them plan to continue on for a graduate degree and that fraction has increased over the years." How is that relevant? That doesn't have anything to do with whether English majors go to PHD programs. Lots of English majors probably get MBAs, or go to Law School, or get some other degree, but that isn't what we are talking about. If this discussion is going to have any point, you have to argue in good faith.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 07:30:31 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

So blaming educational institutions or the whole "system" for graduate unemployment is like blaming car manufacturers for accidents; there is a correlation between the bad outcomes of some people and the choices they have made which must be acknowledged.

Preparing for a job is only one reason to pursue a post-secondary education. However, if people are going to assume that a post-secondary education will do that, then they need to be aware of the ramifications of their choices so that they can choose appropriately.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 08:07:04 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 19, 2019, 07:39:58 AM

Quote from: Hibush on October 19, 2019, 05:23:27 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors.

That is because 99% of those who major in History, Art History, English, and Philosophy don't end up working in museums, as writers or philosophers. They use their visual and communications skills to become managers in the jeans-folding industry.

Many of these studies also lump together everyone who earned a specific degree so that the benefits at mid-career tend to also include that MPA, MBA, or law degree earned by the BA holder who decided that jean-folding was only fun for a year or two. 

The people who go to elite colleges tend to do well because they don't spend too many years folding jeans and instead start climbing some career ladder with a middle-class-or-higher income.

I fully expect that some of the results for humanities BA holders is more the result of who gets those degrees (generally people with something on the ball who had enough stability to not drop out) and less the value of the degree itself.  The Grinnell graduate who did good networking and is willing to move to any of the metropolitan areas in the US is far better off in terms of a high-paying job than the Compass Point State graduate in history who wants to go back home to the town of 2500 people and have a bill-paying job.

Actually I know several people who did pretty well for themselves going to no-name schools and then finding a bill-paying job in small towns.  The small towns do need SOME educated professionals.  They're "bill-paying" rather than "high-paying" jobs, but that's okay for some of us.

That said, I do generally agree with you that stronger K-12 schools are what this country most urgently needs in terms of education right now.  But improvement in that area depends more on cultural changes than on putting in more resources, useful though that would be.  And culture in general just seems to be moving very much in the wrong direction.

Quote from: apl68 on October 21, 2019, 08:13:40 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 19, 2019, 08:07:04 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 19, 2019, 07:39:58 AM

Quote from: Hibush on October 19, 2019, 05:23:27 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 18, 2019, 09:41:54 PM
Ok, but how old is she?  Let her fold jeans for a few years and she'll either seek a mgmt promotion or move on,  she probably will have figured out by then that her humanities BA, like it or not, just won't buy the same sort of career her parents, and certainly her grandparents, could easily have gotten with one.

If you look at actual salaries (https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-salaries-college-degrees/), humanities groups right in the middle. History (even Art History), English and Philosophy are in the same pack as some noted for a strong demand like Nursing, Accounting, Construction, Information Technology.  The mean for al lSTEM vs all Humanities is difference, but a low salary is not fate but feflects the low end of the people choosing the major. That is, those who end up finding too much satisfaction in the jeans-folding industry choose STEM or finance/business majors less often than they choose humanities majors.

That is because 99% of those who major in History, Art History, English, and Philosophy don't end up working in museums, as writers or philosophers. They use their visual and communications skills to become managers in the jeans-folding industry.

Many of these studies also lump together everyone who earned a specific degree so that the benefits at mid-career tend to also include that MPA, MBA, or law degree earned by the BA holder who decided that jean-folding was only fun for a year or two. 

The people who go to elite colleges tend to do well because they don't spend too many years folding jeans and instead start climbing some career ladder with a middle-class-or-higher income.

I fully expect that some of the results for humanities BA holders is more the result of who gets those degrees (generally people with something on the ball who had enough stability to not drop out) and less the value of the degree itself.  The Grinnell graduate who did good networking and is willing to move to any of the metropolitan areas in the US is far better off in terms of a high-paying job than the Compass Point State graduate in history who wants to go back home to the town of 2500 people and have a bill-paying job.

Actually I know several people who did pretty well for themselves going to no-name schools and then finding a bill-paying job in small towns.  The small towns do need SOME educated professionals.  They're "bill-paying" rather than "high-paying" jobs, but that's okay for some of us.

That said, I do generally agree with you that stronger K-12 schools are what this country most urgently needs in terms of education right now.  But improvement in that area depends more on cultural changes than on putting in more resources, useful though that would be.  And culture in general just seems to be moving very much in the wrong direction.

If resources went to (1) Paying teachers a living wage so the profession was attractive, (2) Making classes small enough to be manageable, (3) Getting rid of the testing drill-and-kill...

... I can assure you nobody would have any complaints about "the culture."

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 09:13:44 AM

Quote from: apl68 on October 21, 2019, 08:13:40 AM

Actually I know several people who did pretty well for themselves going to no-name schools and then finding a bill-paying job in small towns.  The small towns do need SOME educated professionals.  They're "bill-paying" rather than "high-paying" jobs, but that's okay for some of us.

That said, I do generally agree with you that stronger K-12 schools are what this country most urgently needs in terms of education right now.  But improvement in that area depends more on cultural changes than on putting in more resources, useful though that would be.  And culture in general just seems to be moving very much in the wrong direction.

If resources went to (1) Paying teachers a living wage so the profession was attractive, (2) Making classes small enough to be manageable, (3) Getting rid of the testing drill-and-kill...

... I can assure you nobody would have any complaints about "the culture."

You'd still have the problem of "requiring" that all students finish high school, and even more so, that they should be able to do so in the same time period. There are big differences in abilities across the population, even if no-one wants to admit it. The lowering of standards cannot be fixed as long as universal "success" is mandated.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 08:13:14 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 07:30:31 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

If someone came to you and said, "you can go to either a burger place or a ramen place for dinner, but there's a 2.9 percent chance the Ramen place will be closed and you won't get to eat, the burger place has a 3.4 percent chance of being closed" it would be pretty silly to go eat at the Ramen place if you felt more like a burger that night. So, no, humanities majors make up a roughly proportional number of graduates who are unemployed. The salary gap is real, but that's a bit different. Some people are in fields that make more money. This isn't a new development.

Quote from: Caracal on October 21, 2019, 10:10:16 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 08:13:14 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 07:30:31 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

If someone came to you and said, "you can go to either a burger place or a ramen place for dinner, but there's a 2.9 percent chance the Ramen place will be closed and you won't get to eat, the burger place has a 3.4 percent chance of being closed" it would be pretty silly to go eat at the Ramen place if you felt more like a burger that night. So, no, humanities majors make up a roughly proportional number of graduates who are unemployed. The salary gap is real, but that's a bit different. Some people are in fields that make more money. This isn't a new development.

Exactly.

I had a student freaking out over where to focus. Because, according to BLS stats, subspecialty (A) at which he excelled, paid $2,000 per year less than subspecialty (B) at which he wasn't all that great, nor interested.

Quote from: Caracal on October 21, 2019, 10:10:16 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 08:13:14 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 07:30:31 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Quote from: Caracal on October 21, 2019, 07:42:54 AM

[. . .]

people who get a B.A in the humanities

[. . .]

People who get B.A.s in the humanities generally choose those majors out of interest and capability. Forcing other students to take courses in which they have no interest and little capability generally serves no purpose other than collecting their tuition money and employing faculty in those fields (whether full- or part-time). Let's examine the converse: all undergraduates are required to successfully complete a single dental hygienist course, because, as we all know, dental hygiene is extremely important. Would this lead to a massive increase in the number of dental hygienist majors? No. Would it lead to new life-altering awareness of and ability to apply dental hygiene techniques? Generally, no. Would it be the direct cause of a huge increase in life satisfaction among college graduates? Probably not. Would the vast majority of students regard Dental Hygiene 101 as a meaningless hoop they had to jump through to get a bachelor's degree? Yes.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM
[
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

Why does everyone always repeat that line about unemployment rates? Yes, of course that is what they measure, that is what they are supposed to measure. Sometimes that does mean they can hide certain kinds of long term unemployment, but do you think more humanities majors are stay at home parents, or are on disability, or choose not to work?

The assumption seems to be almost that everyone is equally suited to all fields, would do equally well in all fields, and would be equally happy in all fields. I guess it might have been nice if I'd majored in Electrical Engineering, since it seems to be at the top of most of these salary charts, except that I would have failed out of the electrical engineering program almost immediately. Are we doing students a favor by encouraging them to pursue fields of study they aren't interested in?  Just because, on average, business majors make more than history majors doesn't mean that if you take a student who likes history classes and get them to take business classes that they are less interested in, that you can expect them to make more money in the long run. I'd argue that pursuing a subject they enjoy might be more likely to get them skills that they could use in other ways and help them in their career over the long run.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 10:26:11 AM


So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Good god, because
1. These are anecdotal stories and don't reflect the reality of most people.
2. Because humanities adjuncts are the ones most likely to write in the Atlantic about living in their car.
3. It has almost nothing to do with the overall rates of employment, because the vast majority of people who get a B.A in a humanities field do not end up as PHD candidates in that field and, thus, never enter the academic job market.

Quote from: Caracal on October 21, 2019, 10:44:27 AM

The assumption seems to be almost that everyone is equally suited to all fields, would do equally well in all fields, and would be equally happy in all fields. I guess it might have been nice if I'd majored in Electrical Engineering, since it seems to be at the top of most of these salary charts, except that I would have failed out of the electrical engineering program almost immediately. Are we doing students a favor by encouraging them to pursue fields of study they aren't interested in? 

I agree with this entirely, but the irony is that humanities faculty seem to be the most interested in recruiting everyone to their disciplines. Nobody is trying to get students who don't know what they want to go into nuclear  physics or medicine, but lots of faculty try to get directionless students into the humanities. It's generally understood that unless you're really motivated you won't succeed in technical programs, but going in with no great passion is assumed to be OK in the humanities.

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 03:04:26 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 20, 2019, 04:37:42 PM

positions attained with my lousy humanities bachelors.  That's right, my friend, I was making it just fine as a corporate monkey with a liberal arts degree in my back pocket

[. . .]

But a bachelor's degree in a humanities field is the opposite of being forced to take a random assortment of one-off courses in different disciplines, often delivered by contingent low-paid labor, from a prescribed menu of gen ed requirements. There is no in-depth study leading to a bachelor's degree in any of those disciplines.

People are assuming their own experiences are representative of the majority of undergraduates. They're not. As a college student, I changed my major from engineering to a social science in my junior year. But I had the characteristics of a person who was likely to succeed regardless of major. That's probably true for nearly everyone who reads a discussion board about academia.

Like it or not, the vast majority of undergraduate students are pursuing bachelor's degrees for very transactional reasons. If they can easily opt-out of being forced to pay large amounts of money for something they see as non-relevant to their short- or long-term objectives, they'll do so -- hence the growth of AP, dual enrollment, and community college transfer credit that wipes out a large portion of general education requirements of traditional bachelor's degree programs at far lower cost.

Spork my friend I don't know what your point is.

I am not even sure what you are saying.

Yes, I know what a humanities degree consists of.  Although I would beg to differ that "one-off courses" (such as geology 101) serve a distinct function, which I have already posted about.  Otherwise I am not sure what "those disciplines" refers to.

Sure, we have a "likely to succeed" bunch here.  But there are a great many "likely to succeed" people out there who have succeeded, and I think my experiences ARE representative of the majority of undergraduates----I think that particularly now that I am a teacher.  And again, I have to point out that all legit colleges include a required sampling of "one off courses" and have for some time, so someone thinks these are worthwhile.

And yeah, I think the dual enrollment business is a good idea.  One is still getting one's "one off" coursework completed but in a cheaper and more timely fashion.  I don't see why that is even a comment or, again, what your point is.

Quote from: mamselle on October 20, 2019, 07:49:41 PM
Could people please strain out the hooks and bites before posting? This bitter sarcasm is hard to read.

It may feel good to type it, but maybe just save that text to some file you keep for forum stuff, and re-write or edit, aiming for a gentler tone?

For starters, the little "dearies" and "my friends" are neither endearing nor friendly....it would be nice not to have to wade through the zingers to get to the content...

Thanks.

M.

I'm generally in agreement here, at least in theory. And I've made my feelings about rudeness pretty clear in a previous post. But I'm reminded of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan." The more I read of Wahoo Redux's exchanges, I can see that WR is dealing with an alarming amount of people who are just begging for that frying pan.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 03:04:26 AM
But a bachelor's degree in a humanities field is the opposite of being forced to take a random assortment of one-off courses in different disciplines, often delivered by contingent low-paid labor, from a prescribed menu of gen ed requirements. There is no in-depth study leading to a bachelor's degree in any of those disciplines.

This is a good chunk of my point.

Someone who had a good K-12 science education would not be gaining much of anything by taking Geology 101. 

Beg to differ.  I took biology in high school, including labs.  Learned a lot.  Learned even more in college.  I cannot imagine the Platonic realm you seem to think exists for K-12, either.  College is generally much harder and more intensive than H.S. education.  We expect more of young adults than we do of teenagers, by and large.  If you have some magic curriculum, please share.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM
ATaking non-math-focused science in college doesn't add much to anyone's education. 

Who says so?  You? Not convincing and I beg to differ.  In fact, Polly, that's a pretty dumb comment. Yeah, I don't think I will reply further to it.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM
Life-changing by taking one distribution class is then acquiring a major, a minor, or a few years working in the field doing something interesting.  Otherwise, it's much like bragging about how much one watches The History Channel and therefore loves history.

One can watch the History Channel and love history.  One might not be able to claim authority or expertise in history, but that is not the point of the History Channel or gen eds anyway.  I don't even know what you are on about here.  Geeze. 

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM
Why do all those politicians think the humanities and certain other fields aren't valuable? 

1.  When have "politicians" ever been a litmus test for truth, justice, and the American way----or worth in education?  Particularly now?  You can have your "politicians," Polly.  I'll look for more knowledgeable, sincere thinkers myself.

2.  What "politicians" are you talking about?  Name them.  Let's see what they actually say.

3.  If they do say that, let's vote them out of office: they are obviously cretins. 

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM
One reason is being force-marched through one-off classes that are clearly more about checking a box than learning something worth knowing. 

Beg to differ.  I've already explained why. 

What is "worth knowing," BTW?  Please elaborate.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 21, 2019, 04:27:58 AM
80 adjuncts from who knows where teaching at a regional comprehensive to ensure students can check the box is not setting the stage for a fabulous experience.

Agree.

And this is why I think we as a society are at the point of seriously damaging our higher education system.

Let's whittle down those 80 adjuncts to 20 or 30 full-time jobs and make it worth our and their while.

Although a great many of these adjuncts do a fabulous job----not all, but many----and this is part of the problem.  Schools very often get dedicated, expert, exuberant teaching done by hopeful and idealistic and dedicated people for a fraction of the cost.  It's all the people that do a good job that make the system so dysfunctional.

Why did you even post that stuff, Polly?

Quote from: little bongo on October 21, 2019, 12:18:55 PM

Quote from: mamselle on October 20, 2019, 07:49:41 PM
Could people please strain out the hooks and bites before posting? This bitter sarcasm is hard to read.

It may feel good to type it, but maybe just save that text to some file you keep for forum stuff, and re-write or edit, aiming for a gentler tone?

For starters, the little "dearies" and "my friends" are neither endearing nor friendly....it would be nice not to have to wade through the zingers to get to the content...

Thanks.

M.

I'm generally in agreement here, at least in theory. And I've made my feelings about rudeness pretty clear in a previous post. But I'm reminded of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan." The more I read of Wahoo Redux's exchanges, I can see that WR is dealing with an alarming amount of people who are just begging for that frying pan.

Sorry Mamselle, you are clearly a decorous, kindly, and mature individual----I perhaps am not always.  And while I kind of like Polly (at least she has opinions and seems to be a genuine person outside the Fora) I am not particularly friendly to her chain of ideas or her arrogant approach to higher ed.  In fact, I think they are very damaging.  I will probably let loose with a lot more slings and arrows until I am banned, at which point I would give up on the Fora altogether (which I sometimes do and am considering now).  Maybe just pretend you are reading a Rolling Stone interview with David Lee Roth or something?  (Although I claim no such genius wit as the madcap madman of Van Halen.)

I will probably swing the frying pan again soon enough.  Always meant to read When Cowgirls Get the Blues...Robbins kind of dropped off the radar.

Quote from: little bongo on October 21, 2019, 12:18:55 PM
I'm generally in agreement here, at least in theory. And I've made my feelings about rudeness pretty clear in a previous post. But I'm reminded of Tom Robbins' novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues: "Violence stinks no matter which side of it you're on. But now and then there's nothing left to do but hit the other person over the head with a frying pan." The more I read of Wahoo Redux's exchanges, I can see that WR is dealing with an alarming amount of people who are just begging for that frying pan.

The problem is that cognitive bias means that who one feels "deserves" the frying pan is heavily dependent on who one feels is right. "Those stupid people who don't get it deserve the frying pan from my insightful and patient colleague who is being eminently sensible." The reason free speech is important is that the only way for anyone to change their minds is to be exposed to ideas that one does not agree with. Over time, ideas that are most strongly supported by evidence should gradually win over others. (And yes, the process may be glacial, or at least seems so.)

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 21, 2019, 11:58:54 AM
[. . .]

Spork my friend I don't know what your point is.

[. . .]

See my most recent post (or second most recent, counting this one) upthread.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 10:26:11 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 21, 2019, 10:10:16 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 08:13:14 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 07:30:31 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 21, 2019, 07:27:50 AM
I only looked at the first of these (too many other competing uses of my time) but it seems to confirm everything I said. Humanities grads make a little over 60% of what STEM grads make. Only 30% work in a job related to their degree, with more than that working in jobs that have no relationship to their degree. The numbers reported only apply to those in the labor force, not those going on to grad school, taking care of kids, or choosing not to work.

I'm assuming that 60% is still a middle-class wage. And that the jobs they hold do require a college degree.

So... humanities degrees sound pretty beneficial to me, considering the alternative.

Most drivers who talk on their phones do not get into accidents.
HOWEVER
A high percentage of drivers who get into accidents were talking on their phones.

Similarly,
Most humanities graduates may be happy with their employment.
HOWEVER
A disproportionate percentage of graduates who are unemployed, under-employed, or who feel under-payed are from the humanities.

(Resist urge to write something snarky about the need for statistics courses.....)

The data says no such thing.  As the NCES study makes clear, most humanities fields have unemployment rates that are "not measurably different than the average." On average, if you're a young adult with a degree in English you have a 3.4 percent chance of unemployment. If you got a degree in Finance, you have a 2.9 percent of unemployment. When differences are that small, they basically don't have any meaning.

So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Because the adjuncts who decide the only thing they want to do is be a professor and not apply their considerable transferable skills (research, writing, communications) anywhere else tend to be in the humanities.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 03:56:50 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 10:26:11 AM


So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Because the adjuncts who decide the only thing they want to do is be a professor and not apply their considerable transferable skills (research, writing, communications) anywhere else tend to be in the humanities.

Fair enough. Any idea why that is? What is it about "being a professor" that is so skewed in its appeal?

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 01:39:45 PM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 21, 2019, 11:58:54 AM
[. . .]

Spork my friend I don't know what your point is.

[. . .]

See my most recent post (or second most recent, counting this one) upthread.

Yeah, saw that one.  Still wasn't sure what you were on about.  But since you mentioned it...

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 10:37:57 AM
People who get B.A.s in the humanities generally choose those majors out of interest and capability. Forcing other students to take courses in which they have no interest and little capability generally serves no purpose other than collecting their tuition money and employing faculty in those fields (whether full- or part-time).

Can you substantiate any of that?

Do you have any studies or interviews or proof that A) students resent the gen eds or that B) schools include gen eds simply to "collect tuition"?

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 10:37:57 AM
Let's examine the converse: all undergraduates are required to successfully complete a single dental hygienist course, because, as we all know, dental hygiene is extremely important. Would this lead to a massive increase in the number of dental hygienist majors? No. Would it lead to new life-altering awareness of and ability to apply dental hygiene techniques? Generally, no. Would it be the direct cause of a huge increase in life satisfaction among college graduates? Probably not. Would the vast majority of students regard Dental Hygiene 101 as a meaningless hoop they had to jump through to get a bachelor's degree? Yes.

Really?  You have any objective info which would suggest the above?

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 04:11:00 PM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 03:56:50 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 10:26:11 AM


So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Because the adjuncts who decide the only thing they want to do is be a professor and not apply their considerable transferable skills (research, writing, communications) anywhere else tend to be in the humanities.

Fair enough. Any idea why that is? What is it about "being a professor" that is so skewed in its appeal?

I dunno.

I guess they always dreamed of wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, smoking a pipe in an office in some ivory tower. Living in a huge old house, just off campus, with lots of dusty bookshelves. Publishing one's research and having intellectual arguments with one's peers and grad students.

Enough already.  Just claiming something doesn't make it so.  Humanities PhDs do have those skills but they,make little difference if relevant employers will not hire them.

Quote from: kaysixteen on October 21, 2019, 05:38:04 PM
Enough already.  Just claiming something doesn't make it so.  Humanities PhDs do have those skills but they,make little difference if relevant employers will not hire them.

Who says people won't hire them? Most of the evidence suggests the opposite. If you look here for example (https://www.historians.org/jobs-and-professional-development/career-diversity-for-historians/career-diversity-resources/the-many-careers-of-history-phds) you can see that actually only about 18 percent of people with History Phds are working as non tenure track faculty (presumably that is mostly, but not all adjuncts) about half are in tenure track positions. The rest of them are all over the place, employed in a whole range of occupations. See here (https://www.historians.org/wherehistorianswork)

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 04:59:46 PM


Fair enough. Any idea why that is? What is it about "being a professor" that is so skewed in its appeal?

I dunno.

I guess they always dreamed of wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, smoking a pipe in an office in some ivory tower. Living in a huge old house, just off campus, with lots of dusty bookshelves. Publishing one's research and having intellectual arguments with one's peers and grad students.
[/quote]

First see the post above. I don't know if there are any statistics that break down adjuncts by discipline, but a smaller percentage of the people who don't get a tenure track job end up as adjuncts than you might expect. However, to the extent that this is true, I think it mostly is about vocation. Unlike a B.A, a PHD is professional and intensive training in a particular field. People who complete a doctorate have a deep interest in some field and have invested a big chunk of time in their training and want work that lets them pursue that interest. My impression of STEM fields and some social sciences is that there are a lot of jobs out there where you would, in some form, be doing work that speaks to the reason you spent years getting a doctorate in the first place. I'm sure this still involves disappointments and trade offs. Presumably if your dream was to get a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, it might be tough to settle for a job at Dupont or whatever, but you're still doing the thing you wanted to do.

In humanities it can beharder. There are some jobs outside of the academy that a humanities PHD can get do directly relate to their field, but there are fewer of them. That isn't to say there aren't lots of things where you can use skills you've acquired, its just that you probably won't be researching and teaching about Faulkner, or the Late Middle Ages. People don't have to be horribly deluded to decide they would sooner teach and write about a thing they love, than get a different job. Now, if you are the sole breadwinner for a family with young children, that probably isn't a good choice, but most adjuncts do it because they can make it work financially. None of which is to say that the system is fair, or good, or doesn't produce lots of undesirable outcomes.

Quote from: Caracal on October 22, 2019, 07:50:10 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 04:59:46 PM

I dunno.

I guess they always dreamed of wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, smoking a pipe in an office in some ivory tower. Living in a huge old house, just off campus, with lots of dusty bookshelves. Publishing one's research and having intellectual arguments with one's peers and grad students.

First see the post above. I don't know if there are any statistics that break down adjuncts by discipline, but a smaller percentage of the people who don't get a tenure track job end up as adjuncts than you might expect. However, to the extent that this is true, I think it mostly is about vocation. Unlike a B.A, a PHD is professional and intensive training in a particular field. People who complete a doctorate have a deep interest in some field and have invested a big chunk of time in their training and want work that lets them pursue that interest. My impression of STEM fields and some social sciences is that there are a lot of jobs out there where you would, in some form, be doing work that speaks to the reason you spent years getting a doctorate in the first place. I'm sure this still involves disappointments and trade offs. Presumably if your dream was to get a Nobel Laureate in chemistry, it might be tough to settle for a job at Dupont or whatever, but you're still doing the thing you wanted to do.

If your dream is to get a Nobel prize, and you think any career prep. is going to more or less guarantee it, you're a freaking idiot.

This is actually relevant.  A "dream" should not be confused with a plan with a reasonable chance of success. The job at Dupont is a reasonable possibility; the Nobel prize will depend on (probably) years of work and lots of luck.

Quote
In humanities it can be harder. There are some jobs outside of the academy that a humanities PHD can get do directly relate to their field, but there are fewer of them. That isn't to say there aren't lots of things where you can use skills you've acquired, its just that you probably won't be researching and teaching about Faulkner, or the Late Middle Ages. People don't have to be horribly deluded to decide they would sooner teach and write about a thing they love, than get a different job.

Sure, and most athletes would sooner go to the Olympics; doesn't mean it's reasonably attainable.

Quote
Now, if you are the sole breadwinner for a family with young children, that probably isn't a good choice, but most adjuncts do it because they can make it work financially.

But that's just it; the "porn" stories are of people who definitely can't make it work.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 04:59:46 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 04:11:00 PM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 21, 2019, 03:56:50 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 21, 2019, 10:26:11 AM


So why is it that the majority of "adjunct porn" stories are in the humanities? If unemployment rates are similar enough that the differences are meaningless, why don't we have engineering adjuncts living out of their cars? Is it a media conspiracy to not report on those?

Because the adjuncts who decide the only thing they want to do is be a professor and not apply their considerable transferable skills (research, writing, communications) anywhere else tend to be in the humanities.

Fair enough. Any idea why that is? What is it about "being a professor" that is so skewed in its appeal?

I dunno.

I guess they always dreamed of wearing a tweed jacket with suede elbow patches, smoking a pipe in an office in some ivory tower. Living in a huge old house, just off campus, with lots of dusty bookshelves. Publishing one's research and having intellectual arguments with one's peers and grad students.

Ms. Mentor at CHE once had a column on the problem of The Person Who Is Very Good At School.  She has always thrived in a formal educational environment.  It's perhaps the only way she ever distinguished herself.  By her senior year of undergrad she has spent over 3/4 of her life in school and (mostly) liked it.  She and her undergrad mentors in whatever field she loves know and like each other.  They're her role models, and the people who praise her.  Grad school and an academic career offer her the chance to make a whole career of working in an academic environment, doing what she likes and making a difference in students' lives even as her mentors made a difference in hers.  It's a dream that seems both noble and seductive.  So she goes to grad school.  If she has the drive and support to make it through to the terminal degree, she has now sunk even more of her life into this dream.  She HAS to make it work.  There's no Plan B.  She can't even imagine a Plan B. 

Based on my personal experience, I'd say Ms. Mentor was dead-on in many cases.  I got washed out ABD after six years of grad school, which was probably two years too long.  I persisted for those last two years, despite being miserable, overworked, and financially strapped, because I had gotten locked into something my mind couldn't imagine a way out of.  In my case something finally snapped during that sixth year.  I just couldn't do it any more.  I self-deported from grad school and was able to turn my part-time student worker job at the university library into a full-time position.  So began my alternative career.

My advisors actually wanted me to stay on in the program and complete my PhD.  If I'd been just a little bit better at research and analysis, or just a little more passionately committed to my discipline, I'd have probably done it.  And then, more firmly than ever in the grip of a sunk-cost fallacy, I'd have spent at least a few years on the academic job market before finally giving up once and for all.  Reaching my breaking point, dropping out ABD, and finding alternative employment nearby in a familiar environment saved me from that.  If things had gone a little differently, I could see myself turning into an "adjunct porn" story.  The most extreme cases that we sometimes hear about sound pretty crazy, but then an inability to give up on a passionately-held dream can drive a person crazy.

Why does this happen most often in humanities fields?  Because they're the fields that have been the most adjunctified, where the job market is the worst.  And because, while most humanities grads are qualified to do lots of other things, few of those things look remotely like that academic career they dreamed so fondly of.  You've got to either reach your breaking point and give up the game despite having no Plan B, as I did, or find a way to imagine yourself in a different life and career that you can work for.  Neither of these is an easy process for somebody who had focused so long and hard on a particular goal.

Quote from: apl68 on October 22, 2019, 09:15:01 AM


My advisors actually wanted me to stay on in the program and complete my PhD.  If I'd been just a little bit better at research and analysis, or just a little more passionately committed to my discipline, I'd have probably done it.  And then, more firmly than ever in the grip of a sunk-cost fallacy, I'd have spent at least a few years on the academic job market before finally giving up once and for all.  Reaching my breaking point, dropping out ABD, and finding alternative employment nearby in a familiar environment saved me from that.  If things had gone a little differently, I could see myself turning into an "adjunct porn" story.  The most extreme cases that we sometimes hear about sound pretty crazy, but then an inability to give up on a passionately-held dream can drive a person crazy.

Why does this happen most often in humanities fields?  Because they're the fields that have been the most adjunctified, where the job market is the worst.  And because, while most humanities grads are qualified to do lots of other things, few of those things look remotely like that academic career they dreamed so fondly of.  You've got to either reach your breaking point and give up the game despite having no Plan B, as I did, or find a way to imagine yourself in a different life and career that you can work for.  Neither of these is an easy process for somebody who had focused so long and hard on a particular goal.

This seems like a circular argument.  There are more "porn stories" in humanities because is it more "adjunctified"; a.k.a. there are more people doing it part-time. But if there weren't so many people willing to do it part time, then those disciplines couldn't be so adjunctified in the first place.

The lack of a Plan B explanation makes sense, but it's still unclear to me why it's so much more pronounced in certain fields. "The Person Who Is Very Good At School" could describe all kinds of people (including me) in all kinds of different disciplines. But I got out after a Master's because I realized I didn't eat, sleep and breathe research.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 22, 2019, 09:26:52 AM
The lack of a Plan B explanation makes sense, but it's still unclear to me why it's so much more pronounced in certain fields. "The Person Who Is Very Good At School" could describe all kinds of people (including me) in all kinds of different disciplines. But I got out after a Master's because I realized I didn't eat, sleep and breathe research.

I don't think it's any surprise that "lack of Plan B" is more pronounced in certain fields. If you're majoring in finance, you'll come to class and the prof will be talking about a company that's hiring new grads. All of your classmates will be talking about preparing for interviews for jobs in the field of finance. You'll get email messages about jobs in the field of finance. The same cannot be said for every major. Sure, the new grads in those departments might have interviews, but for jobs that have nothing to do with their major.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 22, 2019, 08:00:45 AM
[

Quote
Now, if you are the sole breadwinner for a family with young children, that probably isn't a good choice, but most adjuncts do it because they can make it work financially.

But that's just it; the "porn" stories are of people who definitely can't make it work.

Why are you so obsessed with these outlier stories? They don't reflect the reality of life for the vast majority of adjunct faculty. Most of the stories I've read are stories of people who have problems in their lives and lack an adequate social safety net. It has very little relevance for the actual problems adjuncts face and none for undergrad majors.

Quote from: Caracal on October 22, 2019, 10:49:23 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 22, 2019, 08:00:45 AM
[

Quote
Now, if you are the sole breadwinner for a family with young children, that probably isn't a good choice, but most adjuncts do it because they can make it work financially.

But that's just it; the "porn" stories are of people who definitely can't make it work.

Why are you so obsessed with these outlier stories? They don't reflect the reality of life for the vast majority of adjunct faculty. Most of the stories I've read are stories of people who have problems in their lives and lack an adequate social safety net. It has very little relevance for the actual problems adjuncts face and none for undergrad majors.

But when adjunct unions speak to the media, these are precisely the stories they use to illustrate how bad life is for adjuncts. They are not as honest as you are, pointing out that these are outliers who have other problems in their lives. They do this so that they can ask for the moon, since clearly the situation is dire. The fact that most are not that badly off, and that there are more reasonable actions that can be taken to make noticeable improvements for most doesn't have the dramatic flourish.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 22, 2019, 10:55:45 AM
The fact that most are not that badly off, and that there are more reasonable actions that can be taken to make noticeable improvements for most doesn't have the dramatic flourish.

For example, respecting their right to use a union to campaign for well deserved improvements in their compensation and job security and ceasing the coddling of union busting and otherwise spiteful, phony administrators. and taking a hard look at the entire system, including tenure provisions, and asking how pay and benefit equity could be more possible.
I'd like to see more in-depth tenure porn stories. I've seen a few from the bleachers. For example, how one member in a department could consider it his solemn, academic freedom incurred
duty to vigorously oppose the overhauling the focus and academic standards of a department and thereby incur the wrath of a gang of other younger tenured movers and shakers. Then after narrowly escaping being terminated over trumped-up charges, becoming so marginalized that he teaches only a couple of throwaway courses to non-majors, is minimally useful to anyone, has  an incredibly light schedule, survives the twilight years of his career, and coasts into cushy retirement so slowly the bicycle almost falls over. And made possible with your tax money.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 22, 2019, 10:55:45 AM


But when adjunct unions speak to the media, these are precisely the stories they use to illustrate how bad life is for adjuncts. They are not as honest as you are, pointing out that these are outliers who have other problems in their lives. They do this so that they can ask for the moon, since clearly the situation is dire. The fact that most are not that badly off, and that there are more reasonable actions that can be taken to make noticeable improvements for most doesn't have the dramatic flourish.

I don't think it is a particularly effective tactic, but I also don't think that you should have to show that adjuncts are all living in dire poverty to persuade anyone that the current system is neither fair to adjuncts nor does it produce good outcomes for schools. It also isn't a recipe for having a diverse faculty if you have all these jobs that really aren't sustainable for people who aren't getting benefits from a spouse or partner. For schools when you won't invest in teaching by paying people decent wages and giving them reasonable amounts of job security, you aren't going to get good results.

One way to reduce the number of adjuncts needed is to renovate the general education curriculum and staff certain departments with only what's needed to teach majors, minors, and necessary classes for other disciplines.

As for science that's field trips, again, a good K-12 system will do that.   I'm whining about science fair on another thread, but the other aspects of science is quite good including field trips to explore nature.  You are not getting enough science from one science class to make up for the opportunity cost of whatever else could be done if you don't have the basics to learn college science.  If you do have the basics to learn college science, then you're probably ready to take more than the one intro class for check box purposes.  People who want a true liberal arts education and are prepared to benefit from one should get that, but that's very, very different from taking a series of one-offs that aren't doing much of anything for anyone.

As for numbers related to job employment, most people have to work.  Arguing a blanket unemployment rate is pretty low is much less useful than arguing the case that many people could have gotten those same jobs fresh out of high school with some OJT versus truly needing a college education of some sort.  If we're back to the idea of a credential that isn't demonstrating proficiency in necessary skills, then almost no one needs a college education so much as they need a ticket punch.  We could change how that ticket is punched if we wanted to.

Sure, people get degrees in all kinds of fields and then go on to middle-class jobs in all kinds of fields, probably unrelated to the one in which they majored.  That's not a compelling argument for marching people through one-off gen eds in any field in college over enforcing good K-12 education for everyone.

Quote from: Caracal on October 23, 2019, 06:31:41 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 22, 2019, 10:55:45 AM


But when adjunct unions speak to the media, these are precisely the stories they use to illustrate how bad life is for adjuncts. They are not as honest as you are, pointing out that these are outliers who have other problems in their lives. They do this so that they can ask for the moon, since clearly the situation is dire. The fact that most are not that badly off, and that there are more reasonable actions that can be taken to make noticeable improvements for most doesn't have the dramatic flourish.

I don't think it is a particularly effective tactic, but I also don't think that you should have to show that adjuncts are all living in dire poverty to persuade anyone that the current system is neither fair to adjuncts nor does it produce good outcomes for schools. It also isn't a recipe for having a diverse faculty if you have all these jobs that really aren't sustainable for people who aren't getting benefits from a spouse or partner. For schools when you won't invest in teaching by paying people decent wages and giving them reasonable amounts of job security, you aren't going to get good results.

The issue which I have raised before is whether there is a legitimate definition of a job as "part-time". Specifically, if a job is specified as "part-time" does that mean that it still has to be relatively easy for someone to simply string together a bunch of these to achieve essentially all of what a "full-time" job provides?

Many people who teach part-time are retired faculty and people with other full-time jobs who don't want to teach full-time and are happy with the pay and benefits of part-time teaching. Do their opinions count? Saying "the current system is unfair to adjuncts" implicitly refers to the ones trying to make a full-time job of it.

I think there are things that can be done to make things better for people who are trying to combine part-time teaching jobs, and I am somewhat sympathetic, but I become much less so when that situation is presented as the norm, (or even the only scenario being considered), since the people doing a job advertised as part-time AS a part-time job are generally satisfied.

No employer owes employment to anyone, and since there are way more PhDs than all of the full-time positions that would exist even if all part-time positions were consolidated, the existence of people complaining about underemployment will never go away, no matter what improvements are made to hiring practices and working conditions, and so the existence of unhappy people is no proof of inherent injustice.

How about we get rid of Gen Ed and give a Bachelors for about 90 credits of student work in their major, an optional minor, and a few required math and science courses. Seems like a great idea to me. That would solve most the of need for adjuncts too. It would reduce the cost of university for students. Community Colleges could offer Bachelors Degrees in a few selected areas where they have the right faculty to teach the courses.

But apart from my brilliant suggestion, is there any sign that universities and colleges are making decisions about gen ed on anything but a political basis? (Aside from maybe one or two isolated instances.)

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
How about we get rid of Gen Ed and give a Bachelors for about 90 credits of student work in their major, an optional minor, and a few required math and science courses.

Why are math and science courses going to be required, but not anything in History or English? Is there some reason why a History major needs to take a science course, but a biology major doesn't need to know anything about American History?

Quote from: Caracal on October 23, 2019, 07:47:59 AM

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
How about we get rid of Gen Ed and give a Bachelors for about 90 credits of student work in their major, an optional minor, and a few required math and science courses.

Why are math and science courses going to be required, but not anything in History or English? Is there some reason why a History major needs to take a science course, but a biology major doesn't need to know anything about American History?

Actually I'd be willing to forgo that part really. I don't think it should be the job of higher ed to fill in the gaps of necessary high school education. My thought was prompted by the fact that the USA public especially is scientifically illiterate and this is a major social problem. But we could make a competition for the different subjects: we will examine the effects of making their subject required in higher ed. We will include the top 3 most beneficial required courses or sequences of courses.

Alternatively we do away with all required courses. Instead, students can just do their major and optional minor with 60 or so credits. They can also collect additional certificates of competency in communication, math and science, history, politics, art, philosophy, languages, and whatever they like, for their own personal pleasure or to improve their chances of getting a job. National exams for each major so standards are equal whichever school they go to.

QuoteSaying "the current system is unfair to adjuncts" implicitly refers to the ones trying to make a full-time job of it.

Not true. But at the same time, assuming people are going to care about something being unfair is a mistake.

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
Community Colleges could offer Bachelors Degrees in a few selected areas where they have the right faculty to teach the courses.

This has already happened in some U.S. states. Although I would personally not recommend anyone getting a bachelor's degree from them. I have seen firsthand the outcomes of these heavily watered-down, stripped-down bachelor's degrees. Having been burned by hiring/supervising some of these graduates, I am reluctant to hire them to any position requiring a 4-year degree. If they didn't have the transcript to prove it, I would not have believed that they had acquired a 4-year degree from an accredited U.S. institution.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 23, 2019, 07:04:59 AM


I think there are things that can be done to make things better for people who are trying to combine part-time teaching jobs, and I am somewhat sympathetic, but I become much less so when that situation is presented as the norm, (or even the only scenario being considered), since the people doing a job advertised as part-time AS a part-time job are generally satisfied.

No employer owes employment to anyone, and since there are way more PhDs than all of the full-time positions that would exist even if all part-time positions were consolidated, the existence of people complaining about underemployment will never go away, no matter what improvements are made to hiring practices and working conditions, and so the existence of unhappy people is no proof of inherent injustice.

Happiness has nothing to do with it. I'm happy enough with my job. I do a check on that every once in a while, because they really, really don't pay me enough to do this if doing it makes me miserable. But that's not the point, the point is that adjunct teaching is an industry where the conditions that exist allow employers/schools to set conditions of work which overall are bad for adjuncts, bad for all faculty, and bad for the students these institutions are supposed to be serving in the first place.

As for the point about part time work...that doesn't square with the way that institutions actually use adjunct instructors. If these were really part time people needed to fill specific gaps, then they wouldn't be hiring people to teach classes year after year and they wouldn't be relying on adjunct faculty to teach such a high percentage of classes.

A few years ago, I taught a writing class at a small liberal arts school in the Spring Semester. They needed an extra person because freshmen all had to take this class and it happened that the numbers meant they needed an extra section. I taught the class that spring and then the next, but then they hired someone in the writing program and it hasn't been available since. Incidentally this was easily the most I've been paid to teach a section...That is how part time adjunct employment would work. Contrast that to now, where I teach four classes every semester and have been for a number of years. That's been nice for me personally, but clearly the department has a need for more faculty members that they can't get money to fill permanently.

Quote from: Caracal on October 23, 2019, 10:45:03 AM

Adjunct teaching is an industry where the conditions that exist allow employers/schools to set conditions of work which overall are bad for adjuncts, bad for all faculty, and bad for the students these institutions are supposed to be serving in the first place.

As for the point about part time work...that doesn't square with the way that institutions actually use adjunct instructors. If these were really part time people needed to fill specific gaps, then they wouldn't be hiring people to teach classes year after year and they wouldn't be relying on adjunct faculty to teach such a high percentage of classes.

There are several points here:

Quote
The conditions that exist allow employers/schools to set conditions of work which overall are bad for adjuncts.

As I've said before, the people actually doing it as a part-time job, (retired faculty, professionals with full-time jobs, etc.) do NOT consider the conditions bad, so what proportion of people need to be trying to make a full-time job out of it to consider the conditions "bad"? 

Quote
If these were really part time people needed to fill specific gaps, then they wouldn't be hiring people to teach classes year after year.

One of the traditionally "legitimate" uses of part-time faculty was to get people from outside academia to teach specific courses, such as practicing professionals teaching courses in law, accounting, etc. Are those inappropriate?

Quote
If these were really part time people needed to fill specific gaps, then they wouldn't be relying on adjunct faculty to teach such a high percentage of classes.

This is a reasonable point. The question is, what is a reasonable percentage of courses taught by part-time people? And more, what about in a department that mostly teaches service courses for other programs; is it OK to have several full-time faculty who are mostly teaching multiple sections of Introductory Basketweaving? Or does a legitimate full-time position need to involve teaching a certain proportion of senior courses?

Quote
As I've said before, the people actually doing it as a part-time job, (retired faculty, professionals with full-time jobs, etc.) do NOT consider the conditions bad, so what proportion of people need to be trying to make a full-time job out of it to consider the conditions "bad"? 

Probably the reason you keep saying it and feel like no one's listening is we know that no one has appointed you spokesman.  For example I had a relative who taught freshman science. The relative was retired and wasn't hurting for money. But he still had a low opinion of the job, the pay, the department and its priorities. He did it for  a few years and quit, because he had had enough by then. I believe this fits your one of your definitions of an intelligent, responsible adjunct.

Quote from: mahagonny on October 23, 2019, 12:18:08 PM

Quote
As I've said before, the people actually doing it as a part-time job, (retired faculty, professionals with full-time jobs, etc.) do NOT consider the conditions bad, so what proportion of people need to be trying to make a full-time job out of it to consider the conditions "bad"? 

Probably the reason you keep saying it and feel like no one's listening is we know that no one has appointed you spokesman.  For example I had a relative who taught freshman science. The relative was retired and wasn't hurting for money. But he still had a low opinion of the job, the pay, the department and its priorities. He did it for  a few years and quit, because he had had enough by then. I believe this fits your one of your definitions of an intelligent, responsible adjunct.

Absolutely, as evidenced by his response to an unsatisfactory situation.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 23, 2019, 12:20:05 PM

Quote from: mahagonny on October 23, 2019, 12:18:08 PM

Quote
As I've said before, the people actually doing it as a part-time job, (retired faculty, professionals with full-time jobs, etc.) do NOT consider the conditions bad, so what proportion of people need to be trying to make a full-time job out of it to consider the conditions "bad"? 

Probably the reason you keep saying it and feel like no one's listening is we know that no one has appointed you spokesman.  For example I had a relative who taught freshman science. The relative was retired and wasn't hurting for money. But he still had a low opinion of the job, the pay, the department and its priorities. He did it for  a few years and quit, because he had had enough by then. I believe this fits your one of your definitions of an intelligent, responsible adjunct.

Absolutely, as evidenced by his response to an unsatisfactory situation.

I understood you to have sorted adjuncts into two groups: (1) 'trying to make a full time job out of it' and with a low opinion of the job and work environment and (2) not 'trying to make a full time job of it' and with a good enough opinion of the job and work environment.
However, my relative was neither of these. So your analysis doesn't hold up.

[fuller explanation]

Things like this: my relative wasn't expected at faculty meetings, and might well  have been interested in going and feeling like more of a collaborative effort, but he wasn't about to go without being paid. He had other stuff he could be doing. And they didn't mind that he didn't go, because that meant they didn't have to pay him. And then office hours. Like, he's not going to wait around on campus all week until the student is available to meet with him. He wasn't paid for office hours. The students were busy with part time employment, etc. Yet he realized that they really should have access to him outside of class.
So, as caracal said, I agree, it's not a question of who's happy with the job and who isn't. It's that the mismatch between regular, core classes that need a professor extendedly and then using neglected workers to serve them.
And then the 'giving back to the community' mantra.

Quote from: Aster on October 23, 2019, 10:34:36 AM

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
Community Colleges could offer Bachelors Degrees in a few selected areas where they have the right faculty to teach the courses.

This has already happened in some U.S. states. Although I would personally not recommend anyone getting a bachelor's degree from them. I have seen firsthand the outcomes of these heavily watered-down, stripped-down bachelor's degrees. Having been burned by hiring/supervising some of these graduates, I am reluctant to hire them to any position requiring a 4-year degree. If they didn't have the transcript to prove it, I would not have believed that they had acquired a 4-year degree from an accredited U.S. institution.

Yeah, I'm not crazy about this trend either, and I'm at a CC. The reason BA/BS granting institutions cost more is because they have an infrastructure than CC's don't need - admissions, for one. More expensive labs, higher-trained faculty are other examples.

Seems it would make more sense to expand financial aid and seat availability at current BA/BS institutions rather than trying to add all that stuff to a CC to serve students who wouldn't be very well-served.

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 08:24:57 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 23, 2019, 07:47:59 AM

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
How about we get rid of Gen Ed and give a Bachelors for about 90 credits of student work in their major, an optional minor, and a few required math and science courses.

Why are math and science courses going to be required, but not anything in History or English? Is there some reason why a History major needs to take a science course, but a biology major doesn't need to know anything about American History?

Actually I'd be willing to forgo that part really. I don't think it should be the job of higher ed to fill in the gaps of necessary high school education. My thought was prompted by the fact that the USA public especially is scientifically illiterate and this is a major social problem. But we could make a competition for the different subjects: we will examine the effects of making their subject required in higher ed. We will include the top 3 most beneficial required courses or sequences of courses.

Alternatively we do away with all required courses. Instead, students can just do their major and optional minor with 60 or so credits. They can also collect additional certificates of competency in communication, math and science, history, politics, art, philosophy, languages, and whatever they like, for their own personal pleasure or to improve their chances of getting a job. National exams for each major so standards are equal whichever school they go to.

A national exam? Oy... who would decide what goes on it, who would administer it...

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 23, 2019, 02:04:51 PM

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 08:24:57 AM

Quote from: Caracal on October 23, 2019, 07:47:59 AM

Quote from: downer on October 23, 2019, 07:14:09 AM
How about we get rid of Gen Ed and give a Bachelors for about 90 credits of student work in their major, an optional minor, and a few required math and science courses.

Why are math and science courses going to be required, but not anything in History or English? Is there some reason why a History major needs to take a science course, but a biology major doesn't need to know anything about American History?

Actually I'd be willing to forgo that part really. I don't think it should be the job of higher ed to fill in the gaps of necessary high school education. My thought was prompted by the fact that the USA public especially is scientifically illiterate and this is a major social problem. But we could make a competition for the different subjects: we will examine the effects of making their subject required in higher ed. We will include the top 3 most beneficial required courses or sequences of courses.

Alternatively we do away with all required courses. Instead, students can just do their major and optional minor with 60 or so credits. They can also collect additional certificates of competency in communication, math and science, history, politics, art, philosophy, languages, and whatever they like, for their own personal pleasure or to improve their chances of getting a job. National exams for each major so standards are equal whichever school they go to.

A national exam? Oy... who would decide what goes on it, who would administer it...

They manage it in other countries, and they manage it for various tests in the USA. I'm sure it is possible for most disciplines. I guess the anthropologists will have different standards for different places.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 21, 2019, 04:56:34 PM

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 01:39:45 PM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 21, 2019, 11:58:54 AM
[. . .]

Spork my friend I don't know what your point is.

[. . .]

See my most recent post (or second most recent, counting this one) upthread.

Yeah, saw that one.  Still wasn't sure what you were on about.  But since you mentioned it...

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 10:37:57 AM
People who get B.A.s in the humanities generally choose those majors out of interest and capability. Forcing other students to take courses in which they have no interest and little capability generally serves no purpose other than collecting their tuition money and employing faculty in those fields (whether full- or part-time).

Can you substantiate any of that?

Do you have any studies or interviews or proof that A) students resent the gen eds or that B) schools include gen eds simply to "collect tuition"?

Quote from: spork on October 21, 2019, 10:37:57 AM
Let's examine the converse: all undergraduates are required to successfully complete a single dental hygienist course, because, as we all know, dental hygiene is extremely important. Would this lead to a massive increase in the number of dental hygienist majors? No. Would it lead to new life-altering awareness of and ability to apply dental hygiene techniques? Generally, no. Would it be the direct cause of a huge increase in life satisfaction among college graduates? Probably not. Would the vast majority of students regard Dental Hygiene 101 as a meaningless hoop they had to jump through to get a bachelor's degree? Yes.

Really?  You have any objective info which would suggest the above?

I'll point to Arum and Roksa's Academically Adrift, with its finding that on average undergraduates are learning little to nothing in the first two years of college -- which (my comment, not theirs) is when students complete most of their general education requirements.

I don't have stats on this, but I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of colleges and universities are using a distribution model for most of their general education requirements. The model typically centers around "take at least one course in each of X different academic disciplines." By default those courses are almost always 100-level, frequently taught by adjuncts or grad students.

As for students choosing their majors out of interest and capability, rather than "I took Basketweaving 101 in my first college semester and it was so transformative that I majored in Basketweaving," there is the decline in the percentage of students choosing to major in humanities fields (https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/11/colleges-studying-humanities-promotion/574621/). (Also discussed here (http://activelearningps.com/2017/07/10/is-your-employer-in-trouble-part-4/).)

Generally I think that choice of major is a fairly good indicator of revealed preferences. Students are voting with their feet. The AAAS conclusions referenced in the second item linked to above are particularly damning.

Again from where I sit -- non-prestigious, non-profit university -- I don't see the "take one course in each of X different disciplines" requirement doing much besides generating tuition revenue, and in fact even that is going away -- because of demographic changes, we are working on block transfer agreements with area community colleges. Students earn 60 credits at community college, completing their gen ed requirements in the process, then transfer in to complete a B.A. in their major of choice.

Quote from: spork on October 23, 2019, 03:35:05 PM

I'll point to Arum and Roksa's Academically Adrift, with its finding that on average undergraduates are learning little to nothing in the first two years of college -- which (my comment, not theirs) is when students complete most of their general education requirements.

Really? I learned a lot my first two years of college. How can someone spend 16 hours a week in class for two semesters, plus another 32 hour per week and not learn anything?

Silliest thing I ever heard.

Quote
I don't have stats on this, but I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of colleges and universities are using a distribution model for most of their general education requirements. The model typically centers around "take at least one course in each of X different academic disciplines." By default those courses are almost always 100-level, frequently taught by adjuncts or grad students.

Distribution of what?

More likely the assumption is that higher ed is expected to create graduates with some exposure to science, literature, social studies, fine arts and mathematics, so students should take some number of these classes.

Quote
Again from where I sit -- non-prestigious, non-profit university -- I don't see the "take one course in each of X different disciplines" requirement doing much besides generating tuition revenue, and in fact even that is going away -- because of demographic changes, we are working on block transfer agreements with area community colleges. Students earn 60 credits at community college, completing their gen ed requirements in the process, then transfer in to complete a B.A. in their major of choice.

Alternatively, because a college education has been long expected to create well-rounded citizens aware of the cultural and historical touch points of the educated class, whatever that means.

In California we are also dealing with the push towards students getting their gen eds and early major prep classes out of the way at a CC with smaller classes so that the 4-year schools can do the more focused study in student majors. Gen eds are still valuable for teaching students fundamental skills such as research, math, scientific method and the like.

Fair enough. 

But you are aware that Academically Adrift is far from being incontestable.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/20/studies-challenge-findings-academically-adrift (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/05/20/studies-challenge-findings-academically-adrift). 

(If anyone from SMF is watching, your hyperlink function sucks balls)

The rest of that is largely perception.  Most students fill out there gen eds throughout their college careers.

And I agree with ciao.  I was hardly a great intellect, but I learned more in my first two years of college than in all high school. I'm betting the biggest learning curve is in the first two years of college.

The decline in English majors is a complex phenomenon, and a lot of its decline is misconception regarding the degree's marketability.  I've posted about that very thing on this thread.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 23, 2019, 03:52:07 PM

[. . .]

Distribution of what?

Of different academic disciplines. Are you not familiar with how models of general education requirements are referred to in the USA?

Quote

More likely the assumption is that higher ed is expected to create graduates with some exposure to science, literature, social studies, fine arts and mathematics, so students should take some number of these classes.

Exposure does not necessarily equal learning. Or motivation to learn.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 23, 2019, 04:15:22 PM
Fair enough. 

But you are aware that Academically Adrift is far from being incontestable.

Yes. But I don't have ready access to NSSE or other data that might provide a clearer picture of whether student success (however defined) can be attributed in any significant degree to general education requirements. European post-secondary ed systems don't have the kind of required gen ed curriculum that the USA has, and in many cases those systems seem to produce good outcomes.

Quote

The rest of that is largely perception.  Most students fill out there gen eds throughout their college careers.

At the two universities I attended as a student, and the four universities I've been a full-time employee at, students complete the overwhelming majority of gen ed requirements in the first two years. If curricula weren't constructed this way, community college students wouldn't be transferring to four-year universities at the rate that they do.

Quote
And I agree with ciao.  I was hardly a great intellect, but I learned more in my first two years of college than in all high school. I'm betting the biggest learning curve is in the first two years of college.

[. . . ]

I remember extremely little, if anything, from courses taken across all four years of college. But probably more representative than the experience of two academics -- though still not necessarily statistically representative -- are the exit surveys of graduating seniors at my current employer that consistently show dissatisfaction with general education courses and requirements.

I probably should have been clearer and more specific: it is much easier for a new humanities PhD to get alternative non-academic employment if they look for it straight out of grad school, or perhaps even better, whilst still ABD.  It's much much harder to reboot and refocus into a non-academic path if one has been out of grad school for several years and now decides one has to go in such a direction.  Much much harder, yet this would be precisely when the to-date only adjunct prof, whether or not he's ever authored an 'adjunct porn' treatise, would, if taking this sort of advice, have to be searching elsewhere.

As a young person my perceptions about coursework were predicated on comfort and expediency.  I suspect I was fairly typical in that regard.  I now recognize that those were maybe not the best criteria to evaluate my own education.  We also know about the developing adolescent / young adult mind, which I suspect affects how people think about subjects such as gen eds.  People complain a lot about money in this regard.  If one looks online one can find a number of opinions about gen eds, pro and con, from all quarters.  Education professionals seem to feel that gen eds are very important.

And, as I did with Polly, I will point out that there are schools which essentially do away with pesky gen eds...Be a Phoenix? 

I seriously doubt the Machiavellian approach to gen eds as a money generation scheme, don't think it holds water.  Many colleges actually lose money on students----tuition does not cover the entire cost of their education. I'm sure you know this.  Moving people through in 2 or 3 years of streamlined job-oriented education would save on technology and administrative costs, wouldn't it?  Not to mention all those adjuncts you could fire.  And if we really wanted to extra tuition, why wouldn't we just up the number of major requirements?  There is enough knowledge in every discipline to fill out doctorate level education and entire scholarly careers----why not just convert grad courses into more intensive upper-division undergrad courses, eliminate gen eds, and charge the same rate for tuition? 

Whenever I have thoughts as to how Higher Education can be made better, I look to what the corporate for-profit colleges have done to erode the value, quality, and public confidence of education in America.

And then my doubts go away.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 23, 2019, 07:33:21 PM
And, as I did with Polly, I will point out that there are schools which essentially do away with pesky gen eds...Be a Phoenix? 

Phoenix is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and is subject to the same rules as all four-year institutions including standard general education credit requirements.  Phoenix is hemorrhaging students and money because they are expensive for what they do that is the same 4-year schooling as everyone else who now is also online.  The national decrease in percent of adjuncts as faculty is generally attributed to Phoenix and similar institutions shedding faculty as they shrink or close.

A better example of eliminating general education requirements would be the competency-based models like Western Governor's University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University), which has 110k students enrolled.  Another example is the tightly structured minimal general education requirements in many nursing and engineering programs.  Those are generally not 30-40 credits of exploration, but are instead mandatory courses that meet needs with a tiny bit of flexibility depending on the specific term a student has a slot marked "humanities/social science elective" and what fits into the rest of the regulated schedule. 


In addition, the European higher ed system seems to function fine without US-style general education requirements.  Again, the implication that one is getting a welding certificate or dental hygienist training if one doesn't have general education is not the reality on the ground.

The calls in some areas for three-year bachelor's degrees that rely heavily on entering students having already completed many gen eds elsewhere are not going away, especially for the institutions serving the well-prepared students.  Again, the conclusion appears to be that people who have a good K-12 education can focus on their majors to speed through college, while those who had inadequate K-12 education probably need support for 6 or 8 years of undergraduate study. (https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2017/03/14/are-3-year-bachelors-programs-worth-it/)

As for downer's question regarding general education, much restructuring is going on.  For example, the University of Virginia is rolling out a new general education program that includes quantitative and computational fluency requirements. (https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/10/22/uva-adopts-new-gen-ed-program)  With business and other non-liberal-arts majors now the popular degrees, the push-back on many campuses against a liberal-arts-lite-humanities-heavy smorgasbord will continue to increase.  After all, we keep hearing about how those poor adjuncts are being exploited to cover the requirements and it's not at all clear what those checkbox requirements being taught by overworked and underpaid adjuncts are providing in terms of a solid education.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 23, 2019, 07:33:21 PM

And, as I did with Polly, I will point out that there are schools which essentially do away with pesky gen eds...Be a Phoenix? 

As Spork and others have pointed out, lots of countries don't have gen eds and have some very prestigious institutions. It's ridiculous to present Phoenix as the only available model.

Quote from: Aster on October 24, 2019, 05:03:10 AM
Whenever I have thoughts as to how Higher Education can be made better, I look to what the corporate for-profit colleges have done to erode the value, quality, and public confidence of education in America.

And then my doubts go away.

Not enough hockey and football. I could see that coming. In fact, I think the Marx Brothers covered that pretty well in the 1930's.

Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are? Universities are not known for being nimble in responding to social needs and trends.

I'd be pretty happy to see a lot of gen ed thrown out. On the other hand, there is also a problem of creating an over-specialized student. Some breadth in knowledge and skills can be useful.

For those who want to follow the excitement, IHE has a column regarding the UVA new gen ed curriculum that points out that UVa is well-heeled and will be staffing this program with their already-existent full-time faculty instead of adjuncts or newly hired non-TT. (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/enthused-about-uvas-new-approach-gen-ed)

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 05:23:18 AM
Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are?

All institutions that want their students to be eligible for federal financial aid have some sort of general education requirements on the books because that's a requirement for regional accreditation.  However, what constitutes minimally acceptable general education requirements has changed over the years.  That's something you can do the web search on yourself.  However, it's pretty typical to have eliminated the foreign language requirement and to loosen what goes on specific lists (e.g., quantitative reasoning instead of actual math; any sort of lab-like experience possibly including social science instead of a handful of physical/life sciences).

Who doesn't have general education?  The tiny little bible colleges that don't care about federal financial aid.  The fly-by-night, buy-your-degrees here institutions.  Many of the old-style correspondence education that doesn't get the same pool of federal financial aid won't have typical general education.

Western Governors University is the primary example of not having traditional general education requirements because of their competency-based model that assumes adults, not straight-from-HS graduates, and WGU is fighting hard not to have to change their methods.

So it is the federal government that really establishes the requirement for gen ed. I didn't realize that.

I'm normally dismissive of libertarianism, but occasionally something tugs me in a libertarian direction. This does.

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 05:23:18 AM
Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are?

I don't think such stats would be helpful. "Gen ed" can mean speech and composition classes, which provide skills needed for any job, or art history, which provides no job skills. These discussions, as I've seen them, are primarily focused on elimination of humanities requirements, which in many universities would allow students to finish a semester earlier.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 24, 2019, 06:16:03 AM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 05:23:18 AM
Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are?

I don't think such stats would be helpful. "Gen ed" can mean speech and composition classes, which provide skills needed for any job, or art history, which provides no job skills. These discussions, as I've seen them, are primarily focused on elimination of humanities requirements, which in many universities would allow students to finish a semester earlier.

Doesn't it depend on how the stats are presented, and whether they are transparent or obfuscating?

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 06:11:21 AM
So it is the federal government that really establishes the requirement for gen ed. I didn't realize that.

I'm normally dismissive of libertarianism, but occasionally something tugs me in a libertarian direction. This does.

Well, not exactly. The accrediting agencies do. Those are non-profit NGOs. But accreditation is linked to various sorts of federal funding.

Quote from: Caracal on October 24, 2019, 07:35:42 AM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 06:11:21 AM
So it is the federal government that really establishes the requirement for gen ed. I didn't realize that.

I'm normally dismissive of libertarianism, but occasionally something tugs me in a libertarian direction. This does.

Well, not exactly. The accrediting agencies do. Those are non-profit NGOs. But accreditation is linked to various sorts of federal funding.

Leadership at the Federal Education Department right now would prefer to have as few requirements as possible so that schools are minimally constrained in what they provide students in return for the tuition money students borrowed.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 24, 2019, 05:04:09 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 23, 2019, 07:33:21 PM
And, as I did with Polly, I will point out that there are schools which essentially do away with pesky gen eds...Be a Phoenix? 

Phoenix is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and is subject to the same rules as all four-year institutions including standard general education credit requirements.  Phoenix is hemorrhaging students and money because they are expensive for what they do that is the same 4-year schooling as everyone else who now is also online.  The national decrease in percent of adjuncts as faculty is generally attributed to Phoenix and similar institutions shedding faculty as they shrink or close.

A better example of eliminating general education requirements would be the competency-based models like Western Governor's University (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Governors_University), which has 110k students enrolled.  Another example is the tightly structured minimal general education requirements in many nursing and engineering programs.  Those are generally not 30-40 credits of exploration, but are instead mandatory courses that meet needs with a tiny bit of flexibility depending on the specific term a student has a slot marked "humanities/social science elective" and what fits into the rest of the regulated schedule. 


In addition, the European higher ed system seems to function fine without US-style general education requirements.  Again, the implication that one is getting a welding certificate or dental hygienist training if one doesn't have general education is not the reality on the ground.

The calls in some areas for three-year bachelor's degrees that rely heavily on entering students having already completed many gen eds elsewhere are not going away, especially for the institutions serving the well-prepared students.  Again, the conclusion appears to be that people who have a good K-12 education can focus on their majors to speed through college, while those who had inadequate K-12 education probably need support for 6 or 8 years of undergraduate study. (https://www.mindingthecampus.org/2017/03/14/are-3-year-bachelors-programs-worth-it/)

As for downer's question regarding general education, much restructuring is going on.  For example, the University of Virginia is rolling out a new general education program that includes quantitative and computational fluency requirements. (https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/10/22/uva-adopts-new-gen-ed-program)  With business and other non-liberal-arts majors now the popular degrees, the push-back on many campuses against a liberal-arts-lite-humanities-heavy smorgasbord will continue to increase.  After all, we keep hearing about how those poor adjuncts are being exploited to cover the requirements and it's not at all clear what those checkbox requirements being taught by overworked and underpaid adjuncts are providing in terms of a solid education.

You know, I actually considered applying for work at WGU before getting a FT gig.

This is all fine and good as long as we don't pretend that there are not noted limitations and criticism to the "competency" approach to education.  It is not, in other words, a proven better option, nor is everyone convinced of its viability.  It may be the wave of the future (who can say?), but the approach still has to prove itself.  And we have to note, again, that WGU is consistently referred to as "job preparation" firstly, as if "education" is the afterthought.  Everything I see regarding WGU, like Phoenix and Capella, is simply a money-value comparison to traditional education and/or an "employment rate" after graduation statement.  I sometimes think we forget that there are many reasons, good and bad, that people choose to go to college.  Not everyone is obsessed with employment, although I suspect a good many are.

This is one example of a critique: 
http://www.nea.org/archive/53413.htm

Quote

"Liberal arts education is much different than what WGU offers. College education can be compared to learning to drive. We all know what it takes to pass a driving test, and we all know how we do it: we cram a bunch of stuff into short-term memory, and then pass a competency-based exam. We also know that becoming a driver is a much different process; it requires guidance and repeated practice (or seat time). WGU's approach may help students pass licensing exams, but it does not help them become drivers.

Similarly, one could argue that the Boy Scouts has a "competency approach" because scouts are asked to earn merit badges. But of course, the Boy Scouts' mission is to offer "a program for young people that builds character, trains them in the responsibilities of participating citizenship, and develops personal fitness."7 Thus, scouts camp together, learn together, and work together under the guidance of masters who teach knowledge and model the scouts' values. Abstracted from this broader culture of scouting, the merit badges would lose their meaning and value.

Had the competency approach been able to achieve the goals of liberal arts education, it would have done so long ago. Not only have we long had correspondence courses, but textbook producers also have long packaged their products with assignments and assessment tools. Despite their efforts, the core learning experience has continued to take place in interactions between teachers and students, and between students themselves—the stuff that happens beyond the textbook. WGU's online modules may be better than correspondence courses, but they are variations on a theme, and suffer from the same limitations.

Although commentators embrace WGU's model because it offers easily assessable outcomes, this may also be its problem; too often we conflate easily assessed outcomes with accountability."

And:

Quote
"Liberal arts education is experiential learning for the mind. It's about grappling with tough stuff. The assessments (or competencies)—tests, papers, labs— are only part of the picture; equally important is what happens while students are in class and, more generally, on campus: the discussions, questions, conversations; the exposure to new ideas and different perspectives. A college graduate should become an interpretive being, capable of not just answering but asking sophisticated questions; of not just knowing facts, but making sense of them; of not just understanding what's in a book or lesson, but offering original ideas based on their learning. Developing this deep understanding depends, as Socrates recognized, on conversations between teacher and student. Cognitive science confirms what the ancients knew.11 As philosopher Michael Oakeshott has written about liberal education, "in every 'ability' there is an ingredient of knowledge which cannot be resolved into information" given that "'abilities' do not exist in the abstract but in individual examples." As a result, gaining fluency in the liberal arts is like learning a new language. One must master basic rules but "until one can speak the language in a manner not expressly provided for in the rules, one can make no significance utterance in it."

Now I'm not saying that this opinion is the be-all / end-all of the debate, but it points out what a lot of us have been saying about this subject.

I suspect, but will not state it as an absolute, that society will either turn away from "competency" based education or we will have two distinct paths to education----and at some point the "competency" style of education will be regarded as second rate.  Actually, if we factor in the current reputation of for-profit / employment based schools, we see this already.  "Competency" will be education for the people not smart enough for "real" college.  Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but knowing human nature, I bet this is the next stage of ed-evolution.

Since accreditation agencies are so hot on outcomes assessment, I assume that they have evidence from outcomes assessment that gen ed programs accomplish what they are meant to.

Just kidding.

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 09:40:31 AM
Since accreditation agencies are so hot on outcomes assessment, I assume that they have evidence from outcomes assessment that gen ed programs accomplish what they are meant to.

That would certainly be worth seeing, in terms of the metrics they use and the results.

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 06:25:43 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 24, 2019, 06:16:03 AM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 05:23:18 AM
Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are?

I don't think such stats would be helpful. "Gen ed" can mean speech and composition classes, which provide skills needed for any job, or art history, which provides no job skills. These discussions, as I've seen them, are primarily focused on elimination of humanities requirements, which in many universities would allow students to finish a semester earlier.

Doesn't it depend on how the stats are presented, and whether they are transparent or obfuscating?

You'd need to report by type of class and how many classes for it to be meaningful. Even then you'd have a composition class under "humanities" if it's taught by an English department, so I don't know that there are any stats you'd ever hope to find that can identify the "no job skills" classes, which is the argument against "general education" requirements.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 24, 2019, 01:25:47 PM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 06:25:43 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 24, 2019, 06:16:03 AM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 05:23:18 AM
Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are?

I don't think such stats would be helpful. "Gen ed" can mean speech and composition classes, which provide skills needed for any job, or art history, which provides no job skills. These discussions, as I've seen them, are primarily focused on elimination of humanities requirements, which in many universities would allow students to finish a semester earlier.

Doesn't it depend on how the stats are presented, and whether they are transparent or obfuscating?

You'd need to report by type of class and how many classes for it to be meaningful. Even then you'd have a composition class under "humanities" if it's taught by an English department, so I don't know that there are any stats you'd ever hope to find that can identify the "no job skills" classes, which is the argument against "general education" requirements.

I am not sure that any one has attempted to get stats on this stuff anyway, so it's probably a moot point.

I'm skeptical about dividng up the "job skills" classes from the "no job skills" classes even in principle. After all, we often have organizational skills, time keeping skills, critical thinking skills, presentation skills, and more generalizable skills in all classes. (There's also the important skill of being able to look like you know about a topic when you have spent very little time on it.) On the other hand, a class that might looks like a "job skills" class like "Critical Thinking" may turn out to have rather little generalizability to the work world.

UVA's "new" gen ed requirements: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/enthused-about-uvas-new-approach-gen-ed (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/enthused-about-uvas-new-approach-gen-ed).

"oriented around what students should be able to do, rather than simply what they should 'know'" -- while I applaud this approach, I'm very curious if gen ed courses will be assessed in a valid way to find out whether students are actually acquiring these skills. If not, it's just an exercise in relabeling course designations.

Quote from: spork on October 25, 2019, 06:25:43 AM
UVA's "new" gen ed requirements: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/enthused-about-uvas-new-approach-gen-ed (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/enthused-about-uvas-new-approach-gen-ed).

"oriented around what students should be able to do, rather than simply what they should 'know'" -- while I applaud this approach, I'm very curious if gen ed courses will be assessed in a valid way to find out whether students are actually acquiring these skills. If not, it's just an exercise in relabeling course designations.

This doesn't look promising:

Quote
The Quantification, Computation, and Data Analysis literacy enables students to apply mathematical skills to understand and solve real world problems. Students fulfill this requirement by completing two 3- or 4-credit courses that include some or all of the following:

• Theoretical concepts and structures of mathematics and statistics including (but not limited to) pure mathematics, logic, and theoretical statistics.
• Manipulation and interpretation of mathematical expressions.
• Application of computational and analytical methods in order to manipulate, organize, summarize, and evaluate quantitative information and experience.
• Theoretical and/or practical interpretation and communication of data in order to solve real-world problems

Note: this is not a Calculus requirement. Instead, students in the New College Curriculum can fulfill this requirement in courses across the College of Arts & Sciences (including courses in Anthropology, Math, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Statistics, and more).

All of those qualifications suggest to me that there will be options with nary a number in sight.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 25, 2019, 06:35:39 AM

This doesn't look promising:

Quote
The Quantification, Computation, and Data Analysis literacy enables students to apply mathematical skills to understand and solve real world problems. Students fulfill this requirement by completing two 3- or 4-credit courses that include some or all of the following:

• Theoretical concepts and structures of mathematics and statistics including (but not limited to) pure mathematics, logic, and theoretical statistics.
• Manipulation and interpretation of mathematical expressions.
• Application of computational and analytical methods in order to manipulate, organize, summarize, and evaluate quantitative information and experience.
• Theoretical and/or practical interpretation and communication of data in order to solve real-world problems

Note: this is not a Calculus requirement. Instead, students in the New College Curriculum can fulfill this requirement in courses across the College of Arts & Sciences (including courses in Anthropology, Math, Philosophy, Psychology, Sociology, Statistics, and more).

All of those qualifications suggest to me that there will be options with nary a number in sight.

Have you ever taken a math class? "Manipulate" is a fancy word for "solve problems."

• Theoretical and/or practical interpretation and communication of data in order to solve real-world problems

Is just a fancy term for "word problems."

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 25, 2019, 06:48:21 AM

• Theoretical and/or practical interpretation and communication of data in order to solve real-world problems

Is just a fancy term for "word problems."

But since it only need to include "some" of these, that could potentially mean
"Theoretical... communication of data" would suffice, whatever that means. To me, that could mean students are told about results of research, and they simply have to re-word it for a different audience. In that case, they wouldn't have to have any ability to determine whether the data support the interpretations; all they'd have to do is explain the interpretations.

There are a lot of weasel-words there that perhaps could be met without students actually having to do anything quantitative themselves.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 25, 2019, 06:57:42 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 25, 2019, 06:48:21 AM

• Theoretical and/or practical interpretation and communication of data in order to solve real-world problems

Is just a fancy term for "word problems."

But since it only need to include "some" of these, that could potentially mean
"Theoretical... communication of data" would suffice, whatever that means. To me, that could mean students are told about results of research, and they simply have to re-word it for a different audience. In that case, they wouldn't have to have any ability to determine whether the data support the interpretations; all they'd have to do is explain the interpretations.

There are a lot of weasel-words there that perhaps could be met without students actually having to do anything quantitative themselves.

Dude. You're seriously breaking your crayons over this.

Unless there is a common, university-wide test on "quantification skill," the whole exercise is meaningless.

Quote from: spork on October 25, 2019, 07:10:23 AM
Unless there is a common, university-wide test on "quantification skill," the whole exercise is meaningless.

Huh? It isn't trying to establish some set list of skills. If that was the idea it would just be a required class. The point of having a number of courses to choose from is that you want students to learn how to engage with data but you want them to be able to choose courses based on their interests.

Quote from: Caracal on October 25, 2019, 08:03:00 AM

Quote from: spork on October 25, 2019, 07:10:23 AM
Unless there is a common, university-wide test on "quantification skill," the whole exercise is meaningless.

Huh? It isn't trying to establish some set list of skills. If that was the idea it would just be a required class. The point of having a number of courses to choose from is that you want students to learn how to engage with data but you want them to be able to choose courses based on their interests.

But that's just it; the amount of leeway in the choices makes the definition of "engagement" with the data basically meaningless.

We know----because we are smart people with advanced degrees who think and teach and research for a living----there is not a clear, easy dichotomy between good gen eds or bad gen eds.  We will lose some things and gain others by re-configuring and re-thinking how all this works.   

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 25, 2019, 08:51:41 AM
We know----because we are smart people with advanced degrees who think and teach and research for a living----there is not a clear, easy dichotomy between good gen eds or bad gen eds.  We will lose some things and gain others by re-configuring and re-thinking how all this works.

Doesn't all of that "research" involve making claims based on evidence, rather than "Trust me; I know what I'm talking about and you don't"?

I haven't pored through UVA's menus of courses to know what specific courses fulfill which particular gen ed requirements. But if a stated outcome of the gen ed requirements is (sticking with this as an example of an outcome) to be proficient at analyzing data in a quantitative manner, then individual instructors or departments don't get to impose wildly different ways of measuring that proficiency.

Hypothetical example: if Cultural Anthropology 101, Statistics 101, and Spanish 101 all are designated as fulfilling the "quantification" requirement, then proficiency at quantification has to be operationalized so that it can be determined what proportion of students in those three courses are hitting the quantification benchmark. Otherwise, as I said above, the whole exercise is meaningless and gen ed becomes nothing but "students are acquiring the skills they need because they're taking the courses we say they can take."

Quote from: spork on October 25, 2019, 09:52:29 AM
I haven't pored through UVA's menus of courses to know what specific courses fulfill which particular gen ed requirements. But if a stated outcome of the gen ed requirements is (sticking with this as an example of an outcome) to be proficient at analyzing data in a quantitative manner, then individual instructors or departments don't get to impose wildly different ways of measuring that proficiency.

Hypothetical example: if Cultural Anthropology 101, Statistics 101, and Spanish 101 all are designated as fulfilling the "quantification" requirement, then proficiency at quantification has to be operationalized so that it can be determined what proportion of students in those three courses are hitting the quantification benchmark. Otherwise, as I said above, the whole exercise is meaningless and gen ed becomes nothing but "students are acquiring the skills they need because they're taking the courses we say they can take."

Each field though would operationalize "quantification" in different ways. And it would be very dependent on vocabulary. Which methods are generally accepted in different fields, and why?

Quote from: spork on October 25, 2019, 09:52:29 AM
I haven't pored through UVA's menus of courses to know what specific courses fulfill which particular gen ed requirements. But if a stated outcome of the gen ed requirements is (sticking with this as an example of an outcome) to be proficient at analyzing data in a quantitative manner, then individual instructors or departments don't get to impose wildly different ways of measuring that proficiency.

First of all, I'm assuming that for a course to fulfill the requirement, they do have to demonstrate that they will be fulfilling the requirement in certain kind of rigorous ways. You can't just say, "there's a spreadsheet" and call it a day. I think that is what is different about the "literacy" from their "disciplines" categories. What fits as "literacy" is more narrowly defined.

But, while you can mandate certain kinds of standards , it wouldn't really be possible to have some set way of measuring proficiency unless you just want to make students all take the same course regardless of their interests. I did look at the courses and you could take Intro to coding, plenty of hard math courses, an intro to social statistics, mathematical statistics, various comp sci courses, a class on health research methods etc etc. This isn't designed to teach some particular set of skills, instead the point is to have students take a class involving certain kinds of mathematical, statistical or computational thinking. The point is rigor, not uniformity. It actually seems like a good idea, because it allows students to do something that would be relevant to their interests or studies. My work touches on social science statistics in various ways, it would have been useful for me to take a social statistics course in college, or learn how to use ARC GIS or any number of things.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 25, 2019, 10:41:50 AM

Quote from: spork on October 25, 2019, 09:52:29 AM
I haven't pored through UVA's menus of courses to know what specific courses fulfill which particular gen ed requirements. But if a stated outcome of the gen ed requirements is (sticking with this as an example of an outcome) to be proficient at analyzing data in a quantitative manner, then individual instructors or departments don't get to impose wildly different ways of measuring that proficiency.

Hypothetical example: if Cultural Anthropology 101, Statistics 101, and Spanish 101 all are designated as fulfilling the "quantification" requirement, then proficiency at quantification has to be operationalized so that it can be determined what proportion of students in those three courses are hitting the quantification benchmark. Otherwise, as I said above, the whole exercise is meaningless and gen ed becomes nothing but "students are acquiring the skills they need because they're taking the courses we say they can take."

Each field though would operationalize "quantification" in different ways. And it would be very dependent on vocabulary. Which methods are generally accepted in different fields, and why?

Maybe UVA is different, but for the universities I'm familiar with, allowing faculty in each department to define their own versions of a skill, literacy, or whatever, and also allowing them to define what constitutes proficiency in that skill or literacy, and allowing them to decide how to measure that proficiency, results in . . . garbage. Demonstrating that desired outcomes are being produced becomes the equivalent of "Students who take our decorating with coconuts courses are proficient in viticulture because coconuts and grapes are both plants and viticulture is listed as an SLO in all of our decorating with coconuts course syllabi."

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 24, 2019, 09:31:13 AM
I suspect, but will not state it as an absolute, that society will either turn away from "competency" based education or we will have two distinct paths to education----and at some point the "competency" style of education will be regarded as second rate.  Actually, if we factor in the current reputation of for-profit / employment based schools, we see this already.  "Competency" will be education for the people not smart enough for "real" college.  Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but knowing human nature, I bet this is the next stage of ed-evolution.

Again, I will point out that the options are not limited to competency-based education or liberal-arts education.  Engineering is not generally competency-based education in the WGU model, but it's very much not also liberal arts or like a dental hygienist specialized job training.

The same "not-proven-to-be effective" arguments hold true for bachelor's degrees that are pick-a-mix, checkbox classes taught by warm bodies in a liberal-arts-lite model.  Evidence in some books published over the past twenty years (and you can name them as well as I can) indicate that few students are getting a lot of out college and that's not a function of eliteness of institution; it's much more a function of who is invested in their own education and who is getting through college checking boxes to do the next thing, regardless of what those specific boxes are.  Otherwise, we couldn't continue have reports like the classics: https://www.businessinsider.com/question-that-harvard-students-get-wrong-2012-12 and https://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html

Quote from: polly_mer on October 26, 2019, 04:46:49 AM
The same "not-proven-to-be effective" arguments hold true for bachelor's degrees that are pick-a-mix, checkbox classes taught by warm bodies in a liberal-arts-lite model. 

Our conception of education in the western world is predicated upon mandatory primary and secondary schooling and the notion that everybody, no matter who they are, has access to higher ed in some form (we even try to educate felons in prison), so we are going to have a very wide pool of educators and students that we are low-balling and challenging whatever we do whenever possible.

What do we expect?  It's not going to be perfect, and sometimes it's not even going to be as good as it should be.  And someone, somewhere, is going to be able to poke holes in it because that is what we do in this culture.

If we as a culture really are concerned with the efficacy of high ed we would pour defense department dollars into our schools----I don't even both imagining what I could do with room and time to actually personalize curriculum and mentor my students and help them learn at their own paces.  There is no point in even thinking about that, however, since it is not going to happen.   

At the same time, we could do something about "warm bodies."  Repeatedly pointing out that filling classrooms with "warm bodies" is not the best strategy in education doesn't do very much----yes, we agree.  Let's give those "warm bodies" FT jobs.

If we as a culture really had doubts as deep as the ones you express then we would have eliminated the gen ed model long ago, probably would have eliminated college itself long ago.  Simple fact is we have not.  There will always be studies and opinions criticizing what we do----its part of western thought.  We love to tear our clothes and ululate, "for God's sake, won't some one think of the children!"  Find me any government or private program that doesn't have an army of critics.

In the bigger picture, Polly, you and Spork seem awfully embittered, a little defensive (probably for private reasons regarding your own education), and not very objective, and you are simply wrong. 

This is the reason I am starting to lose interest in the debate.  We could post pro/con blog posts all day on the subject and frankly it doesn't matter----neither of us will convince the other and, for the moment at least, the gen eds are here to stay.  Plenty of peeps, like me, who see the value in them.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 26, 2019, 10:26:02 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 26, 2019, 04:46:49 AM
The same "not-proven-to-be effective" arguments hold true for bachelor's degrees that are pick-a-mix, checkbox classes taught by warm bodies in a liberal-arts-lite model. 

Our conception of education in the western world is predicated upon mandatory primary and secondary schooling and the notion that everybody, no matter who they are, has access to higher ed in some form (we even try to educate felons in prison), so we are going to have a very wide pool of educators and students that we are low-balling and challenging whatever we do whenever possible.

As was one of the closing speakers at the fancy schmancy Community College Trustees conference this year.

https://www.congress.acct.org/keynote-speaker

Quote
What do we expect?  It's not going to be perfect, and sometimes it's not even going to be as good as it should be.  And someone, somewhere, is going to be able to poke holes in it because that is what we do in this culture.

If we as a culture really are concerned with the efficacy of high ed we would pour defense department dollars into our schools----I don't even both imagining what I could do with room and time to actually personalize curriculum and mentor my students and help them learn at their own paces.  There is no point in even thinking about that, however, since it is not going to happen.   

And rich people wouldn't be anxiously buying their kids' ways into Harvard, Stanford and USC.

Quote
At the same time, we could do something about "warm bodies."  Repeatedly pointing out that filling classrooms with "warm bodies" is not the best strategy in education doesn't do very much----yes, we agree.  Let's give those "warm bodies" FT jobs.

Amen.

Quote
If we as a culture really had doubts as deep as the ones you express then we would have eliminated the gen ed model long ago, probably would have eliminated college itself long ago.  Simple fact is we have not.  There will always be studies and opinions criticizing what we do----its part of western thought.  We love to tear our clothes and ululate, "for God's sake, won't some one think of the children!"  Find me any government or private program that doesn't have an army of critics.

And all the college marketing programs wouldn't be all about creating deep thinkers, blah blah blah.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 26, 2019, 04:46:49 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 24, 2019, 09:31:13 AM
I suspect, but will not state it as an absolute, that society will either turn away from "competency" based education or we will have two distinct paths to education----and at some point the "competency" style of education will be regarded as second rate.  Actually, if we factor in the current reputation of for-profit / employment based schools, we see this already.  "Competency" will be education for the people not smart enough for "real" college.  Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but knowing human nature, I bet this is the next stage of ed-evolution.

Again, I will point out that the options are not limited to competency-based education or liberal-arts education.  Engineering is not generally competency-based education in the WGU model, but it's very much not also liberal arts or like a dental hygienist specialized job training.

The same "not-proven-to-be effective" arguments hold true for bachelor's degrees that are pick-a-mix, checkbox classes taught by warm bodies in a liberal-arts-lite model.  Evidence in some books published over the past twenty years (and you can name them as well as I can) indicate that few students are getting a lot of out college and that's not a function of eliteness of institution; it's much more a function of who is invested in their own education and who is getting through college checking boxes to do the next thing, regardless of what those specific boxes are.  Otherwise, we couldn't continue have reports like the classics: https://www.businessinsider.com/question-that-harvard-students-get-wrong-2012-12 and https://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html

I get more and more confused about what you are talking about. I'm not sure why the business insider thing is supposed to tell us something.  The only thing that kept me from the wrong answer was that I checked my answer and realized ten cents was wrong. I guess in some point in elementary school I learned to check my answer? But really the question is just one of these many examples where people imagine a question is obvious and don't take their time. I'm not really sure what college classes are supposed to teach you how not to do that.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 26, 2019, 10:26:02 AM

[. . .]

In the bigger picture, Polly, you and Spork seem awfully embittered, a little defensive (probably for private reasons regarding your own education), and not very objective, and you are simply wrong. 

[. . .]

I can't speak for Polly, but I am not bitter, nor do I feel defensive about my own education. It's facilitated my comfortable life in the global 1%. I am, however, worried about the future of my career in the higher education industry, since my comfortable life stems from that career, and I have twenty-five years to go until retirement. Although it's all about me, me, me, my situation is greatly affected by how other people perceive the value of the product that the industry supplies, regardless of whether I think those perceptions are correct or incorrect. Right now a lot of people are questioning the value of an increasingly expensive product that doesn't seem to deliver what it promises. So a lot of the discussion here reminds me of Tower Records right before Napster. Something is going to come along that the great unwashed masses are going to regard as a better value, and poof! A chunk of the industry will disappear, and most likely that chunk will include the kind of university I work at, which broadcasts hoo-ha about its general education curriculum far and wide. Not only is there an absence of evidence to back up the message, but the message doesn't even register with people in the market. They want to hear about something else.

As someone who works in the Defense sector, I'm terrified by wasting resources on educational practices we know are so far from perfect that we're eating our own seed corn and patting ourselves on the back for doing so.

It doesn't matter how many people liked their college box-checking course if they can't actually apply any of the lessons they were supposed to have learned in school like writing the damn equation set for:

X + Y =1.10
X =1.00 + Y

or doing the guess and check equivalent to those equations.

Failing to apply the basic knowledge when confronted with a situation out in the wild indicates one has failed at critical thinking.  Period.  Whether one wants to attribute that failure to not checking the work or something else, the fact remains that college educated people fail all the time at the critical thinking that matters.

The video I linked is one where people continue to fail at applying basic knowledge that should have been acquired during the mandatory elementary schooling.  The following decades of science education research indicate how little people actually learn in formal schooling, which also undermines the notion that more formal schooling is the way to fix people not knowing stuff out in the world.

If the goal really is a larger fraction of people able to do things out in the world by virtue of excellent critical thinking skills, then more college in the current model is not going to achieve that goal.

For example, the formal education assumption behind:

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 24, 2019, 07:54:29 AM
You just acknowledged you can do an algebraic proof better than you can a compound sentence, Polly.  And frankly, I sometimes get lost in your diction.  With all due respect (as a guy who wishes he had paid more attention in algebra), maybe you should have taken more literature and journalism.

I passed all my college-required writing requirements with A's: two semesters of freshman comp and a semester of technical writing.

I passed all my writing-intensive required humanities requirements with A's: the total comes up to 5 philosophy classes, some of which were required and some were for fun.

I passed all my writing-intensive social science requirements with A's.

I'll grant you that spending a year as a journalism intern 25+ years ago may have helped a lot with my writing process based on targeted feedback.

Now?  I can tell exactly which posts I spent three hours and 8-10 drafts doing versus one 10-15 minute draft to organize a couple ideas with a second read for spelling.  One more undergraduate class decades ago would not help this current writing nearly as much as a good editor or taking every post as seriously as I do my professional writing where a failure in communication will have significant consequences.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 27, 2019, 07:52:01 AM
For example, the formal education assumption behind:

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 24, 2019, 07:54:29 AM
You just acknowledged you can do an algebraic proof better than you can a compound sentence, Polly.  And frankly, I sometimes get lost in your diction.  With all due respect (as a guy who wishes he had paid more attention in algebra), maybe you should have taken more literature and journalism.

I passed all my college-required writing requirements with A's: two semesters of freshman comp and a semester of technical writing.

I passed all my writing-intensive required humanities requirements with A's: the total comes up to 5 philosophy classes, some of which were required and some were for fun.

I passed all my writing-intensive social science requirements with A's.

I'll grant you that spending a year as a journalism intern 25+ years ago may have helped a lot with my writing process based on targeted feedback.

Now?  I can tell exactly which posts I spent three hours and 8-10 drafts doing versus one 10-15 minute draft to organize a couple ideas with a second read for spelling.  One more undergraduate class decades ago would not help this current writing nearly as much as a good editor or taking every post as seriously as I do my professional writing where a failure in communication will have significant consequences.

You posted the compound sentence remark, not me.  I was just responding to it.

I fail to see how your X = 1.00 + Y / Harvard debacle proves anything in particular.  I assume that most people are shown the error, understand it, and then shrug.  In other words: big deal. 

I've posted it before and I'll post it again with a little expansion: there was a time I could have done that math; that time is gone and I've forgotten it all; it has not hampered my life or career in the least; now I use critical thinking skills everyday as a teacher, writer, researcher, journalist, and musician; I've never met the genius who has ALL the critical thinking skills at their finger tips (maybe these people exist but I doubt it----most "brilliant" people have only a very small window of genius) so failure at one tiny bit of random math indicates nothing.  Period.

Education, particularly college, should get your brain ready to learn these sorts things when you must.

I suspect each and every Harvardian who failed the .05 cent test the first time can do their little formula backwards and sideways now.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 09:14:44 AM

[. . .]

I fail to see how your X = 1.00 + Y / Harvard debacle proves anything in particular.  I assume that most people are shown the error, understand it, and then shrug.  In other words: big deal. 

It demonstrates that, as Polly said, more formal education of the type that produces failures at basic (really, really basic) problem-solving abilities among Harvard graduates is extremely unlikely to significantly and cost effectively improve those abilities across the general population.

Quote

[. . .]

failure at one tiny bit of random math indicates nothing.  Period.

Education, particularly college, should get your brain ready to learn these sorts things when you must.

Someone who doesn't know how to analyze basic problems like the ones depicted, using techniques presented in elementary school, won't know when they must learn these sorts of things -- whether the "when" is in college or afterward. They don't know what they don't know, or when. As Daniel Willingham says (https://education.nsw.gov.au/our-priorities/innovate-for-the-future/education-for-a-changing-world/media/documents/exar/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf) about "critical thinking" (previous term in quotes because it is a sloppy, meaningless short hand that cognitive scientists never themselves use in reference to how the mind operates): "it's not the difficulty of thinking successfully, it's deciding to think in the first place."

Quote
I suspect each and every Harvardian who failed the .05 cent test the first time can do their little formula backwards and sideways now.

I highly doubt it, given that the method is taught in elementary school algebra, and a large portion of the U.S. population tops out in numeracy, scientific comprehension, etc. at the elementary school level (or below).

Quote from: polly_mer on October 27, 2019, 07:29:18 AM
As someone who works in the Defense sector, I'm terrified by wasting resources on educational practices we know are so far from perfect that we're eating our own seed corn and patting ourselves on the back for doing so.

It doesn't matter how many people liked their college box-checking course if they can't actually apply any of the lessons they were supposed to have learned in school like writing the damn equation set for:

X + Y =1.10
X =1.00 + Y

or doing the guess and check equivalent to those equations.

Failing to apply the basic knowledge when confronted with a situation out in the wild indicates one has failed at critical thinking.  Period.  Whether one wants to attribute that failure to not checking the work or something else, the fact remains that college educated people fail all the time at the critical thinking that matters.

Poly, I vaguely recognize that equation set, but I can't remember how to do that problem. All I did was guess and check "1 dollar and 10 cents, oh no wait that would be .90, oh wait so 5 cents and 1.05, oh yeah ok. I bet I learned all the math I needed to do that before 5th grade, as did all those Harvard kids who got the question wrong. The things that kept me from getting it wrong were
1. My general suspicion about why someone would be asking some question that seems obvious, and my assumption that probably the point is to point out some kind of stupid error people make.
2. A general sense of my own fallibility around things like this.
These things might have something to do with my education in the sense that I've learned to think about context, and have learned that sometimes my initial ideas are wrong, but it also seems like a silly gotcha question. It is basically the mathematical equivalent of an optical illusion.c

Quote from: spork on October 27, 2019, 10:58:20 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 09:14:44 AM

[. . .]

I fail to see how your X = 1.00 + Y / Harvard debacle proves anything in particular.  I assume that most people are shown the error, understand it, and then shrug.  In other words: big deal. 

It demonstrates that, as Polly said, more formal education of the type that produces failures at basic (really, really basic) problem-solving abilities among Harvard graduates is extremely unlikely to significantly and cost effectively improve those abilities across the general population.

Quote

[. . .]

failure at one tiny bit of random math indicates nothing.  Period.

Education, particularly college, should get your brain ready to learn these sorts things when you must.

Someone who doesn't know how to analyze basic problems like the ones depicted, using techniques presented in elementary school, won't know when they must learn these sorts of things -- whether the "when" is in college or afterward. They don't know what they don't know, or when. As Daniel Willingham says (https://education.nsw.gov.au/our-priorities/innovate-for-the-future/education-for-a-changing-world/media/documents/exar/How-to-teach-critical-thinking-Willingham.pdf) about "critical thinking" (previous term in quotes because it is a sloppy, meaningless short hand that cognitive scientists never themselves use in reference to how the mind operates): "it's not the difficulty of thinking successfully, it's deciding to think in the first place."

Quote
I suspect each and every Harvardian who failed the .05 cent test the first time can do their little formula backwards and sideways now.

I highly doubt it, given that the method is taught in elementary school algebra, and a large portion of the U.S. population tops out in numeracy, scientific comprehension, etc. at the elementary school level (or below).

So...the problem is really not a math equation.  The problem is much bigger.  If we boil down this concern that you and Polly share it would sound something like this: since our educational system is failing at basic skill-sets, we should see a great deal of business, medical, artistic, and personal failure in America, correct?  Not only that, but we are screwed for the future?

Perhaps I am overstating, but that's the whole problem in a nutshell.

But...seems to me a great many of these educated people are doing a great many things...but wait, they would do just as well without an education, right?

Any idea how many CEOs have college degrees?

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PM
So...the problem is really not a math equation.  The problem is much bigger.  If we boil down this concern that you and Polly share it would sound something like this: since our educational system is failing at basic skill-sets, we should see a great deal of business, medical, artistic, and personal failure in America, correct?  Not only that, but we are screwed for the future?

Perhaps I am overstating, but that's the whole problem in a nutshell.

But...seems to me a great many of these educated people are doing a great many things...but wait, they would do just as well without an education, right?

Any idea how many CEOs have college degrees?

No.  But I'd wager the number of non-degree holding CEOs is pretty small. 

You may have grasped the crux of the logical conundrum, though.  Gainfully employed PhD holding people arguing the wastefulness of higher education reeks of hypocrisy. The unstated message is not that education is wasteful but that education not done to my higher standards is useless.

I happen to agree with the need for improving both educational inputs and outputs.  We can always do better. Neither denying people an education nor condemning the system trying to educate those people is the answer.  We need to work on our content and delivery systems.  So what?  But let's not reduce this argument to its most ridiculous point.  None of us would be where we are with out our imperfect educations.  That's the point of attaining an education is to being able to recognize when we need to reeducate ourselves. 

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PM
So...the problem is really not a math equation.  The problem is much bigger.  If we boil down this concern that you and Polly share it would sound something like this: since our educational system is failing at basic skill-sets, we should see a great deal of business, medical, artistic, and personal failure in America, correct?  Not only that, but we are screwed for the future?

Perhaps I am overstating, but that's the whole problem in a nutshell.

Not quite, but a good start.  The next piece is wasting time/energy/resources trying to get everyone to have the very good, broad education while neglecting the depth that we need in certain areas that never before existed in human history.  We can't fast-forward certain types of education due to how much background people need to know and we need more people who have those specific experiences in a specific order.  Waiting to start that depth until one's mid twenties when we have evidence from around the world that people of average intelligence can start on that path in their mid-teens means we're behind the curve.

We can't have everyone be a doctor/engineer/computer expert, but we need more than we have, so we can't let people who could do the work drop off the path as early as we're currently doing.  That algebra is year 1 on a 10-15 year journey.  The point isn't that everyone needs algebra so much as if almost no one even gets that first step, we're screwed.

We're also screwed if people get off the path because their time, energy, and good will is being squandered with more breadth when they are ready for more depth.  The calls in many areas to just skip college because it's not worth it will not be successfully countered by the breadth argument.  We could, however, make inroads by letting more people specialize as early as other countries do.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PMBut...seems to me a great many of these educated people are doing a great many things...but wait, they would do just as well without an education, right?

No.  That's not the conclusion.  The conclusion is we need to stop conflating style (someone is in a classroom for N years so they are educated) with substance (people who are of average intelligence who get an education suited to their interests can do good things; people who are of above average intelligence backed by good social capital who are supported in their early years can do great things).

One can sharpen one's critical thinking skills through a good education, but it's entirely possible to spend a lot of time in a classroom, pass every test, and still be unable to apply any of that material outside of the classroom.  After all, Trump and W Bush both have college degrees from elite institutions as well as high school diplomas from elite institutions.  A college degree is not the same as an education.

The syllogism that is false and drives me nuts is:

* Bright enough people with social capital get good-to-great jobs
* Some bright enough people with social capital get college degrees.
* Therefore, college degrees make people bright and employable.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PM
Any idea how many CEOs have college degrees?

Some of the most famous CEOs who started their own businesses are famous for having dropped out of elite institutions like Bill Gates (access to computers as a teenager at a time when computers were research machines) and Mark Zuckerberg (good enough network he could just get the capital necessary to start his business). 

Again, the people who have good social capital and excellent K-12 educations tend to do well in their lives in ways that aren't correlated with college degrees, although many people will have college degrees.  These are the people who will be OK even without a college degree, but do great things when they opt for a college study suited to their interests and talents.

People who are bright enough and driven enough tend to do acceptably well within their communities.  Those folks tend to not end up in overall high-powered jobs, but they are our community leaders regardless of their formal education.

It's a good damn thing for society that we have enough people who can do well without college degrees since only 30% of the US adult population has them and many of the degrees that people have aren't worth the paper on which they are written.  That's not a knock against studying any field.  That's acknowledging the reality that an ever-increasing percentage of our college-going population start college performing lower than ninth graders in excellent K-12 school systems and thus, four years later, have only made it up to slightly lower than where the students from excellent K-12 school systems started college. 

An excellent education is like having a great toolbox.  You can get by with a pair of pliers that is also your hammer and your screwdriver, but it's easier to actually have the right tools for the job.   There's evidence that people who take their own education seriously develop a pretty good toolbox, even if they sometimes are using their pliers as a socket wrench because they didn't get to the point of learning about socket wrenches.  There's also evidence that merely showing people a hammer repeatedly over the years doesn't mean they won't take their pliers and wallop the hell out of the nail while wailing at great length how hard driving a freakin' nail is.

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 01:57:22 PM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 24, 2019, 01:25:47 PM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 06:25:43 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 24, 2019, 06:16:03 AM

Quote from: downer on October 24, 2019, 05:23:18 AM
Are there stats on what proportion of schools require gen ed in the US and what the trends are?

I don't think such stats would be helpful. "Gen ed" can mean speech and composition classes, which provide skills needed for any job, or art history, which provides no job skills. These discussions, as I've seen them, are primarily focused on elimination of humanities requirements, which in many universities would allow students to finish a semester earlier.

Doesn't it depend on how the stats are presented, and whether they are transparent or obfuscating?

You'd need to report by type of class and how many classes for it to be meaningful. Even then you'd have a composition class under "humanities" if it's taught by an English department, so I don't know that there are any stats you'd ever hope to find that can identify the "no job skills" classes, which is the argument against "general education" requirements.

I am not sure that any one has attempted to get stats on this stuff anyway, so it's probably a moot point.

I'm skeptical about dividng up the "job skills" classes from the "no job skills" classes even in principle. After all, we often have organizational skills, time keeping skills, critical thinking skills, presentation skills, and more generalizable skills in all classes. (There's also the important skill of being able to look like you know about a topic when you have spent very little time on it.) On the other hand, a class that might looks like a "job skills" class like "Critical Thinking" may turn out to have rather little generalizability to the work world.

I agree with you. I'm strongly against dropping gen ed humanities requirements just because they don't offer any direct job skills. On the other hand, I'm disappointed that you won't get very far if you argue that all gen ed courses should incorporate training of some skills that help the students. My proposal wasn't exactly the skills you've listed, but I've argued that some such training should be a part of all of those classes. For example, incorporating advanced spreadsheet usage into a history class if that's something the professor can do. I understand that faculty in those departments want to teach "pure" classes. I also understand that they want to continue to be paid.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 05:48:41 AM
I'm strongly against dropping gen ed humanities requirements just because they don't offer any direct job skills. On the other hand, I'm disappointed that you won't get very far if you argue that all gen ed courses should incorporate training of some skills that help the students. My proposal wasn't exactly the skills you've listed, but I've argued that some such training should be a part of all of those classes. For example, incorporating advanced spreadsheet usage into a history class if that's something the professor can do. I understand that faculty in those departments want to teach "pure" classes. I also understand that they want to continue to be paid.

A couple of decades ago I started having fewer experiments in labs and having more lab exercises to teach specific skills. I have two lab exercises on using spreadsheets; one for doing basic calculations and some statistical analysis, and one on graphing. Surprise, surprise; students from other disciplines have told me afterwards how they now do all their labs in their own disciplines using spreadsheets, and wouldn't dream of doing it otherwise. I also started having exercises in how to do library research (run by our library), and on writing (run by our Writing Centre). So they do less "subject" content but learn more skills that will benefit no matter what they do.

I honestly think that if some of these courses that claim to teach "soft skills" would actually incorporate some explicit instruction  in tools, techniques, etc. rather than simply expecting students to learn it by osmosis then students would have more satisfaction that they had, in fact, learned something which may be useful in the future.

For years it has been recommended by various experts that gen ed should be more explicit about skills teaching. I first saw it in the First Year Experience recommendations, and then it spread.

I've done it, and it can help for students who did not learn much in high school or middle school.

But basically it is remedial work. There are very few gen ed skills that are distinctive to higher ed that students should not have learned a long time earlier.

These days I'm not inclined to teach remedial skills. Someone else can teach that stuff.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 28, 2019, 06:37:28 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 05:48:41 AM
I'm strongly against dropping gen ed humanities requirements just because they don't offer any direct job skills. On the other hand, I'm disappointed that you won't get very far if you argue that all gen ed courses should incorporate training of some skills that help the students. My proposal wasn't exactly the skills you've listed, but I've argued that some such training should be a part of all of those classes. For example, incorporating advanced spreadsheet usage into a history class if that's something the professor can do. I understand that faculty in those departments want to teach "pure" classes. I also understand that they want to continue to be paid.

A couple of decades ago I started having fewer experiments in labs and having more lab exercises to teach specific skills. I have two lab exercises on using spreadsheets; one for doing basic calculations and some statistical analysis, and one on graphing. Surprise, surprise; students from other disciplines have told me afterwards how they now do all their labs in their own disciplines using spreadsheets, and wouldn't dream of doing it otherwise. I also started having exercises in how to do library research (run by our library), and on writing (run by our Writing Centre). So they do less "subject" content but learn more skills that will benefit no matter what they do.

I honestly think that if some of these courses that claim to teach "soft skills" would actually incorporate some explicit instruction  in tools, techniques, etc. rather than simply expecting students to learn it by osmosis then students would have more satisfaction that they had, in fact, learned something which may be useful in the future.

What you are talking about here is teaching skills in a contextualized way.

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality. Now how do you teach those "skills" without an interesting context - in this case, history. Or literature, or gender studies, or any other "humanities gen ed" topic? I suppose you could just put it all on an online quiz and have students search for random factoids, write a grammatically correct robo-graded essay, and so forth. Would you really be teaching those "skills?"

Quote from: polly_mer on October 28, 2019, 05:27:43 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PM

Any idea how many CEOs have college degrees?

Some of the most famous CEOs who started their own businesses are famous for having dropped out of elite institutions like Bill Gates (access to computers as a teenager at a time when computers were research machines) and Mark Zuckerberg (good enough network he could just get the capital necessary to start his business). 

Again, the people who have good social capital and excellent K-12 educations...

...which stem from having rich parents and friends of their rich parents who can mentor, guide, and fund them along the way.

And at the right time hire people with Master's degrees like Steve Ballmer and Sheryl Sandberg to really run the operation and build it for long-term success.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:17:00 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 28, 2019, 05:27:43 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PM

Any idea how many CEOs have college degrees?

Some of the most famous CEOs who started their own businesses are famous for having dropped out of elite institutions like Bill Gates (access to computers as a teenager at a time when computers were research machines) and Mark Zuckerberg (good enough network he could just get the capital necessary to start his business). 

Again, the people who have good social capital and excellent K-12 educations...

...which stem from having rich parents and friends of their rich parents who can mentor, guide, and fund them along the way.

Formal education of any sort is never "necessary" to learn things and it never has been. Frederick Douglass never had any formalized schooling at all. He just managed to teach himself to read and educated himself from there. Lincoln had enough schooling to be literate and the rest he picked up in law libraries and through a pretty robust print culture. I'm sure there are plenty of brilliant kids out there teaching themselves calculus on the internet because they think its interesting. Formal education is just about providing a social context to learn stuff and apply that knowledge.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:14:17 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 28, 2019, 06:37:28 AM
A couple of decades ago I started having fewer experiments in labs and having more lab exercises to teach specific skills. I have two lab exercises on using spreadsheets; one for doing basic calculations and some statistical analysis, and one on graphing. Surprise, surprise; students from other disciplines have told me afterwards how they now do all their labs in their own disciplines using spreadsheets, and wouldn't dream of doing it otherwise. I also started having exercises in how to do library research (run by our library), and on writing (run by our Writing Centre). So they do less "subject" content but learn more skills that will benefit no matter what they do.

I honestly think that if some of these courses that claim to teach "soft skills" would actually incorporate some explicit instruction  in tools, techniques, etc. rather than simply expecting students to learn it by osmosis then students would have more satisfaction that they had, in fact, learned something which may be useful in the future.

What you are talking about here is teaching skills in a contextualized way.

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality. Now how do you teach those "skills" without an interesting context - in this case, history. Or literature, or gender studies, or any other "humanities gen ed" topic?

The problem is that the context often overwhelms the skill. For instance "considering alternative points of view" is going to be judged according to the ideological bent of the subject, which students will know and automatically adopt. Do you honestly think that gender studies and physical education/kinesiology, etc. will have the exact same standards and expectations evaluating "considering alternative points of view" in a discussion of men's and women's sports?

There's a reason debating clubs often debate kind of nonsensical topics; it's so that students develop the skills rather than just arguing their own viewpoints. The valuable skill is not having students being able to argue their own positions; it's having them able to recognize the implicit and explicit assumptions in their own cases that, if shown to be incorrect, mean that they are wrong and need to change their own viewpoint.

Quote
I suppose you could just put it all on an online quiz and have students search for random factoids, write a grammatically correct robo-graded essay, and so forth. Would you really be teaching those "skills?"

Anyone who thinks an important "skill" can be developed and/or assessed in this way has no idea what an important skill is.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:14:17 AM

[. . .]

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality.

[. . .]

Maybe in an ideal world. But for many undergraduates, "history" means completing a gen ed requirement consisting of sitting in a lecture hall with 100-300 other students, taking a few Scantron tests, and maybe writing a term paper the night before it is due that will only ever be read by an adjunct or a GTA. Not very cost effective in terms of learning skills or content.

Quote from: Caracal on October 28, 2019, 07:40:46 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:17:00 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 28, 2019, 05:27:43 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 27, 2019, 05:45:07 PM

Any idea how many CEOs have college degrees?

Some of the most famous CEOs who started their own businesses are famous for having dropped out of elite institutions like Bill Gates (access to computers as a teenager at a time when computers were research machines) and Mark Zuckerberg (good enough network he could just get the capital necessary to start his business). 

Again, the people who have good social capital and excellent K-12 educations...

...which stem from having rich parents and friends of their rich parents who can mentor, guide, and fund them along the way.

Formal education of any sort is never "necessary" to learn things and it never has been. Frederick Douglass never had any formalized schooling at all. He just managed to teach himself to read and educated himself from there. Lincoln had enough schooling to be literate and the rest he picked up in law libraries and through a pretty robust print culture. I'm sure there are plenty of brilliant kids out there teaching themselves calculus on the internet because they think its interesting. Formal education is just about providing a social context to learn stuff and apply that knowledge.

Sometimes we get off on dumb divergences.  This one is my fault.

Of course one does not NEED formal education to do anything if one is brilliant and motivated enough. 

And Zuckerberg and Gates are virtually always the example of this (even though the both dropped out of the premiere institution of higher learning in the world where their initial ideas were fostered by training and exposure----don't forget that).

But again, if we go with the sheer facts, the number of formally educated people who have gone on to the top spots in virtually any industry or discipline presents a pretty good argument that, while not perfect, education is at least doing something right.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, thank you for pointing out the obvious socioeconomic dynamics----we all know them----and now I am pointing out another dynamic, the educational one.

Dismiss if you will.

Quote
Quote from: ciao_yall on Today at 07:14:17 AM

[. . .]

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality.

[. . .]


Maybe in an ideal world. But for many undergraduates, "history" means completing a gen ed requirement consisting of sitting in a lecture hall with 100-300 other students, taking a few Scantron tests, and maybe writing a term paper the night before it is due that will only ever be read by an adjunct or a GTA. Not very cost effective in terms of learning skills or content.

We can only do so much with what is given to us.

According to Polly, it is too much. 

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 28, 2019, 08:40:16 AM
\

But again, if we go with the sheer facts, the number of formally educated people who have gone on to the top spots in virtually any industry or discipline presents a pretty good argument that, while not perfect, education is at least doing something right.  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, thank you for pointing out the obvious socioeconomic dynamics----we all know them----and now I am pointing out another dynamic, the educational one.

Dismiss if you will.

Oh, I agree with you, I just am struck by the way polly, Spork and Marshwiggle all have these oddly idealized views of education. We keep hearing about the things students aren't learning in college as if the point is to beam information into their brains. It is possible to be very well educated and never go to college, it is possible to go to college and not learn much. None of which means there aren't ways to do things. better, I'm just not sure why the takeaway from all of this is that nobody needs to know anything about history.

Quote from: Caracal on October 28, 2019, 09:31:08 AM

Oh, I agree with you, I just am struck by the way polly, Spork and Marshwiggle all have these oddly idealized views of education. We keep hearing about the things students aren't learning in college as if the point is to beam information into their brains. It is possible to be very well educated and never go to college, it is possible to go to college and not learn much. None of which means there aren't ways to do things. better, I'm just not sure why the takeaway from all of this is that nobody needs to know anything about history.

This is a straw man argument. No-one has said that no-one needs to know anything about any specific subject. Rather the reverse; if you're going to make the case that "because there is value in [X], education should include [X]". Spork used the example of dental hygienist to indicate that there an endless number of things one could study, all resulting in some potential benefit. How do you decide what NOT to include if that is the criterion? As long as there is a finite limit to the number of courses a person has to take, then there has to be a decision as to what belongs and what doesn't. I don't argue for my own discipline being included, because I don't feel it's useful to those only doing it because they are forced to, but some here seem to feel that no matter how apathetic or even hostile some students are, "their" discipline is worth forcing people through.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:14:17 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 28, 2019, 06:37:28 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 05:48:41 AM
I'm strongly against dropping gen ed humanities requirements just because they don't offer any direct job skills. On the other hand, I'm disappointed that you won't get very far if you argue that all gen ed courses should incorporate training of some skills that help the students. My proposal wasn't exactly the skills you've listed, but I've argued that some such training should be a part of all of those classes. For example, incorporating advanced spreadsheet usage into a history class if that's something the professor can do. I understand that faculty in those departments want to teach "pure" classes. I also understand that they want to continue to be paid.

A couple of decades ago I started having fewer experiments in labs and having more lab exercises to teach specific skills. I have two lab exercises on using spreadsheets; one for doing basic calculations and some statistical analysis, and one on graphing. Surprise, surprise; students from other disciplines have told me afterwards how they now do all their labs in their own disciplines using spreadsheets, and wouldn't dream of doing it otherwise. I also started having exercises in how to do library research (run by our library), and on writing (run by our Writing Centre). So they do less "subject" content but learn more skills that will benefit no matter what they do.

I honestly think that if some of these courses that claim to teach "soft skills" would actually incorporate some explicit instruction  in tools, techniques, etc. rather than simply expecting students to learn it by osmosis then students would have more satisfaction that they had, in fact, learned something which may be useful in the future.

What you are talking about here is teaching skills in a contextualized way.

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality. Now how do you teach those "skills" without an interesting context - in this case, history. Or literature, or gender studies, or any other "humanities gen ed" topic? I suppose you could just put it all on an online quiz and have students search for random factoids, write a grammatically correct robo-graded essay, and so forth. Would you really be teaching those "skills?"

The important thing is that faculty would be explicitly teaching those skills. If I hire a plumber, I don't want to receive a bill for $2400 for "services rendered". I want to know what they did and why. I see no reason why it should be any different for college students. Make a dedicated effort to teach certain skills in the context of a history class and tell the students that's what you're doing. Even if they think it's dumb that they have to learn history, they'll agree that they gained something by taking the history class. It might feel good to tell your friends that you teach a class that exists solely for the purpose of learning, but that makes it easy to drop your class, and there's no reason it has to be that way.

In response to one of the comments above, this has been proposed many times. I was by no means the first. The surprising thing is the resistance from faculty in departments that might cease to exist in the near future. Why aren't they pushing for this change?

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 10:22:52 AM
In response to one of the comments above, this has been proposed many times. I was by no means the first. The surprising thing is the resistance from faculty in departments that might cease to exist in the near future. Why aren't they pushing for this change?

I think part of the problem is that faculty had to pick up those skills themselves "by osmosis", so they have a hard time trying to articulate the process. I have found it challenging also, but it's well worth it when I can see my students actually learn and know that they have learned.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 10:22:52 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:14:17 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 28, 2019, 06:37:28 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 05:48:41 AM
I'm strongly against dropping gen ed humanities requirements just because they don't offer any direct job skills. On the other hand, I'm disappointed that you won't get very far if you argue that all gen ed courses should incorporate training of some skills that help the students. My proposal wasn't exactly the skills you've listed, but I've argued that some such training should be a part of all of those classes. For example, incorporating advanced spreadsheet usage into a history class if that's something the professor can do. I understand that faculty in those departments want to teach "pure" classes. I also understand that they want to continue to be paid.

A couple of decades ago I started having fewer experiments in labs and having more lab exercises to teach specific skills. I have two lab exercises on using spreadsheets; one for doing basic calculations and some statistical analysis, and one on graphing. Surprise, surprise; students from other disciplines have told me afterwards how they now do all their labs in their own disciplines using spreadsheets, and wouldn't dream of doing it otherwise. I also started having exercises in how to do library research (run by our library), and on writing (run by our Writing Centre). So they do less "subject" content but learn more skills that will benefit no matter what they do.

I honestly think that if some of these courses that claim to teach "soft skills" would actually incorporate some explicit instruction  in tools, techniques, etc. rather than simply expecting students to learn it by osmosis then students would have more satisfaction that they had, in fact, learned something which may be useful in the future.

What you are talking about here is teaching skills in a contextualized way.

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality. Now how do you teach those "skills" without an interesting context - in this case, history. Or literature, or gender studies, or any other "humanities gen ed" topic? I suppose you could just put it all on an online quiz and have students search for random factoids, write a grammatically correct robo-graded essay, and so forth. Would you really be teaching those "skills?"

The important thing is that faculty would be explicitly teaching those skills. If I hire a plumber, I don't want to receive a bill for $2400 for "services rendered". I want to know what they did and why. I see no reason why it should be any different for college students. Make a dedicated effort to teach certain skills in the context of a history class and tell the students that's what you're doing. Even if they think it's dumb that they have to learn history, they'll agree that they gained something by taking the history class. It might feel good to tell your friends that you teach a class that exists solely for the purpose of learning, but that makes it easy to drop your class, and there's no reason it has to be that way.

In response to one of the comments above, this has been proposed many times. I was by no means the first. The surprising thing is the resistance from faculty in departments that might cease to exist in the near future. Why aren't they pushing for this change?

Well, they do explicitly teach them, obviously, which is how the students get through the class.

The resistance tends to come because different fields have different methods for doing research, writing styles, evaluation and weight of fact versus opinion versus perception.

So when someone starts wanting to micromanage how historians or psychologists or whomever do their work, the hackles come up fast.

Case in point - I taught business (so I have some neoliberal cred on this.) In business, our grammar and spelling are to be impeccable. Writing is clear and declarative and factual. Does this disadvantage certain communities and English language learners? Yep. Guess what, that is life. Writing is a key part of business and if you don't write properly you won't get anywhere. Them's the rules and culture, and I can't change them.

So I used to get a lot of crap from other departments because I insisted on grading student writing and even taking off points for style and grammar issues. "But it's their thoughts that are important," some would wail. True, still, if they can't present their thoughts in a way that is accepted within 99% of the business community, those important thoughts will simply not be herd heard.

Quote from: spork on October 28, 2019, 08:36:04 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:14:17 AM

[. . .]

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality.

[. . .]

Maybe in an ideal world. But for many undergraduates, "history" means completing a gen ed requirement consisting of sitting in a lecture hall with 100-300 other students, taking a few Scantron tests, and maybe writing a term paper the night before it is due that will only ever be read by an adjunct or a GTA. Not very cost effective in terms of learning skills or content.

And that is why we need to prioritize gen eds and fund them sufficiently to create real learning.

I think Scantron is evil.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 11:35:19 AM

Quote from: spork on October 28, 2019, 08:36:04 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 07:14:17 AM

[. . .]

For example, in history, they are learning research, writing, considering alternative points of view, and evaluating potential outcomes against reality.

[. . .]

Maybe in an ideal world. But for many undergraduates, "history" means completing a gen ed requirement consisting of sitting in a lecture hall with 100-300 other students, taking a few Scantron tests, and maybe writing a term paper the night before it is due that will only ever be read by an adjunct or a GTA. Not very cost effective in terms of learning skills or content.

And that is why we need to prioritize gen eds and fund them sufficiently to create real learning.

I think Scantron is evil.

Well that's never going to happen. So what's the best option, given the available options?

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 11:16:55 AM

Well, they do explicitly teach them, obviously, which is how the students get through the class.

The resistance tends to come because different fields have different methods for doing research, writing styles, evaluation and weight of fact versus opinion versus perception.

That's the most terrifying statement I've heard on here.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 28, 2019, 05:27:43 AM

The point isn't that everyone needs algebra so much as if almost no one even gets that first step, we're screwed.

* Bright enough people with social capital get good-to-great jobs
* Some bright enough people with social capital get college degrees.
* Therefore, college degrees make people bright and employable.

People who are bright enough and driven enough tend to do acceptably well within their communities.  Those folks tend to not end up in overall high-powered jobs, but they are our community leaders regardless of their formal education.

I absolutely knew someone would say this.  It's cliche. It's a no duh declaration. That's why I said:

Quote
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, thank you for pointing out the obvious socioeconomic dynamics----we all know them----and now I am pointing out another dynamic, the educational one.

The simple fact remains, our high-end success stories (CEOs, film directors, inventors, investors, designers, writers, researchers, artists) are overwhelmingly college educated.  We don't necessarily like our politicians, but overwhelmingly these folks are college educated.  And our most difficult professions that directly affect people's lives (doctoring, lawyering, engineering, military officers, most sheriffs and police commissioners) all require college degrees.  And yes, even the lowly professoriate requires those undergrad degrees with their darn gen eds for virtually any position (unless one is a highly successful artist in some genre or medium).

On a related note: How many jobs require a college degree as a gateway requirement?  Go ahead, explain that one away.  Someone thinks that these degrees where no one really learns very much are important.

No one is saying we are educating people perfectly.  No one is saying it can't be done better.  But before we get too far out there, we better remember that something has gone right within the halls of academia. 

To deny that is simply to deny facts.

If Polly, you and Spork think you can re-rig American secondary education as it actually exists, go ahead.  Figure out how to realistically rewire what we do given the tax structure and mission of mandatory education. 

Quote from: Caracal on October 28, 2019, 09:31:08 AM

[. . .]

the takeaway from all of this is that nobody needs to know anything about history.

That isn't the takeaway. Never stated or implied that it was.

Example: annual tuition, after discount, at a four-year, private non-profit university is $25,000. An undergraduate needs 120 credits to graduate, the university has a fall-spring semester calendar and forces eight semesters of enrollment. The student takes 10 courses per year, at $2,500 per course. So at a cost of $2,500, the student has to take a course in Gen Ed 101. The student has no interest in the course topic, the course is nothing but Scantron tests and a term paper, and the course results in little to no learning on the student's part. That's $2,500 down the drain for every course that offers what can be obtained for almost nothing from books at the public library or that repeats material that should have been learned in elementary school.

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 11:16:55 AM
Well, they do explicitly teach them, obviously, which is how the students get through the class.

The resistance tends to come because different fields have different methods for doing research, writing styles, evaluation and weight of fact versus opinion versus perception.

So when someone starts wanting to micromanage how historians or psychologists or whomever do their work, the hackles come up fast.

You're missing the point of the proposals. History profs are teaching history, not spreadsheets or writing or public speaking or other practical skills. The students get through the class by taking tests over history.

This isn't micromanaging and it doesn't have anything to do with telling historians how to do their work.. These proposals would require any gen ed course instructor to explain what practical skills they are teaching. It could be writing, public speaking, computer programming, interpersonal skills, personal finance, sales, or many others. If the university is going to require students to take a particular class, that class has to do more than cover knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Other courses, like a seminar in European history, would have no such requirement.

Quote from: spork on October 28, 2019, 02:39:44 PM
So at a cost of $2,500, the student has to take a course in Gen Ed 101. The student has no interest in the course topic, the course is nothing but Scantron tests and a term paper, and the course results in little to no learning on the student's part. That's $2,500 down the drain for every course that offers what can be obtained for almost nothing from books at the public library or that repeats material that should have been learned in elementary school.

This is why you sound so embittered to me. 

Firstly, you cannot make this kind of blanket statement.  You just can't.  Particularly when considering the size of our undergraduate population.

Secondly, this is not necessarily what happens.  I am a prime example.

Thirdly, this attitude is not about gen eds alone.  A couple of years ago I gave a brief assignment to my students asking them to explain why they were in college.  I was stunned by the negativity.  I am likewise stunned by the negativity I overhear when students are discussing their professors or classes (fortunately I've never overheard anyone say anything too terrible about me). 

Very few people really, truly enjoy school.  When I thought about it, I didn't either, at least not until the graduate level.  This part of the reason we have giant football schools and Greek systems; if we didn't provide a substantial amount of entertainment value to schooling, our colleges and unis would be, I dunno, a third their sizes?  Half their sizes?  Who can say.

Yet for some reason we still think education is pretty important.  And as I've posted elsewhere, educated people predominate the ranks of individuals who are the most successful in our culture. 

So your hypothetical academic victim, even if hu is pretty unhappy with the experience, probably gets a lot out of it whether or not they or you want to admit it.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 08:14:36 PM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 11:16:55 AM
Well, they do explicitly teach them, obviously, which is how the students get through the class.

The resistance tends to come because different fields have different methods for doing research, writing styles, evaluation and weight of fact versus opinion versus perception.

So when someone starts wanting to micromanage how historians or psychologists or whomever do their work, the hackles come up fast.

You're missing the point of the proposals. History profs are teaching history, not spreadsheets or writing or public speaking or other practical skills. The students get through the class by taking tests over history.

This isn't micromanaging and it doesn't have anything to do with telling historians how to do their work.. These proposals would require any gen ed course instructor to explain what practical skills they are teaching. It could be writing, public speaking, computer programming, interpersonal skills, personal finance, sales, or many others. If the university is going to require students to take a particular class, that class has to do more than cover knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Other courses, like a seminar in European history, would have no such requirement.

And I think, if universities actually did this, they they could make that a selling point for those courses.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 28, 2019, 08:26:06 PM

Very few people really, truly enjoy school.  When I thought about it, I didn't either, at least not until the graduate level.  This part of the reason we have giant football schools and Greek systems; if we didn't provide a substantial amount of entertainment value to schooling, our colleges and unis would be, I dunno, a third their sizes?  Half their sizes?  Who can say.

Yet for some reason we still think education is pretty important.  And as I've posted elsewhere, educated people predominate the ranks of individuals who are the most successful in our culture. 

So your hypothetical academic victim, even if hu is pretty unhappy with the experience, probably gets a lot out of it whether or not they or you want to admit it.

Sorry for the double post, but perhaps you could enlighten a colleague on another thread (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=705.msg12629#msg12629):

Quote
Regardless, we're now stuck in a pattern where only a handful of stellar students talk, the bottom 30% will barely complete in-class exercises, and nobody seems particularly prepared or interested (although at least nobody's hostile). 

Sounds like there may be quite a few who are "getting a lot out of it whether or not they want to admit it."

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 28, 2019, 12:41:06 PM
On a related note: How many jobs require a college degree as a gateway requirement?  Go ahead, explain that one away.  Someone thinks that these degrees where no one really learns very much are important.

Calling something a cliche doesn't make it untrue.  For jobs that don't require specific skills, requiring a college degree is simply the easiest filter to apply to ensure that the new hire is very likely to be bright enough to learn something new, socially polished enough to not be an embarrassment, and pliant enough to have knuckled under to the formal educational system and therefore very likely to knuckle under to the corporate system.   

Companies that really need the social polish tend to recruit from specific institutions and only the recent graduates.  Those companies are sorting based on who has obviously bought into the whole American system, especially if the new hires have done the socially responsible and accepted ways of gentle protest related to social justice that isn't all that hard for an individual and doesn't make that much difference to the workings of the system.  The filter is absolutely for social class and related mindsets and actions.

The corollary is that good enough students who attend good enough schools end up back in their old neighborhoods with whatever jobs their social network can find that didn't need a college education.  Networking, including attending the right schools all the way up, but definitely for college and post-college is the way people get the unadvertised jobs that constitute 70-85% of the jobs. (https://www.businessinsider.com/at-least-70-of-jobs-are-not-even-listed-heres-how-to-up-your-chances-of-getting-a-great-new-gig-2017-4)

For jobs that require specific skills that are only learned in college, college pedigree matters much less and companies advertise the jobs they have to the general public because they need those specific skills.  That's not filtering on the college degree; that's acknowledging how useful formal education can be in specific areas where formal education is the most effective way to get knowledgeable people.

Be dismissive all you like of pointing out the obvious, but ignoring the effects of socioeconomic status means failing at critical thinking regarding what's currently happening, what's likely to continue to happen, and what can be done to address known problems.

Some sectors of higher education are indeed doing something well.  However, large fractions of college-going people being underprepared for college, college graduation rates of 50-70%, and college graduation rates that vary strongly by socioeconomic status indicate something is also very wrong with higher education (https://thefederalist.com/2019/08/15/study-students-graduating-college-gotten-easier/). 

Fixing the K-12 system is hard, but a better use of the resources if the social goal is more people who are better broadly educated instead of college-level teaching jobs for faculty members.  Otherwise, we're going to continue to read about college students who can't recite the alphabet and yet are somehow supposed to be getting something out of their trip to the library. (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=637.msg12239#msg12239)

Correlation (having a college degree) is not causation (being bright enough, supported enough, and taking full advantage of all the educational opportunities along the way).  It's cliche because it's true.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 29, 2019, 05:50:35 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 28, 2019, 12:41:06 PM
On a related note: How many jobs require a college degree as a gateway requirement?  Go ahead, explain that one away.  Someone thinks that these degrees where no one really learns very much are important.

Calling something a cliche doesn't make it untrue.  For jobs that don't require specific skills, requiring a college degree is simply the easiest filter to apply to ensure that the new hire is very likely to be bright enough to learn something new, socially polished enough to not be an embarrassment, and pliant enough to have knuckled under to the formal educational system and therefore very likely to knuckle under to the corporate system.   

This sounds like a pretty good justification for college to me.  Including gen eds.  I'm sold.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 29, 2019, 05:50:35 AM
Be dismissive all you like of pointing out the obvious, but ignoring the effects of socioeconomic status means failing at critical thinking regarding what's currently happening, what's likely to continue to happen, and what can be done to address known problems.

See, this is the trouble with debates in general.  I never dismissed that ingredient in the recipe.  I actually acknowledged it by saying yes, yes, yes we all know this.  Yes, yes, yes.  We know.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 29, 2019, 05:50:35 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 28, 2019, 12:41:06 PM
On a related note: How many jobs require a college degree as a gateway requirement?  Go ahead, explain that one away.  Someone thinks that these degrees where no one really learns very much are important.

Calling something a cliche doesn't make it untrue.  For jobs that don't require specific skills, requiring a college degree is simply the easiest filter to apply to ensure that the new hire is very likely to be bright enough to learn something new, socially polished enough to not be an embarrassment, and pliant enough to have knuckled under to the formal educational system and therefore very likely to knuckle under to the corporate system.   

....

Correlation (having a college degree) is not causation (being bright enough, supported enough, and taking full advantage of all the educational opportunities along the way).  It's cliche because it's true.

Blah blah blah, polly_mer. Where would you be today without your college degree? Still in your hometown scraping to make ends meet?

You had opportunities. Stop using your prolific typing skills to explain why other people shouldn't have the same.

Quote from: marshwiggle on October 29, 2019, 04:45:59 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on October 28, 2019, 08:14:36 PM

Quote from: ciao_yall on October 28, 2019, 11:16:55 AM
Well, they do explicitly teach them, obviously, which is how the students get through the class.

The resistance tends to come because different fields have different methods for doing research, writing styles, evaluation and weight of fact versus opinion versus perception.

So when someone starts wanting to micromanage how historians or psychologists or whomever do their work, the hackles come up fast.

You're missing the point of the proposals. History profs are teaching history, not spreadsheets or writing or public speaking or other practical skills. The students get through the class by taking tests over history.

This isn't micromanaging and it doesn't have anything to do with telling historians how to do their work.. These proposals would require any gen ed course instructor to explain what practical skills they are teaching. It could be writing, public speaking, computer programming, interpersonal skills, personal finance, sales, or many others. If the university is going to require students to take a particular class, that class has to do more than cover knowledge for the sake of knowledge. Other courses, like a seminar in European history, would have no such requirement.

And I think, if universities actually did this, they they could make that a selling point for those courses.

Unfortunately for institutions like University of Saint Francis, it's too late. Students have already voted with their feet; thirty students in fifteen programs being eliminated, less than two percent of total enrollment (https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/university-of-saint-francis-to-discontinue-several-programs/). Note that the vast majority of the undergraduate programs that will disappear are those whose courses typically count toward gen ed distribution requirements. Meanwhile, eleven faculty teaching in those programs will probably be unemployed at the end of the academic year.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 29, 2019, 06:37:02 AM

This sounds like a pretty good justification for college to me.  Including gen eds.  I'm sold.

Some people drive Rolls Royces.
Some people drive Hondas.

Even though both statements are true, those values of "some" are vastly different.

Saying that there is "some" value in education doesn't remotely address whether the amount of value is in keeping with the cost, or whether the same value could be achieved at significantly lower cost.  Since the cost (in money and time) is high, it's very likely that similar outcomes could be achieved with significantly lower investment.

Quote from: polly_mer on October 29, 2019, 05:50:35 AM
Fixing the K-12 system is hard, but a better use of the resources if the social goal is more people who are better broadly educated instead of college-level teaching jobs for faculty members.  Otherwise, we're going to continue to read about college students who can't recite the alphabet and yet are somehow supposed to be getting something out of their trip to the library. (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=637.msg12239#msg12239)

Polly, you are one of the smartest people I've ever interacted with.  And, as I understand, you are a scientist, so supposedly you work with deduction and facts.

And then you suggest a 3rd-hand anecdote, taken out of context, on a public forum to prove...what exactly?!

According to the linked comment, a student goes to the library.  A librarian supposedly explains that the stacks are arraigned alpha-by-letter.  The student asks something to the effect of, "Which letters come when?" which could have been a badly phrased question with a legitimate concern such as

• Are the letters shown at the end of the stacks?
  
• How are the stacks arraigned? (the layout and order in our uni library it is indeed confusing, even for those of us who spend time there)
• Do the letters come first or the numbers?
  Ect.

We live in an electronic age.  Many students arrive at college literally never having been to a library of any sort in their lives, particularly if they are from isolated rural communities as many of my students have been. 

Students are not necessarily taught in their secondary education how to even check out books.  I've had more than one student come up to me with a book title and a call-number and say, "Now what?"  It is easy to look down at these people as ignorant philistines...but I then remember my first night as a desk clerk at a less-than-reputable motel when my coworker was furious that I did not know where the mail forms were located; apparently I was supposed to be born with this particular knowledge.  The library, with its labyrinths of bookshelves and its byzantine ordering system, is very intimidating to the uninitiated.  This is why we have helpful librarians and professors.

I've never had to explain more than once the basics of library research to a student, however, and the beautiful thing about it is that, because of a gen ed requirement, students were introduced to an entirely new way of seeking knowledge.

The only reason to link to hegemony's post is a kind of hysteria to win an argument based on ridiculous, unsourced evidence which is an anomaly of some kind.  I mean, come on Polly, do you honestly think that college students can't recite the alphabet?

Even if there is an alphabet-deficient college student out there, does that one data-point prove anything? (assuming that the anecdote is true in the first place)

Maybe you don't even consciously know it, but you have an agenda.  What exactly it is I do not know.  And I don't think I care.

That comment was pure bull**it, Polly.

I think I am done with you, my friend.  I ignore Marshwiggle for the most part because he just asks clueless, obnoxious, aggressive questions that really don't need or deserve answers.  Maybe you and he can talk to each other on these boards.  I'm out.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 29, 2019, 10:22:13 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 29, 2019, 05:50:35 AM
Fixing the K-12 system is hard, but a better use of the resources if the social goal is more people who are better broadly educated instead of college-level teaching jobs for faculty members.  Otherwise, we're going to continue to read about college students who can't recite the alphabet and yet are somehow supposed to be getting something out of their trip to the library. (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=637.msg12239#msg12239)

Polly, you are one of the smartest people I've ever interacted with.  And, as I understand, you are a scientist, so supposedly you work with deduction and facts.

And then you suggest a 3rd-hand anecdote, taken out of context, on a public forum to prove...what exactly?!

When you have a political axe to grind and get aroused by your own rhetoric, facts are just an impediment.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on October 29, 2019, 10:22:13 AM

Quote from: polly_mer on October 29, 2019, 05:50:35 AM
Fixing the K-12 system is hard, but a better use of the resources if the social goal is more people who are better broadly educated instead of college-level teaching jobs for faculty members.  Otherwise, we're going to continue to read about college students who can't recite the alphabet and yet are somehow supposed to be getting something out of their trip to the library. (https://thefora.org/index.php?topic=637.msg12239#msg12239)

Polly, you are one of the smartest people I've ever interacted with.  And, as I understand, you are a scientist, so supposedly you work with deduction and facts.

And then you suggest a 3rd-hand anecdote, taken out of context, on a public forum to prove...what exactly?!

The communication method suggested this week of telling a story to illustrate the point is ineffective here?  OK. 

How many more links to college-unreadiness numbers do you want?  Tell me the number that will be convincing to you that K-12 education is failing a large portion of the US population to the point that they cannot benefit from a college education in a mere four years because those folks are starting too low in background knowledge, related effective study skills, and motivation to try again since the last N years of schooling were ineffective.

I can also provide hundreds of thousands of words for first-person accounts teaching in institutions where the students weren't college ready and thus couldn't do things like enter basic arithmetic into a calculator or divide numbers by 10 without being shown how to use that calculator if you think that would be more convincing.

Tell me also how many more links to college graduation rates of a bare majority of people who enter college (https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/681621047/college-completion-rates-are-up-but-the-numbers-will-still-surprise-you) will be convincing.

Tell me how many more links related to the cost of college for the value provided you'd like?  I haven't done as many of those lately so here's one: https://quillette.com/2018/11/23/the-case-for-dropping-out-of-college/

Yes, my college education did fabulous things for me because I learned subjects that aren't taught in K-12 (e.g., fluid mechanics, math past differential equations including programming computers to solve the hardest equations, physics + chemistry that relied on that math, advanced engineering topics that relied on chemistry + physics + math + programming)  nor are they easy to acquire out in the world just by being a curious adult with access to libraries and the internet. 

My college education built on a very good K-12 education from a small, rural place that put money and resources into education.  I achieved the American Dream through my education and moved from the bottom quintile to the top quintile for income.  I couldn't do what I do today if I'd had the completely inadequate K-12 education common in places where I was teaching college classes to folks expected a pass for just showing up*.  My family lives in a very expensive neighborhood today so that Blocky can have a very good 3-12 education in a community that values education where nearly all the children are at or above grade level in reading and mathematics.  Thus, Blocky can choose to attend college or not, but he will be OK out in the world.

I benefit greatly from being a book worm who watches a lot of television documentaries.  However, that's my family background, even with the family members who didn't have high school diplomas until middle age, not a result of school.   I was assured that playing the game would pay off if I played it well including learning things that are valuable in large part because so few people know them and being willing to do all the hard work of learning new things where other people tend to give up early (e.g., math).

Only a third of the US adult population has bachelor degrees (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-51.html) so we're totally screwed as a society if everyone really needs that college education to be a contributing member of society and if we need everyone who can be a contributing member of society to being a contributing member of society.

I'm spending the morning on my novel, so I suggest that people read up on social mobility problems in the US (https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2018/01/11/raj-chetty-in-14-charts-big-findings-on-opportunity-and-mobility-we-should-know/) and the myths of the benefits for college education for the poor (https://everydayfeminism.com/2017/01/poverty-education-myth-doesnt-work/) if they actually want to understand the problems along with possible fixes that aren't saving their college teacher job.

* My favorite first-person story here is the student who explained how passing math in high school worked.  The student was failing algebra and had just failed the final exam.  The teacher gave him another oral exam with extensive coaching during the exam, changed the grade on the recent written exam to a D-, and said, "Welcome to a passing grade in algebra".  That student wanted me to do the same thing for the midterm in my math class.  I declined and pointed out that HS teacher hadn't done the student any favors by passing him in the one math class required for HS graduation without learning the material.

The student angrily explained that he was going to be an elementary-school teacher and didn't need either algebra or the current math class I was teaching.  Instead, that student was going to apply to the regional comprehensive and skip the rest of his CC education.  I smiled big at him and said, "I teach the science for teachers class at Regional Comprehensive that is required for all education majors.  It has a lot of the algebra you didn't learn in high school and can't currently do in statistics.  People routinely fail that class for not being able to do this level of algebra."

The student stated, "Then you and me are going to have problems!" and left the office.  That student never showed up in my science for teachers class, but he did take that F in statistics by not showing up to any more classes and being past the drop date.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 03, 2019, 06:19:34 AM

How many more links to college-unreadiness numbers do you want? 

As many as you like.  I am not opposed to improving secondary and higher ed at all.  Just please make sure they are sane and reliable and not hysterical and/or hyperbolic.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 03, 2019, 06:19:34 AM
Tell me the number that will be convincing to you that K-12 education is failing a large portion of the US population to the point that they cannot benefit from a college education in a mere four years because those folks are starting too low in background knowledge, related effective study skills, and motivation to try again since the last N years of schooling were ineffective.

Tell me also how many more links to college graduation rates of a bare majority of people who enter college (https://www.npr.org/2019/03/13/681621047/college-completion-rates-are-up-but-the-numbers-will-still-surprise-you) will be convincing.

Gonna have to be quite a bit, my friend. 

Remember that I, like you, have been an academic.  I work with students every day and I observe their readiness everyday----not to mention that my last two academic employers were farther down the prestige hierarchy than I would like, and even these folks are more-or-less college ready.   I was educated in public schools.  Many of my h.s. classmates, the vast majority who have gone on to employment and the middle-class lifestyle, also went on to college.  Some struggled; some achieved a great deal.

Your own NPR graphic shows a 65 percent graduation rate in public 4 year colleges and a 76 percent graduation rate in private 4 year colleges over 6 years---sure do wish that were better, but it also suggests a majority of students graduating.  Plus the rates are slowly climbing (if you would care to read your own link.)  What brings the average down are the for-profit and CC graduation rates.

However, don't forget that people drop out of college for all sorts of reasons (pregnancy, family, psychological issues, alcoholism, money, military service, a good job, boredom with school, immaturity, etc.), not just because they are unprepared.  Many return later in life to finish their degrees.  You know this.  Why that doesn't factor into your brain I don't know.

Your link shows us not very much we didn't already know, and your deduction is not entirely sane.

You've gone all hysterical on us again.

Quote from: polly_mer on November 03, 2019, 06:19:34 AM
I can also provide hundreds of thousands of words for first-person accounts teaching in institutions where the students weren't college ready and thus couldn't do things like enter basic arithmetic into a calculator or divide numbers by 10 without being shown how to use that calculator if you think that would be more convincing.

Well, firstly, math is not really important to the lifestyles of most of us in the Western World.  Simply isn't.

Secondly, I can provide hundreds of thousands of words of first-person accounts of people who saw Bigfoot.

Thirdly, are humans born with a priori knowledge of how to work a calculator?  Or does someone need to show us how one works?  Hmm?

So no, not really convincing.  We always complain when young'uns fail.  We also blame the entire generation and the failures they have attended to.   It's what humans do. 

B'sides, how good is anecdotal evidence in science anyway?  Do you do chemistry via anecdote?  "My student said he synthesized an aldehyde by chewing on a dandelion.  So it must be true."

I have no idea what the rest of that is supposed to mean and I don't really care.  But this...

Quote from: polly_mer on November 03, 2019, 06:19:34 AM
Only a third of the US adult population has bachelor degrees (https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2017/cb17-51.html) so we're totally screwed as a society if everyone really needs that college education to be a contributing member of society and if we need everyone who can be a contributing member of society to being a contributing member of society.

...is more hysterical strawman arguing.  Never said anything like that.  No one has.  I don't even think that makes sense!   

And what's all this about "screwed as a society"?!  Who ever posted that?  I think you return to this in order to make a point...but it is a point no one is positing. 

No, we're just talking about the efficacy of education here for those who choose to attend.  Why oh why do I keep trying to talk to you...

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 03, 2019, 07:09:54 PM

No, we're just talking about the efficacy of education here for those who choose to attend. Why oh why do I keep trying to talk to you...

When the posting moves into debate territory, you may be thinking that you while you won't convince your debating partner of anything, the reader benefits from getting to choose which arguments make more sense.

From The Chronicle - Nathan Grawe, "The Enrollment Crash Goes Deeper Than Demographics":

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191101-Grawe?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emg8NQDKSxJ1Szu9PpN83-Tmf5xWeFcz4QXjKuy7n8AYoHS2swS0pfa21OOURUVGxmQzJhdm5iaGVCazdYa0lqZ1V5Slp3WjFYUDctOA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191101-Grawe?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emg8NQDKSxJ1Szu9PpN83-Tmf5xWeFcz4QXjKuy7n8AYoHS2swS0pfa21OOURUVGxmQzJhdm5iaGVCazdYa0lqZ1V5Slp3WjFYUDctOA) (link pulled from Twitter)

It is within colleges' power to control the curricula they offer.

Quote from: spork on November 05, 2019, 12:31:26 PM
From The Chronicle - Nathan Grawe, "The Enrollment Crash Goes Deeper Than Demographics":

https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191101-Grawe?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emg8NQDKSxJ1Szu9PpN83-Tmf5xWeFcz4QXjKuy7n8AYoHS2swS0pfa21OOURUVGxmQzJhdm5iaGVCazdYa0lqZ1V5Slp3WjFYUDctOA (https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/20191101-Grawe?key=mi0Bff1vaLHL09_no2Emg8NQDKSxJ1Szu9PpN83-Tmf5xWeFcz4QXjKuy7n8AYoHS2swS0pfa21OOURUVGxmQzJhdm5iaGVCazdYa0lqZ1V5Slp3WjFYUDctOA) (link pulled from Twitter)

It is within colleges' power to control the curricula they offer.

Agreed. 

From the article:

Quote
"Similarly, recent work by Strada and Gallup finds that students are more likely to see value in their education — and to view it as worth the price — if they've taken courses that they perceive as relevant to their lives and careers. While this result should not be used in misguided ventures to turn all students into STEM majors, it is a reminder that, regardless of major, higher education should prepare students for meaningful lives following college. Some colleges have responded with interdepartmental degrees, such as "computer science + X," which often pair marketable computer-science skills with humanities studies. Other colleges have brought relevance to existing programs through increased support for internships. However designed, these efforts aim to make clearer the links between college studies and life after graduation."

The conflict between faculty self-interest and student priorities: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/gen-ed-reform-and-problem-other-courses (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/gen-ed-reform-and-problem-other-courses).

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on November 05, 2019, 07:10:04 PM

Quote
"Similarly, recent work by Strada and Gallup finds that students are more likely to see value in their education — and to view it as worth the price — if they've taken courses that they perceive as relevant to their lives and careers. While this result should not be used in misguided ventures to turn all students into STEM majors, it is a reminder that, regardless of major, higher education should prepare students for meaningful lives following college. Some colleges have responded with interdepartmental degrees, such as "computer science + X," which often pair marketable computer-science skills with humanities studies. Other colleges have brought relevance to existing programs through increased support for internships. However designed, these efforts aim to make clearer the links between college studies and life after graduation."

Given current levels of tuition, there better be a link between college classes and life after graduation.

Quote from: spork on November 12, 2019, 03:09:24 AM
The conflict between faculty self-interest and student priorities: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/gen-ed-reform-and-problem-other-courses (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/gen-ed-reform-and-problem-other-courses).

"The Onion did a piece a while back on Americans' attitude toward mass transit. As the piece had it, 98 percent of Americans favor increased use of mass transit by other people; that way, their own commutes wouldn't be slowed by so much traffic.
That's kind of how gen ed reforms work. Departments frequently agree that the overall requirement is too high, but then defend their own courses to the death. The problem is all those other courses."

It's all a ruse. The tenured professors don't actually think their field is more beneficial to the students than someone else's field. They just consider it their duty to keep their adjuncts working.

Quote from: spork on November 12, 2019, 03:09:24 AM
The conflict between faculty self-interest and student priorities: https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/gen-ed-reform-and-problem-other-courses (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/gen-ed-reform-and-problem-other-courses).

"For programs that were already at or near the old cap, getting down to the new one required either gutting trimming program offerings or trimming gutting gen ed."

Fixed the blog post for you.

Spork, I refuse your forced choice between "want and need" vs. "want". Trust me, I don't exactly want to teach several sections of comp; they are, however, what my students need. Moreover, my students aren't often the best judges of what they need, and frequently make suboptimal decisions based on what they want.

I teach at one of the most professionally oriented places you'll ever see, so much so that the idea of reverting to a trade school is routinely floated. Even our niche industry, however, has no idea what graduates of the future will need to know. Sure, they can see what's coming 5 years out, but beyond that major disruptions are coming. So, when pressed, they want the basics: writing, math, critical thinking and imagination. To be fair, they're assuming professional knowledge when they say this, but the reality is that the kinds of training we've offered for over a century may well be mostly obsolete in 20 years.

Polly is undoubtedly going to reply that a better K-12 system will graduate students with the three R's, and more. "Getting to Denmark" is a worthy aspiration. But it isn't likely to happen overnight in the U.S., and gutting breadth and skill components in colleges and universities is just as likely to exacerbate existing problems as it is to bring forth a huge cadre of engineers ready to design new missile guidance systems.

Spent the other day with a group of representatives from major contractors and labor unions regarding a construction training program we have. Our CC spends 18 weeks training a City-funded group of at-risk "At-Promise" young adults the basics of the construction trades before sending them out to do woodworking, welding, plastering, electrical, etc. We also teach them math, labor union history, and PE.

We asked them what they wanted from our training program. Answer? "More computer skills and more life skills. We can show them how to drywall. We want people who can show up on time, have a good attitude, and fill out their online paperwork. Oh yeah, and more math."

Changes in Educational Attainment, 1940 to 2018 (https://highereddatastories.blogspot.com/2019/08/changes-in-educational-attainment-1940.html)

Courtesy Jon Boeckenstedt, enrollment management guru extraordinaire.

Quote from: spork on November 18, 2019, 09:58:58 AM
Changes in Educational Attainment, 1940 to 2018 (https://highereddatastories.blogspot.com/2019/08/changes-in-educational-attainment-1940.html)

Courtesy Jon Boeckenstedt, enrollment management guru extraordinaire.

The disclaimer at the top of the article says "some data on this appears to be slightly askew,... So don't cite it."

Quote from: Hibush on November 21, 2019, 08:48:44 AM

Quote from: spork on November 18, 2019, 09:58:58 AM
Changes in Educational Attainment, 1940 to 2018 (https://highereddatastories.blogspot.com/2019/08/changes-in-educational-attainment-1940.html)

Courtesy Jon Boeckenstedt, enrollment management guru extraordinaire.

The disclaimer at the top of the article says "some data on this appears to be slightly askew,... So don't cite it."

For some reason, some posters have developed an agenda. 

Bumping this thread to point to this article about a decline in master's degree program enrollments:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/12/20/probing-slowdown-masters-degree-growth (https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/12/20/probing-slowdown-masters-degree-growth).

Looks like Generic MBA Program is not as likely to be the cash cow that saves Mediocre Tiny University as people thought it was.

This is why I keep asking senior admins "What if the projections are wrong?"

Quote from: spork on December 20, 2019, 05:03:29 AM
Bumping this thread to point to this article about a decline in master's degree program enrollments:

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/12/20/probing-slowdown-masters-degree-growth (https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/12/20/probing-slowdown-masters-degree-growth).

Looks like Generic MBA Program is not as likely to be the cash cow that saves Mediocre Tiny University as people thought it was.

This is why I keep asking senior admins "What if the projections are wrong?"

There seems to have been a proliferation of MLS programs in recent years too.  Wonder how much cash those new programs managed to milk?

Arguments against distribution model gen ed requirements:

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion (https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion)

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/why-checklist-model-survives (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/why-checklist-model-survives).

Quote from: spork on February 11, 2020, 05:54:28 AM
Arguments against distribution model gen ed requirements:

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion (https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion)

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/why-checklist-model-survives (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/why-checklist-model-survives).

As someone for whom the whole "gen ed" idea is, literally, foreign, I find certain things completely baffling. From the first article:

Quote
Often, a particular curricular expectation can be met via a dozen different options. One requirement for philosophical thinking I encountered offered 12 different topics appropriate for meeting the requirement goals, including human nature, scientific reasoning, theories of cognition, social obligations and constraints, and applied ethics. Just to be clear: that list of 12 doesn't cover the courses that count for this requirement, only the topics. Assuming there are at least a dozen courses that address each of those broad topics, we're talking about an explosive list of options -- most science classes, for instance, include scientific reasoning, and I've yet to teach a literature course that doesn't address social obligation, human nature and ethics.

I have no idea what the point is, (other than "turf protection", as noted in the article.) For instance, if students were supposed to develop "mathematical reasoning", what they would get would vary dramatically  depending on their choice of calculus, statistics, or number theory, for example. (And if they could not do basic algebra, I'd be hard to credit them with "mathematical reasoning" at all.)

My strong hunch is that people only accept the idea about all kinds of things qualifying when speaking of disciplines other than their own. For anyone's own discipline, they will have a much more specific idea of basic knowledge and skills required as fundamental.

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 11, 2020, 07:58:57 AM

Quote from: spork on February 11, 2020, 05:54:28 AM
Arguments against distribution model gen ed requirements:

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion (https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2020/02/10/higher-ed-needs-redesign-gen-ed-real-world-opinion)

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/why-checklist-model-survives (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/why-checklist-model-survives).

As someone for whom the whole "gen ed" idea is, literally, foreign, I find certain things completely baffling. From the first article:

Quote
Often, a particular curricular expectation can be met via a dozen different options. One requirement for philosophical thinking I encountered offered 12 different topics appropriate for meeting the requirement goals, including human nature, scientific reasoning, theories of cognition, social obligations and constraints, and applied ethics. Just to be clear: that list of 12 doesn't cover the courses that count for this requirement, only the topics. Assuming there are at least a dozen courses that address each of those broad topics, we're talking about an explosive list of options -- most science classes, for instance, include scientific reasoning, and I've yet to teach a literature course that doesn't address social obligation, human nature and ethics.

I have no idea what the point is, (other than "turf protection", as noted in the article.) For instance, if students were supposed to develop "mathematical reasoning", what they would get would vary dramatically  depending on their choice of calculus, statistics, or number theory, for example. (And if they could not do basic algebra, I'd be hard to credit them with "mathematical reasoning" at all.)

My strong hunch is that people only accept the idea about all kinds of things qualifying when speaking of disciplines other than their own. For anyone's own discipline, they will have a much more specific idea of basic knowledge and skills required as fundamental.

If the goal is for kids to get exercise, basketball, football, soccer, cross country, swimming, and tennis are all reasonable substitutes. No reason to force them to do one particular sport. One practical reason to offer multiple options is because some faculty, and even departments, don't do a good job. Calculus and statistics are typically taught by different faculty in different departments. That's a good thing.

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on February 11, 2020, 10:12:59 AM

If the goal is for kids to get exercise, basketball, football, soccer, cross country, swimming, and tennis are all reasonable substitutes. No reason to force them to do one particular sport.

How about archery? Croquet? Golf? (And if golf is OK, can they use a golf cart?) What about chess? (People have advocated for chess to be in the Olympics.)

"Exercise" is a virtually meaningless term depending on how many activities are allowed. Does it require cardio? Endurance? Flexibility? If there are no specific requirements, then it's pointless.

Quote
One practical reason to offer multiple options is because some faculty, and even departments, don't do a good job.

Of what don't they "do a good job"? That definition (of what they are supposed to do well) is what needs to be specified.

Quote
Calculus and statistics are typically taught by different faculty in different departments. That's a good thing.

Statistics are usually taught in math departments. Many other departments may have their own statistics courses, but usually math would prefer to teach them all (in my experience).

At my institution (< 3,000 students) there are at least eight different courses with "ethics" in the title. Yet only the "ethics" courses taught by the philosophy department count as gen ed requirements. As for the rest, each is a required course in a different major. It's nothing but a competition to fill seats so that faculty members in different departments are able to teach full contractual loads.

Quote from: marshwiggle on February 11, 2020, 10:30:00 AM

Quote from: tuxthepenguin on February 11, 2020, 10:12:59 AM

If the goal is for kids to get exercise, basketball, football, soccer, cross country, swimming, and tennis are all reasonable substitutes. No reason to force them to do one particular sport.

How about archery? Croquet? Golf? (And if golf is OK, can they use a golf cart?) What about chess? (People have advocated for chess to be in the Olympics.)

"Exercise" is a virtually meaningless term depending on how many activities are allowed. Does it require cardio? Endurance? Flexibility? If there are no specific requirements, then it's pointless.

Where I've worked, the committee is responsible for defining the goals, and they add a few courses that obviously meet the criteria. Departments that want courses added have to make the case that their course meets the goals of the requirement.

Quote

Quote
One practical reason to offer multiple options is because some faculty, and even departments, don't do a good job.

Of what don't they "do a good job"? That definition (of what they are supposed to do well) is what needs to be specified.

Teaching. It's tempting to put the bad teachers in classes students are forced to take. There's an incentive to fail students and force them to drop if students have to take a specific class. That doesn't work when the students can take a class in another department.

Quote

Quote
Calculus and statistics are typically taught by different faculty in different departments. That's a good thing.

Statistics are usually taught in math departments. Many other departments may have their own statistics courses, but usually math would prefer to teach them all (in my experience).

That's true at some universities, but not all. The places I've worked (research universities) have always had statistics departments. The math department wouldn't be able to teach a stats course even if they wanted to. The point is nonetheless that it's good for students to have a choice.

Quote from: spork on February 11, 2020, 11:50:36 AM
At my institution (< 3,000 students) there are at least eight different courses with "ethics" in the title. Yet only the "ethics" courses taught by the philosophy department count as gen ed requirements. As for the rest, each is a required course in a different major. It's nothing but a competition to fill seats so that faculty members in different departments are able to teach full contractual loads.

I think you have pointed out at several times in the past that some departments would not be able to exist if it were not for gen ed. I expect that is true at plenty of schools.

But however things are organized, won't there competition between departments for students? Gen ed reduces student freedom to choose courses compared to a completely unstructured approach. But most ways of arranging bachelors degrees don't give students much freedom, and these days gen ed gives students quite a lot of freedom -- more than I had back in the day.

I'm having a hard time seeing what the problem is.

As Handstedt, Reed, and some commenters on this thread point out:

• Distribution requirements often are a repeat what was already studied in high school.
• The courses often don't transfer because every institution has its own "special" gen ed requirements (designed to force in-house course enrollments).
• The above results in higher costs to students because of lengthened time to degree (underlying purpose: more tuition revenue for the university).
• Courses are primarily staffed by the low-paid adjunct army.
• Curricular sequencing sends the message "the faster you get your gen ed requirements out of the way, the more quickly you can enroll in the important courses you are interested in."
• Lack of in-depth study and hence knowledge of any of the disciplines that populate the distribution requirements.

Para's edit: FTFY.

Quote from: spork on February 11, 2020, 11:50:36 AM
At my institution (< 3,000 students) there are at least eight different courses with "ethics" in the title. Yet only the "ethics" courses taught by the philosophy department count as gen ed requirements. As for the rest, each is a required course in a different major. It's nothing but a competition to fill seats so that faculty members in different departments are able to teach full contractual loads.

Many professional programs require, as a condition laid down by accreditors, a specific ethics course. These are not, by definition, gen ed.

They also don't seem to have done much to cut down on cheating in B Schools, but that's a different matter.

Quote from: downer on February 11, 2020, 12:58:48 PM

Quote from: spork on February 11, 2020, 11:50:36 AM
At my institution (< 3,000 students) there are at least eight different courses with "ethics" in the title. Yet only the "ethics" courses taught by the philosophy department count as gen ed requirements. As for the rest, each is a required course in a different major. It's nothing but a competition to fill seats so that faculty members in different departments are able to teach full contractual loads.

I think you have pointed out at several times in the past that some departments would not be able to exist if it were not for gen ed. I expect that is true at plenty of schools.

But however things are organized, won't there competition between departments for students? Gen ed reduces student freedom to choose courses compared to a completely unstructured approach. But most ways of arranging bachelors degrees don't give students much freedom, and these days gen ed gives students quite a lot of freedom -- more than I had back in the day.

I'm having a hard time seeing what the problem is.

The university president could require campus snow clearing to start at his/her driveway every time. Since the whole campus needs to be cleared, it's something that needs to be done anyway. But it's still self-serving.

Enrollment decline as climate change:

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/enrollment-decline-climate-change (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/enrollment-decline-climate-change).

Quote from: spork on February 18, 2020, 06:39:59 AM
Enrollment decline as climate change:

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/enrollment-decline-climate-change (https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions-community-college-dean/enrollment-decline-climate-change).

Both long-term changes, the response to which often brings to mind the old analogy of how to gradually boil a frog.

Quote from: spork on February 11, 2020, 01:40:42 PM
As Handstedt, Reed, and some commenters on this thread point out:

• Distribution requirements often are a repeat what was already studied in high school.
• The courses often don't transfer because every institution has its own "special" gen ed requirements (designed to force in-house course enrollments).
• The above results in higher costs to students because of lengthened time to degree (underlying purpose: more tuition revenue for the university).
• Courses are primarily staffed by the low-paid adjunct army.
• Curricular sequencing sends the message "the faster you get your gen ed requirements out of the way, the more quickly you can enroll in the important courses you are interested in."
• Lack of in-depth study and hence knowledge of any of the disciplines that populate the distribution requirements.

Para's edit: FTFY.

I'm not sure why restudying something in college that one studied in high school is necessarily a bad thing.  H.S. as a similar distribution of classes as college.  It simply stands that one will study some form history, English, math, a science or two in H.S., and probably music or the fine arts, and then you study these same subjects in college because we've divided disciplines in the manner, so there is almost certainly going to be some duplication.  The difference, generally speaking, is that the college classes will be far more thorough and require a higher level of work.  Do we assume that studying a subject in H.S. means we have mastered the subject matter and need not study it further?  And sometimes we study something absolutely brand new in college in gen ed requirements----happened to me.

Many gen eds DO transfer.

We could fix the adjunct employment problem.

Do we really expect "in-depth" knowledge?----could we say that "exposure" is a worthwhile goal for people like me whose lack of "in-depth" knowledge has not hindered my appreciation of some of the things I've been exposed to through education.

And gen ed breadth has been a convention for many generations now; has it always been to generate revenue and keep departments alive?

Just because "Handstedt, Reed, and some commenters on this thread point" something out does not necessarily mean it is true.

We've entered a phase in which we simply look for reasons to tear down our institutions instead of working to help them evolve.