Dear Commons Community,

John Hennessy, President of Stanford University, speaking at the Annual Meeting of the American Council on Education, declared that the American higher education isn’t badly broken,… It’s still “the envy of the world.” But it has to reckon with serious problems, including rising costs and falling degree-completion rates.”  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“In a keynote talk on “Information Technology and the Future of Teaching and Learning,” President Hennessy,  who built his academic career in electrical engineering and computer science, sketched out ways in which technology could help. “My goal is to provide higher education that is affordable, accessible, adaptable, and enhances student learning,” he said.

Massive open online courses “are not the answer, at least not the only answer,” he said. Hybrid and flipped-classroom models work well in some settings, and we need to develop “adaptive courses that provide speed and depth” to help students learn faster and better. That could save time and money, and reduce student stress, he said.

Mr. Hennessy sounded dubious that online credentials would ever entirely replace undergraduate degrees. Those degrees amount to more than a bunch of courses strung together, he said. But he predicted that online-only professional degrees would continue to grow.

To be effective, online learning must overcome several challenges, he said. It has to help students learn better, and it needs to offer a customized experience. “In a live classroom, a good instructor can see what works and what doesn’t,” Mr. Hennessy said. Online instruction might be able to do that using real-time data and analytics on how students are engaging (or not) with the material. “We can get instant feedback,” he said…

Mr. Hennessy recalled the machine-driven educational hype of the 1960s. “There was a vision early on that we would develop high-quality technology that would solve all our problems. But it didn’t happen,” he said. “It turns out that human learning is really complex.”

Tony

Percent Difference in Per Pupil State and Local Funding between High and Low-Poverty Districts, 2011-12.   Source: National Center for Education Statistics

Dear Commons Community,

House Republicans have begun drafting the Student Success Act, a revision to No Child Left Behind. Arne Duncan blasted an early draft saying a funding provision may have a devastating impact on disadvantaged students by giving even more money to well-off school districts at the expense of struggling districts. As reported in The Washington Post:

“Duncan said, about 6.6 million students from low-income families in 23 states are harmed by local and state funding disparities. The funding inequality data comes from National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Department of Education that collects information on schools.

Federal education funding can help rectify state and local inequalities. But federal dollars aren’t meant to balance state and local funding, Duncan told The Washington Post. Instead, federal money is intended to help needy students, he said.

“The point of that money was to supplement, recognizing that poor children, and English language-learners, and students with disabilities come to school with additional challenges,” Duncan told the newspaper. “This is about trying to get additional resources to children and communities who everyone knows need additional help.”

The map above shows where funding inequalities are the worst and shows areas affected by state and local funding differences. Negative percentages indicate that high-poverty schools receive less funding than low-poverty schools.

Mr. Duncan is right to criticize the Student Success Act.  There will be a lot more discussion of this in the months ahead.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Today is the π day of the century – 3.14.15.  Steven Strogatz, professor of mathematics at Cornell, has a brief article on why π matters.

“Pi does deserve a celebration, but for reasons that are rarely mentioned. In high school, we all learned that pi is about circles. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference (the distance around the circle, represented by the letter C) to its diameter (the distance across the circle at its widest point, represented by the letter d). That ratio, which is about 3.14, also appears in the formula for the area inside the circle, A = πr², where π is the Greek letter “pi” and r is the circle’s radius (the distance from center to rim). We memorized these and similar formulas for the S.A.T.s and then never again used them, unless we happened to go into a technical field, or until our own kids took geometry.

So it’s fair to ask: Why do mathematicians care so much about pi? Is it some kind of weird circle fixation? Hardly. The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach. Even young children get this. The digits of pi never end and never show a pattern. They go on forever, seemingly at random—except that they can’t possibly be random, because they embody the order inherent in a perfect circle. This tension between order and randomness is one of the most tantalizing aspects of pi.”

So go out today and celebrate π Day.  It will never happen again (at least not to four decimal places) in our lifetime.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has a short piece on the benefits of students taking notes in class with pen and paper versus electronically on their laptops or some other portable device.  The article written by Carol E. Holstead, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Kansas, comes down on the side of pen and paper.  Professor Holstead concludes that the pen is mightier than the laptop when it comes to retention of important information.  Her concern was that students who took notes electronically tended to multi-task and were distracted by other online activities such as social media and emailing. The article also cites a formal study published in Psychological Science by Pam A. Mueller (Princeton) and Daniel M. Oppenheimer (UCLA) last year that reached a similar conclusion.  Mueller and Oppenheimer found that students may be impairing their learning because electronic note-taking results in shallower processing and that students who took notes on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions. They also observed that laptop note takers’ tendency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing information and re-framing it in their own words was detrimental to learning.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Carolyn Thomas, a professor of American studies and vice provost and dean for undergraduate education at the University of California at Davis, has an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education, calling on Ph.D. programs to do more to prepare students to teach.  She cautions against simply preparing them to be world-class researchers at a time when our colleges and universities need world-class teachers in their undergraduate programs.  Here is an excerpt:

“We excel, in the research university, at preparing our students to do world-class research — everywhere except the classrooms in which they teach. From the beginning we insist that Ph.D. applicants explain their research plans. When they arrive we put them through their paces in methodology classes, carefully taking apart their ideas of what they want to accomplish and introducing them to the hard work of gathering data, performing analyses, testing and retesting hypotheses, and exploring all possible outcomes.

We want students to understand that what they think is true has to be questioned, repeatedly, and that their findings have to be defended. It is an iterative process, and we expect them to be rather poor at it when they begin — improving through honest critique and firm mentorship over time.

When it comes to teaching, however, the message they receive is very different. We don’t ask prospective students to address their teaching experience or philosophy in graduate-school applications, and we do not typically talk about teaching in coursework or qualifying examinations. Often it is not until graduate students enter the classroom, as teaching assistants responsible for their own sections, that they begin to think about what it might require to teach successfully.

In the midst of papers to grade and sections to prepare, conversations between even the best faculty instructors and assistants lean more toward the pragmatic. There is little room or incentive to see one’s time as a teaching assistant as an opportunity to simultaneously teach and analyze classroom success.

Some of this is because of the importance placed on graduate-student research. This makes a great deal of sense: Training the next generation of Ph.D.s to be world-class researchers in their chosen disciplines is a chief responsibility of modern universities. Time spent in the classroom is often seen as time spent away from one’s archive or laboratory, away from the process of inquiry and original analysis that leads to cutting-edge findings and future academic employment. This makes it all too easy to teach our graduate students that they must be skillful researchers, and only adequate teachers.”

This is sound advice and a warning that our Ph.D. programs have a responsibility to develop the next generation of college teachers.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The backlash against the letter that 47 of the Senate’s 54 Republican members sent to the “leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran”  on Monday that warned them not to make any deal with President Obama is receiving a swift backlash even among conservatives.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page called the senators’ letter a “distraction”.

“Democratic votes will be needed if the pact is going to be stopped, and even to get the 67 votes to override a veto of the Corker-Menendez bill to require such a vote,” wrote the editors, referring to a bill that would require Obama to submit to Congress the text of any potential deal with Iran for a hearing and a vote. “Monday’s letter lets Mr. Obama change the subject to charge that Republicans are playing politics as he tries to make it harder for Democrats to vote for Corker-Menendez.”

The New York Daily News went further with a one-word front-page headline (above) in capital letters spelling out “TRAITORS” with pictures of four Republican senators who signed the letter.  The News also condemned the “dangerous treachery” in a scathing editorial.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), a hawkish critic of President Barack Obama’s foreign policies, expressed his disapproval yesterday of the letter.  Speaking to reporters at the International Association of Fire Fighters presidential forum Tuesday morning, King said that while he agreed with “the entire tone of the letter,” he likely would not have signed it had he been in the Senate.

“I believe in a strong presidency. I don’t know if I would have signed the letter. I don’t trust the president on this, quite frankly, though I don’t know if I’d go public with it to a foreign government,” he said, adding that it sets the wrong “precedent” to publicly go to a foreign government to undermine the president of the United States while he or she is dealing with that country.

This action of these senators will only serve to haunt the Republican Party especially as we move into next year’s presidential election.  Potential Republican nominees such as Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, both of whom signed the letter, will be skewered for undermining the office of the president.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yale University announced yesterday that it will be offering a new blended learning masters degree in the School of Medicine.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“Yale University is creating a master’s program that will hold many courses online, continuing the Ivy League institution’s foray into “blended” learning.

The online program, to be offered by the Yale School of Medicine, would aim to replicate its residential program for training physicians’ assistants. Students would meet in virtual classrooms where they would discuss course material using videoconferencing technology. They would also have to complete field training — accounting for roughly half of the coursework — in person, at Yale-approved clinics near where they live.

It is the second professional school at Yale to try the “blended” model for a graduate program, following the Yale School of Nursing, which opened a partially online doctoral degree in 2011.

Yale has taken an active but measured interest in online education in the past decade. In 2007 it became one of the first elite institutions to post lecture videos online at no charge. In 2011 it began offering online summer courses to small groups of undergraduates for credit. In 2013 it joined with Coursera and started building MOOCs.

But a degree program that includes fully online courses is a step toward a different vision of how Yale and other highly selective traditional universities are likely to incorporate online education. Free online courses might make headlines, but tuition-based professional degrees in high-demand fields such as health care are where online courses, and the companies that help build them, are gaining a foothold.”

This is a good move by Yale and indicative of where online education is heading in the foreseeable future.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed into law yesterday a right-to-work law that gives workers the freedom to choose whether or not they want to join a union.  Wisconsin is the 25^th state to do so.  As reported in the New York Times:

“For decades, states across the South, Great Plains and Rocky Mountains enacted policies that prevented organized labor from forcing all workers to pay union dues or fees. But the industrial Midwest resisted.

Those days are gone. After a wave of Republican victories across the region in 2010, Indiana and then Michigan enacted so-called right-to-work laws that supporters said strengthened those states economically, but that labor leaders asserted left behind a trail of weakened unions.

Now it is Wisconsin’s turn. On Monday, Gov. Scott Walker — who in 2011 succeeded in slashing collective bargaining rights for most public sector workers — signed a bill that makes his state the 25th to adopt the policy and has given new momentum to the business-led movement, its supporters say.

“This freedom-to-work legislation will give workers the freedom to choose whether or not they want to join a union, and employers another compelling reason to consider expanding or moving their business to Wisconsin,” Mr. Walker said…

“It’s designed to depress wages and to help them win elections in the future,” Michael Sargeant, executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, said of passage of the measure, almost entirely on party lines, in Wisconsin. “That’s what this is about.”

President Obama issued a statement calling the measure “a new anti-worker law,” and criticizing Mr. Walker directly. “Wisconsin is a state built by labor, with a proud pro-worker past,” he said. “So even as its governor claims victory over working Americans, I’d encourage him to try and score a victory for working Americans — by taking meaningful action to raise their wages and offer them the security of paid leave.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Arizona Legislature agreed Saturday to a budget that reduces state spending for higher education by about 14 percent, or $99 million. The budget scales back funding for the state’s flagship universities, Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, and eliminates state money completely for several community colleges. The office of Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) said that the reductions were necessary to shrink the state’s budget deficit. As reported in The Huffington Post:

“We can’t spend money that doesn’t exist and that we don’t have,” Gov. Ducey spokesman Daniel Scarpinato told HuffPost. “When faced with a $1.5 billion budget deficit, [Ducey] happens to think that it’s a good idea for the state budget to be balanced. He ran on that.”

The governor could sign the budget as soon as next week.

The legislature finally passed the budget package 16-13 Saturday morning — after what the Arizona Republic called a “nightlong marathon” — and just three days after Ducey unveiled his proposal to the GOP in closed-door meetings.

Some lawmakers complained they didn’t have enough time to review the bills, while several moderate Republicans argued the cuts to higher ed went too far.

State Democrats expressed frustration with Ducey’s budget.

“Very conservative members are happy that this is the most fiscally conservative budget they have seen during their time here,” state Sen. Katie Hobbs (D) told HuffPost.

Since the recession began in 2007, Arizona has dramatically reduced funding for public universities. According to funding data compiled by the Center for American Progress, Arizona decreased funding for higher education by over 32 percent during the recession, a larger percentage than any other state. Over the past several years, tuition rose more than any other state while spending per student dropped.

Public universities in other states (Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois) are also facing historic potential funding reductions. Decreased state revenues during the recession resulted in massive cuts to public universities nationwide, but beginning in 2012, most states began to pump money back into universities.

Bucking the trend, several Republican governors are now attempting to lower deficits by targeting university appropriations. In Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker wants to curtail spending on public universities by $300 million over two years, the deepest reduction in state history. Democratic legislators in neighboring Illinois are fighting Gov. Bruce Rauner’s proposed $387 million cut to higher education, while Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is considering eliminating a dozen tax refunds that mostly benefit businesses, a plan would still leave the state’s public universities $211 million below last year’s funding levels.

Universities in Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois and Louisiana are bracing for outcomes ranging from hiring freezes and increased reliance on adjunct professors to layoffs and future mergers and closures of schools. “

Tony

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAZp1j0tKc[/youtube]

Dear Commons Community

In case you missed it, here is a video’s of President Obama’s speech yesterday on the Edmund Pettis Bridge in honor of the 50^th Anniversary of the March on Selma. It is thirty-two minutes long but well-worth a careful listen.

Tony