Sapere Aude!

At LSU, the tail wags the dog | Opinion | The Advocate — Baton Rouge, LA

These cuts contrast jarringly with the compensation package football coach Les Miles re-negotiated for himself in August. The coach’s new contract provides an increase in his take-home pay of $6.5 million over the life of his contract, should his team win the championship.

Another feature of the coach’s newly-negotiated contract is a $200,000 bonus payable to him alone, if certain academic benchmarks — a player graduation rate of 75 percent, for example — are reached. This perquisite rewards the head football coach for work done totally by the students and the academic staff. This type of razzle-dazzle belongs on the playing field, not in a coach’s contract. No LSU professor or instructor receives a bonus if a certain percentage of students graduates.

Since 2006, Miles’ annual compensation has increased more than 250 percent. By contrast, the annual compensation of LSU professors and instructors — the people who carry out the university’s mission — has increased a whopping 0 percent over the past four years.

via theadvocate.com

Chomsky on the Corporate University and Academic Freedom

Dogmatic Students Are The Problem, No "Liberal" Professors

This little study confirms what virtually faculty member already knows.  Students cry bias whenever anybody challenges their ideas.

A regular theme in conservative critiques of higher education is that liberal professors discriminate against right-leaning students. Many faculty members (with studies to back them up) reject the charge. Even if faculty members may lean left, they argue, there is simply no evidence of systematic bias in how students are graded and treated.

A new study in the journal College Teaching suggests that it's possible that some students do perceive bias, but that the reasons may have to do more with their own identities than with anything taking place in the classroom. Notably, the author does not cite his findings simply to rebut the conservative critics, but to suggest that there may be classroom techniques that would lessen the perception of bias.

The study examined 148 female students and 123 male students at a land-grant university in the Southeast where political attitudes among students are fairly evenly split. The students were given two sets of questionnaires -- one on how settled and resistant to change they were (in politics and the rest of their lives) and the other on their perceptions of bias from their faculty members.

The study found that students -- even in the same classrooms -- didn't perceive bias in the same ways (or at all), and those who perceived bias were those who were resistant to changing any of their views. The finding extended to some who identified themselves as being far on the left and resistant to change, and who believed that they had some biased conservative professors. But among both left-leaning and right-leaning students who didn't score high on resistance to new ideas, there was little perception of bias.

Darren L. Linvill, the study's author and director of basic courses in the department of communication studies at Clemson University, said that while his research (including interviews with the students claiming bias) found no evidence of real bias, the findings about perception should be of concern to faculty members.

Many faculty members -- himself included, Linvill noted -- play devil's advocate to many students, expressing a range of views. This time-tested classroom technique, he said, may not work with students who arrive in class determined not to hear new ideas.

Students, especially super conservative students, tend to make charges of bias whenever their preferred ideas are challenged.  So, in classes that emphasize teaching critical thinking skills and logical reasoning and where the professor plays devil's advocate in order to faciliate the development of those skills they are bound to get allegations of bias from dogmatic students.

 

Rival Traditions, Academic Discourse, and the Synthese Affair

At the end of Three Rival Version of Moral Enquiry, Alasdair MacIntyre writes:

"Yet if within one and the same university arena modes of enquiry teaching and learning would have to develop in these very different ways, so that not only was thesis matched with thesis and argument against argument but genre against genre, the subversion of authority against the recreation of authority, how could the university achieve a genuinely shared conversation?  Surely a set of rival universities would result, each modeled on, but improving upon, its own best predecessor, the Thomist perhaps upon Paris in 1272, the genealogist upon Vincennes in 1968.  And thus the wider society would be confronted with the claims of rival universities, each advancing its own enquiries in its own terms and each securing the type of agreement necessary to ensure the progress and flourishing of its enquiries by its own set of exclusions and prohibitions, formal and informal.  But then also required would be a set of institutionalized forums in which the debate between rival types of enquiry was afforded rhetorical expression" (p. 234).

One of the objections from the ID camp in the Synthese affair is that Barbara Forrest's article on Francis Beckwith's views lacks a professional and dispassionate tone.  If MacIntyre is correct, however, it's not clear we should expect there to be a professional, rational consensus on what constitutes appropriate, philosophical discourse to which proponents of rival traditions of inquiry can appeal in order to settle disputes over "tone" and "professinalism" in academic journals.  It's a debate between rival traditions of inquiry over what counts as legitimat science, whether justice requires including alternative "scientific" explanations for origins, and what constitutes the appropriate standards for academic discourse.  What is troubling to me is the fact that proponents of one tradition in the Synthese affair (Beckwith, natural theology) seem to not want to allow the proponents of a rival tradition (Forrest, methodological naturalism) an opportunity for rhetorical expression in a forum for debate bewteen rival traditions of inquiry.

What's Patriotism?

That release included the comment from Martin, “I also thought today brought out a wonderful display of patriotism among the students conducting the counter-protest.”

The online arts blog, allography.com responded by selling “Civil Discourse Kits” of water balloons and bottles on eBay. The online posting had the added message, “If you want to let Mr. Martin know how you feel about him and thank him for redefining what is meant by patriotism and civil discourse, we urge you to call him …”

There also was a petition started at Change.org criticizing Martin and LSU’s media relations staff, arguing in part, “LSU’s Chancellor did nothing to denounce the violent mob — even praising the ‘patriotism’ of the ‘counter-protest.’”

However, Martin clarified in his updated statement, “I do not condone the behavior of that portion of the crowd who … resorted to verbal threats and physical actions against the student while and after he tried to read his statement.”

Martin also stated, “Let me make these points clear: I do not condone the burning of the flag, but I defend the right for someone to express their freedom of speech by doing so. I applaud the many who responded with great passion to speak up for what their flag represents, and that was the purpose of the inspiring patriotic counter-protest that was organized …”

The organized counter-protest that continued after Haas’ departure included the pledge of allegiance and the singing of the national anthem.

via www.2theadvocate.com

I'm pretty sure that if you threaten a guy's life and pelt him with water bottles and trash because you don't like the way he's exercising his First Amendment rights, then you are not patriotic.  Even if you sing the national anthem and say the pledge of allegiance afterwards.  

Scholarly Consensus: College Sucks

Everybody that works in Higher Education seems to agree that it's screwed up.  From The Chronicle of Higher Education:

Without a change in course, presidents fear, American higher education's standing around the globe could erode. Although seven in 10 college chief executives rated the American system today as the best or one of the best in the world, barely half predicted that a decade from now the United States would be among the top globally.

"We should be worried," said Nancy L. Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York system. "We are in a flat world. We are going to have to evolve."

American higher education has never been a monolith, of course, but the findings of the survey of more than 1,000 presidents, conducted March 10 to April 25 by the Pew Research Center, in association with The Chronicle, suggest how deep its divisions are. What's more, those fractures are intensifying just as the country faces formidable and col lective challenges, such as meeting President Obama's goal of having the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020.

Throughout the survey of presidents, the most positive responses, and justifiably so, came from leaders of highly selective colleges, which have healthy balance sheets, more top-achieving applicants than they can possibly admit, and a strong portfolio of global partnerships.

But they occupy a tiny space in American higher education. The responses of nonelite institutions—two-year, for-profit, and less-selective four-year colleges—largely reflect their more precarious situation. The public institutions among them must grapple with declining state support, while tuition-driven private colleges confront a student market that has said "enough" to paying more. Proprietary colleges face greater government scrutiny and regulation.

And, from InsideHigherEd.com:

Garland’s larger argument is actually more philosophical (and, he said, influenced by his wife's t'ai chi teacher) -- that those in higher education should seek to gracefully manage change rather than pine for a bygone era. “You’ve got to realize that full moons aren’t forever, that the moon rises and sets,” he said. “That’s just in the nature of things. That seems to be what's happening, particularly to public higher education.”

Still, the darker themes implicit in such narratives of decline resonated -- with some exceptions -- among many experts on higher education and the faculty who were recently interviewed by Inside Higher Ed. Faculty members have never been known for being particularly Panglossian, but most of those interviewed noted that things now really do seem to be worse. While the current state of affairs is, in one sense, a reflection of the wider economic shocks that have hit other workers, many of the problems now surfacing pre-date the financial crisis. The erosion of status, stature, and prospects for a future that much resembles the past has occurred for complicated reasons, experts say, including long-term, systemic, external and ideological ones as well as more recent political and economic developments, and some self-inflicted wounds.

“The American professoriate is in the midst of a major transformation, and it will very likely involve permanent changes to this line of work,” Joseph C. Hermanowicz, associate professor of sociology at the University of Georgia and editor of the forthcoming book, The American Academic Profession: Transformation in Contemporary Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press), said in an e-mail.

They will erode tenure protection and reduce the number of tenured positions and convert everybody else into adjunct faculty with term-by-term contracts.  Then, some right-wing campus activist will sign up for your class, secretly videotape it, and edit it to make it look like you did something inappropriate.  And, then they'll fire you.

 

 

Angry Mob on Campus

 (Hat tip: Salon.com) And, here I thought the hippies were supposed to be the ones that spit on the morally righteous patriots.  Everything really is ass-backwards in Louisiana, isn't it?   The fact that more people turned out to counter-protest a guy over flag burning than turned out to protest the school budget cuts tells you everything you need to know about that place.

Faulty Towers: The Crisis in Higher Education | The Nation

But as Jack Schuster and Martin Finkelstein point out in their comprehensive study The American Faculty (2006), the move to part-time labor is already an old story. Less visible but equally important has been the advent and rapid expansion of full-time positions that are not tenure-eligible. No one talks about this transformation—the creation of yet another academic underclass—and yet as far back as 1993, such positions already constituted the majority of new appointees. As of 2003, more than a third of full-time faculty were working off the tenure track. By the same year, tenure-track professors—the “normal” kind of academic appointment—represented no more than 35 percent of the American faculty.

The reasons for these trends can be expressed in a single word, or buzzword: efficiency. Contingent academic labor, as non-tenure-track faculty, part-time and full-time, are formally known, is cheaper to hire and easier to fire. It saves departments money and gives them greater flexibility in staffing courses. Over the past twenty years, in other words—or really, over the past forty—what has happened in academia is what has happened throughout the American economy. Good, secure, well-paid positions—tenured appointments in the academy, union jobs on the factory floor—are being replaced by temporary, low-wage employment.

via www.thenation.com

Many disciplines focus on examining divisive moral, political, and social issues.  Professors that teach these disciplines have to be able to challenge their students' reasoning without fear of being fired even when they do not do anything wrong.    If people are worried about losing their jobs they are going to be less likely to do the very things that are required to get a student to think reflectively and critically about important issues.  In short, these working conditions actually undermine the pedagogy required to foster critical thinking and logical reasoning skills.  It exacerbates what is already a big problem in higher education.  This is why tenure and job protection are important in academia.

Yeah, Let's Make Stupid Libertarians Required Reading

Here's a real gem:

John Allison, former chairman of bank holding company BB&T Corp. (BBT), admires author Ayn Rand so much that he devised a strategy to spread her laissez-faire principles on U.S. campuses. Allison, working through the BB&T Charitable Foundation, gives schools grants of as much as $2 million if they agree to create a course on capitalism and make Rand’s masterwork, “Atlas Shrugged,” required reading.

Allison’s crusade to counter what he considers the anti- capitalist orthodoxy at universities has produced results -- and controversy. Some 60 schools, including at least four campuses of the University of North Carolina, began teaching Rand’s book after getting the foundation money. Faculty at several schools that have accepted Allison’s terms are protesting, saying donors shouldn’t have the power to set the curriculum to pursue their political agendas, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its June issue.

“We have sought out professors who wanted to teach these ideas,” says Allison, now a professor at Wake Forest University’s business school in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “It’s really a battle of ideas. If the ideas that made America great aren’t heard, then their influence will be destroyed.”

The notion that libertarian capitalism is not being taught in colleges and universities is pure fantasy.  It's a standard part of any introduction political theory or political philosophy class.  Of course, it's probably Robert Nozick rather than Ayn Rand that's being covered since the former is a better example of libertarianism than the latter by just about every scholarly standard.  Here's libertarian idea:  How about we let the professional eductors decide what to cover and business men can stick to running buisnesses.  Essentially, these people are just pushing their pet thinkers on faculty.  Why not cover a good example of libertarian capitalism rather than a dumb example of libertarian capitalism?

Wheaton College Alumni Rally Around Gay Students

(RNS) Gay and supportive alumni of Wheaton College have formed a new organization following a recent chapel series at the flagship evangelical school on "Sexuality and Wholeness."

More than 400 signatories have signed an open letter to students at the Christian college in suburban Chicago to present an alternative message to one from a chapel speaker who supports gay celibacy.

"The recent chapel message on Sexuality and Wholeness and surrounding conversations may have left you feeling alienated, ashamed and afraid," reads the open letter. "Many of us felt trapped and unable to respond honestly to these messages while we were students."

Matthew Gore, a spokesman for OneWheaton and a 2004 Wheaton alumnus, said the group wants gay and lesbian students at the school to know that they have support among gay alumni.

"As it is, most of those students would be afraid to talk to anybody," he said. "That's just the environment there."

In an emailed response to the letter, Wheaton President Philip Ryken told students that the school considers gay people members "of the human family as created in the image of God himself," but remains committed to its covenant that condemns homosexual behavior.

via www.huffingtonpost.com

A few years ago there was some controversy over Wheaton's discriminatory policy against hiring homosexual faculty members. This policy resulted the American Philosophical Association moving to censure Wheaton since its policy is contrary to the APA's own non-discrimination policy. That gave rise to a counter-petition in support of Wheaton's policy, which a number of prominent philosophers signed.

The same (dubious) argument that implies homosexuality is immoral, the argument from nature, also implies that contraception is immoral.  But, we don't see Wheaton discriminating against people that use contraception now do we?  The anti-homosexuality crowd hardly ever condemns contraception even though it's pretty obvious that there are more people using contraception than practicing homosexuality.   So long as Wheaton's administration and its supporters and sympathizers fail to follow their argument to its logical conclusion and apply it consistently, I think it raises a question not only about their moral consistency, but about bigotry and prejudice against homosexuals.  I wish the gay community at that Wheaton luck in their attempt to combat the moral arbitrariness of the school's administration.  It's nice to see some alumni supporting them.