Two More Schools Join Rankings Hall of Shame

TaxProf

Robert Morse (Director of Data Research for U.S. News & World Report), Updates to 2 Schools’ 2013 Best Colleges Ranks:

Two schools – University of Mary Hardin-Baylor and York College of Pennsylvania – recently advised U.S. News that they submitted inflated data that were used in the 2013 Best Colleges rankings, resulting in their numerical ranks being higher than they otherwise might have been. In both cases, the same incorrect data were also reported to many other parties including the U.S. Department of Education.

University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, a Texas school in the Regional Universities (West) rankings category, advised U.S. News that it reported an acceptance rate (which accounts for 1.5% of the overall ranking) of 27.4%, rather than the actual 89.1% rate.

York College, a Pennsylvania school in the Regional Universities (North) rankings category, advised U.S. News that it reported average SAT scores (which account for 7.5% of the overall ranking) of 545 (math) and 532 (critical reading), rather than the actual 527 (math) and 516 (critical reading) SAT scores. York College admitted that it has been misreporting SAT scores for more than a decade.

Other members of the Rankings Hall of Shame:  Bucknell, Claremont McKenna, Emory, George Washington, Illinois, Tulane, and Villanova.

Georgia Tech Takes MOOCs to the Next Level

Outstanding news!

Georgia Tech announced yesterday that it is teaming up with Udacity, one of the leading providers of massively open online education, to offer a full graduate program in computer science. For a mere $7,000 dollars—or 1/6 the cost of the equivalent program offered on campus—students who meet the prerequisites can fulfill the requirements of a master’s degree entirely through open courseware.

This is a big deal. As the Washington Post notes, even MOOC-friendly colleges like Stanford, Harvard, and San Jose State have been reluctant to actually grant credentials for their online courses, preferring to use them as a teaching aids rather than as the foundation of a program. There have been the usual concerns about quality control, as well as worries that an all-MOOC degree could dilute the value of Georgia Tech’s traditional degrees, but Georgia Tech claims it has taken these concerns into account:

Notably, the university said it hoped to admit anyone who meets its admissions requirement, which it emphasized remain stringent. It estimated it could eventually enroll 10,000 students in the program, in a field facing a shortage of workers. That’s nearly half the size of the whole student body on Georgia Tech’s Atlanta campus.

“We’re turning down people that are probably capable. We just can’t handle them,” said Rafael Bras, Georgia Tech’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs, who said current demand for the program outstrips supply by 10 to 1. “We’re now reaching out to the world through a different medium. There’s a lot of people out there that will have this great opportunity.”

At $7,000 per student and with these kinds of enrollment numbers, this may be not just a boon for students but a good way of significantly widening Georgia Tech’s student base: 10,000 is a lot of students, and the open nature of MOOCs makes it relatively simple to scale up without dramatically expanding staff or administrative costs.

This is the first program of its kind, so nobody knows if the students it graduates will pass muster in the marketplace. But the potential for both cutting costs and broadening the educational base is certainly there. Rest assured we will be watching to see how this experiment shapes up.

How to Reinvent College

TheDailyBeast

An undergraduate having to pay off $120,000, and a university that has more than $165 million in debt? Paying adjuncts less but having them teach more, and instructors who give As 43 percent of the time? Nick Romeo on a new book that critiques how higher education has changed, and what needs to be done to save it.

Some colleges are just as indebted as recent graduates. North Carolina’s High Point University has more than $165 million in debt and only $105 million in annual revenue. This extravagant borrowing funds a steakhouse, outdoor hot tubs, a first-run movie theater, and a roaming ice-cream truck.

Adjuncts anxious about job security have realized that giving higher grades improves their student evaluations, which often determine whether they remain employed. The “resortification” of colleges also encourages students to view themselves as customers, and instructors as retail workers employed to serve them. The A is now the most common grade on college campuses nationwide; it accounts for roughly 43 percents of all grades given. Meanwhile, results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a test used by more than 500 colleges to measure academic progress, reveal that 36 percent of students make absolutely no improvement in writing, complex reasoning, or critical thinking during four years of college.

Given this rather dismal state of affairs, it’s understandable that many commentators see online education as the white knight galloping to the rescue of American higher education. Though Selingo is skeptical of treating technology as a panacea, he does make a strong case that real and lasting benefits can be gained from new tools in digital pedagogy.

How to Tell if College Presidents Are Overpaid

Bloomberg

Universities are nonprofit institutions that get special privileges, such as government subsidies and tax exemptions, based on the assumption that they are good stewards of the public trust. Big corporations pay their leaders more, but those institutions pay taxes that partially benefit universities. They have a bottom line as well as stockholders and corporate boards that often fire leaders who perform poorly.

University presidents aren’t corporate executives. If higher education wishes to maintain its privileged position in American society, it needs to contain its spending. A good place to start is at the top.

They seem to have forgotten the “nonprofit” part…

Wow, I Hope So…

Laptop U

Has the future of college moved online?

Nagy has published no best-sellers. He is not a regular face on TV. Since 1978, though, he has taught a class called “Concepts of the Hero in Classical Greek Civilization,” and the course, a survey of poetry, tragedy, and Platonic dialogues, has made him a campus fixture. Because Nagy’s zest for Homeric texts is boundless, because his lectures reflect decades of refinement, and because the course is thought to offer a soft grading curve (its nickname on campus is Heroes for Zeroes), it has traditionally filled Room 105, in Emerson Hall, one of Harvard’s largest classroom spaces. Its enrollment has regularly climbed into the hundreds.

This spring, however, enrollment in Nagy’s course exceeds thirty-one thousand. “Concepts of the Hero,” redubbed “CB22x: The Ancient Greek Hero,” is one of Harvard’s first massive open online courses, or MOOCs—a new type of college class based on Internet lecture videos. A MOOC is “massive” because it’s designed to enroll tens of thousands of students. It’s “open” because, in theory, anybody with an Internet connection can sign up. “Online” refers not just to the delivery mode but to the style of communication: much, if not all, of it is on the Web. And “course,” of course, means that assessment is involved—assignments, tests, an ultimate credential. When you take MOOCs, you’re expected to keep pace. Your work gets regular evaluation. In the end, you’ll pass or fail or, like the vast majority of enrollees, just stop showing up.

Many people think that MOOCs are the future of higher education in America. In the past two years, Harvard, M.I.T., Caltech, and the University of Texas have together pledged tens of millions of dollars to MOOC development. Many other élite schools, from U.C. Berkeley to Princeton, have similarly climbed aboard. Their stated goal is democratic reach. “I expect that there will be lots of free, or nearly free, offerings available,” John L. Hennessy, the president of Stanford, explained in a recent editorial. “While the gold standard of small in-person classes led by great instructors will remain, online courses will be shown to be an effective learning environment, especially in comparison with large lecture-style courses.”

College: What’s the Point?

AmericanInterest

The Economist recently found that the countries with a low rate of youth unemployment are those that focus on providing their students with a practical education. Germany, for example, “has a long tradition of high-quality vocational education and apprenticeships, which in recent years have helped it reduce youth unemployment despite only modest growth.”

Brooklyn Law School to Permit Dismissal of Tenured Faculty for Lack of Collegiality or Poor Student Evaluations

Good

Brian Leiter (Chicago) reports that Brooklyn Law School’s Board of Trustees has adopted rules permitting the termination of tenured faculty for “adequate cause,” defined to include “demonstrated incompetence” — “including but not limited to, multiple unsatisfactory performance reviews or complaints from supervisors; multiple complaints from students or multiple unsatisfactory student evaluations; sub-standard academic performance; lack of collegiality.” Brian notes:

“[T]hese standards are very alarming, and suggest the dangers associated with post-tenure review.  The inclusion of “lack of collegiality” in the definition of “adequate cause” is unbelievable. … But at least as alarming is the fact that the definition equates “demonstrated incompetence” not with a peer review finding of pedagogical and scholarly incompetence, but with wholly unreliable and disreputable criteria like students evaluations, complaints from supervisors (which just smuggles “lack of collegiality” in the back door), and so on.”

Massive University of Wisconsin Slush Fund Discovered

Well now! Where did that come from?

While the University of Wisconsin has been raising tuition and clamoring for more taxpayer support they have been stockpiling hundreds of millions of dollars in unspent tuition and federal grant monies.

Sources in Madison familiar with the discovery tell RightWisconsin that the total of non earmarked funds in the massive UW Slush Fund is at least $450 million.

News of the massive UW Slush Fund prompted a strong reaction from legislative Republicans.

Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), Joint Finance Co-Chairs Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills)and Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) and Assembly Majority Leader Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) issued the following statement regarding the UW System’s surplus:

“We are outraged with the mishandling of taxpayer dollars and the pattern of incompetence shown by  university system administrators. We want the citizens of this state to know that we will examine the gross  mismanagement of the system’s finances. We will demand accountability and transparency. 

“At a time when the UW System is asking for more flexibility and funding from the state, this situation clearly  illustrates the need for strong legislative oversight. Our state deserves better from the institutions that are educating our students and future leaders. It is not only unfair to the students and their parents who keep  getting hit with tuition hikes; it’s unfair to the taxpayers of Wisconsin. 

“We want to assure the university students and their parents that, at a minimum, this budget will include a twoyear tuition freeze. We will work closely with Governor Walker to address this substantial accounting error and explore pursuing a comprehensive investigation into the management of UW System finances. “

Who Runs Our Colleges– Administrators or Faculty?

MindingTheCampus

All of this has changed dramatically over the last fifty years. The number of campus administrators has exploded. Instead of a single dean of an all-encompassing college of arts and sciences, we see a host of deans spearheading numerous units into which the large college has been split. These deans enjoy the support of a gaggle of assistant and associate deans, dragging in tow scores more chairs, heads and directors. This is accompanied by a proliferation of new academic units on campus – e.g., Urban Studies, Gay and Lesbian Studies and countless other “Studies” departments representing “compelling” fields of academic study that we didn’t know existed in mid-twentieth century.

These bogus departments are augmented by a slew of “indispensable” administrative support units and positions — especially at the central campus level – all of which has resulted in an explosion of assistants, staff and advisors. The academic pedigree of these lower and mid-level administrators is notoriously weak. They – and, unfortunately too often, their senior-level bosses – are not culled from the ranks of the tenured faculty. Finally, the money has followed the growth in size. The salaries of this new campus human infrastructure are high – in some cases bordering on the obscene.

The net effect is that while faculty often think they run things, in fact they do not. Increasingly, the setting of academic priorities, the discharge of academic responsibilities and the establishment of the overall academic agenda is under the control of a vast, over-centralized bureaucracy of campus administrators – whose allegiance is often not to objective faculty goals but rather to narrow political agendas.

Evidently, Colleges Don’t Know What’s Going On…

Till it’s in the news…

College fires professor who forced students to sign pledge to vote for Obama

Brevard Community College (BCC) has fired a professor after a school investigation concluded she required students to sign a pledge to vote for President Obama in the run-up to the 2012 election.

The school’s spokesman John Glisch, said the Board of Trustees voted Wednesday morning to terminate mathematics professor Sharon Sweet with an overwhelming vote.

“The board voted 3-1, with one member absent, to dismiss professor Sweet,” Glisch told Campus Reform Wednesday afternoon.

“The termination took effect immediately, ending pay and benefits for Sweet who had been suspended with pay under provisions of the United Faculty of Florida collective bargaining agreement with the college, pending the board’s decision,” the school added in a press release.

BCC was hurled into the national spotlight last year for Sweet’s actions after a Campus Reform exposé highlighted her alleged demand for students to support the Democratic Party in the 2012 elections.