A group of conservative students on a college campus decide to create a flier to hand out to other students. To attract attention to it, they shape it like money. In place of a dead president they put a live one, in fact the fellow currently holding the job. On the back they make their point: "Obama's stimulus plan makes your money as worthless as monopoly money." It helps that the acronym for this group, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club, sounds like a slang term for a dollar bill. They start to pass them out, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) tells us what happened next.

Bucknell administrator Judith L. Mickanis approached the students and told them that they were "busted," that they were "soliciting" without prior approval, and that their activity was equivalent to handing out Bibles.

The students protested, but despite the fact that Bucknell's solicitation policy explicitly covers only sales and fundraising materials, Mickanis insisted via e-mail that prior permission was needed to pass out any materials—"anything from Bibles to other matter."

"Distributing protest literature is an American free-speech tradition that dates to before the founding of the United States," said Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE's Individual Rights Defense Program. "And why is Bucknell so afraid of students handing out ‘Bibles [or] other matter' that might provide challenging perspectives? Colleges are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas, but Bucknell is betraying this ideal."

As is always the case on this blog, I point out that as a private university Bucknell can decide whatever they want on what can be handed out and what cannot by students. FIRE collects and posts a university's statements on free speech to its students, and for Bucknell they note this passage from the 2008-09 Student Handbook.

Freedom of speech here is understood not to be absolute: it must be integrated with other protections provided for the community in the Code of Conduct (such as the right to be free from harassment) and it must concord with the principles embodied in the Pledge of Student Responsibility. For example, the individual who directs epithets or threats at another cannot claim immunity under a perceived right of absolute free speech.

It should be noted that this statement parallels a statement on academic freedom that includes another qualifier (that academic freedom does not include the freedom to plagiarize.) That construction tells me that the writers of this student handbook meant there to be both academic freedom and free expression with provisions against unreasonable use of those terms (in their eyes.) So the question is whether or not it's unreasonable to think a student group can make a handout to give others that questions any social issue.

FIRE's press release goes on to discuss suppression by Bucknell of BUCC's attempts to hold an "affirmative action bake sale." While I don't find these sales to be particularly effective vehicles, Bucknell's prior censorship of the event intrigues me. Many women's groups use a candy bar handed out as a way of highlighting their perceived injustices in the rates of pay for men and women. Would Bucknell deny its Women's Center the right to hold such an event?

But it gets worse. Bucknell's administrators go so far as to require BUCC's free speech rights to take a particular form:

BUCC members filed an application to hold the same [bake sale] event two weeks later, but were then told that they would have to obtain the permission of the Dean of Students to hold a "controversial" event. No such permission is required by Bucknell policy. When the students nevertheless attempted to get this special permission, [Assoc. Dean of Students Gerald] Commerford rejected the request. In a recorded conversation, Commerford said that such a bake sale would violate Bucknell's nondiscrimination policy, even with satirical recommended (not actual) pricing, and that the only event he would approve on the topic would be a debate in a different forum altogether. This novel restriction also does not exist among Bucknell's official policies.

"Using this absurd logic, Bucknell would have to require its College Democrats to say nothing political on campus unless they give equal time to Republican candidates at their events, or its Catholic Campus Ministry to remain silent about abortion unless it holds a debate and invites pro-choice activists to speak at its events," Kissel said. "While students are free to host debates, they must not be required to provide a platform for their ideological opponents. Rather, those opponents must be free to spread their own messages and host their own events."

Bucknell's fear is that some student's discomfort with a conservative viewpoint will become vociferous, vile and potentially violent. So it tries to prevent that. But it has a student handbook that requires its students to sign a pledge of respect ALL other students:

As a member of the social community, I will respect individual differences and the rights of all others. I understand that bias on the basis of gender, handicapped status, national origin, race, religious belief, or sexual orientation, whether expressed in word or action, is repugnant, and that Bucknell will not tolerate harassment, discrimination, or violence against any person for any reason.

Is it as willing to enforce this against students who don't like cookies or funny money as it appears to be against conservative students?

Labels: higher education

One more day of grading then I'm done. In the meanwhile, two blogs I haven't visited in a while are back up and putting out good things:

1. I haven't visited the National Association of Scholars blog in awhile and after reading there have decided they need to be in the RSS reader. Let me in particular encourage those of you with high school juniors and seniors to consider putting this list of questions in your pocket. If you want to be non-confrontational or a bit sarcastic (your voice will make all the difference here), try "Do you have a tunnel of oppression?" or "What family planning services do you provide?" Or, if you like the more in-your-face approach, you could ask "Is this a right to carry campus?" (Mitch, I expect you to do this next year.) If you don't have such a college-ready student, give a read to what's going on at Macalester.
   
2. My colleague Ming Lo travels each summer, and each summer he blogs (then goes dormant for about ten months, a shame.) Ming and I both love Anthony Bourdain, and as a single, younger guy Ming is able to visit some pricier restaurants that Littlest's scholarship fund will not permit. From Las Vegas, He writes about Bouchon:
   

   Bouchon has a wonderful selection of fresh seafood. James and I love oysters, and we got a handful. For the main course, the other two picked the daily special pork tenderloin. I opted for the bistro favorite, steak-frites. Unlike an American steak house, French bistros do not offer different cuts. Primier cuts are usually offered at restaurants, a more formal eatery than bistros. But this is why certain cuisine is more highly regarded in terms of skill--how to make less desirable ingredients into great food. The steak at Bouchon was not too tender, more like a flank steak. The problem with lean and chewy meat is that it lacks either the taste (from the fat, like rib-eye) or the tenderness. But the chefs at Bouchon managed to make it as tender as possible while keeping the juice inside. Of course, the sauteed onion (almost mashed, in butter and red wine) definitely helped to enhance the experience.

   I'm not sure if Ming is misspelling or inventing with the word "primier", but works for me either way. Vegetarian moi gives most bistros a miss, but if you're a fan of the Paris cafe scene, this sounds like one more example of how Vegas recreates every other part of the world, which is the point of Ming's post.

Labels: food, higher education

In economics we have this argument about how much math our students should have when they take the principles, and how much they will need if they decide to become professional economists. Even among our majors, a majority go into jobs where little more than algebra will be required of them. Our experience in Minnesota has been that our students seem less well prepared in mathematics than ten to twenty years ago. In Minnesota we had planned to increase the amount of testing we did of students graduating high school. They would get a test (called the MCA-II) that is mandatory to pass in order to receive a high school diploma. Last year, pass rates on the 11th grade test were quite low, and there was concern that the standards would be watered down.

Buried in the omnibus education bill that was signed into law, those concerns were well founded.

...the Legislature recently decided that students no longer have to pass the 11th-grade math test -- many educators think it's too difficult -- and would have caused a precipitous drop in graduation rates next year.

Juniors already took their graduation math test this spring, and the statewide results for how well students performed come out in the next week or two.

The solution passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, however, could raise a few eyebrows: Students either have to pass the test once, or fail it three times, to graduate.

"They had to do something," said Don Pascoe, director of research, assessment and accountability for the Osseo schools. "They [had] set an extraordinarily challenging target for individuals to meet in order to graduate."

On the other hand, the short-term solution could send long-term mixed messages to kids about math, said Jim Bartholomew, the education policy director at the Minnesota Business Partnership.

"You're saying that we want and expect people to get to this level, to be able to pass this minimum competency test," he said. "Then on the other hand, you're saying 'But it doesn't really count.' "

That's right: three fails equals a pass. As if to help assure that it's too hard! the STrib reproduced four questions on the MCA-II practice test. I'll guess these to be cherry-picked; you can see a SAT math practice question from here; go here for the ACT. The questions the STrib chose are a little harder, but not unreasonable. (I'm having my 9th grader take these questions tonight; I'll report back what I find.)

It's worth noting that the passing standard for this test could have been adjusted if they thought it was a bit more challenging than expected. There are processes for norming a test to measure what you want. But the article makes it clear that you've got some social engineering going on behind these changes:

Last spring, only one-third of juniors were proficient on the state test. And the numbers were significantly worse for many low-income students and students of color.

Emphasis added. The soft bigotry of low expectations, anyone?

[Don] Pascoe [director of research, assessment and accountability for the Osseo schools] said Minnesota's math test is asking for too much. His own research has estimated that a student who just barely is proficient on the state math test would score in the 75th percentile on the ACT.

"One student's life goal was to be a cosmetologist, and the school she wanted to go to required a high school diploma," Pascoe said. "It would have been a real sin for her not to go to cosmetology school because she didn't have really strong math skills."

If his research was borne out, did it not make more sense to re-norm the test rather than pitch it away? And more disturbing: Does your 17-year-old ever get to aspire to something different than being a cosmetologist? Pascoe's reasoning is that this student should never have the tools for college because she made a decision to first try out for a cosmetology certificate.

Kent Pekel of the University of Minnesota says at the end of the article: "When we decide that every kid doesn't need to be educated to that level, we really make the decision for that kid about what they want to do, long before they can make it for themselves."

We've had this discussion before: Algebra is not negotiable. I wrote then:

...we in economics have debates over how much math students should know. And we do negotiate over calculus. But "the ability to manipulate values by a set of logical rules" is not negotiable. If we wish to have a workforce that can compete globally, we must have workers who can think about values and symbols and perform some analysis on them.

Is there any reason to believe, in the three years since I wrote that, that the need for those workers has gone down?

Labels: higher education

Here's a fun story with just one thing missing.  See if you can figure it out.

Labels: higher education

Bloomberg ran a story Friday that shows how private schools got caught up in the financial ease of the mid-2000s and now stand near extinction. Its lead example is Simmons College:

Simmons, founded in 1899, educates a mix of 1,900 female undergraduates and 2,800 graduate students. Its women-only undergraduate liberal arts program accepts 56 percent of applicants; top-tier schools accept fewer than 20 percent. Simmons has five graduate schools, from the 200-student School of Management to the 1,100-student College of Arts & Sciences Graduate Studies.

Colleges like Simmons -- mainly undergraduate schools offering some master’s degree programs -- are in the worst financial shape, according to Kneedler’s analysis. They turned to borrowing for the amenities they used to entice students to small programs. Now, they’re drowning in debt, Kneedler says.

Simmons President Helen Drinan says she hopes the new building and accreditation in March by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business will make it easier to market the School of Management to prospective students. The school hired Deloitte LLP’s higher education advisory unit to suggest ways to navigate its current bind and to find further savings.

If these ideas don’t work, the business school may have to go co-ed or abandon its emphasis on MBAs to focus on undergraduate business degrees.

Drinan bets Simmons won’t have to go that route. It should be able to keep its undergraduate enrollment steady and increase students in its graduate programs, including the business school, she says.

“If that school cannot grow, then we have another decision to make,” she says. “There’s been a lot of political anxiety around campus over the fact that the School of Management is a relatively small program. Now we’re in a position to say, ‘Let’s run with it.’”

Like the housing bubble, Simmons’s woes started with easy credit. The school borrowed more than $140 million, tripling its debt in the seven years through 2008. It added classrooms connected via wireless networks. It renovated its library. And it spruced up its student center with a coffee bar and mix-your- own-milkshake cafeteria.

“That was a pretty bold borrowing strategy,” Kneedler says.

Simmons followed suit as U.S. colleges jacked up tuition by an average of 3 percent above inflation every year. It counted on a rising endowment, parents’ bull-market-fed wealth and burgeoning private loans that more than doubled student debt from 1998 to 2008.

Simmons raised annual tuition and living expenses to $41,500 in 2008, 22 percent above the $34,132 average for private colleges. Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, the costliest U.S. school, charged $53,166 last year.

Then credit markets collapsed. Simmons -- and even better- known schools such as nearby Boston University -- felt the aftershocks. Like many now-struggling companies and municipalities, Simmons had sold variable-rate bonds and hedged against rising interest rates through swap agreements, which fixed interest costs for the school.

When rates fell, Simmons owed more than $10 million on the swaps. When it refinanced the bonds, it had to accept more than triple the interest rate it had been paying before the crisis. Drinan expects to settle the swap with bankrupt Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. at a lower cost.

Wall Street provided the tools for schools to take advantage of cheap credit. Bankers introduced college finance executives to the interest-rate swaps and similar innovations that are now costing colleges, says Andrew Evans, vice president for finance at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

I have a niece at Simmons and thus more than a passing interest in the school. It's a common story though: In a period of easy credit, inexperienced investors are lured to take on risks for which they are ill-suited and ill-prepared, in part to keep up with competitors or neighbors. When the investments turn against the neophyte, bad things happen. And like many other businesses, colleges have to retrench, figure out how to survive. In Simmons case, its undergraduate programs, which are highly regarded in New England, are not the revenue generators that graduate programs can be.

Most businesses would, in an environment like this, be led to increase their efficiency, but you see damn little of it. A new report on colleges and cost control included two quotes from a survey of college faculty (both teaching in four-year schools):

I think there are maybe some things we could do at the margin to improve our efficiency a little bit, but I think huge moves in the direction of cost-effectiveness are going to translate into watered-down quality.

This drive for business efficiency is not necessarily compatible with good education.

It's not just recalcitrant or resistant faculty. Inside Higher Ed noted last week that presidents and chief budget officers all believe they've done all they can, all the efficiencies have been achieved already. So we will try to cram more students into a classroom maybe (in my own department where I schedule about fifty classes a semester, our limit is set mostly by room size and where we have rooms with the technology the faculty want to teach with -- you're welcome to wonder why labor gets to pick its own technology) but cutting away unessential programs just isn't on the radar. Like Simmons, most schools are doubling down on expanding programs that sell to the over-30 crowd, many of whom come with dollars from their employers. (Thus their chase of AACSB accreditation.)

That will work well if the economy turns around and the employers can put dollars in their managers' hands to get additional training and MBAs. But universities traditionally have been countercyclical businesses; to save itself, some of these schools are making themselves more pro-cyclical.

Labels: higher education

I was last here for the same meetings four years ago, and at that time I didn't blog much because of cost.  The hotel now offers the T-Mobile plan, which I find at right at my reservation price.  (Quick principles of economics question:  Why do more expensive hotels charge for internet access but the cheaper ones advertise free internet?  Answers in comments please.)

These meetings are not just economists -- indeed, we're a minority here.  So the opening reception last night is a great bit of anthropology of social scientists, as are the book displays.  I get a better understanding of why the natural sciences view us as not up to their standards.  I'll bring pictures later.

Old Town was delightful last night, and for the vegetarians who are sometimes put off by not being able to get red or green chili no carne, let me send you to the Church Street Cafe.  We were three loud and hungry economists, and yet we got great service anyway and the vegetarian red chili sauce was outstanding on my vegetarian rellenos.  

So I missed the Tea Party.  See Leo for video and pictures and a description of the St. Cloud version.  You had to look hard to find any coverage in this morning's USA Today on my doorstep (that's why I typically toss the other three sections of that paper, keeping only sports.)  A few people have told me about this video, I'm off to watch it now then taking the taxpayer-subsidized train to Santa Fe for sightseeing, as all my sessions are tomorrow.  Thanks, taxpayers of New Mexico!

Labels: economics, higher education

...is Bill Ayers. He was banned from speaking at Boston College over security concerns surrounding a Boston police officer who was killed decades ago. A talk show host tied the killing to the Weather Underground and by logical extension to Ayers. So the school canceled the talk on campus and is trying to find him a space off campus. This is ridiculous, as we noted when Bay Buchanan was denied to speak at St. Catherine's.

AAUP President Cary Nelson is wondering where the limit to the heckler's veto is. Yet on our campus we have a heckler's veto, as witnessed by the "wall" created in reaction to an ugly racist smear left on a classroom project. Allowing Churchill, Ayers, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or George Rockwell to a campus is permitted, says Prof. Nelson, but because the student(?) who wrote on that wall has no constituency, we can heckle him to our hearts' content?

The students of that class that created the project are now distributing green bracelets to represent WE ARE ONE: NO HATE ON CAMPUS". Really? I am curious why Prof. Nelson failed to put David Horowitz on his list? They certainly know each other.

I am willing to have Bill Ayers speak at SCSU. Happy, in fact. You take the power away from monsters by demystifying them. But we so fear our own reaction to monsters that we instead erect walls, and then we have the Cary Nelsons decide whose wall we should tear down: a plagiarist, a cop-killer, the president of a fascist organization, the anti-Semite president of a country, or a student who writes an ugly racist epithet. Who benefits? Not the plagiarist or the cop-killer. Not the Rockwells or Ahmadinejads. And certainly not the student.

Labels: higher education

The campus is abuzz over yet another piece of ugly graffiti.

A class studying civil rights activist Dorothy Irene Height’s life and legacy stood up to the person who perpetrated the most recent act of cowardly graffiti on the St. Cloud State University campus.

Several students in a class called Race in America, without prompting from university administrators, banded together to immediately and publicly denounce a racist message posted on a bulletin board honoring Height’s accomplishments. They left the racist vandal some graffiti of their own.

“Not true. Not funny. Not OK in my community,” read one.

“Racism is ignorance,” read another.

“Man up,” another read. “Do you talk to your mother with that mouth?”

The student-driven outcry spread through text messages, e-mails, Twitter and Facebook early this week and continued Wednesday. By Wednesday evening, students had left more than 100 notes for the unknown racist.

This is the very same bulletin board we discussed last year; I know the professor and the class, and saw the board before the graffiti and the response. The display had once again the amateur drawings, but in this case laying out the life of a woman whose story wasn't very well known, and perhaps did need to be more known. Unlike last year's, this display had the quality of telling a biography in an informative way. (I'll suggest someone from that class should spiff up her Wiki page; they seem to have learned enough to improve on this.)

There's no doubt that the person who chose to scrawl graffiti on that display deserves condemnation. One hopes that the student would receive instruction on why that's not the way to engage those with whom you disagree.

But really, "the unknown racist"? Isn't this a bit extreme? I saw a couple of groups, lead by faculty, walking past the display. (UPDATE: Stepped out for a few minutes and found the professor with some of her class, filming statements around the display: They've announced they will be put up on Facebook and Twitter.) The notes pasted up are by and large of the "that ain't cool, man" variety, but a few would suggest something more angry. One of the short stories I read in an English class (I think in high school) was The Lottery. Does anyone assign this any more? Do students have an appreciation of how groupthink can lead sometimes to mob violence? The question is, does one graffito make a racist, known or unknown?

It intrigued me that in this story -- unlike any stories ever written about crime, for instance -- the race of each student quoted in the story is identified. Sure, I understand the reason being to show solidarity, unity in opposing racism. But have we now reached a point where journalistic standards will include a style sheet saying when it's OK to recognize race and when it's not OK?

A few days ago James Taranto commented on a similar story, an AP report that despite the existence of President Obama not all jokes about race have stopped whizzing over the internet. He traces out the history of the United States and notes:

How far does America still have to go to bridge its centuries-old racial divide? Liz Sidoti answers the question:

Even in 2009, a black man cannot become president of the United States without some knuckleheads sending stupid emails about him.

To be sure, America has made some racial progress. But the dream of equality will not be truly and fully realized until President Obama's political detractors treat him with the same respect George W. Bush's detractors showed him.

Like all colleges, our university has many young people, learning about what it means to be an educated person, engaging in self-expression. We have classes that teach about race mandated for every student, but reacting with this mass expression to any dissent to it. Our university's goal may be to reduce racism in one place, but a policy of zero expresssions of racial slurs is a chimera. We are human beings, fallen from Eden. Most of us resist sin some of the time; none of us resist all sin all the time. How should a university treat one of its students -- if indeed that's who it is -- who falls, who fails?

SCSU may think it is overcoming racism with its hallway displays. But if we're ever going to really overcome racism, it will be when we stop looking for the guy who drew the graffito with stones in our hands or fury in our pens and markers, and can instead embrace him or her with the same love and discipline (law and gospel, if you will) that we show any other wayward child, and it stops being a news story.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The National Association of Scholars argues no. At Virginia Tech, official documents for promotion and tenure say, however, that “diversity accomplishments are especially important for candidates seeking promotion to full professor. ... Committees are asked to develop working expectations for department members, perhaps sharing good examples, and to review diversity contributions included in the dossier with those expectations in mind.” The provost of the school is insisting that it's only a suggestion. Um, doesn't look it to me.

Labels: higher education

What more can I say?

A new national survey of faculty members shows that the proportion of professors who believe it is very important to teach undergraduates to become "agents of social change" is substantially larger than the proportion who believe it is important to teach students the classic works of Western civilization.

According to the survey, 57.8 percent of professors believe it is important to encourage undergraduates to become agents of social change, whereas only 34.7 percent said teaching them the classics is very important. Observers say the difference results from influences as diverse as conservative criticisms of curriculum and Barack Obama's call for social activism during his presidential campaign.

The survey found that, on the issue of classics and change, professors' opinions also vary by rank. Full professors are more likely than assistant professors to say teaching the classics is important, and assistant professors are more likely than full professors to say encouraging undergraduates to become socially involved is important.

Source, based on this survey. As George Stigler once said, the typical college catalog would not stop Diogenes in his search for an honest man. Ben Rogge, economist and former dean at Wabash College, used that quote in an excellent commencment speech, The Promise of the College, on what students should expect from university studies. Included was this caution:

One of the ways in which colleges (and college faculties in particular) have become corrupt in recent years has been the way in which they have sought to woo their students to their personal causes by assuring the students that they, the young, are possessed of a mystical wisdom, a godlike, compassionate understanding of life denied to all over age twenty-two, except of course those few adults who share the vision. This I believe to be nonsense.

Young people, and I mean you, are capable of being intelligent, courageous, selfless, and dedicated, but are not usually marked by the qualities of wisdom, tolerance, kindness and true compassion. I cannot urge you too strongly to beware of all adults who flatter you and tell you of your wisdom: we seek but to enlist you in our causes, whether of the left or the right or the middle, and we do not honestly believe you to be wise—nor are you, as a matter of fact.

To know more, yet to know how little you know—is that all there is to it?

Yes, that's about it. To know more may not be much and it may not be directly useful in the way the world measures usefulness, but at least it's something. To know more is at least to live an examined rather than an unexamined life; to live in an examined world rather than an unexamined world. In a world in which most human beings are said to live lives of quiet desperation, surely there is something to be said for this increased awareness, this increased perception of shades of meaning, of shades of beauty and ugliness and dissonance, of shades of dignity and integrity and vulgarity and hypocrisy.

Labels: higher education

We know that the state is already in place to pick up $1.3 million of the federal stimulus spending aimed at supporting state budgets. From faculty union sources I've learned that there is an additional $669 million in spending for K-12 and higher ed. But that requires the legislature and Governor Pawlenty to keep spending at 2008-09 levels. So for instance, the governor's budget sought base spending reductions of $73 million for the next biennium for MnSCU; that would have to be rescinded to get that $669. So too would cuts to the U of M. And it would delay the day of reckoning on the higher ed budget. I probably don't have the exact net gain or loss figured in here, but that $669 is not a free lunch.

Also, the federal stimulus bill raised Pell grants by $500. That can be used to shift off spending by the Office of Higher Education on state grants. According to thesame union sources, that might be another $69 million. The temptation will be, of course, to shift that money out of higher education.

Labels: higher education, Minnesota

Prof. David Colander writes that at Middlebury College, his school which has no business major, his majors believe the undergraduate economics degree has the right amount of academic rigor.

At Middlebury, the economics department continually gets students who were planning to major in science until they discovered that in a science major, they would be expected to make a deep commitment to future graduate work. (How deep is that commitment? Students told me that one science student at Middlebury was informed that he would not have time to participate in a sport and also be a science major.)

As chair of the economics department, I am frequently asked by my dean to figure out ways to reduce the number of economics majors — the administration simply refuses to keep increasing the number of economics faculty members. I propose that the solution does not lie in changing the economics major, but in making other majors "just right" as well.

To that end, I asked my students why they considered the other social sciences easy. The answer was twofold. First, far fewer courses in those fields are taught quantitatively than is the case in economics, even though much of the relevant research work is highly quantitative. Other social-science curricula could challenge students more by adding some applied-statistics, math, or computer-science courses as standard requirements. The second reason my students considered the other majors too easy was that they believed the grading standards were undemanding. If they are right, those standards could be raised. For example, social-science courses could require students to write substantial papers that are subject to rigorous standards of logic and exposition.

When I asked my students how the natural sciences could become "just right" majors, they suggested that those departments focus less on training future scientists and more on educating future citizens about the exciting developments in science today. That way, science majors would be able to wait to become scientists in graduate school; they could learn about science during their undergraduate years.

We have a college of business, and the economics department is not in it, so our story is quite different. I suspect the rest of the university would like our business school to be smaller. But besides the obvious benefit of teaching economics to their students, a business school contains many of the students who would also be interested in economics. While some of our best students are like Middlebury's, where students flee the natural sciences (or math and statistics) to have something that feels as rigorous but allows more freedom of thought and perhaps a more engaging subject matter, most of our students come from those who find there to be TOO much emphasis on careers in management or finance. There's just lots of things you can do with an economics degree. And no matter if you're at a school like Middlebury, a Harvard, or St. Cloud State, there are good students who want all those options.

Labels: economics, higher education

..."because I made the whole thing up."

Just days before DFL caucusing begins for Minneapolis City Council elections, Charles Carlson — University of Minnesota student and Minnesota representative at the Democratic National Convention — said he will announce Monday his withdrawal from the Ward 2 councilmember race following a series of lies regarding his past and his qualifications.

...Carlson, who speaks with an English accent, previously claimed he grew up in Ramsgate, England, but admitted recently that he grew up in the United States.

The Daily confirmed that Carlson attended elementary school, middle schools and high schools throughout Minnesota, including Northfield High School, where a former classmate said Carlson did not have an accent. Also, the classmate did not have any knowledge of Carlson previously living in England.

In a Feb. 1 Daily article, Carlson said his English background would help him connect with the 2nd Ward’s immigrant population.

Carlson also provided the Daily with two fraudulent transcripts to Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and Princeton University. These schools, along with two other English schools he claimed to have attended, had no record of Carlson.

Carlson said he has been diagnosed with schizophrenia affective disorder, which impacts an individual’s ability to accurately judge reality. Although he said he did not know whether it has affected his perception, he admitted in a recent interview to making false claims in an attempt to hide a “messy past,” which Carlson said included two years in a mental institution.

“I spent six years being a gay nothing that people just made fun of, and then when I was discharged I found out that people would believe anything you told them,” he said. “And in an effort to substantiate who I am, to be something, I went too far.”

...“This campaign was never about me, it was really about the fact that I felt students were being neglected,” Carlson said. “I’m very sorry for not being honest.”

I hope Mr. Carlson, age 23, gets the help he needs. It appears he was diagnosed properly and, while it doesn't seem he was institutionalized more than a couple of months he was under care and given a guardian. He actually is correct that people want to believe things you tell them about yourself, and a good story will seldom be checked.

But I do like the "the campaign was never about me" part. Look, son, in politics it's ALWAYS about you. Where did you learn that lying about yourself was acceptable if the ends were right? My first suspect: University.

(h/t: Tony.)

Labels: higher education

The title of this post is my normal response to students who seek higher grades because "I tried really hard on this assignment" or give me a measure of hours worked. If that was the decisionmaking process, we would have you take your homeworks online and have your time studying measured by the computer. (We'd have to figure out that you were actually reading the screens, but it's doable.) Alternatively, you could come to a study center and punch in on a time clock. I would hire a monitor to make sure you aren't slacking, and grades would be assigned based on hours punched in.

This is, I hope you'll agree, absurd.

This article talks about students who nevertheless believe that arguments from inputs should count in what has become the all-too-common grade negotiation. I took two grades, as far as I remember, from college below a B. I worked harder in those two classes than any of the others because I knew I was having trouble. And I did not argue either one; indeed, the D in Fortran programming was probably gentlemanly.

Two quotes stick out:

“I tell my classes that if they just do what they are supposed to do and meet the standard requirements, that they will earn a C,” he said. “That is the default grade. They see the default grade as an A.”

I have tried to overcome this by telling students they start with zero and must reach certain marks to attain grades. (I don't use curves for grading.) Never use -2 or -5 when grading. Give +7 or +2 instead. Add, don't subtract. A dean at Vanderbilt in the article uses the right noun-verb combination: "students make grades," not "teachers give grades."

Jason Greenwood, a senior kinesiology major at the University of Maryland echoed that view.

“I think putting in a lot of effort should merit a high grade,” Mr. Greenwood said. “What else is there really than the effort that you put in?”

“If you put in all the effort you have and get a C, what is the point?” he added. “If someone goes to every class and reads every chapter in the book and does everything the teacher asks of them and more, then they should be getting an A like their effort deserves. If your maximum effort can only be average in a teacher’s mind, then something is wrong.”

Sarah Kinn, a junior English major at the University of Vermont, agreed, saying, “I feel that if I do all of the readings and attend class regularly that I should be able to achieve a grade of at least a B.”

These students have not been taught correctly. Freshman classes are meant to impart values for learning, and one of them is "you are graded in life on what you accomplish, not how much sweat you produced."

Labels: higher education

Following up on my post about the Gaza victims Qassam-launchers-shielded-by-children panel, I had noted the impassioned response of the director of religious and Jewish studies, who had tried to attend the panel and ask a question about the poster. He got loud after his question was ignored by the panelists, and was asked to leave by campus security. His response was to hold his own panel. Unapologetic, he explained,

"I asked those leading the panel to please help me understand what these pictures had to do with this event," Edelheit said. "If there was a direct answer to my question I would have left - it would have taken less than three minutes."

...Questions were raised as to why Edelheit has not organized or spoken on the same panel with Slisli and Tademe last Wednesday. Edelheit responded by saying he was refused and opportunity to be on the panel, but it has not been the first time Slisli and Tademe have denied him.

"I made a decision last Wednesday because these two professors have, for five years, ignored me and repudiated my presence on this campus," Edelheit said.

Having two separate presentations about the same topic negates the potential usefulness of a public forum, according to Edelheit.

"Separate discussions are fruitless," Edelheit said.

And there, in a nutshell, is the problem of university campuses. What is desired, a sharing of views, is not really the interest of the Left on campus. The last thing they want is intellectual diversity. They want separatism. Their students should be shielded from conservative thought, from anything that might interfere with the campus Left's fawning over Hamas. I'd like to thank Professor Edelheit for pointing out the real apartheid on our campuses, rather than this faux one the Left is inventing. (And it's not new, as this article from 1990 shows.)

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The authors of The Diversity Challenge followed 2,000 UCLA students for five years in order to see how diversity affects identities, attitudes, and group conflicts over time. They found that racial prejudice generally decreased with exposure to the ethnically diverse college environment. Students who were randomly assigned to roommates of a different ethnicity developed more favorable attitudes toward students of different backgrounds, and the same associations held for friendship and dating patterns. By contrast, students who interacted mainly with others of similar backgrounds were more likely to exhibit bias toward others and perceive discrimination against their group. Likewise, the authors found that involvement in ethnically segregated student organizations sharpened perceptions of discrimination and aggravated conflict between groups.

An interview from the Chronicle of Higher Education (temp link) expands on this point:

Our results in The Diversity Challenge show fairly convincingly that, while such organizations also have some positive benefit (in terms of increased attachment to the university as an institution), there are also clear negative results among both white and minority student groups. Although the negative effects of Greek-group membership seem a little more toxic among white students, the negative effects on intergroup attitudes of these group memberships seem fairly similar among both white and minority student groups. The mediating mechanism seems to be the same among both types of student groups. This is to say that relatively high ethnic identification leads students to join ethnically oriented groups, and once in the groups, ethnic identification increases further, leading in turn to an increased sense of ethnic victimization.

In terms of policy recommendations, it is very unlikely that university administrations will be able to ban ethnically oriented student organizations. Rather, I would recommend that university administrators do as little as possible to encourage the formation of such groups. For those ethnically oriented groups that continue to exist nonetheless, there should be affirmative effort expended to increase the level of interethnic contact for members of such organizations.

The authors follow UCLA students for about six years from their entry to university and find several other patterns:

• exposure to Asian students, whom the authors find to be "the most ethnocentric and xenophobic attitudes of all major student categories" leads to increased prejudice against blacks and Latinos. Asians tend to think of themselves as Thai, Chinese, etc., while Latinos and blacks think of themselves more pan-ethnically.
  
• a student's reaction to being an "affirmative action admission" is complex. If you think you got in for that reason and worry about it, it negatively affects your grade. But attitude matters: If the student doesn't concern yourself over the possibility of confirming negative stereotypes, there's no effect on GPA.
• the authors say students become "more liberal, less ethnocentric and less racist" over time as a general rule. It's not clear why they become less conservative, nor do the researchers concern themselves with any implied bias therein. To them, it seems only natural.

My thanks to reader jw for the link.

Labels: higher education

Departments on our campus are trying to raise revenue, and one way is through differential program-based tuition.

SCSU's art department currently charges $20 per credit for non-general education courses as a part of program-based tuition, a program they started in spring 2007. It is in the process of increasing that number to $26 per credit starting fall 2009.

This cost is similar to the technology fee all students pay to use the open labs on campus, only it is used for specific departments to help pay for service materials. It replaces any course fees students previously had to pay to cover costs of materials needed for class, including computers.

David Sebberson, art department chair, is trying to get another computer lab for his department. "It's all about timing," he said. "The university hasn't figured out a good way to fund and support department based computers."

The open labs, funded by the technology fee are replaced every three years, while department materials get replaced whenever they can fit it in the budget. Program-based tuition has increased the art department's budget by $130,000.

With the extra $6 per a student, the second computer lab could be constructed and over the next few years, the software can be purchased as well as other new equipment.

With the status of the economy, one would think the extra costs with program-based tuition would turn people away from departments that use it, but Sebberson said the opposite has been true for those in art majors.

"Enrollment has continued to increase," he said, with the number of credits generated increasing by 1,000 from the 2006 school year to the 2007 school year.

The nursing science department started program-based tuition in spring 2007 as well, charging $25 per credit.

The mass communications department is following suit, currently in the process of shifting to program-based tuition planning $25 per credit, getting rid of the existing course fees.

We're told we can't do this because a student paying a higher tuition is going to have to get something extra. Because the art student takes home a painting or a clay ashtray you can nick him an extra $78 for your usual three-credit class. What about art appreciation courses? What do they take home? Because we don't give them software, our department is told it cannot collect to support software for teaching econometrics and forecasting.

Of course, the departments are trying to collect revenue without reflecting any of the cost. Those extra 1000 credits the art department teaches requires someone to teach them. Is that an extra faculty member? What did that person cost? Did those students make the classroom more crowded and reduce learning for those already there? How much did that cost? And what if demand for art went up -- how much would enrollment have risen in the absence of the fee?

I don't see differential tuition as a big problem; you can cure a lot of congestion in popular classes with it. I suspect this is in fact what we're seeing, at least with nursing and mass comm: two popular programs that are competitive to enter and from which departments are collecting rents. But universities produce students jointly across departments. The math department puts valuable skills into my economics majors. I'd like them to be subsidized. My principles classes put some logic and critical thinking skills into the person taking art appreciation, but I don't get the art department's money.

Labels: higher education

Click to enlarge. This was distributed this morning as an announcement to our campus. Your suggestions for how to respond are invited in comments. I support campus free speech. I also think the comparison drawn is outrageous and disgusting. Beyond saying so, what does one say or do?

Labels: fill-in-the-blank studies, free speech, higher education, SCSU, totalitarianism

Our friends at the Kool Aid Report (who, by the way, would like me to remind you that Learned Foot was the winner of our sparsely-competed Bowl Mania Challenge earlier this month), have been sponsoring a Blogs for Mirth Day. Try as I will, I guess I'm not fly enough to get that FAQ.

But I thought they might like a story.

On Tuesday the Women's Center at SCSU -- whose ad for this event prefaced their existence by saying they work "with passion and purpose to end sexist oppression" advertised an event on campus titled The Female Orgasm! The exclamation mark was in the title; given the title, it hardly seemed necessary. Event description:

Join us to laugh and learn about the "big O," the most popular topic sex educators Marshall Miller and Dorian Solot teach about!

Orgasm aficionados and beginners of all genders are welcome to come learn about everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot.

Whether you want to learn how to have your first orgasm, how to have better ones, or how to help your girlfriend, Dorian and Marshall cover it all with lots of humor, plenty of honesty, and an underlying message of sexual health and women's empowerment.

Are you coming?

Again, I have to wonder: Had SCSU a Men's Center, and had it an event celebrating the male orgasm, what would be the reaction of the campus community. In the case of this event, the university yawned.

The couple apparently has made a small industry of these presentations. Undoubtedly the sex education business could use improvement (I have kids, I hear what they think they know ... and I correct when I can), and I guess it's fine to hire out to someone to do this function for you. One wonders why the theme is so, well, explicit, and what it has to do with a Women's Center that says its mission is to fight sexist oppression. They suggest using either a women's center or a GLBTQ-L.S.M.F.T. group to help raise the money, so I will guess this isn't the only time.

I figured I wouldn't pay this program much attention. The ad wasn't all that tasteful, and I figured if I hadn't known what I needed to know in two marriages I was beyond help. However, one bit of excitement (!) was that the flyer said there were t-shirts and buttons. I simply had to know -- what could they be? And so we procured a couple of shirts.
To Brother Foot, who won that contest and who has long been as big a feminist as Mitch Berg I say, sir, this is the mirth I offer you today. One of these shirts shall be yours to wear.* The other will be used as a prize, as you see fit, for the next MilF. I could not think of a better use for them. Happy Mirth-day to you. Send email to arrange collection of your prize.

*regrettably these came in large. I had no reports of XLs of these babies anywhere. Maybe XLs do not love them.

Labels: higher education, humor

FIRE has been sending letters to public universities, including ours, that updates the schools on the latest in campus free speech rulings from DeJohn v Temple.

The basic point is that for too long, our nation's public colleges and universities have completely ignored the fact that as government institutions, they are legally required to be in full compliance with the First Amendment. That these public institutions have continued to maintain unconstitutional restrictions on student speech—despite over twenty years of federal caselaw striking down speech codes!—is an affront to our legal system, a black mark on our public system of education, and an embarrassment for our nation.

No doubt the university is more focused on budget issues than speech codes right now, but following court decisions should not be optional for universities. The letter will serve as notice that free speech advocates will be on the lookout for violations, including at SCSU, which still has a "red light" for its speech code from FIRE.

(h/t: reader jw)

Labels: higher education

Let me give a more local view of the hagiography of Obama. Over the weekend a small debate on campus broke out over Inauguration Day events being offered by the multicultural student services office here on campus (and some viewing opportunities through the student programming board.) Classes were invited. Some people wondered why we are doing this.

Undoubtedly some of the fascination with Obama is race. How could anyone think not? So when we have groups on campus dedicated to advocacy for particular races (called "underrepresented" or "historically underserved" or some such), celebrations of an advance of those races is to be expected. Tuesday is a great day for many reasons -- it reminds us of the robustness of our democracy, for one thing, and for another it marks an important expansion of political participation that we could not have imagined fifty years ago. So I do not have any problem that student organizations organized on race -- of which we have all but one, as there's no white student organization; just as Indoctrinate U pointed out, we have no male analog to a Women's Center -- celebrate the accomplishments of that race.

Is this hagiography evidence of left bias in the university? I don't know. When you have Obama visiting the Post and they snap cellphone pictures like ten-year-old girls at a Jonas Brothers concert, it's hard to blame a university for setting up a few big-screen TVs to watch an inauguration. It just reflects the mood of the times.

Nor would I complain greatly of having students taken from a classroom to watch the Inauguration, provided that the course is one for which presidential inaugurations or race relations was germane to the topic. I would ask, if a chemistry professor took her class to this event, what the Inauguration has to do with chemistry. I teach economics of developing countries tomorrow, 12:30-1:45. I will not take my class to it; we will have our normal lecture. That's my contract with them and what the state pays me to do. If students want to cut class and watch the Inauguration it is their right to do so. As with any other class, I do not incentivize absenteeism by sending out notes ex post or answer emails of "what did we do in class today?" Nor will I tomorrow. But that's my decision, based on what I see my contractual and ethical duties to be to my employer and to my students.

So while some, including some campus readers of this blog, have questioned the events, I see no reason to complain about it. But two last observations that are less positive about the events on campus. First, I think it's fair for one to wonder how many classes will take advantage of this. It may be many. Faculty these days tend to think more about the object of study than the disciplines with which they study. They can justify taking the students to view the Inauguration by saying something like "I study current events". All of the fill-in-the-blank studies programs will have no problem providing some rationale. It is this lack of disciplinarity that, in my view, is cheapening college education. Lacking a discipline means lacking its ethical standards. That is stuff out of the toothpaste tube, alas, not likely to ever be put back in.

Second, in the course of defending the campus viewing opportunities, one professor wrote this:

I would hope the majority of those who did not vote for Barack Obama did not "not vote" for him because he is an African American. And of course, now he is President elect for all Americans, not just those of us who voted for him.

How unfortunate a paragraph. 56 million people voted for someone other than Obama, and each one of them now has to be judged by the anointed like this professor. Did a few vote for McCain because Obama was black? I suspect so. But did a majority of those who did not vote for John McCain not vote for him because McCain is white? Did a majority of those who work in multicultural student services "not vote" for McCain because of race? These questions are absurd, of course. So is the question implied in the quote.

If Obama is going to be a post-racial president, he needs to work on professors who cast aspersions on those who might have voted for McCain because they don't like trillion dollar stimulus bills, or who think a 72-year-old guy has more experience than a guy who writes a biography before he has one, or who thinks the guy with military experience might be better for national security than the guy without. Nobody should have to prove those reasons were not rationalizations for racial animus.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

1. Grade.
2. Final Word, 3-5pm Saturday, AM1280.
3. Fill out Boehner's form.

I'll let you know how 1 and 3 go on Monday. See you then.

Labels: AM1280, economics, higher education

Gary writes today about how a community college has adopted the Academic Bill of Rights and is being attacked by its faculty. The ABOR has been mentioned here many times (most notably here and here) and people will know I'm not a fan of it. It's almost identical (#7 of the list was dropped, I don't know why) at pages 258-59 of the board of trustees' policy statement. But if the arguments against it are what David Horowitz tells us, that its inclusion would mean legislators can dictate whether creationism is taught in a college classroom, then the pro-ABOR people may win because the antis are arguing nonsense. The only argument in ABOR about curriculum is limited to "the humanities and social sciences" if you read the original at item #4. The broader protection against indoctrination has been the focus of this blog for the last six years (this is my answer to Gary's request for information from "anyone who has firsthand knowledge of professors using intimidation tactics on students." NoIndoctrination.org has done it even longer.) The best protection is to have well-read students who speak for themselves, not a balkanized faculty of Department of Conservative Studies versus Department of The Rest of the University.

Labels: higher education

There's a course on campus called "Sociology and The Global Politics of Food".  It's not taught in the political science program but in the sociology department.  That in and of itself isn't the interesting part.  Social sciences often try to blur the lines between disciplines -- economics departments are as imperial as any of them (public choice in politics, experimental economics in psychology, etc.)  Nor do I really concern myself with the politics or the sociology.  Here's what they did this year for class projects.

Outside the faculty office of the instructor (one of those offices festooned with leftist propaganda) was something that looks like a bookmark (a strip on thick paper.)  On one side were "resources" with names of a number of local areas that appear to be related to food (not all are obviously connected, but I'll assume they are.)  On the other side are "Action Steps".  This is the list:

• Visit websites of hunger-relief organizations to learn what they do and how you can best help them.
• Host a "virtual lunch".  Decide how much it would cost to host a lunch with friends and then donate that money to a food shelf or food bank.
• Host a money drive in your school, work or faith community and see if your company will match the funds.
• Donate 10% of your grocery expenditures to your local hunger relief organization.
• Donate a grocery gift card to your local food shelf so they are able to purchase the items they need the most.
• Donate a gas card to a program that delivers meals to people in the community.
• Encourage your book club to focus one of their book choices on the issues of hunger and poverty.  Take it one step further and have your book club members organize a money drive or volunteer at a hunger relief organization.

I like that list. These are good things and I hope people do them. Here's my question: Does this constitute something we do in a public university?  What is the purpose of higher education -- to organize a food drive?  To say "if you liked what you learned in my class, you will give more to charity"?  I cannot imagine teaching a course where, among the items I give students or make available to students -- perhaps this professor distributed this in class, perhaps not -- I cannot imagine giving a student an "action step".  

Robert George writes:

Of course, what goes on ... in far too many classrooms is radically different from the classical understanding of the goal of liberal arts education, which is not to liberate us to act on our desires, but precisely to liberate us from slavery to them. Personal authenticity, under the traditional account, consists in self-mastery—in placing reason in control of desire.  

How can it be liberating to enter into the great conversation with Plato and his interlocutors? According to the classic liberal-arts ideal, doing so enables us to grasp more fully the humanizing truths by which we can direct our desires and our wills to what is truly good, beautiful, worthy of human beings as possessed of profound and inherent dignity. The liberal-arts ideal is rooted in the conviction that there are human goods, and a common good, in light of which we have reasons to limit and even alter our desires, thus becoming masters of ourselves.

Now if you accept this ideal, you are seeking answers to the question: What qualities make for an upright life?

This appears to support telling people to donate to food shelves, but the purpose of education is to give students the opportunity to "place reason ahead of desire" by their own lights.  Telling them what "action steps" they can take is not something that belongs in a university where we are developing reason and intellect of young adults attempting to transform themselves.   Telling them what to do is something we do in kindergarten.  By the time they're 21, we hope they don't need someone to give them action steps.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is why we all read The Onion: A colleague points out this article (NSFW), which he posted in our mailroom replacing math with econ and inserting a St. Cloud byline. It's the week before finals.

Labels: higher education

While Minnesota continues to buzz about the Williams Wall and Starcaps (not steroids, I recognize, but part of that issue), there is also a debate on how students use drugs as performance enhancers. A group of scientists are now suggesting that it's OK for healthy students to use the same drugs that are typically reserved for use by elderly and children with brain disorders.

"We should welcome new methods of improving our brain function," and doing it with pills is no more morally objectionable than eating right or getting a good night's sleep, these experts wrote in an opinion piece published online Sunday by the journal Nature.

The commentary calls for more research and a variety of steps for managing the risks.

As more effective brain-boosting pills are developed, demand for them is likely to grow among middle-aged people who want youthful memory powers and multitasking workers who need to keep track of multiple demands, said one commentary author, brain scientist Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Almost everybody is going to want to use it," Farah said.

The full article is here, and its key recommendation appears to be "that mentally competent adults should be able to engage in cognitive enhancement using drugs." Having watched body-building competitions and with experience in sports economics, my game-theoretic brain thinks we would shortly see most students trying to obtain these drugs -- which are still only available by prescription, so many may not find doctors who will prescribe the pills -- particularly at highly selective, competitive institutions. The more highly competitive the field, the more likely you would see them.

So what would higher education institutions do about this? Would they randomly test students for Ritalin, Adderall, or Provigil? They don't test for Mountain Dew and 5-Hour Energy. They don't test for Red Bull or other caffeinated drinks. Should they?

And if "mentally competent adults" can choose "cognitive enhancement using drugs", why cannot mentally competent athletes choose what to put in their bodies? I'm pretty sure the steroid story is something like the game theory story of the hockey helmets. Does that work for you as well with Ritalin?

Labels: economics, higher education, sports

My colleague (and frequent Scholars commenter) Dave Switzer points to a new website called CampusBuddy, that can reveal your school's GPA and provides another place for professor ratings. Dave has listed out departments for their averages here at SCSU. The GPA overall at SCSU is 3.14 according to the site; Economics is a "less-than-generous 2.47." Only five departments have mean GPA lower than us: Math (lowest at 2.03); Astronomy; Physics; Chemistry and Accounting. Given that all six of these departments require some math skills, I'm going to put it on poor math training. Here's the story at Normandale CC, which is a school that provides some transfer students to us. As I reported a few years ago, looking at 1999 data, 248 of 2,546 freshmen that year who took the math placement test did not even get through the tutorial. The six-year graduation rate was much better for those who did pass the tutorials.

A blast from the past: Matt Abe on one school's use of "integrated math".

And for longtime readers:
Remember some years ago we named a certain department the "Department of the 3.7 GPA"? I'm happy to report that department is tightening its standards; its departmental GPA is now 3.5. Teacher Development, however, gives an A- or better to 85% of its students and a mean GPA of 3.8. How many of those become math teachers?

Labels: economics, education, higher education

Walter Block describes a scene in which other people apologize for his comments on pay differences between the races and sexes. He at least gives them a tonguelashing, as does (at the bottom of this relatively long post) Tom DiLorenzo, who explains

...the way the College handled this is a sin according to Catholic doctrine. Publicly condemning someone for his ideas without first communicating with that person and asking for clarification is "intellectual sin".

Block challenges his erstwhile inviters to a debate over pay differentials. I have some understanding of the issues involved, and while I've written a couple of papers in which we used years of education as a control variable for wage differentials without too much concern over the quality of those years of education, I certainly understand and would be happy to have debated Prof. Block for his views. His point is valid, but testable if you had data on urbanization of the school and public versus private. I suspect the PC police that came down on Block would not stay around for the rebuttals.

Labels: economics, higher education

I would like to believe this story isn't true, but school officials are backing a student she was assaulted election night for wearing a McCain-Palin button.

An Augsburg College student says she was assaulted on campus on election night and was called a racist by four young women because she was wearing a McCain-Palin button.

Annie Grossmann says she suffered blurred vision and may have had a concussion from a punch in the eye, but she declined medical attention.

Grossmann says she had been watching the returns with a handful of fellow Republicans, and was attacked while walking back to her dorm.

The school says it's unlikely Grossman's assailants were students (after all, their diversity statement says they are "promoting cross-cultural learning and understanding so that we at Augsburg grow in our capacity to create a hospitable learning community"), but "they have no reason to doubt" the attack. An SCSU student told me he "was afraid my car was gonna be vandalized with the [McCain] sticker on it." Luckily, he drives a beater "on its last legs".

Labels: higher education, Minnesota

Labels: higher education, leftism

I received last night an email from Joshua Behling, the challenger in the MN House District 15B race against incumbent Larry Haws. There was an on-campus debate of local House races. I've reprinted the email with permission:

We just finished up a debate at the campus of St. Cloud State University. There were 10 questions that were asked by the moderators and then questions from the audience were asked.

A question was asked by a student of SCSU. He spoke with broken English. His question was, "With the large amount of immigrants in this area and state what will you do as a Legislator to make sure that immigrants have an opportunity to succeed?"

Rep. Larry Haws responded 1st by saying, "What kind of immigrants are you talking about?"

The student responded, "Well there are a lot of different immigrants but mostly in this area I guess, Somalians."

Rep. Larry Haws responded, "Are we talking legal or illegal immigrants?"

The student responded, "Legal."

Rep. Larry Haws responded, "Good, because if your talking about legal, then I say send 'um here [SCSU], we'll check you at the door. If you are talking illegal then send 'um over to Tech [St. Cloud Tech College]."

There was about a 5-10 second pause as the ENTIRE room gasped and re-adjusted themselves in their chairs.

You could see that all but a few of the students looked at him and each other thinking, I can't believe he just said that.

The requirements for international student admissions at SCTC are here. The application form does ask you about your status. If you are not in status, you are to provide a written explanation.

However, Rep. Haws has pointed out something interesting. The House Research Department put out a document in December 2004 titled "Noncitizens and Minnesota Law". It reads from page 47:

The application forms of Minnesota’s two public higher education systems—the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and University (MnSCU)—require information on the applicant’s residency, citizenship, and visa status. Application forms also request an applicant’s Social Security number as an optional piece of information. MnSCU requires international students and nonimmigrants to complete separate application forms. Admission to Minnesota’s public postsecondary institutions does not depend on being a legal resident of the United States.

And on page 49:

...MnSCU board policies allow resident tuition for refugees under federal law and authorize MnSCU institutions to adopt policies to exempt nonimmigrant international students from nonresident tuition. Several MnSCU institutions operate under a board-approved tuition waiver programs that authorize a single tuition rate for resident and nonresident students. These campuses can charge resident tuition to undocumented students without being in violation of federal law. The University of Minnesota also has policies providing exemptions to the nonresident classification. None of the exemptions are based on citizenship or immigration status.

Emphasis added in both. My data is a few years old here, but I don't recall seeing this changed. I'll post this with hope that you'll correct me in comments if I missed a legal change.

Now schools might treat the legal status on their own differently -- MnSCU seems to provide latitude to schools to request your I-20 or I-94 forms, which may mean they can turn you down if you don't have them. A campus "may have" additional requirements. So perhaps Rep. Haws has pointed out something about SCTC that we didn't know; they might not have that additional requirement. Perhaps we have something to look at for the next Legislature.

Labels: elections, higher education, immigration, St. Cloud

He's off pursuing facial hair justice. A TV station in Denver is reporting another mascot controversy. This must be some really nasty mascot.Hmmm. Are the Fighting Whities back, I wondered? No, that's not it at all.

Boone the Pioneer, the longtime face of the University of Denver, will stay in retirement after the school's chancellor called the cartoon "divisive" and said it doesn't reflect diversity.

The cartoon image of a grinning pioneer with his coonskin cap was the official mascot of the university from 1968 until 1998, when he was replaced by Ruckus, a red-tailed hawk.

Alumni and students urged Chancellor Robert Coombe to return the retired mascot to official or semi-official status.

Coombe sent an email to the university community on Monday rejecting that idea.

The e-mail read, in part, that DU "cannot adopt an official mascot that has a divisive rather than unifying influence on our community."

Coombe wrote that the cartoon pioneer "does not reflect the broad diversity of the DU community and is not an image that many of today's women, persons of color, international students and faculty, and others can easily relate to as defining the pioneering spirit."

Now I'm more confused. Discovering places, that's a white guy thing? This will be news to Laura Wilder or any of the black pioneers of the Pacific Northwest. But this gets even weirder in the story:

[University spokesman] Berscheidt said the university would allow students and alumni to use the trademarked image of Boone because DU is done with it.

"People can walk around with Boone everywhere if they want, it's just not the official logo or mascot and no money will be used to promote it," Berscheidt said. "Students and alumni are welcome to use Boone any way they wish."

I suspect this has more to do with the current mascot being plastered on lots of shirts and memorabilia for sale; printing a new mascot would cost its marketing agents money. I'm not sure what is more fearsome or powerful about Ruckus the Red Hawk over Boone the Pioneer, but if you're going to keep the hawk why not call yourself the Hawks? I don't think any other team in WCHA has it.

h/t: Misantrhopic Frat Boy, who has other name suggestions.

Labels: higher education, mascots

I wrote to Renee Zeman, chairman of the College Republicans at St. Kate's, where a scheduled speech by Bay Buchanan was prevented from speaking.  It was her group that gave the invitation to Buchanan that its administration quashed.  The StarTribune poll at the time I'm writing this indicates that 55% believe that Buchanan should have been allowed to speak because "colleges must be open to exposing students to a range of thought."  Zeman agrees.  Here are my questions (in italics) and her answers:

1. What did you hope to learn from Bay Buchanan's lecture? 
  The opportunity to hear Bay speak would have been a great motivator not only for me but for all of the students that would've gotten to hear her. It is always a challenge to get youth excited and passionate about elections and about politics in general that I think she would've been someone who could put a lot of enthusiasm into the college community. Besides that, she's a woman right out of the history books. The opportuntiy to hear from anyone that has had a prominent role in the white house would be a very educational and valuable lecture.

2. Do you support the administration's position that there should not be partisan speech during the election campaign? Why or why not?
  It doesn't make sense to me that a college is trying to ban political speech during an election year. I always thought college was when you were supposed to develop your ideas and opinons based off of educated and inteligent points of view. Why on earth a college would ban partisan speech does not make any sense to me. I don't see other colleges doing it, I don't know why St. Kate's feels that they have to. I guess i should add that if the administration is actually trying to ban political speech from campus they should try stepping into a classroom and listen to the professors "not be political". It's also completely contradicting to what they have literally shoved down our throats since I have been there. I had to take a whole course my freshman year about being a strong, active, intelligent, reflective woman. Now by their actions they are telling us what we can and cannot listen to on campus. I wouldn't even mind if they brought some speakers from the other side to campus to talk. It's all about getting an education and learning what it is exactly that you believe in.

3. What did you believe were your free speech rights when you came to St. Kate's? Was there any indication during your recruitment to the school that academic freedom was subject to restrictions due to St. Kate's Catholic basis?
   There have been a lot of thing about St. Kate's that I wasn't expecting since I was recruited. It's like they have a whole different idea of what being a Catholic school is. St. Thomas is practically a brother school to St. Kate's and is just as much, (I'd say probably more) Catholic than St. Kate's is. They don't seem to have a problem letting partisan speakers on campus. Niether do the rest of the colleges around the Twin Cities. 

I note that the new St. Kate's spin is that it also barred Hillary Clinton and Al Franken from speaking. This is wrong as well and inconsistent with a university's mission and statements about academic freedom and its encouragement to become, as Renee puts it, "a strong, active, intelligent, reflective woman."  Students should be exposed to all views, not hidden from them in a vain attempt to provide "balance".  High school seniors who are beginning their search for a college should investigate the actions of their prospective schools, as well as their words.

Labels: higher education, Minnesota

...would the administration of St. Kate's like to tell us how the activities of its Center for Women, Economic Justice and Social Policy fit under its "no political speech" definition?  Their fall semester program has included:

• Issue Forum: Public Policy and Homelessness in Minnesota - Presenters: Michael Dahl, Executive Director of Coalition for the Homeless and Steven Prusha, Project Custodian at the College of St. Catherine.
• 
  RNC Panel Discussion - Come hear how St. Kate’s students, faculty and staff were involved with supporting and protesting the RNC.  (emphasis added)
• 
  Issue Forum: Health Care Reform - With Brian Rusche, Executive Director of the Joint Religious Legislative Task Force
• 
  Issue Forum: The History of U.S. Relations with the Middle East - Professor Nasrin Jewell will discuss U.S. policy in the Middle East and current political realities.

Prof. Jewell is on St. Kate's faculty, so he's fine. But the JRLC?  It appears that any event that promotes "social justice" is OK, but anything from off campus that doesn't fit its message control is not.  

Labels: free speech, higher education

In the comments to King's post below, Julie Michener tries to defend St. Kate's by saying

Because we are a 501(c)(3) organization, the College of St. Catherine has sought to avoid any appearance of partisanship during the 2008 political season.

Michener goes on to quote at length from a policy regarding political candidates and political debates. But Bay Buchanan is neither a candidate nor engaged in a campaign or debate for any candidate.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is one of the great organizations supporting free speech and academic freedom on campuses. Here is what FIRE had to say today about this topic, both on their website and at the Huffington Post:

True, both public and private universities do have legal duties related to their status as government instrumentalities (public schools) or 501(c)(3) non-profits (private schools) which prevents them from institutionally endorsing candidates (or even appearing to do so), lobbying for legislation or raising money for candidates. Therefore, university bans on administrators using university letterhead to endorse or shill for candidates, for example, are reasonable and required by law. But universities go off the deep end when they translate this common-sense duty into somehow meaning that no one is allowed to engage in partisan political speech on campus.

Read the whole thing. St. Kate's has gone off the deep end on this one.

Disclosure: King and I both sit on the Board of the Minnesota Association of Scholars.

Labels: free speech, higher education, politics

From a Minnesota Association of Scholars press release (I am a member of its executive board):

The College of St. Catherine administration has barred CNN commentator Bay Buchanan from speaking on the St. Kate’s campus, according to Ken Doyle, president of the Minnesota Association of Scholars.

The St. Kate’s College Republicans, a student organization, was planning a tea and discussion with Ms. Buchanan, in conjunction with the speaker’s scheduled same-day lecture at the University of Minnesota. “The students were planning a really classy event,” said St. Kate’s physics professor Terry Flower, advisor to the group. “They’re all about intellectual diversity and the marketplace of ideas.”

“St. Kate’s administrators tell us that, because this is the election season, they’re banning all speakers with clear-cut party affiliation,” Doyle says. “My Jesuit philosophy teachers would call this a non sequitur; my sainted Irish grandmother would call it just plain goofy.”

“I smell a rat,” says Doyle.

Ms. Buchanan was treasurer of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaigns in 1980 and 1984 and chairman of her brother Patrick’s unsuccessful bids for the presidency. She was the youngest person ever to hold the position of Treasurer of the United States. George magazine once recognized her as one of the top 20 political women in the country. A steadfast right-to-life champion, she co-anchored “Equal Time” on CNBC and MSNBC and worked as a political analyst for “Good Morning America.” Her lecture was to have focused on “Feminism and the 2008 Election.”

We honor a private college’s right to patrol its borders,” says Doyle. “At the same time we worry that limitations on free expression and debate aren’t good either for St. Kate’s students or for society in general. We urge St. Kate’s president Andrea Lee to reverse this decision and promote intellectual diversity and political awareness on her campus.”

Whatever St. Kate’s decides, Ms. Buchanan will speak at the University of Minnesota in the Coffman Memorial Union Theater, 300 Washington Avenue SE, Minneapolis, at 7:00pm Wednesday October 22, with a reception immediately afterwards. The event is free for students from any college or university – including St. Kate’s – and for members of the Minnesota Association of Scholars, $10 for the general public.

From the St. Kate's website, its student handbook indicates that their students are supposed to enjoy freedom of expression:

Learning and scholarship are at once individual and collective. Students enjoy the collective assurance and protection of free inquiry and open exchange of facts, ideas and openness. Students are free to take reasoned exception to the data or views offered in any course of study and to reserve judgment on debatable issues. This free exchange in no way diminishes the responsibility of the student for learning the content of a course.

And a review of their speakers policy does not indicate any restrictions during campaign seasons:

Whereas the College of St. Catherine provides an atmosphere of intellectual openness in which students can refine their abilities to evaluate alternatives faced in a pluralistic society;

And whereas the college, as a liberal arts college, upholds the academic principle of responsible inquiry and the constitutional right of free speech;

And whereas the College of St. Catherine, a Roman Catholic college, recognizes and respects the official teaching of the Church;

And whereas the college recognizes legitimate plurality of opinion in some areas of Church teaching;

Be it resolved that the college sees it as consistent with its mission to provide a forum for the free and responsible exchange of ideas. Be if further resolved that this policy will be implemented by the dean of students under the authority of the president of the college.

*As adopted by the Board of Trustees, 1980

These are from the campus' own website and are an indication of the kind of school students attending St. Kate's would be promised. Recently FIRE has put out a policy statement on political activity on campus:

Students and student groups at public colleges and universities enjoy the full protection of the First Amendment and must be free to engage in political activity, expression, and association on campus. Students and student groups at private colleges and universities are entitled to that degree of freedom of expression and association promised them in institutional handbooks, policies, and promotional materials. It is important to note that the overwhelming majority of private colleges and universities provide extensive promises of free speech in their materials, and therefore should be held to standards comparable to those required by the First Amendment.

Apparently St. Kate's disagrees.

Labels: free speech, higher education

In this continuing series we have seen that the belief that affirmative action is wrong is ignorant speech to be controlled, because it's a goal, an ideal, so you should shut up rather than express dissent and, besides, affirmative action even helps white people, as long as they enlist in the army.  Today's edition continues to ponder what do students think about how they get jobs.

It might have been fun to have actually gotten an answer to that from the classroom or club that this was drawn in. I suspect you would have heard a great deal of anxiety over a number of things, from the interview process to the decision and how it is made. That anxiety is common to all people.But what do students think represents "the best person for the job"? Who gets to decide?  How many dimensions of the job can be used to decide who is best? The Civil Rights Act is an exception to the concept of at-will employment, which recognizes the right to private contract between employee and employer.  I hope that shows up at some point in this student's education.   Who's to say you're not qualified? How about the person who will pay you to work for her? Does she have a say in this?

We all get our income by persuading someone else to give it to us.  (Except for government; it gets its income at the end of a gun.)  We can persuade employers to hire people of color qua people of color because it increases the firm's sales or production of goods and services someone else sells.  When it does, the person of color would be favored regardless of whether there is a law in place.  If it does not increase sales of production, the law's compulsion of to hire the person of color acts as a tax on the firm's profits, and causes the employee who would have been hired instead to take the next-best job.  If you want to argue that's an OK price to pay, do so.  But you should not pretend that cost does not exist.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 for background)

There were two interesting sub-themes in the board that was presented to us in response to an anonymous poster who had the temerity to challenge a department's leftist orthodoxy. One was to focus on "goals-oriented affirmative action". It was an odd focus, and the only explanation that works for me is that this was a discussion point in a classroom. Of course, that's speculative.

But I'm also lead to believe this by two other posters that had this odd theme as well. Take for example, this one:

Consider that list: race, color [sic], national origin, sex, disabilities, veterans. Really? Are preferences for veterans -- that existed after almost any war -- a form of affirmative action? Apparently so recently, but using the affirmative action reporting mechanism to administer veterans' benefits is not the same thing as calling it affirmative action. We have long had in America a notion that part of the payment to veterans for their service, particularly in wartime, comes after their demobilization. Federal job preferences are a longstanding benefit. It appears recent law has directed private job benefits as well.

As the following pictures shows, though, it isn't just that for the students in this class or club:

I have wrestled with that poster. What this Marine is entitled to is our thanks, our support, and the full benefits of what they signed up for. A Marine gets a value in return for a value offered to his or her country, by his own actions and choices and preparation. I'd like to ask veterans reading this post: Do you consider the veterans benefits you receive a form of affirmative action? Some in academia say 'yes'.

UPDATE: A private correspondent writes:

I think that poster has equal opportunity employers confused with affirmative action employers. Equal opportunity employers promise not to discriminate. Affirmative action employers are the ones who promise to hire qualified minorities, women, etc over white men.

The Department of Labor provides information on affirmative action and for veterans. I read that to mean federal jobs or those with its contractors and subcontractors.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I saw a note on campus for a film sponsored by a student group I had never heard of before.

AniMent Action on Campus - AAC

Welcome to AAC! We are here to work for equal rights of animals, and support environmental issues. We will be actively involved in the community on campus, in St. Cloud, and in the state of Minnesota.

Come join us for the betterment of our local community, and to raise awareness about AniMent issues!

I thought it was a group of students who drew anime art.  Instead it's a group that combines animal rights activism with environmentalism. They could have left out the "on Campus" part: Where else would you find such a thing?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

In which we find the quality of mercy is often strained.

(Part 1, Part 2 for background and to catch up.) 

In part 2 we had a few slides that showed a great deal about the subject matter of this class, but did not have any real animus towards the person who drew the counter-poster to which this class has reacted.  Alas, not all had that quality.

I've chosen to block out this student's name (I'll leave the illustration, so you know it's a female), but I found it touching after writing:

Get educated before you open your mouth and speak!  If you knew what affirmative action is you wouldn't be so stupid to put up a poster like that ... you are the cause of so many problems we have these days ... It's ignorant people like you that cause the races to divide ... GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT!

...that she chooses to leave a parenthetical

(and if you have any questions my name is yyyy yyyyyyy and we can chat...)

Do you always leave notes for people you want to "chat" with that have you underlining the words ignorant and stupid?  How's that working for your love life, Miss? "Biff, you're stupid and ignorant. Here's my cell, call me!"  I have to call that one my favorite.

This one is not quite as much fun. "Ignorant people talk without knowing what they're talking about." I believe that's called a tautology, yes? But the bubble quote is not tautological: "I use bigotry because I can't take responsibility for my actions." The poster is an imitation of the counter-poster, and on the kid's rejection slip it reads "not as qualified as you think."

Remember, this appears to be an organized response, on a board that a department has claimed as theirs.  This seems a good deal of hostility in this poster.  Is this something that academics should encourage?  I think, but do not know, if this is a classroom exercise.  If it was, how was it graded?  The line at the bottom reads "Why would any businessperson in their right mind lose money by hiring an unqualified person regardless of color?"  I don't know what that means exactly, but it sounds like a taunt.  

Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that used to pride themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society.

Obama supporters who found the campuses congenial and Obama himself, who has chosen to live all his adult life in university communities, seem to find it entirely natural to suppress speech that they don't like and seem utterly oblivious to claims that this violates the letter and spirit of the First Amendment. In this campaign, we have seen the coming of the Obama thugocracy, suppressing free speech, and we may see its flourishing in the four or eight years ahead.

Michael Barone. Here's their cue:Source. More coming in a bit...

UPDATE:  Ed weighs in:

The best solution for bad speech is more speech, not speech codes, mobs shouting down critics, and legislative control of political speech in the public square. Yet we’re inexorably moving in that direction, thanks to the so-called defenders of free speech who only can muster any passion for it when they see a political benefit for themselves and their allies. In a real sense, the thugocracy isn’t coming, it’s arrived after a generation of advent.

Labels: free speech, higher education, Obama

Yesterday's edition introduced us to the new board created by someone in the Community Studies department in the back stairwell of Stewart Hall here at SCSU.  I noted while walking around the building yesterday -- I work in a remote corner of the building, so I see lots of hallways and stairwells -- that that department has new bulletin boards up awaiting material.  As the song goes, I can't hardly wait.

The board in question provides responses to a counter-poster who had responded to a set of illustrations for an essay titled "Daily Effects of White Privilege."  It is written as "this is our response"; there are names on some of the responses that are also in the student directory, so I'm going to assume the students are a member of a class (perhaps a club instead, we should admit as a possibility.)  In either case a faculty member is with them as professor (or advisor.)  Let's look at a few more of these responses.

"simle" ... who has time for proofreading?

Here's the point: I put a job description on a website for new PhDs to be new assistant professors on campus. I get a bunch of applications. The first cut of the pool is between those who are qualified for the job and those that are not. I can rank in some way, perhaps, those that are more qualified than others. But at the end of every job application process I have a tradeoff in front of me -- one candidate has a set of skills making her better in one area than the other, the other has a different skill set making him better in the other. How do I weight that? If some non-job characteristic like sex or race is counted as a criterion in the hiring process, then the process of trading off means that characteristic compensates for a lesser skill in something else. You can't say at the same time "we value diversity" and "there are no qualification differences between the diversity-preferred and diversity-unfavored candidates" because the latter means diversity had no value. A line has no width.

Again, the question -- in what way are they less qualified when we "give diversity a chance"?  Are they less qualified because they can't put a 'Y' or a '1' in the diversity box on the application screening form?  And notice the confusion here -- nothing that the counter-poster wrote said anything about quotas.  Is the professor or advisor doing any teaching here?

Now this one is very interesting. It suggests that the firm makes more profits by hiring on the basis of "goal-oriented affirmative action." (That term could mean numerous things, but in Minnesota it has a particular definition under state law.) If it really improves profits, why would a firm ever need a program? But this would allow for customer discrimination: If it improves my profits as a car dealer to have a male sales staff, I will prefer to hire only males. Now it might improve your profits because the State of Minnesota won't do business with a company of more than 40 employees on a contract over $100,000 unless you have one of thse goal-oriented affirmative action plans. But that's not the profit motive -- that's a use of the confiscatory power of the state to take tax dollars and use them to compel private firms to meet public goals.

More on Monday.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Have you wondered how it is that Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn are able to work in a university? You shouldn't. In this deleted scene from the documentary Indoctrinate U we see that these and other Weather Underground terrorists were able to secure jobs in academia. Watch the video embedded at that link.

Blast from the past: Weatherwoman Nancy Rabinowitz and Hamilton College.

Labels: higher education

When we last left our little board -- located in a stairwell in the building I work in -- we had had a poster placed by someone unidentified (as was the board's user or users) twice placed on it which indicated opposition to affirmative action.  Such action is an indication that someone is asserting a private property right, rather unusual in that the board is on state property, not near someone's office or classroom, and had hitherto been used for postings by the dean's office for the college in which I work.  I had asked once about its ownership to someone in the dean's office (after the initial display was made) and got in return a shrug of the shoulders.  Adverse possession might attach to the board so many months later.

So I thought I should ask what happened to the counter-poster and wrote a note "Who took down the poster that was here this morning? Who owns this board?"  I signed the note.  Rather than answer me by email or phone, they simply wrote on my note:

At the bottom the respondent noted that the poster would return next week.

It did Monday afternoon, as the centerpiece of a brand new display:

Sorry to have cut off that little bit, as you might guess the first letter on the banner across the top is a 'w', as in "White Identity and Affirmative Action". The subtitle reads as a quote, "I'm in favor of affirmative action except when it comes to my jobs." (Italics and red in original.)  This time our interlocutors made clear their mission:

By our responses, it appears, someone in the department who now claims this board has removed the counter-poster, taken it to his or her classroom (which class? we do not know) and asked the students to draw their responses.  It is interesting that the title is called "White Identity...", for as best we know the artist who drew the counter-poster could be a person of color, or of disability.  The assumption is that anyone who disagrees with affirmative action must be white.  This would be news to Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams or Justice Thomas.  And the subtitle ascribes a bad motive for the counter-poster's opposition to affirmative action:  He or she would be for it except that it was she or he who lost the job.  As John Hood noted a few years ago, what matters here is who is doing the hiring:

...I think there may be good reasons for me to engage in race-conscious affirmative action. The key distinction involves agency. Government institutions are purportedly "owned" by all of us and at least can be said formally to represent all citizens. Thus they have no business adopting policies that discriminate--regardless of whether they are designed to advance or to redress bigotry--unless those policies are narrowly tailored to the needs of specific jobs, slots, or contracts. (As Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute once put it, it's OK for fire departments to turn down wheelchair-bound applicants for the job of fighting fires but not for the job of dispatching the firefighters.) Private actors, on the other hand, should enjoy the latitude to associate or disassociate with others in a free society, even if they do so for reasons most of us would find repugnant.

But judging the responses of these students, that is not OK with them:One of the classes that could have been the creator of this display is a course titled "Community and Democratic Citizenship." Nothing could be less democratic than the suggestion that one's free speech rights are dependent on someone else deciding whether or not you were 'ignorant'. But it could have been part of a different class. Would not that context help us understand the previous bulletin board and this one?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

On Friday I posted that this board had had an extra poster put on it, and then updated that the poster that disagreed with the board's premise was taken down. After posting that, I tacked a note to the board asking who controlled this board and why had the extra poster been taken down? I signed the note so as to leave no doubt who was asking, and put it on a small memo paper with the university's logo.

That evening I got a call from someone standing in front of my note and said someone had written a reply on the note. Next to "who owns this board?" was written "CMTY -- see Dr. Luke Tripp." Dr. Tripp is chair of the Community Studies program. I had speculated before that the board came from that department because there was a similar board that was identified as theirs. Now we know. I have received no other communication in this regard.

There was also scrawled on the note a message that the counter-poster would be returned on Monday. As of 45 minutes ago, it was not there. But someone else had put a copy of that poster up on the board at lunch time. The person who put it up was engaged in an experiment as well, and found the note removed within two hours of his re-posting.

I am now referring to the person in the counter-poster as Yezhov. (If you've never read that book, btw, it's well worth your time.)

Labels: higher education, SCSU

A few weeks ago I had spotted a new posting on the bulletin board I featured last summer, which had a series of drawings and slogans depicting "Daily Effects of White Privilege."  The new posting was drawn by someone who opposed affirmative action.  The drawing was there as I cam up the stairwell mid-morning but had been removed in the afternoon when I went to get a photo of it.

Yesterday another version appeared:

The thing in this students hand reads "REJECTED to promote diversity." I doubt this refers to SCSU directly -- we are not a selective institution such that admitting a student of color crowds out a student of pallor. But it could represent other schools, perhaps ones that the artist had applied to and was rejected from.

At the bottom there is a comment:

Notice: This poster does not insult anyone and it does not advocate discrimination. To remove this poster is to violate a student's academic freedom.

I think a great contrast to this particular display would have been for the student to not be anonymous. If you are going to ask for your academic freedom, you should do so openly and proudly. If the student was to face discipline, he or she should come forward and seek advice in defending his or her academic freedom. I for one would volunteer. And it would be a good contrast to this display, which has remained up now for over six months, unsigned and unattributed, left to have people believe it is a statement made on behalf of the institution. Perhaps it is; if so, why consign it to a stairwell?

I will watch to see if and when this added poster is removed like the last one.  Should the person who removes this addition be subject to any disciplinary action?

UPDATE:  Too late!  It's already been removed.  I know members of the administration read this blog, so let me ask them:  Will you investigate who is removing these posters?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

It's not only religious liberals that somehow find it time to talk politics. Our own Women's Center just happened to notice hey! there's an election this year!

It seems timely and logical to address issues of public policy and politics during a presidential election year. Consequently, the Women’s Center chose this topic for the Fall 2008 theme for Women on Wednesday, a signature noon-hour lecture series with an 18-year history at SCSU. As in the past, this series seeks to address the issues that students, faculty and staff have identified as important and of interest to them. These issues include many areas of public policy that affect the lives of women, as well as men and children, on a daily basis, including violence against women, reproductive rights, immigration, sex education and teen pregnancy, citizenship, human rights, and women in the military.

Well certainly, that seems like a neat list. And one might think that given Governor Palin's own response to teen pregnancy and reproductive rights one might get a talk about this, and there it is "Reproductive Rights" on October 22. What do you want to bet we'll have someone speaking from the National Down Syndrome Society or maybe some research on teen pregnancy. That'd be nice. But I'm not hopeful given the list of other topics: Maze of Injustice; Citizenship for Equity and Social Justice; GLBT Civil Rights during a Presidential Election Year; and Let’s Get Real: Race and Sex in the 2008 Election.

Likewise we got notice of a talk being offered by "the Social Responsibility Masters program, in conjunction with the Women’s Center, Multicultural Student Services, the Department of Theatre, Film Studies and Dance, and the Department of Mass Communication" of the movie Uncounted. There will be no reading from John Fund; instead, the Secretary of State Mark Ritchie will be there. This is Mark Ritchie who ACORN's founder calls his "organizing colleague this April."

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a long time organizing colleague from the nonprofit sector, addressed the Board and told the story not only of his partnership with ACORN in Minnesota and nationally in deciding to run for this seat, but also of the work he has done with us on our key issue of Election Protection.

I plan to see one of the showings of the movie; I'd like to ask Secretary Ritchie how he plans to prevent the registration of dead people and people in prison that has been happening in Milwaukee last month. I've invited Secretary Ritchie's #1 fan to join me.

UPDATE: More "timely and logical" addressing of "public policy" at Metro State in Denver.

Labels: higher education, politics, SCSU

Bitch magazine is in trouble. The 12-year-old quarterly publication, which bills itself as a “feminist response to pulp culture” and has a following among women’s-studies scholars, says on its Web site that it needs $40,000 by October 15, or it will stop publishing. That’s what it costs, the editors say in a video posted on the site, to put out an issue of Bitch.

News of the magazine’s financial difficulty was posted today on a women’s studies e-mail list. One member of the list said the magazine’s title originally offended her, but she said she had come to appreciate it, calling the publication “courageous” and “refreshing.”

Source. I suggest a bake sale.

Labels: fill-in-the-blank studies, higher education

If you have been following the Mark Steyn trials in Canada -- where Steyn has faced legal sanctions for writing about demographic trends in the West and relative birth rates of Muslim immigrants versus native and other immigrant groups, in Steyn's witty and biting style -- you may be interested to read that some political scientists are asking the American Political Science Association to protect the free speech of its conventioneers when they meet in Toronto next year. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports:

The political-science petition, whose initial signers include Robert P. George, a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University, and Harvey C. Mansfield, a professor of government at Harvard University, warns that scholars visiting Toronto might face legal jeopardy if they made controversial statements. Scholars should be able to speak about “public policy concerning homosexuality or the character of and proper response to terrorist elements acting in the name of Islam, without fear of legal repercussions of any kind,” the petition reads.

The campaign has the flavor of a boycott. According to a report in the National Post, the petition’s authors plan to distribute buttons at this week’s conference that say “Toronto 2009? Non!”

But the petition itself makes a milder demand. It asks the association to solicit legal advice and to consult with the Canadian government to ensure that scholars’ civil liberties will be protected. “Our petition is simply asking for clarification,” said one of its authors, James R. Stoner, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, in an interview with The Chronicle today. “We’re asking the APSA to acknowledge that there’s some issue concerning this, and that we can presume that the customary standards of academic freedom will be assured.”

Aside the usual reaoons of low attendance, there are very good reasons to not hold an academic conference in a place like Venezuela -- the regime there might not like, say, a Latin Americanist who researches Hugo Chavez's crimes and discusses them from the podium in Caracas. It would be irresponsible for an organization to invite a speaker into that situation. Likewise, if the APSA cannot assure the academic freedom of speakers to an academic conference, it should make arrangements to either move the conference elsewhere or to make a public statement declaring it cannot provide protection. I would hope it could do the former.

Labels: censorship, free speech, higher education

I had seen reference to UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley's valedictory in the Chronicle of Higher Ed and read it, but when Charlie Quimby referred to it I decided to respond to it. Charlie's title, "Competing for (and Investing in) High-Paying Jobs" is provocative insofar as he neatly encapsulates Chancellor Wiley's message. But Wiley is also complaining that his goals were frustrated by Wisconsin's business leadership. He begins...

Wisconsin has lost its way. We've lost touch with our traditions and values. Our politics has become a poisonous swill, and the most influential voice for the business community has been taken hostage by partisan ideologues.

...and goes on to single out a business group as the source of the problem:

According to WMC's website, the organization boasts nearly four thousand member companies and a goal of making Wisconsin "the most competitive state in the nation." Over the years, I've had the opportunity to closely examine the strategies--both the public rhetoric and actions--WMC employs to pursue that goal. Apparently, the organization's definition of being competitive is being among those states with the lowest taxes, lowest wages, and least regulation in the nation.

Here's the funny part of that list -- two of those three things are in the control of government. The third is a response to the other two, along with the attractiveness of the state to people with high-paying skills.

The value of a university (public or private) to its community or state is only in part its ability to create high-skilled workers. It creates educated citizens as well. It creates citizens that desire a good life for their families, with an understanding of what that good life is. As those families grow, parents impress upon their children the value of an education; they look for opportunities to add to their child's appreciation of the world and civilization.

As I listened to our own president's convocation speech last week, I was struck by the amount of marketing his administration engages in. Part of it is with government, and part with business leaders. And to do so means being accountable for what you use public and donated monies for, a point that was driven home for President Potter:

Recently after hearing me talk about my vision and goals for elevating the reputation of St. Cloud State, a local business leader asked me: “How will you know when you get there?” When I offered a detailed, “academic” response, he offered his own ideas….which I like much better.

In order to succeed we must build a reputation as a place that cares about our students. If we do this, our students will come here because we care about them and help them achieve their dreams. Faculty and staff will come because they know it’s a great place to work. Donors will give because they want to be part of supporting a great university.

Students and business leaders will "pull" from universities those things they want, when it is offered to them in forms they can connect to. Chancellor Wiley's model is an attempt to push Madison onto the business community. It's not as if any of those Wisconsin business leaders are stupid regarding the value of high-skill labor. It is that he and his institutional leadership are pushing solutions without listening to the problems. And one of those problems is a tax system that leaves your high-skilled workers with a lower after-tax real wage, using those tax dollars to be invested in unaccountable public K-12 education systems or in wasteful transfer programs or even the odd public sports stadium or two (including our own National Hockey Center -- a discussion for another time, and one that will make our administration less happy than my approval of the quote above.)

High income families may wish to enlist others to help pay for goods they want and thus call them "public", but when push comes to shove, the thing they want most is a higher after-tax real wage. The one best suited to invest in any asset is the one who receives the return on it. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, the least efficient education is other people's money spent on the education of other people.

Labels: economics, higher education

What are the two first words you say to your new class of students the first day?

"Thank you."

I was at a party earlier tonight as my sister-in-law and her husband send a son off to college. Another guest is a music professor at another school nearby. SCSU's semester starts today (Monday), a week earlier than in the past due to consolidation of the MnSCU schedules. It really feels wrong: The State Fair is supposed to bring the curtain down on summer, not open the fall. Labor Day is always the barbecue that says goodbye to your kids' summer vacations. It's a little more poignant for us this year as Littlest enters high school (she starts today as well.) You just don't want all these transitions quite so soon.

So this is the conversation with the other professor, and in the middle of this we sort of stop and catch ourselves. "I get no sympathy from my wife about this," he says. And he's right. We get three glorious months to self-indulge, or teach a summer class to make that tuition check for the school in fall, or travel, or what have you. In the fall he gets new studio students to work with. He looks forward to it. And so do I. Does anyone else get to do this? We like to call athletes lucky to play a child's game for money, but my luck is as good as theirs even if the money isn't.

I ran into a former student of mine, one of my first students here from more than 20 years ago, who now teaches at a school in the Cities on Saturday. He's just helped one of my graduate students find some teaching at his school; he sends some of his students up to St. Cloud to become my students. I ran into the grad student later to retrieve some books I had lent him. He is now being helped by my older student. I gave a couple prayers of thanks driving home and thought maybe August isn't so bad.

Putting a monkey wrench into this mistiming is that I'm also on jury duty the next two weeks. I already put this off once when it threatened the conference in Waikiki, so I felt I couldn't ask again. You probably won't notice, as I'll be forward-dating posts. But I'm not so concerned about missing the blog, or the Fair or the RNC next week (where I will be on the air a couple of nights -- details as we finalize them). I hate missing that first time to see students, and thank them for being there, for signing up to have me as their teacher, for wanting to learn economics ("I only took it because it was required for my major" is a challenge I accept; "I didn't think I was going to like this course but I did" is the prize), for coming to SCSU, for allowing a 50-something to feel a little younger (and a little older) every September.

Or August, as it now turns out. I'll get used to it. My lucky day just comes a bit earlier now.

Labels: higher education, prayers, thankfulness

A note from our faculty union president:

President Potter has asked that a Diversity Task Force be formed and he has created a structure for the task force and a means of populating the task force. Both the formation of and structure for the Diversity Task Force have been reviewed and supported by the Faculty Association.

The Task Force will develop a comprehensive Diversity Plan that addresses all aspects of the University’s efforts to create and sustain a diverse learning community. These aspects include but are not limited to: student recruitment and retention, workforce composition and development, the campus climate, the relationship between academic program development and administration to diversity, the relationship of faculty scholarship to issues of diversity, the role of the University’s community engagement efforts both as service to the community and as a venue for student learning and development and the development of a reflective approach to continuous improvement in the realization of the University’s commitment to diversity.

President Potter has asked that all nominations to the Task Force be people with knowledge and experience with diversity in the educational setting, through prior education and/or scholarship; participation in or certification in diversity training for trainers, a history of activism around diversity and social justice issues or experience working and/or teaching in settings characterized by their diversity.

Question to readers: Should I apply to this task force? Would my research into bulletin boards be considered "knowledge and experience with diversity in the educational setting"?

Labels: Feminists, higher education, SCSU

As regards the idea that lowering the drinking age would help campuses combat binge drinking, a thought from Milton Friedman in 1991:

...all of the experience with legal drugs is that there's a tendency for people to go from the stronger to the weaker and not the other way around, just as you go from regular beer to light beer. That's the tendency that there is: from cigarettes without filters to low-tar, filtered cigarettes, and so on.

Perhaps illegality induces binge drinking (the fixed cost of acquiring illicit substances over a larger quantity of booze or drugs), and maybe it doesn't. It appears the evidence on that is mixed. But I'd argue for no drinking age. My parents supervised my consumption of beer and wine, under rather generous limits (two glasses of wine with holiday meals was acceptable -- one beer was acceptable anytime if you asked first), and a couple of trips to unrestricted Europe as a car-less 15- and 16-year-old helped to inform me of the effects of drunkenness.

I wonder if we could convince MADD to accept a change in the laws that permitted one to drink before permitting one to drive? It might be a good test to see whether they'd put their time as drivers where their mouths are.

Labels: Feminists, higher education

The annual Beloit Mindset List is out for the Class of 2012. What do entering first-year students know? The list is long, here are just a few of my favorites:

1. They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.
2. GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available
3. Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.
4. The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.
5. IBM has never made typewriters.
6. There has always been Pearl Jam.
7. The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.
8. Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.

My brother is going through withdrawal from sending his first-born off to college last week; today is convocation at St. Cloud State. First order of business with these students will be to tell them who Stevie Ray Vaughn was.

Labels: Feminists, higher education

In signing the Higher Education Act reauthorization last week, Congress and President Bush have created a small opening for student free speech rights. Sec. 104 of the act reads in part:

(2) It is the sense of Congress that--

(A) the diversity of institutions and educational missions is one of the key strengths of American higher education;
(B) individual institutions of higher education have different missions and each institution should design its academic program in accordance with its educational goals;
(C) an institution of higher education should facilitate the free and open exchange of ideas;
(D) students should not be intimidated, harassed, discouraged from speaking out, or discriminated against;
(E) students should be treated equally and fairly;

As FIRE notes, it does not have the force of law, and as we've argued repeatedly in discussion of the Academic Bill of Rights, it should not have a law. But this "sense of the Congress" is an important statement nevertheless, and would seem certain to be cited in litigation when the next assault on student free speech happens.

Labels: Feminists, higher education

Reading Mitch yesterday was depressing. Not to find out that there are feminists teaching freshman comp; I'm fine with that, if it's composition that they're teaching. The problem is that it's the most important course a freshman takes (please, not freshperson, and first-year-student is too cumbersome -- thank God they never thought of freshtron!) So what is this 26-year-old grad student thinking as she plans her new course?

And next Monday, a whole new round begins–and this year, I’m doing more socially-conscious assignments than last year. Could be interesting. But I realize now, that if I don’t ask them pointed questions about how they view the world (be it television, themselves, etc), no one else will, either.

And if you worry about how socially conscious your assignment is rather than how well the student can write the assignment, it won't matter how many other classes ask them pointed questions. They won't know how to answer.

My advice to the young Oxsana -- if you want to teach women's studies, teach in their programs. Leave the teaching of composition to those who will focus on the construction of clear paragraphs and proper sentences.

Unfortunately, the senior professors of English are just as bad.

Labels: Feminists, higher education

While waiting for a plane.

A society that worries itself about which chromosomes scientists have isn't a society that takes science education seriously. In 1900 the mathematician David Hilbert famously drew up a list of 23 unsolved problems in mathematics; 18 have now been solved. Hilbert has also bequeathed us a way of thinking about mathematics and the sciences as a to-do list of intellectual challenges. Notably, Hilbert didn't write down problem No. 24: "Make sure half the preceding 23 problems are solved by female mathematicians."

Peter Wood, from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

This got me to thinking about the reactions I've gotten to Littlest's latest explorations: literature (her high school sent a list of classics deemed "important for college-track students" -- she's decided to work through the entire, two-page list) and military history, an interest she shares with me since doing her 8th grade history project on Alexander the Great. The reactions have been either "military history? That's odd" or "No! She is so good at math!" She still is. She's also 14. Let the girl grow, please. Laissez lire.

Labels: Feminists, higher education

The first bulletin board has now been up for the better part of eight months and aside this blog has had no public reaction ... until today.
In case that note doesn't read well for you, it says "Is there not a black man about to be president? This rhetoric divides not solves. -- Black Man"

It is possible that the note isn't really from a person of color. But presuming the display has been erected for educational purposes, it should please its creator(s) that it has received a public reaction. We'll continue to follow that story.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Here are the remaining shots that struck me as interesting of bulletin boards in the classroom and faculty office building in which I work. This consists only of certain posters I found.

There are lots of posters for internships, being as internships are seen by many recruiters and placement officers as a great way to get into a potential position with an organization. But some are more interesting choices. Here's one to intern with Working America, an arm of the AFL-CIO, whose job is political activism. You have a chance to "get paid to fight back" -- now that's an educational experience, isn't it?Most workplaces have posters that ask workers who are victims of discrimination to report their experiences to the proper office. I had paid this one no mind at all until I read the small print. Did you know if you discriminate against someone who is a member or active in "a local commission as defined by law" you get the same rights as someone discriminated against them for their race or sexual orientation? Who thought that law up? I haven't heard of such crimes, or even that it was one. I don't think I've ever had a beef with the parks commissioner.Two comments about this. First, it is on a board in a very high-traffic area and has been on this board for almost a year. So thousands of people walk by a brochure about female genital cutting. Towards what end? I probably have passed this a couple hundred of times without figuring that out; maybe I'm just dense. Second, this is a criticism of a practice that happens "extensively in Africa" and many countries in the Middle East. Many years ago I knew an Egyptian immigrant couple whose son went to school at SCSU. They ran a long-since-gone restaurant that was the only place I could get a good plate of baba ganouj back then. One night the wife of this couple came to me quite upset; her son was supposed to write a paper about the practice, and it was clear that he was surprised to hear it happened in his home country. The son did not know what to write.

There are over 100 students studying here from countries that appear on that list; the ESL classes for intensive study each summer are taught in a classroom close to this poster. I wonder what they think about this.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I am done with bulletin board #3, but while I was shooting that board I saw a few other things that I thought Scholars readers might find amusing. These are assorted postings on bulletin boards in my office building (Stewart Hall) that captured my eye. Small comments attach. I will be off tomorrow in search of new material from other buildings.

This is a work in progress, about the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act," the law signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 which was to end welfare. The starting piece in the upper left corner says "A nation's laws affect a nation's ..." and nothing more yet. The left has opposed PRWORA since its enactment; it will be interesting to see where this one goes. It might be a new series on this blog some day.

Here's a board with information students might want to get about the university's graduate program in social responsibility. The little flyer in the bottom right corner was particularly interesting; let's take a closer look.

Three steps Towards Changing the World:

1. Enroll in the Master's program in Social Responsibility at St. Cloud State University.
2. Educate yourself about such issues as racism, gender bias, heterosexism, animal rights, globalization and many more. (...and many more? Like what? Check the list.)
3. Use your knowledge to help make a difference in the lives of others!

I hear you can get pizza with that.

Almost directly across from this board is a maintenance closet used by the people who keep our classrooms and hallways clean. On the door:

The bumpersticker reads: "If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a soldier." You might even say soldiers " make a difference in the lives of others!"

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Another concern of the bulletin board is bullying in schools. So the sign at the bottom of this picture tells us that "This is what a bully-free world would look and feel like." OK, that sounds like a good plan! But what words do we include for "the no bully zone"? Laughter. Opportunity. Fun. Yes, that's good. Happy. Harmonious. Kids harmonious? Sometimes, and sometimes not.

Inclusive. Opportunity. Diverse.

Wait a second. Are we saying bullying has a racial component to it? It's interesting that the pictures of children together are of different races, but I think only one picture has children of two races.

While this is all for this particular board, I have a few more from nearby boards that will make a nice essay for tomorrow and Friday that I will include in this series.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

As we saw yesterday, this bulletin board -- appearing in a hallway near the Social Work Department at the university -- is trying to make points about sex education. Along with many condoms and their (opened) packages we find discussion of feeling during sex, some myths about sex and pregnancy, a lament that "only 49% of college health centers provide emergency contraception" ... which I think is not a condom. "2800 teens each day become pregnant," one note chastises, indicating that it thinks teen pregnancy is a problem. I would think people in social work would believe so; it must be part of their experience.

The board seems to dismiss the possibility that abstinence is helping reduce teen pregnancy, despite plenty of evidence and bipartisan support for including abstinence in programs to address the issue. Note that while I linked to some of Robert Rector's work, I don't necessarily agree that one should not talk about condoms. I simply think the board goes over the top in its pushing for condoms over abstinence.

This board appears in a hallway leading to offices of the Social Work Department, to which some newly enrolling students will walk in the next few weeks, some with their parents, to receive advising. It would be interesting to get their reaction to this board. Would it give one pause? Would there be nervous laughter? Would it raise questions? Would it educate?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Let's start with this wider view: this is part of the bulletin board that includes appeals for peace and affordable education. A lot of pictures cut out of magazine around it. If this is a classroom presentation, I'll just suggest that Littlest -- who celebrates her 14th birthday today -- can do better than this display. But click to enlarge that picture, and tell me what those are on the far right?

Yes, that's right: they're condoms. I'll start with this one for today:
The blue pieces of paper suggest these facts

• "1 in 3 women get pregnant under age 20." Well, the National Center for Health Statistics reports 40.5 live births for 1,00o population ages15-19, so unless there are a whole lot of abortions going on there, that figure looks just a little high.
• "80% of abstinence only curricular contain false, misleading & distorted information." This is based on a report commissioned by Henry Waxman that gets repeated in much of the NOW and other feminist literature. Of course, it's not about what the parents want, right? Is that a problem according to the third piece of paper...
• "Most adolescents learn sex ed from parents, friends & media before programs start." I cannot tell what they mean by this; are the programs spreading misinformation, or are the parents and friends? Who has the right information? Oh yes, that's right, must be the people who make these posters.

More on this board tomorrow.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This bulletin board (see here for a review of the others) is at the entry to a set of offices for the Department of Social Work in my office building. Hundreds of students pass by here each school day. I do not know if this is the result of work in their classes, but it appears to be a composite of projects done by different individuals or groups. It is unlike the previous two boards.

The top image is of President Bush "wearing" a t-shirt that says "I [heart] Hugo Chavez", with fake currency around him. He is standing at a lectern with the presidential seal. The bubble quote over him was folded over when I saw it, so I held it up to take the second picture. It reads "Americans misunderestimated me! I approve raising the poverty line, increasing social welfare and implementing a living wage."

I would like to know the purpose of this particular course, if indeed this was coursework. If it's not, and it's on a departmental bulletin board, it's a bit worse as a statement about the values of social work programs. Perhaps this is a means to educate about the dispositions expected of majors.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is a preview of coming attractions regarding bulletin boards we find on the university campus. This is a partial; the particular bulletin board we will study next is quite large and in a relatively narrow hallway. (I don't own a wide-angle lens.) Yes, that is a "I [heart] Hugo Chavez" shirt below President Bush's head. You can start discussion there if you like.

This is the third series of a continuing study. The summary of the first series is here. As we have not done a summary of the second series, here are links to the entire run:

• Preview
• Part 1, Child Savers
• Part 2, Don't React in Anger
• Part 3, Open Your Shades
• Part 4, The Postman
• Part 5, Hire Locally
• Part 6, Party!

I look forward to your comments on this new bulletin board, which I discovered only last week -- these might be the best ones yet.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

As is common during every economic downturn, articles will pop up about how hard it is for graduates of our colleges and universities to find jobs. Today's in the StarTribune includes a poll question "Have colleges and universities put too much emphasis on 'liberal arts' education?" (currently running about 60% yes.)

Students in the liberal arts discussed in the article are trying the Peace Corps or Teach for America, a public-private effort to recruit graduates into teaching to eliminate educational inequities, involving both more liberal philanthropies and First Lady Laura Bush. The article acts as if this is somehow new. When I graduated from college in 1979, the labor market was beginning to sour and job opportunities were not plentiful; I took refuge in graduate school, taking me to the career I now have.

I'm intrigued by the poll question though, as if one could have found a job by eschewing the liberal arts and going straight into business or engineering. Sure, those jobs pay well, and perhaps the jobs are more plentiful. But does one necessarily learn those skills at the expense of the liberal arts? In the most recent issue of The Canon, a magazine from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Vigen Guroian argues emphatically 'no'. He quotes approvingly from Robert Louis Stevenson's essay, "On the Choice of a Profession." Stevenson reflects on a banker who has no time to converse with him, because he is busy doing his duty as a banker. Guroian writes:

To say that “business is my duty” ignores this fact and reveals ignorance of what duty and virtue really are. That is why Stevenson quips: “Who told him it was [his duty]? Is it in the Bible?” Of course the Bible did not instruct his friend (nor does it instruct anyone else) that it was his duty to be a banker. Banking may
be a man’s choice of work, but duty impinges upon work as the transcendent obligation to do what is morally right in every location or vocation.

Duty is the “business” of being a virtuous human being. Doing business is not a duty, although it may be one’s duty to behave virtuously in business. That is why Stevenson wonders: “Is he sure that banks are a good thing?” For it can never be
one’s duty to do evil. A contractual agreement or a compelling love for making financial transactions may persuade a person to be a banker, but it may be a person’s duty to foreswear an unscrupulous bank dealing or even to leave one’s position in the bank altogether. Nothing in Stevenson’s friend’s statements suggests that he has thought through these matters or that he even knows how to begin to evaluate his position morally. He is a man with a shrunken moral imagination, though we do not know how precisely he got that way.

Finally, Stevenson’s friend does not even know why he is a banker.

Finally, the student of business is in need of the liberal arts as much as these students who go off to the Peace Corps or Teach for America. Indeed, they might serve as a substitute (albeit a very imperfect one) for what they might learn in the lecture hall or seminar. The student in the StarTribune article who majored in Chinese, philosophy and justice and peace studies (!) has no doubt that he's lacking something to "get a real job". But the liberal arts are something to help the business major or engineering student know what matters in the "real job" they get. It's a false choice.

Labels: higher education

Today's entry is a winding up of this bulletin board I think. It appears the class is adding more to the board since I took pictures, so something more might be forthcoming soon. As block parties go, this one is a little timid. Just two couples saying "How are you today?" and "We are fine how are you?" It's hard to believe one would need to be coached in a simple act of neighborliness.

The piece reminds me of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone. In a 2006 Time article, he wrote that we simply need to make more friends.

Social isolation has many well-documented side effects. Kids fail to thrive. Crime rises. Politics coarsens. Generosity shrivels. Death comes sooner (social isolation is as big a risk factor for premature death as smoking). Well-connected people live longer, happier lives, even if they have to forgo a new Lexus to spend time with friends.

So what can be done? Unlike global warming, we can solve this problem fairly easily by simply getting more involved in our communities and spending more time with family and friends. Family-friendly workplaces would help too. Reaching out to a neighbor or connecting with a long-lost pal--even having a picnic or two--could just save your life.

The one thing missing from that list is religion, odd because, as Arthur Brooks points out in his new Gross National Happiness, "about half of all voluntary associational membership, which brings great happiness to millions of Americans, is worship-related." And, unlike going to a club, a party or a volunteer effort, going to church doesn't suffer from diminishing marginal returns to happiness (at least up to weekly attendance.) (Bowling Alone, pp. 333-34, Gross National Happiness, p. 47.)

No picture of a church appears in any of the drawings of "building community".

Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's daily effects is an interesting one. On the surface I should support the idea that a voluntary transaction is being applauded for building community. But suppose the kids on the block want $20 but the guy in the next town would do it for $10. Should I sacrifice $10 to build my community? Suppose I use this logic as a means of supporting import restrictions? I know, it only says odd jobs, but I actually hire someone as my handyman, whose livelihood depends on selling me his services.

Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's bulletin board offering is actually rather nice, given Mrs. S father was a postal carrier. But the fellow drove a jeep, as does the guy who delivers my mail (and I live in the city). One time his predecessor, now retired, came to ask for any of our excess apples from our two prodigious trees. I never did get his name, or to know him. Yet he brought the mail faithfully, we gave him a Christmas card and gift each year -- I was unfamiliar with this practice before marrying the daughter of a postman -- and we both enjoyed the experience. Were we "building community"? No, I just wanted my Sports Illustrated.
Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

One nice thing about the WEA meetings each year is the high number and high quality of its sessions on the economics of sports. I was happy to catch a beer and a couple of these sessions while there. One (which I missed because of a conflicting session I was involved with) was on the economics of sports facilities. I don't recall if we covered any college facilities in this discussion.

SCSU announced last week that it was going to redesign the National Hockey Center, the building that houses our only Division I program.

St. Cloud State University President Earl H. Potter III last week discussed the preliminary details of a renovation that is scheduled to be completed in the next four years without forcing the university’s hockey team to play elsewhere during the construction.

The Legislature this session allocated $6.5 million for a $14 million renovation. The university then revised its plans to create a more ambitious facility that will “give Central Minnesota something it’s never had before,” Potter said.

He is convening a leadership team to begin raising the $22 million in private dollars needed to complete the project, he said. ...

“It will dramatically change the fan experience and the experience for our student-athletes,” Potter said of the post-renovation building. “We will reposition St. Cloud State in the WCHA, in terms of our ability to attract and compete for the best student-athletes. And it will offer Central Minnesota an entertainment venue and a series of activities that it’s never had before.” ...

He described a facility that would be a small-scale Xcel Energy Center, a complex that puts fans first, emphasizes the history and tradition of St. Cloud State hockey and “reeks of Husky hockey,” he said. A team store would carry Husky merchandise.

The renovation will include accommodations and acoustics to host concerts and other events that require facilities larger than what the St. Cloud area has, he said.

The local newspaper, which has yet to find a public spending project it didn't like, of course gushed over it but with one caveat,

How does such a vision complement (not compete with) plans to expand the St. Cloud Civic Center?

Remember, city officials are making steady (albeit slow) progress on a publicly funded $30 million expansion there. So how will these separate plans work in concert (no pun intended) and bolster the area’s appeal not just to hockey fans, but other venues in need of large spaces?

You might think that perhaps we could choose between them, since expanding the Civic Center is not expected to use private dollars. Those folks have been campaigning hard for more state bonding money and are likely to come back to the local government to get tax dollars as well. If SCSU can raise the money privately, isn't that better? My guess is that you'd have all three venues for concerts -- the Paramount Theater (under 1000 seats); the Civic Center, which I think will come in at no more than 2500 and for which even at that size parking will be very tight; and the NHC which has ample parking used during the daytime for students, and which as expanded might hold 7000. Does a metro area of 100,000 (160,000 if you count everything in Stearns County out to Sauk Center and everything in Benton County past Foley) need three such venues?

But the more basic question for St. Cloud State is what the value is in this investment. This week's Chronicle of Higher Education (temp link for non subscribers) highlights the questionable nature of investment small schools make in athletic facilities by studying a set of D-III schools in Pennsylvania that are shelling out more than $20 million each for new facilities.

Mr. [John A.] Fry, president of Franklin & Marshall, says the building frenzy has made all levels of college sports more professional, though he expressed concern that money is sometimes siphoned away from academic projects for sports.

"It's fair to say there is a bit of an arms race in Division III," he says. "You see a lot more spending on athletics, and you wonder if that's the highest and best use of those dollars."

The competition is for athletes, and many of the donors we are seeking for the NHC will be people who support athletics first and foremost. More money brings better student-athletes, and given the competitive nature of the NHC, those donors are going to want to build something that they think will attract better players than other arenas in the WCHA.

Does it help academics at the university? There the evidence is less clear. The most important item in driving academic donations appears to be television appearances, not winning championships. (Grimes and Chressanthis [1994]) Given the low viewership of college hockey, I would think it more likely a donor campaign for NHC construction works as a substitute rather than a complement to academic fundraising. All the results that suggest complementary focus on D-I basketball and football. There's a case to be made for the uniqueness of college hockey in Minnesota (the state of hockey! we're told) but I don't believe it.

BTW, nail soup. It's a variation of the stone soup story that progressives have now turned into some fable. (There's a lunch group on campus that uses this name. Or at least used to be.) I like the Swedish version better. This is the second time the university has dared to think bigger about a facility on campus. If the administration succeeds in both fundraising efforts, it's a big deal for us -- we haven't seen that around here since the first building of NHC.

Labels: economics, higher education, SCSU, sports

One of my favorite talk show hosts is Dennis Prager, heard from 11-2 on AM 1280. I enjoy him because the topics are not always politics and he tries his best to deliver accuracy before opinions.

Education topics provide particular interest for me and Wednesday's show was one of the most informative. Two authors and their books were discussed.

Mark Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University just published his latest book, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30). His premise is that the current digital age, IMing, last minute meetings, etc. keep younger people from reading while focusing all their energies on themselves. While "me" has been a topic of discussion since the 1980's (The Me Generation) this conclusion ignores events that led to the current implementation of poor reading.

The second author, Anthony Kronman, a Yale Law Professor, discussed his latest book, Education's End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Real philosophy, idealism, etc. are ignored for the guilt ridden, victimology currently in vogue.

Both authors agree that while our youth are intelligent, they are not being educated. The United States with its penchant for self-criticism, particularly by the left, has put its education system in a bind. We have spent almost 40 years teaching our youth only the bad and the ugly about western civilization, often by educators who entered the profession to avoid the draft in the late 1960's, early 1970's. In addition, the profession often attracts people who are risk averse. The result is that group think takes over. Because peer pressure is so intense, particularly at the post-secondary level, those with views opposing the status quo are often ridiculed and denied tenure. Many with conservative views simply keep their mouths shut.

We do our children, our nation, our taxpayers, and frankly the world, a major disservice when we deny the good of western civilization. The subject used to be required of all college freshmen, no longer. Yet many of today's students know they're missing something. They are beginning to search for classes that make them think and yes, learn about western civilization.

Is it good for a society to ignore its bad and ugly (as most societies on the planet do) and lie to their own people that they are perfect or have the only way, etc.? and all others are rotten? No.

Nor is it good for a society to only focus on the bad and ugly while ignoring the good that the society has done. Western civilization concepts have brought more people out of poverty, educated more people, debated more ideas, invented more products, produced more solutions than any other civilization, period. It is time to give our youth the good.

Labels: education, higher education

Today's edition of the bulletin board contains a rather interesting image. The display wants you to "Open Your Shades." A multicultural group of children plays outside.Is the issue that we aren't seeing them? Or that they want to look in? It turns out several of the items on this wall come from a poster on "How to Build Community."

Or grow one, as we'll have pictures of soon here in a non-bulletin board edition of Daily Effects.

Background of this series here.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Today's is just a caption, which might be the best encapsulation of liberal fascism I have seen on campus. This sits on the middle of the bulletin board highlighted yesterday.
The reminder of Christopher Lasch's "Hillary Clinton, Child Saver" could not be more compelling. As we approach Independence Day Friday, a recollection of this quote:

"We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can't take a sick child to the doctor?"

h/t: Ed Morrissey. Goldberg found that It Takes a Village “argues for interventions on behalf of children from literally the moment they are born.” Why do we have a classroom project (or so it appears) based on an assault on parental rights? If a parent walked by this while bringing her son or daughter to my office for advising for freshman orientation, what should I say?

The more I look at these pictures on the bulletin board, the more I think It Takes a Village is the theme.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This board will be the source of the second series of stories showing indoctrination.  This is in a common hallway leading from the stairs of the first series to my department's offices.  "Community Studies" is the name of a department on our campus that houses two programs and other courses.  There are similarities between the two boards, but it is not clear who authored or sponsored the first bulletin board.  Nevertheless, I think the boards should be viewed as elements of a broader theme regarding what is perceived as the role of higher education.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Over the last three weeks we have shown a bulletin board that was titled "Daily Effects of White Privilege" on the campus. The bulletin board is in a medium-traffic area of a classroom and office building in which I work at SCSU. Each day we have taken a different picture of it and displayed it for you to look at. Above is the bulletin board, and links to each individual entry:

• Part one -- shady looking
• Part two -- Cosmo
• Part three -- May I speak with the manager?
• Part four -- the neighborhood
• Part five -- history
• Part six -- the hospital
• Part seven -- the checkout
• Part eight -- the lecture hall
• Part nine -- the news
• Part ten -- the library
• Part 11 -- Band-Aids
• Part 12 -- speakers
• Part 13 -- the mall

Please come back to the blog for more bulletin boards. They're everywhere. This post will be added to the right-side index of this blog as part of our boards-and-doors features.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Ebon-Aide.

New Ebon-Aide™ is the adhesive bandage specially designed for people of color. From the licorice look to mocha, coffee, cinnamon, and honey skin, new Ebon-Aide™ blends with your skin to help conceal as you heal.

Ebon-Aide™ comes in three different sizes and five different shades. At last you've got it made in your shade.

Ask and you shall receive.

Labels: economics, higher education

This is part thirteen of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, here, here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months. This is the next to last edition, and soon we will have an index for all thirteen days. There will be a second set from another bulletin board next week.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

Honestly, I cannot find a connection between the picture and the plaque in this one and for awhile thought the picture was mislabeled except for the giant #5 on the podium. I can only guess that this is a complaint of a lack of political candidates of color. Ironic, if so, and rather dismissive of politicians as being harassing.

UPDATE (Sat.): This was scheduled to go up Wednesday. I don't know why this remained in draft. I will post more of these pictures next week.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The Moving Picture Institute, producers of Indoctrinate U, blogged recently about the University of Colorado's notion of having a chair of conservative policy.

The ongoing debate about higher ed reform tends to be quite polarized, and there are many issues upon which the different sides of the debate are seemingly never going to agree. But [Bud] Peterson's plans for a conservative chair were different. They had a peculiar unifying effect as commenters from all sides expressed strong reservations about a faculty position that seemed more concerned with candidates' political viewpoints than with their expertise, and that also contained more than a hint of tokenism. Chancellor Peterson's efforts are understandable, many conceded, but that does not make them especially viable.

Very sensible, though some seem quite willing to accept tokens.

We're ordering up a copy of IndocU, by the way, and looking for a place to show it this fall on campus. Interested parties may contact me on the blog's email address, comments at blog url without the www part.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Following onto yesterday's post, I note this article (permalink for Chronicle of Higher Education subscribers) that quotes university officials thinking the Heller decision on gun bans has left the door open to finding campus gun bans unconstitutional.

In elaborating on the decision, Justice Scalia wrote that the "court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings."

On the surface, that sentence appears to protect the policies of colleges and universities that prohibit students from carrying guns on campus, said [lawyer] Mr. [Robert] Clayton.

However, the Supreme Court ruling might leave open the possibility that a campus ban on firearms might be challenged on the basis that a particular campus was not a "sensitive" environment, he explained.

The word "school" is often interpreted to mean an elementary school or high school, so one line of reasoning goes that we can't be sure this is supposed to apply to colleges and universities. Another issue is where the school is located.

Even if they remain in place, campus gun bans may be less effective if cities are not allowed to enact tight gun controls, said Mr. White, because the majority of shootings involving students in urban settings occur not on college property but in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Would it be unreasonable to ask that universities keep a lockbox at the edge of campus (at a few different locations) so students would be able to pick up their firearms as they walked home from campus, even while continuing to ban them on campus? Does the Court intend to differentiate between rural campuses and urban, and if so how?

I sincerely doubt the higher education establishment will give up campus gun bans without a fight; I end up agreeing with this article that there is an invitation by the Court to bring the fight to them.

Labels: guns, higher education

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed this week (temp link; permalink for subscribers) discusses "survival training for campus shootings." Seems about time, yes? So what are they recommending?

...some campus-safety experts say colleges must better prepare those who do not wear badges. In April the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators published "The IACLEA Blueprint for Safer Campuses," in response to the Virginia Tech incident. The group recommended that colleges train students and faculty and staff members in how to respond to such emergencies. Among the training methods it recommends are residence-life programs, orientation sessions, and print and digital materials.

Although colleges everywhere have developed training programs for their employees, many stop short of asking students to think through how they might react if they heard gunshots in their building.

That's a mistake, says Randy Spivey. "Since Virginia Tech, there's been a lot of focus on law-enforcement response strategies and notification procedures," he says, "but very little on what to do if you're that person in the event."

"[R]residence-life programs, orientation sessions, and print and digital materials" to do what? Let's go to the taskforce report. I see twenty points, most of which deal with what the campus security forces should do. Under a heading "Prevention and Education Programs to
Address Campus Safety Risks" is point 19, as close as we get:

Faculty, staff and students should be trained on how to respond to various emergencies and about the notification systems that will be used. This training should be delivered through a number of delivery options, such as in-person presentations (i.e., residential life programming; orientation sessions for students and employees); Internet-based delivery; and documents.

Give them another training, it appears. So what is two paragraphs later? As an "ancillary issue",

IACLEA does not support the carry and concealment of weapons on a college campus, with the exception of sworn police officers in the conduct of their professional duties.

They follow this with a position statement (on page 12 of the report) making it clear they don't want students with guns, using the claims that students would accidentally discharge their weapons "where large numbers of students are gathered or at student gatherings where alcohol or drugs are being consumed, as well as the potential for guns to be used as a means to settle disputes between or among students." And, they argue, in a situation where an active shooter was present, the campus police could have problems distinguishing between the bad guy and the student with a permitted weapon acting in defense.

Instead, they want students to get training videos (watch the trailer and ask, do you want this in your child's dorm orientation?) and pamphlets. They also want (point 16) criminal background checks on all students, faculty and staff,and to have "behavioral assessment teams" including public safety officials to decide in advance which student is potentially a threat to campus (point 17). Qui custodiet custodiens?
Photo courtesy Joel Rosenberg, who really needs to comment on this.

Labels: guns, higher education

This is part twelve of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months. This is the next to last edition, and soon we will have an index for all thirteen days. There will be a second set from another bulletin board next week.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

In this picture, the drawing seems to be of children in a classroom. A student of color at the board (on the left half of the picture) says "Please Listen". Two blonde-haired white children playing to the right say "Yeah I don't care" and "Thank you." A second black student (smaller than the others) says to a third blonde, "Why aren't you listening?"

Think teachers ever go through this in their classrooms?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I've written on this feminist mindset in the past, here, here, and here among other posts. This post is lifting comments by feminist professors who attended what appears to be a second-tier conference for Medievalists, professors of medieval studies. A number of them are knowledgeable in their areas of expertise but too often, given the dumbing down of American education, the hard core courses of this topic are sorely lacking for students. So, these professors morph into other areas. Topics of some of the papers from the annual congress in Kalamazoo, MI. included: papers on human waste (yes, you read this correctly), disability studies in the middle ages, major distortions of classic literature with underlying themes not of content but application of today's social agenda to the classics and the typical rant by the feminists. It's not your grandparents' Middle Ages history.

This conference featured such terms as "heteronormativity," "hibridity, "heterosyncrasies" as well as the standard "patriarchy" and typical, defensive mindset. Guess you need a PhD. in something to understand most of these terms.

The feminists appeared in full force. Six female professors met the first day for a discussion by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship. They concluded that feminists needed to redouble their efforts to fight patriarchy (the hardy feminist perennial). The round-table turned into whining, moaning and complaining. Why? Seems that a number of today's young women "don't want to take another feminist class." This was followed by a session devoted to strategies for sneaking postmodernist theory into the heads of reluctant undergrads who would rather not listen to this drivel. "In my students' demographic, they hear the word 'feminist' and they shut down."

I can tell you why - feminism is a losing proposition. BTDT. There is nothing to be gained when young people are exposed to "feminists" whose sole mission in life is to trash men, particularly white men. If you are a female and you want to succeed in life (versus live off the public dole in a university or government position), study something with some substance, like math, hard science, engineering, medicine, business, computers, economics, etc. If you don't want these areas, fine but don't sit around whining about lack of students in your "social" curriculum when the real issue is lack of content. As for students, continue to ignore the feminist babble so rampant on college campuses today and go study something worthwhile.

Labels: Feminists, higher education

This is part ten of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

Certainly there was an attempt to make Band-Aids look the color of the people they covered, but even in the Caucasian world there are many colors. Littlest Scholar liked her Garfield Band-Aids when she was small, and they can still be part of a fashion design.

Stores, of course, market to their customers. When I am in a downtown hotel on business and have forgotten something in my toiletries, I go to a nearby druggist. In many, because their clientèle has a higher share of people of color, there is a separate section for hair products aimed at people of African descent. For the very same reason, I cannot buy most of the Middle Eastern food products I like to eat here in St. Cloud; this is not an act of discrimination but an act of marketing, of lowering transactions costs for the greatest number. I instead travel to the Twin Cities when I want to buy, say, halvah treats for the house. In contrast, because my family likes Asian foods and St. Cloud has a substantial Asian community, I do not have to go to the Cities for those products. So why isn't the Band-Aid story analogous?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part ten of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

Perusing the Forbidden Library list of books includes books removed for being racially insensitive, such as Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird or the Little House books.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part nine of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found here, and here, and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

From yesterday's New York Times, an image makeover for Michelle Obama. Kind of dampens that drawing. Have you seen Oprah yet today?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part eight of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found via yesterday's item here and a billboard for the other six here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

The yellow-faced person to the left is lecturing a group of stick figures drawn in brown sitting in chairs, as if the person to the left is leading a classroom. The balloon voices for the leader or lecturer, "In today's meeting everyone will listen to me! Because I am the boss!" 83% of SCSU faculty are white, as is about 80% of the student body. (Data from here.) Less than 3% are black, and 7% domestic-born students of color overall. More than 6% are international students. I'm not sure the university this picture describes; had the student-artist drawn one student of color in a classroom with otherwise all-white students (and a white faculty member), I would get the point. One might then discuss the white valedictorian at Morehouse.

Along that line, your discussion question for today: Last year two researchers at the Virginia Tech claimed that students who attended historically black colleges and universities earned higher income than those (black) students did in more diverse universities. Here's a link to VaTech's press release; I do not see a copy of the paper itself, but its abstract is available. Assuming these findings are valid, how would you explain them?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part seven of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

The bubble thought of the checkout clerk in this supermarket reads "She looks classy, rich and white ... she can afford what she wants." The indoctrination I received at the supermarket was a sign that read "In God We Trust. All others pay cash." And indeed, the "classy, rich and white" woman is in the picture. Had she been trying to write a check, I might have understood this picture better.

I think to a man, a check is like a note from your mother that says "I don't have any money, but if you'll contact these people, I'm sure they'll stick up for me... If you just trust me this one time I don't have any money but I have these... I wrote on these... is this of any value at all? -- Jerry Seinfeld

Labels: higher education, SCSU

The Chronicle of Higher Education is an industry newspaper, that industry being colleges and universities. It reflects back the belief system of its readers -- as, I believe, any newspaper does, which is why I don't waste lots of electrons here venting about the liberal bias of the StarTribune. Readers want to hear their views confirmed by those who are supposed to be unbiased; academia and Minneapolis are liberal places.

This week's edition marks the 30th anniversary of the Bakke decision with a headline article "'Bakke' Set a New Path to Diversity for Colleges" (permalink; temporary link for non-subscribers.) It is, of course, from Bakke that we get the term "diversity" as the motivation for current university efforts at minority recruitment:

Before Bakke, selective colleges regarded race-conscious admissions policies mainly as a way to remedy past societal discrimination against black, Hispanic, and Native American applicants. The Bakke ruling declared that justification off limits, replacing a rationale grounded in history with one grounded in educational theory.

But has anything really changed? The article contains more than a modicum of doubt:

So broad was the imprint left by Justice Powell's reasoning in Bakke that Justice John Paul Stevens would later remark, in a speech delivered three months after the Grutter decision, that he had argued to his fellow justices that rejecting the diversity rationale would cause a "sea change" in American society.

Truth be told, however, many college administrators still describe race- and ethnicity-conscious admissions policies as tools for improving black and Hispanic access to their institutions. Relatively few colleges have done any research showing that their policies produce favorable educational outcomes.

Arthur L. Coleman, a veteran higher-education lawyer now at EducationCounsel, a for-profit law and policy center, says many people "still don't get" that "we are looking at issues of diversity in a fundamentally educationally oriented way." In advising colleges, he says, he does not use the term "affirmative action," and he warns that focusing on enrollment numbers or talking about promoting social justice is "at core a mistake."

Emphasis mine. This admission, which can be refuted if one can produce the studies the Chronicle says does not exist in volume, should stand as an indictment of modern universities, and should be an invitation for rolling back some programs. As many including Hugh Hewitt are today in a conference asking How Free Is the University, I'd hope the meaning and the departure from Bakke is not lost on them.

It is worth remembering that the Justice Blackmun's view that "in order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race" was in fact the minority opinion of the Court. Diversity is supposed to be about education, neither about social justice nor combating white privilege. While some might have wished for later cases like Grutter to have rolled back some of Bakke -- and, fair to say, I'm one such person -- a stricter reading of the case and an agreement among us that demonstrated improvement of educational outcomes should be the goal of minority student recruitment efforts would make for a vast improvement in what is happening here.

Labels: higher education

This is part six of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

In this picture the white privilege is a presumably white person getting served at a hospital before a person of color. I'm pretty sure I've seen this happen at hospital emergency rooms, even to me. Is it racism, or rudeness, or triage? This reminds me of a story in Paul Heyne's The Economic Way of Thinking when discussing non-price rationing. When price doesn't ration scarce goods, discrimination is possible. But there are many other non-price rationing mechanisms.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part five of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

In case that picture is too small for you, the book they are all looking at is titled "History by Whites". This is specific to the U.S., given the map and flag. Is white privilege a uniquely American experience? Perhaps we could have a map and flag of Rwanda and change "Whites" to "Hutus". Or Chinese looking at a history of Indonesia or Malaysia.

Thomas Sowell wrote of the success of the M Street School, later Dunbar High, from the 1880s on to 1955. It was the only black high school in DC, along with three white public high schools. In 1899 each took a standardized test, and M St. beat out two of the three white schools in test scores. Nobody was reading Zinn back then.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Boy, the cost of provosts has certainly gone up.

The new UW-Madison chancellor, Biddy Martin, was hired with a salary of $437,000 a year, more than $100,000 higher than her predecessor John Wiley was paid. President Kevin Reilly was granted a raise of nearly $80,000, moving from $342,000 a year to $421,500 annually by next June.

And to make it all the more difficult to follow, the board discussed the raises and voted to enact them in a secret session.

And what does $437,000 buy you? A Donna Shalala look-alike that is making domestic partner benefits an issue for hiring success at UW and a scholar of women's studies and German that attracts Wisconsin legislators' attentions. Her vitae is here. She got her degree in Madison; I guess in academics you don't get a hometown discount.

Labels: higher education

Bob Collins writes an interesting commentary about a student interning at the National Republican Convention who says she is "paying her way through school" (and thus interested in candidates that support tax cuts.) Bob's questions are intriguing, so let's try to answer a few of them:

I'm generally intrigued when a young person can pay their own way through college; I have no idea how that can be done without significant help.

Bob notices that her school is a private school with tuition over $30,000. It also turns out she's a history major. Unless she is planning on a graduate or professional degree, the return-on-investment story isn't there. And it would be most likely that the student is not speaking of her current taxes; given the standard deduction and exemption, her taxes are likely to be zero. (She would pay $605 in federal income taxes if she earned $15,000 in 2007, which is probably the maximum she would earn and still a full-time student. Maybe she has investment income?)

Is there a role for the taxpayer to pay for funding higher education, depending on where you choose to attend? For example, you could if you could afford it, attend a private Catholic university for $32,656 a year and pay your own way. Admirable, indeed, but would you base a tax policy on the assumption that everyone could? Or is there a role for the taxpayer-funded public university, which is funded by taxes?

Well, before you can say this you have to get at what our student actually is paying. Only a few students pay the full tuition; there are a variety of private scholarships and grants available particularly in a private school. (And yes, I did pick that story because the university president's name was King. What about it?) Raising the sticker price of college allows for greater price discrimination and more revenues for the schools. Providing public funding contributes to higher sticker prices for college, and possibly with ill effects.

What are the limits on taxation? Basic services? Is higher education a basic service?

I can only answer the last question: no. Higher education is a middle-class transfer. Even our community colleges are full of children of middle-class families that do not need the subsidy and expand public education from the possibility of targeted assistance to college-ready students from poor families.

Does a "tax cut" per se help or hurt the person paying tuition. For example, you would have more money to pay your tuition bill, but what if more of the cost of providing that education is passed along to you?

Here's the issue I see with this question: Suppose the student's parents are in fact footing her tuition. Does this not cut into what money she would inherit later on? If you then tax her parents on the one hand and give her an option for public education with the other, is she better off? Not necessarily, particularly if the public university system created is a poor substitute for the private school she would attend without the taxes. Even more so if public education crowds out some private universities from even existing, because the non-poor have fewer funds and thus lessens demand for them. There's no easy answer to this question.

Labels: economics, higher education, taxes

This is part four of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

The picture is innocuous enough, containing two houses with one neighbor greeting the other, "Hey how's it going?" Kids on the swing. But the caption indicates that the reason they great each other so cheerily is because they are of the same race. Does your neighborhood look like this? Or is this some hazy memory of the past?

UPDATED (1pm): While tossing out papers on my desk -- a neverending task -- I stumbled across this article from the Philadelphia Fed. The data provided says neighborhoods are still relatively segregated, and argues that when given experiments to choose which neighbors someone would like to have, African-Americans preferred a neighborhood where two of five of their neighbors were of their own race, a fraction greater than you would find in the general population. The author believes discrimination does play a role, but not the only role, in the racial composition of neighborhoods.

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part one of a continuing series, background here. Previous drawings can be found from yesterday's item here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months.

I am not interested, for those who have asked, in having this display taken down. It's not my job to decide what the university wants to present to students, staff and visitors (read: parents and incoming freshmen visiting campus for orientation). I would rather have this material out there for people to see, as it is my opinion that this is what the campus views as part of its function.

This picture is of a person of color with a mop and pail in the foreground. To the left, one white person says to another "May I speak with the manager?" At top and in background, a white man emerges from a room labeled "manager's office." The number 24) on this tag would suggest to me that there were many other 'effects' offered for drawings. We cannot be sure we have the entire set here, perhaps only a best-of display.

Perhaps we should learn more about white privilege; they have entire conferences. There's a lot of groups -- in particular church groups -- promoting this agenda. But they say "this conference is not about beating up white folks." You see, you were supposed to be blind:

I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets which I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was 'meant to remain oblivious. White Privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks. (emphasis added, though the apostrophe in the original.)

You might want to look at a few earned assets as well, however. For instance, a government study of the working poor showed that black males with a bachelor's degree were less likely to be below the poverty line than white males with a bachelor's. Marital status has a bearing on earnings and employment as well.

And again, tell me, who is the source of the intentionality of this obliviousness?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part one of a continuing series, background here. The picture from yesterday is here. This appears in the classroom and office building stairwell nearest my office, and has been left up for months. Some people do not have trouble finding dolls of color, and the possibility of Tyra Banks or the Williams sisters on magazine covers has apparently not made much of an impression on the classroom. (I caught Littlest looking at the inside picture of Ocho Cinco over the weekend; he was, um, less clothed than on the cover, with a strategically placed magazine.)

What do you think was the educational purpose of this assignment?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

This is part one of a continuing series, background here. This appears in a classroom and office building stairwell, and has been left up for months. The first picture is of the caption provided at the bottom of the picture, as seen in the second. The balloon on the guy speaking on the right reads "He's shady looking." That word in the first picture that was mutilated reads, I believe, "trained". There is no authorship offered for either the caption or the art anywhere on the display.

Your question for today: Who did the student who drew this picture thought did the training? Who did the caption writer think did it? If these are from a class -- student organizations must identify themselves when they post flyers -- what do you think was the professor's intent?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

I thought about trying to create a full photo essay of this. But instead, we will do this with one a days. The picture above is a bulletin board that appears in the back stairwell (at the first landing) of the classroom and office building in which I work. Its title, "Daily Effects of White Privilege", describes a set of thirteen sketches -- amateur, perhaps done by children but I do not know the artists, they are not signed -- that are to describe things that white people take for granted about the lives they lead. Next to each is a sentence describing that privilege. I have a second board also photographed that has similar art but seems to have been drawn for a different purpose. Both are in areas where students, faculty, and staff walk every day. This one pictured above has been in the hallway for months; the photos were taken in early April for this set, in May for the other.

We now have freshman orientation going on and the young students and their parents are walking by these displays. Keep that in mind as you view the individual pictures. What message is SCSU sending to prospective and incoming students?

Labels: higher education, SCSU

Stanley Fish can be maddening. When I met him up here a couple months ago, I was charmed by his manner with students and interest in teaching about Dante at the mere mention of a few students around him who were studying The Inferno. We spoke at length later about academic freedom -- disagreements, sure, but a very pleasant exchange from which I certainly learned and of which I am uncertain I taught him anything at all.

So when this week's column came out, lambasting the University of Colorado's proposal to raise money for a chair of conservative thought, I was none too surprised by its view. Prof. Fish speaks to an ideal in which faculty who bring liberal activism into their classrooms should be treated like the dog who wets your carpet:

First, what does “left-leaning” mean? Does the university issue policy statements on controversial matters? Does its administration come out for gay marriage or for gun control or for reproductive rights? Does the university endorse liberal candidates, or criticize Supreme Court decisions, or contribute to Move On.org? If the answer to any of these questions were “yes,” “left-leaning” would be an accurate designation. It would also be a reason to deny the university its tax exempt status and demand that it register as a lobbyist. But of course the university does none of these things. How then does it lean left?

The answer appears a little further down in the story when it is reported that emeritus professor Ed Rozek surveyed the Boulder faculty and found that out of 825, only 23 were registered Republicans.

That is a strawman argument on two scores. First, one could hardly find a university as an institution that does engages its institutional voice for gay marriage or its fundraising arm for MoveOn. What we're talking about is that individual faculty behave that way, and encourage their students to do so. As we see below, he doesn't think they should, but then he believes that they must be honorable and so don't do it, save for a few knaves on each campus.

Then second, he simply won't believe the data on intellectual balance. The Rozek study is perhaps flawed, but you don't have to look far to find other such studies. Fish does his readers a poor service in ignoring the other data that are available.

We've been here before with Fish; from an article five years go in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (reprinted in FrontPage here):

[T]eachers should teach their subjects. They should not teach peace or war or freedom or obedience or diversity or uniformity or nationalism or anti-nationalism or any other agenda that might properly be taught by a political leader or a talk-show host. Of course they can and should teach about such topics --something very different from urging them as commitments--when they are part of the history or philosophy or literature or sociology that is being studied. The only advocacy that should go on in the classroom is the advocacy of what James Murphy has identified as the intellectual virtues, "thoroughness, perseverance, intellectual honesty", all components of the cardinal academic virtue of being "conscientious in the pursuit of truth" ("Good Students and Good Citizens," New York Times ,September 15 2003). A recent Harris poll revealed that in the public's eye teachers are the professionals most likely to tell the truth; and this means, I think, that telling the truth is what the public expects us to be doing. If you're not in the pursuit of truth business, then you should not be in the university.

I was told something very different in the 60's when I was teaching at Berkeley. In the wake of the Free Speech Movement a faculty union had been formed and I had declined to join it. Some members of the steering committee asked me why and I asked them to tell me about the union's agenda. They answered that the union would (1) work to change America's foreign policy by fighting militarism, (2) demand that automobiles be banned from the campus and that parking structures be torn down, and (3) speak out strongly in favor of student rights. In response I said (1) that if I were interested in influencing government policy I would vote for certain candidates and contribute to their campaigns, (2) that I loved automobiles and wanted even more places to park mine, and (3) that I didn't see the point of paying dues to an organization dedicated to the interests of a group of which I was not a member. How about improvements in faculty salaries, better funding for the library, and a reduction in teaching load? You, sir, I was admonished, do not belong in a university. No, they didn't know what a university was and a lot of people still don't.

And faculty unions still push the same thing today in some places. I get his point: sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. But if Fish rejects intellectual affirmative action -- which I think he's right to do -- what alternative does he offer?

Labels: higher education

The St. Cloud Times undertook a project to study state employee salaries. Their data center provides a searchable database that you can use to look anyone up, including me if you wish. (They also provide a separate database for the University of Minnesota -- when I see what my colleagues in the U's economics department who are about my age make, ugh!)

A two-part story began Sunday with a look at overtime pay to state employees, with $50 million paid in 2007 out of a $2.58 billion payroll. The public-sector unions of course claim this is due to too few public sector workers, while critics like Phil Krinkie and Craig Westover highlighted the demand for public-sector employees being driven up by greater regulation. But most interesting was the table that appeared in the print story (though not on the website that I can see) of the top 10 salaries in the state. Tops is MnSCU Chancellor James McCormack, who earns over $350,000. Second, though, was an SCSU professor who earned over $250,000; another on the faculty here was near $22ok. By comparison, Gov. Pawlenty gets $120,303 as salary for being governor.

What's up with that? The second part looks at the pay rate for teaching online courses. Here it's pretty simple: Most courses are 3 credits, and for each student in such an online class you get $195. That is not part of one's regular salary but paid on top. And, unlike teaching an extra course in the classroom, you get more, the more students who register. And, there's no limit contractually on how many of these you can do. (Teaching overloads for lecture classes are capped in the contract, and the cap is only lifted in emergency cases, largely so that opportunities are spread around a department more evenly.) Both of those two SCSU faculty in the top ten are providers of online classes.

The article identifies 10,400 seats in online courses. If we assume they were all three-credit classes, that's more than $2 million annually paid to those faculty, not peanuts on a campus with about a $140 million budget, of which about half are faculty salaries. But what doesn't get mentioned in that story is that students pay extra for the online course (between $235 and $250 per credit versus $175 for the lecture course.) They aren't just lucrative for the faculty teaching those courses. More is staying in the offices of our continuing studies program.

Hard to say what will happen with this information. It's always been public, and I don't object to the transparency of my own salary. It was part of the agreement to work here. But the scrutiny over the online courses might cause some changes there. Like many universities, ours has taken a serious approach to assessing effectiveness in teaching. One hopes that online courses, like those in our lecture halls, have evidence of student learning. If they do, I don't see why we should have concerns about who gets paid what. And if they don't, it wouldn't matter how much you pay them. You can't find a bargain in bad teaching.

Labels: higher education, Minnesota, SCSU

You remember our debate on campus here about the Empty Holsters campaign? At Tarrant County College in Texas, they made a much worse choice. FIRE reports:

On March 28, 2008, TCC student Brett Poulos e-mailed TCC South Campus President Ernest L. Thomas to describe an event he was organizing called an "Empty Holster Protest." Poulos had collaborated with Students for Concealed Carry on Campus (SCCC), a national organization that "supports the legalization of concealed carry by licensed individuals on college campuses." SCCC promoted a coordinated national protest for April 2008 in which students would peacefully attend class and perform other daily tasks while wearing empty holsters to signify opposition to state laws and school policies denying concealed handgun license holders the same rights on college campuses that they are granted in most other places.

In an April 10 response, Juan Garcia, Vice President for Student Development, "granted" Poulos's request to stage a protest on the South Campus, but changed the fundamental nature of the protest by banning the protesters from wearing empty holsters anywhere on the South Campus, including in the designated free speech zone. The South Campus free speech zone, according to Poulos, is an elevated, circular concrete platform about 12 feet across.

Poulos met with Garcia on April 18 and was told that TCC would take adverse action if SCCC members wore empty holsters anywhere, strayed beyond the campus's free speech zone during their holster-less protest, or even wore t-shirts advocating "violence" or displaying "offensive" material.

You can have your empty holster protest, but don't wear an empty holster? What kind of sense does that make?

The other issue in this, and the larger reason I'm posting on it, is the use of these free speech zones, which SCSU has. I had hoped that when the Code Pink protest in March had ended up having the students and their advisor apprised of the policy that both liberal and conservative students and faculty might come together and ask that this policy be eliminated, replaced by the sensible restriction to not permit the disruption of classes. So far, all we have seen is further questioning by students of the speech rights of preachers who come to campus. As the Tarrant County story makes clear though, the zones' existence permits a curtailing of free speech far greater than just a time restriction. Public expression zone policies are an invitation for censorship.

Labels: guns, higher education