Miscellany: 4/11/11

Quote of the Day

The only gift is a portion of thyself.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

More Reflections on the Arum & Roksa's Academically Adrift:

Is a College Education Worth It?

Professor Benton wrote a two-part commentary "A Perfect Storm in Undergraduate Education" (part 1, part 2) in the Chronicle of Higher Education on a study I've discussed in a previous post.

The Collegiate Learning Assessment measures facets like critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills. The research in the study shows after 2 years, roughly 1 of every 2 students shows little progress, and even after 4 years, the same is true for just over every third student. Which students generally show the most progress? Those majoring in math and the sciences, humanities and the social sciences.

I have to say there are a number of things I agree with in Dr. Benton's commentary, but I take issue with a couple of his opinions. First, he suggests that college professors are largely a victim of their circumstances. In fact, there is what I consider to be a collective failure, including within disciplines. In the colleges I've attended and taught, professors seemed to have a policy of noninterference in the affairs of other professors. An example I've discussed in past posts was when I taught at UTEP. I had consulted with the senior MIS professor in our small MIS area about my data structures class, and he talked about the computer assignments he gave. I was given a nighttime class to teach, and to my surprise, the majority of students quickly dropped out of the class. I later learned that the other, popular instructor (no terminal degree) in the course didn't require any programming (which is rather like taking a cooking class without  preparing a meal). When I asked my colleague, he indicated that he had not been popular in his class either, but he had shared how he thought the course should be taught. A second point is that as long as administrators or other faculty judge performance primarily on the basis of subjective judgments from students (versus more objective criteria) or fail to back up more rigorous or demanding professors, you will have faculty or instructors living down to expectations. (There are other objections as well, but this is an edited response.)

Second, he argues that the real story of growth takes place out of the classroom, by taking advantage of available office hours, etc. I agree that students in general don't take full advantage of office hours, at least in my experience, but I really see an explicit goal of a college education to be self-actualization. When I was trying to mentor my students (whether or not they realized it), I would bring into my lectures some issues being addressed in the trade publications of information technology. When I evaluated essays or projects, I attempted to provide context-specific criticism, including room for improvement with well-executed work. 

I agree with many of the commenter's observations:

• "So college professors routinely encounter students who...are [unjustifiably] completely convinced of their abilities and resist any criticism of their work, to the point of tears and tantrums: "But I earned nothing but A's in high school," and "Your demands are unreasonable."" It's almost like he was eavesdropping on actual conversations I've had with students...
  
• "Students gravitate to lenient professors and to [easy] courses ...Some students may rise to a challenge; many won't. They'll drop, withdraw, or even leave a college that they find too difficult. If you are untenured and your courses do not attract enough students, then you can become low-hanging fruit for nonrenewal." To some extent that's always been true... My best friend at UT was a pre-med student (before Internet professor evaluations) and used to study section grade distributions before registration. I mentioned in a past post my MIS colleagues at UWM accused me of attempting to sabotage their foreign student program by pursuing academic honesty charges against an Asian student whom serially plagiarized under at least 3 different professors.
  

Benton mentions a number of different issues including faculty morale, overuse of instructors or adjunct faculty, poor student preparation, grade inflation, elective-dominated majors, student evaluations, course section enrollments, inconsistent standards, and split faculty priorities (i.e., research and service requirements).

There is some discussion about whether transparency of learning achievement results would be a useful means for parents and their college-age children to make an informed choice. Clearly some colleges or degrees are more rigorous or demanding; if you have a high graduation rate but suboptimal expectations, the degree may not be viewed as credible. Benton has his doubts; if the parents and their child are looking at a degree as a job ticket punch or can only afford certain schools, objectively better student outcomes may be a secondary consideration.

Before proceeding to the second column, Benton takes some shots at professional programs and research oriented professors. Not to sound defensive here, but I find professors who are actively researching and publishing can inspire their students--and in many cases help attract the best and brightest students to a campus. Second, I think Benton is presumptuous about an alleged lack of commitment of research professors to their students. ISU's applied computer science department prided itself on its orientation to teaching, but I had students saying to others, "I see all this stuff in the professional literature, but Dr. Guillemette is the only one talking about these things." Professional courses can be as rigorous as any of the programs Benton prefers (including the humanities).

The second column is asking, if parents and students aren't focused on learning outcome, what are they focused on? Benton talks about things like student as consumer, college as a cultural experience, students with split priorities (e.g., part-time work), underwhelming reality of the college experience, and coursework chosen to attract notice of prospective employers. Again, I'm not sure these considerations are all that new. When I taught 20 years ago (and I taught in metropolitan areas), I also had a large number of students working part-time. The most intriguing question for me is the first one: student as consumer. As a matter of political philosophy, I accept the free market; why shouldn't there be transparency for  students to make an informed choice, say, if other teachers gave more A's or got higher subjective teacher ratings than I have? First of all, I can't control what students say behind my back. The problem I have is that students may not realize these considerations can be pound-foolish. I might have a good idea about competitive MIS programs in other colleges, the kinds of knowledge and skills future employers are looking for, and how important mastering this course is relative to higher sequence courses. Can an overweight, out-of-shape man find a doctor whom won't be demanding of a change in diet and exercise? Of course. But it's a state of denial...

Injunction Against Arizona Immigration Law Sustained: Thumbs UP!

Judge Bea Partial Dissent: Thumbs UP!

I haven't had time to read the full opinion, but basically the Constitution is clear about the primacy of the federal government and/or the US Constitution in deciding citizenship and enforcement of borders. I made it clear that I opposed the immigration law on those and other grounds. This is not to say I support any de facto abuse of federal executive branch power in terms of "catch-and-release" or deliberately sidestepping, for parochial political reasons, illegal sanctuary local or state government policies. We know that proper identification in standard operating procedure as state and local law enforcement professionals exercise their professional responsibilities and can come across individuals whom do not have legitimate authorization to be in this country; they are what I would call a virtual extension of credentialed federal agents. I have also argued that the federal government has liability in terms of reimbursing border and other states for costs in the apprehension and detention of unauthorized immigrants, especially those whom are violating state or local laws. Justice Bea's dissent recognizes the virtual extension concept by federal government intent.

Another Plug for the Atlas Shrugged Movie

Ayn Rand's classic is an antidote to the collectivist-entitlement morass; even as local and state governments are scaling back on teachers and safety professionals, the best we could see at the federal level was less than a 2% cut on a budget, a third of which is being financed by next generation taxpayers? Nancy Pelosi refused to attend last December's "compromise" on taxes, where the Republicans got an extension of roughly $80B in current rates--but agreed to far more in new spending. (Pelosi has been eying the pockets of higher-income Americans for some time--never mind the fact they are also being tapped for the lion's share of increases in state and local income taxes as well.) President Obama has made it clear: he feels entitled to the upper-income rate hikes as a down payment on his radical, permanent surges in federal spending and head counts. He can talk about wringing out redundancy in government when it makes for a good sound bite for the day (e.g., salmon regulation), but when the cameras are off, nothing gets done.

Who's not John Galt? Michael Moore and others whom assure the teacher unions there's no need to engage in shared sacrifice with taxpayers and leave a sustainable more viable retirement system for younger teachers: there's still a lot more money in the wallets the entitled local, state and federal governments haven't stolen taxed yet.  (Rich people simply know not to carry all their money in their wallets...)

Guest Country Music Video

Before proceeding, let me endorse another country single, country artist, John Rich, on Trump's Celebrity Apprentice this season, "For the Kids", which I've purchased for download from iTunes. It's a fundraising vehicle for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, which researches for pediatric cancer cures and provides pediatric cancer patient treatment, with no child turned away because of a family's financial status.

Family values: stop and smell the roses with your kids.... Thumbs UP!

Songwriters: Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell and Ed Hill

(Chorus)

An she thinks we're just fishin' on the river side,

throwin' back what we could fry,

drownin' worms an killin' time,

nothin' to ambitious

she ain't even thinkin' bout what's really goin' on right now

but I guarantee this memories a big'in

and she thinks we're just fishin'

...

Yeah, aww she thinks we're just fishin'

We ain't only fishin'

This ain't about Fishin'

Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update

Atomic Power Review notes:

• new earthquake: There was another earthquake off the eastern Japanese coast. Workers were temporarily evacuated, and cooling activities for reactor pressurized vessels and/or spent fuel pools were interrupted, but resumed within an hour.

NEI notes:

• daily: No new damage or changes in radiation levels as a result of today's earthquake. TEPCO is planning to inject nitrogen into primary containment for reactors 2 and 3 as well as for reactor 1 (ongoing).

IAEA notes:

• reclassification of Daiichi to 7: NISA reclassified Fukushima Daiichi as event 7 (the highest), even though Daiichi has had maybe 10% of the environmental havoc done by Chernobyl, the only other event 7. This appears to be more of a gestalt rating of various components rated piecemeal at lower ratings. My concern here is that laypeople may wrongly infer that the change in rating is due to deteriorating conditions.

The Hiroshima Syndrome blogger reviews a number of statuses; early measures of today's earthquake indicate 6.6 on the Richter scale. The additional supplemental storage (to low-contaminated water now purged from the reactors (including 5 and 6) and the rad waste tank) mentioned in yesterday's post  may be a previously discussed tanker, with more capacity than the 2 US Navy barges with freshwater, which should be in transit sometime this week from southern Japan. Favorable trends in terms of reactor temperature and pressure, ambient radiation levels, and seawater contamination readings continue. The blogger mentions how an MIT report on US radiation standards reflecting the pervasive linear no threshold assumption (versus radiation hormesis). (You can almost hear the blogger's eyes roll back as he describes this.)

I have discussed this in multiple posts (including a reference Sander's volume), but let me quote Lawrence Solomon, a one-time LNT proponent:

Hormesis describes something that does harm in large doses but good in small doses... Low levels of radiation, science is increasingly telling us, are not only safe, they are actually healthful. It may be more prudent to worry about getting too little radiation than too much... The linear-no-threshold assumption, or LNT for short — refers to the assumption that radiation is an exception to the hormesis rule, and that radiation can never be a good thing...Humans...evolved in a radiation-rich environment, and ...live in a world that continually bombards us with natural, background radiation... “Literally millions of lives are less healthy because they have been convinced that living in radiation-deficient environments is healthy; lives are lost in not implementing effective low-dose radiation therapy to treat cancer; lives are lost out of fear of diagnostic radiation that saves lives,” writes Charles Sanders.

Political Humor

"America is producing fewer Caucasian babies. I suppose China is beating us at that too." –Stephen Colbert

[American business has once again risen to the occasion by increasing productivity: with improving fertility treatments we can achieve the same quantity of babies with fewer mothers.]

An original:

• There had been some false rumors being spread that during a speculated US government shutdown, meat and poultry inspections would have been suspended. But school lunchroom chefs were never worried: they know what's in mystery meat...

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups

ABBA, "The Name of the Game". One of my favorites; I reminds me of the uncertainties early in a relationship getting to know another person. I have 4 little sisters, and I still can't figure out...