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It is not within any university’s ability in any country to reform a society. Educators are not imperialists, but they should be personifications of civic conscience, pushing student after student to question the rules of the world in which they live.
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The good news for educators is that students experiencing a free exchange of ideas for the first time are aware of the importance of the act, which Americans might take for granted. In a rule-bound society, the relentless questioning of the status quo in the classroom can be shocking, sometimes painful, but it is the university’s place to guarantee that this continue, no matter what the geographical location.
I have argued that pragmatism can serve us well in a diverse, multicultural, and globalized world. I have also argued that pragmatism can easily degenerate into an unthinking mindset, more dogmatic than any ideology it pretends to distance itself from. Uncritical pragmatism engenders the doer who will not think beyond the most narrowly technical and profitable; the doer who is incapable of moral reasoning, critical thinking, creativity, and imagination; the doer who despises such things as naïve, time-wasting, or troublesome. The doer-who-will-not-think engenders and imprisons in a stereotypical ivory tower its opposite, the thinker-who-will-not-do. I have argued that universities must, now more than ever, break down these barriers between thinking and doing. They must resist the temptation to appear superficially practical and useful to the powerful doers-who-will-not-think, if this will mean compromising their mission to educate people more holistically so that they will have the philosophical capacity, the moral courage, and the imaginative vision to understand what it really means to be in the service of humanity.
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In Singapore, pragmatism is held up as a pillar of governance and a cultural reason for the nation’s widely acknowledged success, achieved, it is commonly argued, through policies whose overriding objective is to ensure continuous economic growth. The right thing to do in order to achieve this continuous economic growth will depend on the context and is, in fact, whatever works best in that context at that point of time. For instance, when the government needed to strengthen its moral authority, it adamantly refused to allow casinos to operate in Singapore. But when it became clear that a flagging tourism sector needed a boost, the government abandoned its more moralistic language for a hard economic justification for building not one but two casinos in global-city Singapore.
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The pragmatist seizes opportunities and manoeuvres nimbly around threats, so focused on finding technical solutions for achieving the overriding goals that these goals practically disappear beyond the horizon of critical consciousnes
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Barnaby Lenon, headmaster of Harrow, accused many state schools of deceiving children by entering them for ‘worthless qualifications’.
He cited media studies, saying many schools wanted to enter students because it was easier for them to get a good grade.
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Universities will be forced to reveal their unofficial blacklists of A-level subjects that they consider to be sub-standard and harming pupils’ chances of getting places.
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too many heads are wasting the time of the best pupils by pushing them into easier subjects to boost their school’s standing in league tables of results.
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Back in 1970, three psychology professors pulled off a hoax that doubled as medical research. They brought Dr. Myron L. Fox, “an authority on the application of mathematics to human behavior,” to a conference near Lake Tahoe and let him talk about “Mathematical Game Theory as Applied to Physician Education.” Little did the audience know that Fox wasn’t actually a researcher or scholar. He was actually an actor who had played parts in Hogan’s Heroes and Batman. And he was given a gibberish-filled script to learn only the day before. Nonetheless, the educators in the crowd ate up his meaningless talk, and it allowed the researchers to draw the conclusion that “style was more influential than content in providing learner satisfaction.” A nice way of saying that jargon and cant can sometimes take you a long way in the academy — in the humanities and sciences alike. More backstory here. H/T Metafilter
How do academics justify to society what they are doing and why they should be paid for it? It’s a question that has been seriously relevant only beginning with the 20th century and the rise of the professional academic, in both the sciences and the humanities (and especially after WWII for the sciences, which have seen a huge increase in their share of university and national budgets). Before then, much scholarship was done outside universities, and even within them it really didn’t cost much and was often paid for by a prince or other patron for their own amusement and aggrandizement. David Hume, one of the most influential modern philosophers, never held an academic post, and neither did Darwin. (Again, there are exceptions — just think of Kant and Newton — but that’s what they were, exceptions when compared to the modern version of the academy.)
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the very idea of a “university” got started in Europe in the 11th century (the first one on record was in Bologna, Italy, quickly followed by Paris, Montpellier, Oxford and Cambridge), and the term initially referred to a guild of itinerant teachers, not a place. By the end of the Middle Ages, however, it started to occur to various municipalities that it was good for business to attract the best teachers on the market, and that a relatively cheap way of doing so was to offer them shelter — both in physical form as a place in which to teach and study and in the more crucial one of (some) protection from Church authorities and their persecution mania (believe it or not, Thomas Aquinas’ writings were considered too hot for public consumption for many years).
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it is easy to come up with the historically more or less accurate anecdote that links basic research to some application relevant to the human condition, though of course only positive examples tend to be trotted out, while the interested parties willfully ignore the negative ones (basic research in atomic physics led directly to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for instance). But the fact is that I have never actually seen a serious historical or sociological study of the serendipitous paths that lead from basic stuff to interesting applications (this article, focusing on math, does report on some more systematic attempts in that direction, but it still feels very much as cherry picking).
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Below are the Washington Monthly's 2011 national universities rankings. We rate schools based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country). For an explanation of each category, click here. For more information about the overall goals of the rankings, click here. To learn more about our methodology, click here.
Several celebrated Harvard dropouts have done quite nicely sans diploma. These include R. Buckminster Fuller ’17, Robert Lowell ’37, Bonnie Raitt ’72, Bill Gates ’77, and Matt Damon ’92 in the last century alone. But what of those who do not become famous? What becomes of those who leave Harvard voluntarily and, despite multiple invitations, never return? (The College routinely contacts those who have left to ask if they wish to complete their degrees.)
We chose an era known for its radical sensibility and tracked down three members of a College class (1969) that might represent its high-water mark, to catch up with them and see if they had any regrets about the path not taken. Here are their stories.
what does it mean to be “gifted”?
No doubt it will require a special kind of gift to want to pay £18,000 for a course which costs substantially less elsewhere in London by absentee professors who will be on television more than they will be in Bloomsbury.
However, the College’s PR advisors tell me “gifted” means:
"that, like every university, we are selective and will select students whose achievements and potential show that they can make the most of the high-quality, intensive educational experience at NCH".
An alternative view is that “gifted” simply means privileged.
This will accord with the view of Boris Johnson that this is an “Oxbridge” for those who cannot get into Oxford or Cambridge.
"At £18,000 a go, it seems it won't be the very brightest but those with the deepest pockets who are afforded the chance," said Sally Hunt, general secretary of the lecturers' association, the University and Colleges Union.
"The launch of this college highlights the government's failure to protect art and humanities and is further proof that its university funding plans will entrench inequality within higher education."
Grayling said the decision to set up New College came after the government cut subsidies to humanities and social science subjects and introduced increased competition by allowing universities to charge annual tuition fees of up to £9,000.
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the business model might seem unusual for a group of professors who are, for the most part, "pink around the gills and a little bit left of centre", but he said government cuts meant going private was the only way to provide a high-quality humanities education and he predicted more universities would go private.
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"It is the economic reality," he said. "The £9,000 cap is completely unsustainable. The true cost is way more and that ceiling is going to have to be burst. Other universities might also think 'either we sink or go independent'. Almost all of [the professors signed up] have served our time with decades in public sector higher education and we have seen it get more and more difficult. It is quite a struggle now to see into the future with how we can cope with these cuts. Either you stand on the sidelines deploring what is happening or you jump in and do something about it."
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Students will be charged £18,000 a year to attend a new university established some of Britain's top academics to rival Oxford and Cambridge, it emerged today.
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The university’s fees are twice as high as the maximum that can be charged by state-funded institutions because it is exempt from Government regulations.
But the college’s backers, several of whom are shareholders and will make a profit out of the venture, defended the move, insisting it would allow them to offer the “highest quality” education.
Students will expect Oxbridge-style one-to-one tutorials with academics, more than 12 contact hours a week and a 10:1 student to teacher ratio, the university said.
given the crappy economy, a college degree is more valuable than ever, a point that Levitt makes in a recent Freakonomics Radio podcast. The most telling statistic as to the value of college: the unemployment rate among college graduates is less than half (4.5%) than people with only a high school diploma (9.7%). (See the BLS employment status table here.)
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According to the College Board, a year of tuition at a public college for an in-state student costs an average of $7,605, while a year at a private college costs an average of $27,293. Meaning that (assuming you graduate in four years) a college diploma from a public school costs about $30,000, and about $109,000 from a private school. That’s a lot of coin, but consider this: the difference in yearly income for a person with a college degree and a person with just a high school diploma is $19,550, according to the 2010 Census. So keeping things simple, on average, a public school college degree pays for itself in less than two years, and a private school diploma in less than six. Which is probably why, according to the Pew study, the vast majority of college graduates (86%) say that college was a good investment for them.
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- Only 19% of college presidents say the U.S. system of higher education is the best in the world now, and just 7% say they believe it will be the best in the world 10 years from now.
- Adults who graduated from a four-year college believe that, on average, they are earning $20,000 more a year as a result of having gotten that degree. Adults who did not attend college believe that, on average, they are earning $20,000 a year less as a result.
- Only a quarter (24%) of college presidents say that, if given a choice, they would prefer that most faculty at their institution be tenured. About seven-in-ten say they would prefer that faculty be employed on annual or long-term contracts.
Why is the overall quality of undergraduate learning so poor?
While some colleges are starved for resources, for many others it’s not for lack of money. Even at those colleges where for the past several decades tuition has far outpaced the rate of inflation, students are taught by fewer full-time tenured faculty members while being looked after by a greatly expanded number of counselors who serve an array of social and personal needs. At the same time, many schools are investing in deluxe dormitory rooms, elaborate student centers and expensive gyms. Simply put: academic investments are a lower priority.
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The authority of educators has diminished, and students are increasingly thought of, by themselves and their colleges, as “clients” or “consumers.” When 18-year-olds are emboldened to see themselves in this manner, many look for ways to attain an educational credential effortlessly and comfortably. And they are catered to accordingly. The customer is always right.
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Too many institutions, for instance, rely primarily on student course evaluations to assess teaching. This creates perverse incentives for professors to demand little and give out good grades. (Indeed, the 36 percent of students in our study who reported spending five or fewer hours per week studying alone still had an average G.P.A. of 3.16.) On those commendable occasions when professors and academic departments do maintain rigor, they risk declines in student enrollments. And since resources are typically distributed based on enrollments, rigorous classes are likely to be canceled and rigorous programs shrunk. Distributing resources and rewards based on student learning instead of student satisfaction would help stop this race to the bottom.
“I think there’s a wide array of reasons why faculty should be engaged in recording and publishing lectures online. The first is wanting students to have access to materials. The second is for cultivating a really great affinity for a public university that’s providing research and community service. The third is closely aligned with this opportunity to provide educational resources all over the world to those from all walks of life, despite what disadvantages they have faced. It’s so important that we recognize as a public institution that this is something people value greatly and has great value for us too.”
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The world’s encyclopedia is as weightless, free and instantly accessible as Wikipedia, which is quickly gaining legitimacy in the education sphere.
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can the Internet really replace higher education?
As a journalist, I essentially creates my own courses and earn a living asking smart people provocative questions all day long. At this time, I’ve never been happier or more satisfied that I didn’t pay $150,000 to go to graduate school. However, I would hope that my gynecologist or dentist didn’t feel the same way.
There’s a lot of debate right now about whether or not paying for a degree is worth it, a particular problem facing entrepreneurs. TNW’s U.S. editor Brad McCarty recently wrote a piece titled, “Stay in or drop out? The entrepreneur’s education fiasco.” [Read it here.]
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A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.
A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free enterprise."
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The contract specifies that an advisory committee appointed by Koch decides which candidates should be considered. The foundation can also withdraw its funding if it's not happy with the faculty's choice or if the hires don't meet "objectives" set by Koch during annual evaluations.
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David W. Rasmussen, dean of the College of Social Sciences, defended the deal, initiated by an FSU graduate working for Koch. During the first round of hiring in 2009, Koch rejected nearly 60 percent of the faculty's suggestions but ultimately agreed on two candidates. Although the deal was signed in 2008 with little public controversy, the issue revived last week when two FSU professors — one retired, one active — criticized the contract in the Tallahassee Democrat as an affront to academic freedom.
Most professors I know are willing to talk with students about pursuing a PhD, but their advice comes down to three words: don’t do it.
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Go if you feel that your happiness depends on it—it can be a great experience in many ways—but be aware of what you’re in for. You’re going to be in school for at least seven years, probably more like nine, and there’s a very good chance that you won’t get a job at the end of it.
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At Yale, we were overjoyed if half our graduating students found positions. That’s right—half.
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College is impractical. The liberal arts are hazy, its lessons inapplicable to the real world. “The best way to learn is through purpose-driven education,”
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Another possibility is that college is an investment—an expenditure on which one can expect high future returns. This answer is one to which many mainstream economists subscribe. When I spoke to Stephen Rose, a research professor at Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce and the author of Rebound, an optimistic forecast of the postrecession economy, he pointed again and again to what he calls the “totemic number”: 74 percent. That is the financial benefit—the so-called B.A. wage premium—that economists calculate college graduates can now expect to reap relative to their peers with high-school diplomas. It is a number that has nearly doubled over the past 30 years.
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Still another possibility is that the primary role of college today is to serve a “signaling” function—like an elegant business suit, an impressive B.A. advertises talent, pedigree, and ambition employers can use as a hiring shorthand. Thiel, for instance, received both an undergraduate and a law degree from Stanford, credentials that he was able to parlay into a clerkship with a federal judge, an associate position at a white-shoe Manhattan firm, and a job trading derivatives at Credit Suisse before he returned West to join the Internet rush.
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A 1999 survey sponsored by the Educational Testing Service found that 87 percent of Americans felt the lack of a college education to be a disadvantage in life. Ninety percent of high-school seniors expect they will go on to college, with seven out of ten of those believing they’ll progress from there into a professional career. “Education has been central to the American Dream since the time of the nation’s founding,” Drew Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard, wrote in 2009. But in the decades since World War II, it has been college—not just elementary or high school, as before—that has become “fundamental to cherished values of opportunity.”
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. But the data gathered in recent years on the value of college has been mixed at best, blunting the moral edge of “college for all”
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the skepticism is spreading, even among foot soldiers on the academic front lines. In March, “Professor X,” an anonymous English instructor at two middling northeastern colleges, published In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, an expansion of an Atlantic essay arguing that college has been dangerously oversold and that it borders on immoral to ask America’s youth to incur heavy debt for an education for which millions are simply ill-equipped. Professor X’s book came out on the heels of a Harvard Graduate School of Education report that made much the same point. The old policy cri de coeur “college for all,” the report argues, has proved inadequate; rather than shunting everyone into four-year colleges, we should place greater emphasis on vocational programs, internships, and workplace learning.
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last month, a front-page article in the Times delivered striking news: Student-loan debt in the U.S. is approaching the trillion-dollar mark, outpacing credit-card debt for the first time in history.
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The University Has No Clothes
The notion that a college degree is essentially worthless has become one of the year’s most fashionable ideas, with two prominent venture capitalists (Cornell ’89 and Stanford ’89, by the way) leading the charge.
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it is hard to think of a time when skepticism of the value of higher education has been more prominent than it is right now. Over the past several months, the same sharp and distressing arguments have been popping up in the Times, cable news, the blogosphere, even The Chronicle of Higher Education. The cost of college, as these arguments typically go, has grown far too high, the return far too uncertain, the education far too lax. The specter, it seems, has materialized.
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college graduates hire only college graduates, creating a closed system that permits schools to charge exorbitant prices and forces students to take on crippling debt.
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