university

There was an interesting article in the Chronicle a few weeks ago: The Soul of the Research University by Nicholas Lemann. Lemann provides a very interesting discussion of the contradiction between the academic ideal of the research university and the political perspective of the vocational school of further education, including some healthy historical perspective on the development of the concept in the US. "Underlying all of this is the fundamental problem of the country’s having adopted two noncongruent ideals of higher education. ... most of the stakeholders that provide resources to…

catching up on random snippets: How the American University was Killed - a guide in 5 Easy Steps Sterrekundig Instituut Utrecht: The Last Years "The Rhine, the Rhine, the German Rhine! Who guards to-day my stream divine?" Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist How do Science Blogs Change the Face of Science? Graduate Orientation -changing the face of scientists "Graduate school, especially at the beginning, is an ego-destroying, even humiliating, experience." Science for Princesses... The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Scientific Talk Kinds of Wrong One Leaving Academe

A university is a self-perpetuating oligarchy. A university chooses its own members, restricts membership, and governs from self-selected internal member promotion. QED Ok, so this a somewhat platonic abstraction of a private university, and the selection is from the meta-pool of members of the ensemble of universities, that are suitably like the particular university. But, a self-perpetuating oligarchy it is. Public universities, well, it gets complicated - they may be totally under external control or under nominal external control or have some open feedback loops to the external world…

A rather radical proposal from Texas came across my desk recently, courtesy of the Texas Exes... A Modest Proposal for Texas Higher Ed: "... The UT System Board of Regents ... has hired consultants who have publicly stated the fundamental view that academic research is not valuable and that tenured faculty could be replaced by lower-cost lecturers. These consultants propose a formula that excludes research in valuing faculty. They only want to look at any immediate financial value of research that can be proven on a current basis. ... these same consultants also believe that tenured faculty…

Remembering Dr. Emma Bakes An exceptional person, Dr. Emma Bakes passed away on February 28, 2011. She accomplished a great deal and touched many people in an unfortunately short time. Her accomplishments span oceans and included the physical sciences, medicine, fashion, martial arts, and parenthood to name just a few. To honor and remember her, the SETI Institute and NASA's Kepler Mission Team invite you to read the following essay she wrote just a few months ago. It is an essay that reflects her life and her legacy... Donald Mendoza, NASA Ames, and the SETI Institute The Shore of the Cosmic…

The funding situation in the California State University system being what it is (scary-bad), departments at my fair university are also scrambling to adjust to a shift in the logic governing resource distribution. It used to be that resources followed enrollments -- that the more students you could pack into your classes, the more money your department would be given to educate students. Now, in the era of enrollment caps (because the state can't put up its share of the cost for as many students as it used to), it's looking like resources will be driven by how many majors a department can…

Suppose there was an imaginary university. (is that statement redundant?) Let me call this TIU (The Imaginary University). Also, suppose TIU offers summer courses. Further, suppose there is an instructor teaching 2 sections of lab during the summer. Here is a communication that instructor might have received. Dear Person Teaching a Summer Course: It appears you are teaching 2 sections of lab. One lab only has 13 students enrolled in it. We have determined that it is not financially appropriate for us to give you a full course pay for this partially full lab. We are going to pay you 13/…

Even though I got my grades filed last Friday (hours before the midnight deadline), this week I kept encountering colleagues for whom the grading drama Would. Not. End. As you might imagine, this led to some discussions about what one should do when the grade-filing deadline approaches and you are still waiting for students to cough up the work that needs grading. I'd like to tell you that this is a rare occurrence. Sadly, it is not. Before we get into speculation about why students may be failing to deliver the deliverables, a quick poll on your preferred professorial response: Final…

... to the elder Free-Ride offspring's trumpet teacher. While I am generally accepting of your choices as far as the pieces you are having my child learn how to play, I have a small bone to pick with you this evening. You see, May is what we in the college education biz call "grading season". It is when the calendar tells us we are rapidly running out of time to get the assignments we've collected read, commented, scored, and returned to our students so they can use this feedback to prepare for their final exams. Grading is not the most enjoyable part of my job. And when the stacks of…

DrugMonkey has a poll up asking for reader reports of the science career advice they have gotten firsthand. Here's the framing of the poll: It boils down to what I see as traditional scientific career counselling to the effect that there is something wrong or inadvisable about staying in the same geographical location or University when a scientist move across the training stages. From undergrad to grad, grad to postdoc or postdoc to faculty. First, if you've gotten advice on your scientific career, go respond to the poll. Then, come back and we'll chat. Now, if one's goal is to become a…

A reader sends the following query: I've only recently begun teaching in a big state university, maybe tier C in the field I'm in. I'm in a quandary as to how to manage pressure to pass students who are under performing. The first semester, I had to lower the passing to a basically ridiculous level and the college still inquired why so many failed (10 %). Now, I'm again feeling pressure to pass students who do not deserve to pass. I'm getting very disillusioned by this type of practice. Grade inflation seems to be so common that I even have students who think that a 60 is a B. I'm…

At Dot Physics, Rhett Allain discusses his philosophy about class meetings: Here is the point I am trying to make - class is for students. Class is not for me. Students pay for classes, so they should get them. Here is the other point. If a student chooses not to come to class, that is the student's choice. I am ok with that. Maybe it is not a great idea, but these are adults. There can be a problem. What if the class has attendance as a grade? What if the class will give a pop-bonus-quiz if attendance is low (which is essentially the same thing as attendance for a grade)? Well, I don't do…

tags: Professor Destroys Student's Laptop In Class, University of Oklahoma, Professor Kieran Mullen, laptop, laptop brutality, teaching, education, university, comedy, humor, strange, behavior, streaming video In an effort to make a point -- Laptops are distracting students -- University of Oklahoma physics professor Kieran Mullen freezes a student's laptop with liquid nitrogen then smashes it onto the floor. One student caught this act of laptop brutality on video: Read more about it: Professor shatters distracting laptop.

From a recent article in the New York Times considering University of Alabama-Huntsville shooter Amy Bishop's scientific stature and finding it lacking, this comment on why so many denizens of the internet think they can understand why she did what she did: Why did people who knew Dr. Bishop only through reading about her crime make excuses for her? Joanathan D. Moreno, a professor of medical ethics and the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania, thinks reactions have to do with a long tradition that goes back to Plato. The idea, he said, is that someone who is…

Abel has a thoughtful post on the horrific faculty meeting shooting at University of Alabama Huntsville this past Friday. New information seems to come out every few hours on the shooter, Dr. Amy Bishop, a biologist at the university who had been denied tenure, and I'm nowhere near ready to weigh in on the particulars of the case (at least, not with anything smarter than my viscera). But I do want to say just a little on a pair of questions Abel posed in his post: Do you think that lack of collegiality is grounds for denial of tenure for a candidate that otherwise meets the basic…

Following DrugMonkey's lead, I'm going to play along on the meme proposed by Female Science Professor: What tradition or other general characteristic of academia would you like to see eliminated completely? According to the rules, which I just invented, the things to be eliminated have to be of a general nature. So, for example, the answer "my department chair" or "my university's moronic president" are unacceptable unless you want to eliminate the general concept of department chairs or university presidents. The candidates for disposal can be anything to do with academia, from the most…

Recently in my inbox, I found a request for advice unlike any I'd received before. Given the detail in the request, I don't trust myself to paraphrase it. As you'll see, I've redacted the names of the people, university, and government agency involved. I have, however, kept the rest of the query (including the original punctuation) intact. In 2004 I denounced a music piracy case caused by a [U.S. government agency] contractor and [Research University X] computer scientist: Dr. [let's call him "Jolly Roger"]. This man used peer to peer technology to create CDs for third party distribution…

... to the student in my "Ethics in Science" course. Today was our second class meeting, which is essentially the first real class meeting -- the one in which, instead of just focusing on the overall arc of the course, and the assignments you'll be doing, and the mechanics of finding the information you need on the course website, there was actual content to discuss. Owing to my sabbatical year, it's been two years since I taught this course. It's true that much of that sabbatical was devoted to thinking and writing about the subject matter of the course, but I'll admit that I had a moment…

(As before, I'm still not sure whether, in the metaphor, the factory is building monkeys or staffed by monkeys. Perhaps, really, we're in the business of making educated monkeys, and the problem is that our administration views this as akin to making widgets. Anyway, the point is: Explosions! Chaos! Shrieking! Brachiating along the pieces of wreckage!) We had our beginning-of-the-semester faculty meeting today, and I have to conclude that our department is in an abusive relationship with the university (and system) administration. Why I'm convinced of this is the simple fact that we have…

tags: education, academic achievement, university, college, Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities, William G. Bowen, Matthew M. Chingos, Michael S. McPherson, book review The second book review I've ever published in Nature Magazine appeared last week, roughly the same time I was on a trans-Atlantic flight from NYC to Frankfurt, Germany. Due to my lack of wireless and jet lag, I've neglected to mention this until now. This review discusses a book that I think is very important for everyone involved in higher education to read and think about: Crossing…