Seed Corn and Payday Loans

Daily Kos: Cuts to Higher Ed Funding: Were Eating Our Seed Corn.

Together with:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-stafford-20120428,0,1118808.story

Education is one of those things that tends to get shoved under the carpet in politics. A conservative president (George W. Bush) increased funding to schools immensely. The only catch: public schools now focus a large portion of their energy on high-stakes standardized tests. At every turn, we see "limited government" radicals joining "social justice" radicals to make such tests the most important thing to a school. So much so that children are no longer so much human as numeric. For an utterly disturbing article on this phenomenon, click here. The video is here.

The goal is to make students "college and career ready." I've already covered the idea of career training in a previous blog. As far as college readiness, I'm dealing with a state that is not requiring handwriting, keyboarding (typing), public speaking, or even health. Here are four things that our district doesn't require. Why? The state doesn't require them. Everything is at a minimum...running on the least common denominator.

In general, I think it comes to this: education should make kids smart. These days a really good education is designed to make kids rich. That distinction plays out over time, I think. Your first job is one thing...your last job is the most important one. One colleague of mine is giving a commencement speech this month. One of this person's "first" jobs was managing a used bookstore. According to present policy, the college education was a failure. According to reality, such an education was wildly successful.

Today, Americans owe more in student loans than they do in car loans. Want to increase automobile sales? Perhaps lessening the student loan burden would help. But that could lead to higher taxes, and that is unthinkable in this day and age. Well...

Educated people tend to pay more taxes. Want to lower the tax rate in 10 years? Fund education, legitimately. Teach students what they need to know to be successful--you can't write programming code very well from the world of single-finger typing or dual-thumb texting work. Forget interest, altogether. Give all students the chance to choose their schools based on fit and merit, not money. Antioch is taking a chance by completely waiving tuition. Their tuition-free plan could make them a leading institution in the nation. Quickly. And think of how much those students will cling to Antioch as alumni.

It's a brave move, but we see how timid Congress is in an election year. Lack of action leads to disruptive change--disruptive, negative change.

LACs, public schools, and many other social systems in America need to embrace such disruptive change...and control it. Otherwise, they will become victims of outside forces with little or no interest in long-term success...or even viability.

The Hard Is What Makes It Beautiful

 

I went to USD. Of course, that's usually called "South Dakota" on the sports tickers. That's because there's another USD: The University of San Diego. It's a Jesuit school, and it's in the middle of a controversy.

A group on campus is putting on a drag show Wednesday. The question becomes this: does a Catholic campus allow it?

The discussion goes deep. Nobody's having sex. Not all drag queens are gay. Not all drag kings are gay, for that matter. Many people attending drag shows are straight and love the spectacle of the whole thing.

But the connection to homosexuality is there. Now, it becomes a question of whether or not cross-dressing for performance is something the Catholic institution should allow on campus. The president supports the students' right to express themselves. Donors have threatened to quit contributing to the school. Groups have formed. Some are calling on USD to strenuously promote "Catholic values" by forbidding the show's production. Others have rallied around the "anti-hate" aspect of this issue.

It's a mess. A strange, confusing, beautiful mess. Bet it sells out, though! That's life on a liberal arts campus. Ideas fly everywhere. Disagreement abounds. It gets ugly sometimes. It's beautifully ugly.

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Meanwhile, at UC-Davis, they finally got the official report from the Reynoso Task Force, or what could aptly be named, "The Committee of the Obvious."

Their conclusion? “Our overriding conclusion can be stated briefly and explicitly. The pepper spraying incident that took place on November 18, 2011 should and could have been prevented.”

Then follows wording about campus culture--debate and dissent being important. Then there's the whole idea of better communication before you pepper spray unarmed college kids in front of hundreds of people.

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No matter what happens in San Diego, I can assume everybody is safe for having different opinions. Most times, such differences of opinions dissipate and get forgotten. Sometimes, though, those opinion clashes can result in great things. USD attracted $25 million and the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice. I wish the people at UC-Davis felt the same way.

One of the hardest jobs in higher education right now? The Admissions Director at UC-D.

Business Surpassing Education...Again?

http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/09/opinion/wilkinson-jobs-act/index.html?eref=rss_latest&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_latest+%28RSS%3A+Most+Recent%29

Here's the quote that caught my attention:

We must enhance commercialization of research out of U.S. universities. One way to do this is to adopt a standardized licensing agreement for spinoffs. Another way is to make open-technology licensing a condition for universities to receive federal research dollars. Currently, the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 requires faculty innovators to work through their own university technology licensing offices. This creates significant delays.

It seems as though crowdsourcing is a rough parallel to much of the work happening in academia. Of course, in the business world, such efforts involve money, not just ideas. The trouble facing academic circles is that ideas are cheap, and many are flat-out free.

In public education, things have changed to some extent. Used to be, when a teacher (say, 3rd grade) had a great idea, it would be passed informally around the campus. District meetings would result in sharing among campuses. Soon, "best practice" was in place by word of mouth. At some point, the term best practices became formalized. Suddenly, a good idea was a way to make money, especially if the idea could be linked to test scores in some way. Now we see entire careers launched over a good idea in public education.

It seems higher education is still in the informal stage, regarding new information. Wiki's are not money-making ideas. Collaboration tends to result in better teaching or learning or scholarship; however, it often has no direct monetary value attached to it. Faculty make their salary, and little else. Their work is documented in their dossiers, and it may lead to tenure or promotion. Other than that, this kind of work is expected. Great ideas are supposed to come from campuses.

The business world may change that.