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Higher Ed: Adapt or die

Posted: April 21, 2020 by chrisharper in education, Uncomfortable Truths
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By Christopher Harper

Covid-19 may have created a perfect storm when it comes to higher education, creating an opportunity to take a good, hard look at a college education.

In the past 30 years, the cost of an undergraduate degree has tripled at public schools and more than doubled at private schools, adjusting for inflation. At a four-year, private institution, tuition and room and board averaged $46,950 in 2018. Four-year public colleges charged an average of $20,770 a year for tuition, fees, and room and board. For out-of-state students, the total went up to $36,420.

At roughly the same time, the Federal Reserve estimated that the cost of a college education increased eight times the percentage of wages.

Simply put, the ratio between the cost of a college education and a job is way out of balance.

That equation doesn’t take into account the massive debt that students have amassed as a result of the increased costs.

It’s worth noting that in Pennsylvania, which would be relatively representative of many states, the losses faced by universities have little to do with the classroom. Instead, the losses involve housing, sports, and conferences. Maybe universities should stick to the core mission of educating students and get out of these other businesses. See https://www.inquirer.com/education/coronavirus-stimulus-dollars-penn-state-temple-rutgers-rowan-st-joes-widener-cuts-money-20200420.html

What can be done about the cost of higher education?

The amount of money spent on faculty has decreased over the past few decades as universities hire more adjuncts who receive lower pay and often no benefits.

At the same time, the number of non-teaching personnel on campus, with several administrators at top universities making six-figure salaries with fringe benefits and secretarial support. About two-thirds of university budgets have nothing to do with teaching but instead go toward dormitories, facilities, marketing, and student health.

At Temple University in Philadelphia, where I teach, I have seen a vast expansion of vice deans, assistant deans, associate deans, directors, and assistants to the above over the past 15 years. I don’t know what many of them do, and none of them have visited my classroom.

Higher education will have to expand its offerings of online courses at reduced rates after students and their parents saw that classes could be delivered relatively effectively. That means that faculty will have to come to grips with providing online instruction.

The discussions I have had with faculty about online teaching remind me of my former colleagues in the news business who ignored the implications of the internet more than 20 years ago.

Simply put, colleges and universities must adapt or die.

Corona virus questions

Posted: April 14, 2020 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Despite all of the information swirling around about Covid-19, I still have a bunch of unanswered questions.

Why were the models so wrong? 

In the space of about a week starting April 2, two revisions on April 5 and 8 have utterly discredited the model produced by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Just days ago, the estimates called for the likelihood of 100,000 deaths, with as many as 240,000 a real possibility. On April 8, the projected cumulative deaths were slashed to about 60,000, with the upper range again cut to about 126,000. In less than a week, the model proved to be off by more than 33 percent.

Remember when the Imperial College of London “experts” said there might be more than two million dead in the United States?

Why can’t news organizations do the simple math necessary to tell the true story of the virus?

The overall infection rate and death rate do not accurately show the nature of the pandemic. In order to compare apples to apples, you divide the number of those infected or dead by the total population of the country.

That shows that the United States is doing a good job when compared with other countries. But an accurate view of the pandemic wouldn’t fit the meme that Trump has been doing a bad job.

Why did New York City experience such a high rate of infection?

Other cities had high incidents of the disease but nothing to compare with New York. At first, it was thought that the virus had come from China. Now it appears that the virus affecting New York and New Jersey was a mutation from Europe. At first, it seemed that the outbreak had started in New Rochelle in the suburbs, but the minority and Hasidic Jewish communities were hard hit. It would be worthwhile to trace the path of the virus in the New York metropolitan area.

Why did Los Angeles have such a low rate of infection?

The rate was much lower than in many parts of the country. Perhaps the dependence on driving and a lack of a public transit system actually helps in a pandemic.

Why did the developing world have such a low rate of infection?

As one Australian newspaper put it: “How does a palm-fringed lagoon in Fiji or New Caledonia sound or perhaps a dive resort in Papua New Guinea, a beachfront hotel in East Timor? The more adventurous might like to try Latvia, Slovakia, Vietnam, or Kuwait. If there weren’t travel bans, of course.”

Why did Germany, which clamped down early, have such a low rate of infection like Sweden, which did virtually nothing? 

Other questions have obvious answers: stupidity.

Why does anyone think the data from China is accurate?

Why did some states close liquor stores?

Why was it all right to use Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome in 2012 while the Wuhan Virus was racist?

The Zoom boom and bust

Posted: April 7, 2020 by chrisharper in Uncategorized

By Christopher Harper

After the disclosure of deep ties to China and massive disruptions of online meetings, the Zoom boom may be a bust.

I’ve never been a fan of Zoom since I started using it about six months ago for an online class I teach.

For some reason, Temple University recently changed from Webex, a product similar to Zoom that was built by Cisco. No one I asked seemed to know why the change happened. But it probably had to do with the lower cost of Zoom at $19.99 a month vs. $26.95 for Webex. Both services offer free individual downloads.

Now everyone should know about the hazards of using Zoom, particularly after a legal investigation in New York and an FBI warning.

Zoom names every video recording in a similar way, so a simple online search can reveal a long stream of videos.

News organizations and others were able to watch a variety of videos that included therapy sessions; a training orientation for workers doing conferences that included people’s names and phone numbers; small-business meetings that included private company financial statements; and elementary school classes, in which children’s faces, voices, and personal details were exposed.

Many of the videos include personal information and ntimate conversations, recorded in people’s homes. Other videos include nudity.

But there’s more. The inadequate security enabled hackers to join meetings, known as Zoom bombing, to disrupt them with obscene materials and profanity.

But there’s even more. The founder of Zoom is from China and backs up some of the information on servers there. Moreover, a major part of Zoom’s research and development occurs in China, which is likely to have some means of cracking the codes.

I have stopped using Zoom, but I have been unable to convince my colleagues that the program is a bad idea.

I don’t agree with Elon Musk and New York City about much of anything. But both of them have at least banned the use of Zoom over privacy and security issues. I also don’t trust the founder of Zoom to fix the issues any time soon.

Candidate Cuomo

Posted: March 31, 2020 by chrisharper in Church doctrine
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The hashtag #PresidentCuomo has been trending on Twitter.

Musings about Cuomo as the Democrat nominee have come from everywhere on the left, including DaTimes columnist Maureen Dowd and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow.

If Democrats think Andrew Cuomo is the answer to their Joe Biden problem, think again!

The Trump ad campaign would start with Cuomo’s own words rolling on the screen:

“We’re not gonna make America great again. 

It was never that great. 

We have not reached greatness….”

Even an audience of Cuomo’s supporters booed when he said that in 2018.

But there’s more. Cuomo is an alleged Roman Catholic who supports late-term abortions, same-sex marriage, and divorce. That’s a troubling trifecta for religious conservatives throughout the land. 

But there’s even more.

Cuomo pushed for the NY State Act, which he described as the most stringent gun control law in the United States. 

The New York governor, who has spent nearly all his life in government, has opposed hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking and would stimulate the economy in Upstate New York. All you have to do is drive along the border of Pennsylvania, which fracking is allowed, and New York to see the difference in how much better the economy is south of the border. 

If the Democrats are thinking about appealing to Republicans, here’s Cuomo on what he considers “good” members of the GOP. 

“Their [Republicans’] problem is not me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, anti-gay? Is that who they are? Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”

If you go to https://www.ontheissues.org/andrew_cuomo.htm, you’ll find a host of issues that would make Cuomo unpalatable for many Americans.

–Raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
–Expand Obama Care.
–Opposes school vouchers.
–Tax the wealthy.
–Expand trade with Cuba.
–Supports the Green New Deal.

If the Democrats want to dump Joe and go with Andrew, it’s like trading for a younger Bernie. And think about the possibility that his younger brother, Chris of CNN, might be the White House spokesman. That’s a sobering thought whatever your politics are!

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