Archive for the ‘education’ Category

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.

The Silence of LA

Posted: March 17, 2020 by julietteochieng in economy, education, News/opinion, oddities, personal
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Don’t be afraid

by baldilocks

When it’s over, it will be great.

I will miss the quietness, however.

My residential street runs parallel to a nearby busy boulevard and it makes a great short-cut to avoid heavy traffic

But there are no speedbumps on my street and, as a result, drivers fly down it on their way to and from work. There are lots of near misses, if the amount of horn-honking is any indication.  And I’m not a little surprised that there hasn’t been any trading of lead-encased propellants in the five years that I’ve lived here. This is Los Angeles, after all.

However, other than the speeders, my very racially integrated neighborhood is quite peaceful and the near shutdown of the city due to COVID-19 has given it surrealism. It’s almost like living in the country.

No one is in a rush to go to work because so few are even allowed to go. The schools and colleges are shut down.

It’s certain, however, that much work and education is being conducted via digital means and when the shutdown ends, it will be interesting to see how these things will be transformed by the revelation that more stuff gets done when employees and students stay home.

Back to my nearly traffic-free street: I mentioned on Twitter that I had prayed for a long time that drivers would stop speeding down my street and in the last few days it has happened! Of course, I didn’t pray that it would come from a citywide quarantine, but I do know that God is a multitasker. Also, it is far from the first time that He has answered a prayer of mine in a way that I didn’t expect.

The moral of the story is obvious: be careful what you pray for.

However, I will continue to pray for the physical, financial, and spiritual healing of our country. And I’ll wager that it will shock the world in how it comes to pass.

Juliette Akinyi Ochieng has been blogging since 2003 as baldilocks. Her older blog is here.  She published her first novel, Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game in 2012.

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Quaint things: Covington Toobin, Erickson, Gabbard, and the California Press Under the Fedora

Posted: January 9, 2020 by datechguy in education, News/opinion, politics
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A couple of nights ago the word came that CNN has just made a settlement with the Covington High School Kids that they painted as a bunch of racists on the network. Fortunately for the MSM the Iran “attack” gave them a reason to ignore it.

Alas for Resa Aslin the MSM pretending it didn’t happen didn’t keep things from moving along as he, along with several “friends” were now served with suits as well.

The real comedy? It was only then after it cost CNN eight figures and he was served that he deleted his tweet from a year ago suggesting the joy that would come from assaulting a young man who did nothing wrong, as it a year later it would make things all OK.

How Quaint

One of the things that makes both nostalgia and children so quaint is are the innocent assumptions involved here are a few examples:

Jeffrey Toobin in Impeachment:

The House inexplicably refused to seek to compel key impeachment witnesses in court, burning months in which it could have secured not just key decisions in its favor but actual testimony. Indeed, a year ago, I appeared before the Judiciary Committee and encouraged it not only to hold a vote on impeachment but to go to court to force the testimony of figures such as former White House counsel Don McGahn. While refusing to trigger its impeachment powers with such a vote, it did take McGahn to court. It won that case shortly before its impeachment vote. The case will be heard by the appellate court this week, even without being expedited for the impeachment investigation.

When faced with the embarrassing timing of the McGahn ruling after the hurried impeachment vote, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff insisted there was no time to waste in getting the case to the Senate and that “it has taken us eight months to get a lower court ruling” to compel McGahn to testify. He was wrong on both points. After key members claimed there was a “crime spree in progress” and no time to delay a Senate trial, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi immediately blocked any submission to the Senate to demand the witnesses that the House unwisely omitted in its investigation. It seems time is no longer of the essence.

How quaint of Toobin to think that the point of impeachment was to secure a conviction rather than to appease a base for political reasons.

Our next contestant in our quaint exercise in innocence comes from Erick Erickson who is responding to those who ridiculed the VP for pointing out Iran’s & Soleimani 9/11 connection:

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Mr. Erickson is sincere in being offended which is in a sense so cute, as if in 2020 and the years prior the foes of this administration actually still considered obtaining facts and evidence over the possibility of scoring a political point over a hated foe, when in reality as John Adams reminded a young journalist over 200 years earlier that this has ever been the norm.

I really laughed when I saw this one from the Tulsi Gabbard campaign

Just when you thought that Democrats couldn’t possibly play it any dirtier they prove that they are, in fact, capable of just that. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the so-called progressive left is really labeling their fellow party members Russian stooges… and that’s only because those fellow Democrats have the audacity to disagree with the foreign policy establishment. “Roving journalist” Michael Tracey reports on Twitter that Tulsi Gabbard volunteers claim they have found “dozens of signs around New Hampshire defaced with a hammer-and-sickle logo.”

Here is a twitter image

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Is there anything more quaint than the idea that there is still at least one Democrat candidate who thinks being associated with the hammer & sickle might be considered an insult to them. I suppose it’s a mark in Gabbard’s favor that she doesn’t want to be associated with the murderous philosophy responsible for the murder of over 100 million people in the previous century and the enslavement of millions more.

But how naive can one be to think that when running for the Democrat nomination for president in the Year of Our Lord 2020 that there is the slightest possibility that an association with communism would not be considered a great incentive for the current party base to pledge their undying support.

One of the things about the far left is that when you give them power they invariably take it regardless of what you think. Nothing is more illustrative of this than this story out of California:

I’m not sure how I feel about this,” said anchor Jessica Holmes to her co-anchors. “You’re not going to be allowed to shower and do a load of laundry in the same day.”

While that may sound insane, what California Attorney Richard Lee breaks down the hypothetical figures.

“Doing a load of laundry takes about 40 to 50 gallons of water. Taking a shower for about eight minutes uses about 17 gallons of water. Well, there’s a limitation of your daily use of water, 55 gallons per day. So that means if you’re taking a shower and doing a load of laundry, you can’t do both without being in violation of the law.”

How quaint. the News media have been an ally of the left forever and now they are finally discovering that this left isn’t just interested in turning places like Venezuelan into 3rd world hellholes they are interested in importing third world conditions, complete with blackouts and water shortages to America so that folks coming from the 3rd world can feel right at home.

Oh and a note to KTLA, taking down the video doesn’t end the law.

Five Quick One Line Truths Media vs Trump, the London Stabbing, Pot, Education and this year’s Pats Under the Fedora

Posted: December 1, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, education, media, nfl, under the fedora
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If the Democrats / Media had treated Donald Trump like both a regular candidate, and a regular president right from the start, they would not be in the pickle or the bubble they are in today.

Thinking of the rise of Islam in general and the London stabbing in particular, you have to go to the mid 30’s to find European governments in general and England in particular so wedded to the idea of appeasement in the face of a foe willing to supplement or destroy them.

The social costs of the normalization and/or legalization of Pot were as obvious as the social costs the normalization of porn which were, in my opinion, a feature rather than a bug to those who have pushed these results.

When I look at Universities taking big money from those who have made it their mission to bring down American society and destroy education I understand the old communist saying about capitalists selling them the ropes to hang them.

Finally, the most amazing thing about the New England Patriots record this season is that, thanks to Nick Folk emergency surgery, as of today they have field twice as many different kickers this season (4) as they have from 1996 till last year (2).

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