Damn

I thought my undergraduate university spent an excessive amount of money on frivolous entertainment for students, but that was before I heard of High Point University, featured in the new issue of the Chronicle:

The ice-cream truck that circles the campus doling out free frozen treats (more than 500 to choose from!) is but one example. Another is live music in the cafeteria.
...
The chief concierge, Leslie Smith, takes care of maintenance requests, gives restaurant recommendations, and sends out dry cleaning, among other services.
....
Each undergraduate . . . receives a birthday card from the university, signed by the president, with a Starbucks gift card tucked inside. Plus balloons.
...
Snack kiosks are located strategically around the campus offering free bananas, pretzels, and drinks. Gifts await students in their dorms when they return from breaks. That's on top of the gifts they receive for no reason. The university keeps track of each student's preferences (movies, candy bars, sodas, etc.) so all of them get exactly what they want.

According to the article, the faculty received 2% bonuses and new office chairs, and so they are okay with the transformation of their university into a high class resort where the administration is obsessed with making undergrads feel special.

A university that has been less successful at pleasing the undergrads is East Tennessee State University which accidentally went over budget by spending $692,000 for Carrie Underwood and the Goo Goo Dolls to play concerts at the university. Seriously, the Goo Goo Dolls. Remember how in the 90s they had those three songs that sounded all deep and dramatic and emo (when you were 15)? Then you lost track of them for the next 10 years, and it's news to you that they haven't broken up or retired? That band.

The moral of this week's Chronicle is that if you are going to blow a fuckload of money on entertainment, at least ask the students what they like first... and make sure you throw a few bucks and a chair to any professors who might think this money might somehow be better spent.

A fond farewell

to my favorite Chronicle blogger, Marty Nemko, who published his last post as a guest blogger yesterday:

This is my final post as guest blogger and I must say that many of the responses demonstrate what’s wrong with higher education. . . For example, commenters called me, not just my ideas, for example, “off the deep end.”

But Nemko was not discouraged:

I was struck by how the negative comments, even the ad hominem ones, rather than demotivating me, motivated me to try even harder in my rejoinders and in subsequent posts. That reminded me of all the people who say they were unmotivated until someone said, “You can’t.” or “You’re a loser.”

Please don't leave us Marty Nemko. At least not until the fall when the academic year starts and I have something else to write about. In fact, I dare you to keep blogging for the Chronicle! I bet you can't! You're a loser.

APSA listens to reason

The American Political Science Association has decided to hold the 2012 meeting in New Orleans despite complaints from gay and lesbian members:

Lesbian and gay activists in the association say that a "defense of marriage" amendment approved by Louisiana voters in 2004 contains such severe language that they and their partners would face risks in visiting the state.

Y'all, there is a big difference between New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana.  Remember how certain members of the religious right actually blamed Hurricane Katrina on all the homosexuality in New Orleans (and the parties, strip shows, drunken sex, and general hedonism)?  There is plenty of gayness in New Orleans, and as a lesbian I would be happy if my discipline held a conference there.  It's the tweed-clad aging heteros who will feel a bit out of place.

Besides, the APSA held last year's conference in Chicago, and nobody accused them of endorsing the corrupt politicians and the racist police.

Some good news

Aliza Shvarts is leaving the continent to share her art with Europe. Maybe she'll stay away.

The Spanish parliament has granted legal rights to apes. "The action would make it illegal to conduct research on apes, but would still allow zoos to keep them in captivity."  Sounds like they have it better than grad students.

Harvard, Princeton, and Yale have been turned down by a child prodigy. Heh.

Seeking a few good suckers

For-profit colleges have discovered that most of their students wish they went to nonprofit universities with regional accreditation:

One career college official . . . said that she has noticed a significant increase among 18- to 20-year-olds who are saying that they are enrolling because they couldn’t get into their desired nonprofit program. “A greater majority of our student body is saying that we were their third choice and that’s where they ended up,” she said.

According to the IHE article, officials at the for-profits have come up with the idea of using military and weight loss recruiters to find students:

Given the difficulty military recruiters have in filling their quotas, Platt said that those who are successful would make ideal college admissions reps. He also cited research that says the reasons people don’t join health clubs are a combination of fear and laziness — and that a particular type of sales person is effective at reaching those people. That person is an ideal hire for a career college, he said. Audience members said that, for the same reason, those who sell weight loss programs are also effective at career colleges.

In other words, people who are good at convincing hapless suckers to buy useless fad diets -- or, to sign up for endless tours in Iraq -- would be good at finding students for barely accredited programs that are looked down upon by all of academia.  Maybe they should not have allowed press into this meeting?

Conversing with lesser humans

The Chronicle's new blogger, Marty Nemko, on how elite, educated people can communicate with the unwashed common folk:

I disagree with [Deresiewicz’s] contention that being elite-educated makes you incapable of talking with uneducated people. . . If you make the effort to keep your speech clear and concise, ask about things the person is likely to care about: e.g., family, friends, the Red Sox, and listen carefully, you’ll do fine.

Examples:

Do. . . you . . . have . . . a fam-i-ly?  

Do your friends also work at the gas station?

How bout dem Sox?

Our cushy jobs

The Times (UK) reports that academics "have a shorter working week" -- about 36 hours -- "more annual leave and better parental benefits, pensions and sick pay than employees in other parts of the public and private sector."  Okay, the benefits are all right, but 36 hours my chair shaped ass.

In other news, professors at Ball State University have been working to save Indiana from itself:

Their message is clear; Indiana needs to offer people a good quality of life and a more sustainable community infrastructure to attract people and businesses.

Can't get a tenure track job in a desirable location? Maybe you can bring desirability to your unfortunate location.  You know, when life gives you balls, make a sustainable community infrastructure.

Quote of the day

"The truth was that stripping had long called out to me. It offered something different from my grad school grind of dealing with students, grading papers, and sitting through seemingly endless seminars."

-- Craig Seymour, Ph.D., on stripping through grad school

Criminologists in demand

For some reason I was under the impression that the popularity of Law and Order, CSI, and other crime solving shows had lead to an overabundance of eager grad students wanting to study crime... but according to an article in IHE, demand for criminologists currently exceeds the supply.  Why the demand?  Because undergraduates want to study crime... dangerous, sexy crime...

Undergraduates flock to courses about crime . . . “Undergraduate enrollment is the coin of the realm,” Uggen said, and criminology courses produce the numbers with which a department chair can make “a much stronger claim to a faculty line.”

So if nobody wants to read your boring family studies ethnography, consider studying criminals instead.

Sign of fucked up times

At least 50 colleges and universities have ordered this instructional video on how to survive a homicidal rampage:

This month a company in Spokane, Wash., plans to release Shots Fired on Campus, an instructional DVD with strategies for preventing and surviving a gun rampage.
. . .
The 20-minute video, filmed at Eastern Washington and Gonzaga Universities, begins with a student hiding behind a tree and calling 911 on her cellphone. "I'm on campus…" she says. "There's a guy here shooting."

Northwestern can't win

Northwestern had planned to award an honorary doctorate to Rev. Jeremiah Wright at this year's commencement, but after all of the unfortunate publicity (ZOMGobama'spastorHATESwhitepeople!), they revoked the degree "to ensure that the celebratory character of Commencement not be affected." In other words, they were terrified of upsetting the suburban white parents who paid $40,000 per year for those diplomas.

But now the black alumni are angry about the revocation... especially considering that Chicago's mayor, who has been less than awesome to the black community, was invited to speak:

“When the university made those decisions they were not applying the same standards all across the board,” says Dillon [president of Northwestern’s Black Alumni Association]. “This is where the lens of racism comes in. Rev. Wright is accused of committing a crime of being unpatriotic,” while Daley is accused of failing to act when learning that Black men were subject to real criminal offenses.

The Black Alumni Association is also critical of Northwestern's declining black enrollment, which dropped to a pitiful 5.5 percent in 2005.  The administration was admittedly fucked either way on the Wright issue thanks to their unlucky timing -- but they have not done enough to recruit and support black students at Northwestern, and there is no excuse for sucking at that.

Graduation (not yours)

Commencement season has mostly wrapped up for the year, with a few remaining stragglers holding their graduation ceremonies this weekend. As June turns to July, ABD grad students can finally stop fielding questions about whether "this will be the year" as their families resign themselves to another 12 months of "dissertation"... or whatever the fuck you do all day.

Meanwhile, first year Ph.D. students, having survived the "adjustment" and wrapped up exams, are left to ponder the big questions: Why did only two people from my program graduate when entering cohorts have 10-20 people in them? What the hell did I sign up for? Will I ever see a dentist again?

Second years know the answer, but having survived two years of work and stress and misery (with employment prospects declining by the day) -- you may as well stay. Third year might be better, right?

Right. Happy summer everyone.

30,000

According to a local news station, Jerry Falwell's own Liberty University received 30,000 applications this year. Estimated breakdown of applicants:

20% - Eager young scholars who love Jesus and Falwell and can't wait to attend

10% - Self-hating gay teens hoping that fundamentalist Baptist college will cure them (Will deeply regret by sophomore year)

50% - Forced to apply by parents hoping save their heathen offspring from booze and gayness

5% - Foreign students with poor English skills who mistakenly assumed Liberty would be "the most free" American university

15% - Applied as safety school in case of thin envelopes from Bob Jones and the shitty Bible College two miles from home.

Oh for fucks sake

Today, my new favorite blogger at the Chronicle, Marty Nemko, finds the real lesson in Tim Russert's death:

Tim Russert’s untimely death from a sudden heart attack reminded me of the dramatic 50+-year-long gender disparity against men in health care research and outreach.

Nemko claims that "for the past 50+ years, the overwhelming majority of health care research has been on women’s health" citing as evidence:

. . . when I searched PubMed . . . I found 22,304 articles with the keywords “women’s health,” but only 586 
with “men’s health.”

Holy crap... 97% of all medical research is about tits and ovaries? Now that is alarming... so alarming that you almost wonder if there is some huge and obvious logical flaw in his argument...

Douche, Ph.D.

The Atlantic's Megan McArdle believes Ph.D. students are unbearable pricks:

The new graduate student's lack of humility is a stunning thing, perfect, seamless, and unbreakable. They begin issuing their opinions to anyone who will hold still on the assumption that the benighted masses have just been waiting patiently for a clever graduate student to explain How Things Really Work.

Why are grad students so arrogant? According to her "friend" with a Ph.D., the problem is that professors make them feel special... and so taking courses as a first year makes these students feel like hot shit:

For the first time in their lives, the students are treated like adults. They are in the outer circle of an intellectual elite, treated slightly more like members of the club than time-consuming nuisances. Their classes are smaller, and offer actual conversation with some big name professors. . . They start to feel like members of a special elite, privy to secret knowledge, cleverer than the normal run of people.

 The new graduate student, bolstered by the opinions of their professors, tends to become extraordinarily indignant at the notion that anyone would challenge them.

I don't know where McArdle's friend went to grad school, but I want to transfer.   In my experience, most Ph.D. programs are a little less "Welcome to our elite club, oh brilliant first year," and a little more "Make my copies, bitch."

This week in obvious

According to a new study, the pressure to publish leads an alarming number of researchers to fake their findings, while universities are less than eager to investigate.

"Our study calls into question the effectiveness of self-regulation," the authors write...

But it works so well in the corporate world!

Remember that douchebag

who wrote that racist book? He has blessed us with another one:

Relying on the thesis of The Bell Curve—that intelligence, and therefore prospects for academic achievement, is determined by heredity—Mr. Murray’s new book argues that education policies should recognize that not all students can be expected to take high-level academic courses, and that some students should concentrate instead on vocational training to prepare for the workforce.

But Murray doesn't think this book will be as controversial as The Bell Curve:

"This [new book] doesn’t deal with race,” Mr. Murray said. “Anything that does not deal with race doesn’t get as much blowback as something that does deal with race. ”

Right, he's not saying that black kids should be steered toward the plumbing profession while white kids take college prep. He's just saying that "some people" should not aspire to higher learning because "some people" just aren't as smart as some other people... if you know what he means.

Good luck with that

A new bill passed in New York would outlaw smoking in dorms. Yeah, and there won't be any drinking, recreational drugs, or illegal pets either.

Chileans threatened with fees, admissions committees

Teachers protest:

A group of Chilean teachers on Tuesday broke the security line of the government building and protested inside against the General Law of Education which is under discussion in congress.
. . .
The law, signed by President Michelle Bachelet and now submitted for congress's approval, sets out higher tuition fees for students and a selection process for public schools to choose students, which opponents said would be unfair for those families with lower incomes.

Some places are very different from here.

BMW denied

Ph.D. students who look at the academic job market with growing despair can take comfort in the fact that most of those determined little sellouts who went to law school, while you dumbly pursued your passions, won't actually make any money. According to the Associated Press, the big firms offer a few sweet gigs, but most law students will end up with sucky jobs, barely making enough to pay Sallie Mae. In accordance with new AP policy, here are the first four words from the article:

To hear many students

You see kids, academia may not pay, but at least you don't have to take on fuckloads of debt just to pay the tuition.

A sad day for whitey

The Chronicle's new guest blogger, Marty Nemko, writes about attending a graduation for masters students at SFSU where white men were marginalized, cruelly excluded and made to feel unwanted at their own graduation:

I wondered how the straight white male graduates must have felt. . . I wondered how many, in their heart of hearts, felt sadness or anger at being excluded.

How were white straight men "excluded"? According to Nemko, all of the speakers were minorities -- except, well:

the retiring chair, a white man who said that his vision for the counseling department is to create a program in counseling the incarcerated, disproportionately minority.

Race traitor!  And:

... [a] professor handed out four student awards: three to Latinos and one to a white male who had been transgendered and did his thesis on transgender counseling.

And whites who are queer don't fucking count.

I am bookmarking this guy as I'm sure that more delightful insights are ahead.

Go home grandpa

This week's Chronicle is devoted to a problem facing universities, businesses, and families nationwide: How do we get rid of old people?

Professors present an unusual problem when it comes to retirement: They actually like their jobs, and often do not want to leave them.

These professors operate under the illusion that they are still productive and useful members of their departments past the age of 65, while younger academics try to lure them out of their prime office space and onto the golf course.

This leads to what The Chronicle calls the gentle push in which administrators kindly and lovingly push old people out of the way by bribing them to leave. Bribes include: Money, but also "free parking, library privileges" and "computer and e-mail access."

That's right, aging academics -- You can keep your library card! And for those of you who know how to use a computer, you can hang on to that .edu to make you feel like you still have a job even though you've been pushed out on account of being super old. Gentle enough for you, old man?