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."