The small town of Mitchell, South Dakota is best known (when it is known at all) as the home of the Corn Palace and a Cabela's that can be seen from seemingly miles away. It's also the home of Dakota Wesleyan University, the small college George McGovern attended in the 1940s. DWU has a new library -- George and Eleanor McGovern Library and Center for Leadership and Public Service -- which was dedicated last week.
I find it both ironic and heartening that a small town in South Dakota, among the reddest of the red states, is now proudly the home of a library dedicated to the McGovern legacy. My home state has not given liberals much to be proud of recently, but it's nice to be reminded that once upon a time, South Dakota gave liberals (and the country) George McGovern, whose passion and ideals continue to make a difference.
Two of my obsessions meet: coffee and higher education. Remember those Starbucks cups that have the Concerned Women of America all worked up? They're not the only ones. Baylor University has now banned the cups bearing the Armistead Maupin quote (which oh-so-controversially advises gays to just be who they are) from campus. BU has no comment on the cups' removal.
I understand that Baylor is affiliated with a conservative religious denomination, and takes its mission of Christian higher education very seriously. But by essentially censoring something as harmless as a quotation on a paper cup, the institution demeans the commitment of its community to their own values. For a place like Baylor to perceive enough of a threat to Christian values in such a trivial thing seems ludicrously paternalistic. Shouldn't BU be above even noticing such a thing? As if a paper cup is a threat to the inculcation of values...
(Link via DuVernois.)
Ah, just what the world needs: a vanity university. Just in case you're blinded by celebrity and desperate to throw away good money that you could spend on real education, Donald Trump has begun lectures at Trump University. Apparently, more than 2,000 people paid their $250 to watch Trump's picture while listening to his words of wisdom. Key lessons: buy low, sell high; always haggle; and never, ever quit. If you missed the lecture, don't worry: this is supposedly just the first in a series of seven. What a racket.
Finally ran across something frightening enough to make me break my silence. I'd love to provide a link to it, but it doesn't seem to be on the web. That's lucky for Parking and Transportation Services, because this is the most embarassingly, spectacularly dorky bit of marketing I've seen in quite some time.
What is it (I'm sure you're now dying to know)? It's a cute little piece of promotional literature that arrived in my snail-mailbox the other day, with the catchy title "A Blogger's Diary at the U." The purpose? To inform new U students of the myriad transportation options available to them as they begin their college journeys. Doc Dregs and I were fortunate enough to receive two copies of this gem, since we're both registered for classes this fall.
The title is enough of an eye-roller that I nearly chucked both of the pretty, four-color cards straight into the trash, but for some reason, I was compelled to open it and read what followed. The idea is that a new student blogger makes daily entries detailing his/her first week at the U -- with emphasis on all of the great means of transportation available on and around campus! The whole thing is both funny and painful to read; here are some choice excerpts:
Monday 9:05 p.m. My first day of classes at the U of M. Crazy, I tell ya! I had to ride the CAMPUS SHUTTLE buses to get from one class to the next. Not like high school at all! ... I tried to get over to St. Paul, but the East Bank circulator only circles that campus. I won't make that mistake again. ):-(
Wednesday 10:59 p.m. Dreary depressing rainy day. Bleh. It took some getting used to, but I experimented with the GOPHER WAY indoor tunnels and skyways. "Follow, follow, follow, follow the yellow brick road..." well, I guess it's more of a maroon and gold route. LOL! ... One thing I noticed were all the videocameras in the tunnels. I wonder who watches those. :-I
Thursday 6:12 p.m. Cool news! I've made a friend in my Spanish class. We both kinda suck at oral exams. :-P -- oh well. We even live close to each other, so we plan to study together for our first test next week. Joe thought we should try to CARPOOL to campus ...
And so on, as the "blogger" discovers riding his BIKE, where to park if he has to DRIVE, and what a U-PASS is for. The whole thing is just so far beyond dorky that I almost wonder if it's that way on purpose. In this age of post-post-post-irony, surely no one at PTS could really think that incoming students would find this little piece of infomarketing genuinely cool or appealing? I fear that it isn't so, though -- the entire tone is just too earnest. There aren't any clever little nudges, winks, or kitschy insertions to demonstrate that the writers/marketers know how uncool their approach is. I'm certainly not down with college-student culture (I wasn't even when I was in college), but even I'm not far enough out of it to miss how embarassingly lame is this attempt to be current and hip.
Anyway, it's a small thing, and I'm sure that most students will probably do just what I started out to do -- toss it in the circular file. Still, I have to wonder what the marketing people over at PTS were thinking. If anyone from PTS happens to have stumbled upon this, I apologize for mocking your product (which actually is chock-full of useful information), but seriously -- why this? And more importantly, as long as you're going to pretend you're a "student blogger," why not plug UThink?
One of the highlights of the ALA conference (and one of the few events or meetings not directly related to my work that I was able to attend) was the opening general session featuring a speech by Illinois senator Barack Obama, current darling of the demoralized national Democratic party. Obama's speech predictably hit on issues near and dear to the hearts of librarians, such as the right to read, intellectual freedom, the USA Patriot Act, and the importance of literacy -- but it was a rousing speech, greeted with enthusiasm from the crowd (there are conservative librarians, but, um, not very many -- and I doubt most of them were among the thousands present for Obama's speech). The Chicago Sun-Times summarizes Obama's speech here.
Those of you who know the Keeper of the Dregs and I know that we have an unreasonable affection for old educational and training films. Thanks to the Internet Archive, now all of us can find out via educational film whether or not librarianship is the right career choice:
Pleasant but serious male narrator: These racks and shelves contain a lot of books. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands -- perhaps millions. How do you feel about them? Do they mean something to you? Are they your friends?
So begins The Librarian, a 10-minute journey into a much simpler time in the history of libraries and information. There are a number of amusing moments in the film, especially if you happen to know anything about present-day libraries. Highly recommended for fans of educational films and librariana.
From the "What on earth are they thinking?" files, it's the Minneapolis Public Library's new marketing campaign. Apparently, those of us lucky enough to live in the Twin Cities can expect to start seeing these ads sometime this month. Hmm. For some reason, Mao and J. Edgar Hoover aren't exactly the historical figures I'd want associated with my library. I have no problem with Batgirl, but seriously -- I like to think of libraries as bastions of free speech, open inquiry, and education for all. Not the values that usually spring readily to mind when I think of Mao or J. Edgar Hoover.
I'm very excited about MPL's new central library building, set to open next spring. But this campaign strikes me as a serious lapse in judgment. A spokesman for the Friends of the Library says, "We want to pique people's curiosity and get some buzz." I could be wrong -- I'm certainly no marketing expert -- but my guess is that people will either be confused or offended by this campaign. The choice seems even odder here in this super-liberal midwestern city, where I'm sure that many will make connections that anger rather than amuse. And I'm sure that's not the sort of "buzz" the library wants to generate.
Thanks to librarian.net for this bit of news from my own backyard...
Here's a great article at (yes) USNews.com that addresses the small number of low-income students (of any race) at most elite colleges and universities. Although the article focuses on private schools, what's so shocking to me is that only 11 percent of the undergrads at 19 selective institutions -- including U of M peers like the University of Illinois -- come from families with incomes lower than $27,000 a year.
Having once been in this position myself, I strongly identify with the Princeton freshman who finds that, as the child of a family whose income is around 50K, she is not like the vast majority of her fellow students. Things weren't quite as bad at super-lefty Oberlin, where (unlike at many Ivies) conspicuous consumption and the flaunting of wealth is seriously frowned upon. Still, the little things make it clear enough to the low-income student that his or her peers have a completely alien frame of financial reference. It's a valuable learning experience, but it isn't easy.
I've long wondered if one remedy proposed in the article -- "affirmative action" for low-income students regardless of race -- would help. There are, of course, a number of low-income students who manage to compile brilliant high school records, and don't need any help getting into the college of their choice. This was my situation, and when I was young and naive, I thought I owed my success to nothing but my own hard work, brains, and talent. Now I know better: my mother worked herself nearly to death to make sure that my brother and I had every "middle class" educational advantage she could possibly provide as a single parent making just barely enough to get by. Without her hard work, sacrifices, and support -- not to mention her attitude toward college (it was not optional) -- my brother and I would not have done nearly as well for ourselves. I had no understanding of how absurd it must have seemed to my mother when I selected a college 1500 miles from home with annual expenses well above her annual income. She didn't tell me it was impossible, though she must have been tempted -- she just helped me find a way. Considering the level of personal sacrifice (and suffering) my mom went through, it's hard to imagine how smart kids from families even less well-off than ours might make it not just to, but through an elite institution, public or private.
The article was a response to a newly published book: Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education. I will add this to my reading list, since this issue is near and dear to my heart.
The
Ricci's poster isn't the only oddball one. How about Weird Al Yankovic, posing not-quite seriously with A Brief History of Time? That's kinda funny, but who even suspected that The Rock could read?
And when's the last time Tim Robbins and Mel Gibson found themselves supporting the same cause -- even one as non-controversial as reading? This almost makes my head explode.
It's nothing short of astonishing that Mel would have anything to do with a commie pinko organization like the ALA, anyway. But then, the book he's reading is 1984. Does that mean something? Creepy.
I'm actually surprised that this doesn't happen more often. It isn't as if it requires special intellect, equipment, or skills to record over a pre-recorded videotape. But why on earth wouldn't the woman who had the misfortune to check out this videotape contact the library she got it from? Instead, she notified the media -- and that's how the library learned about it. Does she think her public library is intentionally purveying hardcore porn to unsuspecting children? Or maybe she actually expects library staff to screen every video each time one is returned. Hmm. Does Blockbuster do that?
SF Weekly has a lengthy article on the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, which is about to move into a brand-new facility. SFCM hopes the new location will enable it to strengthen its ties with the San Francisco Symphony, attract more and better students, and help position those students more competitively for careers in classical music.
The new facility looks beautiful, but the article rightly questions the SFCM's stated goals as it moves. The article notes that SFCM wishes to emulate conservatories like Juilliard, Curtis, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, each of which has historically strong ties to its world-class hometown orchestra. (The article doesn't mention that Curtis is really a different kind of animal altogether, and has unique characteristics and practices that separate it from other conservatories and explain why so many of its graduates find orchestral employment.) But the San Francisco Symphony sounds pretty lukewarm on the possibility of a closer relationship with SFCM: Karen Ames, the Symphony's director of communications says, "It's the kind of situation where your friend moves into your neighborhood. Do you hope that you'll have dinner more with them after they move? Of course. Is that going to happen for sure? Not really. We love the conservatory and are excited about it moving down here, but that synergy is their goal, not ours." Hmm. Not very encouraging sentiments for SFCM.
The most important point raised in the article -- and one on which the author dwells a bit -- is the same one raised in a recent NY Times feature on Juilliard grads (I wrote about it here): is it ethical to cultivate so many young musicians for such a small (and shrinking) number of jobs? SFCM's administrators are of course right that it isn't their responsibility to try to dissuade talented, music-obsessed kids who've been working toward the goal of an orchestra job for most of their lives from pursuing it. But they, along with the administrators and faculty of all institutions that allow students to study classical performance to the exclusion of all else, do have an ethical obligation to make sure students understand what they're getting themselves into. When I was an undergrad studying clarinet, we all basically knew the odds were against us -- but we also all thought we were going to be the exceptions, the ones who actually made it. A little bit of "What if I'm not one of the lucky ones?" would be a useful exercise for everyone.
This is the kind of thing that drives us catalogers crazy. The author (Steven Levy) is onto something, yes -- but he manages to completely misrepresent libraries and library catalogers in the process (who have been down with the idea of tagging for decades now). Over at SearchEngineWatch, Gary Price effectively corrects Levy's mistaken impressions -- and goes further, beginning to explain the value of controlled vocabularies in helping people find stuff.
I won't rehash Price's excellent commentary. But it's pretty distressing that seemingly no matter how much librarians attempt to raise the profile of their profession and its activities, the wider world never gets it. Concepts like "tagging" and the "long tail" are things that are old hat to librarians, who've been there and done that (and are still doing that, decades later). Why are librarians so continually ineffective at getting our message out and gaining some respect for our profession?
Part of the problem is public relations, but I can't blame the general ignorance and undervaluing of the venerable traditions of library cataloging entirely on our failure to get the word out. Catalogers have placed way, way too much focus over the years on descriptive cataloging -- the minute details of what a thing is -- rather than subject access, or what the thing is about -- our version of "tagging," which is of course the really critical thing the Internet needs to be more useful to everyone. Not that accurate description isn't important -- after all, how else are you going to know whether that copy of Hamlet is a critical edition of the script, the Laurence Olivier movie on DVD, or the Kenneth Branagh movie on VHS? But it's a heck of a lot less important for items that don't exist physically.
In my experience, the division of labor in cataloging has tended toward having paraprofessionals (library staff lacking a Master's degree in Library Science) concentrate on verifying the accuracy of descriptions in catalog records created by other libraries, with little or no attention paid to subject analysis. We call this process "copy cataloging." It's made possible by huge shared databases of catalog records (the largest being WorldCat, also known in LibraryLand as OCLC). As long as the catalog record has one or two subject headings and a classification number that seem appropriate, the copy cataloger simply sets up the item for circulation, and moves on.
"Professional" catalogers (those holding that mystical MLS degree) are generally expected to spend a lot more time worrying about "tagging" and whether an item (be it a book, a map, a DVD, or a website) has adequate subject access. Assigning appropriate subject terms can take a big chunk of time, because of the combination of the intellectual work to determine the right terms and the complicated controlled vocabulary (Library of Congress Subject Headings) from which we select those terms. Because this process is so time-consuming (and therefore expensive), for years libraries have been cutting back on the amount of time they're willing to let their catalogers spend on it -- which ultimately means fewer "tags" and less useful subject access.
So, yeah, we've always done this "tagging" thing -- but in a lot of ways, our priorities are seriously out of whack when it comes to providing intellectual access to information -- a core function of our profession, and the central contribution to knowledge of the library science discipline. Many catalogers (and other librarians) have become super-aware of this, since the harsh light of the Internet makes it so obvious. We should change, and we're starting to, but we're not doing it fast enough. We need to retool and retrain staff -- most of whom are smart, intellectually accomplished people whether or not they hold that magical degree -- and reimagine our processes so that we're spending our time on the thing that matters most: subject access.
Or, well, maybe not. Here's a good, brief article on how to teach students to recognize sites purveying questionable information. A centerpiece of most information literacy programs in academic libraries is teaching students to distinguish between popular and scholarly writing, and a critical element of that training over the past several years has been how to know if information on the Internet is trustworthy. I like the tips in the article linked above, especially used in combination with these more traditional techniques, as neatly summarized by the Cornell University Library.
I guess it's Library of Congress day here at Shades. The Library of Congress looms large in the work lives of librarians -- especially catalogers, who rely on LC for guidance in almost everything. So as a cataloger, musician, and former band geek, I think it's especially neat that Stephen Bulla has completed John Phillip Sousa's Library of Congress March, which was unfinished at the time of Sousa's death. What's even better: the score, performance parts, and a recording are freely available at the link above, as part of the treasure trove that is the I Hear America Singing collection.
Maybe I'm just getting an early start on celebrating National Library Week.
The Library of Congress has announced the 2004 additions to the National Recording Registry. The Registry, created by the National Recording
Preservation Act of 2000, is tasked with preserving the recorded cultural heritage of the United States. It identifies the best existing versions of recordings on the registry and works to preserve and provide access to them. To qualify, recordings must be culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant, and at least 10 years old.
This year's additions to the Registry run the gamut from jazz and blues, to gospel, to pop, classical, and hip-hop. The Registry also includes historically significant recordings of speeches and broadcasts. Some of favorites from this year's group: Ma Rainey's "See See Rider" Blues, Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'" performed by the composer, and Tom Lehrer's "Songs by Tom Lehrer." The registry's chronological range increases by almost ten years due to the inclusion of Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet" and Nirvana's "Nevermind." As usual, all of the choices are absolutely unimpeachable: the musical selections are generally regarded as both historical and artistic milestones, and the speech and broadcast selections document historically important events and/or personalities. Check out the full Registry and see for yourself.
Or maybe you'd rather nominate a recording you think has special artistic and historic value. Public nominations for 2005 additions are open until July 15, and there's even a convenient online form.
Here's a cute little writeup from MSNBC about the myriad oddball scholarships college students might find they qualify for if they look hard enough. My favorite (as a sorta-trekkie): the Klingon Language Institute offers scholarships for the study of languages (not just Klingon). Other scholarships are offered to those motivated, creative and skilled enough to create outfits out of wool or duct tape. I'm sure many students don't have time for that kind of thing during their last couple of years of high school, but it's nice to know that with a little research, creativity, and effort, there are plenty of ways to get a little scholarship money besides having a perfect academic record and/or talent in sports, music, or some other traditional area of endeavor.
In the coming-as-a-shock-to-no-one category: a new study finds that college faculties are overwhelmingly populated by self-described liberals. Even engineering and business departments, generally regarded as more conservative than other disciplines, were found to have many more faculty describing themselves as liberal than as conservative. The study was done by respected academics, but funded by the right-wing Randolph Foundation.
Conservative commentators have already begun indignantly presuming that this imbalance exists because liberal senior faculty and administrators discriminate in hiring against those who hold different political views. While I would never assert that this doesn't happen (and I have heard tales of this kind of bias going the other direction), I have a hard time believing that that could really be the primary cause of the imbalance between liberals and conservatives in academia.
What I suspect is that academia is rife with liberals for similar reasons that the fields of K-12 teaching and librarianship are: people who choose those fields are frequently willing to sacrifice earning power and worldly prestige in exchange for working in a field that seems (at least initially) not to require a total values compromise. Not that academics who really make it don't earn well and have a decent amount of social capital: they do, but compared to what's possible in the private sector, the possibilities in academia are relatively limited. The typical liberal dedication to education, tolerance, and free speech means that liberals feel right at home in college and university environments, where, at the very least, a whole lot of lip service is paid to such values and their exercise.
It's still a chicken-and-egg problem in a way, though. Would more conservatives choose academic careers if the environment was friendlier to their beliefs? Or does (over)education really turn people into liberals? I don't know the answer, but the accusation of discrimination is simplistic, weak, and fails to consider a huge number of more likely explanations.
Presumably students have been complaining about the high cost of textbooks as long as they've been required to buy them. But there is mounting evidence that textbook prices really are higher now than they've ever been, as publishers put out new editions with minor changes and useless bundled content (such as CD-ROMs) just so they can raise the price. To help students learn about alternatives to buying brand new textbooks at list price, the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries have prepared this pamphlet, describing ways that students can get their textbooks cheaper (or even possibly avoid buying them altogether).
It's good to see the library of a major public university acknowledging this crisis for students so openly and providing information and choices. It's not that I think textbook publishers and authors shouldn't profit from their efforts. But I think there are some troubling ethical issues in maximizing profits at the expense of students, who are already having enough trouble paying for their educations. It should be possible to balance the need of publishers to make a profit with the need of students to afford higher education.
Inside Higher Ed has this piece on elite private colleges and universities that find themselves at, near, or just over the $40,000-a-year mark for tution and fees. Institutions in this, um, exclusive club include Brown, Swarthmore, Harvard, Stanford, Duke, Smith, Wesleyan, and many other top-tier private universities and liberal-arts colleges, including Oberlin, my alma mater, where total expenses for the current school year were a whopping $38,810.
Although I imagine that $40,000 is a frightening number for most people to contemplating paying for a year of higher education, it's still true that only students from the wealthiest families actually wind up footing the entire bill. Most receive financial aid, which in the case of students from low-income families usually covers the lion's share of college expenses. As a low-income Oberlin student in the early 90s (when total expenses were in the slightly less jaw-dropping neighborhood of 25 grand a year), I and my family never paid more than a small fraction of those expenses (not that it wasn't still a hardship).
The quandary for colleges and universities at this level has to do with the psychological significance of the $40K figure. Many (most?) students and parents, lacking a real understanding of how financial aid works at these institutions, could be discouraged from even applying, thinking they could never afford them. On the other hand, as one administrator puts it, "more and more people associate high costs with quality." So elite privates almost need to keep their costs at comparable levels to avoid the perception that their tuition is lower because their offerings are not as strong.
The real winners in all of this could be top-tier public colleges and research universities, many of which offer comparable educational quality (if a little less prestige) without the shockingly large price tag. Of course, the way things have been going with public higher ed funding over the past ten years or so, it may only be a matter of time before all higher ed in the U.S. is essentially a private endeavor.
When is a town too small to support a library? Apparently, never--at least when the town is Monowi, Nebraska, population 1 (yes, 1).
The one remaining resident of Monowi, Elsie Eiler, 71, runs the tavern, the only business left in town. But when her husband, a voracious reader, died, he requested that his personal library become the town's public library. Elsie and her children fulfilled this request. The library building has floor-to-ceiling shelves, a plywood floor, and no heat -- but it also has a collection of 5,000 books. There is no catalog, no system for shelving the books, no way to find the book you want to read other than assiduous browsing and serendipity. Circulation happens on the honor system. But the essential spirit of the public library is present in spades: the books are there for the use, pleasure, and education of all of the area's residents.
It's nice to be reminded in this age of everything digital that the basics still matter. Even without spending many thousands or millions of dollars on whizbang digital tools and online content, a collection of books, shared freely, is still a benefit to the community. This is something I hope we never lose sight of as we continue to pursue the bleeding edge of technology. The heart of what really matters -- and the reason that libraries matter -- is the dedication to access for all, intellectual freedom, and self-education.
Let's take a moment to celebrate the happy marriage of two of my favorite things: libraries and iPods. Wired has the story of a Long Island public library which now owns ten iPod Shuffles. What does it do with them? It circulates audiobooks on them. Library patrons can check out an iPod Shuffle loaded with a complete audiobook title. Eleven titles are currently offered.
The library expects to save money in the long run by using iPod Shuffles, since downloaded audiobooks are often a fraction of the price of audiobooks on CD. This is a pretty nifty idea -- one that I suspect will meet with more success than the circulating e-book readers in which many libraries have invested. iPods and libraries: it's a beautiful thing.
Apparently, the great state of Wyoming has become a haven for institutions of higher education of, shall we say, questionable credentials. This is because, true to the state's libertarian nature, Wyoming's licensing standards for post-secondary institutions are rather lax. Are these schools just diploma mills, or genuine players in the distance-higher-ed marketplace? It's hard to say for sure, but based on the evidence presented in the article, it doesn't look good.
Not that all of this should reflect in any way on the quality of the University of Wyoming, the alma mater of several of my very good friends (not to mention the husband). But it just can't be a good sign when quotations like "People start to giggle if you say `Wyoming-licensed school,' if you know about accreditation" are in the air.
I refuse to believe that the mayor of one of America's largest cities has nothing better to do than this. Mayor Bill White of Houston, TX has seen fit to order the Houston Public Library to place all of its copies of porn star Jenna Jameson's book How to Make Love Like a Porn Star: A Cautionary Tale in closed stacks, so that library patrons must ask for the book if they wish to read it (or merely browse through it).
It's hardly unprecedented for public libraries to place sexually explicit or otherwise controversial materials in closed stacks. In many cases, the closed-stack treatment is necessary just to keep the books from being stolen or defaced (many libraries faced this issue with Madonna's Sex back in the early 90s). Public libraries deal with controversial materials all the time, so most of them (especially large public library systems) have policies and procedures in place for addressing any complaints or challenges they may receive.
But rather than allow the challenge to Jameson's book to go through the established review process, Houston's mayor decided the situation was desperate enough that he must take action. This is a terrible precedent. Libraries and librarians must be allowed to make their own (carefully considered) decisions on these matters, in collaboration with the community. The mayor's actions demonstrate a lack of faith in the review process, and perhaps even a lack of regard for the ideals of intellectual freedom and access for all held so dear by the library profession.
Reading this made me try to recover my vaguely-remembered frame of mind during my junior and senior years of high school. Would I have been swayed in my college choice by such marketing tactics as ski trips? Reality TV on campus? In the late 80s, recruitment happened via glossy viewbooks (of which I must have received hundreds, unsolicited), meetings with alumni, and personal phone calls. That's how I ended up at Oberlin, a place I chose without ever visiting the campus.
Other schools tried to recruit me as well, but not with anything fun or entertaining. Their efforts ran more toward scholarship dollars and promises of intellectual stimulation in honors programs. Some of the schools I considered (and you know of which esteemed institutions I speak) simply provided a viewbook and an application. With their reputations, they knew students would come to them. No need to try hard to recruit when you reject 90% of your applicants.
The linked article states the obvious: it's a buyer's market in higher ed, at least for the vast majority of institutions below the top tier. Clearly, colleges and universities that want to stay afloat need to do everything they can to recruit students. But there's an ethical line that should not be crossed when it comes to recruitment, especially when your targets are (mostly) impressionable teenagers. Higher education already has an image problem. Whatever the immediate benefits for an individual institution, adopting the strategies of sleazy marketers who specialize in selling to teenagers just can't be a good long-term strategy for higher ed as a whole. Is it already too late to turn back?
Rising student debt is not exactly a news flash, but the amount of debt that many graduates find themselves with is growing alarmingly, as detailed in this piece from the Tacoma (Washington) News Tribune.
I'm struggling to pay off a healthy chunk of student debt myself, a little more than half of which I borrowed as an undergrad, the rest of which I borrowed to get through library school. But my situation is not nearly as bad as it could be: my sweetie had minimal student debt which he finished paying off several years ago, so at least we only have my debt to contend with. Lots of couples (and individuals, of course) aren't so lucky, as they try to pay off double or triple that amount of student debt, often on a single income.
The triple threat of the growing necessity of a college degree, reduced government financial support for higher education, and ever-rising tuition rates makes it pretty clear that the trend isn't going to reverse itself without some serious reform. Perhaps Congress will come to the rescue of overburdened students and parents, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for their solution.
What really bugs me about all of this is that as unavoidably bad as the debt situation is for many students, some of them insist on digging their own holes. The wife of the man featured in the News Tribune article seems like an obvious case in point. She has borrowed over $100,000 to complete a doctorate in what the article refers to as "anthropology and religion" -- and she's not even finished yet. It goes almost without saying that her earnings expectations are not high once she does complete her degree, yet she continues, presumably adding to her debt in order to do so.
I don't know these people, and I know it isn't wise to judge their choices based on a few paragraphs in a newspaper human interest story. And I'm all for following your bliss, for doing what you feel in your heart of hearts you are meant to do -- but at some point, doesn't reality have to be reckoned with? This couple (who has two children, by the way) appears to be sacrificing their family's financial security and well-being so that one of them can chase a dream. Perhaps she's a brilliant scholar and will find nothing but glittering career success and a meteoric rise to the top of her field. But if she isn't, where will that leave them? According to the article, the couple is already deeply pessimistic about their chances to do something as basic to financial stability as buying a house. Not a good sign.
At what point do you have to take a hard look at what you need to do to achieve your dream career and decide that it's too much? One college friend of mine had a maxim to which he swore he would adhere as he chose his post-B.A. educational path: if you have to pay for graduate school, you probably shouldn't be there. What we didn't realize as naive undergrads was that there are fields where grad students have no choice but to pay their own way through. Still, I think there is a grain of truth in my friend's m.o. For many of us, it's too easy to watch the loans pile up in the service of what we think we ought to be doing. But in 21st-century America, some paths really are too costly to take.
As long as we're on the topic of GRE preparation, let me refer you to Sheppard Software, where all kinds of free web games are available to help you learn geography and expand your vocabulary. The "Learn SAT/GRE Words" quizzes have not thrown me any unexpected curves, but the "Expert Word List" quizzes provide a much stiffer challenge. I've taken four of them, and I'm averaging around 75-80%. These are pretty humbling; I know many of the words, and some of the others I know I knew at some point. But some of these words are either totally new to me, or they're words that I remember encountering maybe once or twice in context but have never really been certain of their meanings.
But I'm just putting off the inevitable...does anyone know of any free online SAT/GRE math quizzes?
So I may have finally come around to a decision to apply to a new graduate program and pursue another master's degree, this time in Higher Ed Policy & Administration. Why do I want to do this? Well, because I'm interested in the subject matter, it's almost free (there are a few relatively minor tax implications), and having another advanced degree could help me professionally. Sounds like a pretty good idea, no?
Unfortunately, my original GRE scores hail from 1994, the fall of my last year of college. That means they have long since expired (they do so after a paltry five years), and the only way I might be admitted to the graduate program of my choice is to (shudder) take the GRE again.
I don't exactly fear the GRE; standardized tests of all kinds have always been good to me, and I did very well on the GRE ten years ago without studying so much as a single vocabulary word, geometry figure, or logic problem. But things have changed since then, and not necessarily for the better. First, the analytical section of the GRE has been replaced by a writing section. This doesn't really worry me, since I'm fairly confident in my ability to write passably well off the top of my head (evidence of this blog aside), but it is something new that I haven't done before. Second, my math studies (such as they were) are now ten years further in my past than when I last attempted the GRE. This means I will have to prepare at least a little bit, or risk an extremely embarassing result on the math section. Finally -- and this is my biggest objection -- the GRE costs $115. It really rubs me the wrong way that I will have to cough up a hundred bucks in order to prove that I am capable of graduate-level work when I already have one master's degree and have previously been admitted to the University of Minnesota Graduate School.
And then there's always the possibility that I will take the GRE and discover that I've killed even more brain cells in the last decade than I think I have. How much did my mental capacity decrease over the course of my twenties? Taking the GRE now will give me proof in hard numbers. Yikes.
Well, I can rant about it, entertain whatever crazy fears I want, and bemoan the injustice of the situation, but the fact remains: I have to take the GRE if I want the privilege of spending more time in school. And I do want that -- I'm hard-wired to want it. So I'll pay my hundred bucks, study my math, and do what I have to do. Wish me luck.
What happens to Juilliard graduates? Do they all turn out to be famous, or at least successful, professional musicians? Not by a long shot, according to this New York Times article, which describes the lives and careers of several members of Juilliard's class of 1994. This is of special interest to me, since I am also ten years past graduation from a famous conservatory (though not quite as famous as Juilliard).
Unsurprisingly, almost half of the class of '94 are not making their livings as professional musicians, and several more, while still in music, are teaching or involved in other activities that are not full-time performance. Those who have left music entirely (including one who recently bit the bullet and sold his bassoon to pay off some debts) have often followed complicated paths through the classical music world and out the other side. Their stories speak to the ludicrousness of expecting 17 and 18-year-olds to be equipped to choose a path as demanding and unforgiving as classical music performance.
The experiences of these musicians resonate with my own path away from performance (though unlike them, I had already decided not to pursue that path before graduation). Studying music performance at such a high level forces most who do it to define themselves primarily by what they do: your conception of self becomes inextricably tied to your instrument. Coming to an understanding of who you are when you move away from performance as the paramount reason for your existence can be a difficult and painful process. It certainly was for me.
The article also makes me curious about the number of my classmates who are now playing professionally. I know that some are, but I also know many who are not. My best guess is that it's an even smaller percentage than the Juilliard class's. Part of this is surely because Oberlin is a very different kind of place than Juilliard; although it's possible at Oberlin to focus intensively on music to the exclusion of everything else (and many do), the fact that the Conservatory shares the campus with a good and serious liberal arts college means that music students are forced to interact extensively with people studying other things. So Oberlin Conservatory graduates may be more open to possible careers beyond music. Of course, the fact that about 25% of Conservatory graduates receive a B.A. in a liberal arts discipline in addition to their B.M.'s in performance (as I and several of my close friends did) must also make a difference.
This piece should be required reading for all undergraduate music performance majors, many of whom could benefit from a reality check before they complete their Bachelor's degrees. I think most responsible music faculty stress that it's worth thinking hard about the combination of talent, discipline, determination, and luck it takes to make it as a professional musician. But learning that not everyone from Juilliard (of all places!) makes it might help emphasize a point that doesn't really sink in for a lot of performers until some time after graduation.
I'll close with a quotation from the article that is an excellent summation of what it's like to study music at this level, an experience that is simultaneously exhilirating and painful for many students:
In the end, maybe going to a conservatory is like being a compulsive gambler: It is one big bet, but the drive to study music is so blinding, and doing anything else so inconceivable, that young players are oblivious to the risk. Sometimes it is hard to determine whether they are driven by single-mindedness or they live in self-denial.Once at Juilliard, they discover the inherent paradox of being a classical musician. You are called on to be expressive, imaginative, creative, somehow in touch with the mystical reaches of art, an individual. But you are also called on to ply a craft with exceeding skill, meshing a complex of minute physical activities in the service of black markings on a page and the composers who wrote them, often submerging yourself in the crowd. And you do it all with the purpose of making a living.
On a lighter note, TNT will air their new movie The Librarian: Quest for the Spear Sunday night at 7 PM. I posted on this topic before, but now more exciting details about the film have been revealed.
A few highlights: "nerdish bookworm" Flynn Carsen (Noah Wyle), who has earned 22 (!!) degrees at the age of 30, receives a mysterious job offer from the Metropolitan Public Library. After Carsen accepts the job from the Head Librarian (Bob Newhart), he learns that the library is home to some of history's greatest treasures, including the real Mona Lisa, Excalibur, and (well, you knew this had to be included, right?) the Ark of the Covenant. One of these priceless artifacts is the "Spear of Destiny," which has the fabulous power to grants its owner control over the world's destiny. (You can't make this stuff up. Well, okay, obviously someone can, but not I). A piece of the Spear is stolen by the evil Serpent Brotherhood, who, with a name like that, just can't be up to anything good. It's up to Carsen to recapture the Spear from the Snake People, and action, adventure, and romance ensue.
Hmm. I'm sorry to say that I think most Dungeons & Dragons modules have less ridiculous and hackneyed plots, but then, I'm a sucker, so I'll definitely be TiVO-ing this. Here's hoping it falls into the "so-bad-it's-good" category.
Gerald Allen, an Alabama lawmaker, is pushing legislation (at the state level) that would ban books with gay characters from public libraries (including libraries at publicly-funded universities) throughout the state. But wait, there's more:
If the bill became law, public school textbooks could not present homosexuality as a genetic trait and public libraries couldn't offer books with gay or bisexual characters. When asked about Tennessee Williams' southern classic "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof," Allen said the play probably couldn't be performed by university theater groups. . . . The bill also would ban materials that recognize or promote a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Alabama. Allen said that meant books with heterosexual couples committing those acts likely would be banned, too.
It's hard to imagine such a law passing, even in Alabama -- and if it did pass, it's highly unlikely that it would survive legal challenges. The knowledgable attorneys and librarians over at the LibraryLaw Blog say what should be obvious to anyone with a basic understanding of the Bill of Rights: "The government cannot prohibit speech on the basis of viewpoint, even in a nonpublic forum."
What gets me about this is the breathtaking unsubtletly of this lawmaker's actions. He must understand that what he proposes is absolutely contrary to core American beliefs and values, and he doesn't even pretend to care. There are, of course, plenty of threats to personal liberties and basic freedoms from various quarters in the U.S. Congress (not to mention the White House and the Justice Department), but at least there's lip service paid to maintaining balance with the rights that are guaranteed in the Constitution. That someone like Gerald Allen, who proudly demonstrates blatant disregard for fundamental American ideals, can be elected to public office does not speak well for the political health of our country.
Several years ago in a hermeneutics class, I read a philosopher (I'll have to look up the name when I have access to my bookshelf at home) whose basic premise was that even severe disagreements or differences in interpretation within a cultural group are healthy and not really threatening, because they occur against a vast background of agreement, common values, and shared understandings. For me, this has been a helpful way to approach American politics: I generally assume, unless there is proof otherwise, that those with whom I don't agree are acting in good faith, because at a basic level, we hold the same truths to be self-evident -- we just disagree about the best way to go about putting those truths into action. But faced with someone like Gerald Allen of Alabama, I can't maintain my belief in the good faith of my opponents. His is a way of thinking that is totally alien to mine, and I'm terrified by the possibility of many like him reaching positions of power.
Here's a little piece of bad news from higher ed land, neatly described in a column by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria: Americans don't do science anymore, and now we're not even willing to let in the foreign grad students who've been doing it for us.
Two serious problems are combining to lead to what sure looks like the inevitable decline of American leadership in science and technology. First, fewer and fewer American students major in a scientific discipline (in 1975, the U.S. ranked third in the proportion of students majoring in science or engineering; today, we rank 17th); and second, the foreign students who want to come to the U.S. to study and do scientific research find it increasingly difficult to get visas.
Zakaria makes the crucial connection between American primacy in higher education and the spread of western culture and ideas (including little things like democracy and free markets) throughout the world. Part of the reason we've been so successful in causing other nations to want to emulate us is because by and large, we educate their business, technology, and government leaders. When our universities are no longer the envy of the world, the best and brightest from elsewhere will no longer come here to be educated -- and in fact, many of them can't come here now because the process of getting a visa is so cumbersome.
It's a vicious circle. Zakaria thinks Condoleezza Rice will be able to do something about this as Secretary of State, and I hope that's true. But apparently we also need to do a better job of recruiting American students into science and engineering (says the humanities geek). And that won't happen until science and math education improves at the K-12 level. Gotta start somewhere...
Two cities are about to suffer them, barring some kind of intervention: Salinas, CA and Buffalo-Erie County, NY are both faced with financial situations that appear to make it impossible to keep their libraries open.
The situation is bad in Salinas, where the failure of two tax measures on the ballot earlier this month leaves a $10 million hole in the city budget. The result: all three of the city's public libraries will be closed, since their $3 million budget is one of the things the city simply can't afford anymore. Several possible solutions are being explored, but the circumstances are not promising.
Things may be even worse in Buffalo-Erie County, where community shock and outrage has followed the announcement that all 52 of the county's public libraries will close if a proposed county budget -- which includes an 80% cut to the library system's budget -- goes into effect. Library director Michael Mahaney says that what's left after the cuts may not even be enough to shut the libraries down in an orderly fashion, let alone to keep just one library open.
The big question -- and one that we as a society have been trying to answer for years -- is whether public libraries are valuable enough as a public good to be worth reasonable support from taxpayers. Judging by the shock and anger of people in Salinas and Buffalo, a lot of citizens are complacent in their belief that government will always find the funds to keep non-essential but highly regarded services like libraries going. These closings are a wake-up call: this could happen anywhere, an increasingly likely consequence of voting against the latest tax increase or bond issue.
Michael Kinsley published a collection of essays in the mid-90s called Big Babies. In the title piece, Kinsley takes to task all of those who think they can have their cake (low, low taxes) and eat it, too (expensive and plentiful government services):
They make flagrantly incompatible demands -- "cut my taxes, preserve my benefits, balance the budget" -- then explode in self-righteous outrage when the politicians fail to deliver. They are, in short, big babies.
I'm not saying it's unreasonable to want to pay lower taxes. I'm just saying that you have to be ready to walk the walk that comes with that -- no libraries, poor schools, less police protection, no safety net. Too many Americans seem to think that government will always manage to find a way to provide the services to which they're accustomed. As the citizens of Salinas and Buffalo are learning, that simply isn't the case.
Google Scholar is here, and already the topic of much discussion in libraryland. ResourceShelf has a good initial review of the service, and finds much to like about it. For those of us (most of us?) who frequently use Google, the interface is comfortingly familiar, something which certainly can't be said for the various indexes to scholarly literature.
But Google Scholar has a lot of limitations, and there are a lot of things that traditional scholarly indexes do better. For example, Google Scholar does not (and I assume, could not, unless reliable metadata for every article and book they have indexed suddenly appears on the open web) offer a controlled vocabulary search. I won't give you all of the reasons why controlled vocabularies help retrieval, but think of it this way: when you search without controlled vocabulary, if you want to be reasonably sure your results are comprehensive, you have to think of and search as many synonyms for your keywords as you can. Ideally, controlled vocabularies solve that problem, by choosing one word and indexing everything on that topic or closely related topics under it.
And although I only had time to try a few searches, I was disappointed that in most cases, Google Scholar didn't lead me to an actual article. It was a good quick-and-dirty source of citations, but following those citations only took me to a page where I could log in or pay for access to an article (duh, most of this stuff is definitely not free). In some cases, I ended up on pages that mentioned the article in question but that didn't actually link to it. Of course, as an affiliate of the University of Minnesota, I "qualify" for access to many if not most of these resources -- but the only way to know for sure is to go the indexes offered by the Libraries and repeat my searches. Very frustrating.
Compare this to searching directly (as an authenticated user, natch) in scholarly indexes. I can search using much more sophisticated strategies, and once I've located a promising citation, I can call up a menu of choices (thanks to the nifty FindIt service) that will link me directly to full text, or to the Libraries' catalog to find out if we have the journal in print. FindIt also gives me options to request the article via Interlibrary Loan, to ask a librarian for more help, or to post the citation to my UThink blog. Pretty cool, eh? And it's not like the U of M is way ahead of the curve here: many, many college and university libraries offer similar (or even more advanced) services.
That's pretty far afield from Google Scholar, though -- the major advantage of which might be that it's free. It should be an incredibly useful tool for unaffiliated scholars, though they'll either have to pay through the nose or make an actual visit to an academic library to see most of the articles Google Scholar has helped them discover. Google Scholar could also be an avenue to promote greater exposure of real scholarship to the non-academic world. Anyone with an interest in a particular topic can now Google up a page of citations, which could at least hint at the breadth and depth of work being done in a field, even if the person can't actually read any of the articles. For these reasons, I think Google Scholar is a positive development. But until and unless it becomes a more sophisticated tool, I can't agree with those who claim it portends the end of the academic library.
I'll believe it when I see it, but I do think that this article reports some encouraging signs that Governor Pawlenty may be ready to acknowledge the critical importance of the University to Minnesota's economic health and cultural vitality. In response to state-commissioned study findings showing that education in Minnesota is suffering, Pawlenty said, ""In a state where we are trying to answer the question in a hypercompetitive world economy, 'Why Minnesota?,' one of the first and most important answers is because we have a world-class teaching and research university or universities. If that's the case, then we should make sure that's a pretty high priority on where the funds go."
Here's hoping this is more than lip service. I'll be eagerly watching the upcoming budget negotiations to see if the Governor and Legislature follow through.
No, really -- for three credits at an accredited university. A musicology professor at The University of North Carolina-Charlotte plans to offer a course titled "Examining 'American Idol' Through Musical Critique," in which students will watch American Idol, learn about the musical styles in which the contestants are asked to sing (Motown, Broadway, etc.), and, of course, critique the contestants' performances.
Predictably, there's lots of eye-rolling going on about this on the Internet. And I have to agree that a course like this just provides more fodder for people who think higher ed is marginalizing itself by taking things like Idol seriously enough to merit academic inquiry. Still, I can see how the show could be an effective gateway to the study of classic American popular music styles, and my hope would be that the syllabus would emphasize that aspect of the course.
There is a major flaw in relying on Idol for that purpose, however: almost all of the singers adopt the same mainstream pop belter style, vaguely inflected with elements of R&B and gospel. It isn't really possible to learn much about various pop styles based on American Idol performances alone -- students would need to listen heavily to classic performers who epitomize the styles that Idol contestants are supposed to be emulating. Such an approach would teach students a lot about both the history of American pop music and what constitutes good performances in various pop genres. (something from which, incidentally, American Idol contestants would benefit tremendously!)
As long as the course relies on "real" music history as background material for critiquing the show, this could be a valuable way into learning about pop music, public relations issues aside. I'd love to see the syllabus.
Michiko Kakutani takes Tom Wolfe's new novel I Am Charlotte Simmons apart in this New York Times review. The novel's title character is a student at the fictional Dupont University, which Kakutani identifies as closely based on Duke University.
I read The Bonfire of the Vanities years ago, and found it moderately enjoyable, but (apparently, like many people) I have never gotten around to reading Wolfe's second novel from a few years back, A Man in Full. Guess I'll put that back on the list now that I've been reminded of it!
Anyway, if Kakutani can be believed, I Am Charlotte Simmons invokes every trite and superficial trope of college life there is, and contains precious few insights into either student life or the culture of American higher education. It sounds like Wolfe should have taken to heart the old piece of advice that says authors should write what they know. Why a 70+ year-old man -- even an acknowledged great writer like Wolfe -- would think he could successfully write about a contemporary female college student is beyond me. I'll probably read it anyway, even if just for eye-rolls and laughs.
A current Oberlin student with far too much time on her hands created this nifty photo essay depicting her stuffed-toy friend Fang's adventures in Oberlin's Mudd Library. Check out these pictures, and you'll understand my bitter disappointment upon my first visit to Wilson Library here at the U of M, when I was a baby grad student just out of Oberlin. Silly me, I thought every academic library should be like Mudd, which looks like it was decorated by a color-blind person on acid -- but trust me, it grows on you.
Thanks to Zoe Trope, whoever she may be, for the heartwarming trip down memory lane.
Recent testimony by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) before a House subcommittee reveals the encouraging news that diploma mills receive federal financial aid dollars, are easy to set up, and have happily (and profitably) provided bogus degrees to many federal employees, paid for by the federal government.
Key elements of the investigation (which must have been a lot of fun) included purchasing diplomas from a diploma mill and starting up a diploma mill. The investigators astutely identified an organization called "Degrees-R-Us" as a diploma mill. Brilliant deductive work there, eh?
Appalling as all of this is, I can't help but be amused by the investigators' purchase of a "premium package" of degrees, which included a B.S. and a related M.S. all for one low, low price. I think if I were going to run my own diploma mill, I'd want to offer a "grab bag:" bargain-basement prices, but we pick the degree. It would be like the bogus-academic version of Russian roulette: you might get a Ph.D. in Astrophysics ... but you might get a Certificate in TV and VCR Repair.
Any takers?
Dr. Dregs's beloved place of employment, the Office of Classroom Management, gets a little media attention in an article in today's Star Tribune. The article addresses one of the critical academic debates of the moment: whether whiteboards are superior or inferior to chalkboards.
It's a bigger deal than you might think (unless you teach math or physics). Some instructors are very attached to their chalkboards, which have always been an integral part of their teaching. Classroom Management, meanwhile, is replacing chalkboards with whiteboards, since chalkboard dust makes such a mess, and (more importantly) ruins expensive technology equipment.
I can't say that I have much of an opinion either way on this burning issue. But it amuses me greatly to see Classroom Management emerge into the mainstream regional media. You go, guys!
Distressing news for anyone who is (like me) still a meritocratic/egalitarian idealist when it comes to education: at the 146 most selective colleges in the U.S., only 3% of students come from the lowest quarter of households in terms of income, while 74% come from the top quarter -- and the gap is widening. A number of factors contribute, including poorer students' level of preparedness, and their access to high-quality secondary education.
Some institutions -- especially those with deep pockets in the form of huge endowments -- are trying to reverse this trend by replacing loans with grants, and emphasizing their need-blind admissions policies. And of course, the issue is getting a lot of play via the means that academics prefer: talk. Robert Reich (yes, that Robert Reich) contributed an excellent article to the Chronicle of Higher Education calling for colleges and universities to re-examine their heavy emphasis on selectivity and exclusivity. And James Bock, Dean of Admissions at highly selective Swarthmore College, writes an eloquent and impassioned message to the less-advantaged high achievers out there, reassuring them that they can get accepted to an elite college and they can afford it.
This is all great stuff. But drawing on my own undergraduate experiences as a low-income student at a selective and very expensive liberal arts college, I am a bit wary of Bock's argument. He is right, of course -- it is possible, and it is affordable (if just barely). But it isn't easy, being surrounded by peers who come from what seems to a student from a less privileged background to be unimaginable wealth -- even if that's really just a comfortable upper-middle-class environment. And what Bock doesn't mention is that while financial aid might cover a student's tuition, room, board, and fees, none of that includes the few basic luxuries that students rely on to keep their sanity, like the occasional pizza with friends, or an evening at the movies. The hardest thing, though, is not having a financial safety net in the form of parents who can spare a few dollars here and there: if an unexpected expense arises, the less advantaged student is on his own to try to deal with the crisis.
Don't misunderstand: I wouldn't trade my undergraduate experience for anything. It was worth all of the worry and occasional suffering (at least for me -- you'll have to ask my mother if the same was true for her!) But I worry about this debate losing the perspective of students who have lived through it. It's an important first step to be able to afford tuition and fees. But those are not the only financial concerns for low-income students at selective colleges.
(And don't even get me started on how the true middle class might afford this kind of education for their children...)
Here's an illustration of how hard it must be to keep for-profit higher ed from leaning too far toward corporate: the University of Phoenix, one of the most successful and visible for-profit universities, has agreed to pay federal fines totaling $9.8 million for shady student recruitment tactics, though the institution admits no wrongdoing.
Student recruiting for the U of Phoenix (or any other for-profit higher ed institution) is much like any other high-pressure telemarketing or sales job, with one very important difference: Federal oversight is strict, since 60% of the institution's tuition revenues come from financial aid. Because of this, the institution may not pressure students to enroll (since enrolling students who aren't suited to a program means more defaults on federally-guaranteed student loans), and recruiters may not be paid based on the number of students they enroll. The Department of Education found that the University of Phoenix violated both of these rules, and more. According to excerpts from the federal report, "while UOP at one time focused on the student and stressed ethical conduct, the culture now is one where the emphasis is on increasing the numbers, the stock price and meeting Wall Street's expectations."
The pessimist in me wonders if such a decline is inevitable in for-profit higher ed, especially when institutions are publicly-traded companies. Reconciling the ethical demands of education while following the complex federal rules governing financial aid and constantly increasing profits to meet stockholder expectations could well be an impossible task. Is this simply a case of too many masters to serve?
Having just offered kudos to the Hennepin County Library system for their beautiful and welcoming new library buildings, I have to direct praise to both HCL and the Minneapolis Public Library, whose catalogs now feature images of book covers, summaries, excerpts, and links to reviews.
As both a user and creator of the University Libraries catalog, it's easy for me to fixate on what our catalog does and doesn't do, and lose track of the cool things other catalogs have to offer. I think these features are especially neat, since they provide some extra dimensions that in many cases really help library patrons trying to choose something to read. To engage in cataloger shoptalk for just a minute, things like images of books and easy access to reviews. summaries, and excerpts aid with two of the four FRBR user tasks: identification and selection.
Or to put it another way, these features make the HCL and MPL catalogs more like Amazon.com. Now, it certainly isn't the case that library catalogs should slavishly emulate Amazon: library catalogs have it all over Amazon in terms of quality and detail of metadata, as well as the flexibility of their search interfaces. But one thing Amazon does that library catalogs traditionally don't do is to help you choose what to buy by showing you what a book looks like, and (for better or for worse), letting you know what other people thought of it. This kind of thing is arguably problematic in an academic library, but I don't think that's true in a public library. In that setting, these are incredibly valuable features, and it's exciting to see our local public libraries taking steps in this direction.
John McCardell, Jr., recently retired president of Middlebury College, gets a few things off his chest in this New York Times Op-Ed piece. McCardell addresses a grab bag of issues, including tenure, college rankings, and the drinking age.
I like what he has to say about how statistics like student/faculty ratios aren't very meaningful in evaluating and ranking colleges. Related is McCardell's observation that not every subject is best learned in a small class, seminar-type setting. Some subjects really are better taught via large lecture. I think McCardell is right about this, but it's hard to generalize since in my experience the lecture format is the one that most easily accomodates laziness on the parts of both students and instructor. I've had lecture courses, particularly in subjects like history, that were utterly compelling. It was clear that the professor was giving his own deeply-thought-out narrative -- telling the story of the topic at hand, a perspective arrived at through years of study and thinking. But I've also had lecture courses that were, to use a popular euphemism, phoned in, where nothing was especially clear except that the instructor couldn't be bothered to work out an interesting and involving way to present the material.
Seminar-style classes, demanding constant interplay among everyone in the classroom, don't allow anyone to be too complacent. The best lecturer in the world still can't force an uninterested student to pay attention, but if that student might be called on at any moment, he will have to stay at least a little bit on the ball.
Classroom response systems are starting to change the nature of student participation in large lecture classes, so the disadvantages of lecture-style courses may eventually be diminished. One thing I'm curious about, though: are there so many large lecture classes because someone has made a conscious decision that they are the best way to teach those subjects? Or is it because it's really the only cost-effective way to meet the demand for entry-level courses?
Today's Star-Tribune includes a write-up on the new Hennepin County Library branch in Eden Prairie -- which used to be a Lund's grocery store, of all things. The revamped building certainly doesn't betray its history. As these pictures on HCL's website show, the Eden Prairie library appears user-friendly and inviting. And even though there's no coffee onsite (something that's high on my public library wishlist), there's a Dunn Bros. next door.
Had enough movies about doctors and lawyers? Well, you're in luck, because TNT is making a movie about a librarian, creatively titled The Librarian. The film, which will supposedly be an "action-packed" sci-fi thriller, stars Noah Wyle, Kyle MacLachlan, Olympia Dukakis, and Jane Curtin.
IMDB's plot summary makes it sound like a real gem:
When a magical artifact is lifted from his library, a meek librarian sets out to ensure its safe return. To do so, however, he enlists the service of a woman with exceptional martial arts skills.
Yikes. I love how the librarian is (naturally) described as "meek." The stereotype lives on! Not that you'd expect anything else from a made-for-cable movie. I may have to TiVo this when it airs later this fall to see just how bad it is.
Apparently, librarians are the smartest professionals in Britain (or at least, the knowers of the most trivia): the team from the British Library has won BBC2's "University Challenge: The Professionals," defeating the team from Oxford University Press.
Behold the awesome power of librarians. Information does our bidding. We know all, we see all -- and if we somehow missed something, we know how to find it out. Tremble before the vastness of our knowledge!
Then again, maybe the British Library folks should try their luck on Jeopardy first.
UPDATE Thursday morning: it looks as though Jennings may have lost. Guess we'll have to watch and find out.
Now here's a good idea: the King County Public Library system (Seattle area) -- along with several other public library systems -- has begun opening small library branches in shopping malls. Some decry this as the further "Blockbusterization" of the public library -- a trend toward libraries catering to popular interests to the exclusion of loftier pursuits -- but I think it's a great idea. Libraries don't have the luxury anymore of failing to acknowledge that much of our society's public life takes place in and around shopping venues; if libraries are going to continue to contribute fully to the goals of self-education, access, and intellectual freedom, they have to do it in relevant locations.
In the Twin Cities area, both the Hennepin County Library System and the Ramsey County Library System have moved in this direction, with Hennepin County branches in the thick of the shopping areas surrounding Ridgedale and Brookdale Malls, and the Roseville branch of the Ramsey system only blocks from Har Mar.
But what I'd really love to see is a Hennepin County branch in the Mall of America. For better or for worse, MOA aspires to be a self-contained community, providing nearly every service anyone could want. A public library should be a critical part of that mix. I'm sure the barriers are huge (just renting space in the mall is a fabulously expensive proposition), but I suspect that the payoff (in terms of visibility alone) could make it worthwhile.
Suzy Hansen writes in last Sunday's New York Times about Internet plagiarism services for college students who just can't bring themselves to actually write their own papers. Hansen purchased a couple of papers on The Great Gatsby to see how good they were: one cheap "ready-to-grade" paper, and one expensive custom-written job titled, "The American Dream and The Great Gatsby." What Hansen found was that the quality of the cheap paper was abysmal, but that the custom-written paper was not bad (considered against what she imagines the run of freshman-level writing to be). Quotations from both papers are amusing -- the article is worth reading for that reason alone.
As much as I despise plagiarism and abhor how easy the Internet makes it, I'm ashamed to admit that this made me consider, however briefly, writing and selling papers to desperate undergrads. At a minimum of $200 for a 5-page paper (I estimate 4-5 hours of writing time, max, for a paper based on a familiar literary work), that would be a nice little pile of extra income. Unfortunately for my checking account, my personal ethics would never allow me to actually do such a thing. But I'm impressed (if not favorably) by the amount that students will spend just to get out of a few hours of writing.
Maybe there's some grand, disheartening conclusion about the state of education to be drawn from the intersection of the rise Internet plagiarism and the ever-increasing number of technological distractions students have. Or maybe not. At any rate, I can't say quite what it would be -- but I do find it fascinating (if a little sick-making) that the tech revolution of the last ten years leaves us with such a plethora of ways to avoid real learning.
I'm not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. The University of Central Florida, in exchange for 10 grand, a few student internship opportunites, and a couple of lectures by production personnel, is letting the WB's new dating reality show, Big Man On Campus, film there. The show will star UCF students: one male (the "Big Man" of the show's title) and twelve female, who will compete for the heart of the Big Man. Standard-issue dating-show twaddle (the creator is also the creator of ABC's big hit "The Bachelor"), but there's something a little oogy about having it officially sanctioned by an institution of higher education.
UCF, chosen (well, duh) because of the attractiveness of its student body, is clearly receiving some benefit here, but the $10,000 to be applied to "academic programs" isn't even enough to pay an adjunct professor for a year, so I'm not sure how much those funds will raise the quality level of education at UCF. Personally, I think they should have held out for enough cash to hire an academic celebrity to serve as visiting professor of women's studies, who would spend the year teaching and lecturing on the ways that these crappy, sexist dating shows objectify, stereotype, and demean both men and women (not to mention the culture). But if I had to guess, UCF cynically accepted a token amount because of the publicity they'll get. I'm sure they think this will be an excellent recruiting tool, and the sad thing is, they're probably right.
But if I were a UCF administrator, I'd be made very uneasy (if not flat-out nauseated) by the WB's blurb describing the show:
On a beautiful college campus, in a beautiful setting, with lots of beautiful people, things will get very interesting. First, the school's most eligible women are going to pick the BMOC - the cutest, hottest, sweetest guy on campus. But then the tables will turn as he chooses his Campus Queen - from the very same co-eds who picked him. These girls will do anything to make the grade.