Thursday, March 24, 2016

What are your "is this real, or is it the Onion?" moments? A Big Thirsty from Frankie.

To entertain myself (and a minuscule highly exclusive circle of readers), I write light murder mysteries lampooning some of the sillier aspects of academic life. 

But when an administrator whose actual job title is "vice president for university engagement" proclaims in a national publication that we shouldn't expect students to be college ready, colleges should be student-ready....how do I make fun of that? 
There's nowhere to go from there. The aspiring satirist in me finds this extremely trying. 

Other things I wish I'd invented, except the Office of Appeasement, Retention, Success, and Engagement got there first:

Professors must act as "facilitators" and not "providers of knowledge."  [1]
Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. [2]
"We're taking this space for our new Student Success center. It's not our problem if you don't have a place to teach your class." [3]

Miserians, what are your can't-believe-this-isn't-the-Onion moments?



[1] What am I supposed to do when a student asks me to provide knowledge? After all, the customer knows best. Probably the best solution is to stand there repeating "does not compute" until smoke curls out of my ears.
[2] Rather than dismiss this one outright, I ran it by my students (business and accounting majors) to get their perspective. I should've dismissed it outright.
[3] I truly wish I were making this one up. 

25 comments:

  1. An admin wonk at our place got himself a Master’s of Educational Chicanery degree, and then came up with “evidence” that reducing students’ time in class by 45% would increase their employability.

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  2. A variation of the question would be, sincere or Poe's Law? I must say I did find myself wondering such whilst reading the output at the link provided above (the customer knows best). (By the way, the author's name links to this article: don't cite what you haven't read beyond the headings.)

    Now, as to the article in the IHE, I started reading it, but instead of aforementioned bewilderment I felt sadness, so I suspended. I'll have another cup of coffee and my Weetabix and try again. However, I do have another thought, namely that the rise of the career administrator who has no (or little) actual classroom experience must end.

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  3. He's sort of right about one thing (in the sense that stopped clocks are sometimes right). We don't give students the resources they need to succeed. How about the states reaffirm their commitment to funding public education? Or perhaps we redirect some administrator salaries (starting with vice president for university engagement), new buildings, rock climbing walls, football, etc. to scholarships so our students don't have to work 40 hours per week or take on crushing loans? Or hire more tenure-track faculty so we can offer smaller classes and keep teaching loads reasonable?

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    1. We don't give those teaching the students the resources they need to succeed either. Just increasingly impossible targets and increasingly insecure employment. Because apparently that's... businesslike? efficient?

      --Grumpy Academic--

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    2. The current trend of asking teachers to hit higher targets while decreasing access to resources makes it seem like we are trying to produce fine Swiss watches from rusty bicycle parts.

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  4. OPH! How completely fucking hilarious!!! (said link at author's name) I felt a tiny bit bad for him (prior to finding out about his lewd and insulting email) when he was mocked for his (rather humorous, considering) typo. But this. THIS is just a hoot! What a fool! Yes, absolutely, actually read an article (if you can, in fact, read) before using it to bolster your argument.

    "Ignore us at you're [sic] peril." Indeed.

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    1. I didn't know the source of the email had been made public. Whatever its source, I was sad that it even existed.

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    2. Further grist for the misery mill. The author's name in another of his comments links to an image that was attached to this post.

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    3. I just want to state here that I maybe shouldn't have referenced who the author of the mean email was (the identification was edited out within a short time). But since I did indirectly refer to that author, and since this latest incomprehensible link goes back to one of Conan's posts (and so might leave the impression that said author was Conan for someone not willing to read all the back story posts), I feel the need to write that Conan was never implicated in the Writing of insulting and rude emails.

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    4. Thank you, Bella. I never suspected Conan as having written that email, but it looks like the author intentionally or unintentionally implicated Conan. It does muddy the water regarding whether the author's comments were sincere, satire, trolling, or combination thereof.

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  5. As long as the Student Success Center is commandeering classroom space, they should go ahead and develop a full degree program. The slogan to appear on the crest on the diploma and letterhead:

    Mensurabile Non Sumus.

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    Replies
    1. Perhaps that should be: Mensurabiles Non Sumus.

      Alternative: Quid Facimus Sine Mensura.

      I think I like the second better.

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  6. I teach at a podunk college very near a very mediocre but VERY large college. Every year we end up hiring people from the VM but VL college. Every year the chair says we're going to stop. Every year the promise is broken.

    This year was going to be different. Hard mandate, for diversity's sake we're going to look for someone from a different part of the country, and from a different academic culture than our rather homogenous one.

    We did the work, did the interviewing.

    The Dean ended up hiring the spouse of another faculty member, both grads of VM and VL.

    I hear that next year we're going to do better.

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  7. Based on the comment thread of the article, there are some true believers that agree with the author. I do note, however, that they are mocking those who disagree with the article, saying 'they are a part of the problem, there are solutions', but when given the question 'what's the solution to students who don't attend class and don't do the work in the first place', I'm not seeing any substantive responses.

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    1. Yes, what IS the solution to those things? If it's that the students are working to support their education, thereby eating into their study time and increasing their absenteeism, is that necessarily the school's problem? And if it's that the students have no excuse other than they just don't give a fuck, then "we" are CLEARLY not the problem.

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    2. Many of my students are taking federal aid to cover tuition fees and books. At the same time they are working something approaching full time to support themselves and often their families as well. That schedule doesn't afford them the time to put in two hours out of class for ever hour in class (much less the four that was recommended to me back in the bronze age) even if they take a minimum "full load" (12 hours per term; not withstanding that they need to average 15 hours per term to finish in four years).

      What they ought to do is either work less (meaning more loans) so that can really concentrate or take fewer hours (at the cost of taking more than five years to finish). But the former is scary and the latter changes their financial aid outlook significantly as well as stretching the time-line, so they feel trapped between academic demands and financial ones.

      And this happens at the lowest cost "university" in my state.

      Now maybe this is on them for living beyond their means and maybe it is a structural problem, but either way it is not because they aren't getting support from the professoriat.

      Personally I don't think it is as simple as "living beyond their means" because most of my students have roommates; drive junkers (when they drive at all); make do with generations old cell phones and a clunker laptop; and otherwise exude a lack of money.

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  8. OK, I've read the article more completely, and when I don't just skim the first and last few paragraphs, I get a very different flavor. It turns out it's not as bad as I thought.

    I like the discussion in the middle about how the economically/educationally disadvantaged need more support. Perhaps a solution is to have a certain number of schools that specialise in getting diamonds in the rough ready for more traditional institutions, and to have the latter commit to accepting a certain level of transfers from the former.

    But then we get to this: "It turns out the problem was not as much about the students as we thought. It was largely us, uninformed about what it takes to help them succeed or unwilling to allocate the resources necessary to put it into practice."

    Methinks he dost use the "royal we" too much. No, "we" are not largely the problem, unless you mean "we the adminiflakes and politiflakes who are unwilling to allocate the necessary resources." We in the front lines are actually quite "informed about what it takes to help students succeed".

    Also, don't use "we" to mean all institutions; not all schools can be all things to all students (notwithstanding that I'm dancing close to the fire of "separate but unequal", which makes me quite uncomfortable).

    And especially don't use "we" when saying things like: "That does not mean colleges should have no thresholds for entry or that students bear no responsibility for their own success. But as we accept our capacity to educate a broader group of students -- and commit to graduating every student we admit..."

    Oh. Please. You were doing so well at the start of that passage, and then you demonstrated that you've never taught a class, or you've been drinking the Kool Aid from a firehose, or more likely, both. Just shut the fuck up.

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  9. Some clarification, if you would, please, Frankie?

    Students don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

    Did your students call bullshit on that? Or did they agree with it, which made you regret having asked them? If the former, it would also negate Professors must act as "facilitators" and not "providers of knowledge," and the customer is always right, so the Office of Appeasement, Retention, Success, and Engagement had better get onboard pronto.

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    1. They were silently baffled at first. When I explained it meant they (students) were more concerned with my caring-ness than my credentials, and did that seem right to them? More silence and then someone suggested, maybe that's true with some of the first semester freshmen right out of high school. It didn't resonate with them at all; in fact they seemed to think it was downright weird. The general sentiment seemed to be, Of course they care how much I know. Knowing stuff is my job.

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    2. Yup. At my joint, administration is becoming increasingly enamored of the idea that we should be "facilitators" and that expertise is less important than we faculty believe. Administration is full of shit.

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    3. I somewhere heard the phrase "be the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage."

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    4. There are appropriate times to be the guide, as there are to be the sage, but even the guide must know the territory back to front, lest the whole party become lost, or worse, unaware of how lost they really are.

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  10. The "sheep incident" here at Fresno State was about right.

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  11. I can't beat Frod's, but every time my college President answers a question about the teaching mission of the university with "well, we are a research university, after all" (which he apparently thinks means he shouldn't have to think about/answer that question) I wish it were satire, or at least a joke that would be followed by a serious answer.

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  12. Yesterday, I went spelunking in the tubes of the interwebz ostensibly to find the source of one of the quotes in the OP, for it sounded familiar. As it so happens, variations on "nobody cares what you know until they know that you care" have been attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, John C. Maxwell, Benjamin Franklin, and several others. But my search landed me on a page that briefly caused me to think, "sincere or parody?":

    Powerful Quotes for Teachers

    Even though many of the quotes were attributed to sources I respect, this collection seemed to ratchet the saccharine up to eleven. But then I considered them in the context of grade levels lower than those I teach, and concluded that they weren't so bad. I poked around a bit in other parts of that website and confirmed that its audience is almost surely K-12.

    This raises the question of the appropriateness of administration's applying certain "truisms" from K-12 to the context of higher education. Above a certain level, students are sophisticated enough to see through bullshit, and they want the real goods, namely your actual knowledge and expertise.

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