The transition from professor to administrator

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2011/12/21/essay-professorial-traits-administrators-need-drop

I resonated with a number of items on his top 10 list, though I think that much of what he talks about applies much more to state schools than to our Christian college setting.

Moneyball comes to college?

http://chronicle.com/article/A-Moneyball-Approach-to/130062/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Taking data-mining too far or wave of the future?

Everything you know about education is wrong?

Another of these pieces that argue that our traditional markers for quality education (small classes, lots of resources, highly credentialed teachers, etc.) do not correlate much if at all with student learning. It's not resources that matter, but culture, namely a culture of setting high standards and rigorous expectations.

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/everything-you-know-about-education-is-wrong/249722/

How College Affects Students

http://chronicle.com/article/What-Spurs-Students-to-Stay-in/129670/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

These authors are a couple of the gurus of higher education research, and their book, How College Affects Students, has been cited over the past couple of decades more than any other book of its type. This Chronicle story is about their presentation at the CIC conference that I attended. They are essentially summarizing the research that various graduate students have been doing, harnessing the results of the Wabash Study in particular. Mandy is doing her dissertation using this Wabash Study data and, I believe, in conjunction with one of the presenters. I’m also attaching my notes from the session I attended at the CIC meeting. Much of the information is similar. The CCCU dinner then held a response panel on this topic, in which I was one of the presenters. As you might expect, the 7 respondents had very different things that they focused on. The provost at IWU, for instance, noted that most of our graduates in the CCCU are in adult programs, but that we don’t have very good data on these kinds of topics as they relate to adult learners. Others noted the role of diversity in developing critical thinking skills.

My response focused on the “knowing-doing gap” in that all of our institutions hear these sorts of explanations about academic challenge and student learning outcomes, but we really don’t change much of what we’re doing to accommodate this information. To take just one example, our salary systems are predicated on a 19th century German research model (hierarchical, knowledge based, oriented toward scholarship) instead of rewarding those who produce the best outcomes by these measures of academic challenge and student learning. At the institution-wide level at JBU, for instance, we have almost an inverse relationship between pay levels and academic challenge/student learning outcomes. But it’s obvious that these structures are so firmly ingrained in our academic cultures and that we have such significant questions about the validity or applicability of this type of research (perhaps because these structures are so firmly ingrained?), that I concluded in my talk that we were unlikely in the near future to see any real movement toward taking this data seriously. After my depressing presentation, my fellow panelists felt so bad for me that they gave me a group hug. 


Evidence on student learning - Pascarella & Terenzini

- Wabash Study results of longitudinal studies of 49 institutions and 17,000 students
- conservative approach designed to produce lots and lots of complicated data
- nsse is a reasonable approach at the institutional level to figuring out whether these experiences are leading to the desired outcomes, but much of these outcomes are due to the kinds of students that we recruit and not the programs and activities that we're running
- they replicated academically adrift results with different tests and different students. 17 percentile points over 4 years, roughly 1/3 making non-significant four year gains, spending 15 hours a week studying. But what kind of change and how much should we be looking for? Kids not going through college can also change, some for the better and some for the worse (such as in faith development).
- good teaching does make a difference in engagement and re-enrollment, and they are learnable skills. One standard deviation increase leads to 30% increase in re-enrollment.
- diversity experiences counted more than anything else in developing critical thinking skills. Had the most effect on students with lower ACT scores.
- effect of study abroad is weak, perhaps because of selection effect. Factor that out and it does impact orientation toward engaging in diverse social and cultural activities.
- liberal arts colleges have higher levels of perceived good teaching, high quality of interaction with faculty, academic challenge, high academic expectations, liberal political views
- why does collaborative learning approaches look good here but bad in academically adrift.
- curriculum that is interdisciplinary, integrated, and academically challenging
- out of class experiences have significant effects not just on psychosocial and related social skills but also academic and intellectual skills. Students do have to be involved with this to make it work.
- same with in class experiences affecting social outcomes
- experiences that influence student learning include experiencing different ideas and people, that requires active engagement with this cognitive dissonance, that occurs in a supportive environment, that confronts real world problems, that deals with relationships, that incites reflection and analysis.
- there are many roads to being an effective educational institution, but it does need to follow these approaches and themes
- focusing too much on parts or on best practices is a problem. Focus on the larger themes and on being effectives (outcomes)
- the peer and organizational contexts also affect student learning. It's not only the direct experiences people have but the context within which everyone operates.
- set the culture in the first year

Steve Jobs - Tweaker

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/11/14/111114fa_fact_gladwell

As usual, I enjoyed Gladwell's explanation of the influence that Jobs has had and why he had it. As with much of Gladwell's work, the argument is that genius is seldom (and less and less so) the lone individual creating ex-nihilo but someone why knows greatness "when he sees it" and then "tweaks" from there to create something much more refined.

Our Universities: Why are they failing?

Good review of some recent books on the topic.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/nov/24/our-universities-why-are-they-failing/?pagination=false

Daniel Kahneman, the top social scientist of the last half century?

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Anatomy-of-Influence/129688/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/12/michael-lewis-201112

Much of what I've been reading in recent years really comes back to Kahneman's work from the 70s.

The West and the Rest?

Niall Ferguson is something of a “bad boy” economic historian from England known for his controversial stances. He’s also become something of a PBS celebrity. Here’s the summary version of his new book and his new PBS series.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/10/30/niall-ferguson-how-american-civilization-can-avoid-collapse.html

Sexual Relationships in the 21st Century

Combine these two Atlantic articles, and you have a whole new cultural world that our kids are coming out of. What’s also interesting to me as an historian, however, is that we seem to have a “whole new world” every century or so. Such a dramatic shift in cultural norms isn’t unprecedented, in other words, but it sure is making our lives more complicated.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/all-the-single-ladies/8654/

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/

The University of Wherever

Another "change in higher education" article, this one focused on the discussions at Stanford.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/03/opinion/the-university-of-wherever.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=opinion

California AND Bust

Michael Lewis is a fun writer, one of my favorites, so even though this isn't an education story, I'm posting the link. I particularly enjoyed page 6 of this article, the story of the fat pheasant.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/11/michael-lewis-201111

"Badges" instead of bachelors

While I’m in the midst of visiting with academic groups about possible changes in higher education, I’ll keep sending around the occasional article that seems to touch on these subjects. The other day it was an article about Straighterline. Today’s interesting thought piece comes from the government’s recent endorsement of an alternative credentialing system called “badges.” The question is, what might happen to higher education if businesses look less and less to a bachelor’s degree as the “signal” of quality, and universities like ours thereby lose our corner on the “credentialing” market?

http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2011/09/22/think-different-not-in-higher-ed/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

The secret to success is failure?

An interesting (but long) article on pedagogical theory, character education, and the secrets to success. As Christians, we won't be at all surprised that "character education" is central to these discussions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/what-if-the-secret-to-success-is-failure.html?_r=3&ref=education

Another "wave of the future" essay

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/online-education-is-everywhere-whats-the-next-big-thing/32898?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

This "Western Governor's" model is so much in the air right now, but I don't yet see it affecting numbers at most of our educational instutions, at least not with the people I engage with. 20 years from now, however? Who knows.

Here's another summary version of some of these "wave of the future" essays.

http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2011/11/on-the-nature-of-change-in-higher-ed-part-ii-education-and-the-new-economy/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Teachers earn less for a reason?

Interesting argument. The average ACT of Education students at JBU is a bit lower than average, the GPA averages are a bit higher than average, and the average "difficulty" rating on student evaluations is a bit lower. We do seem to follow some of this pattern, in other words.

http://blog.american.com/2011/08/teachers-earn-less-for-a-reason/

How innovation "really" occurs?

Hat tip to Brent Swearingen, who forwarded this link to me. The basic argument is that innovation occurs not because of one person with a grand idea but by way of lots of "small bets" made over time. Drucker talks about the "pilot project" approach to innovation. Probably similar concepts.

http://keithsawyer.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/the-emerging-consensus-view-of-innovation/

A "nearly free" university?

Another example of a low-cost on-line provider, this one specializing in providing higher education to third-world countries. Interesting possibilities and another example of the "Wave of the Future"?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/25/education/25future_people.html

Games in the Classroom

This used to be my "thing," using games in the classroom, so I felt compelled to note this article.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/games-in-the-classroom-part-1/35596?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Whither the Humanities

Another of these perennial articles and another call for Humanities to work more closely with professional programs. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em"?

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/08/30/essay_on_how_humanities_can_be_strengthened_by_embracing_ties_to_professional_education

Higher education "premium"

The supposed "premium" for in lifetime earnings from attending college has clearly been declining, most likely because we're now producing many more college graduates (at least in certain fields) than our economy can really handle. The "supply" of college graduates is oustripping the "demand" for them, hence the decline in the average "premium" and the search on the part of many for more financially feasible means to get that degree. On-line, as a result, continues to increase. Peter Wood's answer is that we should all try to be elite, academically-rigorous institutions because, he believes, everything else is going to get gobbled up by the on-line behemoths. Hmm. . . Call me skeptical, both that on-line will take over the way Wood seems to believe and that the rest of us can create (or be seen to be creating) an "academically rigorous" college climate. What would that really take? How would people really know? I can't get the faculty at my own institution to understand the nuances of such issues and agree on what we should do. Now multiply my problems by, say, a million. Creating that "brand" and having it really stick is really, really hard.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/too-much-for-too-little/30220?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Mergers on the horizon?

The medical field certainly moved in this direction, but higher education, so far, has not. We'll see if this is a precursor of things to come. My conclusion, however, is that we're more likely to see the big getting bigger and the small going out of business instead of mergers.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/18/assemblies_of_god_looks_to_merge_three_institutions_to_manage_costs

Student surveys about Straighterline

"Straighterline" and "Western Governor's" are creating new models that may be the future of higher education, but many argue that "you get what you pay for" in these low cost models. Here's a survey of what students at Straighterline have had to say about the program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/straighterline-survey-shows-student-satisfaction/2011/08/17/gIQArW9CLJ_blog.html?wprss=college-inc

Outsourcing grading?

Once again, Western Governor's appears to be leading the way with some innovative thinking. I tried to outsource as much of my grading to TAs as I could reasonably do, but I always felt that that was a less effective approach. These ideas, however, seem more in keeping with what I really had in mind.

http://chronicle.com/article/To-Justify-Every-A-Some/128528/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Here's another article on grading from the vantage point of a professor. Similar issues and concerns come up.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/08/09/essay_on_why_faculty_members_participate_in_grade_inflation

More education does not mean less faith, at least not in the U.S.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/08/study_says_more_education_doesn_t_mean_a_loss_of_faith

The belief that more education yields less faith is also a result of a limited definition of religion, Schwadel said. "Are more highly educated people less likely to hold certain beliefs, such as the Bible being the literal word of God? Yes. Does this mean more highly educated Americans are less religious? Well, if you define religion as literal belief in the Bible, then yes. If you define religion as attending services, however, then the highly educated appear to be more religious. The main point is, it all depends on how you define 'religious,' " he said.

Interestingly, this pattern may not hold true in other cultures that are less overtly religious to begin with, say in Europe.

The Trajectory of the new Christian Colleges

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Riley about what appears to be the overly politicized trajectory of the new Christian colleges that have formed in the last decade (Patrick Henry, Ave Maria, and Kings).

http://www.philanthropydaily.com/?p=6050

AG Schools Merge

There's been a lot of talk about the need for consolidation in higher education, but little move to do so. Well, it's happening in at least one instance.

http://ag.org/colleges/articles.cfm?targetBay=0439b34f-3625-444a-bb49-6d459da7d256&ModID=2&Process=DisplayArticle&RSS_RSSContentID=19872&RSS_OriginatingChannelID=1056&RSS_OriginatingRSSFeedID=1016&RSS_Sourc

At a conference I was just at, there was also a lot of talk about coordination in large systems when it comes to curricular, IT, and other issues. So maybe it's just our small liberal arts schools who think that we're so unique that we can't ever consolidate with other organizations?

Length of school year?

I've long heard that we have shorter school years, and that that's a problem. This piece begs to differ.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/malcolm-gladwell-and-president-obama-are-wrong/27841?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Productivity in Higher Education?

Another hot topic in these economically difficult times. Texas A&M has been making a big push (for a state institution) along these lines. There's been a lot of opposition to the effort, but it's clearly put these important issues more clearly on the table. It's my view that a lot of our smaller institutions may not survive the next couple of decades if we don't confront these productivity concerns head on, so I'm glad to see the ideas being discussed, even if I don't always agree with the specific approaches.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/07/20/o_donnell_on_faculty_productivity_data

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/college-inefficiency-resource-misallocation-or-underutilization/29844

http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/faculty-productivity-is-coming/37718?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

Higher Education Bubble?

Here's some more on what many see as a possible higher education bubble.

http://blog.american.com/2011/07/chart-of-the-day-the-higher-education-bubble/

http://washingtonexaminer.com/politics/2011/07/will-college-bubble-burst-public-subisidies

But what many of these stories miss is that "net tuition," as opposed to stated price, has actually stayed pretty much flat, at least for CIC institutions, over the last decade or so. Aid of various sorts (instiutional, state, and federal) has kept pace and then some in the last 10 years. You can see the consequences in the budget woes of many of our CCCU brethren, as this story notes.

http://www.cccu.org/news/cccu_tuition_student_aid_increases_for_2011_2012

Classical Christian Colleges on the Rise?

We've been having some discussions with Classical Christian groups at times. As usual, in a short article, the author doesn't have room to identify all the streams of thought here, but it's good to see the attention that's being given to these efforts.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/12/classical_christian_college_movement_offers_great_books_curriculum

Fall of the Faculty

We've met the enemy, and it's us. Hmm . . .

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/14/new_book_argues_bloated_administration_is_what_ails_higher_education

Heroic Academics

Cute story about University of the Ozarks prof who creates action figures of real-life colleagues and students at his school.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/18/ozarks_professor_makes_action_figures_of_his_colleagues_and_students

Are productivity gains possible in higher education?

Answer: Maybe? See the author’s suggestions for bridge programs instead of remediation and outcomes-based Core courses. I’m surprised that he didn’t mention some of the other usual suspects when it comes to experiments in “productivity” increases in higher education (Straighterline, Western Governor’s University, for-profits more generally, and so on), but he may have wanted to focus on endeavors that appear to increase both productivity and quality.

http://www.american.com/archive/2011/june/are-productivity-gains-in-higher-education-possible

Do Majors Matter?

Does what you study in college matter? It certainly does when it comes to how much you'll make on average when you graduate. Counseling Psychology students just out of college make on average about $29K. Petroleum Engineers make about $100K above that figure.

http://cew.georgetown.edu/whatsitworth/

But what students study in college also matters a lot when it comes to how much students improve their critical thinking abilities. Interestingly, fields such as sociology and foreign languages appear to come out the best on this latter scale, with physical education and business close behind. Economics and Architecture bring up the rear. The author of the following piece has a few theories about why that might be.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/16/connor_essay_on_why_majors_matter_in_how_much_college_students_learn

Perhaps not surprisingly, these two sets of data are not at all correlated.

The Economic Upside to Ending Tenure?

Here's Naomi Riley's take on this perennial hot-button topic. Riley has been more sympathetic to CCCU types of institutions than many higher education writers, witness her earlier book "God on the Quad," so she's someone I read with interest.

http://chronicle.com/article/Smart-Ways-to-End-Tenure/127940/

More "future of higher education" articles

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/gates-wikipedia-university/29541?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/06/14/essay_rejecting_idea_of_a_higher_education_bubble

Learning outcomes replace college?

Back to the “self-educated” man concept from the Renaissance, what if we really believed that learning outcomes were all that mattered and not “inputs” or the format in which those outcomes were delivered. With existing and developing on-line resources, could people skip the credentialing middle-man (higher education institutions) and take their self-developed skills and learning outcomes directly to employers? Perhaps, though the model presented in this article assumes some things about higher education that we would not completely agree with here at JBU.

http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Learning-Portals-/127694/

If higher education is only about information delivery and skill development, then yes, there are probably other ways to develop and demonstrate those outcomes. But if higher education is also about the signaling of a certain “prestige,” social interactions, and whole person development, then this type of self-directed credentialing can’t measure up. Nonetheless, it is true that for many people, these other functions of higher education are not that important (or at least will not be seen as that important). And if “information wants to be free,” we’re going to have difficulty running our university for “free.” Straighterline, for instance, offers many of our Core courses for $100/course compared to our TUG costs of roughly $5,000/course. In short, we can’t compete, especially when it comes to “general education,” if all that matters is just information delivery and skill development. We clearly need to be about (and be seen as being about) much more than just that.

http://www.straighterline.com/

Whither Evangelical Colleges?

Guelzo's arguments have caused a fair bit of discussion here at JBU. While acknowledging his general points about the growing financial strains on our schools and the need to stay focued on transmitting our cultural vision, many of us have commented that his reliance on USNWR survey data is often misleading but that even by his standards, JBU is clearly doing well.

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=24-03-029-f

Here's a rejoinder from Hunter Baker, who spoke at JBU this spring.

http://hunterbaker.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/the-state-of-christian-higher-education-a-response-to-allen-guelzo/

The "argumentative" theory of reasoning

And here I thought that all of my high school debate experience of trying to win arguments regardless of their validity was divorced from real world circumstances like my father's academic life where "reason" reigned supreme. Turns out, we're hard-wired more for "arguments" than "reason" after all. Hmm . . .

http://edge.org/conversation/the-argumentative-theory

Competency based learning gains traction

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/05/09/western_governors_university_and_online_competency_based_learning_model_gain_traction

Imagine a university for working adults based almost entirely on credit for prior learning and on-line, tutor-supported CLEP tests. That’s pretty much what Western Governors does. As we’re working on our own alternative “modalities” for delivering JBU’s education, are there elements of this model that we might want to incorporate even more than we already do? And if so, how would these efforts mesh with our existing “modalities”? That’s obviously one of the questions that we’ll be dealing with in the coming years.

At the same time that this model gains traction, by the way, the Obama administration is pushing in exactly the opposite direction with its increasing pressure on credit hour definitions and state authorization. Hard to tell where all of this is going to land.

What college (or at least business) education should be about?

From the creator of Dilbert. Very funny and insightful.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656.html

Expert predictions are wrong?

Similar to some other books I've read, the review of this new book argues that in general, formulas do a better of job of predicting things than experts do. Formulas tend to be better "foxes," taking into account more of the nuances that go into real life changes. Experts tend to be "hedgehogs" who focus on one "big idea." That "big idea" is wrong more often than not, but when it's right, it's spectacularly right, which leads to people paying attention to it in all kinds of matters. The author gives the example of Churchill's view of Hitler being spectacularly right in contrast to the more nuanced views of the time, but that Churchill was frequently wrong about other matters, such as independence in India. Sounds like a good read.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/05/051205crbo_books1

Bias in Higher Education?

Another book in this long debate, this one arguing that Christians (especially of the evangelical and fundamentalist persuasions) are the most discriminated against, especially in the social sciences.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/preferred-colleagues/29160#

Practical Implications of "Academically Adrift"

More pragmatically, here are ten conclusions (some of them counterintuitive?) that could be drawn from the book.

1) Academic rigor is the key to student learning, and that means, more than anything else, time on task. Our JBU data would indicate that we’re requiring more work on average than many institutions do, but still not nearly as much as the authors would recommend. Would we as a campus community be interested in moving more toward some of the minimums that they suggest (at least 40 pages of reading per week, at least 20 pages of writing per semester, at least 2 hours and preferably 3 hours of assigned work “out” for every hour “in”), especially for our Core courses? (Oh, and by implication, our semesters should be as long as we can make them? )

2) Faculty scholarship and teaching are inversely correlated, at least at the national level, and especially at R1 schools. That doesn’t seem to fit the general patterns here at JBU (our “best scholars” tend to be our “best teachers” as well), but might this general conclusion be another reason to consider allowing more flexibility in our evaluation system for those who want to put more time into teaching, service, and spiritual mentoring instead of scholarship?

3) The clear implication of the book is that “difficulty” and “rigor” should be emphasized more than “engagement.” This is easier said than done, of course. I’ve yet to see a college that has created a successful “learning focused” assessment process at the individual course level. Also, I’ve made money available to divisions to pilot “learning outcomes oriented” assessments at the individual course level that might replace some of our existing instruments. I’ve had very few takers and none of them “successful.” But the door is certainly open to more of these types of efforts (that’s an invitation to talk to your division chair and then to me). We might also consider weighting even more heavily than we already do the “difficulty” and “rigor” elements of our evaluation and ancillary budget systems.

4) Studying alone is superior to studying in groups. The authors explain that collaborative learning can indeed be a better way to educate students, but that most faculty members don’t know how to run such collaborative processes well enough to leverage their potential. As a consequence, group activities in and out of the classroom do foster engagement and retention, but they on average hinder the development of the types of skills that CLA tests for.

5) The Collegiate Learning Assessment is the best instrument available to assess student learning. In the past, we’ve skipped the CLA because of the cost and time involved and the questions about its accuracy at the individual student level. But CLA has clearly garnered some momentum, and this book will likely further that momentum.

6) Living and working on campus may foster both learning and retention. At worst, they don’t undermine learning. Not so living and working off campus. Those clearly undermine both retention and student learning. Being a residential institution certainly helps us in all sorts of ways.

7) High expectations from faculty members are crucial (this is the main argument from Teach for America as well). Medium or low expectations aren’t much different from each other in their effects, and they both clearly limit student learning.

8) Which institution you attend matters in fostering student learning. Which professors you take within that institution, however, matters even more. Teach for America and other groups have been making the same argument.

9) If you want to learn critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing (i.e. what CLA tests for), get a degree in the Sciences, Social Sciences, or Humanities. If you want to be challenged to read at least 40 pages a week and write at least 20 pages a semester in a course, get a degree in the Social Sciences or the Humanities. The more academically prepared you are entering college, the more likely you are to major in exactly these “challenging” areas.

10) Capitalism is evil! (Thought I’d throw in that subtext conclusion from the book for those of you so inclined.)

Review of "Academically Adrift"

I wrote this for the CCCU Advance magazine.

Sometimes a book comes along that crystallizes much of what people have intuited to be true but that they haven’t yet been able to substantiate or put into words. This is such a book. Most of us in higher education have this innate sense that something is amiss in our ivory towers. We’re just not sure what that “something” is. Sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa do us the great service of bringing together disparate pieces of evidence that have been accumulating over the years and combining it with their own painstaking research in order to give us a much clearer picture of some of the problems confronting us.

And problems there are aplenty, as the title would imply. The authors are circumspect, however, in not criticizing the entire higher education apparatus. In fact, they repeatedly argue that the current system “works” quite well. Just not for the reasons, or the people, that most of us typically imagine. Students are mostly happy with their college experiences, faculty are mostly satisfied with their academic pursuits, and various external constituents are mostly content with what they see being accomplished.

But amidst this general approval, are students actually learning? For the vast majority, the answer appears to be “no.” The authors rely heavily on the results of the Collegiate Learning Assessment to argue their case, and there are potential problems with putting so much weight on a single assessment instrument, especially one that focuses only on critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills. College is certainly about more than just these things, and the CLA data does not provide definite answers on even this narrow range of learning outcomes.

Nevertheless, the CLA is probably the best we have, and the results the authors cull from this data are both compelling and corroborated by other evidence that they have amassed. Furthermore, all colleges and universities would say that critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills are at the heart of the higher education enterprise.

So what went wrong to sideline in practice what in theory should be our main endeavors? From my perspective, the authors are dead on when it comes to the proximate cause and completely off the mark when it comes to the ultimate cause for our having gone “adrift.” The short term culprit is clearly a lack of academic rigor, which by all accounts has declined precipitously in recent decades, especially in comparison to developments in other countries and especially outside of the rarified air of the elite liberal arts institutions.
• “College students on average report spending only twenty-seven hours per week on academic activities.”
• “Only one in five full-time college students report devoting more than twenty hours per week on studying.”
• “Fifty percent of students in our [representative] sample reported that they had not taken a single course during the prior semester that required more than twenty pages of writing, and one third had not taken one that required even forty pages of reading per week.”
In other words, if there is one thing that we as educators can do to provide better direction to this “adrift” academic culture, it would be to provide more impetus for a challenging curriculum.

So why don’t we? Here’s where I believe the authors themselves are adrift in their analysis. They astutely, and understandably given their backgrounds as sociologists, focus on a change in “culture” as the problem. They even note that there used to be both a moral and academic function in higher education, but that once the moral function was discarded, the remaining academic function was fragmented into whatever served the needs of each constituent. A “disengagement compact” took over in which each party wanted more or less to be left alone.

While recognizing and bemoaning the loss of central moral authority that has resulted in this “adrift” culture, the authors clearly don’t share our Christian understanding of how the integration of faith and learning can help restore that sense of order. Their proposed solution, therefore, is to substitute “moral” force with “political” force, i.e. to have the federal government impose testing and accountability standards for higher education along the lines of what “No Child Left Behind” has done for K-12 education. A worse and more unlikely prescription would be hard to imagine.

The sour ending of this book, however, should not put us off to the fruits of the main arguments about the ways in which our higher education culture has become “adrift.” This is an important book that should provoke some valuable conversations at the local and national levels.

Building a Better Boss?

Interesting analysis by the management team at Google. The basic argument appears to be that you don't hire as the boss the person with the best technical skills. You hire the "people person." I guess most of us knew that intuitively, but it's nice to have that conclusion confirmed with more data. And for a technical type like myself, that's a bit of a challenge to me to figure out what changes I might want to make as a leader and how.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/business/13hire.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1&hp

Weapons "cause" the development of civilization?

As a military historian, I had to include this one. Reminds me of that opening scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/science/15humans.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

Follow the Leader?

Hat tip to Frank Niles, who often sends me these kinds of interesting social science articles. Here's the key quote.

It turns out that only a few individuals in a group need to know where they are going in order to lead the group, even if they don't do anything to communicate their leadership role other than move. Also, the larger a group gets, the smaller the percentage of "knowledgeable" or "leader" individuals that are needed. The limit seems to be about five percent; the remaining 95 percent simply followed the herd.

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/the-mathematics-of-fish-schools-and-flocks-of-humans.ars

Academically Adrift?

http://chronicle.com/article/New-Book-Lays-Failure-to-Learn/125983/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/01/18/study_finds_large_numbers_of_college_students_don_t_learn_much

The basic thesis appears to be that writing-intensive and reading-intensive programs can succeed in improving student learning (as measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment), but most teachers, programs, and schools are not rigorous enough to have a significant impact on student learning. Here’s a quote from a commentary on the book that summarizes the argument.

"The study makes clear that there are two kinds of college students in America. A minority of them start with a good high-school education and attend colleges that challenge them with hard work. They learn some things worth knowing. The rest—most college students—start underprepared, and go to colleges that ask little of them and provide little in return. Their learning gains are minimal or nonexistent. Among them, those with a reasonable facility for getting out of bed in the morning and navigating a bureaucracy receive a credential that falsely certifies learning. Others don't get even that. Consider too that the study measured the growth of only those students who were still in college two and four years later. The all-too-common dropouts weren't included. It's a fair bet their results were even worse."

Needless to say, not everyone concurs with the findings, but the book is certainly sparking a lot of debate.