Three year degrees?

I've pondered the possibilities for a three-year degree on a number of occasions, but it's always seemed problematic in practice. That's apparently the conclusion of this piece as well, that three-year degrees sound efficient in theory but find few takers in practice.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/17/three

Three cheers for partisanship

As something of a partisan myself, I very much appreciated Jay Cost's counter-intuitive argument that partisanship is, perhaps, a healthy aspect of modern American democracy.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2009/02/three_cheers_for_partisanship_1.html

Business schools and cheating

http://chronicle.com/daily/2009/02/11172n.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

Turns out that Business students are more likely to cheat than other students, in part because Business School cultures seem not to demonstrate as much concern about these issues as other academic cultures do.

Interestingly, I was just reading about prisoner dilemmas (where it’s in people’s individual interests to cheat, even though when all cheat, it hurts the group as a whole). These are also known as “tragedy of the commons.” After lots of study by game theorists, the “rules” to help restrain such cheating are five.

1) Make sure it’s clear who is “playing the game” (in this case, the students).
2) There must be clear rules about what is permissible and forbidden actions (not always easy in the digital age).
3) A system of penalties for violation of these rules must be clear and understood by all. These penalties should also be graduated (no “one strike and you’re out”) because there’s often a lot of room for “error” in any system.
4) A good system to detect cheating must be in place (if possible so that the group involved can help police itself automatically). Sometimes, this means that the rules on what is forbidden may need to be written more according to what can be detected.
5) Use the “users” to help create the rules, because while they all may have an incentive to cheat, they also all have an incentive to design a good system up front.

Private college sans residential life?

A sign of the economic times? Cut-rate private colleges at 1/3 the price. You get the small classes, full-time profs, face-to-face interaction, and bright students of a private college experience but without any of the residential component. I’ve often wondered what such a model might look like if, say, we wanted to run this type of program at our Roger’s site. This institution runs a prescribed set of Core courses during the morning, four days a week, for two years, and then the students transfer to the main campus for the rest of their time. We could certainly do something like that, even streaming chapel remotely. Kids this age apparently work mostly afternoon and evening jobs anyways (retail, restaurants, etc.). Sounds interesting to me.

http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2009/02/03/cut_rate_campus/

The scholarship of administration

The author's basic point (that we need to make our administrative decisions based on more data-driven evidence) is undoubtedly correct. But I doubt that what he's suggesting will occur very often in practice for all sorts of logistical reasons.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2009/02/02/logue

Hospitals (and Universities?) as Hotels

I remember Harold Heie once confessing that he used to think perceptions of academic quality were based on the faculty and then one day concluding that these perceptions were much more influenced by the appearance of the buildings and grounds. Seems that a similar mindset affects how people perceive hospitals. If the hospital looks nice, people will come, regardless of whether you live or die while you’re there! And if people are significantly influenced by the “halo effect” when it comes to life and death situations, I can only imagine how great that influence is when it comes to an academic setting. Just something I think about during budget time as I argue for more spending on academic quality. J

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/23/hospitals-as-hotels/#more-3783

Class size and student achievement

The typical story is that a reduction in class size, especially to the magic number of about 15 in seminar-style courses, can play a significant role in student achievement. But, as with the economy, the “average” increase that results hides great variability in who actually benefits. Turns out, students who are typically low achievers in class do derive some benefit from smaller classes and more direct attention from instructors, but it’s the already high achievers who more often see the big increases in performance. I guess that supports our emphasis on small classes and more engaged learning approaches in Honors courses, but what do these results tell us for how we should address the other end of the ACT scale? I’d always assumed that a similar approach would apply in this context as well, but this evidence would seem to call some of that philosophy into question.

http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i21/21a03001.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en