Friday, May 13, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
We Need UC Uncut
What the state really needs is UC Uncut - not UC down another $500 million next year on top of previous rounds of similar cuts. For the twenty years that I have been in the system, UC has steadily squeezed undergraduate instruction, with the effect of herding students into huge lectures and relying on the testing of passively acquired knowledge because it couldn't or wouldn't spend its resources on the small-scale forms of active learning in the tutorials and seminars that the world associates with US higher education because that kind of active learning-to-create happens at Harvard and Reed and Occidental and Stanford. UC's nominal student-faculty ratio of 17:1 or 20.7:1 or whatever it is in a given chopping-block year has meant in actual practice offering one seminar of 20.7:1 to each major over the course of four years. What students are largely getting instead are 35-student courses that now have 70-80 students in them, 400 person lectures with 1 TA for every 100 students instead of for 50 or 25, and the near total absence of individual mentoring by a regular faculty member.
This latter is a special tragedy for a public university that does not take its students exclusively from the ranks of the top few percent of test takers on the international scale.
Most UC campuses are comprised of up to nearly 1/3 of Pell-eligible students from families with incomes of less than $45,000 a year (UCLA's 30% is triple the Ivy League norm) . Most of the rest of the student body is broadly middle-class, from California public high schools that no longer have courses for special interests in math or art or music or journalism, no longer have courses for the cultivation of the specific genius of people who will create the next economies and the next cultures. The broad mass of public university students did not get piano lessons and one-on-one tutoring in Spanish and Mandarin, they have not had four years of shop plus mechanical and architectural drawing. That is what we have public education for - to get everyone to the level where their interests and visions deserve to be. These students have enormous intelligence and energy, and yet we are neglecting them. We are not doing this willingly. We have no choice. We do not have the people and time and infrastructure to bring everyone on line in the global economy and world culture able to do all that they can do.
I say this on the basis of direct experience. Over the past three years, I have met several times one-on-one with each of over 350 students from nine UC campuses. These are students who have studied in France through UC's Education Abroad Program. My goal has been to orient them to a different university system, but also to help them develop an individual academic project. Our students are brilliant at checking the boxes of their requirements as required courses get added and subtracted. They need to be, since signing up for classes means hitting a moving and shrinking target. These students generally know what their overall topic of interest is. They are also as a group completely inspiring, the most multilingual, international, multiracial, spontaneously democratic, and transformationally-oriented generation I have seen.
But what about the individual academic project that expresses their specific interests and their unique profile? What about the individual project that would allow them to write a statement of purpose to get into grad school or stand out among the 480 other applicants for an internship at UNESCO, or to apply for a job that will develop their talents? In about three-quarters of the cases, I am the first senior faculty member with whom these students have every had a sustained conversation. I estimate that 90% have had no faculty advising on their course of study. They are increasingly unable to get the more focused and advanced courses that would allow them to develop a true expertise in something before they graduate. Because finding these courses is now so hard, they have no incentive to develop an individual and special program of study that depends on them.
The bitter irony is that this system of deindividualized education is less functional than ever before. Large public universities took on the obligation of mass quality -- high quality for mass enrollments -- at a time when corporate America would hire intelligent but generically-trained college grads by the hundreds of thousands. They staffed their gigantic multidivisional organizations, which John Kenneth Galbraith called the "technostructure." These jobs required varying ratios of conformity and creativity, and UC graduates were its prototypical members: bright, cooperative, motivated, possessed of strong foundations for further specialist training through their college combination of a specific major laid on top of general education.
But the technostructure for which State U was preparing its masses of intelligent students has largely disappeared. Since the 1990s, the corporate world has been applying 'knowledge management" to its workforce under various names. The goal of this practice is to find niche geniuses that invent new products which directly impact the bottom line, on whom the company will lavish great working conditions and pay, while squeezing the positions and pay of the broader white-collar workforce, those millions of smart graduates who nonetheless are not "unique" (see Thomas A. Stewart or my Unmaking chapter 8). For this among other reasons, elite universities are individualizing undergraduate study even more than they already have. As just one simple example, several years ago M.I.T. "replaced the traditional large introductory [physics] lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning." In doing so, M.I.T. reduced the course's failure rate by 50%.
UC is headed in the opposite direction, towards massification and deindividuation. Lack of financial resources is the number 1 reason why.
We need UC Uncut, and CSU Uncut, and the community colleges uncut. Accepting the $500 million cut, as UC officials appear to have done, betrays our responsbility to the current generation of California students.
This latter is a special tragedy for a public university that does not take its students exclusively from the ranks of the top few percent of test takers on the international scale.
Most UC campuses are comprised of up to nearly 1/3 of Pell-eligible students from families with incomes of less than $45,000 a year (UCLA's 30% is triple the Ivy League norm) . Most of the rest of the student body is broadly middle-class, from California public high schools that no longer have courses for special interests in math or art or music or journalism, no longer have courses for the cultivation of the specific genius of people who will create the next economies and the next cultures. The broad mass of public university students did not get piano lessons and one-on-one tutoring in Spanish and Mandarin, they have not had four years of shop plus mechanical and architectural drawing. That is what we have public education for - to get everyone to the level where their interests and visions deserve to be. These students have enormous intelligence and energy, and yet we are neglecting them. We are not doing this willingly. We have no choice. We do not have the people and time and infrastructure to bring everyone on line in the global economy and world culture able to do all that they can do.
I say this on the basis of direct experience. Over the past three years, I have met several times one-on-one with each of over 350 students from nine UC campuses. These are students who have studied in France through UC's Education Abroad Program. My goal has been to orient them to a different university system, but also to help them develop an individual academic project. Our students are brilliant at checking the boxes of their requirements as required courses get added and subtracted. They need to be, since signing up for classes means hitting a moving and shrinking target. These students generally know what their overall topic of interest is. They are also as a group completely inspiring, the most multilingual, international, multiracial, spontaneously democratic, and transformationally-oriented generation I have seen.
But what about the individual academic project that expresses their specific interests and their unique profile? What about the individual project that would allow them to write a statement of purpose to get into grad school or stand out among the 480 other applicants for an internship at UNESCO, or to apply for a job that will develop their talents? In about three-quarters of the cases, I am the first senior faculty member with whom these students have every had a sustained conversation. I estimate that 90% have had no faculty advising on their course of study. They are increasingly unable to get the more focused and advanced courses that would allow them to develop a true expertise in something before they graduate. Because finding these courses is now so hard, they have no incentive to develop an individual and special program of study that depends on them.
The bitter irony is that this system of deindividualized education is less functional than ever before. Large public universities took on the obligation of mass quality -- high quality for mass enrollments -- at a time when corporate America would hire intelligent but generically-trained college grads by the hundreds of thousands. They staffed their gigantic multidivisional organizations, which John Kenneth Galbraith called the "technostructure." These jobs required varying ratios of conformity and creativity, and UC graduates were its prototypical members: bright, cooperative, motivated, possessed of strong foundations for further specialist training through their college combination of a specific major laid on top of general education.
But the technostructure for which State U was preparing its masses of intelligent students has largely disappeared. Since the 1990s, the corporate world has been applying 'knowledge management" to its workforce under various names. The goal of this practice is to find niche geniuses that invent new products which directly impact the bottom line, on whom the company will lavish great working conditions and pay, while squeezing the positions and pay of the broader white-collar workforce, those millions of smart graduates who nonetheless are not "unique" (see Thomas A. Stewart or my Unmaking chapter 8). For this among other reasons, elite universities are individualizing undergraduate study even more than they already have. As just one simple example, several years ago M.I.T. "replaced the traditional large introductory [physics] lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning." In doing so, M.I.T. reduced the course's failure rate by 50%.
UC is headed in the opposite direction, towards massification and deindividuation. Lack of financial resources is the number 1 reason why.
We need UC Uncut, and CSU Uncut, and the community colleges uncut. Accepting the $500 million cut, as UC officials appear to have done, betrays our responsbility to the current generation of California students.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
"Recalibration" in Minnesota
by Susan Cook
Assistant Professor of English
This past fall, and six weeks into my tenure-track position at Bemidji State University, I was advised by senior faculty members to go back on the job market. Our new university president, Richard Hanson, had just announced a “recalibration” plan that focused on what he termed the “distinctiveness, sustainability, and innovativeness” of the university. “Recalibration” is of course a euphemism for budget cuts. Bemidji State, a member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system, is a campus with approximately 5,000 undergraduate and 300 graduate students. It faces a $5 million shortfall over the biennium. In practical terms, “recalibration” means the loss of 35 faculty positions, 32 graduate assistant positions (half of the current positions), 10.75 staff positions, and the men’s track program.
I came into the English Department this fall with two other new colleagues, both of whom were called on the MLK, Jr. holiday and asked to meet with the president the next morning, when they were given their retrenchment notices. Faculty lines were cut in English, Visual Arts, History, Philosophy, Art History, Modern Languages, Music, Physics, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Accounting, Technological Studies, Physical Education, Professional Education, Psychology, and Theatre. The cuts will mean the termination of Art History and Theatre. By cutting entire departments, the administration was able to cut tenured as well as tenure-track and fixed-term faculty.
Throughout the process, the strategy seemed to be one of divide and conquer. At an October 13th meeting between faculty and administration, the president announced that faculty from targeted academic departments would be offered early retirement incentives. The list of departments was released to the university community, along with an announcement that the president was considering retrenchment. As one colleague told me, distributing the list of departments from which the administration hoped to secure early retirements seemed a deliberate attempt to pit retirement-age faculty against the rest of their departments. The administration also informed us that every department on campus would have the opportunity to write a 600-word explanation of its “distinctiveness, sustainability, and innovativeness.” It seemed clear to everyone that the writing assignment was meant to be a distraction, as well as a means of asking departments to justify themselves in implicit relation to other departments.
A few of us began asking about other solutions to the funding crisis—what about furloughs, or individuals who had expressed the desire to share one tenure line? The administration said this was a question for the faculty union; the faculty union informed us that it did not endorse furloughs or other solutions. The dominant mood around campus has been one of resignation and muted resistance: behind closed doors, faculty talked about organizing a vote of no confidence in the president, but no one voiced this idea aloud at faculty senate meetings.
In my department, people began posting anonymous reactions to the cuts on a bulletin board. The board was removed by administrators and then returned by a faculty member, the fight for jobs co-opted by a struggle for freedom of expression.
What is troubling to many of us is the way these cuts have been distributed. The liberal arts have been hit most hard, and instruction overall has weathered the brunt of the cuts. Bemidji State already held the distinction as MnSCU’s most administration-heavy university. Despite the president’s claims to the contrary, “recalibration” did not include cuts to administration—only administrative staff. At the October 13th meeting, faculty argued that the proposed restructuring seemed to be “a complete flip from what has been the mission of our university in the past – specifically, us being a: ‘Liberal arts university with select professional programs.’” The president responded: “I don’t know that it is a flip – but I don’t know that the other (mission) was accurately describing what this university is.” In a later written response dated February 23rd, the president modified his view, stating that “Our main task is to inculcate the power and wisdom of the liberal arts into each student…Inculcation is not a product of programs but is a product of interaction and teaching process. It (inculcation) can happen in a mathematics course, or an accounting course, or a psychology course.” Leaving aside the problematic repetition of the term “inculcate”—which the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us means to “endeavour to force (a thing) into or impress (it) on the mind of another by emphatic admonition, or by persistent repetition”—this statement reduces the liberal arts to a skill set that can simply be added into other, more central courses of study. Illustrating this application of the liberal arts, President Hanson goes on in the same document to quote “T. S. Elliot [sic]”: “‘Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.’” “Recalibration,” Hanson writes, “is very much the same sort of experience.” To summarize the logic: “recalibration” is the same sort of experience as experience, which is to say “recalibration” is a paradox.
It seems clear that the goal of this “recalibration” is to make Bemidji State more of a vocational school, to give customers the career results they demand. One of my graduate students articulated the trouble with this line of thinking: in ten years, she said, if someone wants to get a liberal arts degree, he or she will have to be able to pay private school prices for it. My student may be right. This round of “recalibration” is over, but state legislators have been eager to continue cutting the higher education budget. I won’t be coming back to Bemidji State in the fall—I went on the market as my senior colleagues advised and was fortunate enough to be offered a job. At a private university.
Assistant Professor of English
This past fall, and six weeks into my tenure-track position at Bemidji State University, I was advised by senior faculty members to go back on the job market. Our new university president, Richard Hanson, had just announced a “recalibration” plan that focused on what he termed the “distinctiveness, sustainability, and innovativeness” of the university. “Recalibration” is of course a euphemism for budget cuts. Bemidji State, a member of the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) system, is a campus with approximately 5,000 undergraduate and 300 graduate students. It faces a $5 million shortfall over the biennium. In practical terms, “recalibration” means the loss of 35 faculty positions, 32 graduate assistant positions (half of the current positions), 10.75 staff positions, and the men’s track program.
I came into the English Department this fall with two other new colleagues, both of whom were called on the MLK, Jr. holiday and asked to meet with the president the next morning, when they were given their retrenchment notices. Faculty lines were cut in English, Visual Arts, History, Philosophy, Art History, Modern Languages, Music, Physics, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Economics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Accounting, Technological Studies, Physical Education, Professional Education, Psychology, and Theatre. The cuts will mean the termination of Art History and Theatre. By cutting entire departments, the administration was able to cut tenured as well as tenure-track and fixed-term faculty.
Throughout the process, the strategy seemed to be one of divide and conquer. At an October 13th meeting between faculty and administration, the president announced that faculty from targeted academic departments would be offered early retirement incentives. The list of departments was released to the university community, along with an announcement that the president was considering retrenchment. As one colleague told me, distributing the list of departments from which the administration hoped to secure early retirements seemed a deliberate attempt to pit retirement-age faculty against the rest of their departments. The administration also informed us that every department on campus would have the opportunity to write a 600-word explanation of its “distinctiveness, sustainability, and innovativeness.” It seemed clear to everyone that the writing assignment was meant to be a distraction, as well as a means of asking departments to justify themselves in implicit relation to other departments.
A few of us began asking about other solutions to the funding crisis—what about furloughs, or individuals who had expressed the desire to share one tenure line? The administration said this was a question for the faculty union; the faculty union informed us that it did not endorse furloughs or other solutions. The dominant mood around campus has been one of resignation and muted resistance: behind closed doors, faculty talked about organizing a vote of no confidence in the president, but no one voiced this idea aloud at faculty senate meetings.
In my department, people began posting anonymous reactions to the cuts on a bulletin board. The board was removed by administrators and then returned by a faculty member, the fight for jobs co-opted by a struggle for freedom of expression.
What is troubling to many of us is the way these cuts have been distributed. The liberal arts have been hit most hard, and instruction overall has weathered the brunt of the cuts. Bemidji State already held the distinction as MnSCU’s most administration-heavy university. Despite the president’s claims to the contrary, “recalibration” did not include cuts to administration—only administrative staff. At the October 13th meeting, faculty argued that the proposed restructuring seemed to be “a complete flip from what has been the mission of our university in the past – specifically, us being a: ‘Liberal arts university with select professional programs.’” The president responded: “I don’t know that it is a flip – but I don’t know that the other (mission) was accurately describing what this university is.” In a later written response dated February 23rd, the president modified his view, stating that “Our main task is to inculcate the power and wisdom of the liberal arts into each student…Inculcation is not a product of programs but is a product of interaction and teaching process. It (inculcation) can happen in a mathematics course, or an accounting course, or a psychology course.” Leaving aside the problematic repetition of the term “inculcate”—which the Oxford English Dictionary reminds us means to “endeavour to force (a thing) into or impress (it) on the mind of another by emphatic admonition, or by persistent repetition”—this statement reduces the liberal arts to a skill set that can simply be added into other, more central courses of study. Illustrating this application of the liberal arts, President Hanson goes on in the same document to quote “T. S. Elliot [sic]”: “‘Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.’” “Recalibration,” Hanson writes, “is very much the same sort of experience.” To summarize the logic: “recalibration” is the same sort of experience as experience, which is to say “recalibration” is a paradox.
It seems clear that the goal of this “recalibration” is to make Bemidji State more of a vocational school, to give customers the career results they demand. One of my graduate students articulated the trouble with this line of thinking: in ten years, she said, if someone wants to get a liberal arts degree, he or she will have to be able to pay private school prices for it. My student may be right. This round of “recalibration” is over, but state legislators have been eager to continue cutting the higher education budget. I won’t be coming back to Bemidji State in the fall—I went on the market as my senior colleagues advised and was fortunate enough to be offered a job. At a private university.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Conservative Activist Remixes Classroom Discussions to Attack Public Education
By Toby Higbie
How many times have you asked provocative and probing questions in the classroom, allowed students to air half-baked ideas, or read aloud quotations that you disagree with? Now through the miracle of selective video editing, you may soon see a carnival-mirror version of your classroom in which you and your students advocate violence, revolution, or worse.
That is what happened this week to University of Missouri, Kansas City professor Judy Ancel and her co-instructor Don Giljum when conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart published a story on his website about her teleconferenced course, “Labor, Politics and Society.” The videos, illegally ripped from a university server, appear to show Ancel and Giljum advocating violence and revolution. But as Ancel and Giljum (and eventually UMKC officials) have noted, the jumpy editing gives away the game. In one clip Giljum’s clothing mysteriously changes in mid-sentence, an artifact of Breitbart’s clumsy splicing of snippets from two different lectures. In another clip, Ancel appears to advocate violence as a legitimate social movement tactic. In reality she was quoting from historical figure in a documentary film about the assassination of Martin Luther King to kick off classroom discussion.
The American Association of University Professors issued a press release denouncing Breitbart for “compromising academic freedom, quality education, and the rights of students to a safe classroom environment,” and called on the University of Missouri to “speak out clearly and forcefully in defense of the rights of their professors and students.”
Previously Breitbart has published bogus videos of U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod and the activist group ACORN. Both cases were later revealed to be fabrications, but the damage was done--Sherrod lost her job and ACORN disbanded. Breitbart recently announced that he was going to take on unions and teachers, and this appears to be his opening salvo.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has more HERE
How many times have you asked provocative and probing questions in the classroom, allowed students to air half-baked ideas, or read aloud quotations that you disagree with? Now through the miracle of selective video editing, you may soon see a carnival-mirror version of your classroom in which you and your students advocate violence, revolution, or worse.
That is what happened this week to University of Missouri, Kansas City professor Judy Ancel and her co-instructor Don Giljum when conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart published a story on his website about her teleconferenced course, “Labor, Politics and Society.” The videos, illegally ripped from a university server, appear to show Ancel and Giljum advocating violence and revolution. But as Ancel and Giljum (and eventually UMKC officials) have noted, the jumpy editing gives away the game. In one clip Giljum’s clothing mysteriously changes in mid-sentence, an artifact of Breitbart’s clumsy splicing of snippets from two different lectures. In another clip, Ancel appears to advocate violence as a legitimate social movement tactic. In reality she was quoting from historical figure in a documentary film about the assassination of Martin Luther King to kick off classroom discussion.
The American Association of University Professors issued a press release denouncing Breitbart for “compromising academic freedom, quality education, and the rights of students to a safe classroom environment,” and called on the University of Missouri to “speak out clearly and forcefully in defense of the rights of their professors and students.”
Previously Breitbart has published bogus videos of U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod and the activist group ACORN. Both cases were later revealed to be fabrications, but the damage was done--Sherrod lost her job and ACORN disbanded. Breitbart recently announced that he was going to take on unions and teachers, and this appears to be his opening salvo.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has more HERE
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Why is UC Borrowing 7 Million to Fund the On-Line Education Pilot Project?
By Wendy Brown
Heller Professor of Political Science and Co-Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association
Cross-Posted From UCBFA Website
Last year, UC Berkeley Law School Dean Chris Edley provided numerous assurances that the project to explore the feasibility of an on-line undergraduate curriculum would be funded wholly from extramural sources. He was as confident that he could raise money for the pilot as he was that a fully developed on-line curriculum would itself be a money-maker. Indeed, Edley insisted that on-line ed would soon be a net benefit for UC in many ways. It would, he said, generate surplus revenue for the discretionary use of the bricks and mortar campuses, extend the benefits of a UC education to all who sought it (especially those unable to access the campuses in coming years due to physical capacity limits), and provide the high quality education UC currently offers. He summed up the project of an on-line UC curriculum as simultaneously providing “social justice,” educational excellence and a revenue boon for UC.
It was too good to be true. We knew it then and explained why. On-line education in the “quality sector” had already met with bankruptcy at Columbia, University of Illinois and elsewhere. No studies established that on-line education could match that provided on campuses. Problems with on-line courses are legion. Moreover, existing on-line programs are worse exploiters of debt-financing by students than bricks-and-mortar campuses.
Now there is a new twist to the story. The UC Senate approved the pilot provided that it was funded, as Edley promised, entirely from extra mural funds. But fundraising has fallen far short of hopes: Edley has managed to obtain only a single $750,000 grant from the Gates Foundation. This is substantially less than the $7 million plus that the pilot is expected to cost. Why the shortfall?
Because private foundations concerned with on-line education seek to understand its problems and want to fund studies of those. Why the persistently high and seemingly intractable attrition rates? What happens to students who go deep into debt for on-line education and don’t finish the courses or obtain a degree? How to address high cheating rates? What elements of classroom courses cannot be replicated on-line (oral skills, many critical thinking skills, group problem solving, spontaneous integration of course material and current events) and what is the significance of these losses? And how can expensive, high quality courses compete with Open Source on the one hand and for profit colleges on the other?
In other words, Edley’s dream of a money-making cyber campus came at the wrong time, after other experiments with on-line education in the quality sector had failed and so many problems in on-line curricula have surfaced. At this point, Foundations rightly want to study the problems, rather than throw good money after bad for another high-priced experiment. That is why the UC pilot could not draw the private funding it sought.
But did this stop the pilot? No. Dean Edley is a powerful man in the University of California system, one who remains a special consultant to President Yudof and routinely rubs shoulders with other top brass at UCOP. So, instead of treating the failure to raise money for the pilot as “market information” that should have slowed, shrunk or quashed the project, it got a bail-out from UC, a $4-7 million dollar interest-free line of credit. This at a time when Operation Excellence at Berkeley is slashing vital staff positions, when tuition continues to skyrocket, when hiring freezes have hamstrung countless departments and other campus units, when UC is bracing for another round of devastating budget cuts from the state.
A loan for a pipedream–when existing departments can’t even staff their existing curricula, support existing graduate students or pay for printer paper–would be bad enough. But it is the collateral on this loan that is the icing on the cake.
The loan is “secured” by fees expected to be paid by non-UC students taking the pilot on-line courses. In other words, students who are not UC students would be funding a pilot that offers courses that are not UC courses (the courses have not yet gone through Academic Senate channels for approval). Since the students are not UC students, they will not be eligible for UC aid, which means they will either be encouraged to borrow or they will be wealthy individuals, mostly likely from outside the United States, who can be duped into thinking that these are UC courses and that they are UC students when they take them. Who else would pay thousands of dollars to take a course stamped falsely with the UC brand name that could be more cheaply procured through any number of other sources?
This is a scandal of obscene proportions. Why is a project promised to be funded extramurally now allowed to borrow up to $7 million from UC itself? Why is collateral that depends upon hoped-for exploitation of student indebtedness or consumer ignorance allowed to secure the loan? And what guarantees that state funds or student fees–the only fungible income streams UC has–will not be tapped if and when the original collateral plan collapses?
Not only is the on-line education pilot project being launched on a broken promise, it aims to use non-UC students both as cash cows and guinea pigs, perhaps falsely selling them the UC brand into the bargain. Who knows whether the scheme will work. What is certain is that the $7 million dollar loan and its collateral represents corruption in the present and captures in a nutshell how “students” would be regarded in the future cyber-campus the pilot anticipates.
Social justice indeed.
Heller Professor of Political Science and Co-Chair, Berkeley Faculty Association
Cross-Posted From UCBFA Website
Last year, UC Berkeley Law School Dean Chris Edley provided numerous assurances that the project to explore the feasibility of an on-line undergraduate curriculum would be funded wholly from extramural sources. He was as confident that he could raise money for the pilot as he was that a fully developed on-line curriculum would itself be a money-maker. Indeed, Edley insisted that on-line ed would soon be a net benefit for UC in many ways. It would, he said, generate surplus revenue for the discretionary use of the bricks and mortar campuses, extend the benefits of a UC education to all who sought it (especially those unable to access the campuses in coming years due to physical capacity limits), and provide the high quality education UC currently offers. He summed up the project of an on-line UC curriculum as simultaneously providing “social justice,” educational excellence and a revenue boon for UC.
It was too good to be true. We knew it then and explained why. On-line education in the “quality sector” had already met with bankruptcy at Columbia, University of Illinois and elsewhere. No studies established that on-line education could match that provided on campuses. Problems with on-line courses are legion. Moreover, existing on-line programs are worse exploiters of debt-financing by students than bricks-and-mortar campuses.
Now there is a new twist to the story. The UC Senate approved the pilot provided that it was funded, as Edley promised, entirely from extra mural funds. But fundraising has fallen far short of hopes: Edley has managed to obtain only a single $750,000 grant from the Gates Foundation. This is substantially less than the $7 million plus that the pilot is expected to cost. Why the shortfall?
Because private foundations concerned with on-line education seek to understand its problems and want to fund studies of those. Why the persistently high and seemingly intractable attrition rates? What happens to students who go deep into debt for on-line education and don’t finish the courses or obtain a degree? How to address high cheating rates? What elements of classroom courses cannot be replicated on-line (oral skills, many critical thinking skills, group problem solving, spontaneous integration of course material and current events) and what is the significance of these losses? And how can expensive, high quality courses compete with Open Source on the one hand and for profit colleges on the other?
In other words, Edley’s dream of a money-making cyber campus came at the wrong time, after other experiments with on-line education in the quality sector had failed and so many problems in on-line curricula have surfaced. At this point, Foundations rightly want to study the problems, rather than throw good money after bad for another high-priced experiment. That is why the UC pilot could not draw the private funding it sought.
But did this stop the pilot? No. Dean Edley is a powerful man in the University of California system, one who remains a special consultant to President Yudof and routinely rubs shoulders with other top brass at UCOP. So, instead of treating the failure to raise money for the pilot as “market information” that should have slowed, shrunk or quashed the project, it got a bail-out from UC, a $4-7 million dollar interest-free line of credit. This at a time when Operation Excellence at Berkeley is slashing vital staff positions, when tuition continues to skyrocket, when hiring freezes have hamstrung countless departments and other campus units, when UC is bracing for another round of devastating budget cuts from the state.
A loan for a pipedream–when existing departments can’t even staff their existing curricula, support existing graduate students or pay for printer paper–would be bad enough. But it is the collateral on this loan that is the icing on the cake.
The loan is “secured” by fees expected to be paid by non-UC students taking the pilot on-line courses. In other words, students who are not UC students would be funding a pilot that offers courses that are not UC courses (the courses have not yet gone through Academic Senate channels for approval). Since the students are not UC students, they will not be eligible for UC aid, which means they will either be encouraged to borrow or they will be wealthy individuals, mostly likely from outside the United States, who can be duped into thinking that these are UC courses and that they are UC students when they take them. Who else would pay thousands of dollars to take a course stamped falsely with the UC brand name that could be more cheaply procured through any number of other sources?
This is a scandal of obscene proportions. Why is a project promised to be funded extramurally now allowed to borrow up to $7 million from UC itself? Why is collateral that depends upon hoped-for exploitation of student indebtedness or consumer ignorance allowed to secure the loan? And what guarantees that state funds or student fees–the only fungible income streams UC has–will not be tapped if and when the original collateral plan collapses?
Not only is the on-line education pilot project being launched on a broken promise, it aims to use non-UC students both as cash cows and guinea pigs, perhaps falsely selling them the UC brand into the bargain. Who knows whether the scheme will work. What is certain is that the $7 million dollar loan and its collateral represents corruption in the present and captures in a nutshell how “students” would be regarded in the future cyber-campus the pilot anticipates.
Social justice indeed.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Protests at CSU and Across the Country
Updated Below:
On Wednesday, thousands of people protested across the CSU system in opposition to the cuts that have been imposed, and the cuts that are threatened, to California higher education. Students occupied administration buildings at nearly half of the CSU campuses and organizers report that nearly 12,000 students, faculty, staff, and supporters took part in a wider events across the CSU system. The protests were organized by the California Faculty Association. Reports of individual campus protests can be found here, here, and here.
As always, Angus Johnson's blog Student Activism contains links and commentary.
Not surprisingly, Protests were also held across the country at Portland State, Rutgers, and UMASS, Boston.
April 13 marked the kick-off day for a period of protest across the nation. We will keep you posted.
Update: Protests Continue at Sacramento and Fullerton
On Wednesday, thousands of people protested across the CSU system in opposition to the cuts that have been imposed, and the cuts that are threatened, to California higher education. Students occupied administration buildings at nearly half of the CSU campuses and organizers report that nearly 12,000 students, faculty, staff, and supporters took part in a wider events across the CSU system. The protests were organized by the California Faculty Association. Reports of individual campus protests can be found here, here, and here.
As always, Angus Johnson's blog Student Activism contains links and commentary.
Not surprisingly, Protests were also held across the country at Portland State, Rutgers, and UMASS, Boston.
April 13 marked the kick-off day for a period of protest across the nation. We will keep you posted.
Update: Protests Continue at Sacramento and Fullerton
Monday, April 11, 2011
On-Line and In Debt
Despite assurances last fall that UCOP's proposed online program would only be funded through donations, the University has now announced that it will borrow several million dollars to support the first steps towards the Edley-versity Although the official UC News buried mention of this decision in the middle of an article touting a Grant from the Gates Foundation, the fact remains that the funds that have been raised are not sufficient to fund the online project. If they were UC would not be incurring debt to support it. Vice-Provost Greenstein assured the Chronicle of Higher Education that UC would most likely raise other funds and not have to use all of its available credit. That would be reassuring, of course, if UCOP hadn't insisted that there would be no need to borrow money in the first place.
Perhaps UCOP, recognizing the large numbers of students who go into debt at online universities has decided--in an act of solidarity--to go into debt with them. It is hard to understand otherwise why they would go back on their commitments.
At least, according to UCOP, these funds are not being taken from any other place where they could serve an educational purpose. According to the Chronicle, Greenstein insisted that ”'It’s not like we’re taking student-fee money,...It can’t be used for anything else. I’m not shutting the Spanish department to do this program.'” Given their track record on this subject I know that I am comforted by that statement.
Perhaps UCOP, recognizing the large numbers of students who go into debt at online universities has decided--in an act of solidarity--to go into debt with them. It is hard to understand otherwise why they would go back on their commitments.
At least, according to UCOP, these funds are not being taken from any other place where they could serve an educational purpose. According to the Chronicle, Greenstein insisted that ”'It’s not like we’re taking student-fee money,...It can’t be used for anything else. I’m not shutting the Spanish department to do this program.'” Given their track record on this subject I know that I am comforted by that statement.
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