Friday, June 05, 2020



After 40 Bad Years, the Department of Education Redeems Itself a Bit

This is a banner year for anniversaries: 400 years since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth, 100 years since women first voted in a presidential election, 75 years since World War II ended, and 20 years since the 9/11 attack on the United States. Less momentous but still very consequential, 40 years ago this month the U.S. Department of Education opened for business.

The nicest thing I can say about the Department of Education is it is not the worst federal intervention in higher education—only second worst (not as bad as the federal financial assistance programs, especially student loans). But if asked “is American higher education today better than 40 years ago when this department started?” I would answer “no!”

Are American college students today learning more than those living in the 1970’s? Colleges, in the knowledge business, know remarkably little about how much their students learn. The sparse intertemporal evidence, however, suggests that learning has probably declined somewhat—somewhat dated information suggests literacy among college students has fallen, fact-based student knowledge of American civic institutions is appallingly low, etc. Labor Department data shows students study embarrassingly little (and sharply less than in the era before the Education Department), and the rise in grade inflation has continued strongly on the Department’’s watch. How can learning increase with students spending less time studying but getting ever higher grades? Moreover, the Department does not even try very hard to measure learning for college students: the last major literacy assessment of college students that I know about occurred 17 years ago.

Before the creation of the Department, college tuition fees rose about one percent a year more than the overall inflation rate, but in the first 35 years of the Department’s existence, inflation-adjusted tuition inflation roughly tripled, causing the huge college student loan crisis and a declining proportion of students graduating from the bottom quartile of the income distribution.

Collegiate research is more the purview of agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, but even here America’s longtime global leadership seems to be declining somewhat. So based on the core teaching and research missions, I would say the notion that centralized direction of colleges and universities is better than decentralized control is clearly unsupported.

Interestingly, although Democrats overwhelmingly controlled Congress and Jimmy Carter was president, they were fiercely divided on whether to create the Education Department. It cleared the House Education Committee on a 20 to 19 vote with seven Democrats joining Republicans in opposing it. Opponents included such liberal icons as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Times, Washington Post and even the American Federation of Teachers. Carter had promised the larger teachers union, the National Education Association, he would get the department created and he delivered.

The worst fears of both conservatives and staunch civil libertarians came in 2011 with the “dear colleague” letter that had zero constitutional basis in law decreeing that colleges must adopt standards in sexual assault cases totally inconsistent with American traditions of criminal justice—the right to confront accusers, be represented by legal counsel, etc. It mandated a very low standard of proof completely unacceptable in criminal proceedings in America. This has spurred a mountain of litigation and contention.

In the past few years under Secretary Betsy DeVos (one of several secretaries, beginning with Bill Bennett, that I actually got to know and admire), the Department has done some positive things. It recently issued, after reviewing 124,000 (!!!) comments, new regulations reversing the worst of the damage created by the dear colleague letter.

Moreover, the Department has started doing the one task it really makes sense for it to do: providing Americans useful information about colleges and universities. The College Scorecard, started in the Obama years, now provides potential students with useful information about colleges, including earnings data by major. It is still highly imperfect, but an “F” job of providing consumer information now rises to a “C” grade from me—progress, but a good ways to go. Still, if I were a member of Congress and voting on a bill to eliminate the Department of Education, I would vote “yes” based on its generally abysmal contribution to higher education.

SOURCE 






Are You Sure You Want to Go to Grad School?

Many college graduates think to themselves, “I don’t have any immediate job prospects that are attractive and I can easily get into grad school with the chance of eventually getting my PhD and then a tenured professorship; I guess that’s what I’ll do.”

If you know anyone in that situation, do him or her a big favor by suggesting a new book by Georgetown University philosophy professor Jason Brennan: Good Work If You Can Get It.

This year (at least before COVID-19 struck us), about 80,000 students were planning to begin doctoral programs, but, Brennan cautions, “most are destined for disappointment.” That is because only about 20 percent of those students will ever obtain any faculty position, much less the coveted tenured professorship at a good school. He wrote the book to guide the many would-be professors who are “clueless, naïve, and misinformed about what grad school and academia are really like.”

There has been a crying need for a book like this for many years.

Something needs to offset the perverse incentives that current professors have to encourage as many sharp students as possible to consider going for a PhD and the benefits it might bring. After all, grad students are themselves a valuable resource for senior faculty, who often give students an unrealistically optimistic view of the path ahead of them.

In the U.S., the PhD is poorly suited to students who thirst for self-discovery and personal enrichment.

It is a professional credential meant to train new college faculty. If you don’t relish the prospect of spending loads of time doing what faculty members are expected to do—teach, grade, counsel, and write, write, write—then you should try something else, Brennan advises.

Moreover, most programs are not well designed to prepare new professors. “There is little congruence,” Brennan writes, “between what most PhD programs train you to do and what most professors in fact do. The PhD primarily trains you to do research—to write original papers and conduct original experiments in your field. But most faculty do little research and instead spend most of their time teaching or performing ‘service’ work.”

Spending the five or more years it generally takes to earn a PhD no doubt filters out people who wouldn’t be good at doing true research, but it also filters out a lot of people who would be quite good at the teaching and service work. In earlier days, Brennan notes, individuals who didn’t have doctorates often landed faculty positions on the basis of their knowledge of the subject, but now that we have created such a glut of doctorate holders, schools (even community colleges) can afford to turn away all but those with terminal degrees to their names.

The efficiency of our PhD programs becomes even more questionable when you consider that, as Brennan notes, most professors actually produce little research after they have achieved tenure. Also, as scholars like Mark Bauerlein have observed, most of the research that faculty (those seeking tenure and those who have it) produce is ignored even by others in the same field. Therefore, the whole PhD production system is evidently quite wasteful.

Most of Brennan’s book is devoted to questions as to what doctoral students should expect and how to improve their chances of success.

First and foremost, what is the likelihood of eventually achieving the goal of becoming a tenured professor? Citing the statistics he knows best—from his own philosophy department at Georgetown—Brennan makes it clear that even if you earn your doctorate from a well-respected program, you face rather dim prospects.

Over the last decade, just one out of 32 Georgetown PhDs obtained a research-intensive faculty position where she devotes most of her time to philosophical research. All the rest are regular college teachers. Nothing wrong with that, but it’s like being a player in Class B minor league baseball when you thought you could be a star in the major leagues.

Brennan makes it clear that even if you earn your doctorate from a well-respected program, you face rather dim prospects.
Brennan’s crucial point is that there are so many other people getting their doctorates and vying for one of the very few top faculty slots that you must do all you can to make yourself stand out.  Much of the book is devoted to sage advice on how to do that.

It is essential to success that aspiring professors publish a lot of papers while in grad school and after they have gotten that initial faculty spot. Brennan suggests that they devote at least 20 hours per week to writing. That calls for discipline and a rigid time budget. Don’t waste time or you’ll fall behind those who manage it better. Among other do’s and don’ts, Brennan advises not to spend more time than is absolutely necessary on teaching and grading for undergrads. Being great at that won’t count at all when you’re being considered for faculty positions.

When it comes to all that essential publishing, Brennan recommends having at least three papers in the works at all times. But don’t try to make them perfect. What matters is getting things published. The academics up the ladder who will decide whether to hire or promote you aren’t going to read, much less evaluate, your work.

Don’t strive for perfection—just “take the shot.”

When the student is ready to enter the job market, they should apply for every position that they could possibly qualify for. Since academia is a buyer’s market, with hundreds of applicants for every opening, students cannot afford to be picky. When contacting the faculty veterans who will either give you a chance or toss out your application, you have to hook them immediately. Professors spend very little time evaluating applications (often less than one minute) and dull, jargony ones will be quickly thrown away.

Brennan’s point about clear, concise writing is one that all academics, not just grad students, should take to heart:

Anyone can hide a half-baked idea behind vague, opaque prose that creates the illusion of profundity. To be able to explain a profound and complicated idea—say, quantum mechanics—in simple English requires genuine talent. You can’t fake that around experts.

Last but not least, Brennan addresses a question that students who hold conservative or libertarian beliefs are probably wondering about: Is the purported bias against them real?

It is, he answers, pointing to evidence that many academics admit that they tend to look with less favor on applications from conservatives and libertarians. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try. What it does mean is that they need to choose their fields and advisors with great care, and then outperform the competition. Brennan compares the situation conservatives and libertarians face with that which blacks used to face—you can succeed, but you have to be your absolute best.

Don’t let anyone you know apply to grad school without first encouraging them to read Good Work If You Can Get It.

SOURCE 







Covid-19 is changing education for the better

This pandemic could profoundly change education for the better. Throughout history, the sector has been conservative and resistant to change. For centuries it had the slate, then came a century of blackboard and chalk. Now students are just a finger-click away from the vast knowledge of Google — so much greater than that of any individual teacher.

Coronavirus has given schools Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Classroom. The technology turns a laptop screen into a classroom, where students and teachers see each other and can question each other in truly collaborative online learning. Just after the UK’s lockdown began, the Department for Education launched a new online school, the Oak National Academy, where 2m lessons were accessed by learners across the country in its first week. Necessity really is the mother of invention.

During lockdown, many of the 48 university technical colleges that I helped establish and work with have provided teaching programmes from 9am to 5pm. Pupil attendance varies from 50 per cent to 95 per cent. Most students have access to the latest laptops. But some disadvantaged students do not — or only via a shared family laptop. The UK government now sees the advantage of online teaching because it is making laptops available to those students.

Our students like these virtual lessons. They eliminate long journeys to school — some of the students travel three hours a day. They allow an outstanding physics teacher — something of a rarity — to reach not only his or her own students, but those in schools that do not have a physics teacher at all. In future, virtual classes could allow students to attend school in person for, say, four days, with online lessons on the fifth.

The computer has become so important that I believe computing science should be taken at GCSE level by every student. When it comes to the jobs of the future, it will be a greater advantage to have a computer language than a foreign language. Three years ago, Dartford’s Leigh UTC opened for 11-year-olds, and taught all of them computing science. When those students, now aged 14, chose their technical specialism this year, 76 per cent opted for computing. They know where the jobs will be.

GCSE exams have been replaced this year by stringent teacher assessments. Why can’t this continue? These exams burden each summer term with so much student, parent and teacher anxiety that little is learnt: only the student’s memory is tested. Now that education stretches from the age of four to 18, there is no purpose in an exam at 16. Back in 1950, the tests made sense because 93 per cent of students left for a job. Today, 93 per cent of students stay in education and training. What students need now is an assessment at 14 to decide if they want an academic or a more practical technical education.

Universities will also have to change. Students complain about the lack of time with tutors. Today, tutors using Zoom can meet 10 or 12 students for a discussion much more frequently.

Normal degree exams will also not happen this year. At Cambridge university, students reading human, social and political science will not sit in a large hall for three-hour exams on three separate occasions. Instead, they will be assessed for a third of their degree on their work over the previous three years, and for two-thirds on essays written at home in two, three-hour “open book” examinations. This is welcome because writing on a computer is quicker and more readable. Allowing students to refer to reference materials and books recognises that immediate recall is less important than the deeper understanding they have accumulated from wider reading.

When the pandemic ebbs Britain cannot go back to a low-skilled economy, because it will not be there. Unemployment will be high for both school-leavers and graduates. Schools should tell students that technical courses, possibly with paid apprenticeships, are a pathway to career success. Those going on to university should choose a course which British manufacturing and services need. Three-quarters of UTC students take science, technology, engineering and maths courses in university — twice the national average.

This is a small step along the road to a high-skill economy. Many more will need to make that journey.

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