I remember how it was -- JR
A Farewell Assessment: Higher Education after Six Decades
By RICHARD K. VEDDER
My first published analysis of some dimension of higher education occurred during the administration of John F. Kennedy. 11 men have been U.S. president since. The pace of my commentary on higher education rose to new heights in 2018 when I began to write five or more blogs monthly for Forbes. As with nearly everything, though, diminishing returns are setting in—it is increasingly difficult for me to formulate thoughtful new insights on America’s colleges every few days. So Forbes and I have amiably agreed to stop this regular writing arrangement.
Let me make some observations on how higher education has changed since my initial involvement in it as a student well over six decades ago.
First, higher education has gone from being a wildly popular and rapidly growing sector of the economy to being one perceived as stagnant or declining, with sharply diminished public support. Around 1960, politicians won votes by promising to expand state universities and increase their funding; that is rarely the case today. In the 1960s, the proportion of Americans in college doubled; in the last decade, it declined.
Second, the non-teaching dimensions of higher education have become relatively more important. Look at research. Teaching loads fell sharply and publication expectations grew sharply after 1960. In recent years, this trend peaked, and there is growing realization that diminishing returns are quite present in research endeavors. Teaching loads are creeping up again at some schools.
Third, we expect less of our college kids, but try to reward them more. Research suggests college kids on average spend one-third less time on studies than in 1960, but earn much higher grades. It is a case of learning less, albeit at a much higher cost than in the 1960s.
Fourth, as Johns Hopkins’ Ben Ginsberg chronicled beautifully a decade or so ago, faculty power and control at universities has waned dramatically. The notion that diversity and inclusion bureaucrats would influence considerably the composition of faculty search committees, common today, was completely unheard of a few decades ago. Administrators run universities today and, generally speaking, faculty are treated as hired hands, not the very heart of the university enterprise. To be sure, there are many variations on this, and the faculty at, say, Harvard no doubt still have a lot of clout relative to, say, the faculty at Slippery Rock State U. Contributing to the demise in faculty control: a sharp decline in the proportion of teaching done by tenured faculty.
Fifth, two non-instructional dimensions of higher education have grown exceptionally: medical schools and the hospital/research operations associated with them are as much as one-half the budget at dozens of important American universities. Also, intercollegiate athletics has grown in financial importance, often becoming an increasing burden on university budgets.
Sixth, there is a growing sense of institutional inequality in higher education. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That has manifested itself in a massive flight to quality, with prestigious selective private elite universities growing in wealth and enrollment while mid to lower quality schools are struggling to attract students and pay their bills.
Seventh, there have been some technological advances in higher education, notably electronic aided learning manifested in on-line instruction. Yet college remains still not dramatically different in terms of delivery than it was when I was in college.
Eighth, college has become vastly more costly. Despite rising living standards, the financing of a college education has become a huge problem, witness a huge student loan indebtedness problem. A big dimension of this: the large increase in the federal role and attempts to control higher education, reducing its decentralized character.
Yet there are things that have not happened, contrary to some predictions. For example, collective bargaining grew a good deal in the 1960s and 1970s, but the move towards unionization has slowed dramatically.
I wish to thank some super people at Forbes, most notably Susan Adams, Caroline Howard and Michael Noer. I want to thank dozens of students who not only helped directly but who have inspired me to go to the office every day even at the age of 81. I love teaching, I love research, I love universities, despite their many significant and worrisome flaws.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13937&omhide=true
************************************************340,000 Students Left in Limbo After Chicago Teachers Union Votes to Not Show Up for Classes
The Chicago teachers union on Tuesday voted that it would not enter school for in-person classes, leading the city’s public schools to cancel all classes on Wednesday.
The union said that amid a surge in COVID-19 cases, existing mitigation measures were not sufficient to protect the health and safety of the teachers, a contention that the school district has rejected, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The district’s 340,658 students had returned Monday from their Christmas vacation.
The district had said that if teachers approved what it called an “illegal work stoppage,” it would cancel classes instead of the district returning to remote learning, according to WLS-TV. All other school activities, including sports, were canceled.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said teachers who do not show up will be shunted into no-pay status, the Tribune reported.
“I have to tell you, it feels like ‘Groundhog Day,’ that we are here again,” Lightfoot said, according to the Tribune, referring to a 2019 strike by city teachers and multiple rounds of sparring over an eventual return to in-person classes.
Union leaders are “politicizing the pandemic,” she said.
“There is no basis in the data, the science or common sense for us to shut an entire system down when we can surgically do this at a school level,” Lightfoot said, according to the Tribune.
“If we pause, what do we say to those parents who can’t afford to hire somebody to come in and watch their kids, who can’t ship their kids off to some other place. What do we say to those students who are already struggling?” Lightfoot said.
According to WLS, the Chicago Teachers Union said 73 percent of the members who voted approved staying home and said they would return when the district makes an acceptable offer.
Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said the district will “have a plan specifically for parents that will come out [Wednesday] in a very timely fashion about what the path forward is. I am still committed, though, to coming up with an agreement with the CTU,” according to the Tribune.
Schools on Wednesday were offering no instruction but allowed students in school buildings to address concerns of parents that they had no other place for the children, given the short notice of the teachers’ vote.
“We will still continue to provide essential services, and we will have a plan in place whether it’s for nutrition; we still have COVID testing that’s scheduled in the schools,” Martinez said.
In a statement, the union said it understood the “frustration” its decision might cause.
“We believe that our city’s classrooms are where our students should be. Regrettably, the Mayor and her CPS leadership have put the safety and vibrancy of our students and their educators in jeopardy,” the statement said.
“Unfortunately, our union is again being backed into a corner of being the leader in the city that the mayor refuses to be,” CTU Vice President Stacy Davis Gates said, according to WLS.
The union wanted KF94, KN95, or N95 masks given to all staff and students as well as procedures to be put in place to move to remote learning if 20 percent or more of staff is either in isolation or quarantine, or if a school safety committee says the transition to remote learning is necessary, the Tribune reported.
School officials have said there is no health threat to students, and said the school system has been working with the union to address the teachers’ demands.
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Schools Should Be Open and School Choice Should Be Universal
As we enter year three of the pandemic, it is absolutely absurd that scores of schools are closing again for in-person learning because of the vastly overhyped Omicron variant.
First and foremost, data show the Omicron variant is more transmissible but far less lethal than the original strain of COVID-19 and the Delta variant. In South Africa, where the Omicron variant originated, no deaths have been reported as of this writing due to infection from Omicron.
According to Gyaneshwar Chaubey, a professor of genetics at Banaras Hindu University, “It can be concluded that the mortality rate of Omicron is much lower than other variants of the virus. Recent studies have suggested that it infects fast but multiply 12 times less than the Delta variant, it is perhaps due to this reason, it is not causing any severity.”
Second, in general, COVID-19 poses little health risk to children.
To date, 558 Americans aged five to 18-years-old have died from COVID-19. Although every single one of those deaths is tragic, it should be put in perspective that far more children have died from car accidents and several other causes over the same time span.
Third, we know that remote learning is far inferior to in-person learning.
Per a recent study from McKinsey & Company:
“Our analysis shows that the impact of the pandemic on K–12 student learning was significant, leaving students on average five months behind in mathematics and four months behind in reading by the end of the school year. The pandemic widened preexisting opportunity and achievement gaps, hitting historically disadvantaged students hardest. In math, students in majority Black schools ended the year with six months of unfinished learning, students in low-income schools with seven. High schoolers have become more likely to drop out of school, and high school seniors, especially those from low-income families, are less likely to go on to postsecondary education. And the crisis had an impact on not just academics but also the broader health and well-being of students, with more than 35 percent of parents very or extremely concerned about their children’s mental health.”
However, this has not stopped teacher union officials throughout America from ringing the alarm bells and calling for a return to remote learning.
Just this week, in my hometown, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to cancel in-person learning for the foreseeable future, putting more than 300,000 students in jeopardy of falling further behind the academic eight-ball.
Per CTU, “Tonight, as educators, parents, neighbors and community members we had to make the tough decision to support a resolution to return to remote learning in our city’s public schools. This decision was made with a heavy heart and a singular focus on student and community safety.”
In response, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot delivered a pointed message to CTU, saying, “If you care about our students, if you care about our families, as we do, we will not relent. Enough is enough. We are standing firm and we are going to fight to get our kids back to in-person learning. Period. Full stop.”
Lightfoot added, “We owe that to our children who suffered learning loss.”
Although I rarely agree with Lightfoot’s policy positions, I am in full agreement with her when it comes to stressing the importance of in-person learning and her hardline stance with CTU.
I hope more mayors, governors, and elected officials follow the lead of Lightfoot in holding the teacher unions’ feet to the fire.
For years, teacher unions have put their members’ interests above all else, including the students under their stead. The reprehensible behavior of most teacher unions during the pandemic, in which they have used every excuse in the book to not show up for work, has made it clear as day that school choice is the ultimate antidote to the monopolistic power wielded by teacher unions.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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