26
Mar

Totally free Thinking?

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic News

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

Lately, Blade Nzimande, South Africa’s Minister for Increased Education and Education, announced that the country’s 1st universities to be founded given that the ending of apartheid will open in 2014. Work on a university in Kimberley in the Northern Cape is set to begin in September, so that it can open in time for the starting of the academic year in January. The 2nd university will be primarily based in Nelspruit, Mpumalanga, a considerable agricultural district about 340km northeast of Johannesburg.

Within Increased Ed | Blog U

19
Mar

“Not a College for People Like Them”

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic News

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

Blog: 
Confessions of a Community College Dean

Rising star of the Twitterverse Tressie McMillan Cottom has a must-read post about her observations as a sociologist and former admissions staffer at a for-profit college.  It’s about the interaction between the prestige hierarchy of higher education, economic class, and self-image.

The money quote:

When I teach my undergraduates at my elite, private school they all recognize the for-profit college ads I play to introduce the idea of higher education stratification. I ask them why they did not apply to Everest or Strayer when they were applying to college. They tell me that it’s not a school for people like them.

“Not a school for people like them.”  

When I worked at DeVry, we had conversations like these all the time.  DeVry used to blanket every cheesy daytime talk show with ads — Ricki Lake was a favorite — and its student body reflected that.  Whenever a big muckety-muck from Home Office came to campus to exhort us to higher success rates, we usually responded by asking that the advertising be redirected to places where likelier-to-succeed students might see them.  The usual answer was that the ads worked, and as long as they worked, there wasn’t much point in redirecting them.

This strikes me as the flip side of the “;undermatching” thesis addressed yesterday.  At some level, there’s a broad — and I would say, badly dysfunctional — understanding that certain kinds of colleges are for certain kinds of people.  That’s not restricted to the relatively unobjectionable cases of women’s colleges or colleges with specific religious affiliations, where the identities are worn on the sleeve.  The larger issue is the unwritten identity that each college assumes.

Economic and cultural capital are major components of those unwritten identities.  Those overlap with race, but they have force of their own.  The students who know the difference between engineers and engineering techs go to Purdue or MIT; the ones who don’t, go to DeVry.  

The for-profits are acutely aware of that sort of thing, and they organize themselves accordingly.  As Cottom puts it:

Can you imagine applying to your flagship state university by walking into the admissions office with $ 75 in cash? It is even difficult to do at the local community college I visited recently. And community colleges are, theoretically, designed to serve demographically similar students as those served by for-profit colleges. Waltzing in with cash money is not only a bureaucratic violation but a cultural one. It signals you do not know how “;real” college works.

Exactly.  And if community colleges are serious about helping the folks who don’t come in knowing that, we could learn some lessons from the for-profits.

To my reading, Cottom puts a little too much faith in the economic cycle to explain for-profits’ success, and probably too little on the regulatory climate.  And it’s reasonable to think that the for-profits should be even more nervous about MOOCs than the rest of us.  But those are quibbles.  Go and read her piece.  Give it some thought.  She’s on to something, and we’d best figure out just what it is.
 

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

11
Mar

8 Education Commence-Up Tips

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic News

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

Blog: 
StratEDgy

Entrepreneurial ideas related to education have flourished of late, and business plan competitions can surface some of these initial ideas. Here are eight education-related start-up ideas appearing on several lists of finalists.

Wharton Business Plan Competition
They recently selected 26 semi-finalists out of 140 teams, and the following two teams presented businesses related to education.

Certiorari: Certiorari is a comprehensive educational resource that closes the knowledge gap between lawyers and their clients.

Textbook Friend: Textbook Friend is an online platform, personalized to different schools with different subdomains, student networks, and marketing teams, in which students can communicate directly to buy and sell textbooks on campus, cutting out the traditionally large intermediary fees of bookstores and other services

MillerCoors Urban Entrepreneurs Series (MUES) Business Plan Competition
One of the ten finalists has an idea focused on education.

Excelegrade: A company that developed online software that replaces paper-based tests in K-12 classrooms with assessments on tablets, smart phones, and laptops.

Georgia Tech Business Plan Competition
At least one of the finalists is trying to solve an educational problem.

iSolv3: mobile application that allows users to solve complicated math problems by taking a picture (no typing into the calculator necessary!)

NYC Next Idea
Two out of the six finalists presented education-related ideas.

Glovico.org: A peer-to-peer online language learning platform (USA and Germany)

Cortex International: Medical Ethics Virtual Experience, a module-based, interactive ethics education program for use at medical schools and hospitals (USA and China)

Burton D. Morgan Business Plan Competition at Purdue
The ten finalists in the undergraduate and graduate student categories included two education ideas.

Cornucopia Farm: an agritourism business in Scottsburg, Ind., focused on educating the public about agriculture and how to interact with it in their daily lives.

Skyepack: which is a content-focused educational software environment designed to facilitate the delivery of learn-anywhere mobile content as an alternative to texts, course packs and class handouts.

Which one would get your vote if you were a judge?

 

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

06
Mar

Lastest Why Phd News

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in General

Some brain cells are much better virus fighters
“The cells that a pathogen infects can be a main determinant of the seriousness of brain infections,” says senior author Michael Diamond, MD, PhD, professor of medication. “To comprehend the basis of disease, it is critical to recognize which brain …
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Wellness Advantages of Marriage May possibly Not Extend to All
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The Logical Dilemma with the &#398 State Resolution&#39 in President Obama&#39s Prop 8 Short
Ari Ezra Waldman teaches at Brooklyn Law School and is concurrently receiving his PhD at Columbia University in New York City. He is a 2002 graduate of Harvard School and a 2005 graduate of Harvard Law College. His analysis focuses on engineering, …
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23
Feb

Internalizing the External Evaluation Approach

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic News

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

Blog: 
Library Babel Fish

I’m finishing up a draft of a department self-study for an external review of our library. It’s the third time I’ve been involved in one of these, and the second time I’ve been primary author. It’s making me feel reflective about this enterprise we are part of, the nature of change, and questions of purpose and agency.

Deep thoughts, in other words.

External reviews are an interesting practice. Our first review in the early 1990s brought a number of overheated issues to the surface, not unlike a volcanic event. I don’t recommend bottling everything up until a review team arrives. It’s hard on the reviewers and a mess to clean up. Some good things came out of it, ultimately. The review amplified what an accreditation team concluded at approximately the same time: the library’s budget has to be increased. I’d forgotten what a huge difference a few years of budget growth makes. The review also kicked off a few years of difficult internal discussions that led to a complete redefinition of the librarians’ roles (adopting a more holistic and shared set of duties) and the development of a collegial management model for our library organization, something I still find exciting. It works for us, and it mystifies me that more libraries don’t try it.

The second external review in 2003 was less eventful. No skeletons tumbled out of closets, no Gordian knots had to be whacked apart. We got answers to some questions we posed, we got an endorsement for the things we wanted, and we felt many of our efforts affirmed, particularly in terms of what we did to promote and support student learning.

Working on the documentation for the third external review reminds me that some of the projects we’re working on now got their start ten years ago. The reviewers noted our shelving was near capacity and warned us that we’d have to start planning accordingly. The library was packed to bursting with students who clearly felt ownership of the place and were occupying every available space. We would have to figure out how to preserve that space for students to interact in groups, study in solitude, or spread out as they worked on research. The weeding we’ve been doing wholeheartedly for the past few years stems from this recommendation.

But it also reminds me that some things are in our control, and some are not. Those budget increases leveled off and have been flat for over a decade. (Our staff costs, particularly for health care, have no doubt increased, though our staff is smaller and younger than it was.) Having ever-increasing subscription costs and a stagnant budget makes us constantly tinker with our collection, trying to cut anything that isn’t necessary. In some ways this is a healthy form of simplicity. You really need to know what your priorities are, and you have to involve the entire faculty in defining them. In good times, there’s no real need to be so analytical or reflective. We’ve gotten good at both. And we've gathered a lot of data.

A team of librarians, staff, and students conducted large-scale ethnographic study of our virtual and physical space, which also drove many of the changes we've made since the last review. We redesigned our website, we reorganized space, we created a new reference desk where we could sit side-by side with students to talk through their questions. We have a trove of information, from student and faculty surveys, to seating pattern studies, to interviews and focus groups, to picture associations and photo diaries. Lots and lots of lovely data, and it has been really useful.

But there are limits to what you can do with data. You can say “;look, students say they need more space, they need more places for solitary study, more group study areas. They’ve been saying this for 25 years. Can’t we do something about it?” Well, here’s what we can do: we can scour campus storage areas for tables that can be scrubbed up and used in place of underutilized carrels. We can create nooks in the stacks that are a little like study rooms, though never quite as popular. We can move furniture around and empty some shelves and patch things up. Because that’s in our control and requires time and imagination, but not money.

We can nip and tuck and cancel this and that to cover budget gaps. We can stop buying anything that isn’t a high priority and patch holes by canceling a thousand journal dollar subscription, making up for it by buying one $ 40 article at a time. Every time a vendor promises a cheaper version of an essential database, we can make a switch and hope the savings last longer than the time it takes to fix all the broken links. But data doesn’t lead to a bigger budget.

We academics have a habit of using the term “;bean counters” when condemning those soulless individuals in administration buildings who don’t invest in programs that aren’t performing, who run the numbers before they make decisions. How I wish more administrators were bean counters!  How I wish they cared about data, about evidence, about careful stewardship of scarce resources. It’s useful stuff, data. Every improvements we’ve made in this library was a response to the data we’d gathered. But outside the library? Decisions seem to be made by some other means.

I remember thinking during the University of Virginia debacle, a power struggle that seems to be happening all over higher education, that what rankles the most when watching those who have a bit of power try to reserve it all to themselves, is that they’re so bad at using it. The things we care about in higher education -; ethics, the logical consequences of actions, the use of evidence in decisions, the virtues of equality and a belief that rational people can make decisions for the common good, that stuff we started believing during the Enlightenment, is being replaced by something else. Something blind and careless and full of confidence in the righteousness of power. 

I suppose we could end each department meeting with the serenity prayer, but there are things that need changing, no matter how powerless we feel. So on we go, trying to introduce students to values that have been around a long, long time and may still, some day, come back in fashion. We can hope.  

Barbara Fister

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

23
Mar

Lastest Academic Job Interview News

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic Life

Job fair
academic job interview
Image by EURES, the European Employment Service
Job fair
Stand of Disneyland Paris
Interview with Amanda Findikian, Academic adviser

European Online Job Day 2011 #EOJD
Manchester – UK – 9 November 2011
© European Union

Let Unknown Callers Go To Voicemail If You're Applying For Jobs
If you have any open job applications, you never know when a potential future employer will try to get in touch, so it's usually best just to let any calls from unknown numbers go to voicemail. … Be sure to check out the source link for more pre …
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Lawsuit: Company cheated laid-off employees out of stock
… for people to lose their jobs, but when you know you're terminating somebody's employment and then you cheat them out of an award that they spent a long time working for to boot, it's like kicking someone when they're down," Meyers said in an …
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15
Mar

Lastest Phd Importance News

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in General

IOE’s primary constructing (windows)
phd importance
Picture by IOE London
In recognition of its historic relevance English Heritage has given it a Grade II* listing.

11
Mar

Bill Gates Has a Remedy for Larger Education: Yoda

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic News

Inside Increased Ed | Site U

Weblog:&nbsp
Just Going to

Bill Gates has diagnosed what ails increased education, and the cure is all about technologies, and also Yoda.

Speaking at the SXSW engineering conference, as reported by CNN Income, “Gates&rsquo major theme was customized learning, which can be enhanced by new technological innovation.&rdquo

And Yoda.

Yet again according to CNN Funds, Gates maintains that, “Yoda was a excellent instructor since the Jedi master understood when Skywalker is dropping interest.&rdquo

In Gates&rsquo personal words, “With this wave of application that&#39s becoming designed that personalizes to the pupil … there&#39s genuine promise here that the youngsters can go back and engage in a way they couldn&#39t ahead of.&quot

So Bill Gates and I, and just about every person else I&rsquom mindful of, agree on two huge items: one. That massive lecture classes are non-perfect atmospheres to engender learning. two. The much better different is personalized studying supervised by a mentor capable of nurturing pupil curiosity.

Gates&rsquo reply to this dilemma is “personalized software.&rdquo

As I read this, I recognized this computer software presently exists, and in some cases (mine) it&rsquos a little as well soft, about the middle specifically.

I&rsquom talking about human beings, or in Yoda&rsquos case, an indeterminate species of three-foot tall green factors with oversized ears and gravelly Miss Piggy voices.

I like Gates&rsquo Yoda analogy. Yoda is without a doubt a fine instructor. When Luke is coaxed by Obi-Wan&rsquos ghost to the swamp planet Dagobah to understand beneath Yoda&rsquos tutelage, rather than lecturing Luke Skywalker on how to harness the Force, Yoda encourages youthful Luke to search within himself.

I have to say, I at times come to feel like Yoda in my job, every student a various youthful Jedi in require of the right words of encouragement.

Most of the time I&rsquom communicating two factors, that what I am asking them to do matters, and that they are certainly capable of undertaking it.

Or, as Yoda puts it, “Do or do not&hellipthere is no attempt.&rdquo

Apparently, Gates&rsquo concept is to place Yoda on pc screens as component of the school of tomorrow, “in which college students observe lessons on the web, delivered by the brightest minds in the field.&rdquo

As Gates says, &quotIf you want the extremely greatest lectures, if you want the value efficiency, you have to break down and say, you know, allow&#39s get someone else&#39s materials.&quot&nbsp

I feel about this, and I wonder, provided a Jedi-master&rsquos capacity to undertaking his thoughts across galaxies and star techniques in an instant, why did Obi-Wan encourage Luke to look for out Yoda in person?

Possibly since software and humans are the same issue, not.&nbsp Yes, hmmm.

The assumptions that Gates and other folks like him deliver to these discussions is that education, as is, is as well costly. Soon after all, tuition is rising more quickly than inflation and university is threatening to turn into a bad investment. Technology, Gates argues, has the likely to make college cheaper, for instance by not needing as numerous professors given that, what the heck, we&rsquove received Yoda on tape!

Like Gates, I&rsquom distressed by growing tuition and the strain it puts on my students. Many more of them are taking on shocking amounts of debt, or trying to operate total-time jobs even though also getting full-time students.

But I get distressed when the discussion turns immediately towards the corporate buzzwords of “efficiency&rdquo and “productivity.&rdquo In the 90&rsquos, when unemployment was four% and we have been all acquiring wealthy on our shares of Pets.com, I don&rsquot keep in mind people falling in excess of themselves criticizing our system of larger education.

Not that we can&rsquot get greater, but the truth is, we&rsquore in fact quite great at it. The educating/learning model is not particularly mysterious. College students benefit from becoming in the presence of their Jedi-masters. Occasionally a hologram is okay, but it isn&rsquot a substitute for the real, little green factor.

Surely, universities share some of the blame for increasing tuition as they&rsquove chased amenities, increased the amount of administration, and yes, pursued the most recent technologies, but the deep economic downturn and state government reductions in funding have completed far more to improve tuition rates than any other factor.

When the Bantha dung hit the fan in the 2008 monetary crisis, the government responded by recapitalizing the banks, bailing out the auto industry, and acquiring toxic assets, probably conserving us from a devastating economic meltdown. As of March 4th, the government has been paid back $ 461 billion of the $ 605 billion it handed out, with a very good opportunity more than time to at least break even or flip a profit.

Why can&rsquot we do one thing related with colleges? Do we doubt that there will be economic (and other benefits) to enhancing education, as opposed to creating it a lot more “efficient?&rdquo

And it doesn&rsquot even have to be the government alone that does it.

Because 2008, funding to greater education in Louisiana has been cut by $ 425 million dollars.

In 2011 alone, the Gates Basis spent $ 426 million offering grants to education-relevant organizations.

Virtually all of that funds went to groups operating on integrating engineering into the classroom. They argue the technology helps teachers better do their jobs by freeing them to engage more personally with the students. That feels like the Dark Side to me, as we preserve throwing cash at technologies attempting to produce a substitute for one thing we previously have in abundance, prepared and devoted teachers.

Why can&rsquot we just have a lot more teachers educating? Smaller sized courses, much more personalized instruction, much better studying.

Not one particular Yoda on display, an army of them in the flesh.

To me this helps make sense. Hmmmmmm.

Good for spreading the word, twitter is.&nbsp Herh herh herh.

&nbsp

Stick to @biblioracle
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&nbsp

Inside Greater Ed | Site U

03
Mar

Changing A/P George at Nanyang Technological University?

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in Academic News

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

Blog: 
GlobalHigherEd

aa84f Education 9378013 0Like many social scientists with ties and genuine affection for Singapore, I was shocked when I heard Nanyang Technological University (NTU) recently denied tenure to Dr. Cherian George (pictured to the right). See here for a Storify-based compilation of stories about this ongoing debacle, and here for a 1 March University World News story. Keep in mind this is the second time he was denied tenure – the first occurred in 2009.

Cherian George has a truly rare capacity to shed light on the nature of state-society-economy relations in Southeast Asia (especially Singapore and Malaysia) via an analysis of media systems and practices. He is also a public intellectual, with an ability to write in a fashion free from the jargon all too often associated with media studies worlds.

I first heard about Cherian George's work when I worked in Singapore in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and then every year after, usually via colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who work in the media and communications fields. While I've never met him I can state, with confidence, he would have been tenured here at UW-Madison. Indeed, given his record and in demand areas of expertise matched with actual experience as a journalist, he'd most likely be a tenured full Professor by now. But there you go – the powers that be who govern NTU have decided to send George on his way.

Rather than speculate as to why NTU, led by President Bertil Andersson (a Swedish national, and former Chief Executive of the European Science Foundation, 2004-2007) and Provost Freddy Boey, chose to sanction this decision, I decided to think laterally and pondered what a position description for a replacement hire in George's areas of expertise would be like. It's worth reflecting on the value of having a non-expatriate professor with these capabilities in a school of communication and information, and in a university that seeks to support the media sector in a city-state that ostensibly desires to become a 'vibrant and robust' media hub.

 

~~~~~

HYPOTHETICAL POSITION DESCRIPTION

Media Politics: Following the denial of tenure to Dr. Cherian George (who has a PhD in Communication from Stanford University, a Masters from Columbia University’s School of Journalism, and a BA in Social and Political Sciences from Cambridge University), we are looking for an even more innovative, collaborative, and forward-thinking teacher-scholar who is interdisciplinary inclined. The successful candidate should have a PhD with an active research agenda, and teaching and advising experience. Preference will be given to candidates who study the diverse politics of the media, including the norms and practices of journalism in Singapore and Southeast Asia more broadly; the sociocultural dimensions of the production, circulation and consumption of various forms of media; the formal and informal regulation of the media; and the nature of 'alternative' media vis a vis emerging social media platforms such as weblogs, Twitter, and so on. We are particularly interested in candidates who have deep regional expertise combined with international perspectives. It is also important that all candidates have 5-10 years of journalism experience in the media industry. The candidate needs to understand and be able to teach about the complex forces and diverse perspectives shaping debates in Singapore and Southeast Asia about issues like censorship, 'intolerant' speech, 'free' speech, and the nature of state influence on media systems. The candidate should committed to enhancing the role of NTU as a place where faculty are "excited about ideas,” where "risk taking" and "breaking conventional mindsets" is the new norm, and where faculty increasingly need to encourage students to "ask questions" so as to inculcate more creative and agile mindsets.

~~~~~

Those leading NTU (such as President Bertil Andersson) have stated that they have a "responsibility to Singaporean society."  It might be worth asking President Andersson if students at a "leading institution of higher education in the Asia-Pacific region" need to know about the phenomenon of media politics. And if so, who could realistically fill Dr. Cherian George's shoes?

Kris Olds

Inside Higher Ed | Blog U

18
Feb

Lastest Phd Importance Information

Written by Blog Editor. Posted in General

Sheffield Forgemasters CEO appointed chair at University of Sheffield
Dr Graham Honeyman will assume a role as an Honorary Professor in strategic management after academics at the prestigious institution granted its approval. Established in 1986, the Management School is the largest department in the Faculty of … the …
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