The Kept-Up Academic Librarian

Privatizing U Of California Is The Wrong Solution

University of California President Mark G. Yudof went to Sacramento this week in another valiant effort to convince legislators that they're playing with fire when they shortchange the state's higher-education system. In the course of his presentation, he gingerly mentioned the P-word. The state university, he told them, is a statewide boon, adding: "We do not want to partially privatize it through raising fees." "Privatization" is a crowd-pleasing nostrum for public officials seeking to shed the budgetary cost of programs and services that they nevertheless know to be a public responsibility. It has a cheap but bright surface allure, like a fresh coat of whitewash. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik10-2009dec10,0,4424169.column

Preferential Admissions For Men Serves A Purpose

Now we have a new reason to be upset at the admissions preferences. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights recently announced it would investigate whether women have to meet higher admissions standards at many colleges, especially small private liberal arts colleges that have a hard time attracting men. The question is not whether the admissions bias is happening. (It is.) Rather, it's whether colleges should be pressured to give it up.  It's why colleges admit good but less competitive student athletes or talented musicians. It is why colleges admit students underrepresented in college. Men — white or black or Latino — are underrepresented in college. Read more at:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/12/column-why-men-warrant-a-break-on-college-admissions-.html

Views On Political Correctness In Higher Education

In the opening sentence of a key chapter in his new book on the academy, “No University Is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom,” Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors and a self-identified leftist, makes an important, and conciliatory, point: “Although few students or faculty on American campuses who are on either the right or the left …are inclined to acknowledge each other’s perspective, members of both groups feel beleaguered, isolated, outcast and underrepresented in their higher education environments.” Later in the chapter Nelson allows that while political correctness is not the “all defining campus cultural force the right makes it out to be, it does operate, in some contexts absurdly.” Read more at:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/political-correctness-revisited-views-from-both-sides/?th&emc=th

Let's Hear It For Liberal Arts Education

The cosmopolitanism of curricula at America' best liberal arts colleges is in tune with the wonderful diversity of student life. The great advantage of our cosmopolitan liberal arts education is that it allows students to explore international, virtual networks of knowledge while learning the virtues (the pleasures and effectiveness) of face-to-face conversation, team participation and cooperation. Whether learning music or biophysics, consistent personal contact with teachers and fellow-students deepens education. The key is that the students at these schools are developing skills, learning how to learn, in ways that will serve them for decades. Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-roth/liberal-arts-education-fr_b_360803.html

Why Not Turn Universities Into Public Corporations

Oregon should convert its largest universities into public corporations so they have more freedom to raise money and revitalize the state's stifled higher education system, Dave Frohnmayer, recently retired president of the University of Oregon, said Wednesday. Legislators, state board members and students said Frohnmayer's proposal deserves serious consideration. Frohnmayer argues that in exchange for getting more freedom, Oregon universities that converted to public corporations could be held accountable to rigorous performance goals on outcomes such as student retention and graduation rates. Read more at:
http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2009/11/frohnmayer_make_universities_p.html 

Top Academic Leadership Doesn't Come Cheap

The salaries of college and university presidents have been going up, but savvy leadership has a price. Excellent college leadership is necessary, now more than ever, and that costs. University presidents usually are respected scholars in their own right who must combine a broad grasp of academic issues with administrative and public relations skills -- and perhaps above all, a knack for fundraising. Great university management draws great faculty, who in turn attract top students, fellowships and grants. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-salaries4-2009nov04,0,3798999.story

Higher Education Must Escape The Rising Tuition Trap

Students entering public four-year institutions this fall confront published tuition rates more than 6 percent higher than they were a year ago. Private colleges and universities ticked up 4.4 percent. The recession itself is a major cause. Still, it would be a mistake to blame the spiraling cost of college education on short-term factors. This problem didn't start with the recession -- and it won't end with it, either. Beyond furloughs or shorter library hours, they must find structural savings -- through such reforms as creative scheduling, easier distance learning and more teaching by tenured faculty. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/02/AR2009110203442.html

Online Learning A Wake-Up Call For Traditional Higher Ed

In many ways, education hasn’t changed much since students sat at the feet of Socrates more than two millenniums ago. Learners still gather each autumn at colleges to listen to and be questioned by professors. But the Internet has caused sudden shifts in other industries, from the way people read news to the way they buy music or plan travel. Might higher education be nearing such a jolt? Many have theorized that the Internet could give education a rude shock. Read more at:
http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/10/15/the-future-of-college-may-be-virtual/

Education Made America Great But The Future Looks Very Different

There has been a flurry of reporting recently about threats to the dominance of America’s elite universities. What hasn’t been reported to the same extent, at least as far as I’ve seen, is our relative decline in more mundane measures. America, which used to take the lead in educating its young, has been gradually falling behind other advanced countries. Most people, I suspect, still have in their minds an image of America as the great land of college education, unique in the extent to which higher learning is offered to the population at large. That image used to correspond to reality. But these days young Americans are considerably less likely than young people in many other countries to graduate from college. In fact, we have a college graduation rate that’s slightly below the average across all advanced economies. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/opinion/09krugman.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=college&st=cse

Another View On College Rankings And Their Impact

College rankings are having an impact in the marketplace. As a result, colleges ought to use rankings responsibly as a policy tool and not as the sole basis for judging themselves against other institutions. These conclusions come from a recently published analysis, "The Role and Relevance of Rankings in Higher Education Policymaking," compiled by the Institute for Higher Education Policy (IHEP), a public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C. Its recommendations are solely aimed at higher education policymakers and top academics working at the colleges themselves. It's very important to remember that the U.S. News America's Best Colleges rankings are primarily geared toward consumers. Read more at:
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2009/10/01/about-that-new-ihep-report.html