Price point?

Have the regents who just raised fees/tuition in the University of California system 32% ever considered that with fewer students able to afford their colleges, fewer might attend and the system might actually lose revenue?

“Falling Hare” (1943).

The Shock Doctrine in higher ed.

I bet you Naomi Klein would agree with this extension of her thesis if you ran it past her. From Academe:

As a faculty member drawn into administrative service over the past decade, I have witnessed how economic and fiscal challenges have steadily eroded, if not entirely eliminated, the crucial tenets of shared faculty and institutional governance. I see this development as an academic form of the “shock doctrine” eloquently described by Naomi Klein: fiscal crises destabilize a college or university, instilling fear into loyal and dedicated campus constituents who have emotional ties to their institution that go beyond a typical employer-employee relationship. While these fears are understandable, they may escalate into concerns about the very viability of the institution, which is rarely at stake. This anxiety contributes to an environment where the reframing of decision making and governance, in ways that would ordinarily be rejected by the faculty, is presented as urgent and necessary. Under this pressure, decisions are often made quickly by a select few, behind closed doors and with little transparency. Sadly, for me, faculty members often accept and approve of these practices.

I keep hearing the phrase “Your university is not broke” at various AAUP functions, which is probably true. However, more important than that (because it would still apply even if your university is broke) would be “Open the books!”. This way faculty can at least have a chance to understand the root of the problem.

A day or two ago, I ran into this article about the closing of the University of Illinois’ online arm. The system pored $7 million into this stupid idea. Was anybody held accountable? I doubt it, but I’ll bet good money that eventually it will be the students and the faculty who’ll have to pay for that mistake.

“My biggest fear,” Mr. Yudof said, “is an exodus of faculty.”

So tuition is going up 32% in the University of California system and the system president’s primary concern is the faculty? Really? Why then doesn’t he just turn around and use all that new money to increase professors’ wages?

Let’s look at the whole title quote of this post, as reported in the NYT:

Mark Yudof, the university president, said the state budget cuts had left the university no choice but to raise fees, and noted that the system received only half as much, per student, from the state as it did in 1990.

“My biggest fear,” Mr. Yudof said, “is an exodus of faculty.”

Unless the Times skipped something in the middle there, that’s practically a promise to raise wages. After all, if keeping faculty from moving really was the UC’s primary problem, the fix ought to be really obvious. It’s also a complete dismissal of any concern for the economic and racial diversity of the student body. Should it make us feel better or worse then that this concern for the faculty is almost certainly disingenuous?

Since Theodore Roosevelt was the last President before Obama who could actually write…

…this is now at the top of my Google Books reading list:

Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography.

Strike at U. of Illinois.

Graduate student employees at the University of Illinois have gone on strike to protect their tuition waivers. As if they won’t have enough trouble getting a job when (and if) they ever finish their degrees, the administration there wants them to pay to work. Are they trying to dissuade anyone from going to graduate school there?

Update: That was fast.

Thomas Frank explains it all for you.

Which students should we deny the chance to improve their lot in life?

Ohio University economist Richard Vedder has never been one of my favorite people in the world. This argument doesn’t exactly endear him to me more:

While it is true that areas with high proportions of college graduates tend to have higher incomes and even higher rates of economic growth than other areas, it does not necessarily follow that mindlessly increasing college enrollments enhances our economic well-being. My own research shows that there generally is a negative relationship between state support for higher education and economic growth. Sending marginal students to four-year degree programs, only to drop out, is a waste of human and financial resources, and lowers the quality of life for those involved.

So which students should we deny the chance to improve their lot in life? The ones from bad school districts who just happen to be poor? And what about the poor students who aren’t marginal, but simply can’t afford college?

The other problem with this argument is that it forgets the rather obvious point that college exists in order to teach people. A good education can turn a marginal student into an excellent student, but Richard Vedder doesn’t want to fork over his tax dollars for something that frivolous. Instead, he’d deny colleges as much money to do their jobs as possible and then argue that they’re failing institutions.

I bet most of Vedder’s students at Ohio University couldn’t sit in his classes without student loans. Yet if Ohio University ever went down the tubes, Vedder’s always got the American Enterprise Institute to break his fall. What do those marginal students have?

Let’s torture pigs so that we’ll have more left to kill.

I am so done with Freakonomics. Like me, you’ve probably read all the stuff about how bad the global warming chapter is in Superfreakonomics. Elizabeth Kolbert of The New Yorker writes:

Indeed, just about everything they have to say on the topic is, factually speaking, wrong.

I figured I’d skip the new book, but keep reading the Freakonomics blog as it can sometimes be very interesting. Unfortunately, it seems like Levitt and Dubner have decided to give a permanent platform to this guy. Today he offers a heartfelt, compassionate defense of pig torture:

Horrible as it all sounds, many pig farmers vehemently insist on the humaneness of the farrowing crate. Critics might condemn the crate as little more than a productivity maximizer. But consider why it maximizes productivity: farrowing crates prevent piglets from being crushed to death. As many conventional pig farmers note, the crate’s design is carefully engineered to discourage mothers from rolling over on their suckling or sleeping babies, something that happens with alarming regularity in open systems.

Luckily, a reader named Richard has already posted what I was thinking in the comments:

OK, so let’s get this straight. Option 1: pig suffers. Option 2: baby pigs get killed.

Consider now option 3. If we cannot raise pigs humanely (because of 1 or 2) above, then we should not raise pigs. To the farmer who says they have to do option 1 to prevent 2, I say “no you don’t”. You are inherently engaged in a cruel, inhumane business – don’t make out that you are some sort of saint. You are not.

Paul Krugman picked out a particularly good line from Kolbert that applies here as well:

But what’s most troubling about “SuperFreakonomics” isn’t the authors’ many blunders; it’s the whole spirit of the enterprise. Though climate change is a grave problem, Levitt and Dubner treat it mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are.

In this case, you don’t have to be a trained scientist to figure out the problem with the pig argument. You don’t even have to be a vegetarian. You just have to realize that there are other ways to raise pigs than by the thousands.

“[D]o try to make it clear your heart hasn’t actually stopped beating.”

I’ve written before of my fondness for Heather Cox Richardson’s “Richardson’s Rules of Order” over at The Historical Society’s Blog. In this case, however, she has really outdone herself:

Please remember that your professors are human and it’s hard work to stand in front of a hundred pairs of eyes and talk for an hour. In the last decade, students seem more and more to regard us as if we’re behind a screen, and seem to think they can talk, read, sleep, or just stare at us glassy-eyed without it having any effect on our performance. This is a shared enterprise. It’s hard to lecture to an apparently disinterested sea of eyes. If you don’t think a lecture hall is intimidating, take a minute after class some day to stand behind the podium and look at all those seats. Then imagine holding the attention of everyone in those seats for an hour, two days a week. Wouldn’t it be easier if the people there seemed interested? You don’t have to act like you’re watching U2, but do try to make it clear your heart hasn’t actually stopped beating.

Perfect. Just perfect.

Personally, I’ve started mentioning the Political Science professor I had in college who would stare at the ceiling while lecturing, as if he couldn’t bare to look us in the eyes because he had committed some unspeakable sin. I then explain that this always made me so angry that I try hard to avoid it. Therefore, I can actually see what you’re doing while I’m talking.

This last line always seems to get a laugh. It shouldn’t.