what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff

one of my favorite writers

I think the problem is not 'higher education is dying' but 'america is dying'

Not a bad article, a lot better than most articles on the subject, but you can summarize the whole thing with this line: "Yet the liberal arts, as we know, are dying." College enrollment continues to skyrocket because people have realized that they're better off spending two years in college and coming out of it with a clear vocation and marketable skills than spending four years in uni (plus several more if you continue to grad school) and not having a clue what you're going to do with your life. All disciplines are affected by this, but liberal arts especially. Universities should aggressively promote "practical" disciplines, protect their intellectual property, and use that income to help underfunded departments (as well as things that benefit all students like dorms and students centres, which Dereisewicz thinks are wastes of money because they don't have anything to do with teaching or research).

Some of his claims are real howlers though ... like the notion that university admins and presidents only care about the "stock price" and don't have their institutions' best interests at heart? That's like saying politicians only care about the next weeks' poll numbers. Once you reach that level, padding your resume becomes a lot less important than building a "legacy", IMO. And this is straight-up BS: "A scientific education creates technologists. A liberal arts education creates citizens: people who can think broadly and critically about themselves and the world."

i haven't read the article yet, but "university admins and presidents only care about the "stock price" and don't have their institutions' best interests at heart" caught my eye and reminded me of this http://chronicle.com/article/The-College-as-a-Philanthropy/125176/

universities have always been corporations first and foremost - don't let any noble ideals get in the way of that

always? everywhere? if that's true then they're pretty much the worst corporations ever, at least in britain and europe, but even in the u.s.

I don't think 'always' - but certainly there's been a trend over the last decades toward something that emulates market competition - schools are competing w/ their 'product' (4 year experience + what the name/degree can do) rather than w/ their education. like, just cause they're non-profits doesn't mean that the operation can't trend in the direction of a private corporation - from the top (CEO salaries and perks) to the middle (economically efficient hiring/teaching = adjunct/ grad student world) to the bottom (tv ads/image/aforementioned 'product')

there's still not price competition, for the most part, but I think there will be, inevitably.

Not a bad article, a lot better than most articles on the subject, but you can summarize the whole thing with this line: "Yet the liberal arts, as we know, are dying." College enrollment continues to skyrocket because people have realized that they're better off spending two years in college and coming out of it with a clear vocation and marketable skills than spending four years in uni (plus several more if you continue to grad school) and not having a clue what you're going to do with your life.

yeah otm, I think this is at the heart of it. I think the semi-universal liberal arts education was, overall, a competitive advantage for the american economy but also maybe not built on a structure that will be sustainable in coming decades.

Some of his claims are real howlers though ... like the notion that university admins and presidents only care about the "stock price" and don't have their institutions' best interests at heart? That's like saying politicians only care about the next weeks' poll numbers. Once you reach that level, padding your resume becomes a lot less important than building a "legacy", IMO

are those things (considered to be) unrelated? the 'stock price' seems to be quite related to the general idea of what an institutions' 'best interests' are (rankings, money, talent) and 'legacy' is going to overlap with that too. whereas what we might consider the true 'best interests' (a serious increase in tenure track positions, huge cuts in high-level admin salaries) isn't happening anywhere.

always? everywhere? if that's true then they're pretty much the worst corporations ever, at least in britain and europe, but even in the u.s.

― caek, Monday, May 9, 2011 7:23 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

haha I was taking the piss (think I'm using this birriticism correctly) a little. on cynical days I think that the business of all private universities is long-term horseracing.

endowments don't fund themselves (well, they did until the finance market crashed! ha ha, take that david swensen.)

I think the semi-universal liberal arts education was, overall, a competitive advantage for the american economy but also maybe not built on a structure that will be sustainable in coming decades.

agreed.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BradDelongsSemi-dailyJournal/~3/XpqhCLoBVPw/why-is-the-higher-education-market-failing.html

last paragraph's a good one

But, as I have said, I don't think I understand what is going on--couldn't Yale pull a lot of students it wants from Harvard and Princeton by undercutting them by $5K a year? We do know that HYPSM tune their financial aid policies in the hope of making it not worth any student they want's while to attend Berkeley, with some success. But why doesn't Berkeley fight back effectively? A $3K a year surcharge for 750+ SAT students that gets you private-college levels of residential support and class sizes?

lol, why doesn't yale just make college free for all who qualify

Texas on the vanguard of something bad once again

lol, why doesn't yale just make college free for all who qualify

it already started to w/ people who have families that make less than a certain amount. harvard and yale (and friends) can do this, cause

a. shitloads of money
b. relatively few poor people that qualify

but that's just a strategically move that has the appearance of being generous. (if they really wanted to help the world they could triple their class size.)

strategically smart move*

well, yeah! that's why yale reducing its tuition cost by $5k wouldn't do a damn thing - the only people who it would affect are already affluent enough that money isn't a consideration for them. I was kind of being sarcastic there.

college is already a 'losing' prospect for elite universities in the short-term because even at sticker price, these colleges lose money on every student they take. they bank on the possibility that out of a class of 1000, 10 of those dudes are gonna become billionaires, and 2 of them are gonna donate tens of millions of dollars to build a new library or w/e.

oh gotcha you were making fun of delong

I read your statement as its own thing

I mean anyone who thinks that colleges fund multi-million dollar student halls by charging high tuition rates is pretty stupid. the money comes from other sources. the business of elite colleges is making the undergrad experience so much fucking fun that when you are 50 and swimming in gobs of money you are going to think "I owe this all to Harvard" and will then summarily write them a check for a cool 50 mil.

well yeah w/ the harvard and yales, but mid-tier colleges don't operate w/ that model

(but still charge the same tuition)

I claim no knowledge of the way mid-tier colleges operate *dusts self off, walks away*

haha

Texas on the vanguard of something bad once again

this was really frustrating because no1's entirely wrong, but it seems like the worst way of improving anything

i feel like this kinda bolsters my theory that the right has become institutionally incapable of achieving anyhting except through bullying & force but enh

We do know that HYPSM...

i kept reading this wondering why he thought middlebury was an elite school

In this case the right just wants to end public education in the USA & since research is what keeps American unis a nice place for ambitious smart people to work, if they can end research then they can more readily justify shutting the public unis down, since way fewer smart ambitious people will want to work for them.

haa yeah its probably stupid to believe those dudes have any real interest in improving anything for students so why not just act like dicks

They care about minimizing public expenditures. They care about their own children's educations but don't want to pay for anyone else's.

Plus research is weird & who cares about complex functions of several variables or the gay Shakespeare or whatever.

I'd bet a lot of their kids go to UT tho!

actually I went to college in TX with one of the leaders of this push, at a fancy private liberal arts college; I was a scholarship kid funded by oil money, & it was a pretty conservative place on the whole. Could tell stories but this is too public.

still, rick perry went to a public tx college, kay bailey hutchison went to a public tx college...I'd bet if you looked at the top ranks of the texas republican party you'd have a majority of people w/ a public college somewhere on their resume.

I'm willing to believe that they're not necessarily trying to destroy public universities, they're just stupid.

I'd bet if you looked at the top ranks of the texas republican party you'd have a majority of people w/ a public college somewhere on their resume.

might be willing to take this bet i mean someone is sending their kids to baylor & rice

whats frustrating is that the think tank ppl in that article do seem to have some legitimate problems w/ the UT system (& those issues certainly exist outside texas too) but again theres no interest in trying to reach compromise or find best outcomes. idk. i do think a lot abt things like low graduation rates, student workloads, usefulness of undergraduate courses &c & i think that theres some value in looking outside the academy for solutions

yeah Lamp I pretty much agree; if we could talk this stuff out without having their anti-state agenda in the b/g, that'd be great. As it is we can't.

there really isn't a subject under the sun that we can do that w/ anymore

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/may/humanities-tech-conference-051211.html

I admire the sentiment but

More important are the skills graduates have acquired, such as stamina and listening.

you spent 9 years slumming it and working 60 hours a week on your doctorate to show future employers you're a good... listener

I like how their example of a humanities person took a few philosophy and linguistic undergrad courses and then got a comp sci grad degree

I know that major well & it involves more than a few philo classes & in a way that degree is what's great about Stanford.

I know, lol @ stamina but I think there's something to that: college can be a grind but a doctorate requires self-driven focus of a much different kind, & I can see why companies would want those kinds of workers.

still don't think she's a good example of a 'humanities' student. and if companies would want those workers why would you need this conference? feels more like the stanford humanities department is just trying to get a few $$ jobs thrown their way.

that said when the gf talked w/ stanford professors about their fr3nch lit program she came off with the impression that it was 'weirdly tech themed...' like their only option to study abroad was at some fr3nch engineering school.

that wasn't a selling point at the time but if it would lead to her being a vp at google maybe she should have gone.

I think that major's a good example of how the humanities can link up with science/tech in a way that doesn't distort the humanities; & that's why I like it.

I think you're right that this conference is a way to get students jobs & why is that a bad thing? if the humanities, broadly speaking, had that more in mind, maybe our salaries wouldn't be so low & there wouldn't be so many jokes about burger-flipping etc.

if anyone is doing grad school in the sciences, and _especially_ if they're just coming on to the job market or about to start a postdoc, i recommend this book v. highly: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ph-D-Not-Enough-Peter-Feibelman/dp/0465022227/

it's 140 pages (with big type and one half line spacing), v. readable prose (unlike tomorrow's professor, for example) and seems like v solid advice.

first time in my life i finished a book and just went back to page 1 and read it again. it's probably not completely useless for humanities students.

I think that major's a good example of how the humanities can link up with science/tech in a way that doesn't distort the humanities; & that's why I like it.

I think you're right that this conference is a way to get students jobs & why is that a bad thing? if the humanities, broadly speaking, had that more in mind, maybe our salaries wouldn't be so low & there wouldn't be so many jokes about burger-flipping etc.
--Euler

I agree with this but I feel like the burden should be on humanities academia to make the phd more marketable - which would involve some massive changes. rather than 'hey private sector why aren't you hiring all these super smart 32 year olds with zero work experience'.

yes I agree; symsys at Stanford is a good model for this; though it's not "humanities" as we typically think of it in the USA today

yeah symsys is a really great program ime - fwiw stanford does a decent job at least at the undergrad level of integrating humanites style courses into their science majors so its not just a oneway street. the also tend to be v thoughtful abt finding ways of linking programs w/ industry.

I agree with this but I feel like the burden should be on humanities academia to make the phd more marketable

lol isnt this exactly what the ppl organizing the conference are doing?

thanks for that book rec caek btw

I mean maybe they're trying to set the stage for it but from the article I got the impression it was more 'these people should be hired' than 'let's overhaul the humanities phd system'

let me know what you make of it! i start my first postdoc a week on monday, so it could not have come at a better time for me. dope chapters about: getting jobs, choosing jobs, choosing projects, timing, grants, etc.

http://www.slate.com/id/2300107/pagenum/all/#p2

fun times