Movie Review: "At Berkeley," A Documentary On Higher Ed

Here's a movie review.

Nerd News: the Oxford Brand

Selling out.  I'm amused at how some critics are calling this not only "inappropriate" but "meretricious."  Who says "meretricious" these days?  Apparently unhappy Oxford dons, that's who.

Higher Edpocalypse: Moody's Issues Warning About Student Debt

Oh, boy:

A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America's next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition, and poor job prospects have resulted in growing delinquency and default rates on nearly $1 trillion worth of private and federally subsidized loans. Now the ratings agency Moody's has weighed in with a chilling diagnosis: "Unless students limit their debt burdens, choose fields of study that are in demand, and successfully complete their degrees on time, they will find themselves in worse financial positions and unable to earn the projected income that justified taking out their loans in the first place." 

Turns out borrowing a couple hundred grand to fund an unmarketable bachelor's in gender studies isn't a sound business decision.  Who'd have thunk?  Want fries with that?

Nerd News: Storing a $1 Billion University Endowment as Gold Bars

We're gettin' medieval as faith in the US dollar plummets.  Well, I guess it's better than storing that endowment as real estate or stocks.

Nerd News: A Warning From the American Bar Association

What's the warning?  Think twice before going to law school.  The costs are astronomical and may well crush you with debt forever.  Here is the ABA's document on the subject.  On a personal note, I've heard the same thing from a friend of mine, a recent law school grad who had harrowing stories  to tell.

Nerd News: Highest-Paid UC Execs Demand More Benefits, Threaten to Sue

Is there a single university system more messed up than the University of California network?  Check out this latest bit of scandal and skulduggery.  To its credit, though, the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper names names -- the edu-crats demanding more benefits (from the all-but-bankrupt UC system!) are a collection of deans, portfolio managers, vice presidents, managing directors, and so on.  Can you people possibly be more tone-deaf?  Meanwhile, lest you forget, adjuncts and lecturers and people doing the actual teaching of students are going hungry and getting laid off and generally being screwed by the admin.  The students, by the way, are feeling the pinch too -- tuition's gone up big-time.

Nerd News: Students Protest Tuition Hikes in UK

Oh, my!  The hotspot is London, natch.  Check out reports by UK sources at the BBC News, the Guardian, and the Telegraph.  The first violence has broken out, apparently, and I went to the news video feed just in time to see dozens of mounted London police gallop onto the scene.  It was -- to my historian's imagination -- weirdly too-reminiscent of medieval mobs.  Anyway, this isn't the first UK student protest against increased costs, and it certainly won't be the last.

Nerd Fun: Lampooning Budget Cuts and Economic Meltdowns on Campus

Heh.  But I'll bet it's not that far in the realm of pure satirical fantasy.

Nerd News: UK Students Protest Tuition Hikes

Well, OK, protest away, but as soon as you start destroying property and behaving like hooligans, you've lost your moral standing.

Nerd News: A Letter to SUNY Albany

SUNY Albany recently horrified many a nerd by announcing that it was eliminating programs in foreign languages, classics, and theater.  Now read this glorious letter of protest by a professor of biochemistry and chemistry. I give you a blurb:

Nerd News: Gov't "Help" Increases College Costs

This is so not a surprise in the slightest.  *Sigh.*

Nerd News: Law Student Wants His Money Back

Hilarity ensues?

Quote of the Day: Skyrocketing Costs in Higher Ed

Here it is, folks:

The cost-spiral in higher education over the last several decades has not been warranted by improvements in the quality of actual education.  It has been driven by excessive federal subsidy in the forms of student loans; by a buyer psychology that led many families to think that college was a virtually risk-free investment; by colleges and universities that chose to compete with each other in expensive amenities atmospherics rather than academic substance; and by a spirit of grandiosity.

Do read the whole thing.  The comparison to the bursting bubble of tulipomania is all too apt.  Also?  I can't tell you how maddening it is to see university after university spend a gazillion dollars on crazy amenities instead of substance.  Oh, yes, let's build (insert loopy feel-good project here) while we let the libraries molder and fall into dust.  (Oh, even better, let's spend a gazillion dollars making sure the admin have huge posh offices with all the tip-top modern conveniences and ever-inflating six-figure salaries while adjuncts and lecturers -- you know, the people who actually teach -- cram into shared cramped offices and have to work on a shoestring budget with a shoestring paycheck.)

Nerd News: Public, Non-Profit, and For-Profit Higher Education

You may be surprised. For the impatient among you, I cut to the end of this report by the Economist:

When the full cost of loans and subsidies is added up they [for-profit institutions] are significantly cheaper for the taxpayer, per graduate, than public and non-profit institutions.

Nerd News: Student Debt Explained Visually

Remember what I've been saying about the higher ed bubble?  Here is a graphic illustrating the impending debt bomb from toxic student loans.

Edupunk Nerd News: Let's Talk Some Heresy and Say We Need Fewer Public Ed Jobs, Not More

OK, first things first: the word "public education job" is NOT the same thing as "teaching job." Just as "teachers' unions" is NOT the same thing as "teachers." Now read this.

Teachers unions, the Obama administration, and most Democrats in Congress want to spend another $23 billion that we don’t have to shore up public school employment. If we don’t go along, they tell us, it’ll be a “catastrophe” for American education. With fewer teachers our kids will supposedly learn less, further crippling our already wounded economy.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

Over the past forty years, public school employment has risen 10 times faster than enrollment (see chart). There are only 9 percent more students today, but nearly twice as many public school employees. To prove that rolling back this relentless hiring spree by a few years would hurt student achievement, you’d have to show that all those new employees raised achievement in the first place. That would be hard to do… because it never happened.

On college campuses everywhere too, there's been a massive explosion in the number of administrative positions. Does any university need 20 vice-presidents and such? You know what I think of that! What kills me is that the admin is often nickel-and-diming the teaching staff and always cooking up cockamamie schemes that invariably the faculty hates. What does a VP really add to education? If you spend any time at all in ed and higher ed circles, you figure out super-fast that the admin is usually the problem, not the solution. My hatred of all edu-crats and everything they stand for is a matter of public record.

I see no reason why we should have to pad their numbers in the name of "saving education."

You want to save education? GET OUT OF THE WAY.

And what a stupid idea that because education is important, the only possible way to get it is via the government. Hey, wait! Where have I heard this line of "reasoning" before?

RELATED POSTS: PJ O'Rourke vs. Public Schools, Let's Dump the US Department of Education!, and any post tagged as "edupunk."

Nerd News: UK Higher Education Budget Cuts Spark Protests

Things are tough all over. The "financial meltdown on campus" tag is back with a vengeance.

Look, I understand that things are hard and that money is tight on campuses everywhere; believe me, I understand. But the protesters are demanding BOTH no budget cuts AND no tuition increases. It's pretty much impossible to have both in the current real-world circumstances. In fact, even with both unpopular actions in place, some schools are still going to be in deep financial trouble.

Nerd News: Thoughts on Closing Down Failing British Universities

How long do you think it'll be before mobs of angry academics run this guy out of town? Richard Lambert, head of the Confederation of British Industry, dared to say this:

He said that if the Government decided to carry on funding all institutions, then the best universities would 'pay the price for the incompetence of the worst.'

He asked: 'Then would come the question: what would the government do about it?'

'Would it take the politically explosive but probably economically sensible decision to close or merge the worst run institutions?

'Or would it instead attempt to bail them out?

'That would mean the already reduced quantities of jam having to be spread even more thinly across the system, making our best universities pay the price for the incompetence of the worst.'

Oh my!

Nerd News: The Higher Education Bubble On the Verge of Bursting

Law professor Glenn Reynolds has some home truths to deliver. Now, haven't I been saying this for ... well, ever?

(First major post on the topic here. Most recent post was just yesterday.) Click on the "cost of education" tag for all relevant posts. Watching the higher ed debacle-in-the-making is like watching a train wreck in slow motion, and there's not a thing I can do about it. Also, here's some unsolicited advice: major in something useful and marketable. (Women's/Gender Studies and Religion is NOT such a major.) Good grief, even grads with marketable majors these days are facing a tough job market. What makes you think some wishy-washy, soft-core, touchy-feely major will stand a chance?

Reynolds' piece does have something very interesting in the end. It's the question of whether traditional universities are going the way of the dinosaurs:

My question is whether traditional academic institutions will be able to keep up with the times, or whether -- as Anya Kamenetz suggests in her new book, "DIY U" -- the real pioneering will be in online education and the work of "edupunks" who are more interested in finding new ways of teaching and learning than in protecting existing interests.

I'm betting on the latter. Industries seldom reform themselves, and real competition usually comes from the outside.

Oooh, I like the term "edupunk"! And I'm thinking, hey, I'm up for innovation and better teaching. Aren't you? And in a tiny way, this blog is my attempt at some personal edupunkery: scattering as many good bits of history/culture/analysis out there as I can to whomever wants it -- because you probably won't get it in a classroom!

Nerd News: University Faculty Pensions On the Chopping Block

*Sigh.*