Number 2 Pencil

Writing about your kids

Cathy Seipp of the National Review is taking some odd flack for writing about her daughter's journey in the college admissions process:

A couple of days ago, the Los Angeles Times ran an op-ed by me about Maia’s rejection-letter dejection before she was accepted at UC San Diego as a Russian/Soviet Studies major. This inspired one Times reader to e-mail... he added, “regardless of whether you had her consent (which as a minor she cannot give without your consent — which would be conflicted), your disclosure of your daughter’s personal information was a shocking and unjustifiable invasion of her privacy. I hope it was worth it for you"...

For the record, of course I had Maia's consent to write about her grades and test scores in the Times, so no privacy was invaded.

Other web discussion suggests that Maia's right to privacy wasn't really the issue:

But after Maia sent me a link to a lengthy discussion of my piece on the frighteningly addictive College Confidential, I discovered that many parents disapproved of far more than her graduating early. Some thought she was uppity for expecting to get into any UC except maybe Riverside or Merced — although, as one of the reasonable commenters noted, since Maia was indeed accepted to UC San Diego her hopes couldn't have been that unrealistic. Others accused me of being naive, or "gaming" the system — presumably by raising a daughter who unfairly impressed admissions officers with all those after-school college Russian classes.

Why am I not surprised that a student who works hard and shoot for the best possible college risks being called "uppity", or that parents who push their children are accused of "gaming the system"? No wonder some conservative parents are unwilling to document their experiences with the educational system. Joanne Jacobs on the other hand, writes about her daughter all the time, although she notes that her daughter is just too hopelessly well-adjusted to be a useful subject for a book.

Standardizing the college experience

A Courant (CT) editorial argues passionately against standardized tests for college students:

In the measurement-happy world of federal accountability, the presidential Commission on the Future of Higher Education is thinking about taking educational testing theory to the next level. It is pondering federal standardized testing for colleges and universities to prove that students are learning...

This is a chilling idea that completely misses the point of a college education in a free society. Higher education is a self-guided quest for knowledge. It is the students' responsibility to make the most of it, not the government's. Colleges and universities already meet rigorous standards to be accredited and to receive federal funds, and public institutions are required to meet state standards.

How is it possible to test all that a college student has learned?

It's not possible to test everything anyone has learned, but it's certainly possible to test some things. The question is, do we care? Do we care if someone graduates with a BA in Fine Arts and is a phenomenal sculptor, but not so great at spelling? Well, we certainly care when they aren't even willing to admit there are correct spellings. Do we care if someone graduates with a degree in Education but can't write a complete sentence? Well, yes, I'd say we do, at least if we're going to hire them to be around schoolchildren. And I'd be willing to argue that a college-level test of basic skills would give lie to those "rigorous standards" as listed above, at least for some college graduates, and would embarass the heck out of some degree programs. But given how tough it's been for states to create exams for the K-12 grades, and how tough it's been for them to get everyone on board with the content, standards, and stakes, I can't imagine anyone volunteering to actually produce these hypothetical college exams, no matter what the price.

Brit students work too hard, with too few results

Is it just me, or is this a really odd juxtaposition of complaints?

BRITAIN’S biggest companies gave warning last night that, despite a record number of graduates entering the job market this year, many will lack the basic skills needed for employment. Almost half of businesses said that they did not expect to receive “sufficient applications from graduates with the correct skills”...

Managers cite a series of shortcomings in potential recruits. These include:

# Too much time spent working on degrees and not enough joining clubs and societies, where students might work in teams.

# Not enough experience of giving presentations in tutorials, leaving new graduates unable to communicate ideas in the work place.

# Poor spelling, grammar and mathematical ability mean that graduates are making basic mistakes, writing illiterate memos and are in need of constant supervision.

So, they're spending too much time working on their degrees, yet they're coming out illiterate. How would joining more societies make them more mathematically literate? And they have poor spelling, but the root cause of their communication issues is not lack of basic grammar or writing skills, but not enough experience giving presentations. How competent would they be with PowerPoint if they don't have a firm grasp of grammar and spelling?

Is the root cause here their lack of preparation when they enter college, so that they must spend as much time as possible trying to catch up on the basics they should have mastered years before?

Life on campus

It's a College Follies roundup!

One hapless Arizona State student pretty much guarantees that ASU will be upping their internet connection speeds in dorm rooms as soon as possible.

Are the liberal arts liberal enough to let students follow any path after graduation?

Here's a theory for which, if they can't get students to slow down long enough to respond to the survey, they'll have the answer regardless.

At the U of Buffalo, some students might be signed up for the GRE whether they're ready to be or not. On the one hand, it would be spiffy to get a randomized set of data; on the other hand, I don't see why this should remain on anyone's permanent record.

Frederick Hess wonders why anyone would have to be "committed to preparing individuals to promote social justice" to be admitted to a school of education.

Nowadays, coeds must worry about much more than just getting their bicycles stolen.

It boggles the mind that anyone could read the recent bad news about adult literacy and come away thinking that the instruction in college classes is the root of the problem.

Update: Via Best of the Web, we discover why it's hurtful to assume that only boys and girls need dating advice at the University of New Hampshire. I agree entirely that it's silly to say, "Girls always," or "Boys never," but one needn't prattle on about "rigid forms of gender expression" to make this point.

Next week's dating advice column should read, "Be wary of asking out a person who will get upset if you assume there are any links between 'anatomical sex, gender expression and sexuality.' You'll be more likely to get a lecture than a shot at first base."

Kerry's kooky education figures

Rich Noyes catches John Kerry pulling education figures out of his, er, um, nose:

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry must be thinking our fortunate he was that there were no real journalists in the room -- just perky Katie Couric -- when he appeared on NBC’s Today to complain about President Bush’s State of the Union address. As NewsBusters’ Mark Finkelstein noted earlier, Couric did ask a couple of pointed questions, at one point asking Kerry if there “was there anything you appreciated or liked hearing” in Bush’s speech.

But when Kerry started inventing statistics in his rant against the President’s education policies, preposterously claiming at one point that “53 percent of our children are not graduation from high school,” (in fact, 73.9 percent of incoming freshmen graduate from high school, according to the most recent Department of Education tally) Couric never even blinked -- not even when Kerry haughtily accused Bush of not presenting “the real state of the Union.”

This exchange is particularly silly:

Couric interjected: “He said he wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.”

Kerry sarcastically shot back: “And that’s terrific, Katie but 53 percent of our children are not graduating from high school. Kids don’t have after-school programs. Only nine percent of the people eligible in America will be able to get Pell grants this year and for the fifth year in a row they’re not gonna raise the amount of money to help kids who have a 57 percent increase in, in their cost of education to be able to pay for it.”

And putting more math and science teachers in the system will hurt the graduation rate, how? And according to this source, at least 33% of undergraduates receive Pell grant funds, and the proposed scholarships for math and science majors is meant to supplement the Pell funding.

And a 57% increase? Is he kidding? Or is he just nearsighted enough to miss a decimal place, as this report showed that this year's total fees at four-year private nonprofit institutions were up 5.7%?

Wonder if snowballs are still acceptable?

No more naughty sculptures at Ripon College (WI):

Frosty the Snowman is in. Six-foot penises are out. A new policy at Ripon College, in Wisconsin, decrees that only snow sculptures that are "tasteful" and "reflect the academic mission of the college" will be permitted on the campus. Transgressors will face a $50 fine, plus any dismantling costs. In the case of anonymous sculptors, the charges will be absorbed by the residents of whichever building the offending artwork is closest to.

Reminds me of a Harvard kerfuffle a while back. What is it with college students and obscene snowpeople? At least there's a general rule in place here, instead of a lot of hysterical statements about the patriarchy.

Flying the coop to find a better place to roost

The Philadelphia Inquirer tracks the freshman churn:

Call it the freshman churn, the students who bail before sophomore year. Most first-year students stay put, but in every class an antsy minority switches schools, spurred by homesickness, a creepy roommate, social anxiety, geographic shock, or financial or academic concerns. The place is too small, too big, too cold, too remote...

At Drexel University, 20 percent of last year's freshmen did not return for their second year. At Temple University, 16 percent flew the coop. At Lincoln University, about 32 percent transferred, dropped out, or left for another reason. There are valid reasons to switch schools, but unrealistic expectations about college life or a lack of research often lead students to make that decision before they give their institutions a chance, school officials and counselors say.

Now add an increasingly common phenomenon: Many high school seniors get so caught up in the "trophy hunt" - the mania to get into a brand-name college - that they fail to search their hearts and honestly assess what they will need to flourish, admissions authorities say.

I agree entirely that you should switch schools if you feel out of place your freshmen year, even if (as one student did) you realize this on your first day. The "best" schools aren't always the right one. One parent sums it up:

"Friends of ours [who are] parents said, 'I can't believe you didn't make her stay. I can't believe she left so soon,' " Patty Penrose said.

"What would be the point? She wasn't failing me in any way. She was just switching schools."

Did they try translating math problems into units of kegs and 40s?

Most succinct headline of the year: "College students lack skills"

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food.

Those are the sobering findings of a study of literacy on college campuses, the first to target the skills of students as they approach the start of their careers.

More than 50% of students at four-year schools and more than 75% at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks.

Devoted Reader (and tireless devil's advocate) Brian H. sent this to me with a defence of those hapless college kids - "Have you tried reading a credit card offer?!?!?" I agree, and absolve college students of any shame from failing to understand an offer in which the proposed provider has, as many credit card companies do, buried all the important information in lilliputian font and impenetrable legalese/finanese. Warren Buffett himself couldn't figure out what Bank One really plans to charge you, so we can't expect the coeds to know.

However:

The students did the worst on matters involving math, according to the study. Almost 20% of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30% of two-year students had only basic math skills.

These depressing results are partially due to the fact that, despite all the progress that women and nerds have made in the world, it's still considered cool - or at least acceptable - to brag about one's lack of math skills and hatred of mathematics. My guess is that the new, "fuzzier" methods of math instruction that require students to reinvent the wheel might also be behind the preponderance of students who can't figure out just how much gas is needed to make those wheels turn.

Surprise! You're dropped!

Ah ha ha ha haaah! I know I shouldn't find this funny, but I think it's hysterical.

Like many students, Seth Douglas didn't know what to make of an official UA e-mail sent to him Monday night. The message said some of his classes had been dropped because he had not completed the necessary prerequisites. "I was kind of worried because I'm a senior, and I need my classes to graduate," said Douglas, who is majoring in management information systems...

The message was meant to go out to only 208 Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration students who had failed some fall classes and were not eligible to take certain courses this semester, UA Registrar Michael George said...But because of a technical mix-up, the e-mail was sent to all 21,750 UA students Monday night, said Shane Merritt, director of network and computer support for UA Information Technology.

Expect heavy drinking from traumatized UA students this weekend. Well, even heavier drinking.

Not giving credit where credit might be due

The University of California system sometimes refuses to give credits for high school classes where textbooks have a Christian viewpoint, and at least one Christian college is fighting mad about that:

The Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta, Calif., with 1,300 students, is suing UC for not giving credits for some courses with a "Christian viewpoint" when students apply for university admission. The lawsuit is about theological content in "every major area in high school except for mathematics," says Wendell Bird, a lawyer for Calvary Chapel.

Courses in dispute include history, English, social studies and science. In federal court here, U.S. District Judge S. James Otero could rule soon on the university system's motion to dismiss the high school's claims that its First Amendment rights to free speech and religion were infringed. The school has also sued on other grounds, such as that UC has unconstitutionally treated Calvary students unequally compared to other students...

The university rejected some class credits because Calvary Chapel relies on textbooks from leading Christian publishers, Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Book. A biology book from Bob Jones University presents creationism and intelligent design alongside evolution. The introduction says, "The people who have prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first and science second." UC says such books would be acceptable as supplementary reading but not as the main textbook.

Well, for that kind of thing, I see UC's point. If a science textbook explicitly states that science may be a secondary concern for some of the topics, it seems that a university may not want to give a science credit for a course with this textbook as the main source of information.

However, I do see some problems here:

(1) Is UC willing to do the same for other types of schools? Are they willing to deny credit for someone who may have learned world history from the Muslim perspective? And is UC willing to do the same for bad textbooks whose problems don't stem from a religious viewpoint? If not, then this seems more like Christian-bashing, and that's what CCCS is alleging:

The lawsuit against UC alleges that the university accepts courses from other schools taught from a particular viewpoint, such as feminist, African-American or countercultural, so the school can't discriminate against "a viewpoint of religious faith."

(2) Is this the start of a slippery slope, where the next thing is to refuse credit for all courses taught at religious schools, even if the text is acceptable?

(3) What about homeschooled students whose parents focus on Christianity?

Nothing could be finer...

I wondered why my honey sent me this link to MSN Money's "The 100 Best Values in Public Colleges." He usually doesn't pay attention to anything other than metal-related news on the web.

Then I see that my graduate school alma mater, UNC-Chapel Hill, is ranked #1.

Top-ranked UNC has kept its price well below average -- charging about $4,600 for in-state tuition and fees in the 2005-06 academic year (and $12,029 per year when you add in room, board and books) -- while providing generous financial assistance. It's the only school in our survey that meets 100% of each student's financial need.

I admit, when I meet folks who own up to being tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of dollars in debt just for an undergraduate or masters' degree, I enjoy watching their reactions when I tell them that, by the time I was working just on dissertation hours and had completed my graduate coursework, my tuition and fees each semester was roughly around, oh, $800.

It's (not) the Internet, stupid

I was going to say a few things about this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education. I was going to mention, for one, that it's really not surprising to find out that today's college students are very aware of their peer group status and their spending power, yet can be astonishingly uninformed when it comes to American history, American government, the hard sciences, the fine arts, and so on. In an age when middle-schoolers whine about too much homework, but make time for sports, fun activities, and shopping at Victoria's Secret on the weekends, I think it's safe to say that we should expect more and more well-dressed dodos to be flooding our college campuses every day.

But everything I was going to say about how this seems to be less a reflection of our Informational Age, than a reflection of the fact-free, self-esteem-is-all-that-matters "progressive" education theories so pervasive in our schools? Dave of Garfield Ridge has already said it, and better than I ever could:

While specifics vary from country to country, you can't tell me that students in Japan aren't just as distracted by their cel phones, or that French students don't also email their friends. Yet by most objective standards of measurement, students in developed nations perform better than American students. Why is that, if not for some explanation that extends beyond technological distractions?...

Self-esteem gurus constantly tell our children that they're unique, and special, and they've earned the right to stand up as equals to their elders. Unfortunately, our educational system-- not to mention America's increasingly brittle social fabric, from the family to the village square-- no longer provides these students with either the tools to acquire, or even the desire to acquire the tools necessary to back up this otherwise healthy skepticism with facts, let alone achieve higher-order reasoning...

Humility is important...it affords us the opportunity to know when we *don't* know what we are talking about. Often, it's less important to know the answer than to know when you don't know the answer, yet few educators-- and fewer parents-- bother to instill this basic lesson in children. And if you don't learn it as a child, you won't learn it as an adult.

Giving it the "new" college try

College admission officers just want the balloons, videotapes, and toddler photos to stop:

Forget transcripts and neatly completed paperwork when it comes to prestigious schools or state college programs that are difficult to get into. One student wrapped his University of Notre Dame application in a leprechaun made of balloons. Another sent Indiana University photographs of herself as a toddler in a crimson cheerleading skirt to show a lifelong passion for all things Hoosier. Others include resumes, videotaped pleas for acceptance and newspaper clippings of high school highlights.

Most of the frills are unwanted, but college admissions officials report a surge of them in this year's applications. More than 50,000 will reach Indiana colleges and universities this year, many arriving before the year ends Saturday...

More extreme efforts could backfire. Just ask Notre Dame recruiters about the leprechaun balloons and the hundreds of unnecessary resumes, digital-video discs and homemade brochures they open in a year. "Is that a good way to get our attention? No," said Daniel Saracino, who runs Notre Dame's undergraduate admissions office. "You realize there must be something wrong with this applicant, because he's trying to wow us with something we don't need. The best way to get our attention is with an application that's compelling."

One admission officer notes his favorite example, "the student who not only sent everything about himself, but included details about his siblings, apparently to show he was from 'good stock'." I don't think that matters in college - not even for the agriculture majors.

Look out, the literacy rates are falling!

Not a good sign:

The average American college graduate's literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, is the nation's most important test of how well adult Americans can read.

The test also found steep declines in the English literacy of Hispanics in the United States, and significant increases among blacks and Asians.

When the test was last administered, in 1992, 40 percent of the nation's college graduates scored at the proficient level, meaning that they were able to read lengthy, complex English texts and draw complicated inferences. But on the 2003 test, only 31 percent of the graduates demonstrated those high-level skills.

Reason? Well, here's one that seems rather bizarre to me:

Grover J. Whitehurst, director of an institute within the Department of Education that helped to oversee the test, said he believed that the literacy of college graduates had dropped because a rising number of young Americans in recent years had spent their free time watching television and surfing the Internet.

"We're seeing substantial declines in reading for pleasure, and it's showing up in our literacy levels," he said.

Perhaps...but isn't the process of gaining a college degree meant to offset this? Isn't Whitehurst suggesting here that what college students do in their spare time is more predictive of their literacy than what they do in the classroom? If people who surf the web and watch TV a lot have low literacy rates regardless of whether they have a college degree, then...something's wrong with a college education these days.

The entire report is here. Subjects included only those who spoke English or Spanish. For a 2-year degree, 24% have basic or below basic skills in reading prose; for high-school graduates, 52% fall into these lower two categories. Not impressive.

And the fact that there are small but non-zero percentages of people with graduate experience or degrees that fall into the below-basic literacy categories, which according to this rubric means that they would not be capable of "using a television guide to find out what programs are on at a specific time," is just bizarre.

Students gone wild

Our First Amendment rights are precious things. They define a large part of what it feels like to be an American. And, as with many other rights in America, it seems to always be students who like to push the envelope just a tad.

One UC-San Diego undergrad, in fact, put a tape of himself having sex with an "unidentified actress" on Koala TV, the campus's closed-circuit TV station. The student council has not yet decided to ban "graphic depictions of sexual activity involving nudity" on the station, and amateur porno star Steve York considers this to be "a statement in support of student rights and National Freedom of Speech Week." The tape appears to have been a big hit, although given that the campus is described as "socially-dead," perhaps the viewers mistook it for an online class in sex ed.

Another student, instead of praise, is facing terrorism charges over a high school essay:

Boaz High School freshman who wrote an essay proposing a "Killer Day" when everyone would be allowed to kill two people to relieve stress has been charged with making a terrorist threat.

The 14-year-old girl, who also wrote that she wanted to kill President Bush, was arrested last week and is scheduled for a Nov. 1 hearing. Court officials declined to release her name or provide other information Wednesday, citing the confidentiality rules of Alabama's youthful offender law.

Hmmm. If she's looking for ways that people can "relieve stress," I think that once she's of age, she should move to San Diego and look up Steve York. Sounds like a "Porno Day" gets you in less trouble than a "Killer Day."

Where the men aren't

USA Today notes that, for everyone 135 women who receive bachelor's degrees, only 100 men do so. Glenn Reynolds wonders, what's happened to all the male college students?

One would be to treat it the way we treat other "underrepresentation" issues in higher education: By wondering what universities are doing wrong. There seems little doubt that universities have become less male-friendly in recent decades, to the point of being downright unfriendly in many cases...The remedy, in this view: Affirmative action for male candidates, re-education for faculty, campus "men's centers" to match the womens' centers that were created when women were an underrepresented group on campus (and which still remain today almost everywhere), and efforts to make curricula, dormitories, and recruiting more male-friendly...

The second approach would be to shrug the problem off. Men aren't going to college as much? Big deal. Maybe it's because women are smarter, or better suited to such things...

The third possibility is that men aren't so much underrepresented in college as women are overrepresented. This is plausible.

Glenn notes that the only explanation that we're likely to see any educrat offer is the second. It'll be interesting to see if any educrats really are gullible enough to open up the topic of genetic explanations of gender differences.

While Glenn certainly isn't the first one to point out this problem, few people note that the male-female disparity is not equal across ethnic groups. In a post from 2003, I noticed that black women earning bachelors' degrees outnumbered black men 2-to-1. The most up-to-date information I found now includes the year 2001-02.

Overall, men were awarded 42% of the bachelors' degrees in 2002. But that is primarily driven by the large number of white men, who earned 43.2% of the degrees awarded to white students. In contrast, Asian men earned 40.4%, Hispanic men 39.7%, AmerInd men 39.6% - and finally, black men earned only 33.6%.

If universities are still doing everything in their power to get female students in the door, one wonders why.

The forbidden words

Evan of Brain Terminal marvels at the modern university campus, where day is night, up is down, and the word "vagina" is inoffensive while the phrase "hunting terrorists" is considered beyond the pale:

On August 29th, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing an upcoming speaker: Major John Krenson, who had been in Afghanistan "hunting terrorists." Those two words--"hunting terrorists"--resulted in three students being called to Bucknell's Office of the President by Kathy Owens, the Executive Assistant to the President.

According to the students, when they arrived at the President's Office for the meeting, Ms. Owens held up a print-out of the offending e-mail and said "we have a problem here," telling the students that the words "hunting terrorists" were offensive. For the next half-hour, the three students were given a lecture on inappropriate phrasing...

Last year, while collecting footage for my upcoming film Indoctrinate U, I noticed that the campus was plastered with flyers that screamed "vagina" in large block letters. Although some people might find these flyers offensive, it is protected speech at Bucknell--as it should be--but apparently the phrase "hunting terrorists" is not.

Bucknell denies having a speech code. But while one could argue that college students should be mature and be able to see the word "vagina" in print without getting upset, the same could be said of the phrase "hunting terrorists."

Sex Ed in the days of Sexual Harassment lawsuits

A college sex-ed professor stepped over the line drawn by a couple of students:

The first homework assignment, to do a self-exam on your breasts or testicles, went over pretty easily. But apparently the class discussion about shorn nether regions was a bit too much for two students in Michael Schaffer’s human sexuality class.

George Washington University chose this summer not to renew the contract of the adjunct professor who had been teaching sexuality to a packed house for 17 years. Schaffer was given no explanation for the decision. But, he said, when he pressed Patricia Sullivan, the acting chair of the Department of Exercise Science, for answers, she told him “maybe you need to look at your student evaluations.”

Two of the spring evaluations, from women who took the course, said that the course was demeaning to women. One of the critiques, which specifically cited a class discussion on shaving pubic hair, threatened a sexual harassment lawsuit. That evaluation also pointed to the “look before you lick” advice that Schaffer includes with his comments on all students’ final papers as “a little humor to teach about safe oral sex,” he said.

This is definitely a class I'd have been too embarassed to take in college. On the other hand, I find I agree with the students who are quoted in the article as supporting Schaffer. The class is optional, the course content is explicitly stated, the enrollees are young men and women, Schaffer's sense of humor seems to be appropriate, and at least one young man notes that the class helped a friend identify the early signs of testicular cancer.

The send-off isn't getting cheaper

Parents, get out those credit cards:

...Now these big retailers are tapping into a spending spree that has blossomed into the fastest growing season in retailing for many stores. Back-to-school shopping for college students has surged past Halloween as the second biggest period on the calendar behind the Christmas holidays for chains that sell general merchandise.

...per capita back-to-school spending for a college freshmen soared to $1,151.68 this year, almost double the total back-to-school budget for families with K-12 children. Contrary to conventional wisdom, spending doesn't trail off among sophomores, juniors or seniors.

...Students will spend about $5.6-billion on apparel and shoes this year. About $750-million of that will be lavished on collegiate logo merchandise. At USF that ranges from a $19.95 USF lava lamp in school colors to a $9 green and gold wig to this year's new school spirit-wear that for the fist time carries a Big East Conference logo...

The other big growth area is $3.6-bilion on home furnishings that students use to deck out drab dorm rooms...Parents of a few students hire professional movers to lug in entire bedroom vanity sets from home. Many more glam up their living areas on the cheap with such items as shower curtains, wall paint and throw rugs. One Mallory Hall room looks like a Parisian street scene. Another uses animal print bedspreads and a wall mural to create a jungle look. Others are done up in the latest trendy color combinations for dorm decor - hot pink and lime or pink, brown and powder blue.

The parent quoted in the article spent over $5000 to get her college sophomore into his first apartment. I paid less than that as a down payment for my first house. $3500 for bedroom furniture? For a 19-year-old whose recreational hobbies might very well be beer pong and toga parties? Sheesh.

However, it's fun to look at the Urban Outfitters website and realize that that 1970's era kitchen table, couch, and bedroom furniture that my parents sent me off to graduate school with are now in style. At UNC, I had health insurance, a new laptop, a car that ran, and a full apartment's worth of mustard yellow and avacado green furniture - what more does a student need?

Don't get fired up

In New Jersey, they'll be puffing no more:

New Jersey allows smoking in bars, restaurants and some office buildings. But it has taken a step to limit smoking with a ban on lighting up in all college and university dormitories in the state, signed into law on Monday by Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey.

Saying the law would improve the safety of all students, Mr. Codey said smoking in dormitories was the second leading cause of fire injuries on campuses. During the signing at Drew University in Madison, where Mr. Codey's oldest son, Kevin, is a junior, the governor said the law was the most comprehensive academic ban in the country...

This is the second step in recent years to make dormitories safer. A fire at Seton Hall University in South Orange in 2000 killed three freshmen and prompted legislation to install sprinkler systems in all of the state's dormitories. The authorities said the fire started when several students ignited a paper banner in a lounge.

The horrific Seton Hall incident turned out to be arson, not an accident, but if the sprinkler systems are just now getting up to date, I suppose it's not a bad idea for cigarettes to be verboten.

That salary will buy a lot of Marlboros and phone calls

Now this is the kind of paid vacation plan I'd like:

The summer of 2005 has been an embarrassing one at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. First, the university came under fire when it was revealed that Paul W. Barrows, the vice chancellor for student affairs who quit last year, did so because he had had an affair with a graduate student. That Barrows stayed on the university’s payroll infuriated legislators, and focused attention on how the university treats employees who get into trouble.

Now some lawmakers have shifted their attention to professors — three of whom remain employees even though they are either in jail or headed there.

On Friday, Roberto Coronado, a professor of physiology at Madison, was sentenced to eight years in prison after he entered a plea of no contest on three felony counts of repeated sexual contact with a child. While the university is seeking to dismiss Coronado, he is appealing that decision and remains an employee, even though his incarceration prevents him from being on campus.

Because he has unused vacation time, he is currently receiving his salary — $137,641 — and will continue to do so until he uses up his vacation time, at which point he will be on an unpaid leave, pending the outcome of his appeals of his dismissal.

A plan that pays off even if the reason I'm not at work is because I can't get past the warden? Must be nice.

If I were a shoe, I'd be a Doc Marten boot, the better to kick some sense into these people

How sad is it that affluent American students feel the need to attend a camp to learn how to write a simple essay? Don't their schools teach them anything?

If 15-year-old Anna Zvagelskaya were a shoe, she writes, she would be pink, with a very pointy toe, a flared heel, straps and a diamond buckle.

It's five months before the application deadline at most elite colleges, and a year and five months before Ms. Zvagelskaya's application is due at Harvard, her top choice. But on a summer day here at Tufts University, the San Francisco high-school junior and a dozen other teenagers are enrolled in a two-week college-application camp, spending two hours a day in class -- and hours more each night -- crafting the essays that they hope will vault them to the head of the college queue.

"There are so many kids with perfect grades out there," says Ms. Zvagelskaya, who frets over "a few B's" on her transcript. "Your essay gives you an extra push, a chance to shine"...

All this is happening because the competition to get into elite schools is getting ferocious. Colleges are expecting 2.1 million new high-school graduates to enroll this fall -- 300,000 more than just eight years ago. The most prestigious colleges haven't added many extra seats to meet demand, though.

Ah, that's it. These students aren't writing simple, well-crafted essays; they're writing artsy, confabulated crap in an attempt to avoid having to suffer the ignominy of a state school. Sheesh.

Such self-promotion is possible because few colleges ask direct questions in their essay prompts. The University of Chicago, which prides itself on being an exception, is asking this year's applicants for their observations on "the power of string." The university offers string cheese and Theseus's escape route from Labyrinth as possible places to start. Chicago's admissions dean, Theodore O'Neill, says the school is really asking "how does this person handle ideas?"

Does Chicago really want students who have to pay Kaplan to teach them "how to handle ideas"?

Other critics worry that expensive essay coaching gives rich kids yet another advantage over poor kids. Responds Mr. Hughes, the writing coach: "We're addressing the demands that have been put out there by the universities. It's easy for the [admissions] deans to frown on it, but it's part of a process they helped create."

Critics, fear not. One could argue that if even the rich kids have to attend a ritzy camp to learn how to write an essay comparing themselves to a shoe, then they don't have much of an intellectual advantage over the poor kids, do they? Sounds like everybody was equally failed by their high school writing classes.

(Via Joanne Jacobs.)

KU students go public about public embarassment

If you're a flunking student at the University of Kansas who's in danger of losing scholarship money, well, at least you know you're not alone:

More than 100 students who failed their classes at the University of Kansas last semester found out who shared their misfortune. The school's Office of Student Financial Aid sent an e-mail to 119 students Monday notifying them that they were in jeopardy of having their aid revoked.

But the names of the students were included on the e-mail address list - meaning everyone who got the e-mail could see the names of all the other recipients.

"It was a completely inadvertent, unintentional mistake," university spokesman Todd Cohen said Thursday. "It was our error, our mistake and we deeply regret it."

Time for the university to hire someone who understands Outlook. And students, look on the bright side - this will make contacting everyone regarding participation in the class-action lawsuit that much easier.

The perils of teaching the process

College professor Robert over at brightMystery has an enthralling exchange of emails all centered around a certain hapless, and flunking, student:

Let's call this student "Pat". Pat was in my calculus class; Pat was a nice person, easy to talk to and we enjoyed a good rapport personally. But Pat was not doing well in the course, and Pat's visits to office hours showed me why. If I told Pat what to do on a problem, Pat could do it most of the time with a little prompting. But in terms of working problems alone, Pat would get hopelessly stuck every time...So the problem wasn't Pat's skill with the material so much -- the processing skill was the problem.

Accordingly, when Pat would ask me a question such as, "Can you tell me how to do problem 7?", I would say: Let's start by asking the right questions. What are you being asked to do in this problem? What information is given to you in the problem statement? And what do you know from the course, your reading, or your work on other exercises that will help get you to the goal? I made it a point to NEVER give Pat explicit help on content unless it was a last resort...

Sounds like an excellent calculus teacher, right? One-on-one tutoring with emphasis on the process, not just memorizing facts; many college profs wouldn't have gone this far. Despite this, Pat didn't do well as the course progressed, and sent an email with his interpretation of his poor grades:

Pat sent me an email just after midterms that said something like: I now understand why I am not doing well in your class. My learning style is such that you have to show me exactly what to do, or else I can't do it. But you always answer my questions with more questions, which isn't showing me exactly what to do. So from now on, please show me exactly what to do first, and then I should be able to do it.

I would have had trouble controlling my blood pressure at that point, and would have been unable to resist - though Robert did - sending an reply taking a few hard swats at Pat with a clue bat. But it gets better. Pat's mom starts sending emails accusing the professor of ignoring poor Pat and his "disability":

...I know [Pat] tried to explain to you that when [Pat] asks questions [Pat] needs answers not another question. We had [Pat] tested at [a local university] in January through the suggestion of [an academic counselor at my college]. During this testing we found out [Pat] has a learning disability. [Pat] does better with visual explanations then being asked another question. [Pat] needs to see how to physically work a problem so he can comprehend it....

I know this takes up more of your time but all people learn differently. This was one of the reasons we choose a small college because of the special attention a student gets. I would appreciate it if when [Pat] asks a question if you could show [Pat] how to do it and explain it then answer it with another question.

The ensuing emails are highly entertaining, not least because Robert has extensive experience in tutoring students with disabilities. Read it all. Can I just say that Robert has much more self-control than I do? And can I also say that the blogosphere is a godsend for those who have to deal with this kind of nonsense?

College protestors act like idiots

I agree with John Hawkins that the level to which college protestors will stoop is pretty low. So much for the days when we would expect college students to act like grown (but young) men and women.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's return to his alma mater turned into an exercise in perseverance when virtually his every word was accompanied by catcalls, howls and piercing whistles from the crowd.

Schwarzenegger's face appeared to redden during his 15-minute commencement address Tuesday to 600 graduates at Santa Monica College, but he ignored the shouting as he recalled his days as a student and, later, his work as a bodybuilder and actor.

"Always go all out and overcome your fears," he told the graduates. "Work, work, work. Study, study, study."

Inside the stadium, the drone from hundreds of rowdy protesters threatened to drown out the governor's voice at times. Many in the crowd erupted in boos when a police officer pulled down a banner criticizing the estimated $45 million cost of the Nov. 8 special election that Schwarzenegger proposed Monday.

Captain Ed shows no mercy:

...what are they protesting? The fact that Arnold has called a special election for a direct democratic vote on issues that the legislature has refused to address, including the chronic reapportionment problem that has almost crippled California democracy for decades. While the costs of such an election should be considered and debated as to its necessity, calling for more democracy hardly qualifies as such a disaster that it excuses opponents from acting like idiots and ruining the evening for 600 college graduates.

The Left has no sense of proportion, especially in California, where they have behaved like the spoiled children most of them are for many years now. Last night's spectacle of disruption and rude behavior is just the latest example of the thoughtlessness and reflexive self-indulgence that typifies Leftist activities in the Golden State and elsewhere.

Captain Ed is assuming all the loudmouths were lefties; probably not a bad assumption, but I don't even care if that's true. What bothers me is that public manners have devolved to the point where young men and women attending a rite of passage as momentous as a college graduation can act like children.

This textbook has been brought to you by Fruit of the Loom

On the one hand, we have claims that K-12 textbooks are far too heavy, bulky, and wordy (though the debate rages on the best way to assuage the issue). On the other hand, college textbooks apparently have so much free real estate that advertisers are moving in:

The first thing Tamy Zubyk sees when she wakes up and peels the curtains back in her Ryerson University dormitory room is the sea of flashing, dazzling billboards that pepper Toronto's downtown skyline. From then on, the 21-year-old says she spends the rest of her day being targeted by ads in subways, on storefronts — even in the women's washrooms at Ryerson, which feature ads alongside hand dryers and on the inside of the toilet stall doors. The classroom is one of the few advertising-free zones for Zubyk and Canada's other 785,000 university and college students.

Perhaps not for long.

For the past several months, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd., one of the country's largest publishers of university textbooks, has been quietly trying to coax companies into buying advertising space in their texts.

The Gadfly's take: "Gadfly sees infinite potential in this innovation. A Big Mac next to Marx's Communist Manifesto could inform students of the ills of capitalism—think of the irony!"

My take - Wow, McGraw-Hill has developed a way to make college student ignore even more of the information in their textbooks.

Toeing the invisible line

EducatioNation has a lengthy, aggrieved discussion of recent Oregon madness; the University of Oregon was considering a "five-year diversity plan" for faculty, which would have included an assessment in "cultural competency" in tenure judgments. Given that the diversification plan specifically mentioned race and gender, my guess is that professors who specialized in dead white male culture - or those who wanted to ignore culture altogether in the pursuit of teaching pure knowledge - would find themselves at a disadvantage.

Read it all. The post begins with an ominous poem by Yeats (you can probably guess which one) and ends with a quote from the The Gulag Archipelago. No one can accuse the EducatioNation folks of snoozing during literature classes.

The draft of the plan can be found here. Inside Higher Ed notes that some professors were listed on the draft without their permission, and the responding open letter to the U of O president is here.

Some of the stated assumptions underlying the diversity plan are particularly galling (assumptions are in bold, my responses in regular font):

• Racism and other forms of discrimination continue to exist and must be
challenged at the institutional and individual level. If it must be challenged at the institutional level, that suggests that they're claiming it still exists at the institutional level, a hard thing to believe after years of AA. What's more, it's a little scary that the university considers it an institutional charge to eradicate all individual racism.

• Inclusiveness is essential. Individuals can learn to appreciate and value
differences. Personal commitment and resources are necessary to create
and sustain an environment that fosters a culture of diversity. Of course individuals can learn to value differences; I just doubt that focusing constantly on differences such as race and gender are the best way to support this.

• Developing the cultural competence of individuals is essential to evolving
the kind of community described in our vision statement and to
improving quality of our educational experiences thereby reducing
disparities for all. What kind of disparities are we talking about here? That institutional racism mentioned above? Or differences in GPA or career paths? It's hard to believe that focusing on "cultural competence" of professors will help close the achievement gap.

• Cultural sensitivity and knowledge are necessary but not sufficient for
individuals to behave in a culturally competent way. What gets
rewarded gets done. Funny, when we try to use that as a defense for NCLB, or for teacher merit pay, or any other system that recognizes good work over bad work, we hear that it's not fair to use the carrot-on-a-stick method to improve education.

• Intellectual ability is not a function of race, ethnicity, or class. Academic
achievement is influenced by access to resources and opportunities and
disparities are related to race, ethnicity, and class. If race/ethnicity/class are not related to intellectual ability, why should we focus on those variables?

I particularly like this one math professor's take on the topic of diversity:

Faculty members responded forcefully to the draft’s notion that a group be formed to evaluate “cultural competence” with regard to new hires and research funding. “Who do you think you are?” Boris Botvinnik, a math professor, asked. “You would like to tell us what to do in terms of research in mathematics? We’d like to have a nice atmosphere of diversity on campus. We hire the best people available, and this is the only way to keep the level of the department high.”

A new quota system at the U of Oregon

The University of Oregon's Office of Multicultural Academic Support has some blatantly racist and condescending attitudes about those students they purport to serve:

When senior Stephanie Ramey tried to sign up online for Math 243 Calculus for Business and Social Science for spring term she was denied access and informed she would have to contact the class professor. The professor asked her to contact the Office of Multicultural Academic Support about enrolling in his class.

A staff member at the office said she couldn't register for the class because she doesn't identify as a minority, Ramey said..."I guess I was just really surprised and irritated because I thought I had a right to get into the class too. ... I guess I felt a little bit discriminated against," Ramey said. "For a sophomore math class, I shouldn't have to wait just because I'm white."

Ramey attempted to enroll in one of six University classes this term that reserve the first 10 slots in an 18-student class for minority students, while requiring others who want to get into the class to arrive on the morning of the first day of class and meet with an adviser before being allowed to register for the remaining eight slots...Linda Liu, advising coordinator and academic adviser for OMAS, said the classes are meant to offer a safe haven for minority students and give struggling students a chance to work more closely with professors.

Why is the assumption here that minority students who are smart enough to go to college require a "safe haven" before they can perform the same classwork as other students? Will the next step be that such students require job set-asides so that they can be guaranteed of working in a "safe haven" and relieved of the responsibilities of having to work in the same structure as everyone else?

Greg Vincent, vice provost for institutional equity and diversity, said the University offers a smaller class setting for these "gateway courses" for students who could benefit from them. He said the classes also provide a comforting environment that minority students may not get in other classes. The classes aren't based on a quota, and after the initial 10 spots are filled, the classes are open to everyone, he said.

Why should colleges admit students who need comforting environments? Isn't this no different from saying these students cannot do the same work in the same environment as everyone else? I thought the purpose of college was the challenge, not comfort. How do these types of attitudes differ, fundamentally, from the old racist ideas that minorities were not smart enough to attend college?

I'm not being facetious; I just simply don't understand why it's okay for OMAS to lump together all students of certain races as needing special treatment and allowances, when anyone else would be castigated if they said that such students couldn't succeed without extra help.

(Via Fox News.)

Professors gone wild

When tenure is denied, frustrated professors explode - and disrobe:

The scholar was well liked and well published, according to the e-mail that arrived last week, but he was denied tenure in April. And then he lost it. One day on campus, he started shouting expletives about the university administration (some versions of the story have this taking place in a class; others do not). He then moved into a hallway, continuing to shout and removing his clothes, taking leaflets off the walls. At some point, he was subdued by campus security officers...

...while people don’t like to talk about it, professors suffer breakdowns [when denied tenure].

“I’m surprised this kind of things doesn’t happen more often,” said Cary Nelson, a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a frequent writer about the way academe treats junior faculty members and graduate students. “So much of the system makes people feel utterly powerless,” he said.

Nelson said that he knew of one professor (not at Illinois) who suffered a breakdown after he was denied tenure, and responded in part by stripping naked and climbing into a college building by hauling himself up a wall, holding onto ivy, and climbing in. The professor was eventually able to reverse the decision and to win tenure...

Nelson of Illinois said that the system is sufficiently “crazy” that one can’t help but lose faith in it...In such an environment, he said, it’s not irrational for a tenure candidate to be less than rational. “We badly need more sanity in the tenure process,” he said. “Sometimes the paranoia is merited.”

There are some who would say that creating "more sanity in the tenure process" could best be done by eradicating tenure altogether.

Sauce for the goose

From the, "They Can Dish It Out But Not Take It" category:

College administrators have been enthusiastic supporters Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and schools across the nation celebrate “V-Day” (short for Vagina Day) every year. But when the College Republicans at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island rained on the celebrations of V-Day by inaugurating Penis Day and staging a satire called The Penis Monologues, the official reaction was horror. Two participating students, Monique Stuart and Andy Mainiero, have just received sharp letters of reprimand and have been placed on probation by the Office of Judicial Affairs. The costume of the P-Day “mascot” — a friendly looking “penis” named Testaclese, has been confiscated and is under lock and key in the office of the assistant dean of student affairs, John King.

The P-Day satirists are the first to admit that their initiative is tasteless and crude. But they rightly point out that V-Day is far more extreme. They are shocked that the administration has come down hard on their good-natured spoof, when all along it has been completely accommodating to the in-your-face vulgarity of the vagina activists.

As opposed to the brainless, over-emotional, fluffy way in which college women are asked to celebrate their hoo-has, the P-Day fliers were more, er, intellectual:

The campus conservatives artfully (in the college sense of "artful") mimicked the V-Day campaign. They papered the school with flyers that said, “My penis is majestic” and “My penis is hilarious.” The caption on one handout read, “My Penis is studious.” It showed Testaclese reclining on a couch reading Michael Barone’s Hard America, Soft America.

Hee hee hee. Further proof that college PC warriors have no sense of humor. Meanwhile, Christina Sommers' closing argument, while accurate, certainly makes modern college campuses sound like something out of Bizarro World:

Unhappily, P-Day may be the only effective means of countering V-Day with all its c-fests, graphic lollipops, intrusive questionnaires, outsized effigies of vaginas and its thematic anti-male play. The prospect of public readings from P-Monologues on campuses around the country just might be the reductio ad absurdum that could drive the vagina warriors to the bargaining table.

Thank God my parents sent me to college to learn marketable skills, and not to become a "vagina warrior."

(Via Moonbat Central.)

slamming headfirst into reality

Devoted Reader Terry W sends along a brilliant example of the inflated self-esteem of the college student slamming headfirst into the cold hard reality of real life:

The world of a college journalism intern is not glamorous. It's not exciting, and it isn't fun. It is a true test of skills and stamina, and above all, it makes you wonder if you really want to do what you thought you always wanted to do. Last week, I was flatly rejected by SPIN magazine for a summer internship in New York City...

The rejection e-mail from SPIN also welcomed "questions regarding my decision." Naturally, I was a little more than curious. I was, and am, heartbroken, and like any heartbreak, I needed a reason. I asked politely, and received no response. A week later, I sent another e-mail, asking a little less politely, and a little more aggressively. This time I got an answer.

After telling me the delay in correspondence was because they had "fallen a bit behind in the creation of the next issue," I was told that being "snippy" to a prospective employer was "unbelievably off-putting," even if they had already decided not to give me the job. I went home and cried until I passed out, then woke up and cried some more. Then I thought about what the second rejection e-mail really said...

...being "snippy" and being direct are two very different things. He said he would answer questions, and I took him up on the offer. When he didn't reply, I asked again. I wasn't mean or rude, just to-the-point. If he didn't have time to answer my first question, he wouldn't have time to read any unnecessary formalities. I had a question, and I wanted an answer. That's all.

Don't miss the part where she says she used a "creative" font on her resume so that she'd stand out. Spin is a national magazine that probably gets thousands of applicants for its 2-3 internships each season. Yet this young lady had already set up housekeeping in NYC under the assumption that she and her creative resume were a shoo-in.

I shouldn't mock; I'm sure I was this dumb, once. Thank God I don't have a newspaper article like this to read ten years from now, and cringe.

Coddling the Millennials

Hoo-boy.

Local colleges are rushing to build high-tech classrooms and plush dormitories for a new breed of students who grew up with the Internet and were pampered by parents. Xavier University is planning a new campus quadrangle with high-tech classrooms and a ritzy residence hall to oblige what school officials call the "Baby on Board" generation or the "Millennials" coming of age at the turn of the millennium.

"Their parents posted 'Baby on Board' signs in their cars. They have been protected as children. Their free time was replaced by organized activities and structured programs. They have a high need for achievement and attention," said Xavier spokeswoman Kelly Leon. She said this generation prefers learning from hands-on experience, craves technology-generated education, and feels comfortable working in teams.

"Millennial students do not learn in the traditional ways of 50, 30 or even 10 years ago," said Xavier President Michael Graham. "We need to adapt our campus to their needs and changing times."

"Feels comfortable working in teams", eh? I'm going to have be pretty impressed by their subsequent adult accomplishments to be convinced that this is not just another way of saying that these Millennials are incapable of (a) cracking open real books and (b) pursuing solitary research without having their hands held.

[NKU President James Votruba says] "Today's youngsters have lived with high-technology from video arcades to cell phones, and many have their own computers. At home, most have not shared a bedroom and many have not shared a bathroom. When they come to college, they expect the same creature comforts. That puts pressure on all colleges because there is competition for these students."

Guess what? I hadn't ever shared a bathroom or a bedroom when I went to college, nor had I ever lived without central AC. Did that stop USC from putting me, an Honors College student, into an all-female dorm with hall bathrooms and no AC whatsoever? No, it did not. Did USC assume that I would do the work I was capable of with or without these creature comforts, and that some point I would have to learn to deal with a little adversity anyway? Yes, yes they did. Would I have been laughed out of housing had I gone to them and demanded more upscale surroundings for my spoiled little freshman self? Yes, I would have - and rightfully so. I wasn't there to be pampered.

I thought we were sending kids to college these days so that they could broaden their horizons, and learn something about the outside world, and be in a multicultural environment where they learn how other people think and act and live. But now colleges are spending like crazy to give every incoming freshman a upper-middle-class 90210 environment? What the heck is that?

Some universities have the money to turn every dorm into a miniature Trump Tower, and if the alumni are fine with it, more power to them. There's also nothing wrong with updating the technology for the classroom, especially if the subject matter demands it. But universities should be asking themselves if they want the kinds of students who choose their institution of higher learning based on whether or not they might have to share a bathroom - or a DSL line - for a year or two.

A note to all those Millennials who demand the same private bathrooms and vegetarian meals that they got at home: College dorms are supposed to be yucky for the same reason that your parents aren't supposed to wait on you hand and foot when you're a teen - it's so that you eventually want to grow up and move out and take care of your own precious self. College is something you leave for something better. And unlike at home, you won't get to hang around for years for free if you get hooked on those comfy dorm rooms.

I can't prove that it's the colleges with mystery meat in the dining hall and plenty of scunge in the hall bathrooms that have the highest percentage of students graduating in four years or less, but I have my suspicions.

It takes a masters to build a safe bathroom?

I can't believe I wasted those six years getting a Ph.D. in something so dull, so logical, so patriarchal as quantitative psychology, when I could have gone to San Francisco and done a masters degree like this:

M.A. Student Bios/Projects

Bryan Burgess received a B.F.A. from the North Carolina School of the Arts. An activist artist, Bryan’s thesis is an exploration of theater methods used to challenge gender binaries and gender oppression. Bryan’s goal is to develop a theater model that can be used as an organizing tool for cross-identity alliance building. Bryan is currently working with People in Search of Safe Restrooms (PISSR) and the Transgender Law Center on their campaign for safe bathroom access and is the events coordinator for New College’s Activism & Social Change program.

Shauna Jo Gunderson received her B.A. from New College of California majoring in Literature and Women's Studies. Shauna’s areas of interest and inquiry include Latin America; indigenous resistance to imperialism; the invention of a history outside of oppression; Helene Cixous; "political" poetry; and explorations of femininity spacious enough to include masculinity. She is a member of a collective that works on the promotion of Fair Trade flowers, water problems, women's issues, and the indigenous fight against oil development in the Amazon. Shauna currently works for a non-profit that specializes in sex & HIV education.

Heidi Misken received a B.A. from UC Berkeley; she majored in American Studies with a focus on "Race, Gender, & Sexuality in Film." For her New College of California graduate thesis project, Heidi is organizing Fluid, a community for people who don’t fit neatly into the sex, gender, and sexual orientation binaries: www.groups.yahoo.com/group/SFFluid. At the moment, Heidi is heavily involved in developing the SF chapter of Fluid, in working to open Fluid up to folks who don’t fit into conventional categories of race and ethnicity, and in creating academic theory that addresses the fluidity of sex, gender, sexual orientation, race, and ethnicity.

When Bryan finds those safe restrooms he's looking for, he'll have to let me know if a masters degree from the New College of California is fit to be anything other than a substitute for toilet paper. After all, NCoC says right on their history page that they're proud to still be alternative after 30 years, even though many other alternative-wannabe schools have "retreated or collapsed" since then. Isn't that a bit like saying, "By God, we're proud to still be selling sardine-flavored ice cream, even though every other company that did so has gone bankrupt!" ?

Matt Rosenberg is suitably impressed by the whole thing.

DePaul: Where only the students can be right

DePaul University is apparently a school in which deans can demand that professors never insist they're right. Adjunct professor Thomas Klocek taught in the university's School of New Learning in relative anonymity, until the day he decided to challenge some pro-Palestinian students (not his) in a short verbal debate that took place outside of class. He quickly found himself asked to cancel his winter 2005 classes and surrender his much-needed health insurance.

You can read more about the story, and the context in which it took place, here, but the part that catches my eye is the reason for Klocek's lawsuit. He was ostensibly disciplined for his conduct (for an alleged "obscene gesture" at said students). But then he recieved a letter from his boss, dean Susanne Dumbleton, that contained these sentences:

“No students anywhere should ever have to be concerned they will be verbally attacked for their religious belief or their ethnicity,” Dumbleton wrote. “No one should ever use the role of teacher to demean the ideas of others or insist on the absoluteness of an opinion, much less press erroneous assertions.”

Emphasis mine. And if you read that second sentence to mean that, under Dumbleton's watch, professors cannot insist that they are right about something, and a student is wrong, you are correct. This is demented "progressive" educrat-speak at its finest. This flagrant violation of Klocek's free speech has lawyers who specialize in First Amendment and free-speech issues itching to attack DePaul with lawsuits, as well it should.

(From LGF, some of whose readers note that emails to the university are going unanswered. I'm just doing my part to spread this appalling story - which is not new, but keeps getting worse - to the blogosphere. Additional coverage at CruxMag, Roger Simon, Friends of Micronesia, FreeRepublic, ChronWatch, Minion of the Great Satan, Students for Academic Freedom, and Solomonia.)

Update: Linda Seebach sends along reams (megapixels?) of coverage from the Rocky Mountain News archived here, here, here, and here.

Paying to get in, paying to get out

Is a graduation fee just another punch with which college and professional students should learn to roll? Or is it extortion?

About 75 St. Louis University students lined the hallway outside of the president’s office this morning to protest a graduation fee they first learned about last week. Students are most upset about being notified just weeks before graduation that they would have to pay the fee in order to get their diplomas. They say the university should have told them months in advance.

The university originally set the fees at $75 for graduating seniors and $100 for medical and law students. But in response to student complaints, administrators reduced the fee on Monday to $50 for everyone.

I remember having to pay a fee to submit my dissertation to the graduate school, which seemed in essence like a graduation fee. But then, I knew the deal well in advance, rather than a couple of weeks before my dissertation was due in.

Narcissistic and deluded education at its best

FrontPageMagazine has a devastating indictment of a kooky left-wing professor in North Carolina who is proud to teach political un-science:

Here is Christensen's description of her course:

“The events of September 11, 2001, indisputably changed the course of American politics and history. This course is offered so students may examine various events and policies leading to 911. In particular, this course will focus largely on the specific destruction in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon. We will examine the official story and analyze it critically. We will consider alternative explanations of what occurrred (sic) as well..."

“This course is outside the scope of traditional 'political science' in many ways. First it is 'unscientific' in that it relies much on eyewitness accounts and speculation. Secondly, there is not yet a solid literature on the September 11 'attacks' or on the war on terrorism. This literature is emerging, particularly on the latter. Thirdly, this course will rely somewhat extensively on alternative news media accounts and a variety of films and videos in lieu of literature.”

As I said, it's political "unscience," taught by a woman with a website so violently dumb and deluded that a freshman should be ashamed of having it. And why should NC Wesleyan students get credit for surfing the World Socialist website (that would be the "alternative media" Christensen lauds)?

Tune in, turn on, pass out

Here we see Ohio University students participating in what must be the most lethargic form of "protest" ever invented:

More than 20 Ohio University students, Athens residents and out-of-town visitors sprawled out on sidewalks around campus yesterday, symbolically "dying" to protest the war in Iraq. Except for one minor shouting incident, the protest - organized by social activist group Interact - passed quietly. Individuals lay on the sidewalks in front of College Gate, Howard Hall and the West Portico. At College Gate, Interact members and others read names of deceased American soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

"We were looking for a way to visually represent the war in Iraq, something that would really make an impact," said Fiona Mitchell, an Interact member and organizer of the event.

This is genius, to convince college students that lying sprawled out on the sidewalk is meaningful social protest! Why, I saw quite a few of their compatriots participating in a similar fashion at the bar I visited last St. Patrick's Day. Does such protest count if the fake corpse is covered in green Mardi Gras beads?

Then there's this rejoinder to the protesters, published in the same student newspaper:

It's a shame that I'm here in Iraq with the Marines right now and not back at Ohio University completing my senior year and joining in blissful ignorance with the enlightened, war-seasoned protesters who participated in the recent "die-in" at College Gate. It would appear that all the action is back home, but why don't we make sure? That's right, this is an open invitation for you to cut your hair, take a shower, get in shape and come on over! If Michael Moore can shave and lose enough weight to fit into a pair of camouflage utilities, then he can come too!

Read it all (both stories via Best of the Web).

The fallout of PC on campus

Campus speech codes are a menace:

...On one campus or another, speech that is discomforting, embarrassing, flirtatious, gender specific, inappropriate, inconsiderate, harassing, intimidating, offensive, ridiculing or threatens a loss of "self-esteem" is banned by speech codes. Too often, they target student critics of academic bureaucracy...

Ultimately, speech codes are problematic because they vest final authority in the subjectivity of the offended. Whether it is "intentional or unintentional," for example, Brown University bans all "verbal behavior" that may cause "feelings of impotence, anger, or disenfranchisement." The nation's Founders, who did not mind offending British authorities, would have been ill-educated by such constrictions on free speech.

Often it's the university faculty who are supportive of speech codes, but these restrictions on speech - among other things - are leading parents to wonder why they should pay for any of this:

...With faculty and administrations leading the way, political correctness and posturing -- from both the left and right -- is reaching dizzying heights in the land of the ivory tower. And rising right along with it is the frustration of middle-class parents, who are growing increasingly resentful of paying sky-high tuition for colleges they see offering their kids a menu of questionable courses and politically absurd campus climates that detract from the quality of a university education...

A couple of weeks ago, a father called reacting to the fallout from the anti-Israel conference at Duke. He asked me outright whether Duke was anti-Semitic. I jokingly assured him that the school wasn't being run by the Ku Klux Klan. Nevertheless, he decided that if his son really wanted to go there, the boy could find a way to pay the $30,720-a-year tuition himself.

Or, as BaySense puts it, "To the millions of college-shopping parents and students out there: next time you're on a campus tour, why not ask specifically about intellectual diversity? I plan to."

(Via Joanne and Insty.)

Exercising his right to speak about bad ideologies

It's very hard to believe this is not an April Fool's joke - the assistant news editor of Lehigh University's student newspaper calls for the redistribution of just about everything:

And now, citizens, we must fight for a more egalitarian society in the United States. It is my opinion that the greatest expression of democracy and equality is the communist system and that it is time for Americans to push for a social revolution where production is made “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” as Karl Marx said...

Besides basic humanistic values, a communist United States would allow all residents to have access to an education of equal quality and value. Capital and racial discrimination would no longer exist. With this new education and in the continuation of the current development of grades at Lehigh, with one-third of students obtaining a 3.5 GPA or higher every semester, a communistic approach to grading could be put into place. The current inflation and leveling out of grades could lead to, just as with capital, an elimination of grades.

Students would study for pure scholastic interest and would put in as much effort as they felt necessary. Instead of spending time learning what is sometimes considered futile, scholars would only learn what they felt useful to them...

Two quick questions for Olivier Lewis:

1. Can he name a country that follows Marx's principles and is a success, and by success I mean, "the government doesn't spend a great deal of time, money, paperwork, and bullets trying to prevent its citizens from leaving"?
2. If I am allowed to work harder in school than my fellow man, how is it possible that we could each end up with an education of equal quality? Wouldn't equalizing education require me to work no more and no less than my school mates?

Love the part about distributing income. If I'm guaranteed an income of $38K a year, no more and no less, no matter how hard I work, why do I want to go to college at all?

(Via FrontPage Magazine.)

Update: And as for equalization of income and giving everyone only what they "need," see what happens when you try to equalize things and take the luxury goods away from those who feel they deserve them?

Dealing with the asshats

One of the most important lessons to learn at college is that asshats will always exist, and no amount of lobbying, legislating, or demanding retribution will ever change that:

Recently, at my alma mater [Penn State], a student shouted racist and homophobic comments from a dorm window. Predictably, the Lesbian and Gay Alliance and the Black Caucus reacted with outrage, as if we need people to remind us that racists are morons.

You know, I spent four and a half years in State College. People also shouted that the Steelers sucked balls and that all women were sluts, among other things. Strangely, the Steelers did not hold a press confrence to demand everyone be educated about how great they were...

Yet, when some idiot decides to shout out something racist or homophobic, their respective advocacy groups demand that the University take ridiculous steps to ensure that it never happens again! Yes, I guess Spanier should just wave his magic no-more-racism wand, because apparently all racists need to change their minds is to read some flyers.

The Penn State Black Caucus's demands have pretty much nothing to do with the actual incident, nor would satisfying the demands stop asshats from existing. It looks like they've just taken the opportunity to squeeze more money and concessions out of the Penn administration, in ways that would probably inflame other students, and the Penn State Collegian is right to point this out.

The Captain approves as well:

Finally, someone has the courage to say it. No matter how many "sensitivity" programs activist groups want to shove down our collective throats, racism will always exist. And so will people being assholes in general.

Update: Those "homophobic" Penn students should be glad they don't go to Harvard, where innocent statements by celebrities espousing traditional values are taken as the most egregious of insults.

Alabama students speak out freely

The Volokh Conspiracy puts it nicely: "It really is extraordinary that we live in an age where students have to educate faculty on the importance and educational value of free speech.".

The full story is here:

In a remarkable display of intellectual independence and moral courage, the University of Alabama (UA) Student Senate last week passed a “free speech” resolution that directly opposes a “hate speech” resolution passed by UA’s Faculty Senate last fall. Recognizing that the faculty’s “hate speech” resolution was a thinly veiled call for a speech code, the students’ resolution urges the UA administration and faculty “to adopt policies that explicitly protect free speech for all students at the University of Alabama.”

The "free speech" resolution is nicely done:

WHEREAS, The right to free speech is an inalienable human and civil right that is protected by the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Alabama;

BE IT FURTHUR RESOLVED THAT Copies of this resolution also be sent to Dr. Robert Witt, President of the University of Alabama, Dr. John Mason, President of the Faculty Senate of the University of Alabama, The Tuscaloosa News, The Crimson White and Dateline Alabama for informational purposes.

Good for them. College speech codes are one of the worst ideas to come out of the PC era.

Next, the "Romance Studies" department gets its funding cut

Previously, we've seen attempts on the part of universities to restrict First Amendment rights on campus. Now, at least one state - Oklahoma - might make sex on campus pretty much illegal. What's next - not allowing students to leave their dorms without muzzles, blinders, and bodyguards?

A bill aimed at preventing sexual relationships between college students under 21 years old and instructors has been introduced in the state Senate. Senate Bill 650 by Sen. Jonathan Nichols, R-Norman, seeks to extend the state’s definition of rape to include sexual intercourse between college students under age 21 and instructors at the same college or university.

“The language is a work in progress,” Nichols said. “As it goes through committee, the language will be honed and fine-tuned.”

Let's hope. The victim has to be under 21, but the "criminal" can be any age - even younger. And the "criminal" can be any staff member - including a fellow undergrad who works for the university. And what's defined as "sexual intercourse" here? Are only heterosexuals able to face charges?

Most colleges have rules in place that prohibit sexual relationships between professors and students who are enrolled in the class, and that's really all colleges should try to prohibit. It doesn't bode well that the first draft of this bill is so broad. Why is there such a demand to criminalize sexual contact between people who are over the age of consent? (Well over the age, in Oklahoma.) If you ask me, this is not unrelated to the assault on free speech on campus. The general sense today seems to be that college students are still just kids who need to be kept within very tight constraints.

Stop the Bleating is even more alarmed than I am:

Even worse, the statute could be read to criminalize sex between a twenty year-old student and her husband if, for example, her husband were a teaching assistant and they were married after he became an employee. (Of course in most cases this would involve pre-nuptial violations of the statute. But assume that they're an old-fashioned couple.)

(Via The Volokh Conspiracy.)

Dressing left, voting right

A change in the campus environment:

...the Left’s long dominion over the university—the last place on earth that lefty power would break up, conservatives believed—is showing its first signs of weakening. The change isn’t coming from the schools’ faculty lounges and administrative offices, of course. It’s coming from self-organizing right-of-center students and several innovative outside groups working to bypass the academy’s elite gatekeepers...

The bustle reflects a general rightward shift in college students’ views. Back in 1995, reports UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, 66 percent of freshmen wanted the wealthy to pay higher taxes. Today, only 50 percent do. Some 17 percent of students now value taking part in environmental programs, half of 1992’s percentage. Support for abortion stood at two-thirds of students in the early nineties; now it’s just over half. A late-2003 Harvard Institute of Politics study found that college students had moved to the right of the overall population, with 31 percent identifying themselves as Republicans, 27 percent as Democrats, and the rest independent or unaffiliated...

The obligatory "Young Republicans don't fit the sartorial mold anymore" segment follows, but I suppose it's necessary; some people still believe that campus conservatives live only in long skirts, ties, or suits. (Actually, some wear pentagrams and patchouli oil.) Love the comment, though, about how the conservatives do stand out due to their apparent understanding of the uses of the laundromat. They also tend to reject the "get-drunk-and-hook-up" morality that is so pervasive these days.

The equations are coming to get you, Barbara!

The Moebius Stripper at Tall Dark & Handsome made me laugh out loud with this tale:

The Student Who REALLY doesn’t get math: As in, the one who asked me last week, in all earnestness, “to what extent” she would “have to use equations” in my class. I managed, in a feat that should surely mark me as a force to be reckoned with in the domain of improvisational theatre, to eke out a coherent yet tactful reply in which I succedeed (I think) in gently pointing out that this is a math class and that it we would do math things in it, and math things tend to involve equations of some form. (At least, math things at this level do. I’m sure that she didn’t want to hear “Oh, no, this class is ALL PROOFS.") Worried that she would break if I in any way made light of the situation, I did not add that if she could come up with equation-free means of solving for unknowns then she was certainly welcome to use them. She seemed disppointed and scared.

Mmmphghgh BWAh haha ha! I don't think I could have managed coherent yet tactful in that situation, much less a straight face. Then again, I was never tested to that level; despite springing stats 101 on several classes' worth of math-shy psychology majors, none of my charges was ever dense enough to admit to my face that they were hoping for a lack of equations in the class.

And had anyone been rash enough to bring in an entire jar of peanut butter when I was a graduate TA, they would have seen it rapidly confiscated, as I greatly enjoy peanut butter but couldn't afford to buy it on my tiny stipend.

Gimme an "A"!

Princeton U. is experimenting with a norm-referenced standard as a means to combat grade inflation:

For students at Princeton University, final exams are even more stressful this year: The Ivy League school decided to make it harder to earn an A. The crackdown on high grades, part of a national battle against grade inflation at elite schools, has increased anxiety, and in some cases, made friendly students wonder whether they should offer study help to their competitors, er, classmates...

At other Ivy League schools, the percentages of A's in undergraduates courses ranges from 44 percent to 55 percent, according to Princeton's Web site. At Harvard University, 91 percent of seniors graduated with some kind of honors in 2001.

At that point, do the honors really mean anything? The Princeton plan does have its downside (especially in classes and departments with small numbers of students), but I agree that something needs to be done about the easy A. The proposal doesn't just limit the number of A's, but also provides guidelines for professors about what constitutes A-level work. And for those who worry that this system will frighten students away from "challenging" courses, I wonder if any student who avoids hard work just because the A isn't guaranteed needs to be in those classes anyway.

Buzzing around campus

While the nation's public schools are busily devising ways to get parents more involved in education, colleges are seeing a boom in parents who are too involved, and dubbing them, "helicopter parents:"

Some people say the phenomenon is related to a baby-boom generation of involved parents who have been organizing their children's lives since infancy. And when their babies go off to college, some parents are unable to deal with the empty nest.

"I have friends whose moms call them two and three times a day to check on them and see what they're doing," said Anthony Huereca, 21, a UF senior from Tampa who plans to graduate in May with a degree in computer engineering. "Sometimes when they see it's their mom, they ignore the call."

While any educator would be happy to see parents who obviously care how their children do in school, college administrators also want to point out that there can be too much of a good thing:

Resnick said some parents are reluctant to let their college students learn how to make their own choices, and mistakes. They feel that as parents they need to have a strong say in their children's academic and other decisions, she said.

Blansett, who also is an appeals officer for UF's housing division, said they have had to ask students to turn off their cell phones during petition meetings. "A student comes in to talk to us, and a parent calls during the meeting and wants to be part of the appeal," she said. "We welcome parental involvement, but our challenge is to take that force and make it a positive force good for the parent and student."

I went to an undergrad university in my hometown; my freshman dorm was within walking distance of my mom's office, my stepfather's office, and my sister's office. While this arrangement was spiffy whenever I needed money or a trip to the doctor's office, I never felt I was being "hovered over," and my parents did their level best to leave me alone and let me get on with my life.

The only way it could have been better is if the Yale fans had had signs that said, "WE KNOW"

Ah ha ha haaa!

In a rivalry that is 121st old, students at Yale University successfully pulled off the most impressive prank in the history of rival pranks.

While this was not an original idea, it was still a great feat in and of itself. The prank was reminiscent of the Great Rose Bowl Hoax on January 2, 1961.

These kinds of tricks are perfect for Ivy League football games, where the crowd is too preppy and well-behaved to be violent. There's a reason that no one pulls this kind of prank against, say, Georgia Tech.

Back to School

Real-life imitates Rodney Dangerfield (well, sort of):

Roger "Rusty" Martin is the oldest freshman at Saint John's College in Annapolis -- by four decades. The 61-year-old president of Randolph-Macon College, in Ashland, Virginia, says he wants to study the freshman experience in a way that would be impossible from the president's office. At Randolph-Macon, Martin's one-on-one contact with students took place mostly across a desk. But he wants to know what first-year students are really like.

So he's taking a semester-long sabbatical from the top of the academic food chain to dwell at the bottom. After his semester at Saint John's ends, Martin plans to publish some of his thoughts in one or more magazine articles. He says his fellow freshmen are strikingly focused, keen to study, averse to drugs and loyal to their parents.

Something tells me Martin's experiences won't generalize too well to the college-age population as a whole. But if just one silly orientation class or crappy food-service company gets the boot, I figure Martin's foray into froshhood will have accomplished something.

Is it still a rule that homecoming queens must use lots of Aqua Net?

OK, competition for homecoming queen is tough enough when you're up against only the female hotties. But now the latest trend appears to be gender-nonspecific homecoming "queens", as reported by SCSUScholars:

Via Cold Spring Shops and Tongue Tied, I read this morning that another school has decided to pitch the idea of homecoming queens as gender-nonspecifc. At least in their case you could argue that the reason was noble -- they wanted to give everyone an equal chance to win a scholarship.

However, I agree with SCSU that trumpeting one's love of "diversity" and "tolerance" by electing a male homecoming queen is still sillier than doing away with the whole "elected royalty" nonsense. It seems that at SCSU, a group of students deliberately nominated a male for homecoming queen (and a female for king) in order to "challenge traditional gender roles and promote tolerance among the student population." Sorry, but it's still a cheesy popularity contest, and I don't need anyone to challenge my belief in traditional gender roles in order to decide that.

The ugly truth (or dare) about campus "hazing"

Prisoner # 1 : "What're you in for?"
Prisoner # 2 : "A riotous game of Truth or Dare."
Prisoner # 1 : (backs away slowly...)

Police are investigating reports of hazing involving several senior girls at St. Paul's School. The incidents allegedly involved groups in two dormitories at the private boarding school last weekend. Dean of Students Douglas J. Dickson said he learned about the incidents this week and reported them to police. He said the school also will investigate and consider disciplinary consequences for the young women involved.

School officials would not say what students had done that was considered hazing. They did say the behavior did not involve physical contact or physical harm.

Emphasis mine. What were these brutal actions that necessitated police involvement and counseling? You guessed it - Truth or Dare:

The Union Leader reported that multiple unnamed sources indicated the hazing was directed at about a dozen new girls and involved at least partial nudity in one of the two dormitories involved. The newspaper also reported the hazing in the second dormitory allegedly involved a "truth-or-dare" game with questions about sexual experiences.

Ooookay. Did I mention that I played Truth or Dare in slumber parties in sixth grade? I was a shy creature then and would have preferred other games, but come on. I was playing by choice. What's more, anyone can make something up for the "Truth" part, the extroverts can perform the "Dares," and everybody's happy.

And this is a crime?

Hazing is a crime in New Hampshire and is defined as any coercion or intimidation presented as a condition of initiation into a group and that might cause students to hurt themselves physically or psychologically.

I'm trying to decide who's more immature here - the girls who decided that it was good idea to play Truth or Dare, or the ones who need counseling because of it. I mean, come on, folks. There's no need for hazing that leaves somebody missing a limb, and outright bullying should be reported, but were these girls forced to play Truth or Dare? If so, how? What's to stop a normal 18-year-old girl from getting up, saying "good night," and retiring to her dorm room? This wasn't even a sorority hazing, from the information given; just a bunch of girls sitting around being goofy. And now facing criminal charges.

This keeps up, in 20 years college students won't even speak to each other.

Update: In my rash of blogging, and rush to judgment, yesterday, I screwed up; this is a boarding high school, not a private college. Doh! That makes the whole situation more understandable - but the fact that the girls in question do not seem to have been in a sorority, and don't seem to have been participating in any sort of organized hazing, yet were still prosecuted under an anti-hazing law, still bothers me.

Update #2 : A reader who apparently knows one of the victims in question says "As a friend of one of the girls who was the object of this little game...When someone forces anything down another person's throut, causing them to choke, cutting off their ability to breathe, it's not a game." The article notes that school officials specifically stated no physical contact occurred, which would suggest that somebody isn't being honest here.

Perhaps the what-seemed-like-an-overreaction on the part of school officials to the hazing - and the mention of counseling - should have tipped us off to the possibilty that a lot more occurred here than a simple game of Truth or Dare.

Update #3: Although I'm swamped with work, I have to spend a bit more time on this; there seems to be enough interest in this story to warrant further investigation.

This article gives a tad more detail about what happened:

The seniors woke the new girls up in the middle of the night, forcing them to simulate oral sex with bananas and answer sexually explicit questions, the employee said. St. Paul's determined the hazing was more severe in one of the dorms, Kittredge II, where five of the senior girls lived, than the other dorm, Ford...

Isolated incidents of hazing have occurred at St. Paul's before, according to Dickson, and the school has handled other hazing cases like it has handled this one.

Interestingly, though, the hazing is now being denied, at least by some alleged victims:

At least some of the freshmen girls whom St. Paul's School officials say were hazed told the dean of students they were willing participants in a nighttime initiation activity. In a letter written to the dean before 15 seniors were suspended or the incident was reported to the police, freshmen from the Ford dormitory said they did not think anything bad had happened.

"We were given candy and had a choice of whipped cream and a banana and a devil dog," the freshmen wrote. "Again, all of the new students wanted to participate and eat their food, meaning that no one was forced." The letter was signed Third Formers of Ford House, making it unclear whether all or just some of the freshmen wrote it.

The parents of one of the suspended students also deny hazing:

“If what my daughter did is hazing, then they have an epidemic of hazing on campus,” said Hilary Mullarkey of Long Island, N.Y., adding she knew of seniors in at least three other girls’ dorms who participated in similar behavior at the elite, Concord boarding school.

Mullarkey and her husband, Robert, said no sexually explicit questions were asked of new Ford house students. But the Mullarkeys agreed what allegedly occurred in another dorm, Kittredge II, was hazing. They claim their daughter’s dorm was “painted with a Kit II brush” and claim the school unfairly singled out Ford house for punishment.

So now, some parents are talking. And their claims are consistent with the Concord Monitor's report that the hazing was "more severe" in Kit II than in Ford.

So what really happened? Who knows? Some freshmen apparently didn't have a problem with the hazing, but at least one must have complained for the school officials to discover the situation. It's possible that most or all the freshmen willingly went along with a situation that ended up being more traumatic than they had bargained for.

The school seems willing to stand its ground on the suspensions. Be interesting to see if more parents start talking; either we'll see a new rash of complaints, or another group of parents defending the hazers, or both.

Update # 4: Be sure to read the comments - N2P is showing up on the first page of Google for a search on "St Paul's School hazing," and two sets of parents have commented to counter the official claims. The Champlaign Channel has more on the parents - and students - who deny that hazing took place, and now parents are reporting that the college plans of the suspended seniors may be affected:

A tradition for welcoming new girls at St. Paul's School that got out of hand this month may have long-term consequences for the 15 senior girls suspended for hazing. "Our children's reputation and records have been permanently marred and their college hopes destroyed," reads a statement from parents including Hilary Mullarkey, whose daughter has been suspended for two weeks and must write a letter of apology.

The Kittredge seniors were suspended through the end of the term. No one affiliated with Kittredge II could be reached for comment for this story, but several former students agree events there went too far.

Sounds like the "tarred with the Kit II brush" theory is holding up.

Thinking outside the bun

The University of Arizona - Where the weather is hot, the livin' is easy, and parents attending commencement exercises will be frisked at the door for contraband tortillas:

There will be no universitywide commencement ceremony for undergraduates at the UA this December, over the strong objection of student and alumni groups. UA Student Body President Alistair Chapman said he believes the underlying motivation is tortillas, which - when spinning through the air at commencement - have confounded the administration and drawn protesters in recent years.

Instead, graduating seniors will receive their diplomas at convocations hosted by their individual colleges, University of Arizona officials formally announced Wednesday. The UA conferred about 3,700 degrees last December, and about half of the recipients attended the campuswide ceremony...

UA President Peter Likins, who made the final decision, could not be reached for comment...Likins had warned in May 2003 that he would consider canceling the campuswide commencement if tortillas continue to be tossed.

"Unless our peculiar practice of throwing tortillas ceases, we may be obliged to cancel future all-university commencement ceremonies, leaving our graduation celebrations to the individual colleges," Likins wrote.

The tortillas continued to fly. But Chapman said a video from the May 2004 commencement showed most of the tortillas were thrown from the audience. He said he believes security at the doors, similar to that at basketball games, would eliminate that problem and is needed anyway for a crowd of 14,000.

Emphasis mine. I can't think of any way to interpret that, other than, if they held one campus-wide commencement ceremony, the rent-a-cops would be forced to shake people down in search of...tortillas. So perhaps it's best to hold smaller ceremonies.

Hey, at least somebody's optimistic about it

Penn State is optimistic and enthusiastic about the new SAT:

“We receive over 40,000 freshman applications each year, and we have more students sending us their SAT scores than any college or university east of Los Angeles,” said John Romano, vice provost and dean of enrollment management and administration at Penn State. “Penn State processes a tremendous amount of student information and, while we applaud the addition of a writing component to the SAT, we need to remind ourselves that the results of the new SAT will be just one of many factors we look at as we make admission decisions.”

“The immediate impact of the writing component,” Romano said, “is the strong signal it sends to students, parents, teachers and administrators in our nation’s secondary schools that writing is important. Eventually, we hope to observe in our university classrooms across all disciplines the results of this added emphasis. For now, we need to assess what role the additional component should play in our decisions.”

Forty thousand applications. Good Lord. What a mountain of paperwork that must be...

When effort isn't enough

Before I head off, I have to link to this one article about Benedict College in Columbia, SC (sent by Devoted Reader Greg M.), because (a) it's in my hometown, and (b) it's absolutely appalling:

Benedict College has fired two professors who refused to go along with a policy that says freshmen are awarded 60 percent of their grades based on effort and the rest on their work's academic quality.

Students "have to get an A in effort to guarantee that if they fail the subject matter, they can get the minimum passing grade," Swinton said. "I don't think that's a bad thing."

There are so many things wrong with this, I don't know where to start. How are professors supposed to accurately measure "effort"? How can a professor defend his or her measurement of effort if the student challenges it, given that the student's perception of effort might be vastly different from the professors?

And then there's the most important question of all, which gets to the heart of Benedict's supposed reasons for doing this. Why should we expect a struggling freshman to do better later on in their college career if it takes everything they've got to make a barely passing grade? It's not that effort doesn't matter in college. But ineffective effort doesn't get a student anywhere, and that's what Benedict wants to reward here. Putting in a lot of effort to little avail doesn't move a student along any more than putting in no effort. Put simply, Benedict wants to reward freshmen who work and work and work and still don't master the material.

Why should those students be passed? Why does Benedict think those students will succeed later on? Are there any studies showing that students who work very hard yet fail classes early on do better in their sophomore and junior years, and thus deserve that extra boost? Nothing is cited in this article.

And, of course, there's the part about professors who insisted on higher standards being dismissed:

Science professors Milwood Motley and Larry Williams defied that policy and Swinton dismissed them. Neither had tenure, which could have protected them from firing.

"There comes a time when you have to say this is wrong," he said.

Especially if you're a freakin' SCIENCE professor. My God, I can't believe Motley was even going along with the plan grudgingly. It would have been torture, for any science professor, to be forced to reward students who DO NOT GET THE RIGHT ANSWER, yet make a lot of "effort." That is not how science works. That is not how the real world works. This is not how Benedict College, which is not educating children but young men and women, should work.

Benedict College is an open-admissions, historically black college that was founded in 1870 in order to educate freed slaves. The school sees itself as a "haven" for students who have to overcome a lot of things just to make it to that level, and for that, I admire Benedict. But a college that tries so hard to be a "safe place" that it rewards students less for actual achievement will end up doing a grave disservice to all its students.

Narrow-minded, but "diverse"

What amazes me is that anyone, even in Colorado, thought they could get away with this:

The University of Colorado at Boulder announced yesterday that it no longer would restrict an education course to minority and first-generation college students after receiving complaints that the restrictions violated equal-protection laws. Educators had limited fall enrollment for the Friday section of "School and Society" to "students of color" and first-generation college students, saying the restriction offered "a much safer and open environment" in which to discuss issues of race, class and the sexes.

Now, imagine a situation in which professors decided to limit enrollment in a course to white students only, or men only, with the argument being that it would be much "safer" for students to discuss race relations, or sexism. Can you imagine such a scenario not being immediately followed by protests, marches, activists descending upon the president's office?

Didn't think so. Yet the clueless UC educators, though they've given in, seem amazed that anyone thought to complain:

After three students threatened last week to take the university to court, however, Lorrie Shepard, dean of the School of Education, issued a "clarification" stating that the course would be open to all students, although "underrepresented" students were specifically encouraged to enroll.

"It is the intention of the School of Education to recruit students of color and first-generation college students to participate in a special section of [the course] for the purpose of creating a critical mass of such students," said Lorrie Shepard, dean of the School of Education.

And how wonderful they must feel to know that educators do not expect them to be able to hold their own in a classroom with others of different races; nay, they must be shepherded into this "critical mass" of safe space and protected from those evil, um, non-minorities and legacy students, who are obviously incapable of discussing touchy issues in a respectful way. Doesn't sound like UC thinks much of any of its students.

"School and Society" is mandatory for education majors, but the course is also popular among non-majors because it fulfills the university's general graduation requirement for "culture and gender diversity." In her statement, Miss Shepard continued to stress the importance of creating a classroom environment welcoming to "students of diverse backgrounds."

"Having a critical mass of first-generation and minority students in a class or group helps avoid the sense of isolation described by many students in these groups," she said. "We hope that students of diverse backgrounds who choose this opportunity can engage the intellectual material of this course without distraction."

I suppose it would be wicked to point out the irony in UC's demanding that students take a "culture and gender diversity" class, and then offering a class which is so deliberately undiverse. And wicked, too, to wonder about Ms. Sheperd's theory that the way to help minority students feel less isolated is to, um, isolate them from the rest of the student body.

(Of course, John of Discriminations already covered this, but I figured it was worth ridiculing once again.)

Panic in Athens

The University of Georgia is officially in a panic over dropping minority enrollment, but their frantic efforts leave one wondering whether or not they're willing to consider the idea that perhaps the nation's best African-American students just aren't interested in UGA:

The number of African-American freshmen enrolling at the University of Georgia this fall is lower than at any time in recent history, despite efforts to increase the number of black students.

Only 202 black students are expected to enroll as first-time freshmen when the flagship university opens next week for the fall semester, according to the UGA admissions office. That's a 26 percent decline from fall 2003, when 273 black students enrolled as freshmen. And it's fewer than in 2001 — the year after a federal judge ruled UGA could not use race as a factor for admissions — when the university enrolled only 207 black freshmen.

That's not a huge shift. Downwards, yes, but is it a trend? The graphs suggest the numbers have never been as high as when UGA was allowed to use race in admissions, but did anyone really expect them to be? It's not as though no African-American freshmen are enrolled.

UGA ranks below Georgia Tech, Georgia State, Georgia Southern and nearly all of the Southeastern states' flagship universities in percentage of African-American freshmen.

Black students made up 23 percent of the freshman class enrolled in Georgia's 34 public colleges and universities in fall 2003. This fall, Georgia Tech expects its freshman class to be 6 percent African-American. Georgia State University's black enrollment is expected to top 30 percent. Almost 12 percent of the fall 2003 freshman class at the University of North Carolina were African-Americans. At South Carolina, 10 percent of the 2003 freshmen were black.

Sounds to me like black freshmen are going where they want to go. GSU and USC are located downtown in bigger cities. UNC offers startlingly low tuition for in-state residents. Maybe black students just don't feel like moving to small-town Athens to attend UGA. (Let me say for the record that I've visited Athens, and I loved it. But it wouldn't be for everyone.)

Black enrollment has been affected on a national level by tuition increases at public universities, declining need-based financial aid and abandonment of affirmative action policies, said Robert Atwell, president emeritus of the American Council on Education.

"It is clearly the case that higher education competition on the basis of the test scores of entering students works against low-income and minority students," he wrote in a report released last month. "To determine human potential requires more than testing."

Yes, it does, but as we can see by the other stats presented above, admission based on test scores doesn't seem to be getting in the way of minorities attending schools other than UGA. I've always felt that it was wrong to assume that test standards must be lowered across the board for minorities, and I still think it's wrong. The surreal denial that the SAT score means anything can be seen in the statements below:

[UGA] admissions officials say they also examine applicants individually, weighing their potential benefit to the campus in addition to academic criteria.

"We have kids with better than a 1300 [SAT score] we've said no to, we've had kids with a 4.0 [GPA] we've said no to," McDuff said in an interview last month. "We have kids with an SAT of 900 that we've admitted."

There's nothing wrong with choosing students based on who the school feels would most benefit from UGA's scholarship. But bragging about admitting people with below-average SAT scores is just silly. That doesn't mean the school is more appreciative of the "whole person;" it just means that the school is willing to lower academic standards for applicants of a certain race or background (it's a guarantee that no rich or white student could get in with a 900 on the SAT), who now stand a greater chance of flunking out than if had they gone someplace with less rigorous coursework.

I think UGA should be doing everything it can to attract qualified applicants of all races and backgrounds. Admitting students who are the first in their family to go to college is great. But please, UGA, don't admit them unless you can prove they have a chance in hell of graduating; otherwise, it looks like you're just giving lip service to diversity to keep that tuition money coming in.

Overpaying, underqualified, and over here

A lack of ready cash has produced a truly heinous situation at some British universities, or so the Guardian says:

Cash-strapped British universities are awarding degrees to students who should be failed, in return for lucrative fees, The Observer can reveal. The 'degrees-for-sale' scandal stretches from the most prestigious institutions to the former polytechnics and includes undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, foreign and home students. In the most extreme case, The Observer has evidence of a professor ordering staff to mark up students at risk of failing in order to keep the money coming in.

Wynne went on to warn staff of the consequences of failing students. 'I often reduce the problem to one of money. It perhaps brings home the issue at hand when you consider that each student brings an income of approximately £4,500. You can all do the sums as well as me to work out the likely implications for the school.'

If UK universities are really willing to pass shoddy engineering students just because they have the 4500 pounds at hand, it gives new meaning to the nursery rhyme, "London Bridge is falling down/falling down/falling down," doesn't it? It's one thing for Britons to be ignorant of history; it's another thing altogether for them to be creating software and building bridges with just "borderline" knowledge.

Bournemouth University has given Wynne its full backing, claiming that his email simply urges a closer scrutiny of borderline students. 'In fact, he does not ask for a lowering of academic standards. Instead, he advocates - even advises - that colleagues make a learned consideration of each student on merit.'

Why should schools scrutinize borderline students more closely? And why are we being asked to assume that professors had not already been making "a learned consideration of each student on merit"? I doubt that Bournemouth's professors needed Wynne to tell them how to do that.

Colwyn Williamson of the Council for Academic Freedom and Academic Standards (Cafas), who teaches at Swansea University, said a blind eye was turned to practices ranging from direct plagiarism to lecturers doing their students' work for them, or simply passing work that had not been examined properly.

Well, now we understand why today's undergraduates don't understand what's wrong with plagiarism, or cheating in general. And isn't it ironic that tests are often attacked publicly for allegedly allowing only the rich to pass classes, when a situation in which money really does determine who passes isn't given near as much press?

While these shenanigans may be keeping British colleges afloat, it's certainly not doing much for the rich students who pass through them:

This impression has been passed to the students themselves. Gilbert Cervelli, an American theology and history student who spent six months at Oxford this year for a credit towards his American Bachelor of Arts degree said he received all A grades.'For a majority of my time at Oxford, I wondered if I could write an absolute crap essay and still have my tutor tell me it wonderful just because I was a huge investment. To think that the only reason I was admitted to Oxford University was because I had money and came from America is a rather cynical view, one that I hope is not true.'

College professors insist on less say in admissions decisions

This is, quite possibly, one of the dumbest anti-testing efforts ever from a political body:

The state Legislature has passed a bill that would limit the state and city university systems from using the SAT or other high-stakes tests as the major criteria in determining who gets accepted.

Both CUNY and SUNY consider SAT scores as one factor — along with scores on Regents exams and high-school grades — in determining admissions. The bill would not immediately impact the selection policy in either system. But the legislation, if signed into law, would bar CUNY or SUNY from relying more on standardized tests in the future.

Something's not right here. I can see professors being opposed to admissions tests. But how on earth can anyone in academia think it's a good idea to open the door for politicians to decide the best way to admit students? Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't some universities fight tooth-and-nail to preserve quota systems and sets of double standards, in the face of court decisions, all because it interferes with their plans for diversity? Don't universities normally claim that they alone know what admissions processes are best for their student body? Didn't the universities get mad when the courts tried to tell them they could not use race in admissions? And here university members are pushing for the government to tell them there's something else they can't use?

If the SAT is useful in admissions, New York schools should be free to use it as much as possible, because, despite the mythology, the SAT is a reliable, quick, and cheap assessment that can be quite valid for use in this context. If the SAT doesn't work for schools, they should be free to chuck it. Given that the anti-testing types tend to be the ones who complain about top-down control of education, it's appallingly hypocritical for them to be pushing for top-down control of the admissions process. Or is it just that unwarranted governmental interference is a good thing as long as tests are being prohibited instead of mandated?

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Kevin for the link.)

Sounds like he's a whiz at "creative thinking"

And the N2P award for Outstanding College Student of the Week goes to...Paul Cunningham of Wilmington College, Delaware:

A Delaware college student ate a bag of hallucinogenic mushrooms and drove around in a pair of stolen cars before arriving, confused, on a mountain in northwest Connecticut police said.

Police said Cunningham, of Dover, Del., confessed that eating an entire bag of mushrooms, "probably wasn't a good idea." He allegedly told investigators that he had no idea how many laws he broke during a three-day excursion that took him 300 miles from home.

About $2500 worth of laws, at least in bail money.

A student at Wilmington College, he told a state trooper that he bought the drugs in Dover on Monday, according to the Republican-American of Waterbury. The next day, he went for a drive and twice got lost in Connecticut.

In Canaan, he decided to climb Music Mountain to see what was on the other side, police said. Investigators believe the exercise cleared Cunningham's head.

Hey, at least he's honest, once he sobers up.

The wrong solution to a real problem

Jay P. Greene and Marcus Winters are skeptical that presidential hopeful John Kerry's plans to increase funding for college will solve America's educational problems:

Unfortunately, while it may be desirable to engage more young people in public service, Kerry's plan is unlikely to significantly increase the number of students who enroll in college. Contrary to popular belief, the evidence indicates that the cost of tuition prevents very few students from pursuing a college degree. The problem isn't that students can't afford college — it's that not enough students possess the academic qualifications necessary even to apply. This cannot be fixed through better financing for tuition: It requires reforming K-12 education.

Emphasis mine. This is also why I oppose quota-driven and double-standard AA programs.

In order to even be considered for admission at almost any four-year college, students must meet three requirements. They must have earned a high-school diploma, have completed a minimum number of academic courses (usually a prescribed number of English, math, and science classes), and they must also be able to read at a basic level.

...no plan can increase college participation simply by providing greater access to funds. And since nearly all minority students eligible to enroll in college already do, attempting to increase their number by expanding affirmative-action policies is similarly futile.

This is why I support measures like NCLB, flawed though they might be, because such plans focus on where the real problems lie. Anyone who thinks the American educational system can be fixed by throwing college tuition money at underprepared students is living in fantasyland.

Unfortunately, such folk are also in the politically correct majority, because so few are willing to say, as Green and Winters do:

Even if college were free — or, for that matter, even if we paid students to attend — students who are this poorly prepared simply can't be admitted.

Villanova officials give students the bird

You're going to think this is a joke, but it's not. The scheduled speaker for this year's commencement at Villanova University is...Big Bird:

Villanova University seniors, who spent up to $112,000 on tuition in their four years, are underwhelmed by news the actor who plays Big Bird will be this year's commencement speaker.

Spinney, who published a book last year called "The Wisdom of Big Bird," has a positive message for students – and won't show up in costume – school officials say.

Why not? That's what Spinney's fame rests upon. If Big Bird's on the cover of the book, why isn't he good enough to receive an honorary degree in costume? Gee, you'd think students like Mordini would be more welcoming of someone who helped teach them the alphabet in the first place *giggle*.

Fark's headline is great: "Cost of 4 years at Villanova: $112,000. Watching students get peeved when they hear Big Bird is their commencement speaker: Priceless"

Update: Recent Villanova graduate George H. gives me what-for and says that Carol Spinney did just fine...better than most commencement speakers, in fact:

I am a Villanova senior who graduated, Spinney did fine, he was short and sweet with no more than 8-10 minutes of talking. He was greeted with resounding applause, and I believe left with a standing ovation. He had a couple jokes and will be remembered. Thank god we had him and not some a**hole who would preach to us about what we are "required" to do with our lives because we are so lucky to have graduated.

If you really want to complain about something, at least choose something good, like the "news" of articles in the Villanovan.

Sounds like George's Villanova funds were put to good use; you wouldn't believe the number of emails and comments I get from high school and college students that are vulgar, illiterate, insulting, and just plain scary. George, I now nominate you for the official role of N2P correspondent in Villanova. If there are news reports from there I should be covering, you let me know.

Encouraging Duke's students to snooze

Ah, Duke University, such a caring environment:

Duke University is eliminating 8 a.m. classes and trying to come up with other ways help its sleep-deprived students, who too often are struggling to survive on a mix of caffeine, adrenaline and ambition.

The school is also considering new orientation programs this fall that would help freshmen understand the importance of sleep.

I have an idea - stop admitting students who don't know that sleep is essential for regular functioning. Oh, you say Duke's students are smart? Then why is Duke assuming that incoming freshmen just don't know that they're supposed to, you know, sleep every once in a while?

James Clack, Duke's director of counseling and psychological services, said the latest research shows that college-age people should be getting nine hours of sleep a night...

Duke wants students to consider adequate sleep a part of overall wellness. One idea is to do individual health assessments for each student and set goals for good nutrition, exercise and plenty of shuteye.

"Individual health assessments" for each student. Mm-hmm. Because, as we all know, college students are known for being willing and eager to follow a stodgy, goal-oriented plan presented to them by their elders. And if James Clack doesn't believe that college students will consider a daily plan that includes nine hours of sleep to be "stodgy" (or boring, or ridiculous, or impossible), he needs to take a few refresher psychology courses.

And speaking of ridiculous:

...Students have shunned 8 a.m. classes to the point that many departments stopped offering them. When campus planners looked over the schedule, they realized that, over the years, most classes had been squeezed into the hours between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m...

Duke was running out of classroom space, and students were beginning to complain about the availability of courses. So administrators worked out a new schedule for the fall, spreading classes more evenly throughout the day and week. The result: no more 8 a.m. classes, but plenty starting at 8:30 a.m. That will still be a shock to some students who have never had classes before 9.

What's wrong with this plan? Where to begin? Students are complaining about classes not being available, but they don't show up for classes if they're available too early. Sounds like Duke isn't so much concerned for student health than tired of all the whining.

Now, there are classes at 8:30, but if they're hour-long classes, the next available time slot is 10 am, not 9. The whole day is essentially shifted back one hour, so students who were going to bed at 1 am before will be going to bed at 2 am now. Methinks that forcing bars to close a half-hour earlier would do more to get students into snoozeland than scheduling classes a half-hour later.

Vice Provost Judith Ruderman makes the most sensible statements:

"We're going to have a lot of grumbling next fall when the reality sets in [and students are forced to go to classes at 8:30]," Ruderman said. "But you know what? They're resourceful and they'll manage."

Ruderman's advice to her sleepwalking students? Take an afternoon nap.

Sounds like Ruderman is VERY tired of all the whining, as I would be. Bear in mind here that I am very sympathetic to people who need lots of sleep; during graduate school I was poked, prodded, monitored, psychoanalyzed, and hospitalized due to insomnia and sleep deprivation. It's not a bad idea to encourage students to beware of bizarre sleeping schedules and offer treatment for those who have really screwed-up sleeping habits. But for students to refuse 8:00 am classes and then bitch about availability is ridiculous. What are they going to do when they have to be at work at 8 am in the real world?

Best comments on Fark:

Learn to drink coffee, it's what college is for.

Went to a community college - took classes from 4 to 11 at night. Went to Purdue - took classes from 7:30AM to 4:30 - very few classes at Purdue past that - almost forces you to take 7:30AM classes at some point. Either way you mix coffee and alcohol in the right combination to get through the day and you sleep while rendering. If your project involves coding, not rendering, then you're screwed. Nothing has changed now that I'm in the real world. No difference.

Anything free is worth what you pay for it

Does anybody think there are half a million college students out there willing to get a free college education in exchange for community service?

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (search) says he would pay for his plan to give a free college education to young students who agree to public service by ending a $13 billion "windfall" that banks earn for making government-backed student loans.

Kerry contends that as many as 500,000 young men and women would be lured into public service by his plan, which he said would reinvigorate the nation's commitment to such service. His plan, to be announced Wednesday at a roundtable in New York City, is aimed at answering questions about how he would pay for his proposals.

I'm as suspicious about this as I am about Kerry's claim that 220,000 students have been "priced out" of a college education over the last three years. For starters, as of 1999, there were almost 15 million Americans enrolled in college, with enrollment expected to increase by another 1.5 million by 2009. This means that Kerry wants to restructure the student loan system so that another, oh, 1 or 2% of college hopefuls can attend.

And what exactly does it mean to be "priced out" of a college education? Does it mean that there are no scholarships, students loans, or financial assistance available for those 220,000? Are students who could go to college later if they worked for a few years now being counted? It's hard to believe that if someone wanted to get through a community college, that feat would be utterly financially impossible for their entire life.

As for this "community service," what are we talking about? Picking up trash on the side of the road? Working with kids? Working as unpaid political interns? Just how much community service does it take to justify getting a free college education?

I also find it interesting that this type of exchange of labor for education is being proposed by the same camp who believes that members of today's Armed Forces, though volunteers, were "forced" by "society" to enlist because of financial pressures. Couldn't Kerry's plan be viewed as "forcing" the unfortunate poor to work for free in order to get their college educations?

Can good grades be rationed?

Here's one way to curb grade inflation - Princeton is considering rationing the number of A's to be awarded in each department:

In what would be the strongest measure to combat grade inflation by an elite university, Princeton faculty will vote later this month on a plan to require each academic department to award an A-plus, A or A-minus for no more than 35percent of its grades.

"I think it's tremendously significant that Princeton is doing this, and I do think it will have a ripple effect," said Bradford P. Wilson, a part- time teacher at Princeton and executive director of the National Association of Scholars, a group that has spoken out against grade inflation. "What goes on at the premier institutions sets the standard of quality for every institution."

Even if a quota produced the "right" results, I don't know that this really fixes the problem. The problem is not the number of A's per se, but the fact that college professors have lowered their standards and students have come to feel more entitled to good grades. In some departments (say, math or engineering), I'm sure this quota would have no effect because A's aren't just handed out anyway. But in other departments, the culture of the A is so ingrained that it would take more than this plan to set things right. My guess is that some professors - those who believe in rewarding effort over acheivement - would do away with grades altogether rather than limit the number of A's.

Sad stories from CSU

Cal State math professor David Klein (whose been featured on this blog before) provides some commentary in the Orange County Register about the racial politics surrounding remedial math education:

By 1998, 54 percent of all entering freshmen students in the 23-campus CSU system were so weak in math skills that they were required to enroll in remedial programs (the figures were similar for language skills). In March 2000, math specialists in Los Angeles Unified School District estimated that 60 percent of L.A.'s eighth-graders did not know the multiplication tables.

Sounds like L.A. could have spent money more wisely sending each student a copy of the Schoolhouse Rock Multiplication Rock video. What does it say when an entire system can't do the job of a few animated videos?

The California school board began to reverse the worst math fads in 1997 after approving rigorous, world-class math standards written by leading mathematicians at Stanford University. Those reforms are now working at the elementary school level in California, and year-by-year improvement is wending its way up the grades. But we are still dealing with a lost generation in high schools and state colleges.

How lost? Students enrolling in CSU are working at the fifth-grade level and rely on calculators to do basic math. The remedial program seemed to be working well, but those who were dissatisfied with the 19 percent failure rate played the race card:

The 81 percent passage rate - however impressive in context - was not high enough for the Pan African Studies and Chicana/o Studies departments at CSUN. Both departments wrote open letters denouncing the math department. Pan African Studies wrote on behalf "of black and brown student clientele regarding the structure of the program, the ambivalence and/or elitist attitudes of some of its instructors and the high failure rates in the developmental math courses"...

Besides citing the failure rate of 19 percent, the math department's critics gave no other evidence to support charges of racism, elitism or other accusations. Many of the remedial math instructors were themselves Latino, and all worked tirelessly to help the students, including tutoring outside of class...Nevertheless, attempts by the math department to defend itself from charges of racial insensitivity, etc., were ignored by the CSUN administration. Control of the program was taken away from the math department - and now no one complains about passage rates. That's because the problem of remedial math education was solved largely by defining it out of existence.

Apparently, for the professional victimologist here, the real tragedy is not that students matriculate at CSU with fifth-grade math skills, but that at CSU these students are being held to real, if remedial, standards. Are those 19% who cannot pass remedial math courses now better off because the "elitist" math department no longer controls the coursework? It's doubtful.

What's more, even though the elementary school students in California are now learning math under more rigorous standards, CSU is ensuring that they'll be taught by incompetents:

Math professors who teach the arithmetic course for future elementary-school teachers, such as myself, are required to allow all students to use their calculators on the exam that tests their understanding of how and why arithmetic "works." The inescapable fact is that California expects more competence in arithmetic from its elementary-school students than CSUN expects from its future teachers. Since 1998, schoolchildren have not been allowed to use calculators on the state's annual standardized tests, and with good reason.

Dealing with "this new type of parent"

At the University of Calgary, administrators are shaking their heads over parents who just can't seem to let go:

...university and college staff are walking a fine line these days, trying to manage parents who can't let go and students embracing all the independence living away from home provides.

In that case the mother, worried her daughter couldn't combat a cold alone, stayed a week. Staff forced the parent to leave when she began meddling in the daughter's roommates' affairs, telling the other three students when to go to bed, do their homework and to stop watching television.

Ah ha ha ha! That's too funny. Can you imagine? My mom couldn't wait to get me out of the house when I entered college; I can't imagine her moving in with me over a cold, much less ordering my roommates about.

Most agree the new parent is an extension of a new breed of student, commonly referred to as the "millennia student." Born in 1980 or later and emerging from structured lives, these students rely on parental involvement and many don't mind if their mom or dad checks in.

"These are kids who, all their lives, have been woken up for breakfast, driven to school, picked up, then driven to soccer practice," said Lynn. "They run on structure and their parents aren't sure their kids can survive without them."

Wouldn't college be the logical point for the parents to step back and find out?

Protecting those delicate college students

The cult of "emotional well-being" explains why universities have become such a hotbed of permanently-offended students. Joshua Elder recounts the tale of his alma mater's reaction to an "affirmative action" bake sale.

The Northwestern University affirmative-action bake sale, held on October 31 and sponsored by members of the College Republicans and the Objectivist Club, lasted only two-and-a-half hours before its message was silenced in response to complaints from a few offended students. There was no threat of violence. No "hostile environment" was available to use as an excuse. But thanks to the "bias incident" clause recently added to the Northwestern Student Handbook, there need not have been. According to the handbook, "any action that threatens or endangers the emotional well-being, health or safety of any person" is enough to warrant intervention by campus authorities. Of course no university wants to come across as being against free speech and expression, so the officials who shut the event down claimed that they had procedural reasons for doing so.

Emphasis mine. Northwestern has made it illegal to injure anyone else's emotional well-being. For some reason, this doesn't stop anti-war protests, hunger strikes, and distribution of pro-Socialist literature from taking place in the same area where the bake sale was held; I suppose those capitalists and war supporters have much stronger emotional health.

Elder follows this ridiculous coddling to its logical conclusion:

Thrust out of their liberal cocoon and into the real world, post-graduate leftists find themselves lost and alone in a frightening and foreign land where their genius goes unrecognized by an uneducated populace filled with evolution-denying Bible Belt fundamentalists, confederate-flag-waving southern bigots, and profit-obsessed big businessmen. Pushed to the fringes of the liberal mainstream by their own radical beliefs and unable to compete successfully in the marketplace of ideas due to their inability to argue or articulate those beliefs, the post-graduates soon grow embittered to the point of irrationality. They see enemies on all sides and label whoever fails fully to support their agenda a racist, sexist, or fascist. Their political positions are no longer defined by what they want to accomplish, but rather by whom they want to destroy. They become the Angry Left.

For those college students who believe that emotional health is paramount, and for whom the feeling of being offended is a blunt object with which to trample the constitutional rights of others, the "real world" must be a scary place indeed.

Appalling, ignorant, and in need of remediation

Economics professor Larry J. Sechrest of Sul Ross State University is in hot water for his contention that "the students at Sul Ross, and more generally, the long-term residents of the entire area, are appallingly ignorant, irrational, anti-intellectual, and, well, . . . just plain stupid":

In the fall of 2002, his article said, "42 percent of our freshmen had to take remedial classes in reading, writing, or math just to meet the state's ridiculously low standard of 'competence'...The taxpayers of Texas have already paid for these kids to learn English and math in middle school, then again in high school, much of which is a review of what they were supposed to have absorbed in previous years"...

The article, copied and passed around by the hundreds, led to two anonymous death threats on Dr. Sechrest's office phone, scores of obscene phone calls in the middle of the night, eggs tossed at his home and windows smashed on a car parked outside his house.

Hmm. Given that all the hysterical reaction seems to be either verbal or violent, can I conclude from the lack of well-written, correctly-spelled death-threat letters that Dr. Sechrest might be correct? His detractors really can't write properly.

Dr. Sechrest, 57, a burly, gray-bearded man, said: "I did not go one step out of my way to throw this in people's faces. Am I going to apologize for it? No. But I never intended to insult them."

"We're not achieving very much in the way of education," said Dr. Sechrest, a tenured professor who has taught at the university for 13 years. "Half the teachers in my department don't give final tests, so that means they just take an extra week off. Sul Ross does not have top-flight people. There's always pressure on to let kids slide."

Interestingly, some positve reactions to Dr. Sechrest's statements have begun to surface:

Last week Dr. Sechrest said he had begun to receive more positive e-mail and phone calls. He noted in particular an e-mail message from a former student.

"As I read your article I found myself laughing out loud and saying things like 'amen' and 'true,' " the former student wrote. "At the same time I felt somewhat guilty because it really did offend people I really care about. There's no denying these are legitimate concerns. The lack of interest in anything beyond Brewster County lines also baffled me."

Dissecting Leftism, who provided the link to this story, notes that even Harvard is in the business of remedial classes:

Harvard gets the cream of U.S. High School graduates so at least those students should be 100% as educated as you can get -- right? Wrong! One of my readers writes that the reality is much, much worse than that:

Can anyone now deny that vouchers are the only hope for the U.S. school system?

"No test can measure the kind of learning we do"

The debate over the "college FCAT" goes on:

While education leaders throughout Florida voice opposition to a proposal that could bring standardized testing to Florida universities, the man who will bring the proposal before Florida's Board of Governors next month said he feels like he is misunderstood.

"I have never advocated standardized testing like a lot of people seem to think I have. In fact, I think there are too many standardized tests out there," Uhlfelder said. "What I am investigating is the possibility of implementing a written exam to make sure our college graduates know how to write at the level they should be capable of. I am tired of students and university presidents distorting what I say when they know (accountability measures) are something we have to do. We will not do anything without the universities' input, though, and they know that."

USF officials, in particular, oppose the measure, and standardized testing in general. The student government president says no student supports the test (not surprising) and makes the erroneous-but-politically-correct claim that any standardized test would be detrimental to "academic freedom."

Uhlfelder, on the other hand, wonders what all the fuss over standardized tests is about, considering the importance of tests such as the SAT in college admissions. The issue here, really, is whether the schools are doing (as they claim) a bang-up job of accountability already. I agree that it makes more sense to put funding into education rather than testing, but unless there's some form of accountability that clearly shows where the problems are, where do the improvements begin?

"Admit, Deny, Done"

One of the charges I commonly hear against tests like the SAT is that the scores aren't useful for today's college admissions officers, who consider "the whole student" and the unique qualities that each applicant can bring to the college environment. But some say that the concept of spending a lot of time considering applications is a "Hollywood" fiction:

Anthony Dudley thinks he has a good shot at getting into Florida State University this fall. His application lists a number of extracurricular activities, including membership in the National Honor Society and the NAACP Youth Council. He wrote a moving essay about caring for his terminally ill aunt. And he has three letters of recommendation.

One reason is volume: Florida universities are among the largest in the nation...
And since most Florida schools aren't overly selective, most admission decisions are based on grades and test scores. When evaluators look at essays or letters of reference, it's usually because an applicant is right on the edge of qualifying...

Ironic, isn't it? People who oppose standardized testing tend to be the same people who believe every kid should go to college, but when every kid tries to go to college, the swamped universities are forced to drastically cut down on the time spent per applicant. The result: Test scores become more important.

Even by Florida standards, FSU has an assembly-line approach to admissions.

A sliding scale wrapped in plastic on Nerona-Balog's desk tells her what combination of grade point average and SAT score is acceptable at FSU. The school also has a 20-point checklist that provides additional scores for each applicant.

The kids on the borderline merit further inspection, but at Florida's largest universities, it appears that great students don't need to spend much time on the essay, and poor students needn't bother sending videos or lists of extracurriculars. At some universities, only one person makes the decision, which adds to the mystery surrounding the process:

Nicolas Vilaret, 17, was stunned when UF turned him down for early decision this year. So were his parents and his guidance counselor.

"Was it a whole group of people or just one person making the decision? I couldn't tell you why I didn't get in," says Nicolas, who applied again to UF, this time for regular admission.

Update: Pandagon says I missed the point, because smaller or more elite colleges don't use this assembly-line process.

Brave New World of Admissions

I've mentioned Cliff Sjogren and his unusual ideas for modifying the college admissions process before. Jay Mathews solicited letters asking Ms. Sjogren, and everyone else, to describe how they would change college admissions. The results? Well, they're pretty..revolutionary.

Clifford Sjogren, former chief admissions officer at the University of Michigan and the University of Southern California [a summary of his original idea]:

Emphasize high school grades, adjusted for each high school's degree of grading difficulty. Replace early decision plans with nonbinding rolling admission. Consider SAT or ACT scores only if they are average or above average, because low scores may not mean low ability. Welcome a written student statement on anything that might interest the college. De-emphasize extracurricular activities and eliminate legacy and faculty preferences for in-state public university applicants...

As I pointed out before, low SAT scores and high grades might point to grade inflation, so if the interest here is to judge each high school's degree of "grading difficulty", the SAT scores of their students would come in quite handy for that. Yes, some smart students bomb out on tests, but if large numbers of A students do poorly on the SAT, something other than test anxiety is to blame. And I hope the written student statement will be assessed for the quality of the writing, and not just the topic chosen.

Rod Davis, Parent:

For selective colleges, especially tax-supported public colleges, I am now convinced that for the two-thirds of every class that is admitted without special considerations being given, the decision should be reached through a lottery. That lottery should be open to any and all applicants that pass a substantive test or tests, like the SAT II or AP tests, formulated by the college or consortium of colleges. The tests should measure those skills and knowledge each college believes are essential for success.

In other words, first make sure they've got the skills, then use the lottery system (in place of, I assume, "diversity," essays, legacies, etc.). This doesn't remove all the controversy about the tests, though.

Virginia Kim, Law student:

Do not even bother requesting the SAT or ACT. Focus instead on Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests, which almost all selective college applicants take, and since most students don't take them until the end of their senior year, require a year off. Do not accept applications from current high school seniors. Instead, schools should require all applicants to have their high school degree in hand at the time of the application.

Okay, but what do they do for that year? And what about students who attend high schools that don't offer AP classes? Is the AP exam standard the same as now what's require to exempt certain college courses?

Martha Marrazza, Junior Walt Whitman High School:

Emphasize diversity in applicants, with a point system that rewards passionate or unique students; applicants who net the most points are accepted. Points for extracurricular activities, leadership or honor positions are doubly counted. SAT or ACT scores only act as tiebreakers when there is a deadlock between two otherwise qualified students.

Technically, everyone is unique, and you can be passionate and still be undisciplined, or dumb as a post. Do all extracurricular activities count the same, and aren't most leadership position points going to reward the popular over the loners? And if the SAT/ACT is meaningful enough to be a tiebreaker, why not use it earlier in the process.

Fred Reed, Writer and parent

Avoid college altogether by establishing a difficult test, a longer and more detailed version of the Graduate Record Exam, that could be used as proof of a college education even if you do not have a degree, just as the GED test can be used in lieu of a high school diploma. This would prove that you were ready for college-level jobs even if you didn't go to college.

I don't think that's really possible, and it make my head hurt just to think about designing such an exam. And oh the howls of outrage from those who fail; talk about "high-stakes"!

Setting classroom standards

UNC professor Mike Adams starts the new year off right with a new set of rules for rude students:

As most of you know, I take a different approach to these problems. First, I shut the door at the beginning of each class period. Then, if a student walks in late, he (it usually is a male, no offense to tardy feminists) gets three points deducted from his final average. If his cell-phone rings (no offense to co-dependent feminists), I deduct three points from his final average per ring. And if she (sorry guys, it is usually a female) actually answers the call, she fails the course...

In light of the on-going problems with tardiness and cell phones, I am going to modify my class policies this semester...The specifics of my new policy follow:

If your cell phone goes off in class, or if you are late to class, you must write a 2500-word paper (minimum) entitled “The Death of Civility at the Postmodern University.” In this paper, you will be asked to write about the decline of civility in our public universities in recent decades. Please note that if you are late more than once, or if your cell phone goes off on more than one occasion, your paper must be a minimum of 5000 words. If you have three separate transgressions, you automatically fail the course. Finally, the paper must be of “A” quality in order for you to stay in the course. You will receive no other credit for completing this project, except, of course, for its positive impact upon your character.

Heh.

NYU and human sexuality

Well, we can't claim that New York University isn't doing a good job of teaching its students human biology and sexuality. If it wasn't, how would this student have ever come up with this idea for her film class?

In October, a film student at New York University pitched an idea for her video-making class: a four-minute portrayal of the contrast between unbridled human lust and banal everyday behavior.

The matter has raised a mini-tempest on campus...Ms. Carmicino and Professor de Jesus say the issue raises far-reaching questions of censorship and academic and artistic freedom. "This is where you unfold as a creative artist," Ms. Carmicino, 21, said. "You need people to bounce your ideas off of, or else you won't evolve as an artist." Ms. Carmicino is a junior in the film and television department at the university's Tisch School of the Arts.

I think Ms. Carmacino has confused having people "to bounce ideas off of" with having people bounce off each other. Let's she if she can, like any true artist, create an interesting film that doesn't include hard-core porn.

A college dedicated to teaching high-school-level skills

Devoted Reader Mark sends along this link to a Interested-Participant posting in which IP expresses amazement about the fact that, in Ohio, the function of a college, apparently, is to teach high-school level material:

The state agency that oversees higher education wants to phase out government funding for college remedial classes required for more than a third of freshmen, a plan that has officials at the University of Cincinnati and elsewhere worried about the consequences -- economic and academic -- of such a move.

"Assisting underprepared students is a core function of higher education and is something we do at the University of Cincinnati. There is nothing to indicate that this is going to change anytime soon," said Anthony J. Perzigian, UC's senior vice president and provost for baccalaureate and graduate education. (Emphasis mine.)

Got that? The core function of higher education is to educate those who are not yet ready for higher education. Surely, this VP's defense of the alleged "core function" has nothing to do with the fact that remedial courses cost money yet don't provide credit towards a degree. Thus, students enrolled in remedial classes - or the taxpayers of Ohio - are paying tuition for courses that are unrelated to earning a diploma.

As IP puts it:

It is incomprehensible to this writer that a senior official with the University of Cincinnati states that teaching high school is a core function of the university. It also doesn't make any sense that the taxpayer should be responsible for a university to teach high school courses.

And we're not talking about small numbers of students enrolled in these remedial classes, either:

The 2002 Performance Report for Ohio's Colleges and Universities said 32 percent of new freshman take a remedial math and/or English course their first year on the main campus, and that the average for Ohio main campuses last year was 23 percent.

The 2002 statewide average for branch campuses was 48 percent, UC officials said.

In other words, on average, nearly half of all UC admits have to take a remedial course before they can even get started on tackling college-level material. But instead of admitting that the Board of Regents might have a point in restructuring the system so that college hopefuls will be forced to learn the basics in high school, the UC VP is all about making sure that UC gets that tuition money from those valuable "underprepared" students"

"The announcement that they want to phase out funding by 2007 raises questions about who will be responsible for underprepared students, including many adults seeking to enter or re-enter higher education."

Perzigian said serving students who begin their college careers with deficiencies in math, science, reading and composition is integral to UC's mission.

Why? Why are they being admitted to college if they're not ready? The last I checked, a college degree was not a right. Why should taxpayers, who are apparently already supporting a failing K-12 system, be forced to support a college system that doesn't value college-level work?

The IP wonders if perhaps the current UC funding is being wasted on other, non-academic material:

On a positive note, unnamed officials have been heard to remark that incoming students are well versed in diversity, environmentalism, homosexuality and transgenderism, animal rights and radical vegetarianism, and the problems of the homeless. No remedial classes are necessary in these areas. Areas of deficient knowledge are exclusively reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The ruckus over the n-word

Recently, a University of Virginia employee wanted to complain about the insensitivity of the name "Redskins" for the Washington pro football team. This employee thought this term was as degrading to Native Americans as a certain n-word is to African Americans. So this hapless, politically-correct employee used both terms in a statement while denouncing such language.

Such language is so taboo, however, that the employee is in trouble for using the n-word, even though the employee was only using it as yardstick indicating how bad such terms can be. In other words, this employee was using the word not as a racial slur, but as a way of indicating the worst possible racial slur. Nevertheless, this person's use of it has been deemed offensive (even though the reporting of it in the newspapers hasn't been).

David Bernstein believes this entire mess is no different from the "Jehovah" scence in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."

OFFICIAL: You have been found guilty by the elders of the town of uttering the name of our Lord, and so, as a blasphemer,...
CROWD: Ooooh!
OFFICIAL: ...you are to be stoned to death.
CROWD: Ahh!
MATTHIAS: Look. I-- I'd had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was, 'That piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.'
CROWD: Oooooh!
OFFICIAL: Blasphemy! He's said it again!
CROWD: Yes! Yes, he did! He did!...
OFFICIAL: Did you hear him?!
CROWD: Yes! Yes, we did! We did!...
WOMAN #1: Really!

And the Instaman says:

MONTY PYTHON BECOMES REAL LIFE at the University of Virginia. You know, this kind of thing is doing an amazing amount of damage to the reputation of higher education out in the greater world, and most academics don't appreciate the extent of the harm.

I agree. The term is indeed offensive, but it can be use inoffensively in certain contexts, one of which is certainly "The n-word is a truly degrading word." Why do universities, of all places, want to demonstrate such a truly chilling suppression of speech, not to mention a total misunderstanding of context?

(In case you're wondering, my context is that I was reared by several Southern matriarchs whose tough disciplinary tactics prevent me from even thinking the n-word, much less typing it. Plus, I don't want anyone who would type that word into search engine finding this site.)

High costs, low educational value

One of my favorite writers, Wendy McElroy, has a very informative article up about the high prices of some low-value college curricula.

Before they send their children onto a college campus in North America, parents should read two new reports...

A second report issued by the College Board, a non-profit schools association, Trends in College Pricing 2003, states, "college tuition and fees increased an average of $579 at four-year public institutions, $1,114 at four-year private institutions, and $231 at two-year public institutions" in 2002.

What's more, one researcher estimates that half the money going to public universities comes from taxpayers, and a lot of that money appears to be going into non-academic projects (water slides and indoor batting cages, anyone?).

What does Ms. McElroy suggest? Privatization.

There is an obvious solution: Return to a curriculum in which knowledge is valued more than political correctness.

If clients value political correctness or water parks, then they can pay the cost both in lower academic standards and spiraling tuition. Meanwhile, those who value knowledge and skill can enjoy the comparatively modest, stripped-down tuition it would cost to acquire them.

Faking racism in San Francisco

Not "hate crimes," not even "hoaxes," but instead, "a way to bring racial issues on campus to the forefront of the university":

A recent police report issued by the SF State University Police provides new information in the alleged hate crimes on campus. According to the report, racial epithets written on the doors of two African-American students were not the product of racism, but rather a way to bring racial issues on campus to the forefront of the university.

“Granted I was wrong and it was stupid of me, there’s no excuse,” Miller told [X]press. “I’m mad at myself that I let someone coerce me into doing this, but it’s been a big learning experience.”

So this is how they help contribute to "awareness" of racism, by fanning the flames with fake hate crimes? By this logic, those of us women who want the police to take accusations of rape more seriously should all go to the police at once and file fake sexual assault charges against men we know, no matter the effect on the lives of the accused or the reaction of the general public. How appalling.

At least Miller acknowledges that she understands what she did wrong; Jackson has given no indication that she now knows racial threat hoaxes are not an acceptable response to disagreeing with one's roommates.

The UC SAT flap, continued

I've recently posted a few times on the SAT score controversies currently swirling around some of the University of California campuses; in particular, Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego have come under fire. The UC president, Robert Dynes, has publicly defended their admissions program, which let low-SAT-scorers in through "comprehensive review."

All week, I've been itching to post on the updates to the news that vastly-underqualified students were admitted to these challenging universities. The main update was the recent LATimes article that insists that race was not a factor in the admission of low-scoring students. Well, John of Discriminations doesn't agree with the LATimes conclusion, and he did a great job of dissecting the article this week. Such a great job, in fact, that Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles took notice. Kudos to John for the mention!

Anyway, here's John's post:

Despite the length of this article — over 2200 words — neither the numbers nor the differential rate of admission to Berkeley and UCLA for low-scoring minorities is given. Thus we are told that Berkeley admitted “low-scoring blacks and Latinos at twice the rate of Asians and whites with similar scores” and also that Berkeley accepted “only 8% of all low-scoring applicants” (emphasis added). We are pointedly not told what the admission rates were for low-scoring whites and Asians or for blacks and Hispanics, nor the absolute numbers.

When critics of race preferences argue that high standards and thus relatively fewer minority admissions to Berkeley and UCLA are not discriminatory because minorities are able to attend other, less selective campuses of the University of California system, they are often called racist. Now the Los Angeles Times argues that, despite highly disproportionate admissions of low-scoring blacks and Hispanics over similarly low-scoring whites and Asians at Berkeley and UCLA, there is no discrimination because in the UC system as a whole low-scorers from all groups are accepted at about the same rate.

Nice try.

Here's what Kaus had to say (scroll down to the second posting for November 5th):

I actually don't understand the entire basis of the LAT story. Does it tell us anything important if one ethnic group with low scores is admitted at a higher rate than another group with low scores? Doesn't the rate depend on the number of low-SAT applicants, which could vary for all sorts of reasons?

In fact, although the Times doesn't discuss it, the paper's own data shows that low-SAT "underrepresented minorities" (primarily blacks and Latinos) do apply to UC in relatively great numbers--so many that, whatever the success rates, 65% of the students actually admitted to Berkeley and UCLA with low SATs are "underrepresented minorities." Even at Riverside, the least selective UC campus, 49% of low-SAT admissions are "underrepresented minorities." How does this show that, as the Times says, "UC admissions did not appear to be racially biased" or that the the "comprehensive review" program isn't a backdoor scheme of racial preferences? It doesn't.

Kaus then says that if ignoring the SAT in favor of "comprehensive review" results in the admission of worthier applicants, he's all for it, but he points out something I've mentioned before - if the UC system is downplaying the SAT because it allegedly doesn't predict success in college, then they'd better be prepared to show us that the comprehensive review process does.

Kaus also mentions this Oakland Tribune article, which does a good job of crunching the numbers:

According to an analysis by this newspaper, 90 percent of the 332 students admitted to Berkeley in fall 2002 with SAT scores 1000 or below were minorities. In 2001, 89 percent of the 388 students with low scores were minorities...

Berkeley officials said SAT test scores alone are not a good indicator of who will succeed and who will fail at the university...

Altogether now - is there any proof that comprehensive review is a better indicator?

None of the students has left Berkeley due to academic deficiency, officials said.

Okay, so at least they're trying to support it, although this isn't enough. I want to see how long it takes those students to graduate, what GPA they have when they graduate, what majors they're enrolled in, and how they do in the GRE. In other words, I want to see the type of data that the College Board routinely rolls out in support of the SAT.

...an additional look at data provided by UC headquarters shows that most of the low-scoring students are minority. In 2002, 63 -- or 19 percent -- of the students were black and 149 -- or 45 percent -- were Latino. Those are minority groups that are underrepresented at UC Berkeley and other UC campuses. Another 83 students (25 percent) were Asian, 5 (1.5 percent) were Native American and 23 (7 percent) were white. Another 9 students were categorized as "other."

In 2001, 66 -- or 17 percent -- of students admitted with scores below 1000 were black and 170 -- 44 percent -- were Latino. Asian students numbered 110 (28 percent); 25 students (6 percent) were white and 17 students (4 percent) were "other" or didn't provide the data.

Supporters of comprehensive review insist that this doesn't mean they're doing an end run around Proposition 209. The data suggest otherwise.

Others say no one should be surprised that minorities score poorly on the SAT -- and those scores alone don't mean a student is underqualified for the university.

"With every $10,000 increase in family income, there is a lock-step increase in SAT scores," said the Equal Justice report, which was prepared by a coalition of Berkeley faculty, civil rights and education groups.

Two things fascinate me about this type of research:

(1) These anti-testing groups don't seem to notice that SES is also correlated with many indicators of academic achievement. Thus, the argument for not using the SAT could be extended to not using grades, not using AP test scores, not using AP class enrollment, not using number of years of math courses, etc. Why stop at opposing tests? Why not insist (as some do) that kids from poor backgrounds can't be expected to do well on any measures of academic achievement?

(2) The correlation of SES with SAT scores tells us absolutely nothing about whether the SAT is measuring something real. In fact, in our capitalistic society, it would be very odd if SAT didn't correlate with SES. The fact is that kids who come from wealthy homes are more likely to have had access to tutoring and better schools; are more likely to come from homes with educated parents; are more likely to have spent time around books and libraries and enriched environments. Thus, the SAT, which is related to SES, is telling us that kids who grow up around more money learn more, and do better academically as a whole. The faltering K-12 public system is complicit in this, because kids from poor backgrounds often get stuck in the worst schools, with the teachers most willing to lower standards and make excuses.

I agree that this sucks, and in some sense it is not fair that some kids get the shaft economically. However, this reality does not lead logically to the conclusion that colleges should feel obligated to pass over kids from wealthy homes, who are well-prepared for college, in favor of kids who just never had the opportunity. There is no indication that "leveling the playing field" in this respect is actually giving more opportunity to worthier candidates. There's no data to show that it make sense to admit students with poor grades and low SAT scores, under the assumption that these students will automatically flourish in a challenging college environment.

How colleges have reached the point of justifying the admission of students who didn't really accomplish anything in high school, simply on the basis of the fact that those students didn't have the same economic opportunities as other, more accomplished students, is beyond me. It's as though these policies are determined to punish some kids for having had more opportunities than others, and downplay the very real accomplishments of kids who took full advantage of their parents' generosity.

Bondage in the heartland

Who knew attending Iowa State could be so exciting?

Iowa State University student leaders voted 21-9 Wednesday to grant funds to a student organization that teaches about bondage and other sexual fetishes.

Tony Luken, speaker of the GSB Senate, acknowledged some personal qualms about Cuffs but said the organization did deserve funding. "They're a registered student organization, and any registered student organization can request funds from GSB," he said.

Dontcha love that nod to "diversity"? Duane Long certainly has his educrat speak down; by his definition, refusing to fund a "registered student organization" that is devoted to alternative sexual practices would be a blow against "diversity." Lord knows, we can't have that.

Of course, if one goes to examine Iowa State's political student groups, there is one Republican/conservative group out of a total of thirteen; I suppose that counts as "diversity."

Are you Cerulean or Aquamarine?

The Shark Blog has a new name for the type of "diversity" that college administrators often try to engineer - "Crayon Diversity." As Sharkansky puts it:

Regent Cole went on to talk about the importance of diversity and said the event had strengthened his resolve that the UW should promote a more diverse campus. Regent Ark Chin said such advocacy was a must in light of the atmosphere on campus.

The Board of Regents wins today's Crayon Diversity Award for advocating the principle that diversity is a good thing as long as people don't express diverse opinions.

In other words, as long as we're all different colors, the need for "diversity" is satisfied. Shark also thoughtfully pointed out some demographic factors to the UW Board of Regents:

As I've pointed out previously, the college-age population of the State of Washington is 72.5% white, 6.5% Asian and 3.7% black, while the University of Washington freshman class is 56.5% white, 27.9% Asian and 2.9% black. The only way the university could accurately reflect the diversity of the state's population would be to send 3/4 of the Asian students home and admit a lot more white kids and a handful of new blacks. I hope that's not what the Regents have in mind.

Does "comprehensive review" capture the college "essentials?"

University of California President Robert Dynes is in the news today, defending the "comprehensive review" admissions policy that has drawn so much fire as of late:

Dynes defended the UC’s fledgling “comprehensive review” system of admitting students based on a number of factors beyond standardized test scores and high school grades.

”Creativity, imagination, motivation and just plain work ethic have to count for something,” he said.

Really? Why? Are creativity and imagination absolutely essential for success in college? Are they predictive of eventual graduation? Does this mean the less-imaginative students will be less likely to be admitted, despite good grades? Can motivation be reliably measured? How can you tell if a student has a good work ethic? What if they've worked really hard and are really motivated, but still have bad grades? Why would that background be beneficial to the applicant, when one could view it as proof that this student just can't succeed in an academic environment, no matter how hard they work?

Why don't any reporters play Devil's Advocate with these fatuous statements? I mean, it might be true that "creativity and imagination" are absolutely essential for success in college, but I don't see anyone providing any data showing that, and I don't see anyone pointing out that such statements are theories, not facts.

The right questions to ask

Erin O'Connor was kind enough to link to me in her post entitled, "Choosing a College," and you should go and read it now. No, not because it's got my name in it, but because (a) Erin's posts are almost always magnificent, and (b) it reproduces a letter from a concerned parent about the politicized, PC world of college campuses today. Erin also links to the NRO article, "Reading Between The Lies During Campus Visits," which is a treasure trove of suggested question for parents to ask when visiting universities (and don't miss Erin's comments on his article, either).

Oh, and thanks, Erin, for introducing me to Invisible Adjunct. I thought I knew of most of the college-follies blogs, but this was a new one to me. His entries are long, thoughtful, and generate a lot of reader commentary - always a good sign on a blog.

Another Good Samaritan suffers

I once thought Brandon Zivi held the award for Least Appreciated Good Samaritan on this earth. Now I see I was wrong:

On a recent Thursday, two police officers appeared at [Oklahoma University student Michael Wright's] house, apparently to investigate his stalking of a female OU student. Stalking is a serious crime, which is defined as "the willful, malicious and repeated following and harassing of another person." It can place a young man on a registry of sex offenders that could haunt his future and limit his options in life...

The female student bypassed the university and went straight to the local police with the "allegation" that Michael "had looked up her number" — albeit in an open directory. The police were forced by law and policy to investigate. Michael was forced to endure a weeklong ordeal before the bureaucracy offered him an apology ... or as close to it as bureaucracy ever comes.

Ok, so this episode really isn't OU's fault...unless OU was instrumental in teaching this young woman that it was a crime for a man to look up her information in a public directory. Who wants to place bets on whether she's a "Women's Studies" major?

With no religious implication, I say: a devil is at large. He tells us that acts of kindness and common decency do not exist; the worst possible interpretation should be placed on acts that appear to embody those values. Individuals do not exist; only categories.

In real PC terms, this means that all men should be objects of suspicion. A man, such as Michael, should be subject to a criminal investigation that could damage the rest of his life for trying to return a lost ID card.

A novel way to pay off student loans

A Northwestern student is aiming for $50,000 worth of compensation from the university, which prevented him from gaining his biology degree this year because of allegations of cheating. The story that Yahoo News tell is just...weird:

Anton Rozenbaum had a B-plus average and was set to graduate from Northwestern University in 2002 until he was accused of cheating [on a final exam in biology], according to a suit filed last month in Cook County Circuit Court...

After receiving a B-plus on the test, Rozenbaum went to the professor to dispute how he graded the exam. [ok, there's his first mistake. With a B+, what was there to complain about?] During the meeting, he took notes on the exam and the two got into an argument, according to the suit. [So, he's writing notes on his exam as Professor Sontheimer explains his grading scheme, then starts arguing with him.]

Sontheimer claimed the notes on the exam paper were Rozenbaum's attempt to change his answers and get a higher grade, the suit states. He responded by reducing Rozenbaum's grade to an F.

Say what? Rozenbaum was stupid enough to change his answers in front of the professor, and then flip the exam around and claim, "But I did write that on here! See?"? If so, that's just pathetic.

Rozenbaum counters that that he never asked for his grade to be changed. The suit also claims that the university did not properly investigate the claim of student misconduct before upholding the reduced grade.

If the university requires such investigation before exam grades can be changed, and didn't do so, then Rozenbaum might have a leg to stand on. Otherwise, he's learned a valuable lesson or two here. One, don't bitch and moan about a B+. Two, don't try to change answers on your exam after the fact, on the assumption that the prof will never remember what you wrote the first time.

(Nick of Twilight of the Idols has another take on the situation here. Let me just add that he's right to say that I was quick to take the teacher's story as fact, instead of the student's. Perhaps too quick.)

While we're on the topic, is this officially Stupid Lawsuit Week? This woman obviously has the same greedy impulses as Rozenbaum, and you can insert your own joke about "sensitive palates" here. Oh, and why is everyone quoted in this article hailing the decision as a victory against discrimination? If I read this carefully, the woman was drinking for several hours in a bar before deciding to breastfeed her child - in the bar. With alcohol in her system. And yet it's the bar's manager who's the bad guy for trying to enforce the rule that kids can't be in the bar, and for trying to ensure the comfort and enjoyment of his other customers?

Why test at SUNY?

Remember my posting about the suggested standardized test scores for the SUNY system? This editorial takes the Socratic approach to that topic, starting with the very important question of why SUNY believes this is necessary:

SUNY suggests that the purpose of such testing, rather unusual at the university level, would be to measure just how effective the instruction is at its 64 campuses. Does that mean SUNY administrators fear that the instruction there might not be adequate? On what basis would they feel that way?

SUNY would be better off if its administration tried to examine the quality of learning there before putting in place a system that purports to measure it.

Let's hope the SUNY administrators haven't fallen into the trap of believing that good standardized tests are quick & cheap, or that testing in and of itself will help correct errors in the quality of teaching at the various colleges.

Berkeley gets defensive

Oh, Berkeley's now on the defensive, thanks to the public dissemination of the report stating that students with rock-bottom SATs who were admitted in 2002:

Officials from University of California, Berkeley, defended their admissions processes Monday after a confidential document hit the media that questions whether "marginally academically qualified" students were admitted to the campus last year over better students.

The 2002 freshman class at Berkeley was "the academically strongest freshman class in UC Berkeley's history," according to a campus statement issued in response to the document...

Um-hm. Any evidence to support that? Or were enough geniuses admitted that the mean SAT scores didn't change?

Moores' analysis said UC regents have received complaints from parents and students who question why well-prepared students are denied admission to UC -- particularly competitive campuses such as Berkeley.

Parents should be pissed. Berkeley's process is anti-achievement, anti-striving, and anti-effort. Students are being rewarded with entrance despite doing little more than signing their names correctly to the SAT.

Richard Black, Berkeley's assistant vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment, said Moores' analysis looks only at students' scores on the SAT I standardized test. In fact, officials said those scores are only one of several factors in admissions decisions. Factors such as high school grades and scores on subject-specific standardized tests, called SAT IIs, are weighed more heavily in admissions decisions.

Students who score 600 on the SAT do not do better on the subject-specific tests. I can guarantee you that, because the subject-specific tests are generally considered to be more difficult. Also, with grade inflation so rampant, I'd like to know why Berkeley apparently didn't find it odd that someone could have a good high school GPA without being able to answer simple vocabulary and Algebra I items on the SAT.

The university also weighs other factors, such as obstacles students have overcome, demonstrated leadership abilities and academic opportunities available at a student's high school. The process is part of the university's "comprehensive review" admissions policy, which looks at factors besides test scores and grades. The policy was applied for the first time to the incoming class of 2002.

Ah, there we go. "Obstacles" they've overcome. If life didn't throw you hardships, you had a nice, well-lit, comfy kitchen in which to practice your SATs, and you went to a good high school, you're out of luck. On the other hand, if your parents sent you to a rotten school that didn't pull you too far down into squalor, but you haven't demonstrated much in the way of academic achievement, Berkeley wants you around. Of course, a cynic might note that, if these students are making such low SAT scores, it's hard to see how they've overcome anything, unless Berkeley is awarding them admission simply for staying out of trouble or for working at McDonald's all through high school.

It apparently doesn't matter to Berkeley how hard an individual works; what matters is whether they worked more than Berkeley expected them to, given circumstances completely out of their control. You hard-working middle-class white-bread honor roll students better pray for a close relative to get cancer during your junior year, or hope that one of your teachers sexually harasses you, because that's your only shot at awakening Berkeley's "compassionate" admissions officers.

Further, the statement said the review policy helps UC meet its mandate to offer a space to the top 4 percent of students in each high school graduating class.

"Students with low SAT scores are more likely to come from schools and school districts which, in the past, have sent few or no students to UC Berkeley," the statement said. "Admission of such students, who are often the highest-performing students in their schools, is consistent with recent UC regents' policy."

Regardless of whether those students have accomplished much in an objective sense, or whether their academic capabilities are in line with the rest of the students, or whether grade inflation is rampant in these schools. There are no longer objective standards for college readiness, and it's apparently unfair to suggest there are. In other words, if Bridget Green ever manages to pass that exit exam, Berkeley's got a spot open for her.

I apologize if I seem to be harping on this too much, but it really frosts my shorts. I don't often take these stories personally, but today I am (perhaps I haven't had enough coffee yet).

Anyway, it's appalling for me to consider that I, personally, would not be admitted to Berkeley (or, probably, to any UC school) if I applied today, despite a good GPA, stellar SAT scores, and a well-rounded activity schedule. I didn't have hardships to overcome (my parents worked their tails off to do that for me). I didn't have diverse life experiences, thanks to the small Southern town in which I was raised. The hard work that I did in high school would have meant diddly-squat to the racial bean counters of Berkeley, who apparently don't care if students have what it takes to finish college, only whether students add the right mix of "diversity" to the campus environment.

Protesting color-blindness at UCLA

Garin K. Hovannisian is most unimpressed with UCLA's student protest against California's proposed Proposition 54, aka the Racial Privacy Initiative, which would block the collection of race information on California’s students, contractors, and employees. There are many loopholes, of course, all of which have escaped the not-well-organized and fairly-clueless protestors:

The rally began when a student approached the microphone and yelled, “We don’t got the money like Ward Connerly and all the Republicans in Sacramento, but we’ve got the power of our voice.” Then, one of the leaders of the rally began, with a sizeable audience following, the extended chant, “We are what diversity look like! This is what diversity look like!”

The opponents of Proposition 54 reflect a social vision in which color takes precedence over character; race over intelligence...Thirty minutes into the presentation, I noticed a lone student, standing toward the back of the stage, holding up a sign that read, “Yes on 54. No to bigotry.” Then, slowly, two demonstrators, carrying a bigger sign—prettier too, I admit—that read “Vote no on Prop 54” besieged and covered the lone student and his ordinary hand-made banner. It makes you wonder how they can claim, “This is what diversity looks like.”

Yes, it does make you wonder, because the only diversity these protestors value is that of race, and it seems that race is extremely important to them for employment purposes, college admissions, and the like. In other words, the mirror image of the segregated US in the early part of this century. These agitators want to turn back the clock and make sure that people are judged by the color of their skins, not the content of their character.

Tossing them in the deep end

The Univerisity of California at Berkeley has charted a brave new course with its recently-implemented "comprehensive review" admissions process. As Joanne Jacobs reports on the original LA Times story, Berkeley took the bold step of admitting, in 2002, almost 400 students whose SAT scores were anywhere from 300 to 700 points lower than the school average. Some students with SAT scores as low as 600 (yes, that's combined) were admitted in place of far-more-qualified students. What an innovative idea! Wonder why no one else has thought of it?

Of course, there are the naysayers. A confidential university report notes, with exquisite understatement, that "the admissions process at UC Berkeley might not be compatible with [the school's] goal of maintaining academic excellence." Gee, do you really think so?

One regent, Ward Connerly, said Berkeley's flexible standards might be an attempt to get around the state's ban on affirmative action and admit more underrepresented minority students...

UC Berkeley officials said the largest group of rejected applicants with 1400-plus SAT scores were denied admission largely because of their lower grade-point averages...Yet statistics provided by UC Berkeley officials on Friday showed that these rejected students actually had, on average, higher grade-point averages and more semesters of honors and AP courses than the students with SATs in the 600 to 1000 range who were accepted.

The usual blather about how the sun doesn't rise and set on SAT scores, and the complication of the admissions process, is repeated here, although, if admissions are so terrifyingly complicated these days, it's worth asking, who made it that way? Not California's voters.

Great quotes:

"I'm not a big supporter of SAT scores at all," said William G. Tierney, director of USC's Center for Higher Education Policy Analysis. "But if you sign your name, you get a 400."

"Either the University of California at Berkeley really believes that students who are lower academic achievers based on SATs are better students than those who are higher achievers on those tests, or there is some other reason here. You know which I think," [Ward Connerly] said, adding that "this is a damning report."

And Joanne, as usual, sums everything up perfectly:

It's hard to believe students with below-average math and verbal skills can succeed at a university designed to educate the ablest students in the state. Berkeley is a sink-or-swim environment. Except for star athletes, who will get tutoring and support, underqualified students are likely to sink.

Do we call them "strong-dislike crimes" now?

Officials at Gonzaga University (VA) have taken suffocating speech codes and piteous sensitivity to new heights. Students no longer have to express hatred or preach hatred to be censored; the word "hate" itself is no longer acceptable in public presentations:

Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA) administration officials censored flyers advertising a Young America’s Foundation organized lecture because the word “hate” was used on the flyer. The flyer in question featured the topic of guest speaker Dan Flynn’s speech, “Why the Left Hates America,” which is also the title of his book...

In a conversation with Gonzaga’s Director of Student Activities, student organizer Paul Schafer was told that the word “hate” is a strong word and that the students shouldn’t hold an event at which a speaker hates someone...

Aw, the poor widdle Director of Student Activities, so afraid merely of the word "hate," and so dumb that he doesn't understand that the advertised speaker isn't the one ostensibly doing the hating. Does this mean, as one commenter put it, that "no one can use the term "hate crime" anymore, since it too contains the discriminatory word?"

College roundup

Essayist extraordinaire Victor David Hansen is one of the featured authors in the National Review's new special on higher education. Yes, every other page is an ad, but it's worth reading (and the ads make me nostalgic for college days, which I didn't think was possible). The topics include the heavily-politicized college atmosphere, the impact of September 11th on campus discussions, and the controversies surrounding community service for college students.

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Are Georgia's college hopefuls not that motivated to do well on the SATs? That's the theory of Governor Sonny Purdue, who ultimately hopes to see the SATs required for the HOPE scholarship. Right now the scholarships require only a B average in core curriculum classwork, which allegedly has led to grade inflation in Georgia's schools. The interview with the governor is here. Controversial? What do you think?

The governor didn't suggest a minimum score. But he said even a low minimum SAT would help create an incentive for some students to do better on the exam.

"It would be devastating for minority students," said House Education Chairman Bob Holmes (D-Atlanta), a member of the HOPE study commission who is African-American. "Even the people at the College Board indicate you should not use this as a reflection of how well students will do in college."

That's interesting, given that the College Board markets the SAT as a method of indicating college readiness, to be used in combination with grades. I wasn't aware of any press release or research from the CB which stated that the SAT was not related to college performance.

And we're not really talking about high standards here. One suggested SAT cutpoint for the HOPE is a score of 1000, which is an average score nationwide, but above Georgia's average of 984 (the lowest in the nation). That requirement would have disqualified almost one-third of the HOPE scholars in 2000 - and remember, these are kids with B averages in high school. Luckily, Governor Perdue has faith in his students and doesn't expect minority scholarship offers to plummet if the SAT is included in the equation.

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Professorial gadfly Mike S. Adams is back with another column at Townhall.com. This time, he's written an open letter to UNC's Director of Diversity, in which he wonders why the new spirit of moral relativism and non-judgmentalism that's so prevalent on campus shouldn't be extended even further - say, to pedophiles?

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From AZCentral.com's College Guide, here's how to master tests without technically cheating. The suggestions, which are fantastically unimaginative (I mean, what student isn't going to try to buddy up on homework assignments or get copies of old tests these days?), reminded me of my experience as a TA for a legendary, tough old teacher in my graduate department.

This professor reused exams from year to year, but his exam questions were so monstrously esoteric and vague and broad and eccentric that you literally could not pass his exams unless you reviewed copies of previous exams, so that you'd have some idea of what you were in for. The items were unlike any that I'd seen on any other statistics exams, and it took people hours to finish these tests.

I took the course one year and TA'd it the next. When the time came to grade the first batch of exams, I asked the professor for the key, and he said there wasn't one. I was just to solve all the exam items on my own, and then check it against the class's work, and call him if there were any problems. It was like having to take the class all over again - but I admit, I really got a lot out of it the second time around.

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And finally, Slick Willie, otherwise known as former President William J. Clinton, has created a foundation to provide free test preparation services to Little Rock students. The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation is teaming up with the Princeton Review to fund a program forstudents who are headed for college and would like to take the SAT or ACT, but cannot afford any test preparation courses. Right now, Arkansans who take the SAT score above average on the exam - but they represent only 6% of Arkansas's graduating seniors.

Do teddy bears get issued at orientation, too?

I was greatly amused by this article (found through WSJ's Best of the Web), which *giggle* reports that a total of four students have *snicker* fallen out of bunkbeds at a certain school, and this is a lot considering that school has just started, so *snurf* the school is going to insist on *teehee* guardrails being installed on beds that don't already have them.

How callous of me to poke fun at poor, injured students from some elementary boarding school, right? Think again. The school in question is the University of Buffalo:

Four University at Buffalo students have injured themselves falling or jumping out of bunk beds in the first month of school, an unusually high total that concerns school officials.

"...or jumping?" The hell? Jumping implies intent, in which case the administrators should invoke Darwin's theories and remove all guardrails at once. Perhaps the students jumped because they were late for class; perhaps they jumped because they were suicidal over having to take a statistics class this semester, and they were too lazy to drag their tails out to the nearest bridge.

Either way, why's the U of B administration got to be involved when adults choose to jump from a bunkbed? What's next, height markers on the walls in the manner of depth markers on pool perimeters?

In response, UB administrators are warning students to be careful when using the beds, and the school is ordering guardrails to install on all beds that don't already have them. The series of accidents is surprising to officials, who say UB typically receives one report a year of a student falling out of a bed.

You know, I did a lot of wild and stupid things in college. Things I won't write about here, because I know of at least one minor that reads this blog (Hi, J!). But I never did anything quite so wild as majorly hurting myself falling off a bunkbed, nor anything so stupid as reporting it to the college. I mean, seriously. Who tells their campus administrators that they fell out of bed?

"It's an unprecedented situation for us," said Joseph J. Krakowiak, director of UB's residence halls. The students who fell reported minor injuries - the most severe was a broken ankle - in incidents that took place over the past four weeks in UB residence halls, said Dennis R. Black, vice president for student affairs.

Okay, are they all fallers now? Or do we still think some of them were jumpers? Man, that suicidal one must be pissed about that broken ankle. And if that's the most severe injury, why were the other three reported at all?

There's no common thread among the accidents, Black said. In one case, for example, a sleeping student either heard a phone ringing or dreamed she heard a phone ringing and hurt herself when she jumped out of bed to answer it.

*mgphfhg* Okay, I will not laugh, I will not laugh...

In another, a student woke up one morning to find himself lying on the floor next to his loft bed and sporting a bloody lip, Black said. The student could only assume he fell out of bed but wasn't jarred awake.

*snortpdmhpgh* Okay, so he's a jumper AND he has blackouts. Or maybe he got the bloody lip somewhere else and just passed out on the floor?

Another student fell when she eschewed the bed's ladder and tried to climb down onto the top of a nearby desk.

Bahh hha hah hhah! I mean, come on. If she was the one with the broken ankle, then I feel bad for her, but surely it's not the college's responsibility to make sure that she comes down out of bed in the proper manner in the morning, is it? Suppose the guardrails were there and she just clambered over them to step onto the desk, and then subsequently slipped and fell after landing on a pencil? What's the college supposed to do then, lash students into bed at night and unstrap them in the mornings?

This last accident, though, given that it was in the morning, is the one most attributable to muleheaded stupidity, and least attributable to alcohol. I find it very interesting that this article doesn't even mention that most famous of balance/judgment destroyers until the verrrry end, nor does it report whether intoxication was related to any of these accidents - and we know it had to be. That guy on the floor with a black lip? Please. If his veins contained more red blood cells than Rolling Rock, I'd be surprised.

The loft beds in use at UB's dormitories typically aren't used as bunk beds in a traditional sense, with two students sleeping one above the other. Most often, the UB beds are raised as much as five feet off the ground so that students can fit storage boxes, a computer desk or a chair underneath.

So, five feet. Not that low to the ground. About nose- to chest-level with most students. You'd think that young adults smart enough to get into college would eye this distance and wonder if maybe it wouldn't be a good idea to plan on sleeping on the floor when inebriated, or to make sure to use the ladder that the school so thoughtfully provides.

The university sent an e-mail to students last week urging them to be careful in using their loft beds, particularly if they've consumed alcohol or used drugs or medication. The e-mail also asked students if they want a rail installed now or if they want their bed lowered to the floor.

Actually, considering how often college students engage in binge drinking, I'm sure there were more falls than were reported. During Pledge Week people were probably dropping like coconuts throughout the dorms. And it's not that I don't think guardrails would be a useful feature on beds placed that high. I just think it's ridiculous that the tone of this article, and the administrators' comments, seems to be that everything that happens inside a dorm room is U of B's fault, and that students just can't be expected to be responsible for their own choices, be they beer-drinking or ladder-avoiding ones.

Did the "holistic" admissions model work?

The Tri-Valley Herald provides an update on the "innovate" college admissions policy implemented by UC President Richard Atkinson. The plan two years ago was to move away from test scores and GPAs, and towards a "comprehensive, holistic" form of judging applicants (despite their best efforts to deny it, judging applicants is exactly what they're still doing).

Has it worked? I suppose that depends on how you define "worked":

On Thursday, the effectiveness of that policy was a dominant theme of Atkinson's last board meeting before he retires on Oct. 1.

The proportion of black, Latino and American Indian students admitted to UC has also increased, and more are applying to the system -- a reflection of California's changing demographics and the increasing number of minority high school graduates, the report said.

Oh, so the racial balance hasn't been upset. Good, good. Of course, that "increasing number of minority high school graduates" might have been dependent on the recent decision to push back the high school exit exam. What happens with the UC admissions model if minority high school graduation rates drop? Will they allow their admissions model to remain the same even if minority enrollment rates then decrease?

And what kinds of students are attending UC these days?

Barbara Sawrey, chairwoman of UC's Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, which oversees matters relating to undergraduate admissions, said the report should also allay critics' fears that the comprehensive review policy would diminish the quality of entering freshmen...

Sawrey said academic achievement is still factored heavily in the new process, although admission consideration has been broadened to also take other factors into account, such as personal achievement.

Personal achievement that isn't apparent in increased test scores or in increased GPA, that is. I'm all for personal achievement, but it's downright bizarre to see colleges downplaying academic achievements and giving heavier weight to non-academic matters, such as whether you were the first in your family to go to college:

The new comprehensive admissions process combines the current two-tiered policy into one review. The new policy allows UC admissions officers to consider all applicants' extracurricular activities, leadership skills and personal obstacles, in addition to academic achievement.

It also allows admissions officers to consider if the student had to overcome difficulties, such as being the first in the family to go to college or attending a school with limited educational resources, in making decisions to admit students.

Well, I guess that's one way to get rid of those annoying legacy students who went to good schools, made good grades, and hoped to follow in Dad's footsteps at UCLA. No need for them as part of the campus's "diversity." As one critic of the admissions model wrote in an Los Angeles Times article around the time of implementation, "It looks like they're trying to punish kids who have gone to good schools, tried their best and played by the rules...And they're really pulling the rug out from under them by doing all this at the last minute."

Have the academic standards actually remained high? I'd like to see that above-mentioned faculty report mentioned above to judge for myself.

Righteous indignation in Indiana

Today's another madhouse day, so instead of finding something to rant about, I'm going to let Nick of Twilight of the Idols do it for me. Nick's read a couple of recent editorials by Charlie Nelms, who is the Vice President of Student Development and Diversity at Indiana University, and he's deeply unimpressed by them. It seems Nelms is another supporter of the "Free speech for me, but not for thee" viewpoint.

Go read, and see what you think.

Duke battles segregation with more segregation

Conservative-thinking student Steve Miller has already done battle with Santa Monica High School, and now his college of choice, Duke, is next in line. I think he'll do quite well in the major of political science, and Duke's professors had better be prepared for him. He's already started a Students for Academic Freedom chapter on the campus, and his sharp eyes (and equally sharp mind) have noticed signs of trouble even in orientation:

...I began to quietly, politely, question some of the troubling things I had observed during our orientation. For instance, during our schedule on one day our lunch was from 12-2. The itinerary read as follows:

In response to my question the dean remarked in the past Duke used to be segregated and that this was something the faculty was (rightly) ashamed of. He explained that they had an obligation to create as inclusive an environment as possible. He did not explain how we are to compensate for past segregation with more segregation; maybe that's one of the things I am supposed to learn at Duke.

Another student learned at Duke that it's impossible for a history course to present facts, and perhaps those who insist on factual knowledge should consider dropping it, especially if they're Republicans. Steve Miller's got his work cut out for him.

College is not for everyone

No, this isn't another Mark Edmonson post. On the History News Network site, there's a very interesting article by professor Thomas Reeves that questions why we assume everyone should go to college. Certainly, that is an assumption in our society - witness the furor over high school exit exams and AA in college admissions. Depriving someone of their "right" to attend college, even if it's through a selection process that measure academic readiness, is considered a sin by many activists, politicians, and general left-leaning pundits:

Going to college has become a national fad, a rite of passage, millions hope, into the world of hefty salaries and McMansions. The trek to academia has now spread to the working class, who see sending their kids to college as a sign of respectability... but is this crush for diplomas necessarily a good thing?

Let us consider our nineteen new college students [mentioned on a billboard]. In the first place, how many of them have the intellect and the intellectual preparation to be serious and successful students? ACT scores continue to decline nationally, and Richard T. Ferguson, ACT's chief executive, urges better high school preparation. About four in ten last year scored well enough on the test to suggest that they could earn at least a C in a college-level math course. On tenth grade math tests in Wisconsin recently, 76 percent of white students attained proficiency or better, compared with 40 percent of Hispanics, and 23 percent of blacks. In Michigan, Colorado, Texas, and New York academic tests have been altered or thrown out because of low scores. The great majority of high schools continue to require little in exchange for their diplomas. Hundreds of thousands enter the campus gates without a clue about the intellectual challenges that are, or at least should be, awaiting them.

What happens to the underprepared? They're more likely to drop out, of course - but they're also likely to contribute to the dumbing down of class content and discussions. When a professor is confronted with "a classroom full of people who do not read, study, or think,", it's not a stretch to conclude that the standards will be reduced to the point of being useless for any student who does think.

But why is this situation considered acceptable?

In America and all across the western world, intellectuals are enthralled with the abolition of moral and intellectual standards. In the courts and in the media, as well as the classroom, they are ramming this dogma down the throats of the vast majority.

Not surprisingly, the commenters to Dr. Reeves' post immediately assume that he is racist and "classist" - such is the kneejerk response to anyone who states outright that perhaps not every kid is college material, and that admitting students who are not college material is not the best thing for those students or the colleges they attend. Dr. Reeves' post says nothing about race or class, but, paradoxically, anyone who does not support the very racist practice of AA (and I assume Dr. Reeves would not) finds himself tagged with the "racist" label these days.

(Thanks to Devoted Reader Mike D. for the link.)

Discrimination in the news

Hie thee to John's Discriminations blog, where he's all over recent newstories which that Michigan does not prefer minorities, but in fact creates them. He also notes that the NAACP has come far from its original mission of creating "color-blind" hiring situations, especially when it comes to firefighters.

Chronicling the diversity of the modern university

The National Review's Peter Wood reviews the latest Almanic Issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education. As he puts it, "Here is American higher education reduced to its industrial organization and consumerist profiles:"

Here is the dust in industry (43.8 percent of college presidents have "education" degrees; 89 percent of 4-year public colleges offer "distance-education" programs) and the sum in consumerism (43.7 percent of dependent college students get federal aid; 36.9 percent of college women chose their college partly on the basis offers of financial assistance, but only 30.7 percent of college men.)...

These labels translate fairly seamlessly into social attitudes. More than half of faculty members in American colleges and universities (55.3 percent), for example, agree that "racial and ethnic diversity should be more strongly reflected in the curriculum." Think about that. In most colleges and universities, the curriculum is already a charm bracelet of ethnic-studies courses and special pleading on behalf of minority subcultures, but the majority of the faculty nationwide are saying "not enough."

He also notes that 28 percent of faculty members believe that the frenetic pursuit of "diversity" results in admission of underprepared students, which leaves 72 percent who apparently "don't mind the gross disparities in academic failure and dropout rates between regular students and those admitted because of racial and ethnic "plus factors." Ouch.

Documenting academic outrages

Front Page Magazine has a "back-to-school" special which includes articles related to UNC's growing conservative student movement and the stunning lack of diversity at universities that supposedly value it. They also have a link to the Students for Academic Freedom site, whose motto is, "You can't get a good education if they're only telling you half the story."

I began reading some of their reports, and got engrossed in the battle over Laguardia Community College in NY. It's seem their math department has been totally corrupted by cronyism and political hiring, to the point where one full professor of Mathematics (allegedly) has no knowledge of calculus.

I found this hard to believe, but then I found this memo that describes the level of teaching taking place among the 44 sections of Statistics I in the college:

[The] new syllabus contains all the material of the old Statistics I plus all the material of Statistics II, with no increase in class time. The new course has now run for three semesters. Let's try to see what has happened in the classroom. If you look at the files that contain the (cumulative) final exams instructors are required to submit, you can review the final exams of the 44 sections of the new course taught thus far...

1. 19 of the 44 final exams are missing...
2. One quarter of the existing exams make no reference to any syllabus topic beyond Normal Distribution, which is lesson 17 out of 36...They seem to have completed substantially less than half the course.
3. Half of the existing exams do not show a syllabus topic beyond Confidence Intervals, lesson 21... These instructors have apparently omitted ALL of Hypothesis Testing ( lessons 22-36, i.e., roughly half the course ). Hypothesis testing is the heart of the subject, for those Math faculty not familiar with Statistics.
4. No exam shows a syllabus topic beyond t-test ( lesson 24 ). The vitally important topics of Correlation, Regression, Chi-Square tests and Analysis of Variance all appear to have been omitted by EVERY instructor.

In other words, although Laguardia's catalog claims that this course covers all the concepts of two Statistics courses, only half the students are being exposed even to the most basic concepts, and none are learning some of the most important concepts. Not only is this shameful, but the syllabus begs for revision. Normal Distributions aren't mentioned until Lesson 17? When I teach Stats, I teach that much, much earlier in the course, because it's the building block for z-scores and hypothesis testing.

Anyway, I found the Students For Academic Freedom site to be an engrossing (if frustrating) read. I'd love to know what you think.

Final exam - Visualize world peace

Remember my post about the squishy activism degree that the New College of California is advertising? Sadly, this subversion of education with political activism isn't an isolated incident:

Proponents of [peace] programs say they promote serious academic inquiry into conflict resolution. But critics call them little more than thinly-veiled vehicles designed to promote a specific political ideology...

"If anything, one is really led to question those core values through peace and global studies," Bucks said.

Oh, so the assumption with "peace" studies is that "core values" must be questioned, and presumably revised. Is this accompanied by the learning of any hard facts, or is the entire goal just to learn to think about global issues? And is it acceptable to come out of a "peace" program with the same "core values" that you started with?

...Matthew Spalding, director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation, said the peace studies programs are more ideological than educational.

"Peace studies has a narrow focus -- it has certain premises and it looks for certain outcomes," Spalding said. "One would seriously have to wonder whether these programs are really a form of advocacy that is masquerading in the guide of academic studies."...

Edwin M. Epstein, who happens to be chair of Berkeley's Peace and Conflict Studies Department, is quoted in his belief that the "peace" issue has become more "legitimate in the sense that people are now asking the question, 'What's going on in the world?'" I suppose he assumes that few Americans have ever considered this question before, which is a mighty patronizing attitude. He also fails to elaborate on why a more traditional course of study, such as political science, history, theology, or international government, would fail to help a student understand "what's going on in the world," whereas a degree in "peace" studies would succeed.

Social critic Herb London, president of the Hudson Institute, a domestic and international policy think tank, said the programs are based on the flawed assumptions that conflicts conform to objective rules that can be analyzed and differences that can be talked out.

Epstein acknowledged that many peace studies programs have a liberal bent, but said that politicking was not the purpose of the courses. "It's not the function [of peace studies programs] to proselytize or advocate, but to examine and understand how people can resolve conflicts in society at all levels local and global," Epstein said.

Epstein's students have obviously skipped their psychology/sociology classes along with their history and political science classes if they think they can sit in class and figure out innovative ways to "resolve global conflicts" that manage to cancel out the human desire for control and violence. Rolling over and playing dead doesn't work too well with the human monsters that are now causing havoc in the world, and my guess is that sitting in a comfy classroom taking "peace studies" classes isn't going to be much help either.

I'd have respect for a "peace studies" class that pointed out, for example, that dropping nuclear bombs on Japan in 1945 ended not only a brutal war, but also a pattern of violence that had begun years earlier, and has led not to a further "cycle of violence" with that country, but to 60 years of peaceful relations. My hunch is that few "peace" professors are going to allow their students to think in this manner.

Fighting for the right to be conservative

UNC-Chapel Hill (my alma mater) has a conservative group that is organized, serious, and unstoppable - and they're meeting with Chancellor James Moser today to discuss the undiverse political atmosphere of the campus:

[Conservative] students, who earlier this year formed a group called the Committee for a Better Carolina, have a broader agenda. They say conservative students are uncomfortable and intimidated on a campus that is overwhelmingly liberal, and they want the university to commit to big changes.

"It's like the conservative point of view isn't legitimate. It's not even considered," said Michael McKnight, a senior journalism and mass communications and public policy major from Roanoke Rapids, who is president of the committee.

He's right. I was there for six years. Anyone even remotely conservative was equated with the violent segregationists of the 1960's, and no journalists bothered to contradict this viewpoint. I was fairly protected from most of the lunacy, as a graduate student enrolled in a very un-PC department, but it was crashingly obvious when I went outside my office.

Yeah, but what's on the final exam?

University of Michigan professor David Halperin is under fire for teaching a course entitled, "How to be Gay: Male Homosexuality and Initiation". Gee, I can't imagine why such a course would spark outrage; can you?

A family-values lobbyist is leading public opposition to the self-proclaimed "uncompromising political militancy" of the professor who teaches "lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender." The lobbyist, Gary Glenn, says professor David M. Halperin and the university "are guilty of perpetrating a fraud against UM students and the people of Michigan [with] propaganda statements...

Mr. Glenn notes that Mr. Halperin has boasted in print about his success in advancing a homosexual agenda. In a 1996 article in an academic journal, Mr. Halperin wrote: "Let there be no mistake about it: lesbian and gay studies, as it is currently practiced in the U.S., expresses an uncompromising political militancy. ... The emergence of lesbian and gay studies has brought about a far-reaching intellectual transformation in the disciplines of the humanities, arts and social sciences as well as in the social life of American universities and in the professional culture of American academe."

Robert M. Owen, associate dean for undergraduate education in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts, claims that this course is but one part of the university's "genuine search for intellectually interesting and sometimes provocative subject matters." It's not surprising that Mr. Halperin is both a political activist and is teaching a course that most likely advances a political agenda. Unfortunately, it's also not surprising that a college dean would defend a course about drag queens and gym rats as part of an "intellectual" search for truth on a college campus, all at taxpayer expense.

Bush is Hitler, and my thesis proves it!

Is your college too conservative for you? Are those nasty science classes getting in the way of the real mind-broadening that you want to do? Do you want to reject the teachings of learned PhD's so you can open your mind to people with names like "Butterfly" and "Starhawk"? Instead of having to skip boring classes like English Lit and Stats in order to protest the eeeeevil Republican regime, wouldn't you like to receive college credit for making those picket signs and wearing those goofy masks?

Well, now you can, at the New College of California. In fact, you can receive an entire degree in social activism. Telling you the city in which you can do this is, of course, unnecessary, because it's implied in the boneheadedness of this scheme.

Yes, indeedy, a college degree in activism - and at only six grand a semester, it's a bargain! It's "unlikely that conservative instructors" will be present, so you needn't worry about encountering any actual facts or science or judgements or anything like that. Just warm, fuzzy opinion and political activism. Hey, if your "professor" says climbing a tree will save the environment, who are you to contradict her?

Allegedly, the New College isn't looking for "rabble-rousers," but note that community work can take the place of prerequisites such as a high school diploma and college work, and while they say that they aren't looking for someone with a rap sheet, nowhere do they say that they'd reject someone with a rap sheet for trespassing, disturbing the peace, and other activities that leftie activists so prize these days.

In reply to the instructor who claims that, "Admission officials want to see a portfolio of community work, not a rap sheet," Joanne Jacobs replies, "Call me cynical. I think they want to see that $6,000 check." Scholarships are already available for those who don't have parents rich and dumb enough to write a $12,000/year check so their little darlings can study anarchist theory and get a masters in globalization.

I think the "teachers" at New College are not only greedy, they're also completely unaware that most people are capable of watching the news and making judgments about world events without the input of the goofy/annoying antics of your typical "social cause" activists. The anti-war attitude of those quoted in the article is, of course, brazen, and the activists quoted seem completely unaware that there might be reasons for the drop-off in anti-war activity other than that people don't really know "how to change the world." Like, say, perhaps, people noticed that some of the men and women who were genuinely changing the world for good were wearing camouflage outfits with US flag patches on the shoulders?

And why do I have the feeling that the "teachings" from this program will be so completely uninformed, one-sided, and irrational - such pure mindless propaganda, in fact - that the students who study here will ultimately have less impact on the Unwashed Masses that they wish to "enlighten"?