Sense and Nonsense

Envy

I wish my U.S. History students could do this kind of thing:

Overpaid College Presidents

Today's newspapers are reporting that 23 private college presidents made more than $1 million in 2008. Take a look at this article from today's New York Times. 

This is truly outrageous that many of these university presidents are being paid close to $1.5 million a year. Can anyone seriously say that the president of Suffolk University in Boston needs to be paid that much?  Or that Neil Kerwin (an old acquaintance of mine, now president of American University in Washington, D.C.) deserves to earn almost $1.5 million a year?  Nonsense.  The argument that these universities have to pay these salaries to be competitive for "top talent" is ridiculous.  The managerial revolution in higher education has produced bloated university bureaucracies with excessive salaries paid to far too many mediocre administrators.  

At some point soon, parents are going to stop ponying up the $50,000 per year demanded of private colleges and universities in this country.  And the first people to take a hit from the changing economics should be the overpaid administrators.  I can't wait!  Along with the greedy bankers, these people should be drawn and quartered.   

The Daily Lie

Last year, I came across a great idea to liven up my teaching: the daily lie.  See an explanation of it here. 

I printed out that blog post when I saw it last year, but I set it aside and it soon got lost in the mounds of detritus on my desk.  But some archeological excavation yesterday uncovered it, and I have decided to implement the idea in my own courses.

I tried it for the first time this morning, and it worked just as advertised.  My students were more alert, engaged, and attentive than usual.  Today's lie in my U.S. History class was that during the Pottawatomie Massacre, John Brown and his men stuck their victims' heads on sharpened fence posts to terrorize other supporters of slavery.  (There seems to be no evidence of that, though they clearly dismembered the bodies of their victims.)  I'll let you know how this experiment pans out. And I gladly accept your suggestions of lies to foist off on the unsuspecting, gullible youth of America.

Early Education

I don't pretend to be an expert on early education, but I know twaddle when I see it.  And we have faced a surfeit of twaddle in recent decades in the approach to education (especially, but not exclusively) in the early grades.  Faux educators hoping to come up with the latest hot idea on the block have foisted all sorts of cant and drivel onto America's schools.

We don't need more emphasis on "learning styles."  God help us.  (I have too many students whose "educational psychologist" says they have a "different" learning style.  Bosh!  We used to call that "stupid" and should still do so!)

Here is a review of E.D. Hirsch's new book, in which he makes "a new push for focusing on SUBJECT MATTER, not learning styles."  Bravo, E.D.

Statistics: The New Plastics

In "The Graduate," the career advice that Dustin Hoffman's character received came in one word.    Today's New York Times gives college students a different word of career advice: "statistics."

Wellesley to Honor Albright

The Boston Globe reported today that Wellesley College is creating an international studies school to honor former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Wellesley alumna.  Good for Wellesley.  This is a fine effort to train smart women for a role in world affairs.  Read about it here. 

"Scholars of Confusion"

Also from the Times "Education" supplement today, see this short piece by Walter Kirn, which illuminates what is wrong with so much of what passes for "scholarship" and education in contemporary universities.

Inadequate Education

In a piece in today's New York Times, Peter Applebome, writing about the financial catastrophes of the past year, makes some excellent points about the financial ignorance of most Americans.  Here are excerpts:

All financial collapses have their own brand of pain. But this one cuts particularly deep because over the past few decades, without even quite knowing it, we went from a nation with a few financial choices to one with thousands, and we’re making decisions previous generations never faced — in I.R.A.’s, 401(k)’s, 529 plans and elsewhere. What’s the right asset allocation? Regular I.R.A. or Roth? When is it best to retire and when to begin withdrawing funds from retirement plans? Tell me again how that annuity is supposed to work? What’s the catch in that cheap adjustable-rate mortgage?
. . .
We’re all part of a 24/7 financial noise machine even if most of us don’t know the first thing about it.

Surely, there are different levels of financial ignorance and folly. People who took out loans they had no ability to pay based on the quaint notion that housing prices only went up didn’t make the same mistakes as Mr. Madoff’s investors, who had at least some reason to think they were doing something prudent and wise.

But can anyone doubt that the demands on people to make reasonably intelligent choices with their money has so far exceeded their wisdom to do it, that maybe we should at least try to figure out some way to close the gap? If many presumably sophisticated Madoff investors were ruined, what chance do the rest of us have?

. . . [S]houldn’t we be teaching more of this in high school and college? Shouldn’t every high school graduate at least know what compound interest can do for you as a saver and what it does to you as a borrower? Any college kid at some point gets lectures and required readings on the importance of diversity, academia’s favorite subject. Shouldn’t they graduate with a modicum of financial literacy as well?

“We’re taught that money is the root of all evil and that money can’t buy you love, but the nature of compound interest, that you have to have more money coming in than going out, is almost never taught,” Mr. Rowe said. “Students have to take math and foreign language and history, but you can graduate from every good school in the country without any exposure at all to how money works.”

I agree completely.  Ever since I left teaching at the university level and started teaching high-school students, I have thought that there ought to be a high-school course that teaches the basics of personal finance.  The absence of such a course is symptomatic of much of what's wrong with secondary education in this country.

The Stamp of Disapproval

Many years ago, my wife gave me a joke gift of a rubber stamp that said "HOGWASH." For a while, I used it liberally on the termpapers of some of my students at Boston College, at least those who I thought were strong enough to take the criticism -- and appreciate the humor. But maybe it was occasionally cruel. I like to think I've put that sort of behavior behind me. So, here's the one I want now:

Avoiding "Academic Hell"

Here's some good advice for avoiding "academic hell" in college.  The gist of it is this:

Many students believe that taking a punishing course load will somehow indicate a higher ability; making it easier to land jobs or post-graduate positions. Here’s the reality: it won’t.
. . .
Employers and professional schools will notice your GPA, where you went to school, and your major. They don’t care about about how many credit hours you jammed into each semester or how hard your schedule was compared to others in the same major. The same goes for graduate schools. Though it’s true that specific professors on the admissions committee might look at your grades in the classes relevant to their specialty, they don’t care about the general hardness of your particular schedule [the way college-admissions people do].
. . .
If I was only allowed to offer you one piece of advice to make your college years easier, it might be this simple rule. Nothing seems to have as profound an effect on student stress than a killer course load (though a killer extracurricular load runs a close second). What pains me is that this stress is so unnecessary. Get the credit hours required to graduate. Take the courses required for your major. That’s all that matters. Don’t make you life much more difficult than it needs to be.