Category: Uncategorized

I found this article touched on some really interesting topics concerning internships. The article pretty much highlights the debate around paying for internships during the summer if students want course credit. Some people argue against the idea that students should be paying more money to the school, only during the summer (which by the way, is when most people want to intern), if they want to intern and get college credit; this is due to the fact that it is not only out of their own will they choose to intern, but it’s a requirement for their degree. So what’s the issue? Its like taking a class and paying for it, right? Some may argue, its not so simple. There are other factors such as the expenses that go along with interning. Some factors that the article brought up were traveling, weather that be buying a car and paying for gas, or constantly paying for metro cards during the summer. But this can of course extend to other realms such as supplies one may need in order to fulfill certain tasks within their internship. Also, people gotta eat, am I right? Nonetheless, in addition to paying the school for the intern credit, they must dish out money for the expense that go a long with it, some expenses that students simply cannot offered. Furthermore, those against this notion will raise the question of whether an internship is really a “class” or a “job.” Non-paid internships for school as a “class” seems just like work with no pay and some experience for college credit. The distinction between a class and a job really highlights the issue of whether or not internships are a part of Higher Eds. Turf.

On the other hand, according to the article, some people in favor of this pay to Intern College credit dilemma simply say that if you are getting credit from the college, you pay them for the credits as you would any other classes, end of story. Of course they would be ignoring some of the factors we discussed above, but regardless the premise stands and is a simple but very powerful one. It just seems like they should be getting paid, or not have to pay the colleges, because we think of class not really as work, but perhaps it is, just a different kind of work. And when someone “works” they get paid; you don’t get paid to go to school. Its not the kind of work that the word “job” has connotations too, but nonetheless, its work, just a different type.

I really enjoyed this article due to the content and the debate that it discussed. It seems that this would have a real impact on the lower and lower-middle class students looking to make connections. But I really like the approach the author used to introduce the topic by using a personal account of a student. I find this technique to be very powerful and persuasive. Either way, enjoys the article, and I’d love to hear what you guys think! I tend to lean towards against having to pay for these internships.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/17/when-students-pay-tuition-work-unpaid-internships

I found this article to be particularly interesting as my opinion on the status on service learning has been accurately articulated. Critics of service learning are of the view that the educators are doing a disservice the general public and to the students by allowing the academic setting of service learning to be one similar to a classroom setting. An excerpt from the article reads “When the focus is on learning, students and professors operate as if they’re in a traditional learning environment — namely, one that allows for failure, experimentation and mistakes. Experimentation and room for failure in a community does not benefit the students nor the community as the results of the students performance deliver real results that may have negative externalities. Priority needs to be given to the results of the students performance students rather than the work that they accomplished. I am of the view that the issue within service learning lies in the fact that faculty do not prioritize the effectiveness of students work but rather focus on students completion of their work. Do you think that service learning should have room for failure or should their be modifications to the system to properly accommodate performance shortcomings by students?

 

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/16/new-book-argues-service-learning-doesn%E2%80%99t-prioritize-students

As we have discussed in class one of the more controversial topics surrounding higher education is the NCAA and how the athletes on teams are dealing, or in some cases, breaking the NCAA rules for their own personal gain. For those unfamiliar, or who simply need a refresher, the NCAA has “strict” rules preventing their athletes from receiving any form of payment, both monetarily and materially. Athletes who have been caught breaking said rules received both massive fines and suspensions, part of the issue regarding athletes striving for more money incentives is the mindset that seems to be present that being paid to go to these expensive schools to learn isn’t a perk. This was evident in when Cardale Jones of OSU tweeted out that he is “here to play football not play school” and that classes are worthless. Personally, I think this kind of mindset should be tempered and schools should find ways to facilitate a learning culture throughout the university, including athletes who sometimes do not do any real work in their specific classes.

 

Recent news broke in the case of Laremy Tusil who was able to receive money perks as well as a few unconfirmed perks such as a car and paying for his apartment. He was shunned for this and it resulted in him a first round projected player in the NFL draft to be drafted by Miami in the 2^nd round losing out on millions of dollars. However, a new way to make money off of NCAA football has become evident and it can be well assumed that it will become more prevalent in the near future.

 

Introducing Breana Dodd. Dodd is a University of Tennessee student, yet her name is well known around the college football circle as “Hottest college football girlfriend of the season” by Barstool. Dodd is currently dating Josh Smith a wide receiver on the University’s team who of course cannot receive any payment. That doesn’t stop businesses from using Dodd who is tangently connected to the NCAA in order to advertise their brand. Jolly Rancher is using Dodd’s fame and recognition as a football girlfriend to help sell their product, and advertise to her 23,000 instagram followers. Important and absolutely imperative to note that Jolly Rancher said they didn’t choose Breana Dodd because she is dating a football player but rather she was just one of around 30 students chosen to help advertise. Personally, I find this hard to believe but to play Devil’s advocate, lets say they didn’t solely choose Breana due to her relationship but her massive following, wouldn’t you argue that her massive following was a sub-product of dating the football player? It is truly odd to me that a Football player cannot receive any payment but someone who has reached a level of prominence through a relationship facilitated by football can. However, I truly do commend Dodd for being able to make money off of her brand, its truly impressive and I find nothing wrong with her doing it personally.

 

LINK: http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2016/05/breana_dodd_can_get_paid_to_endorse_candy_her_boyfriend_college_football.html

Our interview last week with President Gould was not exactly what we expected it to be. We assumed that she would already have well-prepared, written down answers and that she wouldn’t answer any questions other than those we had sent her earlier. At first, before we met with her, her secretary wanted to make sure we didn’t have any extra questions, but when we sat down with her, she was very open and seemed happy to answer and address additional questions that we had that were not sent to her before. Also, when we came in, she said that she only glanced at the questions that we sent her several minutes prior to our arrival, and she didn’t have prepared answers or any notes written down. In the beginning, she told us that she will be completely open when she answers the questions, and she wants to make sure that nothing she says will appear on social media or the school newspaper. The interview lasted for more than an hour and a half.

What I particularly liked about the interview was that President Gould was addressing the specific issues that we had talked about throughout the semester in class. Rather than merely answering our questions in a simple manner, only addressing exactly what was in the question, she went into great detail when answering our questions, and after answering our questions she would often go on tangents talking about other things in higher education that she felt were important. She talked about how being in the NCAA division III has made her job a lot easier because she has been in universities that are in NCAA division I and that she has seen all the corruption that goes on with the college coaches and the people high up in the university that inflate grades of student athletes and put classes on their transcript that they don’t take in order to cover up their failing grades. This way the student athletes can help the university team win and the university will get more money from different contracts with broadcasters, athletic companies, etc. In Division III, President Gould said, none of this happens and sports are played “for the right reasons”. This is exactly what we had talked about during one of our classes this semster.

In addition to this, President Gould kept on emphasizing the importance of innovation and change in higher education. She gave an example of how some professors “don’t know what to do” because students aren’t very interested in French anymore and prefer to take other foreign languages such as Spanish or Arabic. She says that the wrong response is to try to get more people in the French class, rather, they needed to add more Spanish and Arabic classes. If more students want to learn languages that would be helpful to them and more relevant to them after they leave college, then the college should change and cater to the needs/wants of the students and not insist that since this is the way its been done for so many years we might as well continue. President Gould also talked about the importance of MOOCs and online courses and that colleges must realize that a lot of students that aren’t able to come to a physical campus would be able to get their degree from these online courses. She said that the majority of Brooklyn College students are not the traditional freshmen that attend school for four years; there are transfer students, there are students balancing work with school including students with families that they need to support at the same time, and the college needs to break away from its traditional ways and change and innovate in order to fit the needs of these students as well.

A lot of what President Gould spoke about were issues that we talked about in class, and I realized that I really learned a lot from this class because if I were to have this interview before the semester started, I wouldn’t have understood anything that would have been talked about.

Wheaton College is Becoming a New Focal Point of the Academic Diversity Debate

 

As members of CUNY we know that one of the nice benefits of attending colleges are in fact the interactions that we make with the other students that are attending the school. The melting pot of information, discussion and an overall pursuit of knowledge helps individual students grow themselves but also integrate new ideas that arise into their own thoughts to develop more cohesive ideas. This feature of college isn’t indigenous to CUNY although it is a part of it’s identity as seen in the early years of CITY College[1]. The issue arises when numerous people are against the concepts of affirmative action[2], which serves to not only let the underprivileged of poor socioeconomic students achieve a higher education but to also allow the schools to achieve diversity among their students, and for the most part the public is backing the idea of making colleges more diverse[3]. The importance of diversity in colleges also allows students to begin to interact with people of different backgrounds as it is highly unlikely that in their life they will never interact with other people.

As prevalent as the benefits of making schools more diverse are there are some schools who are still not in favor of it and it is putting them behind both economically and socially. Wheaton College has recently sparked controversy when they have taken steps to fire Professor Larycia Hawkins. The issue with her firing is that is is not merit based but more so social based. Professor Hawkins in the midst of the rampant racism, decided to show her support for Muslims when she decided to wear a hijab by proclaiming that both Christianity and Islam are religions of the same G-d and the Book “Larycia Hawkins donned a hijab last December to show solidarity with Muslims during a rising tide of anti-Islamic sentiment following the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. She posted on Facebook a photograph of herself in a hijab with the message, “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book.”[4]. Wheaton College is a Christian flagship school who took offense to this statement and subsequently took steps to fire Professor Hawkins. While I respect the school’s vigor and objectivism to stick with their mission statement, I am completely appalled that the school would fire a professor due to her personal opinion that really doesn’t hurt anyone.

This controversy is only negative for Wheaton College, the resistance of seeing other views isn’t only seen in this regard but also in their sciences where the “cutting edge” sciences in the school should still expect students to understand that humans descended from Adam and Eve. This alone prevented the school from receiving money from a man who was at first willing to invest. “As the college president, the Rev. Philip Ryken, showed off the west suburban Chicago school’s cutting-edge science labs to Vanderveen, the former Wheaton student recalled Ryken saying that students were expected to accept the belief that mankind descended from Adam and Eve — one of the college’s core tenets found in its statement of faith. As a result of what he perceived to be the school’s conservative bent, Vanderveen never gave the college another dime.”[5]

Personally, I think this school which is feeling the wrath of remaining in the past and unaccepting of other groups of people within their institution is becoming a great point in why schools should begin to recreating themselves to the changing world and become more accepting of others.

[1] Dorman, Joseph. Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words. New York: Free, 2000. Print.

 

[2] Schmidt, Peter. “What the Supreme Court Will Be Asking as It Revisits Affirmative Action.” Chronicle of Higher Education (n.d.): n. pag. Web.

 

[3] Drake, Bruce. “Public Strongly Backs Affirmative Action Programs on Campus.” Pew Research Center RSS. N.p., 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 04 May 2016.

 

[4] Pashman, Manya. “Wheaton College Could Face Long-term Fallout over Professor Controversy.” Http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-wheaton-college-professor-fallout-met-20160222-story.html. N.p., n.d. Web.

 

[5] ibid