Majors Geared to Women: Helpful or Harmful?

This article discusses how women studying in Asia are increasingly specializing their business graduate programs and are entering and finishing their programs much earlier compared to their male counterparts. Studies conducted by the Global Alliance in Management Education show that women represent 72 percent of the master’s international management course.

The article speculates that women are better suited for this specialized masters program because they are often more interested in an international career, have no real difficulty with language, tend to be more sociable with non-Chinese students and work better on teams. They are unafraid of assimilation and therefore often do better in the program.

I think it is interesting to note, even if on a more global scale, the types of majors and concentrations that are more geared to women or more inhabited by women. I would love to know why that is and how that became. My main concern about majors geared toward women is the preferential treatment, and therefore funding, that some majors receive versus others. For example, Brooklyn College severely underfunds the Women’s and Gender Studies Department compared to other departments. Perhaps not particularly popular, this growing academic area is becoming more and more relevant to our lives, especially as citizens of New York City. I cannot tell you specifically how a department becomes great, but better funding I am sure would help.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/women-in-asia-better-at-planning-a-business-education

The New Generation of Job Hoppers

In her TED talk, Alex Ellison speaks about the benefits of a liberal arts education, particularly when considering current vocational patterns.  People now tend to work for only a short while in a certain area before moving on to something different.  Ms. Ellison calls this emerging generation of workers, “job hoppers.”  She argues that a liberal arts education will equip people entering the job market with the skills to excel in a wide range of fields, making them more competent “job hoppers.”  I had never thought of or heard this reasoning before, and I found it very interesting.  In class, we all seemed to agree that a liberal arts education makes us more cultured and thought-out individuals, but we didn’t really discuss how the humanities might actually put us on more stable financial ground. We largely assume that directed vocational training is the way to go if you want to live comfortably, but that kind of mentality might leave college graduates ill equipped to learn something different if their current career path isn’t working out.

As Alex Allison says in her talk, liberal arts is meant to liberate us.  It cultivates our different skills and opens up many new opportunities.

Here’s a link to Ms. Ellison’s talk:  Alex Ellison and “Job Hoppers”

The Purpose of Higher Education

In a Ted Talk, Fred D’ Agostino argues that the primary purpose of higher education is not to get a job and secure financial stability. He doesn’t deny that college education affords economic benefit on both the macro (we have a more able work force) and micro (the individual augments his earning potential) level, but he maintains that a college education should be about building a “robust democracy” and a “civilized society.” College provides us with the knowledge and tools to directly participate in our society. A college graduate is better equipped to speak intelligently about issues and take part in the solution. Higher education also expands democracy by putting everyone in the same classroom, which in some way equalizes us. And as D’ Agostino articulates, to be part of a larger democratic society, there needs to be a mutual respect between citizens. The equality afforded in a diverse college classroom helps people develop this mutual respect.

D’ Agostiono’s argument goes beyond the idea that college makes us into well-rounded individuals who can relate to many different people. He is saying that that college is a privilege. And with that privilege comes certain responsibilities, namely to use what we’ve learned to give back to our communities. D’ Agostino’s perspective definitely resonates with me. It gives me a sense of being a part of something larger and empowers me to directly cause the expansion of democracy. After all, government wouldn’t provide me with the tools to become an active citizen if they didn’t believe I had the potential to affect a meaningful change.

Here’s a link to the TED Talk if you want to check it out:  Fred D’ Agostino on Higher Education

 

Governor Bevin’s Announcement to Cut University Funding

Governor of Kentucky, Matthew G. Bevin, recently announced that the state would be cutting university funding. He said the state would grant financial rewards to institutions that have successful outcomes. This seems reasonable. As we have discussed, government has a limited amount of funds and must carefully decide how to use them. Investing money in failing institutions at the expense of scientific research, elderly care or defense does seem like an unwise decision. However, as I have learned from class discussions and other articles, measuring success rates is often tricky. It is difficult to track students post graduation, and certain factors may be artificially pulling down the graduation rate (for instance, some people only intend to take one or two classes to sharpen their skills in an area and beef up their resume). Republican Governor Bevin has a very particular way of measuring success, that is, taxpayer potential. He derogatorily remarks, “all the people in the world that want to study French literature can do so. They are just not going to be subsidized by the taxpayer like engineers.” This is certainly a very conservative view, and we can imagine that left-wing thinkers would disagree. While people pursuing a liberal arts degree will not necessarily contribute as much to the tax bank, they are enriching our communities with culture and art and a kind of sophistication you can’t get from mixing chemicals or solving math problems. We can also imagine that a population made solely of doctors, engineers and businessmen would quickly become very dull.

Link to article: Kentucky Governor Orders Immediate Cut in Funds to Universities

Giving Cuomo the Benefit of the Doubt

I understand that I am probably going to get skewered for this because of the audience I am appealing to, but as a neutral party to politics and my own education, I would just like to put this out there. Since we are going to talk about Cuomo’s failed attempts at cutting CUNY’s budget, I figure it would be a good topic for my first response.

Recently, Cuomo has come out with a statement pushing back his planned budget cuts to CUNY after the backlash he received from administration and the broader public. According to the article however, the director of state operations referred to what Cuomo did as a negotiation tactic. I am inclined to believe that it is. The way I see things, I think any personal rivalries between De Blasio and Cuomo are played up when both are somewhat liberal politicians. I think what Cuomo did was try to figure out a way to better his state’s financial state and suggested cuts to wherever he thought was appropriate. As a negotiation tactic, the idea is that if CUNY didn’t raise an uproar to the proposed cuts, he’d just cut the budget and save millions for the state. I doubt that Cuomo had any vested interest in causing problems for CUNY and I don’t think that he would act contrary to the beliefs of the people when it came to funding CUNY. The media can sensationalize things and I understand that the CUNY system has had a lot of problems with fighting this, but I think that the act of fighting it blocked things from changing. The ads on the App Store, the email blasts to students, the protests, and other political tactics I felt were unnecessary. A marked disapproval of Cuomo’s suggestion would have more than enough sufficed. At least that’s what I think. I could be wrong, but with the amount of backlash and bad press Cuomo’s been getting, I kind of feel bad for the guy.

Teacher Appreciation

I recently rediscovered a comedy skit that I had seen last summer. It’s basically a parody of ESPN’s SportCenter (that’s a sports news show for anyone who didn’t know). In this video, instead of reporting on pro sports, the comedians talk about “the latest developments in the exciting world of pro teaching.” In this academic utopian world the best teachers can earn annual salaries in the tens of millions of dollars and actually star in commercials for the new BMW 6 Series. I think it’s a video worth watching so I’m not going to ruin any more of it (the link will be posted below).

I decided to advertise for this video because I think it relates to our discussion about money and particularly about professors’ salaries. Someone mentioned in class (I think it was Xavier) that teachers are the ones who are really down in the trenches and doing a significant amount of the work in preparing students for the future, yet they don’t receive the credit they deserve. I think this video, in an exaggerated manner, displays how much we should value quality teachers and professors and the difference they can make.

I don’t want to sound like too much of a kiss-up so I’m going to end my post here. This is the link to video, I encourage all to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkHqPFbxmOU

Breaking News: More College Students Choosing Science Majors

My title may be more than a little sarcastic. But this article truly spent around 1000 words announcing the results of a study by the American Academy of Arts & Science that concluded that the amount of humanities degrees are declining, while the number of science degrees are steadily growing.

Now, while it is nice to have studies that pretty much confirm common knowledge (or what I thought was common knowledge, as I’ll explain), I was shocked to receive the impression that politicians and other figures have been speaking as if the humanities were on the rise. In my opinion, it takes a day in a non-specialized college to realize that the majority of students are flocking towards science majors (and other science-related majors, such as nursing and engineering) in search of the supposed overflow of career opportunities (or rather you’re just ‘more likely’ to get a job in the science/science-related fields, rather than ‘guaranteed’). Seems like the author of the article was looking for a snazzy introduction to the information, rather than a more just one.

This article frames the study’s information in a way that gives the reader the impression that the sciences are simply becoming ‘more interesting’ to people, only dedicating one sentence to career safety/monetary gains; apparently, students would rather study cell reproduction than Marie de France. The author of the article also posits (in a whopping two sentences) that maybe the recent sweep of cuts in college’s humanities departments may have something to do with this decline in interest; I think this ‘reason’ also connects to the promotion of science/related fields because of financial reasons and job needs. Promoting science and cutting humanities follows the desire to draw students to the supposedly booming science/related job markets.

This blog post has turned into more of a critique of the article, rather than actual commenting on the issue presented. But I do wish the author of the article had spent less time attempting to sensationalize the findings of the Academy of Arts & Sciences, and more time exploring the real “reasons for recent declines” and the interesting gains of the humanities at community colleges.

Information Preservation for the Future

Miriam recently told me that she thinks she will never stop paying for Spotify. I said that we never know what might pop up to replace it; just look at iTunes! We never thought of Spotify as an alternative until it was made possible. That got me to think that somehow, one day, it is possible I wont be able to listen to the music that I have on iTunes.

The article from Inside Higher Ed titled, Preventing a Digital Dark Age, discusses this problem in regard to digital documents, research, photos, etc. This is a problem especially since most of the world, including higher education institutions, is moving towards digital technology for production and preservation. However, unforeseen future technology may not be compatible with the digital research that we have now. That would mean that the research and documents that were worked in and created from our present could be lost. Or even something disastrous could happen, which would cause us to lose all our information!

The DPN organization was created to help solve this problem if anything would go wrong. DPN allocates five terabytes to universities (annually) in order to store and preserve the information that the university decides to secure. This information will be stored in three different locations and in many different ways in order to insure access in the future. All the information that is a part of this preservation membership is in a “preservation ecosystem.”

One problem with this ecosystem is that there is a lack of diversity. Most of the members of DPN are large to mid-sized universities. Part of the reason is because smaller universities may not have the budget to pay for the preservation. For larger universities who are not members have the problem of wanting more storage. For example, the amount of digital information that the largest universities would like to store is worth a petabyte, which is 1,000 terabytes. DPN is not even able to store that much information.

There are other organizations like DPN that are working to avoid the loss of all the information and research that is being generated. I never thought of this problem on such a wide scale. Universities today are not just places for people to go for education, they are places for research and innovation. Many universities are hiring experts to work to preserve and decide what to preserve. Not only is there so much research to still be done and information to gather and build on in the future, we now need a way to insure that all this information is accessible to the future generations. They can’t move forward without previous information!

Grit and Resilience

As a follow up to today’s class discussion, I just came across this op-ed in the New York Times from Sunday entitled “Hidden Gold in College Applications.” It discusses how some colleges are placing less emphasis on SAT/ACT scores and GPA, and are instead focusing on things in students’ applications–namely, reference letters and personal statements–that highlight aspects of character, emphasizing words like “resilience” and “grit,” just as we spoke about in class. Things like obtaining decent grades and consistent volunteering are all the more significant when the student is cooking dinner for her brother three times a week while their mom is at work, or is working 30 hours a week at the family business. The article ties this in with major discussions lately about reforming college admissions to increase greater socioeconomic diversity, a subject we talked about at length.

The article also mentions some administrators’ fear that “if you put students in an academic environment that’s too tough for them, you’re setting them up to fail.” This reminds me of Scalia’s stance in the affirmative action case. Yet the article goes on to show the success stories of students who were admitted based on this more holistic, and I think personal, perspective.

I think this is taking a step in the right direction for college admissions, especially when we talk about students of low socioeconomic or limiting backgrounds. This type of process will also encourage more students who come from these backgrounds to apply to schools that they would have thought wouldn’t accept them. We read in some of the readings (I don’t remember which) how minority or low socioeconomic students generally shy away from even applying to “good” schools, and I’m not even talking about the Ivy Leagues. Modifying the traditional admissions process could be a key in creating greater diversity on college campuses, and it provides very deserving students, albeit less privileged, with an opportunity to succeed.

Transcripts of the Future (or so We Should Hope)

Has anyone ever looked at their transcript and thought, “I know I have excellent grades and impressive classes listed here, but I feel like someone who sees this won’t really understand what skills and abilities I have?” If so, you may be interested in a new initiative the University of Maryland University College (that title seems incredibly redundant) is taking in regards to transcripts. UMUC is experimenting with competency based learning, an idea we discussed in class and read in Selingo’s book, and have therefore decided to pilot an “extended transcript” in the upcoming fall semester.

This transcript differs from the usual one in that it lists more than just the classes you’ve taking and grades you’ve received. It actually “pulls in students’ papers, projects and other assignments and how they count as progress toward clearly defined learning outcomes.” Each learning outcome (or objective) is tailored to fit your major or field of study and contains subcategories of related skills. The transcript even tracks the student’s progress in showing proficiency in these skills. Additionally, the transcript will offer “evidence” (i.e. papers, projects etc.) to show how students have displayed mastery of each particular skill.

This new transcript can be helpful for multiple reasons. First, it gives employers or graduate schools a better idea of how competent an applicant is. This can especially benefit those students who have shown excellent mastery of learning objectives and skills. Second, as the associate vice provost and registrar at UMUC says, it shows students how classes outside their major can affect their learning objectives and potential career paths. With this foresight, students can better gauge exactly what classes will be useful for them. Hopefully, this would aid students in avoiding unnecessary (in regards to their career and general life goals) classes that will increase their tuition bill, a problem everyone should be trying to avoid, and rob them of their precious time. Third, as mentioned earlier, it allows students to customize how they want to represent themselves to potential employers.

There are some issues with this potential new system; most notably, collecting data from all campus archives could be difficult. UMUC, though, is going to remain resilient and push forward. As Thomas Green, the executive director at AACRAO (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers), puts it: “The concept here is that we don’t think there’s going to be one model that will emerge quickly. We’re just trying to accelerate the beginning of this.” Indeed, such an idea will take time to develop properly, but UMUC and other universities have taken a very important first step in helping students access transcripts that can show who they really are beyond just some classes and grade point averages.

If anyone would like to read the article discussing this matter you can find it at the following link: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/02/29/u-maryland-university-colleges-extended-transcript-new-type-student-record. I also recommend looking at the picture of the prototype they have shown being that it serves as a good visual aid in understanding the basic layout of the transcript.