Chapter 2 Questions

  1. Are adjunct professors beneficial or detrimental to a students supposed “consumer” experience?
  2. Is there any data to confirm the existence of the “Me Generation”?
  3. To what extent are consumer economics applied to higher education? Specifically Selingo’s example of large private colleges “fudging the numbers”?
  4. How does this sense of entitlement manifest in the professional world?
  5. Although many are opposed to the idea that college is now a business does this new model create a better or worse environment for students?

Final Paper (Exam) Assignment – Design your own College

Seminar 4, Spring 2016
Final paper 2016

Final Paper Assignment:  Design your own College

If you were creating an institution of higher learning from scratch, to survive and thrive in the coming decades, what would it look like? The final assignment in the course, in lieu of a final examination, is for you to design what you consider to be the ideal modern college or university for the future of New York City. You should use the information and analyses from this semester to create what in your view is an ideal institution of higher education to further the viability of NYC. You should not simply describe a current college or university, even Macaulay; try to be innovative within some practical boundaries. You can give your institution a name, a logo, a motto, and even a mascot if you want and decide where to put it.

Points to consider/cover (not exhaustive)

What will your institution’s mission be, and what is the rational for this mission?

  • Will it be a public, private or for-profit institution?
  • What type of institution will this be (community college, 4-year college, masters University, Research University)?
  • Will you have a “bricks and mortar” campus? Where?
  • If “bricks and mortar”, will your institution be residential or commuter?
  • Who will run your institution? What kind of governance will you have?
  • How will you fund your institution? (more on budgets later)
  • Who will be your target student audience, and what entry characteristics will they have?
  • How many students will you have at your institution?
  • Will the preponderance of financial aid be merit or need-based?
  • If you provide other financial aid or resources for students, where will the funding come from?
  • Will you have academic departments?
  • What will your curriculum be like (areas, general education, majors, something else)?
  • How will your students be graded?
  • What kinds of pedagogy will you ask your faculty to use to teach this curriculum? (assume you do not have to fight with accrediting or state agencies about changing any rules about the method for delivery of instruction)
  • What kinds of credentials will you be seeking for your faculty and what will they spend their time doing?
  • Will faculty be able to obtain tenure or not? Why/Why not?
  • Will you have serious (Division 1) inter-collegiate athletics?
  • How will you know if your institution is realizing your mission? This is called “Outcomes Assessment”.
  • How will your institution advance the goal of improving the future of New York City?
  • You can deal with other issues and questions as well but you should explain why you are making the decisions you are making. What problems or challenges will your institution be designed to address?

You will also have to run an institution that can cover its costs by income from tuition, donations, endowment income and research recoveries. I will give you some guidelines for budgets at a later date, but as the stock market is in good shape, I will make a donation for your endowment to get you started (see below).

  • Keep in mind the following NYS Department of Education Rules: For a bachelor’s degree, you need a major and some general education requirements, but students must in some way accumulate 120 credits, which traditionally has represented forty 3-credit courses or the equivalent. The state says that a 3 credit course must meet for 45 contact hours (an hour is generally 50 minutes but that’s a detail).  There may be other ways of meeting these requirements.
  • You must deal with the economics of your new college and will need to develop a basic annual budget for your college.
  • To start your college, I will give you a donation of $100M which is your basic endowment (if you want you can name a building after me). You can figure that the endowment will generate approximately 5% in income a year. In general, you want to keep from spending your endowment, and if financial times are good, you may want to reinvest some of the income from the endowment to increase the base for generating future endowment income.
  • You will have to generate the resources to run your college from tuition, overhead from research grants, and donations (“Development income” in college-speak) if yours is a private college, and from local or state funding if your college is public. Tuition can come from student grants or loans as well as direct payments. You can calculate overhead from faculty grants, if faculty do research at your college, at 50% of each dollar brought in for research. If you are a public university, you may also get some money from your state or city. You can calculate getting about 25-30% of your total budget from public funding if yours is a public college.
  • For the purposes of calculating the cost of faculty, you can figure an average annual salary of $100,000 for each full professor, $75,000 for each Associate Professor, and $50,000 for each Assistant Professor. Adjuncts will cost you $3,000 for each course.
  • The President will make $300,000. Each Vice President will make $200,000. Each Dean will make $150,000.
  • Health benefits will cost about 40% of your total salary expenditures.
  • The costs of running the buildings (lights, power, toilet paper) do not have to be estimated but these are real costs in the real world.
  • Develop ratios to explain the number of administrators, staff, and faculty costs, etc. based on the number of students you are serving and your overall budget.

Standard syllabus stuff

Attached is the “main” syllabus for the course, with rules, regulations and a list of topics by dates. Readings will be posted on the website for these as I get them ready, but at least 1 week in advance, and hopefully more. I will update this syllabus throughout the semester with readings, so by the end, there will be one complete syllabus but in the meanwhile, it will be a bit fluid. If there are any topics you think we should cover that I have not included here, let me know.

Syllabus-for-Spring16_latest

Class Discussion Leader Assignments

Here are the discussion leader assignments. If there is something that prevents you from doing a particular week, please speak with me, and we’ll see if we can get someone to swap with you. Or you can arrange a swap yourself, but do not do this without letting me know.

Lname First Discussion Second Discussion
Abramowitz 2/17/16 3/30/16
Beda 3/9/16 4/27/16
Cali 2/24/16 4/6/16
Cao 2/24/16 4/20/16
Caruso 3/16/16 4/6/16
George 2/17/16 4/20/16
Gooding 3/2/16 4/6/16
Iuni 3/16/16 5/4/16
Jiang 3/2/16 5/4/16
Khalfin 3/9/16 4/6/16
Mahmud 2/24/16 4/13/16
Mendez 3/16/16 4/13/16
Miranda 2/17/16 5/4/16
Moreno 3/16/16 4/20/16
Park 3/9/16 4/20/16
Saad 2/24/16 5/4/16
Salem 3/30/16 4/13/16
Sleiman 3/2/16 3/30/16
Stein 3/2/16 4/27/16
Sutton 3/9/16 4/13/16
Tam 3/30/16 4/27/16
Zami 2/17/16 4/27/16

How to Lead an Effective Class Discussion

How to Lead an Effective Class Discussion
(adapted from a document from the Hamilton College Oral Communications Center – of value in graduate school as well as in this class)

As one of the leaders of a discussion of assigned readings in the course, your general objective is to help your classmates better understand that material by facilitating a conversation about concepts and issues expressed in or implied by the reading. Working with your group, you should plan a brief agenda that will help the group achieve this goal. Below are suggested elements of the agenda.

  1. (Optional) Plan a brief “check-in” period. Give group members an opportunity to speak. For a classroom discussion, the check-in might give people a chance to mention briefly things that are on their minds and relevant to the topic, such as an item in today’s news, a personal experience that occurred since the last class meeting, an issue that came up in an earlier class in our seminar or another class, a general reaction to the assigned reading (e.g., it was difficult to read, you didn’t understand the context or were missing some key background information), etc.

Allow individuals only 20-30 seconds each to make these comments, and use this time as a way to let them get engaged and “warmed up” to talking about the reading. Some of the comments might be used as a bridge to the main part of the discussion. Not every individual needs to contribute each class, but all should feel obligated to help out the discussion leaders with getting discussion started.

  1. State the objective of the discussion and provide any needed background or orientation. Keep it brief. Do not waste time giving a complete overview and summary of the reading as you can assume that group members have done the assigned reading. If they haven’t, your summary probably won’t be sufficient to produce a very satisfying discussion anyway.
  2. (Optional) Select someone to keep a record of the group’s ideas. Specify what method of recording you want to use (e.g., whiteboard/blackboard, PPT from console computer projected) and be prepared with the proper materials.
  3. Start the discussion. Guide it, keep it on track. Get members involved. Write out the key questions you plan to ask to stimulate thinking and discussion. Arrange them in a sensible order.

In general, avoid asking yes/no questions and questions that simply ask members to recite or recall a detail from the reading as a check on whether anyone actually read it. Questions that make for more interesting and engaging discussion are those that ask people to clarify, interpret, or extend points made in the reading; to exemplify and apply concepts; to compare and contrast; to offer judgments about the accuracy, relevance, or usefulness of the author’s observations; to agree or disagree with positions expressed in the reading or in the discussion; and to suggest theoretical or practical implications.

  1. When the discussion has either run its course or run out of time, summarize what you understand to be the group’s major conclusions, the points of agreement and disagreement. Give group members an opportunity to correct or clarify these for the record.
  2. (Optional) Conduct a brief “check-out.” Give group members an opportunity to comment on the discussion itself or where this experience leaves them or directs them personally.

Chapter 10 Questions

  1. Is it a good idea to do as Altucher, who attended Cornell, advised and to invest tuition money on a business or some other venture as a replacement for attending college?
  2. Are some students just sent off to college because their families don’t know where to put them? Are some people in college just because that’s the only path option they are aware of, even though they don’t think college is suited for them?
  3. What do you think about programs that involve students getting credits for on-site work that they do? There was mention of companies that educate their workers through processes like boot camps. Do you think that is an efficient way to teach them what they know instead of them having to go to school to learn that?
  4. Is taking a year off in between college and high school a smart decision or wasteful? Is it good because people get worldly experiences, or is it bad because money just gets spent on expensive trips?
  5. Is higher education stuck in a vicious cycle due to the education gap, whereas people from higher income families have more of an ability to attend selective colleges, which can lead them to becoming rich as well and sending their children off to selective colleges as well?

Chapter 1: The Great Credential Race

Despite the administrative/business aspect of the higher education system, should universities view students as customers, utilizing degree programs and on-campus amenities as marketing tools?

Do you believe there is a corporate-like system within higher-level institutions? If so does is play a positive or negative affect in your experience?

Given the decline in the bachelor’s degree’s significance in today’s society, should undergraduate degrees be accessible to everyone, regardless of academic performance?

Should colleges provide customizable curriculums to suit the convenience of the students? If so, would it enhance the overall educational experience?

Education today has become more competitive than it has ever been. Institutions constantly compete for prestige and financial capital. Many individuals are also unaware of the criteria utilized by academic news reporters to assess the quality of the institution. Could university rankings by media outlets such as U.S News be detrimental to the public’s general knowledge of a ‘good’ college?

Chapter 1: The Great Credential Race Questions/Issues

  1. Will the trend of higher education being treated as a business continue? If so, what advancements or setbacks would be caused by a business model for higher education? Are there any alternatives or possibilities to replace the current system?
  2. Will the trend of “credential creep” lead to a more educated populace overall?
  3. Does consumerist education, in your opinion, affect your learning as a student? If so, to what extent?
  4. Would the mass opening of new graduate institutions like the one in Texas lower the overall quality of a graduate education or improve it? How? Why is this a concern?
  5. Are there any viable alternatives to the U.S. News and World Report rankings system?

Chapter 6 Questions/Issues

1) How do we (as a society) discover those “diamond in the rough” individuals who cannot afford any tuition nor have the ability to physically access higher education?

2) Online classes help people develop (and get certified for) very specific skills while living a busy life.

3) But how do you regulate cheating on online exams?

4) Online intro classes would really save students and professors a lot of time and energy.

5) Why isn’t there more research going into education and the best ways to educate people of all ages?

6) Why do students who live on campus really want to take online/mixed-mode classes? Flexibility?

7) I feel like online classes have a stereotype of being “inferior.” Do you feel like this stereotype is real?

8) Online classes accommodate more for different types of learners?

Chapter 2: The Customer is Always Right, Right?

Chapter 2 of Jeffrey Selingo’s College (Un)bound claims that there has been a transformation of colleges from a place of learning to a place of business. In many respects, I agreed with Selingo’s thoughts, though I did disagree with some of his more broad statements on current students of college. This chapter outlines several different issues in the current business model of higher learning, most notably the causes and effects of rising college tuition, part-time professors, and grade inflation.

When posed with the question of why college costs so much, many students would blame tenure and wages earned by professors. However, this is not the case (27). Most of students’ money is reportedly going to employee benefits, support staff, and amenities. Colleges of recent years have been hiring employees in all different fields to create a more personalized experience for students, from construction workers to advisers to dieticians. Selingo writes that one result of this price jacking is that, “once students are on campus, they put a price tag on everything, including the classroom experience” (20). This, in turn, creates entitled students who feel that they are customers of a business, rather than students of an institution. Also, the race to create better campuses to keep up with competition is a big consumer of funds. After reading this section of the chapter, I was left with a few questions that I think are central to our understanding of this dilemma. Which came first, students who were demanding customers or business-like colleges? Is this an evolution of society or of the way higher learning is organized? How can we return to a system where education is the primary focus when so much of any given college’s resources are not being directed towards areas they are needed most?

Selingo also mentions the plight of the part-time professor. According to his research, “about half of all professors at four-year colleges teach part-time as adjuncts… many adjuncts, however, have a PhD and would like full-time academic jobs with tenure” (20). Our college system is failing our professors who are unable to make a living wage as adjuncts alone. Because it is cheaper to hire many part time professors than to hire a full time professor, colleges often skimp on the area they should be splurging on the most. How can we expect professors to teach quality lessons when they may be focusing on personal matters, like how to pay for rent or healthcare, instead of the direction of the class?

Grade inflation is another issue sweeping the nation. In College (Un)bound, an adjunct professor named Deborah Louis comments, “Students tell me that they deserve an A because they did all their assignments” (24). This mindset in the contemporary student is not uncommon. Students of today are very grade oriented by the time they reach college because they are taught at a young age to base success on standardized tests scores. Some students feel they should be receiving higher grades for doing “less work” than their parents’ generation (24). However, grade inflation cannot be blame on students alone. Adjunct professors’ contracts are most often renewed on the basis of good reviews, and an easy way to ensure that this occurs is by being an easy grader (20). Grade inflation is harming our nation’s students, however, because students who are not being academically challenged in college are more likely to be overwhelmed by challenges in the “real world” (26). How can we reinforce the idea that an A is worthless if the A is no longer universally acknowledged as excellent? Can we teach students to “unlearn” the culture of GPAs and to focus on obtaining knowledge?