This may very well be my last post here of the year. The holi-daze is upon us, and sitedad will be traveling to see various relatives, as per the custom. I won’t have a computer for much of my time out of town (though I will have my iPhone, which does allow me to approve comments to emutalk.org and do minor edits/changes). So I thought I’d go ahead and have a bit of a “miscellaneous stuff” post to round out the fall term and 2009.
- Simon Fraser University use “bait” laptops to combat theft on campus. I thought this was interesting since EMU has traditionally had a bit of a theft problem. This might not be a bad strategy.
- Showdown in Pittsburgh on Tuition Tax Idea. I had posted about this here recently; apparently, this tax is being voted on again. I am sure that lots of underfunded college towns are keeping an eye on this– places like Ypsilanti, I would think.
- This post about Journalism and education reporting. I think this one is kind interesting because of this passage which specifically references our area:
In 2005, The Ann Arbor News, for example, fielded two full-time reporters and one part-timer to cover 10 school districts, charter schools, the University of Michigan, and Eastern Michigan University. Now, with the newspaper replaced by an online-only news operation, one “digital journalist” watches over everything education-related. The county’s lowest-performing district gets almost no attention. Parents complain, but there’s little that David Jesse, the reporter, can do.
I don’t know; I wasn’t all that keen the way the Ann Arbor News was reporting stuff about EMU when they were still in business, and I’m not sure what I think about what annarbor.com is reporting now. Speaking of which:
- Eastern Michigan University considers initiatives to address poor retention rate. To quote from the article:
The initiatives are:
• Creating a required seminar course to better engage first-year students.
• creating a comprehensive early-warning system to provide students with more timely academic feedback.
• Creating a comprehensive guide for all instructors working with first-year students.
• Creating integrated academic probation, financial aid and repeat course policies.EMUTalk.org regular Mark Higbee is quoted as speaking favorably about the first year seminars, too. Well, as time is limited at the end of the term, I’ll mention only two things. First, my first tenure-track job was at a university with a first year “seminar” program designed to improve retention and it just about bankrupted the institution. Second, notably absent from the Board of Regents list is the initiative “improve admissions standards.”
- In my field (generally speaking), jobs are disappearing. Not exactly news, but perhaps an indication of the nature of the academic job market.
- One last piece from the most recent Inside Higher Ed: an interview with Cary Nelson about his new book, No University is an Island, which looks like an interesting read, especially given the discussion here about things like tenure and academic freedom this semester.
Oh, and one last thing for the term here: regular EMUTalk.org readers will recall a discussion here about the misspelled signs outside Pray-Harrold’s non-smoking area. Here’s a link to the old sign:
Note the lack of an “r” in the Harrold part. I noticed the other day that these signs were gone. And then today I happened to be on campus and I saw this:
Now, this is clearly an improvement. However, as a regular EMUTalk.org who I happened to see as I walked out of the building pointed out to me, this new sign is not quite right because it is lacking a hyphen– that is, “Pray Harrold” instead of “Pray-Harrold.” I suppose this is true, but this is at least closer, if not close enough. Whether or not the non-smoking area was far enough away from air intact vents is another story (and I agree it isn’t– that is, the line might be far enough from the doors of the building but not from where air gets sucked into the building).
Anyway, that’s about all dare mention now. Once again, happy holiday season– whatever it is you celebrate– and enjoy your break.
I think academic achievement of incoming freshman and the level of student retention have a direct correlation. In the article EMU is quoted as having a retention rate of 39% and later in the article it says this,
“Retention rates at Western Michigan and Central Michigan universities, which are also Mid-American Conference members, are at 54 and 57 percent respectively.
The University of Michigan’s Ann Arbor campus graduation rate is at 88 percent while Wayne State’s is at 32 percent and Michigan State’s is at 74 percent. ”
I’m not sure if it is as evident to anyone else as it was to me, but CMU and WMU are clearly drawing from a different geographic population than EMU. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to point out that EMU is 39% and Wayne State is 32% due to a large number of students coming from Detroit Public Schools and being academically unprepared for college. I think you can throw out the UofM and MSU numbers, because comparing UofM to EMU is apples and oranges. Clearly, EMU doesn’t only have students from the metro Detroit area, but it is a large number.
Here are some other numbers to look at, which support the claim that our students aren’t as “smart” coming in as WMU and CMU.
“The average WMU freshman has a 3.3 high school GPA and a 22 ACT score, but these numbers should not be viewed as minimum or cutoff points since students both above and below these averages are considered for admission.”
http://www.wmich.edu/admissions/undergraduate/criteria.html
“Central’s freshman class has an average high school grade point average of 3.33 and an average ACT score of 23.”
http://www.cmich.edu/x1083.xml
“The average student coming to EMU directly from high school has a GPA of at least 3.05 and an ACT score of at least 21.”
http://www.emich.edu/admissions/undergrad/first_year/requirement.php
I know that GPA and ACT scores aren’t the only criteria and I also know that some students are admitted on a conditional basis that don’t reach either of the GPA or ACT requirement. I think the numbers do shine a little light on part of the retention problem.
A simple test….
Just to add to the part about the bad academic job market and also to tie it to the graduation rate at places like EMU: “At Colleges, Humanities Job Outlook Gets Bleaker,” from the NY Times. Here’s a quote:
The “she” is “Rosemary Feal, executive director of the M.L.A.” (That’s Modern Language Association)
Happy holiday season to you, too, Steve. I enjoyed your end-of-semester wrap-up, particularly the journalism note about the education beat. As a former reader of the Ann Arbor News and a parent with two children in the Ann Arbor Public Schools, I miss the day-to-day coverage the paper ran on the schools, particularly the coverage of the school board, the school budget and the school governance issues. In my mind this is critical information for citizens — how our schools are funded and run. It is through the schools that we, as a community, come together, at least in theory, to articulate and promulgate our communal values — values we hope to instill in the next generation and generations to come.
Furthermore, as a citizen, I’m also concerned about my tax dollars. Many sources indicate that k-12 schools account for nearly 1/3 of the entire state budget, and in many municipalities, the schools get the largest slice of the budget pie. (cf. John Bebow, Center for Michigan: http://www.thecenterformichigan.net/blog/pocketbook-glance-how-you-fund-the-state-budget/ as an example).
As Student Media director here at EMU, it’s my job to help prepare the next generation of journalists to cover things like schools and education funding. It’s not a sexy beat, to be sure, but it is important. We have a ton of student journalists who want to write movie and CD reviews and dozens who want to write opinion columns or cover men’s basketball. We don’t get many interested in covering budgets, council meetings, policy reviews, etc., but those are the things that are really going to impact lives. Fortunately, there are still many news outlets, print and otherwise, diligently covering the education beat, so I tell our student staff not to despair of finding work in the field. The field is changing, but as long as citizens want and need to know about their communities and their governments, there will be a need for professional journalists.
I recently had the honor of serving as a judge in the Iowa Press Association’s newspaper competition. I read hundreds of articles in several categories, including the education beat – small rural weeklies to the big city dailies. Like I said, it’s not a sexy beat, but the issues of funding and governance (as well as curriculum, i.e., “creation science” anyone?) are important to citizens everywhere. I was heartened by the breadth and depth of coverage and hope to see it continue – especially locally.
One final note, I actually think the Ann Arbor News was doing a great job covering EMU the last few years with Larcom, Nash, Hamon et al. Sometimes the news was not favorable to report, but I do think it the reporting itself was reasonable and fair.
All the best in the new year!