Author Archives: sitedad

“Is College Too Easy?”

Posted on May 22, 2012 | 4 Comments

A loyal reader sent me a link to this Washington Post article, “Is college too easy? As study time falls, debate rises.”   Here’s a very long quote:

Some critics say colleges and their students have grown lazy. Today’s collegiate culture, they say, rewards students with high grades for minimal effort and distracts them with athletics, clubs and climbing walls on campuses that increasingly resemble resorts.

Academic leaders counter that students are as busy as ever but that their attention is consumed in part by jobs they take to help make ends meet.

Consider George Mason, Virginia’s largest public university and a microcosm of modern academia. Some students care for dependents. Many commute to class. Seventy percent of seniors hold off-campus jobs. George Mason students spend 14 hours, on average, in weekly study, close to the national average.

“It’s not enough,” said Peter Stearns, the George Mason provost. “And it’s a figure that troubles us, not only at Mason but in higher education generally.”

The university has responded by launching an honors college and an undergraduate research initiative in recent years — driven, Stearns said, by “the need to create a more challenging undergraduate environment.”

Tradition suggests that college students should invest two hours in study for every hour of classes. The reality — that students miss that goal by half — emerged from the National Survey of Student Engagement, a research tool for colleges that examines the modern student in unprecedented detail.

I guess I have two thoughts for now.  First, I don’t know if college has gotten easier or not, but the attitude about keeping students in college has changed dramatically in the last 25 or so years.  When I was in college back in the 1980s, the way college success was presented to students was not everyone will be able to succeed.  In fact, at many universities, it was a badge of pride that a lot of students failed out.  But nowadays, one of the marks of success of a university is its retention/graduation rates:  that is, one of the problems that EMU has it’s retention/graduation rates aren’t as high as they should be.

Second, I’m not sure these guidelines of studying two hours for every hour of class-time have ever been completely true, and I think that at least some of this concern about students not studying enough is just classic “the kids today just aren’t as good as we were when we were kids” thinking.

None of this to say that maybe it is true that college is “too easy” in an effort to appeal to more students, to retain more students, etc.

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Posted in Academics, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life

“Fiscal study: Michigan athletics are self-reliant; MSU is close”

Posted on May 19, 2012 | 17 Comments

I meant to post this the other day but it got lost in my in-box:  a loyal reader sent “Fiscal study: Michigan athletics are self-reliant; MSU is close,” from the Freep.com web site.  It’s not surprising news, really.  The University of Michigan makes about $10 million a year from its athletic program, which puts it in the same league as places like Ohio State, Texas, Florida, and Alabama for making money off of athletics.  Michigan State is basically a break-even proposition.  But that’s about it, and all of the other state of Michigan schools– including EMU, of course– lose a ton of money.

Nothing particularly new, though here’s a fun fact:  as I understand the article, no Big Ten athletic program received more than 10% in its revenues from university subsides.  In other words, EMU (and I would wager to say the same is true for all of the MAC programs) spends significantly more on sports than Big Ten universities, both as a percentage and in real dollars.

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

Restaurant Review: Wurst Bar

Posted on May 18, 2012 | 1 Comment

This Friday, I’m bringing things back to Ypsi, very close to campus, and kind of the opposite on the healthy spectrum.

What and Where

The Wurst Bar | 705 West Cross St., Ypsilanti | 734-485-6720

Ratings (1=Terrible, 5=Mind-blowingly Great)

  • Tastiness: 3-4.5 (see comments)
  • Service: 2
  • Price (1=super cheap, 5=super expensive): 3
  • Value: 3
  • General Vibe: 4 (daytime experiences only and not counting the bathrooms)

Comments

  • When I heard that Theo’s was closing up and being replaced by a bar specializing in gourmet sausages, my first reaction was “wait, that place Theo’s was still in business?  I had assumed it had been abandoned.”  Go figure.
  • And of course my second reaction was “gourmet sausages, huh?”  Wrong again.  They make them all in house and they range from the traditional (bratwurst, Italian sausage, Mettwurst) to the exotic (for example, rabbit, fig, and white wine; rattlesnake; bison and lamb).  They are all excellent, though I have to say that for the most part, the difference between these sausages are more about the spices and less about the meats since once you grind something up into a sausage it all kind of tastes like, well, sausage.  This is of course why lesser quality sausages are often made up of “miscellaneous” left-overs.  But again, the freshness of them along with the variety of toppings and mustards and the like is all very impressive.
  • The other fun feature I’ve had so far are the tots– tater tots that is, though there is also a sweet ‘tater tot option I find quite tasty.
  • But then just the other day I had what was for me the best food option I’ve had there so far, the Nut Burger.  That’s their usual burger (which is a combination of ground brisket, short rib and chuck with “unami spices”) with cheddar, bacon, and a layer of crunchy peanut butter on the bun.  I know what you’re thinking and I was completely sober when I ate it, and it was really REALLY excellent.
  • But the reason for the “tastiness” range is there is the vegetarian options fall short.  They do have “hot seitan” and apple and pecan (and tofu) sausages, along with a rotating vegetarian burger, though my vegetarian dining companion tells me that the options are inconsistent.  Probably not surprising in a place that specializes in sausage.  I don’t know, maybe they need a salad or something.
  • Service has also been pretty inconsistent.  I think they’re getting better at it and all of these tattooed and pierced young people are perfectly nice, but things can be a little too leisurely.  If you’ve only got 30 minutes for lunch, probably not the place for you.
  • At the end of the day, it’s worth remembering it’s a bar.  They take a lot of pride in their craft beer choices which rotate often, and they have all the other usual liquors and such.  I haven’t been there at night– only for lunch and happy-hour/late afternoon kind of times– but like I said, it’s a bar, so if dark-ish places with lots of TV and people drinking booze offend you, I’d suggest a pass.  It seems family-friendly enough at lunch and in the early evening, but I have a feeling things get rockin’ at night, which often features things like bingo, trivia, whiskey night, etc.
  • I like what they’ve done with the interior of the place a lot with groovy red plastic chandeliers, a white faux buffalo head, old movie posters, and the like, but the bathrooms are vintage Theos, including a trough-styled urinal in the men’s room.  I read someplace they’re planning on fixing that soon though.

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Posted in Restaurant Reviews, Ypsilanti

“What does $1 Trillion in Student Debt Really Mean? Maybe Not That Much”

Posted on May 17, 2012 | 2 Comments

And now the other side of the student loan debt crisis currently in the news– or maybe not a crisis:  ”What does $1 Trillion in Student Debt Really Mean?  Maybe Not That Much,” from CHE.  Unfortunately, it’s behind the paywall.  Here’s a long quote though:

A trillion is a big, round number. It has some shock value. But what does crossing the $1-trillion mark really tell us?

For one thing, that more people are going to college—and graduate school. The sum is an estimate of all outstanding education debt: private and federal student loans for undergraduates, parents, and graduate and professional-school students. And greater educational attainment is a goal the Obama administration and many nonprofit groups are pushing.

At the same time, in the wake of severe state budget cuts, tuition is rising, and students and their families are footing a larger share of the bill. A greater percentage of bachelor’s-degree recipients have borrowed, and the average amount of debt per borrower has also risen. About two-thirds of graduates of public and private nonprofit colleges have loans, with the borrowers’ average debt about $25,000, according to the most recent analysis, of the Class of 2010, by the Project on Student Debt. (The average debt for the Class of 2004 was under $19,000, according to the federal government, which counts somewhat differently.)

Total outstanding student-loan debt—even $1-trillion of it—may not have broad economic implications. It’s still too small a sum to derail the economy, at least for now, says Mark Kantrowitz.

And so forth, the article goes on about how college debt is good debt, how someone borrowing a reasonable amount for a reasonable degree is good, etc.  I mostly agree with this, but it of course doesn’t completely dismiss all the problems of college debt and for me even brings attention to different problems. For example, is it such a good idea that more people are attending college and graduate school and going into huge amounts of debt to pay those bills?  I dunno about that.

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Posted in Budgets, In the media..., Student Life

Provost’s update on the GradeFirst “snafu”

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 20 Comments

Provost Kim Schatzel sent out an email to all EMU personnel this afternoon (I include it after the jump) addressing the GradeFirst mess. The short version is we’re done with GradeFirst, I think.  Two things I thought I’d mention though; first, there’s this passage:

As I have learned in the past four months, the academic business services side of Eastern (e.g., advising, degree audit, application management) is not where it should be from a process/technology perspective and is a high priority for us going forward. Simply put, the snafu by GradesFirst should not have happened.

This seems like a pretty direct way of saying that Schatzel is going to be giving the “academic business services side” of things a lot of attention, and in some likely sensible ways.  For example, Schatzel is moving the communication to students about their academic service to the Registrar’s office, “where it typically resides in universities.”

Second, I’m pleased that Schatzel used the term “snafu” in official EMU correspondence. Continue reading →

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Posted in Academics, Administrator Life, EMU Technology, Faculty Life

eReserves is legal (so says Georgia judge)

Posted on May 14, 2012 | 1 Comment

eReserves is an electronic “reserve desk” that lots of university libraries (including EMU) use to make readings available for all kinds of things, though mostly for courses.  Instead of putting together a course pack, I tend to put everything up on eReserves, free for students and easier for me.  But for a long time now, there has been one potential problem:  is this legal?

Well, a long story short, as the CHE reports in “Long-Awaited Ruling in Copyright Case Mostly Favors Georgia State U.,” the answer is yes.  Here are the opening paragraphs:

A federal judge in Atlanta has handed down a long-awaited ruling in a lawsuit brought by three scholarly publishers against Georgia State University over its use of copyrighted material in electronic reserves. The ruling, delivered on Friday, looks mostly like a victory for the university, finding that only five of 99 alleged copyright infringements did in fact violate the plaintiffs’ copyrights.

“My initial reaction is, honestly, what a crushing defeat for the publishers,” said Brandon C. Butler, the director of public-policy initiatives for the Association of Research Libraries. Given how few claims the publishers won, “there’s a 95 percent success rate for the GSU fair-use policy.” The ruling suggests that Georgia State is “getting it almost entirely right” with its current copyright policy, he said.

 

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Posted in Academics, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life

“Crushed by college debt: Massive loan bills hang over graduates, derail life plans”

Posted on May 13, 2012 | 10 Comments

From the Freep comes “Crushed by college debt:  Massive loan bills hang over graduates, derail life plans.”  It popped up in my EMU feed because it referenced a student here who has lots of debt:

However the political battles are resolved, it won’t change the future for millions of graduates, such as MoReno Taylor II, 29, of Lansing, who sees his $80,000 in loans for Eastern Michigan University coloring his life.

“It impacts you in every way. Job decisions, searching for a potential home,” he said. “Knowing that you have that debt hanging over your head is debilitating.”

I have to say the comments for this piece raise some interesting questions for me.  Perhaps I should know more about why students are borrowing so much money in the first place, so maybe I just don’t know what I’m talking about here.  Besides that, I will freely admit that I grew up privileged enough that most of my college was paid for by my parents, and I also went to college in an era when tuition was a lot less.

Having said that, it seems to me there are some pretty simple ways to avoid that much debt.  For starters, if I was in a situation now where I had to pay for college out of my own pocket, I would certainly attend community college for a couple of years and get the gen ed stuff taken care of at half the price.  I certainly wouldn’t borrow to pay all the bills– that is, borrowing money to not live with the parents and to go to school full-time.  I’d probably live at home, work, attend part-time, etc.

And then there’s this quote at the end of the piece that makes me think:

Jessica Scott, 26, of Grand Haven graduated in 2009 from Central Michigan University with a degree in journalism and $60,000 in debt.

She’s working four part-time jobs, can’t afford health insurance and is living at home because she can’t make her debt payments and pay rent, too.

“It seems silly to think that myself, at 18 years old, made this kind of staggering financial decision,” she said. “I had no idea what I was getting into, or what it could possible lead to. When I graduated high school in 2004, taking out loans to pay for school is just what you did. There was an unspoken promise that you’ll graduate, find a great job and move on with your life. But as we know, that isn’t what happened.

“Now I’m left with a mountain of debt, a great deal of stress and the hopelessness that I’ll never get out from under this. This one financial decision, which took no time at all to make and a quick flip of a pen, will now define my future.”

It reminds me a little of the old days of students and credit cards.  This doesn’t seem to be as visible on campus as it once was and banks have tightened the rules on credit cards, but just a few years ago, there were tons of stories of young college kids who charged things willy-nilly and then got themselves forever in debt.  I’m not saying this is the same thing because it’s not, but at the same time, I wonder if part of the problem is it’s too easy to borrow too much money.

 

 

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Posted in Budgets, In the media..., Student Life

Restaurant Review: Hut-K Chaats

Posted on May 11, 2012 | 7 Comments

I’ve been thinking for a while about starting a new feature here at EMUTalk about area restaurant/coffee shop/bar reviews, something I hope others can contribute to as well once it gets going.  Since Mark Maynard had a lovely interview with the guy who runs the place, I thought I’d start with Hut-K Chaats.

What and Where

Hut-K Chaats | 3022 Packard Rd, Ann Arbor | 734-786-8312

Ratings (1=terrible, 5=mind-blowingly great)

  • Tastiness: 4
  • Service: 4
  • Price (1=super cheap, 5=super expensive):1.5
  • Value:4.5
  • General vibe: 3 (though see comments)

Comments

  • Chat is the general term for Indian and South Asian snack and roadside food, often fried, and (at least according to the restaurant’s web site) Hut-K is a “modern colloquial Indian term that means ‘not the main stream’ or ‘different.’”  So basically, “different snacks,” though that doesn’t quite explain it either.
  • The whole place is vegetarian.  Now, while one of my frequent luncheon companions is a non-meat enthusiast, I am not– though I do enjoy vegetarian food, especially when it’s done well and my reaction is not “this would be good with bacon.”  Hut-K Chat is exactly that:  satisfying vegetarian (mostly vegan, actually) food that wouldn’t make a lot of sense with chicken or whatever.
  • I have been an Indian food enthusiast for a long time, but what they have here is not like the Indian food I’ve had before.  For starters, part of the whole point of the place (as Maynard covers in his interview) is it’s very healthy– and a lot of that butter and cream soaked Indian food is not.  But beyond that, there are some flavors here that are kind of… well, weird, but in a good and herbal kind of way.  In the times I’ve been, I think I’ve tried most of the items on the chaats menu and they’re all great.  The Shanu Chaat is one of those kind of tasty but odd flavored ones, I think the result of something called colocasia leaves.  Both the Dahi Sev Puri and the AAnokhi Pani Puri make for good things to share.
  • My favorite things there are the wrap rolls, which I assume are a sort of Americanized version of something you might get in India.  I find the Quinoa-Lentil Wrap Roll especially satisfying as a unique and filling lunch option.
  • I’m not crazy about the “back 2 roots” flat bread.  Kinda dry and not nearly as flavorful as some of the other stuff they have in there if you ask me.
  • In terms of the “General Vibe:” meh, it’s okay.  Kind of hard to turn one of those strip mall places into anything too interesting, but it’s clean and quiet if nothing else.  I have noticed on the times I’ve been that they do a vigorous take-out business, so that might be your best option.

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Posted in Restaurant Reviews

Once again, rarely about Emus

Posted on May 10, 2012 | Leave a comment

A loyal reader sent me this fairly pathetic Emu-oriented article, “Man headed to trial in emu killing” from the South Bend Tribune. To quote:

A New Carlisle man testified Tuesday that he and a friend went to a Buchanan-area farm in late October to ride an emu after a night of drinking. Jack Keldsen went on to testify that his friend, Thomas Clark, killed the emu with a baseball bat and the two dumped the dead bird on a friend’s doorstep as a prank.

Keldsen was on the witness stand Tuesday during a preliminary hearing for Clark. Clark is charged with killing and/or torturing an animal and larceny over $200 and under $1,000. Keldsen pleaded guilty in March to attempted killing and/or torturing an animal and agreed to testify against Clark.

The whole thing kind of goes downhill from there. Ick.

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Posted in Emus (the bird), In the media...

And let the Faculty contract bargaining season begin!

Posted on May 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

Below is an email from EMU-AAUP president Susan Moeller about what is likely to be one of the major topics of negotiations this season, health care costs.  What else is new?  It sounds like the administration is trying to force a plan before negotiations proper begin; still, before the union reacts too negatively, perhaps we ought to see what the administration’s plan actually is all about.

Read on after the break.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU-AAUP, Faculty Life, The Strike of 2006