Category Archives: In the media…

Is the end of football approaching?

Posted on May 6, 2012 by | 8 Comments

The other day, a loyal reader sent me this article from the sports section of The Wall Street Journal,“Why College Football Should be Banned, by Buzz Bissinger.“  After asking myself “the Wall Street Journal has a sorts section?” I read on.  It’s mostly the arguments we’ve heard before; for example:

Football only provides the thickest layer of distraction in an atmosphere in which colleges and universities these days are all about distraction, nursing an obsession with the social well-being of students as opposed to the obsession that they are there for the vital and single purpose of learning as much as they can to compete in the brutal realities of the global economy.

Who truly benefits from college football? Alumni who absurdly judge the quality of their alma mater based on the quality of the football team. Coaches such as Nick Saban of the University of Alabama and Bob Stoops of Oklahoma University who make obscene millions. The players themselves don’t benefit, exploited by a system in which they don’t receive a dime of compensation. The average student doesn’t benefit, particularly when football programs remain sacrosanct while tuition costs show no signs of abating as many governors are slashing budgets to the bone.

And so forth.  Now, where I think it really gets interesting is if we think about this in relation to Junior Seau’s suicide and other former players’ bad health.  Maybe we are nearing the end of football as we know it.  Here’s how the excellent blog Daring Fireball put it, quoting from this article from the site Grantland, “What Would the End of Football Look Like?”

This slow death march could easily take 10 to 15 years. Imagine the timeline. A couple more college players — or worse, high schoolers — commit suicide with autopsies showing CTE. A jury makes a huge award of $20 million to a family. A class-action suit shapes up with real legs, the NFL keeps changing its rules, but it turns out that less than concussion levels of constant head contact still produce CTE. Technological solutions (new helmets, pads) are tried and they fail to solve the problem. Soon high schools decide it isn’t worth it. The Ivy League quits football, then California shuts down its participation, busting up the Pac-12. Then the Big Ten calls it quits, followed by the East Coast schools. Now it’s mainly a regional sport in the southeast and Texas/Oklahoma. The socioeconomic picture of a football player becomes more homogeneous: poor, weak home life, poorly educated. Ford and Chevy pull their advertising, as does IBM and eventually the beer companies.

Seems ridiculous?  Well, here’s a quote from that Grantland article to put it in perspective:

Before you say that football is far too big to ever disappear, consider the history: If you look at the stocks in the Fortune 500 from 1983, for example, 40 percent of those companies no longer exist. The original version of Napster no longer exists, largely because of lawsuits. No matter how well a business matches economic conditions at one point in time, it’s not a lock to be a leader in the future, and that is true for the NFL too. Sports are not immune to these pressures. In the first half of the 20th century, the three big sports were baseball, boxing, and horse racing, and today only one of those is still a marquee attraction.

Indeed, and I am willing to bet that most of us have no idea who is the World Heavyweight champion right now or even who won the Kentucky Derby yesterday.

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Posted in Blogosphere, In the media..., Sports

Oops! EMU dismisses and then undismisses a bunch of students

Posted on May 5, 2012 by | 31 Comments

Last night, I was sitting around with my family, watching a movie and minding my own business, with the intent of staying off the computer through the weekend.  Then I get an email on my phone from a concerned graduate student informing her she has been dismissed from EMU, a student I knew for certain could not have possibly been kicked out of school because of bad performance.  Here’s a screen shot of what that email looked like:

So, I fired off an angry message to the supposed sender of that email– Molly Weir, the associate director of advising– and I cc-ed a bunch of suits, assuming that this horrifying error was limited to one student.  Then I get an email from another student, followed by emails from Walter Kraft and Susan Martin (and others) apologizing.  Here’s what Martin wrote:

I deeply apologize for the incorrect email many of our students received this evening indicating they were dismissed from the University.  This message was a terrible mistake and I regret the undue alarm and concern it caused. I care deeply about student success and for Eastern to send an alarming message to you indicating you were dismissed is an inexcusable mistake that I personally regret.  We will investigate and determine why this happened and make sure it never happens again.  Please disregard the message or any letter you may receive.  Again, my heartfelt apology for this error.

And then a loyal reader sent me this article from the Freep, too.

Checking my email just a few moments ago this morning, I see another loyal reader sent me screen images of Facebook posts, including the screen shot of the dismissal letter I include above.  These posts were subsequently removed from the EMU page, I assume because it’s not exactly good publicity.  Anyway, this loyal reader claims that 7,700 students received this message.

WTF, EMU?

This loyal reader hypothesized this was a security breach of some sort, but this sure doesn’t look and feel like one of the spam messages.  I am assuming that there will be an investigation and at least some public statement as to who did this and how they managed it, but none of the possible reasons for this are exactly comforting.  If it was this big of a security breach which might also expose student records and all kinds of other confidential things– wow, that’s a big problem.  But if it was some knucklehead in advising sending out messages through the automated GradesFirst and accidentally pushed the “fail everybody” button, that’s obviously kind of a problem too, right?

So, anyone know anything else?  Any readers get dis’ed last night?

Update:

Here’s the email Walter Kraft sent around Saturday afternoon:

To EMU Students, Faculty and Staff,

First and foremost, we reiterate our sincere apologies for the email students received last night that indicated that due to academic issues they were in the process of being dismissed from Eastern. This was a terrible mistake and we know it caused undue concern for many.The purpose of this email is to update you on our investigation into the cause of the issue. The investigation is under way and we have not yet determined the exact cause, but there are some things we do know.

First, this was not a matter of a security breach, hacking or anything of that sort. There was no inappropriate access to any records or student information. We have confirmed that this was an operational error in our notification system from Academic Advising to students who are subject to dismissal for academic performance. We also have confirmed that Academic Advising prepared the message last night in order to notify approximately 100 students of academic performance issues. For some reason, which remains under investigation, the message went out to the entire student body. An outside company that we contract with for this notification process, GradesFirst, sent the dismissal message to the entire student body instead of the file of 100 or so students who were supposed to receive it. GradesFirst has offered an apology for its role in this matter.

Make no mistake about it, we consider this matter very serious and we take full responsibility. We will continue to investigate to determine exactly what went wrong and take whatever steps are necessary to make sure it never happens again. We will have additional updates as we learn more. Please feel free to contact me with any additional questions or concerns.Sincerely,WalterWalter Kraft

Vice President for Communications
102 Welch Hall
Eastern Michigan University

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Posted in Administrator Life, College Fun, EMU President, EMU Technology, In the media..., Security and Safety, Student Life

“Harvard and MIT Put $60-Million Into New Platform for Free Online Courses”

Posted on May 3, 2012 by | 4 Comments

I heard this story on the radio too, but as reported on the CHE web site, “Harvard and MIT Put $60-Million Into New Platform for Free Online Courses.” Here’s a few paragraphs from the opening of the article:

Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today announced a partnership that will host online courses from both institutions free of charge. The platform, its creators say, has the potential to improve face-to-face classes on the home campuses while giving students around the world access to a blue-ribbon education.

The new venture, called edX, grew out of MIT’s announcement last year that it would offer free online courses on a platform called MITx. The combined effort will be overseen by a nonprofit organization governed equally by both universities, each of which has committed $30-million to the project. Anant Agarwal,  director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, who led the development of MITx, will serve as edX’s first president.

Students who complete the courses on the edX platform will not receive university credit, although they could earn certificates.

That last paragraph is the kicker for me:  if students don’t get credit that actually leads to a degree, then it seems to me that this is “an education” in only the most abstract of terms.

And I also suspect that these “massively open online courses” will ultimately emerge as a fad that are largely recognized as ineffective.  I’m participating right now in Curtis Bonk’s MOOC about online teaching and learning, and I’m blogging about it a bit on my own site, too.  So far, it seems to me that while it is an interesting discussion and interaction opportunity, it isn’t really an educational opportunity per se.  There really isn’t a lot of teacher/student interaction, and without that or credit, it’s learning for learning’s sake.  There’s a lot that can be learned with these experiences, but there’s a lot that can be learned from things like wikipedia, too. That’s a noble thing, but it certainly isn’t the same as learning in order to gain credit that goes towards a college degree.

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Posted in Academics, In the media...

More op-ed reading and thinking of college as of late

Posted on May 2, 2012 by | 1 Comment

I guess it’s the season– graduation and all, and the slightly quieter “between terms” times for me– but it sure seems like I’ve been seeing a lot of interesting articles and commentary pieces on higher ed lately.  A few I thought I’d share here:

“Tempering the Rise of the Machines” in Inside Higher Ed is one of those piece that will scare the bejeezus out of those of us who make a living actually teaching, until you realize it is mostly science fiction.  The article summarizes a report:

The report, called “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education,” was co-written by Lawrence S. Bacow and William G. Bowen, the former presidents of Tufts and Princeton Universities, respectively, along with several Ithaka analysts. It was bankrolled by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The report contained little advocacy one way or another; rather, the authors appeared to strive for a dispassionate analysis driven by a general sense that the rise of machine learning is inevitable and universities should be prepared. Their findings were based on interviews with senior administrators at 25 public and private, four-year and two-year colleges, including “deep dive” analyses at five of them.

Their objective was to assess the potential roadblocks that might prevent these traditional institutions from adopting sophisticated, “machine guided” learning tools into their curriculums. Technology designed to usher students through new material is thought likely to play a significant role in the future of higher education, although critics have worried that relying too heavily on such technology could harm learning.

Sure, a report written by a bunch of administrators based on interviews with administrators (and not faculty nor students) and financed by a group that has been tone-deaf to teaching in the past and which has obvious interest in the use of computer technology in all spheres of our lives; what could be biased about that?  The “good news” here is it turns out that the magic of software that could eliminate professors entirely is at best decades away.

Then there’s “Did Anyone Ask the Students?, Part I” on the CHE web site and by Jeff Selingo.  Selingo is the editorial director of The Chronicle and in the course of thinking about new technologies and such being introduced by “educational entrepreneurs” and traveling around the country to different campuses, he decided to actually ask students about these things.   The short list of what he found so far (Part 2 is tomorrow, I guess):

  • Face to face still matters and students still want it.
  • Students need to do “more career exploration” before college than they do now.
  • Majors don’t matter.

As I commented on the site,  this does square with my experiences in interacting with students– well, at least mostly.  I teach about as much online as I do in person, and I think for the most part, my online students would rather be taking classes f2f, but life/practicality gets in the way.  And since I’m teaching at a large public regional university (and not a place that is mostly online), almost all of my online students are taking f2f classes at the same time.  I do think majors matter to students perhaps more than Selingo is implying– it seems like what they really value is flexibility and choice, which isn’t quite the same thing as not valuing a major– but I also think majors probably matter more to faculty who put a lot of investment into the discipline/turf.  Anyway, I’m looking forward to part 2.

Last (for now), there’s Frank Bruni’s New York Times column (which I found via the Selingo piece), “The Imperiled Promise of College.”  It’s a bit all over the place, raising questions about the value of a college degree in the first place especially relative to the current economy.  The opening paragraphs seem true to my experience (and Bruni and I are roughly the same age, I should point out):

For a long time and for a lot of us, “college” was more or less a synonym for success. We had only to go. We had only to graduate. And if we did, according to parents and high-school guidance counselors and everything we heard and everything we read, we could pretty much count on a career, just about depend on a decent income and more or less expect security. A diploma wasn’t a piece of paper. It was an amulet.

And it was broadly accessible, or at least it was spoken of that way. With the right mix of intelligence, moxie and various kinds of aid, a motivated person could supposedly get there. College was seen as a glittering centerpiece of the American dream, a reliable engine of social mobility.

I think there are two ways to look at the way things have changed.  One is where Bruni goes, questioning the value of higher ed– or at least of some majors– for folks entering the job market today.  (Though see above regarding the argument that majors don’t matter).

The other way to look at it is the undergrad BA/BS is no longer an “amulet” so much as it is the entry point to a graduate degree that is now the ticket that gets you to a decent income and job security.  I don’t know to what extent actual statistics support this, but I hear from a lot of my MA students nowadays that the masters degree is what the bachelors degree was for me almost 25 years ago: the entry point into the professional job.  As one former student said to me, “everyone’s got a BA; you’ve got to do something to distinguish yourself if you’re going to get something.”

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

“This time it’s different– vote ‘yes’ on the Ypsilanti tax proposals”

Posted on May 1, 2012 by | 4 Comments

I have a Save Ypsi Yes sign in my front yard, and the other day, while I was out there doing some gardening, somebody walking their dog stopped and asked me to explain why I was in favor of a city income tax and a water street mileage.  This op-ed piece by Ypsi City Council Member Pete Murdoch sums up the reasons why I think the only logical vote is yes.

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Posted in In the media..., State Government, Ypsilanti

Congrats, graduates: the good news

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 1 Comment

But I don’t want to be a complete downer here about college costs and bad job prospects.  annarbor.com had a nice story about EMU graduation, “Family reunites with son on eve of deployment at Eastern Michigan University commencement.”  Kind of touching.

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Posted in College Fun, In the media..., Student Life

Congrats, graduates: the bad news

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 2 Comments

“Dean Dad” at Confessions of  Community College Dean (now at Inside Higher Ed) had a sobering post yesterday about college graduates, “Class Dismissed.”  Here are the opening paragraphs:

Half of new bachelor’s degree grads are either unemployed or underemployed, according to the Associated Press.

The market isn’t ready to absorb them. Specifically,

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor’s degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren’t easily replaced by computers.

I had to smile at “college professors” making the list. When I entered graduate school during the first Bush administration, we were told that a great wave of faculty retirements was on the horizon, and that we’d be in high demand be the time we got out. We all know how that played out. It’s entirely possible that college professor positions will open in great numbers, but only if you fail to differentiate between adjunct and full-time positions. And having adjunct positions available hardly gets around the “underemployment” issue.

And if you don’t think college professors can’t be replaced by outsourced workers, well….

Speaking of bad news, CBS Sunday Morning had a surprisingly good story about the high cost of a college education, “Some hard lessons about college costs.”  Click the link to see a link to the video; here’s a pretty good quote though:

“In other industries, we found ways to produce things using fewer labor hours, using more technology,” said Sandy Baum, a senior economics fellow at George Washington University (which, at $55,000 a year, is pretty pricey). “We haven’t really figured out how to do that in education.”

The result? College tuition has risen as twice the pace of inflation. In fact, they’ve doubled in 10 years.

Baum also said the increased cost is not due to faculty being paid lots of money: “Faculty salaries have been pretty stagnant. But their compensation goes up when health care costs go up.”

Add to that the increasing number of administrators (for both good and bad reasons), athletics, and college spending on “lifestyle” amenities like posh dorms and workout facilities and you start to see why college costs more than it should.

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

Once again, I am overlooked

Posted on April 29, 2012 by | 20 Comments

Marty TRUEMUAs Heritage Newspapers reported, “New campaign at Eastern Michigan University features faculty excellence.”  To quote the press release/article:

The Office of Marketing for Eastern Michigan University has launched its second phase of TRUEMU. The campaign focuses on faculty excellence.

“This phase of our campaign is designed to focus on our faculty all-stars,” said Ted Coutilish, vice president for marketing and promotions, “to showcase their individuality and really, really show the university through different perspectives.”

I’m happy to see this fine picture of my friend and colleague.  Still, I’m disappointed that my own contribution to the TRUEMU campaign hasn’t been turned into a light post banner.

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Branding, Faculty Life, In the media...

New Women’s Basketball Coach; annarbor.com appears to be down

Posted on April 27, 2012 by | 4 Comments

These aren’t related stories really, but I thought I’d fold them into one post anyway:  I obviously haven’t been paying much attention because it turns out that women’s basketball coach AnnMarie Gilbert resigned a couple weeks ago.  ”Resigned” is, I think, the polite way of putting it.  As this article from the Freep describes tells the story, it sure looks like Gilbert was forced out because of NCAA violations.  Since the investigation is ongoing, maybe we’ll hear more about that in the coming months.

Replacing Gilbert is Troy Tory Verdi– here’s the story about that.

As for the annarbor.com part of things:  as of my writing of this (on Friday morning, April 27), it appears that the site is down.  I’m going to assume it’s a technical snafu of some sort, though what if someone finally decided to literally pull the plug on that operation?

 

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Posted in In the media..., Sports

EMU alum Dave Coverly to speak at commencement

Posted on April 26, 2012 by | 3 Comments

I came across this a little later and it seems to me it deserved a post of its own:  also from the Echo, ”EMU alum Dave Coverly to speak at commencement.”  I’m not attending either ceremony this year, but I think I’d rather listen to the cartoonist.

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Posted in Academics, College Fun, EMU Events, In the media..., Student Life