News Flash: Poor People Go to College Too!

I don't know why so many professors have a misconception that everyone in college is middle class or higher, but it needs to change.  I've encountered so many ignorant professors who looked down upon me for needing to work a job while in school.  They say that I don't take my studies seriously because I can't devote all my waking hours studying, as if any students do.  Some have told me that I don't deserve to go to grad school because I'm academically lazy.  The funny thing is that so many students who don't work spend much of their extra time partying, something I had little desire to do.  I've had professors refuse to schedule a meeting with me or help me via email when their office hours are scheduled during my other classes or work.  How is this fair at all?  Should I be punished because I don't have mommy and daddy to pay for my education?

I'm not sure if these professors legitimately believe that there are no poor people in college or if they are somehow jaded from other experiences.  A certain post I made on the Chronicle of Higher Education forum regarding financial aid was met with a response that there are no real lower-class students in college.  The students who claim to be poor are just poor because they waste their money on food and expensive cars, in that person's example.  I was shocked that an educated person would resort to generalizing a whole group of students like that.  Perhaps some professors don't realize that college is a high-risk investment by those of the lower class.  They should realize that many of these people are more dedicated than wealthier students as we have potentially little to gain and everything to lose.

I don't mean to generalize; I've had some sympathetic professors.  But they were the minority for sure.  I found my humanities professors to generally be more understanding than their science equivalents.  I'm sure working students would like to keep their non-academic work a secret to be revealed only when necessary.  I hope that I won't have any of these unpleasant situations in graduate school where I am employed by the university.  All I ask is that professors ask themselves, "What if this student really does need to work to put food on his or her table?"

The Case for Cursive

Cursive is a dying art in most elementary school classrooms around the nation.  The Common Core curriculum used by 46 states no longer requires schools to teach cursive.  Instead, typing has taken up the time previously allotted for cursive practice, which generally occurred in the third, fourth, and fifth grades.  The idea behind the change is that typing has become the primary medium for writing and class time could be better spent teaching how to type properly.  The issue seems to have as many supporters as opponents.  I consider myself to be a strong opponent of the decision.

Where should I begin?  How about I start with the fact that it is a major disservice to students to not provide them with the ability to read the handwriting of so many adults in the world today?  I don't think I've ever had a high school teacher or professor who didn't write in cursive, unless writing on the board.  And even then, many wrote in cursive.  How can students expect to read signatures and generate their own?  A simple Google search for "SAT cursive" brings up dozens of message board posts from students stressed out about the simple SAT pledge which is meant to be reproduced in cursive by the student.  The gradual shortening of time spent on cursive education has a noticeable impact.  Specifically, only 15 percent of students wrote the paragraph in cursive.  I was taught cursive for three years in elementary school and, even though I didn't write in cursive again until college, I easily remembered how because I had so much practice with it from long ago. 

There are also benefits to using cursive.  Knowing cursive helps to generate a signature that is less prone to forgery, yet less enigmatic than a signature might be from someone who doesn't know cursive but doesn't want to sign his or her name in print.  Being cursive-literate means that one can read all (legible) forms of handwriting.  Just imagine how embarrassing it would be to be to come in to the office after lunch to find a cursive handwritten note on your keyboard from your boss.  You look at the note from no less than six different angles, including upside down, and yet you cannot make any sense of the mysterious message.  You then turn to your coworker or, even worse, your boss, and ask for a translation.  I'm sure most of you can visualize the inevitable facepalm from him or her.  Oh, and knowing cursive also means that you can read the occasional birthday card from your grandmother or the Constitution of the United States.

I won't argue that cursive is the faster form of writing.  According to the first article above, no studies have shown conclusively that cursive is faster than print.  So far, it seems that people tend to write fastest in whichever style they use most often.  But I believe cursive should still be taught as an alternative to print.  For some people like myself, cursive is much faster than print, and I actually print more than I write in cursive.  For sure, typing is the fastest form of writing.  But are typing classes really necessary in elementary school?  I took a typing class in sixth grade and none of us really practiced typing correctly.  We just enjoyed a chance to be on a computer.  I didn't really learn to type properly until eighth grade.  But is typing so complicated that it deserves to take up all the time previously spent on cursive?  I know plenty of people my age who don't type from the home row position, yet type faster than me with the same or fewer number of errors.  People will get faster and more accurate at typing just based on all the time they spend at the keyboard.  Very few people, however, will teach themselves cursive.  At the very least, allow students to learn cursive in an art class or elective.  Just provide them with some option to learn cursive in school!

I'd like to hear your comments on the importance of cursive education.  Whether you support or oppose the teaching of cursive in the classroom, or don't care either way, I'm interesting in hearing why you feel the way you do.

Be Cooperative, Not Competitive

Academics is too competitive.  In high school, we compete for the highest GPA and PSAT/SAT/SATII/ACT/AP/IB scores so we can get into a good college and enter with enough credit that we "can totally graduate in, like, one year!"  I'll just ignore the athletic types who go to college on sports scholarships.  Once we get into college (and realize we're going to be there for at least 4 years no matter how much credit we had coming in), we compete for a high GPA and GRE/MCAT/PCAT/LSAT/OAT/DAT so we can get into a good graduate/professional school.  Once we get into graduate/professional school, we compete for a high GPA so that we can get a great residency or professional job.  At this point, most medical professionals can finally enjoy the fruits of their labor free from excessive competition.  But not so for most of the rest.  They compete for the most efficiency/research so they can make partner, get an executive promotion, or receive tenure.  By then, these people are often at least in their mid-30s.  It can't be healthy to be under so much competitive stress for that long!  If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, then I guess all of the most learned members of our society are quite insane.

Does any of this excessive academic competitiveness actually help us learn better?  Of course not!  Does it make us bitter and prone to backstabbing?  Take a look into the inner politics of any professional firm or university.  Does this competition make us happy?  Probably not.  I'm quite guilty of comparing myself to students with better academic records and I certainly don't feel better afterwards.  One graduate student recently explained how she didn't feel "cut out for high quality research" after having a paper rejected from a conference with just an 18% acceptance rate.  Students even resort to prescription drugs like Adderall to improve productivity.

It seems like interdisciplinary research in universities is growing in popularity.  I'm glad to see this happen and I hope that it becomes standard.  Not only does this type of work teach all parties new things and exposes them to new perspectives, but it also can answer questions that could not be answered by experts in a single field.  My graduate studies are in a subfield that is interdisciplinary by definition and that was one of the major reasons why I chose it.  I get to really delve into the material I want to learn the most, but will also get plenty of exposure to some other fields that also interest me.  My senior year, I wrote a thesis for my humanities degree on a technical subject.  This combination of majors was new for the department, which brought plenty of challenges and rewards.  I don't know how good my thesis was compared to those who write solely within the discipline, but it was a great feeling to hear my thesis advisor say that he was unsure how to fully evaluate the quality of the thesis, but that he was happy to be a part of this unique project and learn some new things about the topic.

I would like to be a part of an academic community that discouraged competition and promoted cooperation.  If I could go back to my freshman self, I would tell myself to work hard and do the best job I could and to enjoy the process without worrying if I was near the top of my class.  All too often, I've seen ugly arguments come out of conversations after the return of graded exams.  The fact of the matter is that a student will often feel worse and perform worse if he or she feels inferior to another student.  That helps no one.  If cooperation was encouraged more, everyone (who puts in an honest effort) would learn and perform better.  After all, we tend to learn best by explaining what we learned to someone else and being corrected if necessary.  Plus, despite the cutthroat nature of some professions, we would all be happier at work if we had a genuine desire to work with each other, not against each other.  From what I understand, MIT doesn't have class rank or honors.  I, for one, would have been very happy to be without all that stress. 

The Perplexing Professoriate

Continuing from my last post, I want to explain why I don't think Americans need to be as critical of college faculty as some politicians think they should be.  The biggest misconception I've seen in the news and from politicians about professors is that they have cushy jobs that require little amount of time actually working.  All too often, only time spent teaching appears in these articles.  Of course, for major research universities, most professors spend less time in the classroom than most Americans would probably like.  However, the amount of time spent on research and service is largely unknown to those outside of academia.  Hell, many undergrads don't even know what professors do with themselves outside of teaching.

Service can be difficult to report in any way that doesn't come off as trying to sound more important than it is.  After all, meetings don't really sound like hard work and surely you can just zone out and occasionally vote on a committee, right?  But that's the problem.  People generally don't understand the workings of a university and underestimate the amount of work faculty members put into it.  And even in the case of the professors who don't take committee work seriously, they still probably advise master's and doctoral students.  In the case of adviser work, their reputation is partially on the line with each publication and advanced degree their advisees receive.  Much of this work can be seen as similar to one-on-one teaching or tutoring.  But all too often, they are just called on to be in the classroom more.

But of all three of a professor's main duties, none is misunderstood as much as research.  We've all seen the descriptions of professorial research as arcane, hyper-specialized, and unimportant work that results in publications that will only ever be read by less than ten people.  In the cases of the arts and humanities, the work often comes off as shockingly irrelevant to society.  In the sciences, the work sounds so complicated that people also cannot fathom any potential benefit from it.  Yet universities often pursue the "publish or perish" mentality if a professor ever wants a chance at tenure.  How are professors supposed to (unofficially) devote most of their attention to research while also spending most of their time on teaching?  Clearly it's an impossible situation.

I know most people don't realize the pressures faced by professors and don't understand their work.  But the tenure system is very selective and it definitely does not reward laziness.  In most cases, these people have dedicated their lives to obtaining a doctorate and facing the uphill battle that is securing a tenure-track faculty position.  Sure, some may grow complacent after receiving tenure.  But for most professors I've seen, they love their work and continue working diligently for its entire duration.  People rarely demand such accountability from other professionals.  The fact of the matter is that most people will not take the time necessary to fully understand the role of the professor.  But they just need to trust that professors are working hard for the benefit of the students, the university, the state, the nation, and the world.

The Pressure of Accountability

As you may have heard, a government investigation discovered massive cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta Public Schools.  But it wasn't the students who were cheating, it was the entire institution of public schools, from teachers up to principles and even the superintendent's office.  In this particular case, many of the guilty educators, who changed standardized test answers before submitting them for grading, attributed the cheating to a hostile work environment.  They claim that Superintendent Beverly Hall refused to accept responsibility for anything negative, but was quick to be noticed for successes.

This case may have been about pressure form the top so Hall could maintain a great image, but the first place my mind jumped when guessing the primary reason for the cheating was funding.  Schools receive funding based on student performance as determined by standardized tests.  The pressure to improve test scores increases each year it seems.  This is not unlike increasing pressure for professors to provide quantitative results of their productivity.

It seems like more and more state governments are demanding accountability from professors (probably so governors can justify spending cuts for higher ed).  But the million dollar question is: How exactly can a professor's productivity translate to numerical statistics?  At large, public research universities, which make up most, if not all, state flagship universities, professors are expected to spend their time about equally on teaching, research, and service.  Service is somewhat easy to judge because it is clear to the department of which committees a professor is a member.  Research can also be easily quantified through a combination of publications and grant money, as compared to other faculty in the same field.  Teaching is where the whole system falls apart and, of course, this is the category politicians want to scrutinize the most.

So how exactly can quality of teaching be quantified?  Most universities make use of teaching evaluation forms filled out by students near the end of the term.  These can be a useful method to determine trends in teaching style and quality, but they are hardly perfect.  While difficult professors who just so happen to be awesome at engaging the students can receive top scores, it is much simpler for a professor to make the course an easy A if he or she wants a good evaluation.  This is assuming, of course, that the majority of the students even fill out the evaluation with any amount of thought.  In my experience, most students would just mark all 5s or 3s or whatever, just so they could finish in 30 seconds and get to leave class 14 minutes and 30 seconds early.  Also, the questions asked on the evaluation forms at my undergrad made it unusually difficult to point out serious teaching flaws because the questions focused on things like my interest in the material, instructor's excitement, and instructor's respect of the students' race, religion, and gender.  These major errors must be addressed if student evaluations are to be the quantitative representation of the teaching portion of a professor's work.

I think it would be most effective to have faculty evaluate other faculty by watching the lectures.  This has its own problems, though.  The instructor under evaluation may prepare more than usual and deliver an unusually good lecture.  Perhaps this could be mixed with student evaluations.  In the end, however, there is no clear-cut method of quantitatively evaluating faculty productivity.  I do believe that most professors work hard and do not need extra pressure to keep up the good work.  In my next post, I'll explain why I do not believe the public needs to be so critical of faculty.  

College and Debt

When writing my previous post, I got to thinking about some things I've read in This Fine Place So Far from Home about how people from different socioeconomic classes viewed student loans differently.  This book is a collection of essays from working-class graduate students, professors, and other PhDs about their experiences in higher ed.  A common theme that struck me was the opposition on the part of the authors' families to student loans.  The reasoning was sound.  The belief was that once one borrows money from the wealthy, it becomes nearly impossible to break free from debt.  It's easy to see why a family barely scraping by would discourage the children from taking out tens of thousands of dollars for college, even though the loan would be an investment.  The problem, however, is that it is impossible for many students to receive a college education without the help of loans.

With all the recent news about student loans exceeding credit card debt in America, coupled with high unemployment, many students today may opt to forgo a college education to save money.  Now I don't want to advocate the idea that all students should go to a traditional college, but surely there are many young people out there who want to attend a university and have the dedication to succeed, but are held back by financial worries.

What we as a society need to do is educate these people on the risks and rewards of a (hopefully only partially) loan-funded college education.  Colleges should send loan literature to high school students that is heavy on the information and light on the legalese.  College orientations should have mandatory sessions on managing student loan debt.  Additionally, students should be presented with data regarding job placement for their major so they know the risks of taking out large loans for majors that generally result in low paying careers.  I place the burden on the university because I don't trust that Sallie Mae or the federal government would always have the students' best interest in mind.  We already know that many for-profit colleges aren't looking out for students, but I'm going to give the rest of higher ed the benefit of the doubt.  With the proper education, students should know that they shouldn't take out excessive loans to attend an expensive private school if they can receive an great education somewhere cheaper.  This type of academic frugality will ultimately help both the students and the economy.

I also favor legislation to make student loans dischargeable.  I'm not sure how to accomplish this and I won't pretend to be an arm-chair economist.  But it seems to make the most sense to not punish people for trying to better their lives by attending college.  College is an investment which may or may not pay off financially in the long run.  But a college education is something that should be an option for all who wish to obtain it.