minahkaypoh

Everyone wants to be "the best." Stuyvesant High School in New York City is one of those considered to be winning the race to the top.   According to this picture, and the New York Times, not so much .

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education released information on the " Median Salaries of Senior College Administrators by Job Category and Type of Institution, 2011-12 . "  Giving concerns about administrative costs contributing to rising tuition-- or at minimum, the difficulty in keeping tuition flat giving the expansion of some administrations, this is data we should all pay attention to. How does UW-Madison stack up? A quick comparison of the salaries of a sample of 20 or so indicate that overall, Madison pays slightly better than the median salaries at doctoral-grant institutions.  But that conceals some heterogeneity which may deserve further attention.  What jumped out most to me is that while men like Vice Chancellor for Administration Darrell Bazzell, and Vice Chancellor for University Relations Vince Sweeney, and Dean of the Graduate School Martin Cadwalleder earn $30-60,000 more than the median for people in their position, three of the key female stars o...

This is from Tom Mortenson's Postsecondary Education Opportunity Report, Feb 2012

The National Bureau of Economic Research has released a couple of new papers worth reading. (1) A new study from Kirabo Jackson at Northwestern considers a Texas college-prep program called APIP: Advanced Placement Incentive Program. It provides cash incentives for student and  teachers to help students perform well on AP tests, and it provides teacher training, curricula oversight, and test-prep sessions .   While this clearly fits the model of "teaching to the test" it's about way more than paying students for grades.  The cash incentives for the teachers are real money-- depending on the school, as much as $500 for each student in their course scoring a 3 or better on an AP exam, and bonuses up to $1000 at year's end, and for the "lead" teachers, annual bonus payments up to $15,000 per year. Payments to students are also large-- not only is the fee for the exam defrayed, but they can also get up to $500 for good scores. Now, this is clearly not an entirel...

A fellow professor at an institution that shall remain nameless (truly) just forwarded me an email he just received. It has been modestly modified only to protect the professor and the university. "Hello, I see from the Latino Studies Department website that you are a faculty member .  I’m wondering if you would be able to translate something for me?  At our cafeteria we are in the process of naming several of our new food venues.  At our “Mexican Grill” venue, where we will be serving Tex-Mex food items, we are considering some different names for this food venue.  We are considering using Comida Rica or Que Rico for the name, along with “Mexican Grill.”   Does Comida Rica mean Delicious Food and Que Rico, Delicious?  We want to make sure that we are using words properly and have also seen these words associated with “Rich Food” “How Tasty” or “How Rich.”  I would appreciate it if you would let me know  the definition when used with food." Yes, t...

Lest you thought their interests in UW System were merely economic, Wisconsin legislators have now baldly demonstrated their political agendas with regard to institutions of public higher education.   Squelching an art exhibit hosted by UW Extension, legislator Steve Nass framed his attack on academic freedom as an appropriate intrusion, intended to "help" Extension's long-term interests in having state funding by promoting political correctness. Linking together the new austerity in higher education with political interests in suppressing "liberal" education and the activities of the arts and humanities, the Wisconsin legislature brings the past antics of Lynne Cheney and her ilk to a whole new level.  It is imperative that UW System not operate out of economic fear, compromising the integrity of its programming, and instead reverse the decision to cancel "Art in Protest"-- holding the event proudly, to fulfill the mission of its name.

Make no mistake about it-- a conservative agenda in public higher education, quite similar to the one for public k-12, is steadily progressing across the nation.  The multi-pronged attack includes cutting budgets ("we have no choice-- look at the deficit!"), deriding outcomes ("college is worthless, students are partying"), and applying business models to evaluating success ( c.f. all the efficiency talk). Today's news is rife with stories suggesting that under attack, public colleges and universities are abandoning their missions, adapting market-centered approaches, fighting with each other, and otherwise jumping ship. A new survey reports that 143 public colleges and universities now have differential tuition  -- a policy that seems efficient on its face, but may well further stratify opportunities, leaving behind those with the least information and least ability to pay. In Florida, a week after announcing substantial budget cuts to state U's , the legis...

This guest post is from Dr. Barbara Ferman , Founder and Executive Director, University Community Collaborative of Philadelphia and Professor of Political Science at Temple University. Please contact her directly with any questions or comments, at bferman@temple.edu . Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s White House speech on January 10, in which he heralded Action Civics as a promising model for engaging current and future generations in the democratic enterprise, appears to have generated cheers from some and set off alarm bells among others . Such debate is what democracy is all about and should be supported and encouraged. However, as is too often the case, the debate is mired in confusion as to the purpose and practice of Action Civics. As Executive Director of one of the founding organizational members of the National Action Civics Collaborative (NACC), I would like to set the record straight with regards to this very promising practice—what is Action Civics, what is the val...

The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has released a new report highlighting the use of federal student financial aid by states and congressional districts.  It is fairly obviously intended to make the point that campus-based aid-- which President Obama is trying to leverage to hold colleges and universities responsible for rising tuition and fees-- is a tiny amount of money.  I think it does that quite effectively. But what it also highlights is how important the federal Pell Grant is to state and local economies. Let's take Wisconsin, for example.   In 2010-2011, just over 130,000 Wisconsin students received Pell Grants, valued at over $454 million. In contrast, campus-based programs (the SEOG and work-study) distributed funds to just over 35,000 students to the tune of about $34 million. The contribution of federal student aid to congressional districts is sizable, but the relative contribution of campus-based programs is generally small. ...

The following is a guest post by Robert Kelchen , doctoral student at UW-Madison.  The recent revelation by Claremont McKenna College that it falsely reported artificially high SAT scores for six years of incoming students is the most recent example of a college or university fudging the numbers in order to look better in the ubiquitous U.S. News and World Report college rankings . Other recent examples of colleges trying to game the rankings include:        Iona College reported in 2011 that SAT scores, acceptance rates, student-faculty ratios, graduation rates, and alumni giving rates were exaggerated for a decade. These data were used by 14 external agencies, ranging from their accrediting body to Moody’s and the NCAA.        The University of Illinois’s law school reported in 2011 that LSAT scores and undergraduate grades were substantially inflated for six classes of students. These incorrect scores were not discovered until the law ...

This cross-posted item is from a piece I wrote for the Silicon Valley Education Foundation's TOP-Ed blog . ----------------------------------------------- Amid the current flurry of state policy reform activity around teaching, I've been thinking about what's missing. My conclusion: A focus on teachers as learners.... ---------------------------------------------- To read more, visit the TOP-Ed blog post .

It is often said that access/diversity and affordability in higher education can only come at the expense of quality. Thus, it is all-too-common for critics  to cast those in favor of broadening college access as socialists who simply want to destroy high-quality educational institutions. They promote a false dichotomy that has been kept alive for decades by the consistent retelling of the "tragedy of the commons." The tragedy, we're told, is that people will always strive to maximize their private benefits, and that eventually these will necessarily come at the expense of common goods.  Garrett Hardin famously laid this out for us in 1968. Sadly, far too many people seem to think the tragedy of the commons is a problem that can't be solved. The "iron triangle" model dominating decision-making in higher education confirms this-- since "we know" that spending leads to quality (thus less spending leads to less quality), and that increased access (e.g...

A recent exchange between Chris Rickert and Mike Knetter provides a useful example of what happens when we engage in policy discussions without being insufficiently clear about our intended goals. Chris's column from Thursday was titled " Big donors don't make a big impact on tuition at UW-Madison ." In this piece he makes the following points: (1) UW-Madison faces a public relations problem because it claims to have financial troubles but building construction on campus is rampant. (2) Private donations to UW often go to buildings and athletics, rather than to need-based financial aid. (3) There is a national affordability crisis. He does not tie these three points together in any clear fashion in the text of the column, but the headline attempts to do so by claiming that what the three points tell us is that donors aren't really helping the university respond to the national crisis, since their money doesn't go to discount tuition. Obviously, those who raise...

This Wednesday the Wisconsin Special Task Force on UW Restructuring and Operational Flexibilities will hear from the chancellors of Madison and Milwaukee on several issues, including flexibility for tuition-setting. I'm on the record as having numerous concerns about the unintended consequences of giving institutional administrators more say over tuition, since they operate under intense local and political pressures to generate more resources which lead them to raise tuition even when it comes at the expense of access commitments. The latter are far more difficult to uphold, since even when people feel strongly about supporting college opportunities for disadvantaged families, the fact is that those families are quite distant from the lives of decision-makers, and thus easy to neglect. A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research by Columbia economist Judith Scott-Clayton offers important reminders for this task force and the chancellors.  The access commitment is...

                                                                                                   On Friday my son turned five.  And so it was that on Thursday night I found myself elbow deep in dark chocolate cake batter and made-from-scratch coconut frosting, carefully following a recipe from the very chic Boston bakey Flour .  After asking Conor to name all of the children in his kindergarten class (twice) to be sure I would make enough cupcakes, I filled 18 spaces in my two non-stick pans and stuck them in the oven. Then I collapsed—while I love to cook, I hate baking, since it requires precise measurement and careful attention to detail, for which I have little energy left in the evenings given that such effort is required at...

In a recent blog Kevin Carey took on Claire Potter ’s critique of Obama’s higher education proposal by chastising her for using the term neoliberalism , and calling her a college professor so out of touch with the real world that she isn’t invited to the policymaking tables where he hangs out. Dear Kevin, as you know I like you very much—so pardon me if I take offense here.  As a fellow college professor who spends quite a bit of time in DC policy circles (including with you), I think your critique of Potter is off-base. It’s also incredibly unproductive, as you set up an “education reformer versus college professor” dichotomy that's decidedly unhelpful. You accuse Potter of thinking she’s better than the DC crew, but she said nothing of the sort—instead it’s really you who calls her the idiot, seemingly for using big words.  At the heart of the problem with your critique, Kevin, is that you’ve really missed the meaning of neoliberalism.  Yes, I’m going to keep using t...