MOOCS and the Three Year Degree

A few years ago, the Higher Education community was discussing how we could reduce the cost of higher education if we could create three-year degree programs. I remember that Time published articles about it from Lamar Alexander, George Miller, and others. Universities started to draw up plans to create new three-year tracks. As you might guess, the idea fizzled mostly because students were not really interested in working that consistently (i.e. over the summers and through Winter break). For the past 18 months or so, MOOCs are the new three-year College degree program. Actually, this idea has had more energy and financial support. While some of my students have graduated in three years even without the creation of official three-year degree tracts, I anticipate that some of my students will take MOOC courses. For my highly motivated students, this will work out well. For the majority, I don't think the massive online format with minimal instructor contact will satisfy the needs and wants of my students. My students (who are mostly traditional students between the ages of 18 and 24) want faculty-student interaction, student-to-student interaction, and find that the time and spatial demands of the "seated" class are generally more favorable than other formats. None of the above should be read as a full or effective rebuttal to the growing cost of higher education. That, especially as student loans become the primary way students pay for higher education, is a real problem. I just don't see MOOCS as a viable or effective solution to the cost problem, just as the three-year degree track never really met the needs of students.

Writing Well

Last night, I witnessed the culminating session of the Senior Seminar for the English Department. It was a great event. Each student prepared a short (4-7 page) statement of what they believe. They read the statements aloud. The essays were personal, poignant, and revealing. It was an honor to be an audience member and hear the truths they were describing. It also reminded me of how hard it is to write well. The essays charmed me because they dug deep to reveal truths about their authors. The writing was personal but universal, always revelling in the messiness of what it means to be human. It really struck me that writers, both students and scholars, take the easy road and substitute cliches and canards for truth. To write well, one must be willing to look at oneself and one's world in unsentimental way. These young writers helped give me a bit more faith in the possibility of writing to reveal and improve truths about humanity and ourselves.

Top Ten Most Played Jazz Tunes

I was playing around with my Ipad and learned that this is mylist of most played Jazz Tunes:

"Money Jungle" by Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, and Max Roach
"I'll Play the Blues for You" by Jason Moran
"A Night in Tunisia" by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
"Street Sounds" by Charlie Hunter
"My Favorite Things" by John Coltrane
"Blue Train" by John Coltrane
"Blue Monk" by Thelonius Monk
"St. James Infirmary" by Hot Lips Page
"There's No You" by Coleman Hawkins
"Testifyin'" by Benny Green

First off, I am surprised who is missing. There are no songs from Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, or Errol Garner.

Second, I am not surprised that Coltrane and Hawkins are on the list as I have been listening to those guys for twenty years!

Third, it confirmed my love for saxophone and piano jazz. The surprise is that Charlie Hunter and Art Blakey snuck in there!

What are your top ten played (not necessarily your favorite) jazz tunes?

Toni Morrison and Snooki: More Evidence of the Decline of Higher Education

The USA today just announced that Rutgers paid Snooki (of Jersey Shore fame) more money for a talk on campus than they will pay Toni Morrison (Nobel Prize winner) to give their commencement address. Both are being paid well (over $30,000) but the very idea that somehow bringing Snooki to a major college costs more than bringing Morrison and that this has happened at a major research university suggests how very wrong things are in higher education! This is not a critique of Rutgers because I think this could happen almost anywhere. It just makes me sigh!

The Irrelevance of Ideas to Education?

In my local newspaper, a columnist observed that tenure used to be a way to protect teachers from being fired for dangerous ideas but it has morphed into merely a way to secure a quasi-permant job.



I don't want to evaluate this claim whether it is true, although I suspect it may be the practical effect of most tenure decisions. Rather, I want to explore a potentially hidden assumption within this comment: Ideas either don't matter or have become irrelevant to teaching and learning. Now, the columnist (a former principal) does not actually make this case anywhere in his article. As is typical, his concern is about creating effective schools.



What confuses me is his sense that we could have good schools without an engagement with potentially controversial ideas. Or, in other words, tenure is no longer needed because teachers should simply teach skills and the fear of getting fired for holding, espousing, or exploring a controversial idea is just plain outdated. Given I live in a fairly conservative part of the country, there is plenty of local concern about governmental intrusions into individual freedoms, especially in terms of guns, religion, and the right to be entreprenurial (ok that last one is not in the Bill of Rights but lots of people think it ought to be). This would suggest to me that folks around here believe the government can and frequently does interfere with our lives but that intervention is just not a pressing issue for education.



All of this suggests that education, as popularly conceived, is no longer about ideas but about skill development and empolyment preparation. As long as education is framed in this way, the defense of tenure on the grounds of intellectual freedom and the need to explore controversial ideas will not be successful.



Perhaps more significantly, if education is "just" skill development and employment preparation (as opposed to training to become engaged and productive citizens), then the argument for public education and public funding for education seems diminished. If students and their families are merely investing in their personal financial futures, then why should society bear this cost?



Moreover, reframing education as vocational training begs the question of where society should debate what needs to be done with all that vocational training. If students are taught how to do things (from engineering to physical therapy to human resource management), where will they explore what they should do? What is their ethical obligations and the role of government, economics, personal responsibility, etc.?



The columnist persuaded me that defenses of tenure cannot rest on job security. Rather, they must emphasize the dangers of taking controversial ideas out of the classroom. Tenure is needed to help students engage dangerous ideas and develop their own ethical voice and their ability to become critical thinkers. Our country depends not only technical know-how about but the freedom to ask questions, especially questions about the nature of the good life and the good society.

A Hiphop Take on What is Going on in Egypt

Great new song about what is going on Egypt!

Check out http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/singles/id.13786/title.freeway-f-amir-sulaiman-ayah-the-narcicyst-and-omar-offendum-january-25th

That opening lyric is awesome!

Derrida interviews Ornette Coleman!

All I can say is wow!

http://http://www.ubu.com/papers/Derrida-Interviews-Coleman_1997.pdf