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The Grade Negotiation Season

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Paul Kiser in About Reno, College, Communication, Education, Ethics, Generational, Higher Education, Internet, Opinion, Pride, Public Image, Public Relations, Respect, Universities

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college credit, Email, financial aid, grade point average, Grades, negotiation, professors, semester, student loans

Spring brings forth the failures as well as the flowers

Spring brings forth the failures as well as the flowers

Most people don’t realize that we are in a new season. It happens twice a year at the end of a semester when college professors are bombarded with emails from their students trying to beg, borrow, or steal a few points for a higher grade. It should be noted that the majority of these emails are not coming the students who attended class, turned in assignments on time, and studied for the tests. No, these are the students that missed class, turned in assignments late, and had a party to go to rather than study.

The emails are typically as follows:

Hi,

Could u look @my grade. I need 2 have a c n u’re clas or i lose my finansal aide. i was sure i had a c n u’re class.

Rach

The student often assumes that the professor knows in which class the student was enrolled, and writes as if she or he is texting a friend. The student probably knows that they didn’t deserve a “C” in the class; however, they hope that the professor will feel sorry for them and bump them up. Usually, nothing changes, but the student can say to her or his parents that they were sure they had a “C” in the class and that they even complained to the professor, but he or she wouldn’t change it.

For the professor, these emails take pointless hours of time to review the scores, confirm the grade, and respond. It turns the end of the semester into a circus where all the clowns come out of the woodwork after being absent most of the semester.

There is nothing wrong with a student questioning their grade; however, if a student is at the borderline of losing her or his financial aid, and/or falling below the required grade average for enrollment, the problem is not about one grade, but the overall performance in all classes.

Sadly, professors are not allowed to offer an appropriate response such as:

Rachel Smith
Student
ENG 203 – Writing For Business

Dear Rachel:

Thank you for your email. Your grade is based on your participation in my class and reflects the work you performed. The “D’ you received is not only correct, it is generous. I’m pleased to see that a student like yourself will no longer be offered financial aid, so that a better quality of student can now be a recipient.

I wish you well on your future in the world of menial labor for which you may or may not be qualified.

Sincerely,

Edward Terrell
Professor
University of  Higher Education

 

What America Must Do: Step 6 – Reinvent Higher Education

14 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by Paul Kiser in College, Communication, Education, Generational, Government, Higher Education, History, Information Technology, Internet, Opinion, Politics, Public Relations, Taxes, Technology, The Tipping Point, Traditional Media, Universities, US History

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college degree, faculty, professors, state run, students, tuition and fees, universities

Sans Students: Is this what university classrooms will look like in 2020?

Higher Education is an unmovable object with an unstoppable force heading straight for it and universities are at ground zero. Classrooms as we know them may be doomed and the question is whether our country will lead the world in adapting to a new model, or whether we will be the last ones to accept reality.

The Value of the College Degree
The unmovable object in Higher Education is importance of the college degree in American commerce. Business lives or dies on information. The person who can access, filter, analyze, organize, and explain information tends to be valuable in a company.

High schools are tasked to help students graduate with basic competencies, but they are dealing with children who are still maturing into adulthood and that process needs to be complete before they are morphed into business men and women.

Those who believe high schools should be vocational schools are assuming that all children will become a construction laborer or office drone, so why bother with college prep? The concept of education as a training ground for corporate zombies is too simple-minded to apply in a country that encourages all citizens to reach their maximum potential.

College is where young adults are given the tools to become valued business leaders. College classes require a student to learn how to access and report information, which is central in business competitiveness. The business that can out think its competition always wins, which may be why many top businesses are more concerned about the degree, not the major. A college degree is more than a piece of paper, it is a badge of achievement that says this person is ready for the business world.

The Relentless Rise in the Cost of College
The unstoppable force is the rising cost of a college education. With cuts in federal and state budgets a greater share of the burden is being heaped on those who are least able to avoid it. In Mitt Romney’s failed bid to be President he suggested that students should borrow from their parents to pay for college. That was one telling sign that Romney is out of touch with the real world the rest of us live in.

March 2012 protest in Sacramento over tuition hikes

In 1991 the annual average cost for a university education was at $7,602 or over $30,000 for four years of college. In 2001, that annual cost had risen to $12,922 or over $50,000 in four years. In 2011, the annual cost had risen to $22,092, which meant it cost over $88,000 for the average college four-year degree. That is the equivalent of buying a new car every year a student attends college. If the trend continues it will cost a student an average of over $41,000/year for college by 2021, which means a four-year college degree in 2021 may cost over $167,000.

Students and their parents are already outraged by the rising costs, but it is universities who control the expenses, and therefore control the costs.

Based on current trends, the average annual cost for college may exceed $40,000 by 2021

Students want to be competitive for careers that will lead them to higher paying jobs, but they have no means to afford college and the list of parents who CAN pay over $22,000 a year for four years are on a first name basis with Mitt Romney.

The Other Unmovable Object – Faculty
Teachers at the college level have traditionally been considered the most important asset to a university and for centuries they were treated with dignity and respect by administrators, but financial pressures have made them a target for saving money. While students face escalating tuition and fees, university faculty are also a target of the unstoppable force. Professors have been constantly asked to accept budget cuts and teach more students for the same, or lower pay. 

Some universities have replaced expensive tenured professors with temporary faculty employed by contract on a semester by semester basis. Temporary faculty make a fraction of a full, tenured professor. Not surprisingly, a teacher that may not be offered a contract the next semester tends to be more accepting of increased class sizes, or other cost-cutting measures.

What may be surprising is that a college teacher is likely not receiving a significant portion of the tuition paid by the students in his or her classes. A temporary professor may bring in $100,000 or more in revenue each year for the university, but a temporary professor is often paid less than $4,000 per class with no benefits. Low pay and increased pressure to do more for no additional money makes the teaching environment unpleasant for the student and professor.

A Revolution Caused by the Internet
Ironically, the Internet was originally intended to allow one university to have quick access to the knowledge database at other universities and research laboratories. As it expanded and became commercially available in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s the public began to have access to a vast storage of on and off-campus knowledge without a student ID. Within a decade homes across the world were linked into a mass of dynamic information via business and personal websites, blogs, chat rooms, and other social media sites.

Suddenly anyone could access information and share ideas and they didn’t have to pay tuition to have easy access to it. Certainly some of the information was in error, but often people found information that outpaced the knowledge produced in books. Universities no longer held the monopoly on information.

Government Must Change
State governments and Higher Education face these problems:

  1. A college degree is still a valuable achievement and desired by the public and business.
  2. Tuition and fees are too high and the public can no longer afford them.
  3. Professors have been devalued in a system where more and more of the revenue is channeled away from the them.
  4. University administrators and government legislators have created a paradigm for Higher Education that is unsustainable.

Social media has changed the expectations of the public. People expect to be able to have ready access to anyone to whom they are paying for a service.

Controlling advanced knowledge within ivy covered walls is no longer possible in a world where anyone can do a Google search and know as much or more about the most current knowledge on any topic. However, just doing a Google search does not teach a person how to filter, analyze, organize, and report that information.

State-run universities have a unique opportunity to reinvent Higher Education. The challenge is that they are the most unlikely to do it. Administrators have Accreditation organizations that are established to dictate what Higher Education is and will be today and tomorrow based on the best practices of yesterday. That doesn’t work in a world where today is already history that was recorded by over 340 million tweets a day (March 2012 data.)

When the unstoppable force hits the unmovable objects (value of a degree and the need for faculty) few things about Higher Education will remain unchanged. Now is the time for State-run universities to dodge the upcoming annihilation and take the lead in reinventing Higher Education. They can start considering the following guidelines:

  • Tuition must stabilize and regress. Fees should be eliminated. Universities can assume that there will be no money available to siphon off for student activities, the football program, or any other money-absorbing entity. 
  • Support materials (textbooks, etc.) will be digital only and the cost will be pennies on the dollar of what students have been paying. Goodbye, McGraw-Hill. Hello, Faculty Publishing.
  • Classrooms will be more like Boardrooms with fewer students where the Professor is the CEO of knowledge and students must bring their best or beg for a second chance with someone else. Much of the lecture and information gathering will be done via webcasts and/or outside of class time. ‘Class’ will be where the work outside the classroom is brought in for discussion and idea sharing.
  • Class schedules will not follow a semester system and will be on a schedule that is more like a project team.
  • Faculty will lead students while at the same time work toward advancing knowledge on the subject matter.
  • The most important person to the student will be the educational coordinator (i.e. Counselor or Adviser in the old paradigm) who will create an individualized degree that is based on achieving a level of mastery information handling, not a number of credit hours.

The framework in which this happens must be within a government structure. Private enterprise has proven that when they try to create a system of higher learning they fail. It solves nothing to make Higher Education a profit-based program that is a poor imitation of the old, outdated model. If government can successfully create a new model it will make the United States of America the leader of advanced knowledge. If not, we can expect to be exporters of our future.

Links to:

What America Must Do:  Step 1 – Silence the Wackos in Politics
What America Must Do:  Step 2 – An Extreme Makeover of Government at All Levels
What America Must Do:  Step 3 – Restore Government Revenue and Fair Taxation
What America Must Do:  Step 4 – Balanced Budget By 2015, Debt under 50% of GDP by 2020
What America Must Do:  Step 5 – Restart a Federally Run Space Program

Is Higher Ed Doomed? (Part I): Driving off a cliff near you, the state-run university

31 Monday Jan 2011

Posted by Paul Kiser in College, Ethics, Government, Higher Education, Universities

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

colleges, cost of college, faculty, funding cuts, higher ed, professors, student loan crisis, students, universities, university administration

by Paul Kiser
USA PDT [Twitter: ] [Facebook] [LinkedIn] [Skype:kiserrotary or 775.624.5679]

Paul Kiser

Article first published as
Is Higher Education Doomed (Part I): Driving Off a Cliff Near You – The State-Run University
on Technorati.com

Part I

The average cost of a college degree is rapidly rising. In 2006, the annual average cost for tuition and fees at a state-run (public) four-year school was reported to be $5,836. In 2010, that cost was $7,605, an increase of 30% in the time it takes to earn a typical undergraduate degree. This follows a 46% increase in tuition and fees in the previous four year period (2002 to 2006.) What is even more disturbing is that there is no end in sight in the rapid escalation of the cost of higher education. (What does it cost to go to college? Click on this link to the College Board website.)

So where is all this going? Consider these six facts:

Students are the victims of the Higher Ed crisis

  1. College debt is becoming the next major loan crisis following the same scenario as housing crisis: Too many huge loans made to people who cannot possibly afford them.
  2. States have made, and continue to make massive cuts in funding higher education. Specifically, funding cuts to the operational budgets of state-run universities and colleges.
  3. The budget cuts have driven up tuition and fee costs, making the concept of an ‘affordable’ college education at a state-run institution a myth.
  4. The budget cuts have also forced higher education institutions to increase class sizes and cut services, so students/parents pay more and get less in return.
  5. The budget cuts have effectively ended the concept of job security for the professor as university administrators have hacked away at programs in desperate attempts to slash expenses.
  6. State-run universities and colleges are locked into a brick and mortar concept that demands that education must occur primarily on a centralized campus with massive overhead costs.

Put these six facts together and there is one unmistakable conclusion: state-run universities cannot continue in their present form, and may not survive at all.

In addition to the major problems crushing state-run universities, the refinement of learning/teaching alternatives and an Internet system that removes the ‘it-has-to-be-taught-here’ mentality of campus administrators is presenting options that have yet to be fully explored.

NEXT:  Is Higher Ed Doomed? (Part II): The cost of Higher Ed doesn’t add up (Click for link)


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