fiscal crisis and higher education

I recently spent 10 days in California. My visit coincided with the special election on ballot initiatives intended to generate new revenues -- these initiatives were soundly trounced by voters (except for the one to prohibit raises for legislators in years with a deficit). The failure of the ballot initiatives was followed by many public pronouncements about the cuts that would have to follow.

The causes of California's fiscal crisis is multi-faceted and stems from circumstances both unique to California and its political culture and from the broader economic recession that has impacted all the states. This is not an attempt to analyze those causes, or even sketch a few of them. It's a comment on narrow aspect of California's budget that caught my eye while I was there.

While I was perusing a local SF Bay Area newspaper, I saw an advertisement encouraging students to enroll for summer classes at a local community college. It was a fairly typical assortment of general education and technical courses being offered. What caught my eye was the "fee" -- not tuition -- charged. The cost to students was $20 (yes, twenty) per credit hour.

Do not get me wrong, as a community college professor, I'm an ardent supporter of access to higher education for all interested in pursuing it. Maintaining reasonable tuition costs at community colleges is an important part of enhancing educational access. Some would say that Kentucky's Community and Technical College's $125 per credit hour (for Fall 2009) is pushing the upper end of the envelop, but that is far lower than tuition at Kentucky's four year colleges and Universities.

My point -- California could easily double their $20 per unit fee and still fall at among the nation's cheapest tuition for community colleges. Low income students in California could obtain Pell Grants to offset the increased fees. California's 110 community colleges enroll more than 2.5 million students most of whom are part-time, or 1 million full-time equivalent students. That's 1 million times a full-time load of 12 credit hours multiplied by and extra $20 per credit hour, which would create an additional $240 million in revenue. That could go a long, long way to prevent cutbacks in courses and enrollments currently proposed as the means to deal with the state's financial crisis.

How good is college access if college are cutting back on offerings, and projecting that thousands of students will be unable to obtain the courses they want, or in some cases find any courses in which to enroll?

It’s kind of like ZipCar for books

Remember libraries? They’re like book stores, only you don’t pay for the books, and no one minds if you just sit around and read without taking anything home. (Remember book stores? They're like Amazon.com, but with other people.)
Libraries are regaining their relevance, after an inevitable ebb. With so many regional and local economies suffering, free opportunities for recreation and no-cost access to information to hone skills and find jobs are important. While it may not be immediately obivous, they’re a great place to interact with real, live people. (Take that, Internet!) Libraries also offer the benefits of group ownership: I can read the book, my neighbor can read the book, my wife can read the book, and some guy named Doug can read the book- but as if by magic, it’s still just one book. It’s only manufactured once, but it’s used many times by many different people. What a creative, thrifty, and environmentally-friendly idea. It seems like something Benjamin Franklin would have dreamed up.
My local library happens to be adjacent to a few local stores, several restaurants, and (my personal favorite) an ice cream shop, all of which surround a courtyard with benches, tables, grassy areas, a fountain, and a little pavilion for performances. There’s even a movie theater and a coffee shop nearby. People meet, interact, support local businesses, read, and borrow books, all in a central place that’s about a five-minute walk from the local Metro station. It’s a wonderful and natural synthesis of public and private space, one I’d love to see replicated more.
Whether or not your local branch is as hip as mine, a library is a great way to build community, learn, and save money with minimal impact on the environment. Be the solution

I own several Van Gogh paintings, some dinosaur skeletons, and Abe Lincoln’s hat - And so do you

See something da Vinci painted. Study the bones of an eons-old giant, armored fish. Honor the memory and legacy of Abraham Lincoln. Marvel at bizarre Soviet space capsules. And, leave your money at home.
Like archives (which I wrote about some time ago), museums offer opportunities for people to make use of common wealth, to learn, and to interact with each other. By sharing artifacts and works of art with other members of our community, we enjoy their benefits without having to personally bear the costs for their protection and care. (How do you clean a stuffed chimpanzee in a space suit, anyway?) This public ownership and use is also a means for creating and building value without making more stuff that will just be thrown away.
For those who want to learn more about the natural environment, its histories, and the ways that other people (past and present) perceive and relate to it, many museums have much to offer. Aside from obvious option of natural history museums, many art museums and galleries offer exhibits on landscapes or nature photography, while history museums frequently tell stories of the reciprocal influence between people and nature.
For those living in the DC area, these treasures are offered to the public virtually every day, free of charge at the Smithsonian Museums and at the National Gallery of Art. For anyone in the area interested in an outlandishly cheap* way to be the solution there are some great environment-related exhibits going on now:

Freer + Sackler Galleries:
Winslow Homer: Four Views of Nature

National Air and Space Museum:
Looking at Earth
Earth Today: A Digital View of Our Planet

National Gallery of Art:
Oceans, Rivers, and Skies: Ansel Adams, Robert Adams, and Alfred Stieglitz

National Museum of Natural History:
Dig It! The Secrets of Soil
Orchids through Darwin’s Eyes
The Sant Ocean Hall

Smithsonian American Art Museum:
Accommodating Nature: The Photographs of Frank Gohlke
George Catlin's Indian Gallery
1934: A New Deal for Artists

And, if you’re not in the area to make the trip downtown, many of these exhibits and all of these museums have online collections and exhibitions.

*The museums are free, but you’ll probably want a Metrorail fare card to get to and from the Mall. And, remember to pack a lunch to keep costs down.

Image source: Smithsonian Museum of American Art

So, what is it?

I heard a college kid explain to her father that "...sustainability is just another term for environmentalism", as I rode home on the Metro yesterday evening. The word "sustainability" has been bandied about here and there, especially since the UN's World Summit on Sustainable Development dispersed the idea in 2002. But, it seems that lots of people still don't get it.
So, what is sustainability? Is it purely an environmental idea, as our student suggests? Have sustainable ways of life ever existed? Do any exist now? If we were to shift our current way of life to a sustainable one, who would win and who would lose?

Image source: Wikipedia

Hidden in plain sight

They’re less like National Treasure and more like The History Detectives. Their magic is less epic than cerebral, but they are subtly powerful. They are the fail-safe protection on our governments, enabling citizens to petition their officials for the redress of grievances. They are temples of secrets.
I’d venture to guess that the reader has likely passed their local or state archives or even a branch of the National Archives without realizing it. They are frequently crowded into basements, or are sometimes overshadowed by a single exhibit. Most people don’t have a good sense of what they are or what they’re for.
Archives answer questions. For those who work for the community, they are a means to understand complex issues involving our government or other institutions. Archives contain the reasons and the politics behind the establishment of a park or state forest boundary, document legal battles between citizens and government agencies, record what some parcel of land was really intended for, and chronicle how communities have succeeded or failed when faced with all manner of environmental problems. More generally, archives are home to records of the decisions an institution makes and to the evidence of the actions it takes. Sometimes they’re even a place to make a point.
Archives offer something to people who want to understand the past- their own, their family’s, and their community’s. They contain snapshots of the places people connect with the government- the ubiquitous census records, land patents and deeds, marriage licenses, birth certificates, and the oft-overlooked prison records. (Everyone wants to discover that they are descended from royalty. It’s more likely that you’re related to horse thieves and other nogoodniks.) Sometimes, you can even find a picture. These records, together with the recollections of other family members, can help you to uncover where your family is really from, where and how they lived, and even paints a picture of what they wanted out of life. Archives build a human story.
In creating and answering questions with these collections, you’re doing the impossible. You’re creating something of expanding value without expending anything. This value has the potential to grow without limit as you learn more, make new connections, and share all of this with others.
Perhaps the best part about an archive is that you get to touch most if not all of their collections. While museum objects are safely sequestered under glass, archival documents are handed-over by the Hollinger box-full. You can hold in your hands Ralph Waldo Emerson’s sermons, a century-old photograph of the wild mountains that would become Shenandoah National Park, or your grandfather’s enlistment records, revealing that he lied about his age in order to join the Marine Corps. Some archives or manuscript collections contain maps of places you know, made before you knew them, or hand written notes about the way a classic book was originally going to end. Some contain sound recordings and moving pictures. They establish a tangible connection to history and make it relevant to the present.
Obviously, this tip is more complicated than carrying a bandana to reduce the number of paper towels you use or buying local beer to save energy. But, whether you need resources to make your community a better place or you want to put stock in something of enduring value, archives offer a way to be the solution.

Author's note: The people pictured above are committing a crime. They are highlighted here not because I agree with their sentiment (I don’t think there is a constitutional basis for their assertion), but because a friend alerted me that this demonstration was unfolding at the National Archives earlier this week. It seemed fitting to include it.

Image sources:
Anonymous photographer, undisclosed stack location, Washington, DC
Veterans for Peace
National Park Service

All in all, you’re just another brick in the wall

The yellow buses have been back out in force for the last few weeks. This inspires me to lob some questions at the reader:
Is the prevailing model for public schools the right one? What can change? What should change? Who should decide what top educational priorities are? Are private schools better? Is home-schooling better? What about unschooling? Should students pay tuition?

Image source: National Archives and Records Administration; ARC Identifier: 541288

A slow-motion public relations Chernobyl

I’ve written before about doing away with silly slogans like “Save the Planet” and fanciful phrases like “dying planet”. The planet isn’t “dying”, nor are humans “destroying” it. It’s not in any immediate danger of becoming as lifeless as our moon, nor being obliterated into tiny bits, as if devoured by The Nothing from the Neverending Story. Of course, that’s not what most people mean when they use this sort of hyperbole. They're speaking or writing about real problems, but their message is getting lost or twisted in the telling.
Alas, a tiny minority of fringies actually believe this science fiction or something like it. And being fringies (thus, generally lacking time-constraints like steady employment, friends, and family), they have a great deal of time in which to make themselves heard. Other well-meaning folks hear these dramatic words and repeat them, not giving much thought to what they’re saying. Many feel that emphasizing the gravity of some environmental problems will sway others. After all, education and reasoned arguments so often go ignored. Those with better understanding of the issues and cooler heads don’t speak as loudly and aren’t as appealing to those trying to sell ad time. So the message gets distorted and real problems are dismissed as foolish alarmism.
Environmentalists (lumped here into an outlandishly broad group comprising policy groups, volunteer groups, conservationists, deep-ecologists, pro-nuclear folks, anti-nuclear folks, and the many, many others too numerous to list) have done a poor job of connecting the dots for people who don’t understand that improving environmental quality provides benefits to people. For example, cleaning-up the Potomac River and preventing further pollution of its waters means a cleaner drinking-water source for most residents of the DC area, more productive fisheries for those who earn a living on the Chesapeake Bay, increased revenues for guides and outfitters, and a safer place to take our children to swim and play. Perhaps for brevity’s sake or maybe because such connections become increasingly clear as we learn about and work in nature, we are likely to describe a local event that helps to realize these human benefits as a “Tree-planting for Clean Water”. Many will read a gently-misguided pastime or flaming-liberal neopaganism in this name. We wrongly assume that others understand the implicit though real connection between clean water and people. We wrongly think that because we have come to understand these connections, indeed to feel that they are obvious, that everyone has this understanding.
So what do we do? For starters, we stop getting angry at people who don’t understand. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a person because he or she hasn’t read the same books you have or hasn't spent much time outside. These gaps in understanding do, however, make connections between environmental quality and peoples’ quality of life less clear. Be patient, educate, ask questions, keep an open mind.
State the obvious: Improving environmental quality benefits people directly or indirectly. This fundamental fact is lost on an astonishingly large number. Emphasize that people need the machine called Nature to keep making the things we use to live our lives, and that interfering with that machine costs us. Restoring or preventing further damage to this machine called Nature is a matter of helping people. Repeat it: Helping people, helping people, helping people.
Stop using intimidating or contentious words. “Ecosystem services” doesn’t say much to a person with limited knowledge of science and economics, and who gets mad at you because you used a word that starts with “eco-”. Instead, explain what natural resources, environmental problems and solutions actually mean to the average person. Use terms and phrases that have an implicitly human component, like “drinking water” or “community service”. Emphasize parks. Emphasize health, safety, and economy.
Be honest and know the facts. If you say that you know something, know why you know it. If there’s disagreement over a point, understand why people disagree and be willing to talk about the disagreement. Don’t pretend that there are no costs associated with an environmental investment (except when there aren’t).
Understand dissenting opinions. Sometimes people have different values, sometimes they refuse to let go of tired old stereotypes, sometimes they’re flat-out wrong, and sometimes they raise valid points. Ask people why they believe what they believe. Study their primary sources of information. Don’t be afraid to learn, to adjust your position, or ferret-out flaws in your own argument. Also don’t be afraid to educate people when they misquote their own sources or refer to a source that makes factual or logical errors.
Finally, remember that in most major environmental issues, there are few genuinely bad guys, fewer genuinely good guys, and hordes of people learning and trying to make an honest living in between. If you brand someone “an enemy”, they have no reason to talk to you or work with you. Don’t presume that someone is foolish or morally deficient for adopting a position other than your own.
And when you get frustrated and need a reminder of why dialog and an open mind are important, just think about the last time someone got mad, told you what you believe, and got it dead-wrong, just because you said “I’m an environmentalist.”

O wonderful, wonderful

I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet the last several days. A week ago, my wife and I welcomed into the world our first child, a son. Mother and baby are both in great health. This is one of those great moments in a person’s life that is formative of everything to come, and which colors all of the memories that precede it.
This is also an event that brings home the reality and immediacy of the need for broad change in how our society does things. Any parent knows that they must provide a safe home for their child and ensure that they are well fed and cared for. A good parent also knows that he must thoughtfully raise his child and provide for his future. Yet, somehow, we’ve failed to recognize that we can’t make reckless use of finite resources, or produce persistent waste without limits. Ensuring that our children have everything they will need for a healthy, dignified life is no less our responsibility than feeding them and keeping them warm. This is a time of great celebration for me (not to mention a time of abject sleep-deprivation), but is also an opportunity to renew my focus on what is increasingly the work of my life, the pursuit of a sustainable community.

A plague of plagiarism

I just put an 8 week on-line sociology class to rest; entered the grades and said farewell. I was, up until the very last moment, about to have an all time record for on-line classes. For the first time since I began teaching on-line classes in 2000, I was about to have a class in which everyone who had not officially withdrawn actually completed the entire course with a passing grade. Some of those grades were going to be D's, but they were still going to pass. Normally there are several students who neither complete the course nor take the time to formally withdraw and thus end up with failing grades -- an "E" in our system.

Unfortunately, when I got to the very last student (both alphabetically and because she had waited until the last day of class to turn all her papers for the whole eight weeks), all the work she turned in was plagiarized. Some were papers taken in their entirety from one of the free on-line paper mills, other she apparantly did the work of hunting down paragraphs to copy from the internet herself. Plagiarism is always upsetting and disruptive, but this coming as it did at the last minute to ruin what would otherwise have been a class for the record book, was crushing.

I have less plagiarism in my classes since I got seriously tough on it, and created ways of getting the message across to students at the beginning of the class (borrowed some great "For Better For Worse" cartoon strips from Lynn Johnston -- with references of course) that drive home the point. But even with all the warnings, students still do it. I don't remember have these problems when I first began teaching 30 years ago.

As a sociologist I have to wonder, is plagiarism more common today or is it just easier for teachers to check for it? If it is more common (which I suspect but cannot prove) why is it?

For a time I thought that what I perceived as an increased incidence of plagiarism was only because the types of students that I taught had changed. I began teaching at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and then moved on to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, now I teach at a community college, in a poor, rural area. Was the increase plagiarism due to my students having poorer preparation and poorer college skills? Since discovering the Rate Your Students blog, I realize that the problem of plagiarism goes well beyond my little corner of academia.

So if, as I believe (but cannot prove), plagiarism has increased, the question is why? I know lots of people who would jump to "declining values" as their first response. That answer reminds me of a quote from sociologist Abraham Kaplan "We do not explain why there is a lion in the garden by pointing out that in fact there are two of them in there." If values have changed what caused them to change? Values are a cultural phenomenon, they are the result of social processes, and do not float down from the ether. For there to have been widespread changes in values, there have to be widespread changes in society that produce those value changes.

What has changed? One thing that has changed is opportunity. The technology of computers and the Internet has certainly made plagiarism far easier than it was in my college days. I would liken it to changing the channel on the TV -- from the time I was 5 until I was 34, when I wanted to change the channel on the TV I got up, walked across the room and turned a nob to change the channel. I didn't change channels often, and used the TV Guide to look up what I might watch before changing channels. Then I got a remote control, and overnight I became a channel surfer, and changed my viewing habits just like that. My values and attitudes about television viewing changed after the fact, as a result of access to a new technology.

Something else that has changed is that a much higher percentage of high school students (and the population in general) are going to college, than did when I went to college. While the increased access to college has benefited many people who want to go to college who might have been left out forty or fifty years ago, it has also meant that many people who aren't really interested in what colleges offer (academic learning) are nonetheless attending college. They are attending college because that is what the job market demands. As a society we have lost alternative career paths -- even though there are shortages in fields that don't really need college (electricians, plumbers, construction, repair work). When economic necessity is forcing you to get a diploma, but you don't care for the activities that are required to get that diploma, short cuts become appealing.

These are just two ideas I've had about the sources of plagiarism. I think that there are more things, and I'd like to hear other people's thoughts.

Achievement Gap

The article linked below from Penn State discusses recent research on learning gaps among children and how they widen as the children age.

Achievement gap among child learners can widen in later years

Environment, parental involvement, parental educational level, economic status and many other factors contribute to the learning gap. It is obvious that a good start down the educational pathway is critical to later learning.

Education and Economic Mobility

This article from the New York Times is directly related to the discussion that we have been having regarding education.

Higher Education Gap May Slow Economic Mobility

On particular quote from it:

"Mr. Butler said experts were likely to disagree about the reasons and, hence, on policies to improve mobility. Conservative scholars are more apt to fault cultural norms and the breakdown of families while liberals put more emphasis on the changing structure of the economy and the need for government to provide safety nets and aid for poor families."

I think we all agree that there are things that need to be fixed -- we just can't agree on how to fix them.

We Must Change

I'll start out by saying that this post is not about Barack Obama, voting for Barack Obama, or voting for the democratic party. This post is about what it will take to actually initiate effective change regarding the issues we are most interested in - education, economy, environment, and ethics.

Over the past years, when dealing with almost every issue, our nation has been told that there is either no hope (social security for example), no movement for change (education for example), or out right denial (climate change for example). Why is it that society has allowed itself to be told this over and over again?



We have allowed ourselves to be told that we should not get our hopes up...not have high expectations for the decisions of our policy makers...not have an optimistic outlook on the future. No wonder the youth generations are as inactive in public discourse as they are! They have been given no chance to lend their ideas - if it isn't a part of the political norm of the day, they are told indirectly that it is unrealistic, infeasible, or not good enough.

While we write, speak of, and comment on these posts, I think it is important to note that no idea is ridiculous. For example, it will take some outside-of-the-box solutions to truly fix increasing entitlement costs, climate change, and education (see comments from previous post)for example. Outside-of-the-box solutions could be something brand new or a solution that was deemed "not possible" by the current political crowd.

Society needs a change in message - one that is inclusive and open minded. High minded debate is excellent and needed, but will be for nothing if those very debates are constricted by a message of "it's not possible" or if the solutions of such a debate are passed over. It may seem unrealistic to think this way, but the issues that face us require it.

The video, while being for Obama, also tells the story of a new message. It says nothing of what cannot be done, but of the possibilities of what can be done. If anything, this message could make the ideas and solutions talked about in these posts real and within reach. Do you think a message such as this is good for society? Policy making? Will it be enough to tip the scales in favor of real solutions for education, the economy, ethics, and the environment?

How should the educated legislators fix education?

Education is one of those issues that, I think, no party has any idea on how to fix. Increasing federal spending seems to not have much of a difference in some cases (Washington, D.C.), while school vouchers are unfair, aren't enough to make a difference, and make the system worse for everyone. So where does that leave us? I am fairly young, so eventually I will have children that need to become educated, and looking at how education reform has gone (No Child Left Behind), it won't be an easy process.

I think it is here that the point needs to be made. Education may not necessarily be just a funding issue - it is also a parenting issue, a teaching issue, a middle class economy issue, etc. Also, now that our economy has changed, the current way society teaches children is obsolete - it is this that makes us less competitive, not outsourcing, it seems.

With that being said, check out an Op-Ed in yesterdays New York Times by the Republican (I want to say strategist), David Brooks. He lays out an interesting set of policy ideas, that while not all of them are good in my opinion (health care savings accounts and assuming you need to reform unions to institute merit pay), many of them take a swipe at some of the deep rooted issues of education.

I bring all of this up because the Democrats want to take away No Child Left Behind - as do I - but what are they gong to do after that? Brooks brings up middle class tax cuts, so are the democrats going to focus their replacement of Bush's tax cuts with those? Can we cut taxes? Brooks talks about strengthening Kindergarten - a very liberal idea - but this will increase spending. Lastly, how do we reform education when each state has their own system of rules and regulations?

Something needs to give, but I don't think the Democrats have a solid plan and the Republicans tend not to have a clue, so where does that leave us?

Image Source
www.treehugger.com

A great improvisation

We live in a contentious time, an era in which all of the rules seem constantly subject to revision without notice. People divide themselves based upon ideologies and geography. Our growing human population and fast-evolving ways of life fuel our needs, our wants, and the means we use to satisfy them.
This booming demand and frenetic change are complicated by the constraints and connections of our collective home, this blue island in space. We find ourselves fighting over beliefs, land, and natural and cultural resources. Likewise, we enjoy an exchange of ideas and benefits of connection.
Blue Island Almanack is established to explore our home and how we use, share, and compete over it. Sometimes this exploration may be personal or related to authors’ immediate communities, and at times it will deal with global or theoretical ideas. The contributors find particular value in the central ideas of economy, education, environment, and ethics; these concepts seem to strike a chord with many people, and permeate the variety, complexity, and connectivity of many issues.
The contributors to this blog invite readers not only to hear what we have to say, but to contribute to the fabric of the articles, essays, and discussions we offer by asking questions and providing insights and challenges. This discourse will lend shape and movement to the blog as we move forward.
On behalf of founding bloggers Panhandle Poet, Progressive, and Sue, I welcome you and thank you for taking time to participate in this project.

-E.R. Dunhill