Took yesterday and most of today off. I have notes on an essay on education, but someone grabbed the title and used it as a Wall Street Journal op ed page editorial today. We Pretend To Teach, and They Pretend to Learn. online.wsj.com
It is very much on target, and says much of what I wanted to say. Anyone interested in the education mess should read it.
Back about 1970 I was involved with the Council that was to draw up the Master Plan for the University of California system. The program was very structured: the University System would have a limited number of campuses, and would do all the graduate school education. There would be a limited number of undergraduates at each of those campuses, and they would be the elite applicants. Tuition would be low for state residents, and very high for out of state and foreign students. This would be the University system, and it would be for the best and the brightest. Salaries would be high for an elite faculty.
In addition, there would be the California State Colleges, which would not be permitted to award graduate degrees. They would do undergraduate education, and send their best and brightest to compete for places in the University system graduate schools. Their primary purpose was teaching, and it was on their ability to teach that faculty members would be chosen and retained: no publish or perish, because their purpose was to teach, not to do “research”. They were not to discover knowledge, but to convey it to most of the undergraduates in the state. A small number would go to the University undergraduate system, but about 90% of all undergraduates enrolled in state higher education would be in the California State Colleges. This would include colleges of education and teacher. Again the focus would not be on ‘research’ or anything else other than producing great teachers for the California schools.
Of course as soon as the Master Plan was adopted and funded, the California State Colleges began a political campaign to be turned into universities, with salaries comparable to the Universities, and graduate schools with research, and publish or perish, and all the rest of it; and instead of being teaching institutions they would become second rate copies of the Universities, with a faculty neglecting teaching in order to gather prestige in research and publication, or, perhaps, at least to look as if they were. In any event the California State Colleges became California State Universities, their commitment to actual undergraduate education was tempered to make room for the graduate schools, budgets were higher, costs were higher, and tuition, which had been designed to be very low, began to climb.
I make no doubt that something like that happened in many other states. When Roberta and I were undergraduates, tuition was low enough that you could, literally, work your way through college. In her case she did office work and she was good enough at it to earn a respectable salary as she managed to go to the University of Washington and study music, as well as get a teaching credential. I managed my first couple of years with the funds from the Korean GI Bill, then wangled undergraduate assistantships doing technical work – I built electronic stuff for Van Allen at Iowa and worked on polygraph equipment for Al Ax at the University of Washington, then later did computer programming for the NRL projects at UW under Dvorak – who had been a submarine commander in WW II, and who invented the Dvorak keyboard. We seldom saw him, but he was legendary even then. Apparently supervision of Navy Research Contracts fell under his sway because he was a USNR Captain.
My point is that we could work our way through college. The Korean GI Bill was good enough to pay state resident tuition and we could wait on tables or find other work to stay alive. Student loans were not a real option, and few graduated with debts. I managed to learn enough to get a job as an aviation psychologist and human factors engineer at Boeing, and Roberta got her music degree and teaching position in the Seattle public school system.
None of that is possible now – and from my perusal of the course catalogs of local universities, I could never have managed to learn enough to get a professional job at Boeing in four years.
The Universities pretend to teach and the students pretend to learn, the costs rise and the number qualified to do something a company might actually pay them to do goes down. And the rising salaries of the teachers and professors and deans and assistants to the Associate Deans, and all the rest continue. They also invented the ‘Post Doc” fellowship, which pays a pittance to someone who has actually earned a PhD but can’t find anything useful to do with it. Gardeners and maintenance crews get larger and are paid more. And every year the Faculty Senate pleads that the University is in danger without higher tuition. Meanwhile, grade inflation makes credentials meaningless.
Credentials are essential and expensive, and they are not worthless because you generally can’t get a job without them; but they don’t really certify that you can do anything, only that you have acquired the credential, something that you must have even to be considered for a job
And so it goes.
I note that in May of 2011 I proposed one remedy to awful schools.
You may take it as a general rule: get the worst 10% of the teachers out of a school, distributing their students to the remaining teachers, and you will improve the school, probably very dramatically. So designate one awful school as the place to send all the worst teachers. It won’t hurt that school much, because not much can. It complies with the silly laws and rules that make it impossible to fire bad, incompetent, malicious, and generally unsatisfactory teachers, and it will do some good for the other schools. Admittedly it’s a silly way to improve a school system, but it may well be the only possible way, since there appears to be no way to change the rules.
jerrypournelle.com
It’s not politically possible, but it would work without firing any teachers…
If your career interacts with the military, Colonel Couvillon recommends this:
Lessons of combat
strategypage.com
[enthusiastic comment deleted]
Alas, as the war(s) have wound down, the bureaucrats and ‘managers’ emerge from the shadows and start issuing all manner of (CYA) safety regulations, EPA restrictions, and cost-saving measures. Additionally, those without combat experience will move to the forefront of promotion and command queues because of their sterling record of ‘education’ and accident (i.e. risk) free service.
David Couvillon
Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve, Retired.; Former Governor of Wasit Province, Iraq; Righter of Wrongs; Wrong most of the time; Distinguished Expert, TV remote control; Chef de Hot Dog Excellance; Avoider of Yard Work
jerrypournelle.com |
