Whither (or Wither) the Humanities?

The decline of the Humanities has been widely heralded, and Tamar Lewin's "As Interest Fades in the Humanities, Colleges Worry" (New York Times, October 30, 2013) does a good job of summing up the current discussion and offering links to some of the major commentaries on this issue.  As someone who teaches a Humanities course, I can definitely speak to the value of the skills that these classes offer -- especially in critical thinking, argumentation, writing, research, public speaking, and (often) the use of communication technologies.  But I can definitely see why, with the current job market and the growth in student loans, students might not want to major in one of the traditional humanities disciplines.  However, for those who worry that our nation is losing its way and that our students are not gaining the sort of critical thinking skills that they need to face the hard choices fast coming upon us, then I point you to Ken Ilgunas's excellent speech upon his graduation from the Duke Humanities program -- much of which is excerpted in his book Walden on Wheels.  As Ilgunas points out, "One does not become free simply by staying out of debt" or, for that matter, preparing to join the corporate world in order to pay that debt back.

"Price of Admission" Gone

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A student in our class alerted me that "Price of Admission" has suddenly been pulled from the web.  I searched around but could not locate the video online, but I did find excerpts from it (see above), a collection of transcripts from the video, and the complete transcript interspersed with code.  If anyone can find alternatives, please let us know in the comments.  (I'm glad this didn't happen just a couple weeks earlier, of course!)

"We must hate our children"

Joan Walsh's "We must hate our children" in Salon.com today offers a scathing criticism of the way Americans have normalized student loan debt -- a particularly trenchant commentary on this day when the federal student loan interest rate officially doubles.  One striking excerpt:

I used to find it endearing when President Obama talked about how he and Michelle finally paid off their student loans after he was elected to the Senate. But in a way, the president’s folksy anecdote helped normalize what should be outrageous: that we expect young people to go deep in debt, well into middle age, to get a good education. Of course, the Obamas’ story should come with an asterisk, since much of their debt was built up paying for Harvard Law School, and clearly, that paid off for them. The assumption that students should borrow money to pay for an undergraduate degree, and that the only debate is over how high their interest rate should be, is seriously crazy.

Read the rest online here.

The Humanities on Decline

Last week's article Humanities Fall from Favor: Far Fewer Harvard Students Express Interest in Field with Weak Job Prospects in The Wall Street Journal has triggered some clucking around the web, but also some rather defensive reactions, such as the questioning of David Silbey in "A Crisis in the Humanities?"  However, it has long been known that Harvard grads are flocking to Finance.  And, as Karen Ho's Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street revealed, even if they major in the Humanities, Harvard grads are likely to at least entertain working for the banks (which increasingly rule the world).

Laptop U

Nathan Heller's "Laptop U: Has the future of college moved online?" (New Yorker, May 20, 2013) does an excellent job of covering the continuing debate over the promise and peril of MOOCs as a way of "saving" higher education -- or at least creating savings for students, or maybe profits for somebody somewhere at some time in the future.  I especially appreciate the coverage it gives to the problems that online teaching presents for the humanities, which are never as easy to translate to the online environment as science or math courses.  Because of all the complex issues it takes on, I think this article is more useful than Amanda Ripley's "College Is Dead.  Long Live College" from TIME Magazine (October 18, 2012) which featured in my class this past term and I will likely use it when I teach the course again in the Fall.

Rice Controversy Opens Window on RU Finance

Kate Zernike's "Pressure Builds on Rutgers President" (NY Times, April 4, 2013) does an excellent job of framing the national controversy surrounding Mike Rice's bullying of his basketball players against the back-drop of ongoing changes at Rutgers.  There is no question that the failure to respond more aggressively to Rice's behavior has damaged the Rutgers brand, and I can only hope that it has not ultimately disabled President Barchi during this critical time for the University.  

Undergraduate Research Writing Conference, April 10th

I just came back from a little tour of the Livingston Student Center where the Writing Program is running an Undergraduate Research Writing Conference on Wednesday, April 10th, 2013, from 9:00 am - 4:00 pm.  It's going to be an awesome event. Over 50 students will present their research projects completed in writing courses (most from Research in the Disciplines), so it will be a great opportunity to pick up some presentation tips and ideas.  Registration is free in the main lobby of the student center, not far from the Dunkin' Donuts, and you will get a program directing you to the sessions at 9:00 am, 10:30, and 1:40 pm.  The awards ceremony will be at 3:20, where free snacks and refreshments will be served and raffle prizes awarded to students who attend any of the sessions. 

Bonus: if students from my class attend the conference (getting a stamped record of attendance, with your name on the sign-in sheet) AND write at least a brief blog post about the event on their class blog, they will receive 2 points of extra credit toward the final grade.  

Higher Education Off the Rails: How Students Can Turn the Crisis Around

Historian Claire B. Potter will be presenting a talk titled "Higher Education Off the Rails: How Students Can Turn the Crisis Around" on Thursday, April 4th, starting at 7:30 p.m. in "The Gathering Lounge" at the Livingston Student Center on Livingston Campus.  The title announces quite clearly that this talk will speak directly to issues raised in our class, and I think anyone who is looking for some inspiration on how to address the issues we have raised could find it here.  Potter is the author of The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Tenured Radical" blog, which often assumes a critical stance toward the way things are going in higher education.  Highly recommended.  If you attend, you can get a point extra credit if you write about what she says in your blog.

Son of Citation Machine

Those looking for free help in putting their citations into proper MLA format should check out "Son of Citation Machine," which is a free (ad supported) internet app that guides you through the process and generates MLA format by just having you fill in a few blanks.  It even tells you how to cite the work properly for in-text citation.  So no excuses! 

Library Links

Today we are going to have an introduction to the resources of the Rutgers Libraries, so I thought I'd give you some useful links to material that we will likely cover today.  I will update this later to include any resources I may have left out.

Useful Links

Rutgers RIOT
See the screenshot above.  This is a great animated tutorial on using the libraries.

Searchpath
A more print-based tutorial on the RU Libraries.

English 201 Research in the Disciplines
A research guide for 201 students, this is a great place to start if you are looking for some guidance in finding the best library resources.

English 201: College!
A research guide designed for our specific section, put together by a librarian last year.  This guide is no longer supported, so the links will eventually die, but it looks useful -- especially links to RU-specific data.

University Faculty and Staff Experts Directory
This could be a very useful resource for identifying subject area experts to interview on your topic.  Remember: one of the requirements for the final paper is to interview an expert.

Refworks
Refworks is a great tool for organizing your research, and you can find information at the link above.  The Libraries also invite students, faculty, and staff to attend a workshop on how to save time and trouble in creating bibliographies and endnotes, by using RefWorks - a resource on the homepage of the Libraries' website (www.libraries.rutgers.edu). The Libraries will be offering the same two and a half hour workshop in the mornings on two different days - Friday March 8th and Friday March 29th. Both workshops start at 9:30 am and will be held in Room 413, on the fourth floor of Alexander Library.  To register for one of these workshops, please go to: http://ctaar.rutgers.edu/workshops/register/

RefWorks is a web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create and manage their own personal bibliographic database. RefWorks is free to members of the Rutgers community. The Basic RefWorks workshop helps users create RefWorks accounts, acquire references of all types (books, journals, media, etc.) from numerous sources, organize and manage their bibliographies, and insert references into MS Word documents. This workshop will also introduce several useful RefWorks tools, such as RefShare (to share bibliographies with both Rutgers and outside collaborators) and RefGrab-It (to acquire bibliographic information from web- based resources, such as Google Scholar). Finally, the tool Write-N-Cite will demonstrate how to easily incorporate references into an MS Word document and automatically create end notes and a bibliography. No prior knowledge of RefWorks is required.

Diverse Millennial Students in College Lecture

"Diverse Millennial Students in College" is the title of a new book and of a lecture at the Rutgers Student Center on College Avenue, Thursday, March 7, from 10:30 am - 1:00 p.m. with a free lunch reception to follow those who register.  Like the book, the lecture will deal with the unique challenges and circumstances faced by the current cohort of African-American, Latino/a, Asian and LGBT students.  Speakers include Dr. Lonnie Booker, Dr. Samuel Museus, Dr. Nana Osei-Kofi, and Dr. Stephanie Waterman, whose contributions to the book cover a broad range of issues, as described in a recent review.  The lecture is part of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Lecture Series and is the first of two parts, the second of which will run April 4th at the same time and location.  I recommend it to anyone whose topic touches on diversity issues.

The Case for NOT Saving for College

Jeff Bogle's "The Case for NOT Saving for College" (Huffington Post) tells middle-class parents that trying to put away $1200 a year for their kids' future college education might be less worthwhile in the long run than spending that money now on teaching them: exploring the world, learning new things, and expanding their horizons TOGETHER through travel or educational projects and programs.  I think the argument speaks to how much the focus on delayed gratification at the heart of middle-class thinking often prevents us from spending time here and now with our kids so that we can pass on our knowledge and values to them.  It also says a lot about how suspicious people have become regarding the value of higher education, which seems increasingly to benefit the banks.  As Bogle writes near the end of his piece:

Maybe this can be read as a case against college itself; I do think it's terribly overrated for professions outside the highly technical. But there can be a lot of value in education -- probably more value when one is educated at 28 as opposed to 18 -- but value nonetheless. Really, this is a case against the relatively new idea that we must -- MUST -- stash money away for our children's higher learning expenses. That we are doing them a disservice if we don't or cannot. I contend this idea is a bit of a marketing ploy by the financial industry desperately searching for new ways to get inside our wallets. 

Read the full post here.

Few See Better Future for Higher Education

"Diminished Lives and Futures: A Portrait of America in the Great-Recession Era," written by a group from the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers, presents polling data that suggest that most people have surrendered themselves to a "diminished" future for themselves and their children.  The authors sum up their findings by writing:

When asked about the future of employment, college affordability, job security, retirement, and other tenets of American prosperity, more than twice as many respondents have a negative vision of the future compared to those with a positive one. Just 19% agree that overall job, career, and employment opportunities will be better for the next generation. Six in ten Americans believe they will not recover from the effects of the recession, a sobering assessment of the American recovery. (20)

The vision of the future for college is especially grim, given that "six times as many people feel the ability of young people to afford a college education is a thing of the past" than believe it will be affordable (10).  That suggests that parents may be discouraging their kids from going to college and may already be pushing them toward trade schools.

Part of why people may hold such pessimistic views is highlighted by the Rutgers news release on the study, titled "Rutgers' Heldrich Center Study Finds Three in Four Americans Touched Personally by Great Recession."  With so many people having personal or close contact with job loss and financial insecurity, it is little wonder they are pessimistic.  

The Law School Bubble Begins to Burst

Ethan Bronner's "Law Schools' Applications Fall as Tuition Rises and Jobs Are Cut" (The New York Times, January 30, 2013) points to why Law Schools are at the bleeding edge of cuts in higher education that seem inevitable in all sectors of the bubble we are in: Law Schools cannot keep afloat by enrolling international students.  As Bronner notes:

The drop in law school applications is unlike what is happening in almost any other graduate or professional training, except perhaps to veterinarians. Medical school applications have been rising steadily for the past decade.  /  Debra W. Stewart, president of the Council of Graduate Schools, said first-time enrollments to master of business degree programs were steady — a 0.8 percent increase among Americans in 2011 after a decade of substantial growth. But growth in first-time foreign student enrollments — 13 percent over the same period — made up the difference, something from which law schools cannot benefit, since foreigners have less interest in American legal training.

Looking to foreign students to keep the money flowing in professional degree programs, however, is like looking to tar sands to keep us supplied with oil: both point up the unsustainable situation in which we find ourselves.  Eventually other countries will build a competing higher education system that will dry up that flow.

The $10K Degree

In "My Valuable, Cheap College Degree," Arthur C. Brooks presents his own personal experience with distance education to lend support for the idea of the $10K Bachelor's Degree.  A graduate of Thomas Edison State College in Trenton, N.J., Brooks was obviously very self-motivated and assembled his degree piecemeal, in much the way that supporters of MOOCs imagine that future college grads will be able to do:

I took classes by mail from the University of Washington, the University of Wyoming, and other schools with the lowest-priced correspondence courses I could find. My degree required the same number of credits and type of classes that any student at a traditional university would take. I took the same exams (proctored at local libraries and graded by graduate students) as in-person students. But I never met a teacher, never sat in a classroom, and to this day have never laid eyes on my beloved alma mater.  

Read the rest online at The New York Times.

More Cheers for MOOCs

In "Revolution Hits the Universities" (The New York Times, January 26, 2013), Thomas Friedman joins the rising tide of voices cheering on MOOCs as the best hope for a better future in higher education.  As he concludes his piece:

I can see a day soon where you’ll create your own college degree by taking the best online courses from the best professors from around the world — some computing from Stanford, some entrepreneurship from Wharton, some ethics from Brandeis, some literature from Edinburgh — paying only the nominal fee for the certificates of completion. It will change teaching, learning and the pathway to employment.

A lot has to happen before that comes to pass, but it certainly fits with the positive view espoused by Amanda Ripley in her TIME Magazine piece, "College Is Dead.  Long Live College!" that we will discuss on Tuesday.

Oversupply of College Grads?

There has been an ongoing debate among economists that the rise in college graduates (and continued government policies pushing for more college grads in coming years) has cheapened a four-year degree by the simple economics of supply and demand.  In "The College Grad / Employment Mismatch" (Inside Higher Ed., January 28th, 2013), Doug Lederman sums up the debate and offers some interesting facts for both sides: for while the number of jobs requiring a college degree have not increased, the pay rate for many jobs that do not necessarily require a B.A. is higher for college grads.

The Fiscal Risks of College Sports

Though Rutgers has done brilliantly well this year in making their move to the Big Ten conference, which should eventually bring their sports programs to a self-supporting level after decades in the red, it is good to be reminded that for most schools the investment in college sports is unlikely to pay off.  In fact, it is likely to be a costly mistake.  That is the message of Bill Pennington's "Big Dream, Rude Awakening" (NY Times, December 29, 2012) which uses the struggles of UMass to create a big time football program as a jumping off point for discussing the risks associated with investing in college sports.  Worthwhile reading.