Seriously, there is a ph.d. in administration

 

A Doctoral Degree To Administrate?

By Professor Doom

 

Administrator: “A student is appealing her grade, and I need you on the appeal committee. [The professor] gave an A for final grade scores ‘two standard deviations above the mean,’, and an F for grades ‘two standard deviations below the mean.’  Can you explain what the instructor is doing?”

 

Me: “Uh, sure.”

 

--an Education faculty member, for some bizarre reason, decided to give final grades based on the normal distribution. This was double-bizarre in a class with about a dozen students, since it was all but impossible for two students to get an A with such a grading system (likewise, it’s nigh impossible for more than one student to fail). The second-best student in the class complained, since her A grades weren’t averaging to an A, and the better she did on tests the higher the score she needed to get an A—always out of reach. The administrator has a Ph.D., used statistics in the dissertation, but was completely clueless on basic statistics, as was the Educationist, also with a Ph.D. that used statistics. This was my first clear hint that administrative Ph.D.s were very different than in other fields.

 

     In the modern world, a doctorate is considered the ultimate degree for teaching or research, the terminal degree. The version of the doctorate-holding professor is a relatively recent invention in academia—in the 19^th century, most academic staff or professors held no such degree (and the staff were often faculty). A Master’s was sufficient for teaching, indicative of a mastery of the knowledge sufficient to help others learn. The primary difference between the two is a doctorate represents research, generally successful research that contributes to the field of knowledge. A Master’s degree is obviously desirable in a teacher by a student wanting higher education. I certainly would want to be taught and trained by someone knowledgeable in the field, and I’d be willing to pay for have someone like that. A master in the field that has also extended the knowledge would be even more desirable for a student wanting to know everything. But what about for an administrator? Of what use is a research degree there?

 

“Your writing is just a hobby.”

--Administrator, as part of an explanation of why, since my many paid articles didn’t directly relate to my job as mathematics teacher, I should expect no particular assistance or credit from my institution. But the administrator sees nothing wrong with getting higher pay for a research degree in a job with no research…

 

     Although administrative positions command high pay for doctoral, research, degrees, it’s a little puzzling why this would be the case. The Dean’s job description I listed previously has nothing to do with research, or even with teaching. When I go into McDonald’s, I neither want, nor am willing to pay for, a manager with a doctorate in meat cooking to ring up my bill on the register, just for a burger and fries no different than at any other McDonald’s. If the manager pursues some arcane knowledge as a life goal, good for him. I just want my burger and fries.

     In a similar vein, I imagine if students had a choice of say, 40% lower tuition, or administrators with doctorates, they’d take the former in a heartbeat...probably why students don’t ever get that option.

     For all the talk about how business-style efficiency is necessary to make higher education better, it’s odd that administrative positions prefer a degree that implies knowledge and skills irrelevant to the position. In fact, almost all administrative positions require, or “prefer,” advanced degrees, even though advanced academic degrees are mostly desirable for teaching and research…the things most administrators don’t do. A bit of hypocrisy here in light of the talk about running institutions efficiently, but administrators decide what administrators need (and their pay), the hypocrisy is merely icing on the cake.

 

      Phone call: “Hello. I understand you’re interested in a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration?”

--in my research, I naturally clicked a box indicating such an interest. For weeks, I received daily sales calls from institutions wishing to sell me a degree. They were all accredited, of course.

 

     There are a great number of institutions offering a wide variety of doctoral degrees in administrative fields. To be more clear, there are a ridiculous number of institutions, for an insane variety of degrees.

     Particularly disturbing is these administrative degrees are taught through education departments. This was an unexpected benefit of my research here. Time and again I was puzzled at administration’s bizarre fascination and unshakeable faith in Educationist beliefs. It’s no longer a wonder how Educationists acquired their nearly occult power over administrators: administrators are beholden to Educationists for their degrees.

     Administration and Education go hand in hand as “fields of knowledge.” Hand in hand may be too platonic a phrase, as the relationship is quite incestuous: educationists hand the advanced degrees to the administrators, who use those degrees to get jobs allowing them to hand positions to Educationists.

     A look at the course titles in the curriculum for Administration degrees only adds to the puzzlement: Progressions in Leadership Thought, Governance and Structures in Higher Education, Fiscal Management in Higher Education (sounds useful, but it’s more about fundraising; you’ll need actual accounting credentials to get a financial position), Strategic Planning and Change, Leading Across Cultures…again, it just goes on. There’s hardly any rhyme or reason to these titles, and almost nothing relies on anything else for understanding. Much as in many bogus undergraduate degrees, each course is composed of material that requires but a few months at best to master, with no applications elsewhere.

     Curiously, there are no courses on “Increasing Retention.” There’s also no instruction on “Acting with Integrity,” somewhat problematic seeing as this is key to accreditation. Nor is there anything on how to teach, how to deal with teachers, or how to deal with students—over-the-top omissions in training for an administrator at an institution with teachers and students. And yet, it’s assumed these managers know these, the most important things in their job, have been trained extensively, in fact, and they’re paid for it accordingly.

      Not only is a graduate degree excessive for administrative positions absent of teaching or research, their degrees don’t have anything that apply to the position. Now it becomes clear why administrators seldom know anything about what goes on in my, or any other, courses, or have much respect for education in general. All those degrees, and yet completely ignorant of what their underlings do…nothing like a business model, even as they’re paid as much as highest level managers. My image of an administrator able to discuss Shakespearean poetry, prove a theorem in differential equations, run a biology lab, and grade a test in French collapses like any childhood fantasy: administrative training gives them nothing that relates to the primary task of the campuses they rule over.

      The bulk of college money goes to pay for administrators, possessing (theoretically) advanced training in degrees and knowledge that have utterly no relationship to their job. Perhaps I’m making too big a judgment just from the titles of the courses. I’ll be looking at their coursework soon, but until then: how is it not fraud that most of the student debt goes to people that literally have nothing to do with education?

Think about it.

http://professorconfess.blogspot.com/

Administration in higher education, part 1.

Administration in Higher Education, Part 1

By Professor Doom

 

     Administrator: “There’s no such field as ‘mathematical game theory’, and frankly I’m a little bit angry that you would try to trick me.”

     Me: “…”

--- Key to my longevity has been keeping my mouth shut when dealing directly with administrators. There really is such a field, by the way.

 

     These essays started with what one would suppose was the bottom of the campus hierarchy: the students. At long last, it’s time to now look at the unarguable top, those with the power to hire and fire, the ultimate controllers of all things campus-related: the administration.

     As a wide-eyed young student in public school, I was in awe of administrators. In public school, the dean was respected, even a little feared as a disciplinarian, and the principal was all-powerful, able to do anything he wanted, or so it seemed to a child.

     In college there is still a dean, and in lieu of principal, there are people with awesome titles like vice-chancellor, or even chancellor. My respect of high school authority easily transferred to these titans of the campus.

 

Administrator: “We need to provide course outlines for Calculus I and Calculus II to another school. Are these ok?

 

Calculus I	Calculus II
The Derivative	The Derivative
Introduction to Limits	Introduction to Limits
Continuity	Continuity
The Derivative	The Derivative
Power Rule and Basic Differentiation Properties	Power Rule and Basic Differentiation Properties
Derivatives of Products and Quotients	Derivatives of Products and Quotients
Chain Rule	Chain Rule
Marginal Analyses in Business and Economics	Marginal Analyses in Business and Economics
Graphing and Optimization (rest of outline removed for brevity)	Graphing and Optimization (rest of outline removed for brevity)

 

--note similarities in course outlines between the two courses, prepared by an Educationist. Note that the administrator could not note similarities. I had to spend considerable time convincing the administrator that something was wrong here. As near as I can tell, sequential courses with identical/heavily overlapping curriculum are common in Education or Administration.

 

 

     Institutions of higher learning were adapting to more of a business model early in my career, and this only increased my respect for the administrators that were becoming more and more visible on campus. Administrators were managers, after all, and the managers I knew from the real world were generally impressive. A McDonald’s manager, for example, can do the job of every employee under him— operate the cash register, cook, maintain the equipment, the manager could literally do everything, so he could take over any employee position. It followed in my naïve mind that administrators were likewise masters of the institution, able to take over the job of any faculty member if need be. This sort of scholarly ability had my respect and awe.

 

     My first Business Calculus class at my current institution started poorly. Administration had ordered the book before I’d been hired, and had selected a graduate level mathematics textbook, suitable for an MBA program. I’d only been handed the book on my way to the classroom. I opened it, and knew there was no way freshmen community college students could handle that kind of material. The first class was brief, and I made a trip to the bookstore to correct the error as quickly as possible.

---In those days, the school was unaccredited, so no student loans…and yet the students had their books on the first day. Now, students don’t have their books weeks into the semester, depending on how long until the checks come in. Either way, administration doesn’t know enough about education in higher education to order books.

 

     I was slow to abandon my innocence. Yes, I saw instance after instance of administrative ignorance, but I just figured they were honest mistakes, of no consequence. Besides, administrators often had Ph.D.s, they were academics, of course I could cut them some slack.

 

Administrator: “You need to be more clear in your writing on the board. The little numbers, the ones up top?”

Me: “The exponents?”

Administrator: “Yeah, those. You told students that there’s always a one up there, but you don’t always write it. You should always just put a one up there.”

Me: “Thank you.”

 

---When I do open my mouth to an administrator, it’s usually to say ‘thank you’.

 

     Eventually, over the course of years, the truth finally penetrated my awe-addled skull: these guys can’t do my job, mathematics was out of their ken. Still, they were administrators, with advanced degrees, they must know something, and there are plenty of academic fields that have little math in them.

 

Administrator: “I’m on this committee now.”

Faculty: “You’re on this committee? Considering this committee is specifically faculty-only, how are you on this committee?”

Administrator: “I put myself here ex officio.”

Faculty: “Ex officio? What does that mean?”

Administrator: “I’m non-voting.”

Faculty: “We’d be more comfortable if you weren’t here.”

Administrator: “That’s not going to happen.”

 

--The surreality of this exchange will not be reduced if the reader, unlike the administrator, knows what ‘ex officio’ means. I had to look it up, too. Of course, I’m not an administrator, and thus wouldn’t immediately know terms about rules of order and committees and such. Administrators don’t need to know, either, apparently.

 

     After, I don’t know, the thousandth time I was told to increase retention even when it was clear that doing so would not be in the best interests of an honest institution, one thing became clear: I did not understand the job of an administrator.

 

What Is An Administration Job?

 

     I set out to learn what such a job is all about. The job descriptions of college administrators, for example, deans, are loaded with the corporate-speak. Consider this snippet from a position advertised on The Chronicle of Higher Education, for a “Campus Dean of Student Services” position some time ago:

 

The ideal candidate must demonstrate progressively responsible higher education work experience in student services, preferably within a community college. Proven leadership in a large, complex organizational setting, preferably within a community college. Demonstrated knowledge of contemporary theories and practices affecting student services and academic programming. Demonstrated understanding of and commitment to the community college philosophy and student development. Ability to coordinate the division's service programs with other college divisions and offices so as to be responsive to the needs of a diverse student population. Proven ability to work as a team player, appropriately exhibiting a positive attitude, a sense of humor, and the ability to tolerate and flourish in an environment characterized by multiple complex factors, competing priorities, ambiguous situations, and resource challenges. Ability to supervise and evaluate assigned staff while building a highly effective working team, Excellent written and verbal communication skills. Ability to interpret and apply college policies and procedures; ability to resolve issues, resulting in mutual respect and tolerance for varying points of view. Knowledge of and ability to utilize administrative applications of information technology. Demonstrated skill in managing budgets, equipment, and other institutional resources. Master's degree in higher education, student affairs or closely related field from a regionally accredited college or university. A Doctorate is preferred.

 

     This isn’t the whole description, by the way. Note how the advertisement begins: “progressively responsible…work experience.” A candidate for this position will, as a matter of course, have viewed all previous positions as stepping stones for this new position. While not explicit in the advertisement, this position, too, will be considered a stepping stone. This is common to the business world—every job is another step up the corporate ladder, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

 

      This point of view, of course, is alien to an educator, who seeks to help people gain knowledge; the concept of sucking students dry and moving on just doesn’t register to a person with integrity.

 

Sally Clausen, Louisiana's higher-education commissioner, announced on Tuesday that she was resigning, less than a month after revelations that she had quietly retired from her post and then been rehired in order to collect a lump-sum payment… it was revealed that Clausen retired in August from the $425,000-a-year job, then was rehired within a day — getting a $90,000 lump-sum payment in the process, for unused vacation time and sick leave. She also will begin receiving a $146,400-a-year pension in less than two months.

 

---Former president of a large institution in Louisiana. This is where all the tuition money goes, folks. The student base vastly expanded under her watch there, and all educational standards were annihilated; faculty that complained went elsewhere. Her “success” at that institution was parleyed into becoming higher education commissioner, leading to more opportunity for plunder. For comparison, the Governor of Louisiana has a 2013 salary of $130,000, not even matching the “bonus” pension of this education administrator. Should the guy running a whole state receive a tiny fraction of the pay of someone running some small aspect of education in that state? This is where the tuition goes…

 

 

     Of course, in business, one usually goes up the corporate ladder because of successful financial decisions. I’ve seen many administrators come through, establish destructive programs, sacrifice institutional prestige in the name of retention, self-declare the programs a success no matter how abominable they are, plunder the institution in any way possible…and move on and up the ladder, going to some position of even more power, influence, and especially pay. Meanwhile, those with loyalty to the institution, or standards, are left to deal with the consequences of these vagabond pirates.

 

Citizen: “I know your CFO. I hear she’s doing very well for herself.”

Me: “Yes, she sure is.”

--the Chief Financial Officer was allowed to redefine her job description, greatly increasing her pay for doing the same job she had always been doing. Since her job was now so important, she moved on up the ladder to elsewhere in the system, for more, more, more. Other administrators did the same. I wish I could re-define my position for higher pay.

 

     The rest of the advertisement for the position is a tsunami of corporate-speak: leadership-this, organizational-that, team-player hood, positive attitude possession, and the obligatory excellent verbal and written communications skills. It’s a painful read, but for such an important and extremely high paying position, all those words are necessary to describe the job, I suppose. Advertisements for positions like mine barely take a paragraph.

     Then comes the education requirements: a graduate degree is required, in fields I’ve never heard of. A doctorate is preferred.

     Wait, what?

      Scroll back up and read it again: a doctorate. These guys are managers, and years of dealing with them showed me that their knowledge and respect for knowledge was minimal. And yet they need the highest possible educational degree for their positions. Next will be my investigation of what these doctorates entail, but until then, should an advanced higher education research degree really be necessary or “preferred” for positions that require less knowledge and skill than what is necessary to manage a McDonald’s? Should tuition be paying ten to forty times as much as for a McDonald’s manager for such positions?

 

 

About those ads...

Yes, I have ads.

Software looks at my blog, finds some keywords, and chooses ads.

So, ads for online education. Faithful readers of my blog know online education (that you pay for) is bogus, but for any newcomers, please, please, don't give those guys money.

Click on the ads, sure, that actually costs them a little money. But give them nothing.

Thanks.

Two classes predict failure as a college student.

I'm not one for chain letters, but imagine if this were spread around so that everyone knew the scam...

Two Classes Predict Failure As A College Student

By Professor Doom

 

     Just a short essay today, but this is an absolutely critical message. Across the country, classes are starting up, students are enrolling, and new debts are beginning to grow. Even though student debt is crushing and inescapable, people do this to themselves because they figure education is a chance to improve themselves, or their economic situation.

     Just a chance. What if there was a better than 90% accurate test to tell if higher education was a bad idea?  Wouldn’t that be a wonderful way to identify if someone should risk years of his life and tens of thousands of dollars for that chance? There is such a test, it’s been known to everyone in higher education for years, and allow me to present it to the general public. If you, your child, or even someone you know is a student taking on debt for higher education, here is all you have to do to test if the student is making a huge mistake:

     Look at all the classes the student registered for. Look for one of two courses:

1)      Remedial Math. It might be given a funny name, like “Developmental Math”, or “Math Explorations”, but usually the course is numbered with a 0 in front of it, like 0091, or 004 (three or four digits, but the first is a zero).

2)      Remedial English. Same deal, the course number starts with a 0.

     These courses don’t count for college credit (that’s what the 0 means, it’s a 0^th year course, meaning below a first year college course). A student taking one of these courses is a remedial student. If either of these is on the schedule, do everything you can to get the student out of college as quickly as possible. If the student is taking both classes, physically drag him or her off campus if necessary. If you do so in the first few weeks of classes, you can get a good refund.

     The reason you should get your remedial student out is simple:

      Less  than 10% of remedial students will get a 2 year degree within 3 years. That statistic comes from looking at millions of students. The vast majority of remedial students will require 2 or more extra years (i.e., pay 50% more) just to have a chance at a degree...and coursework without a degree is worthless.

     Even if the remedial student somehow graduates, it’s been shown that these students disproportionately learn less than other students...their degrees are worthless. Paying 50% more for a worthless degree is a terrible deal, but that’s the only deal for remedial students.

     A student needs to function at basically the 10^th grade level to have a real chance at college (yes, I know, high school goes to the 12^th grade, but higher education starts at 10^th grade material for many). If the student isn’t at that level by the time he’s 18, his chance of real success in higher education is zero, and he will only be taken advantage of by ruthless college administrators.

      And now you know a 90% accurate test to tell if someone should stay away from college.

     Now, some advice for the remedial student determined to succeed at college.

     First, drop out. You’re hurting yourself taking (and paying for) non-college courses in college. That’s a terrible thing to do.

      Next, go down to the local library, check out the books you need for remedial English or math, and STUDY and practice the skills until you know those books inside and out. You don’t need someone with graduate theoretical degrees to teach you what you should have learned in school...and you sure don’t need to pay $5000 or more a year (plus lost wages) for the privilege of having someone teach you that stuff.

     If your college says you belong in remedial courses, go to the library, check out those books, and do the work. If you can’t learn the things 14 year olds know on your own, then college is a bad idea. The library is a much cheaper way to find that out than in college.

     Almost twice as many people have student loans as there are students, that’s how inescapable these loans are. I hope my advice can save even a few people from entering perpetual debt, for nothing.

   

The corruption of higher education is everywhere

Higher Education is Corrupted Everywhere

By Professor Doom

 

Carol J. Spencer, president of San Juan College, in New Mexico, said that regardless of how much federal money is available, the bottom line is that community colleges need to find a way to deliver more graduates.

--report from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Quality is irrelevant. Sheer numbers of degrees is what counts. It’s not about education¹. At no point in the article does the Chronicle indicate or imply there is anything outrageous about this comment. It’s about the money, after all.

 

    Now, perhaps some will read these essays and believe that this is only my interpretation, that the system is only this way in my region, or strictly the institutions I’ve personally attended. To this assertion I answer a very simple: “No.” My associates across the country, from Florida to California, from Louisiana to South Dakota, all say the same, and I doubt any of my students were protesting on Wall Street.

     Consider a 2009 study, Campus Commons, which addressed the serious issues faculty believe they face on campus. They found “Many faculty members felt that the emphasis on retention, which they believe is coming from the state and college administrations, is misdirected.” Some quotes from faculty in this study²:

 

It bugs me that retention is the big issue. There seems to be this emphasis on retention as the indicator of success.

 

I disagree with that. I mean, my sense is that if a student realizes that this is not the place for me and this is where I can do better, maybe that’s success.

 

I don’t know that that’s a bad thing if a student drops out…

 

I have students who are really doing well. They’re great, and then tragedy happens in their life, they disappear. Do I get measured for that? (Me: yes, you do, since admin only looks at the bottom line)

 

This is already part of our issue that they are basing funding partly on our graduation rates. It’s problematic.

 

Definitely don’t reward schools for having more students. I mean, that puts the teachers under pressure just to pass them.

 

So what if you graduate more people and hand more people a piece of paper? It doesn’t necessarily mean that piece of paper means anything.

 

Yep. We’ll be forced to lower standards and graduate more numbers.

 

Or easier classes. I could graduate a whole mess of students, I just have to, boom, lower my standards, I can get more money, easy, so no on that one.

 

     Those quotes are from faculty at public postsecondary institutions, supposedly those for whom the student loan money is not a concern. The situation at for-profits is crass, for lack of a better word. For-profits, while not necessarily aggressive when it comes to graduating students, are relentless when it comes to having good retention, keeping students in the programs at all costs.

     As one example, Kaplan has been in the news a few times, with complaints from faculty about the pressure to pass³. Most of the accusations against Kaplan administration are basically the same as what I’ve witnessed any number of times by administrators at public institutions.

     “Lower the bar…we were helping poor people,” from the referenced article, is an example of how Kaplan influenced faculty to pass more students. This is no different from “Yes, they’re weaker students, so grade them more generously. This is their chance to improve themselves.” Remember that line from an earlier essay?

     Another quote from the article,  that when students failed, faculty were blamed for not motivating them, also sounds familiar, as do the comments about how faculty were encouraged to ignore plagiarism. There are numerous similar complaints at other for-profits, complaints perhaps different in magnitude from public institutions but no different in kind. If mandating 85% retention at a public institution is acceptable, how is it so much worse when a for-profit institution tries to exceed 85%? The final similarity is how for-profit colleges don’t have a tenure system, so faculty have no resistance to administrative shenanigans.

 

“Tenure? No, we won’t have that here.”

 

--Administrator explaining the plan for the tenure system at my college.

 

      I’m not that convinced tenure is a good thing, but faculty in the for-profit system, without tenure, had no option but to cave in to administrative greed, and that collapse came quickly. The collapse of the public system has been slower, and in line with this collapse has been the steady deterioration of the tenure system. One state school merits special mention in this regard: University of Maryland University College, also has no tenure system, but endured faculty protests. Faculty members complained administration “lacked interest in academic standards”, and faculty “feel under pressure to pass students regardless of whether they have learned the material,” complaints all but identical to those leveled at for-profit schools. As a result of such protests, over a dozen faculty were terminated for “lapses in loyalty and challenging what they perceived as the administration’s attempts to water down UMUC’s academic rigor.”⁴

      It could be a coincidence, of course, that the death of tenure and the death of standards (and the skyrocketing of tuition) occur at the same time, but was there ever a campus so overpopulated with tenured professors that education became meaningless? That concern seems to be a boogeyman, and it’s a risk worth taking in light of the many tenure-free campuses where education is no longer on the table.

     Considering that working at a for-profit institution is a “scarlet letter” that may prevent employment elsewhere, and that such institutions don’t seem to have a track record for probity (despite as solid a record for accreditation as non-profit schools), an honest person probably shouldn’t work for them at all.

 

 

Summary

 

--“pressure to raise grades, tolerate plagiarism, and dumb down courses to keep federal student aid flowing”

 

--Pop quiz: Do you think this is something I, a public institution faculty member would say, or a for-profit, private institution faculty member would say? Hint: trick question.

 

     The suckers in the higher education system were failed by accreditation, failed by remediation, failed by the “masters of Education”, and failed by a myriad of college policies, with administration guiding all these failures. The last chance for the suckers to be protected from receiving a bogus education was the faculty. Any con man will tell you, “never give a sucker an even chance,” and administration, by completely controlling faculty, has seen to it the suckers’ last chance is gone as well, as I’ve shown in detail on these last five essays (more than I’ve spent on any other topic).

     A whole culture was in awe of higher education, viewing it as an ultimate goal, a primal need to be satisfied. Vast sums of money were loaned to that culture, to pursue those needs. The accreditation process that would have kept higher education as a noble goal, that would have protected that culture from indebting itself forever just for a worthless slip of paper, failed. Accreditation could do nothing to withstand the lack of integrity by so many of those who ruled and run the system, and the rulers preyed especially on those most vulnerable, those least able to gain from higher education, indebting those most vulnerable more than any other. Those who studied Education as an end saw only the opportunity to advance themselves, and feasted no less than the rulers, assisting the rulers in creating policies to drive the system further into the abyss. Only one barrier remained: the faculty.

     The fundamental corruption of the higher education system could have been stopped by a great number of honest and bold faculty, willing to face down the rulers and their often unwitting servants.  The faculty could have done honest work despite the failings of accreditation, but the mighty hurdles placed in the system by those rulers assured that honest and bold faculty would be a tiny minority at best.

     The only thing stopping administration was their own integrity, and there was none. Avarice exponentially expands into integrity’s absence.  Next I will take a look at those consumed by avarice.  It can be argued that administrators are no more responsible for what has happened than students, and that they have forgotten the path of enlightenment, of education. Perhaps they’re not truly responsible, but they’ve “forgotten” nothing, college administration was never on any such path, as I’ll show in my next series of essays.

      

    

 

1)      Gonzales, Jennifer. “At Community Colleges' Meeting, Officials Debate How to Deliver More Graduates.” Chronicle of Higher Education. April 18, 2010.

2)      Immerwahr, John, Johnson, Jean, and Paul, Gasbarra. “Campus Commons? What Faculty, Financial Officers, and Others Think About Controlling College Costs.” Public Agenda. 2009.

3)      Field, Kelly. “Faculty at For-Profits Allege Constant Pressure to Keep Students Enrolled.” Chronicle of Higher Education. May 8, 2011.

4)      Stratford, Michael. “U. of Maryland University College Is Said to Have Bought Silence of Former Employees.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. March 12, 2012.