Leftist Courses Targeted by Conservatives?

By Professor Doom

     College employees are particularly vulnerable to e-mail scams. Our e-mail addresses are readily available, and regular hacks of the system mean the entire mailing list is at the disposal of your typical e-scammer.

      Our particular weakness (at the risk of exposing it) are phishing scams sent, falsely, from the Poo Bah. We know better than to click on links and download files, but when it comes from the Poo Bah, there’s a problem: we can use common sense and ignore it, but then there’s a real risk of angering the Poo Bah by not downloading or supporting whatever he asks whenever he asks it. It’s a tough choice, but many faculty decide to fall for the scammer rather than risk the kind of rage documented often enough in this blog.

     A few universities, more accurately professors of certain courses at those universities, received suspicious e-mails recently:

Duke warns professors about emails from someone claiming to be a student, seeking information about their courses -- many in fields criticized by some on the right. Some Michigan and Denver faculty members have received similar emails but from different source.

     These e-mails weren’t really all that scammy; all that was requested was the reading list or syllabus from the courses involved. The scammy part is the request (probably) didn’t come from a student, with a conject that someone “on the right” is doing it. The courses are those with titles that might well be Left-oriented, or at least titles where it’s unclear what books might be in the course:

“…on courses called "Money, Sex and Power," "Energy and Environmental Justice" and "Religion and Mass Incarceration." The email messages, which did not come from a Duke email account, were very similar in asking for a reading list so the alleged student "could get a better idea of if the class is right for me."

     Now, I get a few of these every semester as well, from students wanting some advance idea of what will be in the course. Most math courses give a pretty clear indication of what’s in them from the title (eg, “Statistics”), but others are vague enough that it’s quite fair for a student to have no idea what would be in them (eg, “Mathematical Methods”). I think nothing of giving out my syllabus to any who might ask, or telling them what book I’m using…I’ve no shame in what I discuss in class. The professors for these particular courses, on the other hand, feel they have something to fear:

“…didn't want to inadvertently help someone trying to attack either higher education generally or certain fields of study. “

     This is an interesting thing to fear: someone might not agree with what you’re doing in the course. Many faculty refused to respond to the syllabus request because they didn’t think it came from a student. Why should only students know even roughly what’s discussed in a course? In a classroom environment, students are often (quite understandably) intimidated…is the material being discussed so fragile that it can’t withstand exposure to an audience not afraid to question it?

     We’re in an era where student debt is skyrocketing, tuition is perpetually rising, and our graduates are all too often no better off in any measurable way after 4 to 6 years of study, even when they get a degree. I think it’s very fair in these circumstances to ask some questions about what, exactly, is going on in our classrooms.

     And I also think it’s a little suspicious that we have some professors wary of exposure of what they’re doing in their classes. 

     I know, “you must be guilty if you don’t expose all your secrets” is the cry of the oppressor but…most campuses, most courses, already post their syllabi and reading lists online. Why are courses called “Environmental Justice” getting special treatment in this regard?

     As is so often the case, the comments are far more interesting to me than the actual “news item.” A few are worthy of counter-comment:

Gender Studies has always been a Right Wing target, so we're primed for scrutiny, critique, and insult.

    I suppose the above is correct, but maybe the time really has come to start asking yourselves why you’re such a target? Certain fields, not just Gender Studies, but African Studies and most especially Education do seem to consistently be the butt of jokes and the target of scrutiny by “the outside world.” I suspect it’s the endless scandals and hypocrisy that are factors here, but that’s just my opinion. The fact is still these guys never seem to look in the mirror for answers. (Allow me to gratuitously add, many of these are the same people that think Trump only won because America is filled with deplorables and Russia hacked the election, whatever that accusation means.)

My courses are in Information Sciences and Technology, so not controversial at all. My syllabi and assignments are on publicly accessible web sites and linked to my home page to allow not just students, but also potential students, employers, parents and anyone interested in the course to see the specifics.

     I include the above to demonstrate mathematics is hardly alone in thinking that, yeah, we shouldn’t be ashamed of what we teach in class. Why do certain other fields feel this way?

Well this is most interesting. Since when did the content of a class being openly taught at a University become a secret? I certainly do not think people should lie about their identity. But if say a WSJ reporter requested this information, would the request be rejected? If so why? As a society do we not have the right to inquire about what our sons or daughters are being taught at these ever more expensive bastions of knowledge? Fear of someone disagreeing with you does not seem like a rational response to a request for information.

      These all seem pretty valid questions, although I doubt a WSJ reporter would ask them…seems more of a Breitbart thing to me. Isn’t it odd that we no longer expect mainstream news to do investigation but instead turn to alternative news for that sort of thing?

I agree. MIT has spent millions of dollars putting EVERYTHING FROM EVERY COURSE online for anyone, anywhere in the world, to use. https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

      It’s the modern world. It’s time our institutions of higher education focus on prestige and integrity (MIT has both), over growth.

     All the above said, there’s still the issue of the culture of fear in higher education today, where saying a word out of line can get you terminated  instantly. While the professors’ fears above may well indicate something shady going on in the classroom, I concede it could simply be due to being in an environment where you must always be afraid.

      And that still means we should question what we’re doing in higher education.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Learning To Be Offended By Microaggression

By Professor Doom

      The recent riots at Berkeley are no accident; we're training our college students to get upset at the silliest little things...it's no surprise they can go violently nuts when significant things are being discussed.

     But today I want to talk about tiny little things, aka microaggressions.

     A few years ago, the entire concept of microaggression was just a touch of California lunacy, and then only at the universities. Predictably, this plague has since spread across the country, and now we have students on campuses across the country being offended at the silliest things.

      Now, don’t get me wrong, student complaints should be heard, there needs to be a means for that, and there always has been. In the past, it was a harried professor serving as dean. He’d listen to the complaint, but usually blow it off. Only a serious complaint would register enough to be worthy of his precious time.

    Today our campuses are loaded down with a massive bureaucracy that has nothing better to do than deal with student complaints. A piffling complaint that would have been laughed at in the past is not laughed at today. Instead, a committee is formed, meets a few times, then schedules a meeting with the student to rehear the complaint, then meets again to discuss punishment for the professor being complained about. Later, the professor finds out he was involved in a complaint and has already been tried, convicted, and sentenced. 

      Instead of taking a few seconds to resolve by a professor paid an extra few thousand bucks to deal with complaints, complaints today are now handled by half a dozen administrators paid over $100,000 apiece to take every complaint, no matter how ridiculous, very seriously.

      Thus the explosion of the whole concept of microaggression: the “micro” tells us that, quite literally, no problem is too small to escape notice of our bloated caste of administrators, who really have nothing else to do. 

      The great part is, when the admin screws up and metes out a ridiculous punishment for a ridiculous crime…admin generates even more money for itself if the professor complains. More meetings, more re-meetings to deal with the professor daring to defend himself…it can go on for years. It’s a losing proposition for the professor, but admin make bank on this.

      I promise the gentle reader, the endless shenanigans here has something to do with the endlessly rising tuition, even as standards, for those schools that still have some, are ever falling.

     Virginia Tech has compiled a list of 50 specific microaggressions, actual student complaints about mean things professors have done to them (I do wish it were possible for professors to lodge microaggression complaints against admin…).

      Some of these complaints are quite valid, but I want to focus on the ridiculous ones, because even the most ridiculous complaint can lead to a professor losing his job.

“Don’t call yourself that,” where that refers to me calling myself disabled.

      I grant it’s a little annoying to have someone tell you what to call yourself, but in defense of the professor who committed this microaggression: every year we’re told to replace our vocabulary with at least one new word, often several. “Remedial” becomes “Developmental,” “Basic” becomes “Advanced,” “Minority” becomes “Protected,” “Disabled” becomes “Enabled,”…and much like in Office Space, any transgression results in a legion of admin checking up to make sure we got the memo.

     This complaint would normally be blown off, but I can see a professor now getting chastised for doing what we reflexively do now, just to keep our jobs.

      Here’s another microagression that should be ignored, but now will consume thousands of dollars of taxpayer/tuition money to be fully investigated:

“You don’t have all the needed paperwork, so we can’t help you with the accommodations.”

      The Americans with Disabilities Act mandates we must do everything we can to make a student with a documented problem. Some classes run 20% or more of students “disabled” in some way. Of course, helping someone who needs help is something we want to do, but there comes a time when, yeah, we’re going to ask for documentation saying you’re allowed to eat in class or whatever. 

      But it’s a microaggression now to ask students to comply with Federal law. You better believe we got the memo what to do now when a student wants something special.

“When my white professors say ‘n>>>>>’ thoughtlessly in class.”

     Here’s the thing about this complaint: no way. We all know using “that word” means instant termination, and I’ve documented it.  So, a thinking person hearing that complaint about professors (multiple) using that word thoughtlessly (is it even possible to use that word thoughtfully?) would know full well it’s a bogus complaint.

      But complaints don’t go to thinking people, they go to admin. This complaint will cause a witch hunt, and admin will seize the opportunity to investigate several professors and hire assistants to help with the investigation, causing a million dollars or more in expenses to the institution.

“Being asked to present the black perspective in a predominantly white class.”

      This complaint was presumably made by a black student, and I see his point. That said, imagine the outrage if a white student presented the black perspective! While not immediately blown off, this is the kind of complaint that could be resolved with couple of five minute conversations (faculty really shouldn’t put students on the spot like that, and it’s a bit much to ask a student to speak for all blacks, regardless of the student’s skin color).

“A non-disabled classmate viewing the R-word as just another swear word and including it in a poem.”

     I concede my ignorance at not being sure what word is being referenced here. I have no idea if the word, if it is forbidden, is not forbidden for non-disabled students…and I really think poetry should be allowed to use all the words, in any event. Please, consider all the confusion and communication issues we have now because don’t know what words can lead to instant termination.

      But I can assure you a team of admin could easily spend hours on this non-event.

“But gender is socially constructed, you don’t need to physically transition” Accept, don’t invalidate trans people’s experiences and wants for their body.

     I’m not even sure there’s a complaint here, but admin will look at this and say “we need at least a Vice President and Dean of Trans Students, if not a whole Institute for Trans Students.” More millions will be thrown away due to this non-complaint.

“She’s so bipolar.” Disabilities are not insults.

     Um, ok. Again, a 5 minute conversation could wrap this up nicely. The big problem here is the student gets to define what are insults…it’s nuts.

“Being in a room full of fellow academics and being told you speak ‘very intelligently.’ “

     Would it be less offensive if “very stupidly” was said instead? This is yet another highlight of the problem with micoaggression: you can flip the behavior being complained about, and it’s still offensive. In other words, no matter what you do, you’re insulting someone. You can’t win, and that’s a scenario which puts dollar signs in administrative eyes.

      I’m not by any means saying all student complaints are ridiculous, but the current system of investigating in massive detail every complaint, and never just telling the student “get over it” is yet another sign that our higher education system, designed for education and research, has fallen far, far away from that design goal.

     And by training our kids to get upset at insignificant concerns, they become tolerant, even permissive of riots when real issues are brought up. 

     Thus we have riots at Berkeley to keep a speaker from voicing his thoughts.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

           

    

Kansas U Gets The Finger

By Professor Doom

     The first year of college, the freshman year, is the worst. I’ve seen many a good student (including the valedictorian in my high school class) come to campus, and, given no direction by rapacious admin, get sucked into the party atmosphere…drinking (or worse) away their chance at an education. They throw away their first semester, then admin “gives them another chance” with extremely loose policies (and still no guidance), and they waste another semester.

     I’ve seen plenty of not-so-good students wipe out in their freshman year as well. It used to be they vanished after the first semester, but those loose policies keep them on year after year, sucking them dry of student loan money before admin finally lets those kids go.

     In times past, it was no great dishonor to drop out of college after a semester or two. Nowadays, dropping out is such an achievement, and doing so with outstanding loans is such a disaster, there’s a stigma attached to it. There really shouldn’t be…and college shouldn’t be so ridiculously expensive, especially considering most schools, most degrees, really are scams, or at least grotesquely overpriced.

     For years, only the administrators in higher education knew what a rip-off most of higher education was. Slowly, faculty started to figure it out…either by seeing the pay that administrators get (which you don’t learn about at the school, but is posted online. I never had an admin tell me his salary), or seeing the infinitesimal graduation rates (again, available online, though never in 25 years has an admin told me about it), or perhaps just by counting cars in the parking lot when admin insists a thousand students are in class.

      Today, anyone in higher education who cares to know, knows what’s going on, and this knowledge is filtering to the students. We see the really bright students figure out that college, at least in most cases, simply isn’t worth it at all. Now even the mediocre students are figuring there’s a real problem with what’s going on in higher ed.

     The latest mediocre student to figure it out is, or was, from Kansas State University:

Billy Willson finished his first (and his last) semester at Kansas State University this week -- and in so doing has set off a debate there and beyond on the value of college and of general education in particular.

In a Facebook post, he announced that he was dropping out, despite having earned a 4.0 grade point average.

--his post also included a picture of him giving the finger to KSU.

     Now, a 4.0 GPA used to be amazing, but not so much anymore. My own GPA was a used-to-be-respectable 3.5, but nowadays that’s a pretty mediocre GPA. Grade inflation is so ridiculous now that professors don’t even use GPA to determine student caliber, and many institutions now have an “A+” grade, allowing for 4.3 GPAs. This makes all previous GPAs even more meaningless. I again point out there’s a trivially easy fix for the grade inflation that wouldn’t even require raising standards or cut into graduation rates, but I know it just won’t happen. I do note that any school with the integrity to do such a fix will suddenly find itself rated as an elite school…not that there’s any interest in that anymore, as “growth” is the only goal administrators pursue.

      Anyway, this kid is walking away from college, but I maintain he’s no great genius—I say this not to insult him, but to illustrate that the higher education scam is becoming as well-known as a fraud as Three Card Monte. Let’s take a look at his reasons for him to announce, correctly, that “YOU ARE BEING SCAMMED”:

You are being put thousands into debt to learn things you will never even use.


     I still have the Hamlet Soliloquy memorized. Granted, I was forced to learn it in high school…but it’s taken years for me to really appreciate the prose I was forced to memorize.

     Have I ever “used” it? Nope. Nothing in the premise of “higher education” says it will be useful. That said, I’m grateful for my teachers who forced the knowledge into me when I was too young to understand what I should know, as they laid the foundations for me to learn ever more things which I found ever more important.

     Important to me.

     I do understand all this knowledge will be of no value to many, and I agree with the student that going deep into debt is the wrong approach for gaining knowledge.

 Wasting 4 years of your life to be stuck at a paycheck that grows slower than the rate of inflation….. Average income has increased 5x over the last 40 years while cost of college has increased 18x… You're spending thousands of dollars to learn information you won't ever even use just to get a piece of paper."


     I do wish the kid had looked into the student loan scam, and had been forced to learn some real (i.e., non-Keynesian) economics, the better to understand why we’re seeing no paycheck growth in the economy.

Paying $200 for a $6 textbook


      Hoo boy, that is a rip off. Many students now use (“illegal”) PDFs of their course texts, although institutions are countering with “user fees” forcing the students to cough up money on top of tuition to account for the revenue that used to be claimed by the textbook sales. It’s nuts, and indicative of a system, that, yes, is a scam.

“Being taught by teacher's [sic] who have never done what they're teaching”


     Considering how popular Sexual Deviancy classes are on campus, I consider this something of a plus. That said, I think the kid is a bit confused here. I assure you, I do the math I teach in my class. I guess he’s talking about job training? Again, he should look into how admin controls the hiring, and the less they pay the faculty, the more money they get for themselves. It’s not complicated, and, bottom line, admin isn’t about to pay the market value for someone with “useful” job skills.

 "Colleges are REQUIRING people to spend money taking gen. ed. Courses”


     The “gen ed” courses are always a struggle for me, philosophically. I hate forcing people to do things, but I also hate just how ignorant so many college graduates are. The reason why these courses are mandatory is because it’s written into accreditation that college graduates are to have basic knowledge of a broad range of subjects…back when education was cheap, it was ok to make some things mandatory.

     Strangely, admin has rewritten everything in accreditation that gave some quality to the education, but kept these mandatory gen ed courses which force students to be on campus for years trying to learn material they have no interest in learning. We should ask some questions about that, because every year the serious courses in gen ed like mathematics and literature get watered down, or removed, and replaced with laughable courses in socialism, gender studies, and ethnic studies courses which no scholar considers a foundation for academic education.

     When I went to college, I spent around $1500 a year for tuition. Nowadays, students spend more than that just on books,  “user fees,” “student activity fees,” “parking fees,” and a whole host of other yearly fees that don’t even figure into the average yearly tuition now, of roughly $25,000.

      Because college is so expensive now, students must take loans. The only rational reason for taking a loan is to get something that will pay off the loan. So even as I rationalize we should have gen ed courses, I admit the reality: at the prices we’re charging for “higher education,” we should abandon much of it in favor of “job training.”

“… to learn about the quadratic formula (and other shit they will never use)…”


      And here’s where I learn that this 4.0 student is actually pretty mediocre. The quadratic formula is taught in high school. I learned it in the 10^th grade, and I tutor high school students who, even today, learn it in the 10^th grade. So this kid is already 2 years behind college material…and yes, that makes him an average “college student” as, like most college students, he’s merely learning the material he should have learned in high school. 

      The funny thing is, the kid says he wants to be an architect. I wish him good luck building things without knowing much in the way of math. He’s dropping out of college despite his misguided architectural dream, and I’m fine with that, because he’s correct in that it’s just too expensive right now.

     I hope someone teaches him about libraries, and I trust he knows how to read because there’s nothing he’ll learn at KSU that he can’t just read and learn on his own for free.

     One more tidbit from his rant:

“…when they could be giving classes on MARRIAGE and HOW TO DO YOUR TAXES."


        I honestly thought the point of the state education system was to create educated citizens. Shouldn’t we be alarmed that our high school graduates don’t, apparently, know about marriage and how to do “your” taxes (I’ve always hated that phrase, as those taxes are not “yours” in any meaningful since. I do concede “how pay squeeze to the government so they don’t hurt you” is a bit too cumbersome though far more accurate).

So, on the one hand, good riddance, Kansas State! On the other hand, why do your students study middle school (or, at best, early high school) topics in college? Do they get college credits for taking these courses? Why was such an ignorant individual ever admitted to any university? How on earth was he able to get a 4.0 GPA during his first semester?!

--from the comments section. Lots of people outside the system just have no idea what higher education is today, so they don’t know that high school material and 4.0 GPAs are typical for college.

        In any event, I wish the kid well and my point remains: even the average students are starting to realize higher education all too often doesn’t make any sense. Is there even a chance it will change before there are no suckers left to buy into it?

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com