Really, someone should ask some questions...

 The founder and CEO of American Title Services in Centennial was found dead in his home this week, the result of self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun, according to the Arapahoe County coroner....They said Talley died from seven or eight self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun fired into his torso and head.


--from The Denver Post.

I know, "conspiracy theory" is as much an epithet as much as "diploma mill", but this IS the fourth banker/finance type to die strangely in a week or so. These dots are not so far apart that connecting them is difficult.

Why doesn't the media ask a few questions here? I mean, this guy had money (or at least resources) at his disposal, and he wasn't some guy who spent so much time in the garage that he fell in love with his nail gun and decided that would be the best way to die. He had the means to get better ways to die.

Read that snippet again, or click on the link and read the article. The guy shot himself seven or eight times, in the torso and head. Now, committing suicide with a nail gun is pretty odd, but I can sorta see it in someone who uses a nail gun alot. That doesn't fly here.

How about committing suicide by shooting yourself in the torso with a nail gun? This is over the top bizarre, completely unheard of. Was the guy stupid or something? Again, no, he ran a big finance company...those guys generally aren't stupid.

On the other hand, they have been known to be crooks, and with four dying strangely, why not ask a question like "are we really sure these suicides sound credible?" It really seems like a mainstream newspaper would have the resources for that. This guy, like the others, was under investigation, and maybe he knew it would turn out bad. Lightly linking the story to my blog's theme, note that this guy has some spiffy (questionable) graduate degrees, to add to his resume that he's lied on.

I can't help but wonder if maybe some vigilante group is taking out bankers. I know, that sounds ridiculous, but how much more ridiculous is that theory than "wealthy, educated man decides to kill himself in a slow, unreliable, painful way. We'll present this story as unarguable fact."

You can read about the other three banker deaths here...but you sure won't find mainstream news taking some guesses about the coincidence-factor here.

Am I alone in thinking this is the kind of death that doesn't immediately say "suicide" in light of the other "suicides"?

Nuclear Military Cheating Scandals Not Surprising

By Professor Doom

Air Force nuke officers caught up in big cheating scandal

Exam Cheating Scandal Hits Navy Nuclear Force

    I’m disappointed, but not surprised, at the military cheating scandals, where 34 officers got together and exchanged answers on their monthly proficiency exams (Air Force) and where instructors where exchanging answers so they could be instructors (Navy).  This is pretty scary stuff, as these guys are in control of nuclear weapons and reactors—you kinda want folks responsible for this level of firepower to know what they are doing, and you also want them to be trustworthy. These officers failed on both accounts.

      I’m disappointed, but not surprised. The culture of cheating encouraged by administrators in our institutions of higher education will naturally spill over into our military officers…that’s where we get our officers, after all.

Student: “When I graduate, I’m going to join the Air Force and pilot a bomber.”

Faculty: “But you’ll drop bombs that will kill women and children!”

Student, excited: “I’ll make $40,000 a year!”

--Yes, this conversation really happened…and the student involved was female. Considering how the US spends as much on the military as the rest of the world put together, I can’t help but worry the devastating effects of this level of military expenditure has created such a miserable economy that our young people are so desperate for a decent job that, indeed, killing women and children is a fair price to pay for earning a decent living. I’m not one to crush dreams, but I hope she found a better dream.

     I’ve had a number of military or soon-to-be military students in my classes in the last few decades. They’ve almost always been outwardly respectful, and generally good students I’m glad to have in my classroom.

ROTC student: “Yeah, I can’t make the test, I’m sick. Can I take a make-up?”

--Early in my career, I used to give make-up tests regularly. I learned, however, that make-ups are just too ripe for cheating, and so I don’t give them now unless I have little choice in the matter. This is how one of my early mistakes started.

        One year I had the pleasure of having about a dozen Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) students; this was right after the liberation of Kuwait, so sentiment was high, and these guys put on shows on campus, climbing down from helicopters and such to show how well we were being protected from invading Iraqis.

“I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who get caught.”

--the secret version of the ROTC motto.

      My ROTC students showed up to class as a unit, filing in at the same time. But, one test night, I was one student short; he called in advance to say he was sick, and wanted a make-up. No problem, stuff happens. I have him come to my office, and he takes the make-up there, while I go off and do some errands.

“70%”

--the class average on the test. A little low, but no big deal.

“96%”

--the make-up student’s test score, highest in the class.

     The make-up student does well, best in class, and about double what he scored on the first test. Maybe he studied, it can happen, and I was still pretty naïve about cheating in college. What followed afterward was a strange series of phone calls, over the course of a few days:

Phone call: “Hi. If one guy does well on the test, does that hurt the other people that take the test?”

Me: “Uh, I’m not sure. It depends on if I curve. What’s this about?”

*click*

Next day:

Phone call, different voice: “Hi. I’m in your statistics class, and I wanted to know if there was a curve.”

Me (getting suspicious): “I haven’t decided. Because one student did well, I can’t curve more than 4 points, however.”

*click*

Next day:

Phone call, different voice: “Hi. I’m in your statistics class. I just wanted to make sure what I heard was true. If some guy scores high, that affects any curve you give to the rest of the class?”

Me: “Yes. What’s this about?”

*click*

Next day:

Phone call, Commanding Officer of ROTC at the institution: Hello, I’m the CO of the ROTC program here at [the institution]. One of my charges lied to you about being sick for a test you gave. He was actually at work that night. We don’t tolerate lying, and we’d like you to nullify that test as punishment for his lying.

Me: “Well, I rather think there’s more to it than lying, but seeing as that’s the best I can prove based on what you’ve told me, I guess simply dropping that test would be fairest to the other students.”

CO: “Thank you.”

--I was younger then, and really didn’t think it through. Primarily I was just glad that the strange phone calls would end.

     Clearly, what happened here was that the other ROTC students didn’t mind one of their own cheating…provided it didn’t hurt the other ROTC students. This is bad news on two levels—not only is cheating acceptable, but the ROTC students are really not functioning as a team; the other members were not willing to sacrifice even a few points on a test to help out one of their own.

      I’ve already discussed before that cheating is overwhelming in college. This doesn’t speak well of the moral fiber of our children, but, as I’ve shown before, administration rather encourages cheating, so I’m hard pressed to really blame students for responding to the (barely) mixed messages they receive regarding cheating. On the other hand, our young are so desperate for decent jobs that killing women and children doesn’t seem to count as a drawback for a job that pays, frankly, not all that much.

     Our military officers are drawn from our young, drawn from a college population told to think that cheating is no big deal, and so deep in debt that they’ll commit bloodshed for money.

     So yeah, I’m disappointed in the officers involved in that cheating scandal. But not surprised.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

End Student Loan Insanity

(sorry about this not being the promised sequel, but it's coming)

By Professor Doom

    “Don’t worry about the student loan, because you’ll make so much more money once you get your degree…”

--typical line from college administration when recruiting students.

     Every day I see another story on the insanity of student loan debt. They approach the madness from many different ways, but I’ll summarize: student loan debt exceeds a trillion dollars. Student loan debt exceeds credit card debt. Student loan debt can never be discharged, not even through bankruptcy. Since most degrees are worthless, the poorest (you know, the ones who think a degree will help the most) people never make enough from the degree to pay off the debt, which is why more people have student loans than there are college students.

      The data and statistics on the student loan scheme are thoroughly horrifying, but, once again, there are fixes. The obvious fix, of course, is to just stop the idiotic federal student loan program, which is responsible for the vast majority of student loan debt.

     Trouble is, people want college, so we need a replacement for the federal foolishness. I totally get that college is too expensive now for a young person to simply work his way through college (although my fixes, mostly reversions to how institutions used to work, will go some way to reverting to the usual level of cost). I totally get that some people are so disadvantaged that some sort of loan program should be available.

      Once again, there’s a stupidly simple fix that has only one explanation (lack of integrity) for why it hasn’t already been implemented.

     “Our degrees and certificates can fuel your success.”

--right from the University of Phoenix web site. I’ll grant the UoP has never claimed to be higher education in the liberal sense, but the time has come to put some of the $200,000 a day they spend on Google advertising where their mouth is. Yes, they really are that profitable, but not everyone understands where the money is from. Your tax dollars literally go from UoP to Google, for the purpose of luring suckers in for questionable degrees.

     Whether for-profit, non-profit, or state, institutions of higher education raise tuition to as much as they can get away with, to soak up that federal loan money as thoroughly as possible. Education isn’t on the agenda, taking that loan money is; plowing young people under crushing debt is just an unfortunate (and acceptable) side effect. That said, institutions justify time and again that the loans are a good idea for the suckers students, because their degrees will help them make more money.

     But wait. What if the loan money didn’t come from the federal government? The federal government only gives the loan money to accredited schools, because supposedly (and despite my thoroughly showing to the contrary) accreditation gives some sort of legitimacy to certain institutions of higher education.

     If accreditation is supposed to relate to loan money, let’s make it “accredited schools are the only institutions that can make loans to their students for tuition.”

Faculty:  “…Wouldn't presume to speak for everyone in a major. I've known smart kids from all of the disciplines…But education majors. Oh my.

I wonder what they do over there in the school of education. I've heard whispered rumors at the water-cooler of students being assigned coloring books as homework…final essay assignments about their feelings… They don't read the syllabus, or if they do, they don't understand it. I had one of them raise his hand on the fourth (the fourth!!) day of class and ask "are we supposed to be actually *doing* the reading listed on the syllabus?"

--I just had to take another shot at Education; I don’t have to rely on rumors for what goes on in education courses, as I’ve seen with my own eyes. The reason why the education major asked that question, by the way, is because education classes are often fraudulent—the syllabus is the only documentation turned into admin for accreditation, so it’s created to make it look like the class is legitimate. The education class itself usually does nothing, despite any readings given on the syllabus. We must do something about these guys, honest, as this sort of fraud really is unstoppable right now.

     Just imagine the immense prestige of an accredited school with this restriction. Now, an accredited school doesn’t just blow smoke at the students about how much money they’ll make with a degree, the school believes it to the point that it’ll make the loan money to the students. If the school, instead of the federal government/taxpayer, has to take the hit for defaults, I bet that, suddenly, the school would make pretty darn sure the students actually learn something, or at least make sure the students don’t get so far into debt that they’ll never recover. Instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel by blowing a fortune in advertising attracting suckers to sign up for the loans, schools would go back to only taking people that really are interested in studying.

      Now, I know this won’t happen, but we really need to change what’s going on. Apollo Group, owner of the biggest for-profit institutions, is making awesome profits year in and year out. I don’t have a problem with corporations making profits, per se, but all their profits come from sucking in federal loan money and screwing over young people; drug dealers who ply their trade outside high schools look saintly by comparison. 

     If Apollo really thinks their degrees are worth something, they should be more than happy to loan students the money to get the degrees. Heck, they could do that now, since nothing says a student must take only federal loans. Apollo doesn’t do that, of course, and neither does anyone else.

     The reason is simple: the answer to “do they make loans now?” is the same as the answer to “do they think their degrees are worth anything?”…namely, “hell no, they know what they sell is worthless crap for a very high price. They’d have to be freakin’ idiots to loan people money for their crap.”

     Now, in most fields where for-profits and non-profits compete, what happens in the for-profits doesn’t really hurt the non-profits (consider hospitals, restaurants/soup kitchens and private detectives/law enforcement), but it’s different in education. The problem is, the bogus accreditation system and “everyone gets a 4.0 GPA” policies have leveled all degrees, so there’s no way to distinguish sham from legitimate. The non-profit institutions are bleeding students to the for-profits, and can only keep up by making their degrees just as worthless…victimizing everyone.

      I know making institutions, instead of government, responsible for loans isn’t a realistic solution, but I still want to be a (lonely) voice for integrity in the system. On the bright side, the Federal government has serious economic issues now, and might not be able to afford to throw away money on student loans soon. It can’t happen soon enough, as I hate being in an industry that creates victims.

     Since I’m already in fantasyland with this fix, let’s consider what will happen when the federal government shuts down the student loan scam. First, most of the for-profits will close overnight. They get 86% of their revenue from tax dollars (it’s actually more, but that’s for another essay, as I’m wont to say); when that spigot shuts off, it’ll be game over for them. Granted, with the roughly 99% profit margin they have once the student signs up (they pay their teachers/adjuncts very little), they could still make money, but it probably won’t be worth it for them.

     It would be fun to see what happens to the other schools…how would they react to being the only source of tuition loans? I imagine the ones with integrity, that honestly believe their product is legitimate, will happily do so.

     Just how many schools do you think fit that description? Yeah, me too.

     

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Flush the Administration

By Professor Doom

Me: “There are many errors here. In these official documents that are giving invalid results, you assert that 1.8 + 1.4 = 3.4. It is, in fact, 3.2. Can you please at least change that much?”

Administration: “No.”

--Often I see documents that I probably should not see, but I try to help fix errors when I can. My attempts at preventing my institution from making embarrassing mistakes are hit and miss. Mostly miss.

(two years later)

Admin: “We’re forming a special committee to determine how errors were made on a document reviewed by 12 different [graduate degree holding] administrators…

--yes, this concerned the same document.

    Before, I discussed the insane importance administration puts on student evaluations, in spite of common sense and studies showing that evaluations don’t measure teaching, only grades. Administrators that never serve as faculty will never understand what evaluations mean, have already ignored explanations and studies to this effect. If administrators served as faculty, they might be more willing to understand the obvious and well-documented. With administrative degrees completely unrelated to what happens on campus, administrators with such degrees will never be qualified to serve as faculty. We must go the other direction.

Administrator: “Math? That’s just a bunch of formulas. A student can just look it up if he needs it.”

Me: “…”

--if sometimes I seem a little disrespectful to administrators, I apologize. Respect is a two-way street, however.

     Simply having a non-administrative or non-Education degree is not enough. I’ve seen departments where the department head is an administrative hatchetman, brought in from outside to enforce “higher retention” and destroy any academic standards that get in the way of this all-encompassing administrative goal.  Despite having the appropriate degree and, presumably, respect for the subject, these well-paid assassins of legitimacy know which side of the bread their butter is on, and act accordingly. Faculty are helpless in the face of this scenario, and all they can hope to do is band together and revolt en masse against the head—a dangerous proposition as the department head, with the backing of administration, will “ease out” those faculty with the leadership ability to organize such a revolt.

     I’ve also seen departments where the head is chosen from the faculty, and changes every year or three. This is the key to happiness, and legitimacy. Administration can no longer rig the system by bringing in an outsider to enforce their decrees. The “administrative department head” can no longer be abusive to the faculty in the department, because he’ll be returning to the ranks of faculty soon enough, and will have to live with the decisions he’s made and any ill treatment of his associates. 

       That latter idea is actually key: administrators right now are immune to the consequences of their abuses. They strut around as self-styled “titans of industry” with no real understanding of what institutions of higher education are about. Faculty that serve only temporarily as administrators can’t be nearly as abusive, because they’ll actually suffer the consequences.

     The whole reason administration managed to take over the system is because faculty, foolishly, turned it over to them, trusting to administrative integrity to keep it honorable. This happened back when administrators didn’t make the extraordinary sums of today—faculty saw no reason to pay much, since administration was such a minimal position (soon I’ll address more of what administrators do on campus today…). Faculty don’t want to administrate, but I suspect many would be willing to take on the bureaucratic burden, if only for a year or two, for an extra $20,000 a year (i.e., for a tiny fraction of the cost of having a professional administrator).

Michigan public universities increased their spending on administrative positions by nearly 30% on average in the last five years, even as university leaders say they've slashed expenses to keep college affordable for families…The increases took place [during] a period in which both student enrollment and state funding of universities remained about the same.

---the collapse of Detroit hasn’t done Michigan any good…and yet administration is blooming in this environment. Could there be any stronger evidence of the corruption?

     The same can apply to many of the lower level administrative positions. Instead of recruiting someone from outside with a Ph.D. in some strange Education field unrelated to anything that goes on in the institution, have a faculty member already at the institution serve as dean, for example, for a year or two at a time, revolving through faculty at the institution, perhaps making the transition over less intense summer semesters. Again, this is just a “like it used to be” fix, and I apologize that most of my suggestions are so simple. I acknowledge it’s harder than it sounds. The way to end rapes is to get rid of the rapists…the way to get rid of the corruption of higher education is the get rid of the administrators. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

More on this next time.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Fixing Higher Education, Part 15

Faculty: “Either I do what the dean wants, and screw over this person who deserves the position…or I get fired and lose my health benefits, which I really need right now. What do you think I’m going to do?”

--overheard faculty dilemma. The illusion that faculty have any real influence over anything on campus is casually dispelled once one realizes administrators can fire at will.

     This is, I believe, my 15^th essay on all the fixes that higher education needs.

     As each fix is enabled, the problems of a corrupted higher education system will get less intertwined. With faculty doing the hiring, the pressure to pass everyone fades away. “Spineless” or incompetent faculty giving in to nightmarishly incompetent administrative demands will no longer be a constant issue. Ultimately, most hiring and firing would be done via a department head, with assistance of departmental committees, and this leads to a very real worry: the department head, despite being faculty, can turn into an administrator, in turn answering to the whims of those above him. There’s an answer to this, an answer so seldom considered that I must build up to why it is necessary.

Student: “[That professor] is great. You won’t have to learn a thing in her classes.”

--student describing a professor whose courses are so popular she gets extra sections, extra money. One student saying something like this means very little, but when it’s semester after semester after semester, that’s a sign only an administrator could miss.

      Student evaluations are key to promotion and hiring, and administrators use them to make their decisions. This is despite that it is the faculty receiving high evaluations that are not doing their job, as studies, as well as common sense, have shown. Administration, as is often the case, has it backwards, although faculty members have always known this. I’ve heard it explained many times to administrators at meetings, to no effect. Evaluations need to no longer be used as the definition of good teaching, key to hiring, pay raises, and promotion. 

      The fix here is simple enough: instead of punishing faculty members with less than stellar evaluations, it should be understood that teaching is not a popularity contest, and student evaluations should actually count against a teacher if they’re consistently too high.

     This may sound wrong, but evaluations are an average of all student ratings. A great teacher should get great evaluations, but all it takes to turn a class of great evaluations into mediocre evaluations is just one angry student, just one student rating a professor negatively is sufficient.   

     The only way to get perfectly high evaluations is to never have even one disgruntled student. But there’s only one way to get a disgruntled student. 

     Always—always!--this disgruntled student is a failing student. The only way to get perfect evaluations is to fail nobody, and a professor that fails nobody probably isn’t covering any material worth knowing (or paying for). There are no college courses for shoelace-tying, belt-buckling, beer-drinking, or tv-watching because nobody can fail at those, either.

      Crap, any administrator reading that last sentence probably just got the idea of offering college courses in shoelace-tying, belt-buckling, beer-drinking, and tv-watching. Well, college credit for tv-watching is already taken, but now non-administrative readers understand why such silly courses exist.

Administrator: “We needed to forgo faculty pay raises to get the funds for a new student recreational center. It will have a rock wall, and be over twice as big as our current center.”

Faculty: “But how does that contribute to education?”

Administrator: “The new center will allow us to attract more students.”

Faculty: “How does having more students contribute to education?”

Administrator: “More students means we’ll have a larger construction budget, for more facilities.”

Faculty: “Like an even bigger student recreational center?”

--The faculty, wisely, didn’t say that last line, but this is the madness of higher education now. Every administrator is working to get more growth, so that the growth can support more growth, for the purpose of increasing growth. Do we really need the entire population of the country in college? If so, will administrators then try to get people enrolled in multiple colleges simultaneously?

     Changing administration’s thinking on this matter, or any other matter, is unlikely to happen, not with mere words. Time and again the imperviousness of administration to common sense, even when backed by real studies, has been demonstrated to me. There is no fix that would allow administrators to become reasonable; this isn’t part of their job any more than teaching or research or respect for education is part of their job. Instead of getting administrators focused on high retention, what is needed is a way to get administrators that listen to educators, and care about education.  It’s time to think outside the box, and change the way how institutions get administrators.

     Or not. As is so often the case, the fix is to revert to the system that made American higher education so respected in the 20^th century. Next time…

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com