Behind the Scenes at Community College

By Professor Doom

"The misplaced commoditization of education is perhaps most powerfully seen at the community college—inflated administrative salaries, meaningless surveys of satisfaction, exploitation of adjuncts, spiraling text book costs, millions of education leadership degree programs which do not prepare graduate students for leading anyone, thousands of programs, pilots, grants, and services that perpetuate a kind of public fraud which promises higher education but is best suited for vocational training. So much leadership puffery…"

--From today’s book.

     The workers in higher education, that is, the educators, know there’s something very wrong right now. Some leave, never to return, some stand up and fight, and some wait and consider the best course of action. The ones that stand up are squashed, and the ones who wait see the squashings and realize if we’re going to do anything about it, we need to be subtle.

      I’ve responded with this blog, in the vain hope that if enough people outside higher education watch as I connect the dots, we can amass enough strength and do something about it. It’s nigh hopeless, but perhaps over time my goal can be reached. I post anonymously, of course, but have no illusions that, when I’m found, my career in higher education will end. I’ve counted on the general incompetence of the Poo Bahs of higher ed for this to take years, and not been disappointed.

      Others write very thinly veiled books, “fiction,” detailing the madness, somehow thinking that posting their complaints as fiction will protect them. There are a few books out there from small publishers. Mainstream publishers won’t touch such books, for some reason.

      The book I’ll be looking at here is  College Leadership Crisis: The Philip Dolly Affair, detailing many of the characters one finds in an all-too-typical community college.

“…met for Moonbuck's coffee…but such benign activities were a front for their true purpose—to get rid of Dolly…”

They had a steadily increasing-in-volume dossier of information about the President and his actives in Hamilton City. In fact, they actually possessed several videos [soon to be posted on Lube Tube]

 

     The above excerpt highlights the nature of the fictional world in the book: a coffee shop called Moonbuck’s, an online site for videos called Lube Tube. This book is thinly veiled fiction. The proper names might be changed a bit, but otherwise the reader should realize the people and events detailed here are very close to real-world counterparts.

     Phillip Dolly is the Poo Bah of the fictional community college. Like many Poo Bahs in the real world, he leaves in disgrace from one school, only to quickly get another plum position somewhere else, in this case at the fictional Copperfield Community College (CCC)…it’s weird how often this sort of thing happens, almost as though the Poo Bah’s real job is to destroy institutions, and having succeeded in the job, the Poo Bah has no trouble getting yet another position where he can continue the plundering.

      The book considers the thoughts of Dolly as he’s cast down from the previous school, where he considers all the good things he did for the school:

Hmm, I made all of the directors deans and all of the deans became associate VPs. Only one of the new VPs had emotional problems, but no damage was done. He checked into rehab. Our quality initiatives must have moved the college forward. We redid offices, put in new floors and windows, and really spruced the place up too. We won several national awards.

I remember there was some grousing when I had the president's salary increased to 475K,…

 

     The book is a little subtle, but allow me to highlight the real problem with most (all?) Poo Bahs in higher education. All these people do is come in, elevate themselves and their buddies to high-paying positions, and plunder away. Yes, they win awards, but investigation reveals these awards are practically self-given, there’s a circle-jerk of back-slapping in higher education awards that only insiders really get to see. All the outsiders see are shiny plaques.

      It's a frustrating thing to watch as faculty. It takes years of flawless academic and scholarly work to qualify for a 2% pay raise and a slightly spiffier title, as faculty. Time and again, however, I've seen administrators fly up through the ranks, getting 10% or 20% pay raises yearly, despite making major blunders year after year (examples of making the academic calendar one week too short, spending $100,000 more than the budget allowed, scheduling multiple classes in the same room at the same time on a campus with a dozen rooms all leading to huge pay raises come to mind. Meanwhile having 70% retention instead of 75% precludes a raise, since only the best teachers should get that....)

      But the subtlety is missed: as the Poo Bah goes over all his “achievements” there’s a huge dog not barking: at no point does the Poo Bah ever consider doing anything for education or for the students. For Poo Bahs, getting big raises and constructing nice palaces are the goals of higher education, nothing more.

All those retreats, keynote speeches, conferences, dinners, trips to Europe—just so much, so much over the years…The governing board said I spent too much time out of state.

 

     Again, the book lightly goes over all these trips and things. But admin in higher education, even at tiny community colleges, regularly go outside the country for “retreats”…it’s positively insulting to the educators “left behind” because there are no travel funds for them. Even more obnoxious, they use these “leadership building” trips to justify awarding themselves promotions and pay raises. I’m serious: admin give themselves vacations, and then they reward themselves for getting vacations. Had I not seen it with my own eyes many times, I’d find it as shocking as, I hope, the gentle reader does.

Well, the faculty senate sent me a letter asking why my own kids didn't attend our college.

 

      Again, the book is being subtle. Often I accuse our leaders in community colleges to be incompetent, but the above line drops a hint that I’m quite wrong: these guys wouldn’t dare put their children in the community college system, because they know these schools are bogus, and wouldn’t inflict that on their own children.

      In many cases, then, the Poo Bahs are the worst sort of evil: they know they are serving evil, but do it all the same.

I recommended we take "Technical" out of our name and emphasize transfer education.

 

     It seems every community college Poo Bah dreams of destroying the possibility of the college helping the community, and instead turning the school into a big university, or at the very least into a school that claims to prepare students for university. I’ve seen it many times. There are many reasons for this, but turning the school into a “transfer” institution reaps many benefits—albeit none for students or education.

     By casting the school in such terms, the school need no longer worry about producing graduates, and there’s far less scrutiny over what, exactly, the school is doing. Instead, the emphasis can be on growth. It’s why a fake 2 year school can be considered successful, even if only 0.6% of its students actually graduate on time. “We’re a transfer institution” whines the Poo Bah, so who cares if there are no graduates, who cares if there is no second year coursework at the 2 year school, who cares if most of the coursework is high school level or lower?

Oh. The accreditation people were concerned fifty percent of our total enrollment comes from dual enrollment with high school kids [and the classes are taught at the high schools by high school teachers]. How can that be considered double dipping? I am very comfortable with those partnerships. I told the board and the faculty such outreach was important to stakeholder satisfaction.

 

       The book does a good job of aping the edu-speak of our Poo Bahs, but I want to highlight that “dual enrollment” referenced above. My own community college, and many colleges, do much the same: we claim to have thousands of students, but many of the students couldn’t find the campus if they tried, and aren’t old enough to have a driver’s license in any event. The “college courses” are taught somewhere else, by non-faculty…I’m not saying these non-faculty don’t do a good job, mind you, but the admin? They get pay raises for “growing” the institution like this, even though the institution is, quite literally, doing nothing. Millions and millions of dollars of salary to pay the “leaders” at the community college…while the students go to the same damn high school with the same damn teachers to take the same damn courses the high school already offers. It’s nuts, but the way how funding is awarded, makes perfect sense for administrators.

      Like I’ve said, the book is a little subtle at pointing out the reality of community colleges.

I guess I'll email those head hunters at findaprez.com tomorrow. Maybe I'll try www.ccpresidentsrus.com. There must be a community college out there needing my leadership skills, my knowledge of management styles, my commitment to the learn-ed college philosophy, my knowledge of branding and sustainability, my zest for policy governance, and my networking abilities.

      The book does a great job of getting into the mind of a typical community college Poo Bah, and I’ve only lightly gone over the ignorance and hubris of these guys. Next time around we’ll look at some of the other characters typical of community college.

 

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

The Truth Of “A Degree Is Worth A Million…”

By Professor Doom

     My conscience is bothering me too much to let it slide…I’ve been deceptive. In a recent post I noted that a study showed a university education actually lowers your income, and I just went with the flow there, instead of clarifying what’s really going on.

     My justification/rationalization is simple. Our criminals leaders in higher education have shamelessly promoted the studies showing “college degree holders make a million dollars more over a lifetime” to justify charging ridiculous amounts of tuition, money that just flows into administrative bank accounts, to the detriment of our students.

      So, under the assumption admin is being honest (bear with me) about believing the causal effect between having a degree and making more money, it was a fair enough rationalization to then accept the causal relationship in the new study showing having a degree and making less money.

     But the causal relationship? It’s rubbish, in regards the studies showing degree holders make a million bucks more over a lifetime. It’s also rubbish regarding the more recent study showing having a degree reduces income, but first things first.

     The old study determined its results by looking at graduates from 1960 or so—you have to give people 30 years to say you have a result that applies over “a lifetime” after all. Even if there is a causal effect, there’s still no reason to believe in any of it applies today.

      Today’s economy is nothing like the economy of 1960—there was actual manufacturing and production in the United States back then, we didn’t have all our production jobs shipped overseas. I could go into great detail on the economic aspects here, but I want to focus on what changed in higher education since 1960.

     The big change? You couldn’t just walk onto campus in 1960. “Open Admissions” campuses were as rare as Diversity Fiefdoms in 1960. The way how you got admitted into university in 1960 was your application was reviewed carefully. You needed good grades (demonstrating a work ethic). You needed public service (demonstrating character). It was a good idea to show you had a particular ability (demonstrating talent). And, of course, it sure didn’t hurt if your parents went to that school, or were wealthy (demonstrating a genetic track record of success, if you will).

     The point? To get into university of 1960, you needed to demonstrate that you already had what it takes to become successful (incidentally, when I went to State U in the 80s, I still had to do the same even though it was a party school). Once you showed you were going to be successful anyway, the university accepted you…and took credit for your success.

     In terms of success, university was a rigged game back then—they only took people that were likely to make a lot of money (the definition of success in America), and so there’s no causal relationship claiming “having a college degree”’ leads to “making a million more dollars over a lifetime.” The only way to get that college degree was to first demonstrate you were likely to make a lot of money.

     You may as well say there’s a causal relationship claiming “having a 50’ yacht” leads to “making a million more dollars over a lifetime.” A relationship (correlation) is there, mind you—I sure hope government doesn’t read this and start handing out 50’ yachts to everyone!—but a yacht won’t cause you to make money.

     So now let’s go back to the new study showing having a university degree lowers your income, to the point that you’ll make less than if you didn’t have the degree at all.

     Again, we could point to current economic conditions, but that doesn’t work—the guys without degrees are making more, and they’re in the same economic conditions. 

      On the other hand, I can totally point to the changes in higher education since 1960 to identify why getting a university degree from a lower tier school (as  identified in the study), or getting a degree in a lame field (as identified in the study), is related to making less money.

     The biggest change, by far? Open admissions. While open admissions schools might not even get accredited 50 or more years ago (because old accreditation required restrictions on admittance), they’re a dime a dozen today, and there are many more bogus degree programs as well.

      In the past, you had to demonstrate you had potential for success to get into university. Now, you have to demonstrate you have an opposable thumb, because all that’s required is to hold a pencil to check a box saying you want loan money. Heck, you don’t even need that, as the explosion of the administrative caste means there’s a $100,000 a year administrator available to hold the pencil for you, if need be.

     Now, there still are legitimate schools, mind you, and that’s where the people likely to be successful will go—again, successful people, or people from a successful family, are going to have the tools to stay away from the scammy schools and bogus degrees that are now quite common to higher education today.

      This is what the study is really saying: the scammy schools are luring in suckers, and, bottom line, suckers are going to make less money than people who are less likely to be ripped off. This is every bit as obvious as why people that got degrees from universities 50 years ago made more money.

      Going to a fake school, getting a fake degree, is basically the equivalent of putting a giant red “L” on your forehead: getting such a degree labels you as a mark, a sucker, a loser…the only kind word used to describe this kind of person is “victim.” Bogus accreditation and the student loan scam has exploited legions of these people, to create millions of victims. 

     It’s not that getting a degree from a scammy school lowers your income, it’s that getting such a degree marks you as a fool. When you put that you have a Sexual Deviance Communications degree from JoeBob’s Fully Accredited Fly-By-Nite University on your resume, you’re telling your employer “I was stupid enough to borrow $100,000 to get an utterly useless degree where I learned nothing at all.”

     Good luck getting a high paying job with such a black mark, proudly displayed, on your resume.

Deanling: “We showed improvement in the test scores, so we know the program works.”

Me: “Looking at your data, I see you have a p-value of 0.37.”

Deanling: “What does that mean?”

Me: “It means that the improvement you have, half a point on a 100 point test, is just luck, you cannot claim your new student service program is making any difference.”

Deanling: “That’s not true.”

Me: “Yes, it is, it’s how statistics works.”

Deanling: “You’re not being collegial.”

--the Deanling, incidentally, has a Ph.D. in Administration, a research degree, where the curriculum alleges statistical training (I checked to see with my own eyeballs). And sure enough, she managed to get a pile of money to extend the program and hire more administrators, so might does seem to make right after all. I’m so glad to be away from community college…

     No university Poo Bah will tell the truth of the study, but few of them really understand research well enough to follow my argument here even if I explained it to them. 

      Even if they did, none of them have the balls to do as I have done, and tell the truth about what current studies reveal about higher education. I’ll break it down into two cases:

     Higher education of the past identified people who were likely to be successful, and educated them. 

     Higher education of today identifies the vulnerable, and screws them over.

     It’s that simple.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

    

Phys Ed for College?

By Professor Doom

     Every few years, institutions discuss the course requirements for degrees. 

Invariably, these requirements, at least in terms of credit hours, are “more.” Admin doesn’t really care, as long as the new coursework is very easy (good for retention) and mandatory (good for growth), but most departments take this as an opportunity to ensure their own job security, advancing coursework that is obvious on the face of it to be worthless. Other departments take the opportunity to add coursework to make the degrees more valuable in the marketplace. No departments will let go of the courses that are already mandatory, since that might cost jobs in the department. It’s always a tug of war, as there really is an upper limit to just how many credit hours a student can be expected to take over the course of 4 years.

Student: “I’m taking bowling this semester.”

--I’m serious, legitimate campuses offer bowling courses. I’ve nothing against bowling but why pay thousands of dollars to learn about it? It’s not that complicated a game, honest…it’s why we have leagues for 8 year olds, after all.

     There’s a push to open a whole new mandatory field for our students: physical “education.” Like most people that read, I hated the mandatory phys ed of public school—it was basically on opportunity for the bullies to polish their craft on the sportsball fields, while the thieves honed their skills robbing the lockers as the other students were out getting their mandatory physical “education.”

Student: “I’m taking tennis this semester.”

--the point of these quotes: student already can take physical education courses for college credit as it is. Many do, because it is an easy A. I’ve never heard of a college course on chess, though I consider it a vastly deeper game than tennis and bowling. It’s no surprise, since chess doesn’t sell well…

     Don’t get me wrong, I believe in physical exercise, and it seems the people I see using obesity scooters get younger every year (granted, everyone I see looks younger every year…). While I don’t believe in mandatory public school, I can accept our kids probably should get encouragement to engage in physical activity. The fact is, we already have mandatory physical “education” in our public schools. How can anyone possibly justify forcing it down the throats of our college students? Poorly, as it turns out:

Physical education requirement in college more necessary than we think

 

      The above article is so loaded down with fallacies and invalid thinking that I don’t understand how anyone can be swayed. I assure you, the Poo Bahs of higher education will be swayed, but only because the retention rates of college courses on jumping jacks are much higher than courses on chemistry, calculus, or English literature.

Many ASU students wake up before 7 or even 6 a.m. to do so, but this dedication does not come easy. Recently, it has been suggested by many states in the U.S. that there be a physical exercise requirement reinstated for college students, especially at large universities such as ASU. 

     So, the push is on for mandatory physical education as ASU; I’ve covered before how education is the lowest priority at ASU, not that ASU is exceptional in this regard. However, when you point out that students are already exercising, it’s tough to say we need to make it mandatory, right?

According to a study at Oregon State University, all college students in the U.S. were required to take physical education courses or fill exercise requirements in the 1920s, however, this number has fallen to 39 percent, which is the lowest is has ever been in the country. According to the study, in which 354 universities were selected, many educational institutions are cutting courses that offer physical exercise from their programs. With more than 34 percent of adolescents being overweight and 17 percent being obese,

     Yes, in the past, our institutions did have physical education, but this was before mandatory physical education was a thing in the public schools (their grip on the nation wasn’t nearly so strong in the 1920s). As it became clear that the benefits of exercise were already being taught, the higher education system abandoned such mandatory courses, in favor of focusing on scholarly activities. Yes, there are benefits to exercise, but exercise isn’t the critical thing for academic success; the gentle reader is encouraged to consider if Stephen Hawking’s insights are due to all his exploits on sportsball fields, or due to his study of science.

     Pointing out that 34 percent of adolescents are overweight is just smoke: college isn’t for adolescents. The article may as well point out that baby blue whales weigh 3 tons.

    Some would argue that college should teach independence; therefore, students should be able to form healthy habits on their own without this hand-up from the university. This logic is not faulty. However, most won’t realize the merits of exercise until they get a taste of it.

     The article’s ham-fisted attempts to look fair are risible here. Our college students, the vast majority of them, got a hefty taste of forced exercise in the public schools, there’s just no reason to force them to learn how to play tennis or whatever in college. I mean “no reason for the students” here. Obviously, institutions have much to gain by forcing students to “study” tennis, and you can bet tennis teachers will be cheap hires.

Additionally, gym intimidation is a real thing. Many individuals are anxious to partake in exercise because they believe they will look ridiculous doing so in a large room of people. 

     Again, the one-sidedness of the arguments slaps me in the face. Our universities are already loaded down with large rooms full of people; courses with hundreds of students in them are already quite common. I suspect you could easily have a “class” of 10,000 students doing jumping jacks…as huge courses like this are the goal of ASU, I once again am suspicious of the pure intentions of this article.

After all, walking into a room with confusing machinery and physically fit individuals is a daunting task. Not only do we feel inadequate, but we don’t know where to start.

     This is basically the advertising campaign for Planet Fitness, right? Anyone intrigued by the above selling points can just go down to Planet Fitness and pay $10 to get a tutorial on how to use those “confusing” machines (honest, $10 is a fair price to learn how to use them).

      Wouldn’t freely paying $10 to learn how to lift weights be fairer than paying thousands of dollars in college tuition to do the same? Heck, you probably won’t even get weights to lift in the college course (say it with me: “jumping jacks”), because purchasing 10,000 sets of weights would cost real money. That would cut into the Poo Bah’s pay.

     Anyway, the article is just a blizzard of foolishness, trying to get suckers to actually buy into paying thousands of dollars to learn how to do the things they already learned how to do for free when they were children.

       But that’s what higher education already is, for the most part.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com