By Professor Doom
A few times I’ve
ranted that the Poo Bahs of higher education, despite their huge salaries, have
never done anything for education. I must concede that I’m wrong: the Poo Bahs
have done much to make higher education worse, to turn our institutions of
learning and research into, in many cases, pits for the exploitation of
children, young adults, and the workers.
A
recent article points out the achievements of the Poo Bah at Arizona State
University. I’ve mentioned this guy before, for his recent 20% pay raise to
$900,000 a year (plus benefits enough to support an Afghan village in relative
luxury forever). The Poo Bah has a new
book coming out detailing his successes at ASU (gee, his job gives him time
to write books? Why is he paid so much,
again?).
The book is
already getting praise from the mainstream:
“The book has glowing blurbs from
both Bill Clinton and Jeb Bush.”
--and Carnegie too. Having these guys
praise a book gives me a cold feeling inside, comparable to hearing Jeffrey
Dahmer praise a particular brand of barbecue sauce.
The book is “interesting”
stuff, so let’s look at the vision for the new American University as practiced
by the Poo Bah at ASU:
First, college math is turned into a “guaranteed to pass” course,
via computer software.
--note the implied
praise for growth, the key to the Poo Bah’s “success”.
I totally grant
that, in theory, a computer course could quite possibly allow for learning,
although realistically it’s better for certification of basic skills than
education. I have more than a little experience with computer courses (having
created an internet/computer course for a state university in 1998), so let me
talk about the reality here.
Now, for online
courses, computer work is meaningless.
Cheating is over the top extreme, and employers already know that online
degrees are worthless, for good reason. I’ve shown before that college
administrators rather encourage cheating, or anything else that will help with
growth of the institution.
But how about if
real measures are taken to avoid cheating? Even in this case, it’s a simple
matter to manipulate the course. First, you cut out the material that students
have trouble with—this is particularly easy in computer courses, which
naturally record all data. Semester after semester, take out “the hardest
material”—as you remove the hardest material, then something else becomes the
most difficult. It doesn’t take long to get a “course” that anyone can do well
in.
Failing that, of
course, you can use the “retest” method: the student is allowed to simply take,
and retake, and retake, the test until he passes. A typical test is multiple
choice, has 10 questions…even a toaster will pass eventually, and by
“eventually” I mean with a few hours of effort.
Failing that, you
can use “the curve” method. Just say the top 85% of students automatically
pass. Again, this is easy to do with computerized tests. This is not rocket
science here, it’s trivial to set things up so that anyone or anything can
pass, and there aren’t any actual experts around that can say otherwise. What
little, if any, faculty that are running (not “teaching”) these courses are in
no position to criticize what’s going on. Again, I’ve been at state
institutions where similar things go on with no chance of faculty doing
anything about it.
Key in all of
this is administrative control—you don’t need to be an expert in a subject to
“remove questions too many students miss”, to let students just retake the test
repeatedly, or to define passing to whatever you want it to be. Which order from
above is more likely to have been given: “Set up these computer courses so that
85% of students pass” or “Set up these computer courses so that 50% of students
pass?” I said “50%” in that last option because that is a more realistic
estimate of how well students do in traditional courses…it’s way too low a
percentage in administrative eyes. It’s not a bad thing that only 50% of
students can achieve college education in an introductory course—that means the
material is more than just the stuff any child can learn.
Now, I’m not
trying to be a jerk by saying 50% of students should pass, but I do want to
point out: there’s supposed to be prestige in having a college education.
There’s no prestige to tying your shoelaces, because everyone can do it.
College education isn’t supposed to be an “everyone can do it” thing, and if I
am wrong about that, why should it cost $20,000 a year to learn things that
everyone can learn anyway? Administrators want it both ways: common skills for
a very rare price.
Seriously, how
can you call this education or justify the price? This might be certification,
and I’m ok with that, but these are actually considered college
courses—students are paying THOUSANDS of dollars to run a mostly text computer
program that probably cost $50,000 or less to develop (and reused by thousands
of students—talk about a nice rate of return!). Gee whiz, I can buy computer
games with millions of dollars of development costs, with high quality artwork
and animation, and voice acting by major movie stars…for $50 or less, and I can
play such games for hundreds of hours, for the rest of my life, if I want. But
it costs thousands of bucks to “play” this ASU software for a few months?
Again, I point out
that when computer
courses are tried at the high school level, it’s a complete disaster,
everywhere in the nation it has been tried…I’d look real, real, close at
the “success” at ASU, as I very much suspect independent analysis would show
these computer courses to be highly questionable.
“Arizona State is one of the earliest, most
aggressive adopters of data-driven, personalized learning…”
I don’t see this
is as much of a future for education, not with administrators in control of the
entire process. Don’t get me wrong, for a tiny sum of money (eg, the $50 one
might pay for a computer game), I suppose it’d be harmless enough, but not for
the prices clueless kids are paying. To
be in debt for the rest of your life, in exchange for the right to play with
some computer software for a few months? Seriously, this is the glorious future
of higher education?
ASU is pretty clearly set up as a
factory of credentialing, and any lip-service to educational excellence,
particularly in the undergraduate sphere, is exactly that. I’m certain there
are legions of non-tenurable faculty laboring heroically to do the best they
can, but it is impossible to look at the available evidence and see quality
undergraduate instruction as any kind of institutional priority.
They are increasing enrollment and
cutting deals with Starbucks in an effort to hoover up “market share,” which to
my knowledge is not a recognized trait of quality education.
They are a corporation where
non-tenurable labor functions as engines of surplus in order to support a
corporate hierarchy.
Arizona State is indistinguishable from
Amazon.
So, converting
education of math into a simple (and ridiculously profitable) computer course
is the first big achievement of the Poo Bah at ASU, to justify his $900,000
salary. As hinted at above, there are quite a few other amazing achievements
here, showing how wrong I was to say that the overpriced Poo Bahs are doing
nothing for education.
I’m obviously
quite wrong, Pooh Bahs are working very, very, hard to debase education as much
as possible. Turning much of the coursework into a boiler room operation, with
classrooms packed with computers instead of telephones, is but the start of it.
More next time.
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