Another Community College Scam

By Professor Doom

     I don’t really mean to pick on community colleges…or maybe I do. It just seems like the frauds and hijinks going on there are so consistently over the top, so out of proportion to the around 50% of kids trapped in that system, that it’s just too easy to come up with yet another scandal.

     Let’s look at the community college du jour:

Roxbury Community College released a troubling report Wednesday chronicling the role of administrators in violating federal campus safety laws, losing track of significant funds, and in one case apparently paying an accuser to keep quiet.

     Yes, universities totally have their scandals, big ones, but there’s a Keystone Cops factor to community colleges that just makes them more fun. Ultimately, the real separating factor is community colleges aren’t actually colleges, with 90% or more of the coursework explicitly not college level, and their ridiculously low graduation rates, to the point that 0.6% is considered successful, highlight how community colleges are scams first and foremost, often without even barest lip service to education.

One concerns Orikaye Brown-West, RCC’s security chief until 2006. The report ­details several alleged instances of sexually threatening behavior on his part. The college dismissed him after he made coercive advances on a female student, but administrators never told the board of the matter, nor did they report allegations against him to the federal ­Department of Education.

--this administrative predator lurked on campus for years, really scaring students; one student was paid off.

     The article cited above is old; in the year previous to the 2013 article the Poo Bah was forced to resign—with a meager $100,000 parachute (plus an additional undisclosed amount)--in the wake of a set of scandals…it’s just nuts how community colleges are designed to promote fraud. Even though this is a fairly small school (less than 2500 students), it’s still big enough to have consistent ongoing shenanigans. As an added bonus, consider the parachute this guy gets compared to the size of the school--imagine if corporate CEOs got to take a few months of company revenue with them when they leave, to put this in perspective…

It also says that the school’s Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center has no documentation for many years of cash income from ticket sales, a discrepancy likely to concern state auditors who are investigating allegations that some facility employees have taken cuts for themselves.

     Seriously, how cheeseball is that? The guy selling you the ticket is just pocketing the money and walking away. Does anyone really suspect nobody in admin was asking about the ticket sales revenue? I suspect envelopes full of $100 bills were passed around to avoid such questions, it’s happened enough times before. I was often stunned by the lack of competence, of professionalism, at the community college I worked at…but it’s clear my college was not particularly special in that regard.

The board plans to require legal and ethical training for administrators, to strengthen security policies, to create a new position of compliance officer, and to tighten oversight at the athletic center and the college.

     Isn’t it hysterical that these guys get paid 6 figure salaries, and then need “legal and ethical training”? I’ve been forced to sit through many hours of such training—it’s just stupid videos. Let’s just call such training completely laughable. Honest, the kind of people that cheerfully cover up rapes and bribe whistleblowers aren’t going to be swayed by a 45 minute video. Too bad nobody up there has that level of common sense…or maybe I’m wrong.

     Anyway, that was nearly three years ago. Let’s take a look at how well all that ethical training is working out:

Roxbury Community College has called off plans to privatize its information technology services department after Massachusetts auditors criticized the college for awarding a $3.4 million contract to do so without seeking bids

     Didn’t those ethics videos had something in them about awarding multimillion dollar no-bid contracts in straight up violation of the law and common sense? I again want to mention…this is a small school, smaller than my high school; you need perhaps two dozen faculty, and (in a legitimate system) perhaps five administrators/staff to run it all. And 3.4 million bucks was sloshing around on a side contract…there are what, a hundred computers on this campus, at most? I was at a modern community college with about 2500 students, and that’s the amount of computers we had. Roxbury CC is spending millions on maintenance of a $100,000 worth of computers…that kind of money is enough to just buy all new computers every month for years.

     Ok to be fair, this wasn’t a short contract, although admin, as always, tried to lie about it:

The college originally said that skipping a process to review other proposals was needed because this was an interim contract

--in fact, the contract was through 2019. Again, enough money to buy whole new systems every month. For years.

      In addition to lining their own pockets, the contract shenanigans was also union busting—the community college fired all their old IT staff, and was going to rehire new staff, at a lower price (and a huge kickback for admin, I’ll conjecture…these guys are insatiable). Across the country, community colleges have done that with the professors—fired them all, and replaced them with low-paid adjuncts. This college was just trying to repeat the process with the IT staff, pocketing the difference. Heck, “pocketing” doesn’t do justice to what was going on here, as this kind of money wouldn’t fit in just a pocket…wheelbarrowing the difference, perhaps?

A letter from State Auditor Suzanne Bump’s deputy this summer called RCC’s fast-tracked hiring of Florida-based contractor CampusWorks Inc. “rife with potential for self-dealing” and “exactly the type of procurement practices that public bidding laws . . . were designed to avoid.”

     It’s nice that this “potential” conflict of interest was caught, but realize the only reason it happened is that Roxbury has such a long history of criminal behavior that it merited extra scrutiny. The current set of rulers might be fired, but it means nothing. Even as the school turns over another set of administrators, it’ll just dismiss the previous generation with another truckload of golden parachutes—it really is a revolving door in higher education, most of these administrators will just move on down the road to plunder anew. I’m surprised the former Poo Bah isn’t still around, but with his 40 year history of “leadership” I suspect he’ll just take his pile of money and retire.

      It almost worked, but the failure is only a minor setback for the plunderers running our schools. Even if the admin responsible for this underhandedness are forced to resign, even if the administrators are forced to watch two, or even three, more videos on integrity, the gentle reader needs to understand: the way how community colleges are set up, the way how accreditation is set up, these places will perpetually be places of scandal and ill repute.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com

Study: Students Don’t Like Female Professors

By Professor Doom

     Professors across the country are heavily rated by Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs)…surveys filled out by students on how well they like the teacher.

    Yes, these things are obviously biased towards things that have nothing to do with education, and a professor who wants good evaluations merely needs to be an easy grader. Administration has long since abandoned their job (if they ever held it) of working to make our institutions of higher education better, and so they use SETs as a beating-stick on faculty. It doesn’t matter if you have 20 students saying how great you are, if one student is upset because he failed…then it’s off to the Dean’s office to explain yourself. Seeing as the only students that get upset are failing students, faculty quickly learn to grade generously.

I once sat through a sort of norming session in which an associate dean handed out copies of student evaluation summaries (numbers, no comments), anonymously attributed to a "standout" faculty member. This was to be a model of what is expected at the university. When I raised my hand to ask whether the "average expected grade" should also be an A-, as reported on the summary, she laughed awkwardly and noted that it's just a guideline.

--I too have sat through meetings where praise was heaped on faculty that obviously were doing nothing for the students beyond awarding grades. Admin loves these kinds of faculty—all happy customers, at least until they find out GPA is worthless now.

      Heck, everyone in higher education has seen this…it’s why the average grade on campus is A- now…it’s the only way to keep those SETs high. I’ve already cited many studies about how SETs are of minimal worth, despite the fact that admin often makes them central to keeping one’s job—they’re worthless for determining quality education, but quite valuable for helping admin beat on faculty to keep the students happy.

      A recent study had a surprising (if statistically weak) result: students rate female professors poorly. Yes, I know, statistical studies have serious issues nowadays--honest, statistics done properly can say some useful things, but the sad fact is statistics done improperly can yield some nice paychecks, so the latter is how it’s done in today’s incredibly corrupt world. Despite all that, some aspects of the study lead me to believe they’re on to something:

…students in an online course on technology and society gave better evaluations to the teaching assistants they thought were male, even when the two instructors -- one male and one female -- had switched their identities. They both used both identities, which made it possible to compare what happened when each was apparently female…

     As always, I find myself laughing at the hypocrisy here. In the deeply failed “Student as Customer” paradigm that rules our campuses, every aspect of integrity and standards has been destroyed, just to keep those customers happy. Someone whispers “Students want rock climbing walls” and across the country, rock climbing walls go up. Someone suggests “Students want higher grades” and across the country, grades go up. A survey shows “Students want fake courses” and…well, you get the idea.

     So, here’s the study that says “Students want male professors” and what is the result?

“…onus should be on universities that rely on SET for employment decisions to provide convincing affirmative evidence that such reliance does not have disparate impact on women, underrepresented minorities, or other protected groups,…”

--emphasis added

     That’s right, you can still use SETs to bash in the heads of white male professors, but you shouldn’t do that to bash protected genders/minorities because, hey, the SETs are biased. My head hurts just considering this level of cognitive disconnect. I don’t know how people live with themselves, thinking like this.

     Now the study has its detractors, who have some valid issues with the results and significance of the study—and, truth be told, I agree the study is not particularly strong. Considering the incredibly capricious nature of SETs, I’d be amazed if any study showed SETs were good for much besides kindling.

     I really suspect the detractors of the study have an agenda, however:

Given the onslaught of negative articles published recently about SET (e.g., Asher, 2013; Berrett, 2015; Mulhere, 2014; Wieman, 2015; Zimmerman, 2014) we pause to ask why?

      Seriously, “why?” Uh, when you see study after study across the planet saying the same thing about the uselessness of the SETs, when faculty everywhere complain (anonymously, of course) about how SETs are being used unfairly…maybe it’s because SETs are useless and are being used unfairly? The detractors seem unwilling to consider this possibility, for some reason. 

     I’ve seen administration warp and hurt our students based on the flimsiest, most ridiculous of unproven theories (Hi Common Core! Hello Bloom’s Taxonomy! Howdy Remediation Reform!)…why aren’t they tripping over themselves here to get rid of female professors on campus? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they should based on this study but…the hypocrisy here is typical foul.

     As always, the reader comments brings up issues the media misses:

There may be perfectly rational and fair reason as to why female lecturers receive lower evaluations than their male colleagues. Beginning in the mid-1980s, every Canadian university gave a strong preference to female candidates. More talented men routinely were passed over in favour of women simply on the basis of sex…In the circumstances, it's hardly surprising that women would tend to fare relatively poorly on student evaluations. People not hired on merit often turn out to be relatively untalented. Of course, one of the most pernicious aspects of such policies is dishonesty. Females were hired simply on the basis of sex, but once they were in place, everyone was expected to pretend that all hiring was done on merit. Are we to now blame some students for seeing the truth of the matter?

     I’ve written before of the grotesque gender and racial bias going on in higher education today, and it’s hardly restricted to the United States. With administration in control of hiring, education and academics have long since been tossed in favor of identity politics. Could this be a factor in why students seem to rate male faculty higher? At the risk of sounding boastful, only the better white males can survive in this increasingly hostile environment, Maybe I’m wrong about that, but because these demented and insulting policies exist on our campuses, it degrades the people being hired based on their gender and skin color…and doesn’t do the students any favors.

blaher •

 

Here's a revolutionary idea, maybe the female instructors in the study actually WERE less effective than the male instructors like the evaluations say.

     You better believe the above poster used a pseudonym for that. I don’t agree, mind you, but this is what higher education is today: hypocrisy and fear.

     And that, ultimately, is the takeaway from yet another study on how useless student evaluations of teaching are.

www.professorconfess.blogspotcom

Teachers Indoctrinated in Leftism

By Professor Doom

     As part of my investigations into the fraud of higher education, I examined graduate programs in Education, the field of teachers. Educationists have a freakish, scary influence in higher education, and administrators lap up every crazy idea advanced by Educationists no matter how bizarre. Administrators get their degrees through Education departments, however…they may as well be the same people.

     It was then I learned that many “specialist” Education graduate degrees contain no actual specialized information. A Math Education degree holder, for example, need not have taken any mathematics more advanced than high school (specifically, 10^th grade algebra), and the other subject degree programs were likewise bizarre in terms of actual subject knowledge.

      While getting into a mathematics degree program requires training in mathematics and demonstrations of knowledge on tests like the GRE, getting into a graduate Education program requires…a credit card.

Real Analysis

Topology

Abstract Algebra

Probability Theory

--my first semester course load in graduate school. Note: these are mathematics courses.

Successful candidates in Concordia Portland’s M.Ed. in Curriculum & Instruction: Mathematics will demonstrate:

• Expertise in the utilization of new methods of authentic assessment and strategies as tools to evaluate student learning progress.
• The ability to modify instructional plans and promote alternative goals and strategies when necessary, particularly in relation to assessment results.
• Effective instructional skills in planning, implementing, and assessing instruction in settings that include diverse cultural populations and special needs students.

--Right off the online study website of a big school. I openly defy the gentle reader to find any actual math in that. Note: you need not have any mathematical knowledge to enter this graduate program. Note also: I’m not boasting when I say I have all those skills; I maintain most every teacher with 2 years or so of experience has those skills as well (the words used to the describe the skills are big, but there isn’t much there, honest). 

     Educationists don’t just tend to be ignorant of their own field, Educationists tend to be very Left-wing as well. It’s hard to notice such a thing because, well, lots of faculty are Left-wing.

      It’s no secret there’s a powerful Leftist bias in the professoriate of higher education, every study on the subject shows the bias to vary between “dominating” and “exclusive.” Part of this is because of the different mindsets involved: conservatives have tolerance for liberals, but not the other way around. Conservative faculty can face persecution and harassment from the liberal faculty, and they can get no protection from the kangaroo campus court system, a system where conservatives will typically be judged by the same people doing the harassing. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen faculty/administrators who are doing the evil be on the committee investigating themselves…and clearing themselves of wrongdoing. The standard of proof to win in these cases is beyond overwhelming and still takes 7 years of battle.

     A recent article suggests another reason why Educationists are Leftists, by and large:

Doctoral students: courses taught us to embrace liberal activism

     I foolishly though Educationists were learning about Education in their Education programs, much as I learned mathematics in my mathematics program. How silly of me.

“In light of recent national and world events, the doctoral students of the inaugural cohort of the EdD-Educational Leadership program at the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT), must state our support for student activism, members of the Black Lives Matter movement, and those who wish an end to hateful rhetoric and the violence happening against our communities of color and within our institutions of education,”

--EdD stands for Educational Doctorate, which apparently means you can “state (y)our support” of whatever crazy cause is popular of late…

     How insidiously incestuous! Administrators slavishly adhere to Educationist claptrap, because Education departments are what award those Administration degrees (which I likewise investigated in detail) that allow our Poo Bahs to plunder lead our institutions of higher education.

     Now those same leaders are setting up their own “Education Leadership” programs. Since neither discipline (sic) understands the purpose of education, it’s only natural I suppose that the new graduate coursework would involve such incredibly simple skills as “state support for student activism, members of the Black Lives Matter movement…” or whatever is currently politically correct.

      Hey, I’ve got nothing against protests, but somehow I suspect whatever these supposed academics are learning is every bit as one-sided as a Bill Maher monologue.

      What is Educational Leadership about, anyway?

“to address conceptual issues of the roles educational leaders play in leadership, management/administration, and political advocacy.”

     I’m so tired of Educrats bleating about leadership. Leadership is not what higher education, or any education, was about, ever. And we’re cranking out more leaders that don’t have a clue what they’re supposed to be doing. Again, I’ve nothing against leadership…but I’d rather philosophers and psychologists, you know, fields with at least some successful track record, address the concept of leadership, instead of Education, with a record of perpetual failure.

     Instead of learning about Education, these people are merely getting deep indoctrination in a deadly ideology. I really want to emphasize how horrid the “education” here is. Let’s see what the graduates say they’ve learned about leading in higher education:

“Looking back on our three years of study and community service through internship, we recognize the influences of critical theorists and educational reformers, and many others who speak out on behalf of those who have been systematically silenced,”

--do note: normal Ph.D. programs take 4 years. Not Education Ph.D.s, though, which take but 3 years.. I guess this is fine: if you don’t need to know anything beyond recognizing the influence of others, no need to take 4 years learning it.

     Great! They’re going to speak out against those who have been systematically silenced! I guess that means they’ll do something about the horrible treatment of faculty; it’s so bad that posting anonymously is faculty’s last recourse against the culture of terror in higher education. Faculty have been systematically silenced and driven out of this system. I know these newly minted ideologues won’t do that, despite saying they would speak out on behalf of the systematically silenced.

     What else did they learn?

“As students who have increased in knowledge and understanding of institutional and structural racism, we understand our responsibility to call out injustice and work toward solutions which create opportunities for equity throughout our society.”

      Great! They know about institutional racism! It so pleases me to hear they understand that racism is so institutionalized in our universities now that universities can openly advertise positions where white people cannot be hired, because they are white. Does anyone believe the graduates were told the true extent of the racism now, and expect these graduates to protest and change a system where having the white wrong skin color locks you out of a job?

     No, I don’t see that happening. Instead, the graduates’ statements make it clear they’ll just double down on all the racism that is the modus operandi in higher education today.

“…promoting greater diversity on our campuses and in our workplaces; to creating safe spaces for students, faculty, and staff of color; and to intentionally listen to the concerns of all underrepresented populations,”

     Mercy, more of that diversity claptrap? I know what they were taught in this regard, as I’ve had diversity experts “lecture” me on world history (the gentle reader should only click on that link if he wants to hear what these leaders are taught. I don’t really recommend it).

     It’s bad enough that Educationists are not being taught any sane subject. I’d take comfort in the knowledge that they’re not being taught the perfectly failed ideas of Education, but knowing that these people get doctoral degrees in pure indoctrination doesn’t help. 

     Knowing that these graduates may someday work in our public schools, possibly even rule higher education, gives me no hope for the future of higher education, but that their gross incompetence may accelerate the collapse and eventual destruction of this system.

      I believe one of the comments sums up the program quite nicely:

I think Caterpillar has a D6 Model Bulldozer that would work well in this case...We tax payers must start taking back education from the silly Marxists who have clearly gone insane.

www.professorconfess.blogspot.com