Until two weeks ago, I had been laboring under the naïve assumption that one of the primary goals of every academic was to change students’ beliefs when they were based on inaccurate information. I was awakened from this dogmatic slumber at an interdisciplinary faculty meeting by colleagues who reacted with dismay to my confession that I had tried and failed to disabuse one of my students of Creationist beliefs.
The conversation became more heated when I read to the group what the student had written on her final exam: "I wrote what I had to ‘agree’ with what was said in class, but in truth I believe ABSOLUTELY that there is an amazing, savior GOD, who created the universe, lives among us, and loves us more than anything. That is my ABSOLUTE, and no amount of ‘philosophy’ will change that."
Two of my colleagues, one in the language arts and one in psychology, argued that it was an inappropriate use of my authority to attempt to change this student’s belief; rather, my role should have been to provide her with data so that she could make better decisions.
I countered that both the process that allows one to arrive at Creationist conclusions, and the conclusions themselves, are completely divorced from reality, and that my role was not simply to provide evidence and counterexamples and hope for the best, but to help her overcome a false belief and supplant it with a true one.
Their unanimous reaction to this declaration temporarily made me question one of my basic assumptions about the responsibilities of college educators: Should professors attempt to change students’ beliefs by consistently challenging false beliefs with facts?
I share his frustration. There are far too many university professors who think that the "beliefs" of a student are off limits as long as they have something to do with religion. Those same professors would not hesitate to challenge belief in the superiority of whites over blacks or the efficacy of homeopathy or the validity of supply-side economics.
But it's a different story if a student says that God created the universe 6000 years ago. That belief mustn't be directly challenged because the foolishness of religious beliefs is off limits.
Ian D. Clark is Professor of Public Policy and Governance here at the University of Toronto. He has attracted a lot of attention lately because he and his colleagues advocate the creation of Teaching-only Universities in Ontario. The scary part of this ridiculous idea is that it might soon become official policy of the Ontario government as described in a recent article by Louise Brown in The Toronto Star [Teaching-only universities would cut education costs, author says].
Undergraduate universities that focus on teaching only would create cosier classes, cut salary costs and boost student satisfaction, argues Ian Clark, the former head of the Council of Ontario Universities.
Moreover, he says professors at these new universities should be required to teach twice as many courses as usual — a full 80 per cent of their time with 10 per cent left for research and 10 per cent for administration.
Clark and professor David Trick are co-authors of a controversial new book that calls for new teaching-oriented universities where profs would have much higher course-loads. Simply by doubling the number of courses a professor teaches each semester to four from two could cut the operating cost of educating a student to $9,800 from $14,300 at a campus of 10,000, Clark noted Tuesday at a conference sponsored by the University of Toronto’s Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.
Having profs teach more courses is one cost-saving tip rumoured to be part of economist Don Drummond’s report next week to Premier Dalton McGuinty.
John Hawks posts a reference to an article in MacLeans magazine about undergraduate teaching. John supports a style of teaching that emphasizes "hands-on" experience over learning about theory [The Problem with Stem, A reason for practical genomic education].
Like many critics of education, John thinks that traditional lectures are old-fashioned and inefficient. I tend to agree with him on this point—we can do a much better job of education in a classroom setting. However, I part company with many critics who go overboard in rejecting traditional lecture formats as a way of communicating information. For example, I note that this style is readily accepted in many other contexts. John Hawks gave a talk last week n Madison that I would love to have attended [I would so go to this if I were in Madison]. There are all kinds of other public lectures that people pay good money to attend—we filled an auditorium when PZ Myers acme to town. Traditional lectures are very common at scientific meetings because nobody has figured out a better way to hear what an expert has to say.
The death of lectures has been greatly exaggerated.
The new buzzword in science education is STEM: science, technology, engineering, and math. In America, there are dozens of studies on how to improve STEM education at all levels—including universities. Leading scientists have signed on.
Here's the problem. "Science" is NOT the same as "technology" and not the same as "engineering." There's a big difference between learning science and learning how to build things. The purpose of a degree in technology and engineering is obvious—it's job training. The purpose of a science education is quite different—it's supposed to teach you how to think critically.
But that distinction seems to have been lost on politicians, the general public, the media, and—most disappointingly—my fellow scientists. A recent article in The New York Times illustrates the extent of the problem [Why Science Majors Change Their Minds].
Can you tell the difference between a Professor and a hobo? Joseph Somody has posted a quiz. Check it out: Professor or Hobo?.
Joseph is the undergraduate winner of Monday's Molecule #147. I'll be having lunch with him on Wednesday. If you have any other pictures of professors or hobos, you could post a link in the comments and I'll be sure to pass them long. (Joseph will probably read them anyway.)
I'm thinking we could do a similar quiz for students—something along the lines of "university student or not?" There are plenty of pictures on facebook that professors could use.
What did you learn at university? Not much, it seems, according to the data in a new book titled Academically Adrift. The book is reviewed in the latest issue if Inside Higher Ed [Academically Adrift].
The data aren't surprising. The authors of the book show that 36% of students failed to learn anything after four years of college. Of those who did learn something, the gains were very modest.
Why don't students learn?
The main culprit for lack of academic progress of students, according to the authors, is a lack of rigor. They review data from student surveys to show, for example, that 32 percent of students each semester do not take any courses with more than 40 pages of reading assigned a week, and that half don't take a single course in which they must write more than 20 pages over the course of a semester. Further, the authors note that students spend, on average, only about 12-14 hours a week studying, and that much of this time is studying in groups.
Who's to blame for this sorry state of affairs?
Debra Humphreys, vice president for communications and public affairs of AAC&U, said that she viewed the book as "devastating" in its critique of higher education. Faculty members and administrators (not to mention students and parents) should be alarmed by how little learning the authors found to be taking place, she said. Humphreys also said that the findings should give pause to those anxious to push students through and award more degrees -- without perhaps giving enough attention to what happens during a college education.
"In the race to completion, there is this assumption that a credit is a credit is a credit, and when you get to the magic number of credits, you will have learned what you need to learn," she said. What this book shows, Humphreys added, is that "you can accumulate an awful lot of credits and not learn anything."
None of this is news my colleagues and me. Problem is, there's not much we can do about it. If we increase the rigor of our biochemistry courses and start demanding more of our students then the result won't be increased learning. It will simply mean that undergraduates will avoid biochemistry courses. In fact, that's already happening since the University of Toronto has developed dozens of new programs that will award degrees in the biological sciences without ever forcing students to take a rigorous course.
This brings up a question that I often ask my students. If university is supposed to be difficult (rigorous) then it's likely that some students won't be capable of completing a degree. In an ideal setting with expertly taught, challenging, programs, what percentage of the incoming class of students should expect to complete a degree? Clearly the answer can't be 100% because that bar is way too low. Should it be 50% as it was in many universities in the past? Lower?
The graduation rate at the University of Toronto has been pretty constant over the past decade at 73-75%. I assume that many of the students who drop out do so for reasons other than the rigor of university courses (e.g., personal problems, financial problems, transfers, changing goals etc.). Let's assume that this accounts for 15% of the drop-outs.
Several bloggers have discussed the letter.1 Petsko is defending a traditional liberal education that includes literature and language and I agree with the gist of what he is saying. However, I wish we could have more of a conversation about "liberal science" instead of always referring to "liberal arts." It's not enough to insist that every student be exposed to philosophy and literature—they must also be exposed to science or you can't say that they are getting a truly liberal education. And I'm not just talking about a token science course for humanities students called "Astronomy for Dummies."
But let's leave that conversation for another time. I want to discuss another issue. Here's what Petsko said,
Let's examine these and your other reasons in detail, because I think if one does, it becomes clear that the facts on which they are based have some important aspects that are not covered in your statement. First, the matter of enrollment. I'm sure that relatively few students take classes in these subjects nowadays, just as you say. There wouldn't have been many in my day, either, if universities hadn't required students to take a distribution of courses in many different parts of the academy: humanities, social sciences, the fine arts, the physical and natural sciences, and to attain minimal proficiency in at least one foreign language. You see, the reason that humanities classes have low enrollment is not because students these days are clamoring for more relevant courses; it's because administrators like you, and spineless faculty, have stopped setting distribution requirements and started allowing students to choose their own academic programs - something I feel is a complete abrogation of the duty of university faculty as teachers and mentors. You could fix the enrollment problem tomorrow by instituting a mandatory core curriculum that included a wide range of courses.
Young people haven't, for the most part, yet attained the wisdom to have that kind of freedom without making poor decisions. In fact, without wisdom, it's hard for most people.
My university is run by spineless faculty who think that we should structure the university according to what the students want to take. We are evolving into a university that promotes a wide range of options and degrees that have no major focus of study. This is all in the names of "breadth," "diversity," and "interdisciplinary." It's the smörgåsbord approach to education.
The problem with Petsko's analysis is that the very faculty he assumes to possess the "wisdom" to set curricula are the ones promoting student choice and abrogating responsibility—at least at the University of Toronto.
So, here's the question: Should universities be mandating required courses in order to assure a minimal standard of liberal education or should we be allowing students to choose whatever courses they are interested in taking?2
1. John Pierot [Knowing Ways] thinks that humanities represent a different way of knowing. Jerry Coyne also has a humanities background [Keeping the humanities alive].
2. Knowing full well that some students will often choose courses on the basis to expected grades rather than interest.
The World University Rankings 2010 are out. The rankings are based on factual information, such as number of papers published, but also on personal opinions. 40% of the score is determined by a survey of academics that asks about "academic reputation." Another major component is based on a survey of employers who are asked to evaluate the quality of undergraduates they hire.
All types of university are including in the ranking but certain adjustments are made for size—for example, the faculty at smaller universities publish fewer papers. The various categories are identified in the list.
I don't agree with these rankings. It's going to be extremely difficult to complete against the Ivy League schools in the USA and Oxbridge in the UK because of their enormous reputations from the past. Who knows whether these schools are as good as they think they are? You aren't going to find out by giving such a high score to reputation surveys.
Having said that, there are a few things we can learn from the World University Rankings. Here's the top ten.
University of Cambridge UK (L,VH,FC)
Harvard University USA (L,VH,FC)
Yale University USA (M,VH,FC)
University College London UK (L,VH,FC)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology USA (M,VH,CO)
University of Oxford UK (L,VH,FC)
Imperial College London UK (L,VH,FC)
University of Chicago USA (M,VH,FC)
California Institute of Technology USA (S,VH,CO)
Princeton University USA (M,VH,CO)
Four of the top ten universities in the world are in the United Kingdom. No matter what you might think of the way these schools are ranked, it's time we stopped propagating the myth that American universities are by far the best in the world. The UK has about 62 million people or about one-fifth the population of the United States. By any reasonable criterion, it is the country that's created and maintained the best universities in the world. If you won't go that far, at least you'll have to concede that America is not the slam-dunk winner, as so often assumed (mostly by Americans).
The top Canadian university is McGill University at number 19. The University of Toronto comes in at 29th, just behind the University of California, Berkeley. Toronto and UC Berkeley are both XL, VH, FC. The only other Very Large university ahead of them is the University of Michigan at number 15.
That got me thinking about how many professors our students need. It depends on which courses they take but a typical biochemistry student encounters lots more professors in their required biochemistry/molecular biology courses. How many? ....about 25-30!!!
Is that because biological sciences are so much harder than physics? :-)
Socrates (~469 BC - 399 BC) was a teacher in Athens. Most of what we know about him comes from the writings of his students and contemporaries. Let's assume that Plato's depiction of his methods are accurate.
Here's a brief description of the Socratic Method from Wikipedia,
The Socratic method (or Method of Elenchus or Socratic Debate), named after the Classical Greek philosopher Socrates, is a form of inquiry and debate between individuals with opposing viewpoints based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to illuminate ideas.[1] It is a dialectical method, often involving an oppositional discussion in which the defence of one point of view is pitted against the defence of another; one participant may lead another to contradict him in some way, strengthening the inquirer's own point. (Think about the question before you speak.)
The Socratic method is a negative method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general, commonly held truths that shape opinion, and scrutinizes them to determine their consistency with other beliefs. The basic form is a series of questions formulated as tests of logic and fact intended to help a person or group discover their beliefs about some topic, exploring the definitions or logoi (singular logos), seeking to characterize the general characteristics shared by various particular instances. To the extent to which this method is designed to bring out definitions implicit in the interlocutors' beliefs, or to help them further their understanding, it was called the method of maieutics. Aristotle attributed to Socrates the discovery of the method of definition and induction, which he regarded as the essence of the scientific method. Perhaps oddly, however, Aristotle also claimed that this method is not suitable for ethics.
The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.
—attributed to
Socrates Why is this relevant? It's relevant because we've been discussing university education and whether it can be replaced by surfing the net. Whenever we talk about university education I want you to imagine what it SHOULD be like and not what it IS like. Imagine that university education actually focused on critical thinking. Imagine that students could learn like the pupils of Socrates.
Raise your hand if you actually think that modern students of Socrates could learn just as much on the internet as they could by engaging in dialogue? Everyone with their hand in the air is part of the problem and not part of the solution to what's wrong with university education.
Here's an interview with Don Tapscott where he tells us what's wrong with universities and why they need to become more student focused [The future of education: reboot required]. The main theme is that today's students are wise in the ways of the internet and that will force universities to change.
I think the net generation will be a key driver for change. They have the knowledge and tools to challenge the existing model, and I see a growing generational clash.
I also think some administrations will recognize that the writing is on the wall.
If students can pass a course by never attending class and watching the lectures online, why should the student be restricted to only those courses available at that university? If it's online, why not choose from the courses offered at other universities. I also see a lot of the old guard faculty retiring soon. That will help generate fresh thinking.
There are several issues in this debate. They need to be sorted and clarified. First, many of the "old guard" faculty are among those who are most upset with the current system. At my university, they are the ones who are advocating change. Younger faculty in science departments just don't care about undergraduate education. They have much more important things on their minds. The situation isn't much different in the humanities except that there's a somewhat higher percentage of younger faculty calling for change. Many of them are postmodernists and the changes they're advocating aren't necessarily desirable.
Who is Don Tapscott and why is he an expert on university education? Here's what Wikipedia says [Don Tapscott].
Don Tapscott (born 1947) is a Canadian business executive, author, consultant and speaker based in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in business strategy, organizational transformation and the role of technology in business and society. Tapscott is chairman of business strategy think tank New Paradigm (now nGenera Insight), which he founded in 1993. Tapscott is also Adjunct Professor of Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.
This brings me to a second point that needs clarification. People whose main concern is business and management aren't necessarily qualified to have an informed opinion on university education. That includes 99% of the faculty at the Rotman School of Management, here at the University of Toronto.
The third point that needs to be made is that there is widespread agreement that current university education is in bad shape. It should not be possible to skip lectures and still get an "A" in a course. It should not be possible to graduate with a degree when you have never physically attended a university. The fact that we are doing a bad job of teaching students how to think does not mean that we should abandon that goal and make it even easier for students to avoid intellectual challenges. We need to fix the problem, not surrender.
The fourth point concerns technological change. Tapscott is apparently one of the true believers when it comes to the internet and how it's going to change everything. I think he's wrong but that's not the point I want to make. The thing that annoys me the most is the assumption that universities are behind the times when it comes to technological change and that professors are luddites who don't know anything about computers and the internet.
There may be professors like that, but not in science or engineering departments. I suspect that they're rare in the humanities as well. This may come as a bit of a shock to Don Tapscott but some of us old fogies have been using computers for over forty years. We've been on the internet for thirty years. We know about electronic databases, listserves, social networks, webpages, and blogs. Some of us even have cellphones, iPads, and GPS—and we know how to use them. We have HD televisions, stereo systems that will blow your socks off, laptops, and—believe it or not—power windows in our cars.
We've been incorporating these technologies into our courses for over two decades. (That's before our entering class of students was born.) Our children, and the current crop of students, may be the first generation to grow up with personal computers and the internet but when they come to university they will be meeting the generation that invented those technologies.
Give us a bit of credit. We've been experimenting with new technologies long enough to know how they are affecting university education. We are not stupid. If they were capable of totally transforming university education then we would have discovered that by now. Fact is, these technologies have been around for decades and, while they are very useful supplements to education, they are not a panacea and they cannot replace everything that happens on a university campus.
Students need to be provoked, challenged, and stimulated. They need to be thrust into an environment that's outside of their comfort zone. They need to hear things they don't want to hear, even if it makes them angry. They need to see for themselves what kind of scholarship goes on at a university. They need to do a research project and that requires a mentor.
They need to meet graduate students and postdocs and professors who aren't teaching one of their courses. They need to play varsity sports, join the debating team, attend meetings of the student Secular Alliance, meet students from different cultures, protest, volunteer at the local hostel, play in the school orchestra.
This is all part of a university education and you can't do it by sitting in your bedroom at home staring at your monitor.
The article on the CBC News site makes reference to two videos. I'm including them here in order to provoke discussion. The first one is a classic example of the kind of superficial thinking that passes for knowledge among today's generation of students. Although that's not its intent, it illustrates perfectly what's wrong with university education. There's no evidence of critical thinking. The students are holding up sound bites of meaningless phrases.
The second one is similar except that the students are much younger. It's an example of brainwashing. They are "digital learners"—but what the heck does that mean? It doesn't mean a damn thing.
"Five years from now on the web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world," Gates said at the Techonomy conference in Lake Tahoe, CA today. "It will be better than any single university," he continued.
This is nonsense on many levels. First, who's going to determine whether any given lecture is the "best lecture in the world?" Second, why will it be online? (Most professors don't want to put their lectures online.) Third, who says that listening to a lecture is the only thing that a university has to offer?
One particular problem with the education system according to Gates is text books. Even in grade schools, they can be 300 pages for a book about math. "They’re giant, intimidating books," he said. "I look at them and think: what on Earth is in there?"
According to Gates, our text books are three times longer than the equivalents in Asia. And yet they’re beating us in many ways with education. The problem is that these things are built by committee, and more things are simply added on top of what’s already in there.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a textbook author. That means I have more of a stake in this debate than Bill Gates. (Of course, it also means that as a textbook author and a university professor, I'm probably more of an expert than the former chairman of a software company.(1))
When they are well done, a textbook is like the best lecture you could ever get. If you want to learn about evolution, for example, then you could hardly do better than reading EVOLUTION by Douglas Futuyma. I can't imagine any series of online lectures that could compete with a such a good textbook.
Textbooks are collaborative affairs that undergo considerable review by experts before publication. Most online lectures are the work of a single individual and they have not been reviewed for accuracy.
The most important goal of a university education is to teach student how to think and a major component of that process is critical thinking. Unfortunately, sitting in front of your monitor reading a lecture is not the best way to learn how to think and it doesn't give you any practice in critical thinking. There's a reason why students need to interact with other students and scholars in a university setting and it's very sad that people like Bill Gates don't get it.
On the other hand, if Gates is correct then it might be a really good thing for universities. The standing joke among professors is that universities would be wonderful places if only we could get rid of the students!
1. How did we ever get ourselves into the situation where executives from for-profit companies are thought to be experts on education? They are not. They are just about the last people on Earth I would ask for advice on university education.
I believe that universities are special places. The primary objective of the university community is to learn and investigate. That goal should not be restricted or impeded by outside concerns, especially if those "concerns" are ideologically or politically motivated. Society relies on universities to harbor unconventional and unusual opinions. It's where the minority viewpoint can be protected until it becomes the majority, as happens so often in a progressive society.
The other objective of a university is disseminating knowledge. That's why students come to a university to learn and it's why universities offer public lectures. It's why students and faculty members are encouraged to speak out on controversial topics. Universities thrive on diversity and that's why the most extreme opinions can be heard on campuses. It's part of the deal.
We're all familiar with the attempts to censor unpopular opinions. Mostly we get upset when left-wing protests are suppressed as happened during the 60s when the anti-war demonstrations were opposed [see Kent State Shootings]. We know about attempts to fire communist and gay professors and we are outraged to learn that women are being discriminated against in the universities.
What about opinions that don't fall into the liberal camp? Are we upset when those opinions are suppressed in the universities? No, not so much. I'm constantly surprised and disappointed when I hear some of my colleagues urging the dismissal of creationist professors or trying to block IDiots from lecturing on campus.
That's stupid and hypocritical. The value of a university is only protected when all opinions are respected.1 You can't pick and choose which ones deserve protection and which ones should be censored. Universities don't function once you start down that path.
The McGill student newspaper has started down that path with an article about a student pro-life club: EDITORIAL: Choose Life crossed the line with Ruba event. The editors seem to have set themselves up as sole arbitrators of some kind of imaginary "line" that can't be crossed.
At 6 p.m. tonight, Choose Life, the Students' Society's pro-life club, will host a presentation by Jose Ruba, a co-founder of the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform, titled "Echoes of the Holocaust." Ruba's speech will attempt to draw parallels between abortion and the Holocaust, by arguing that "dehumanization and denial of personhood has justified some of the greatest affronts to human dignity that the world has seen." The presentation refers to abortion as a "mass human rights violation" and includes graphic imagery such as photos of dead bodies at concentration camps followed by photos of supposedly aborted foetuses.
On Thursday night, SSMU Council voted to censure the event and to make Choose Life ineligible to receive funding if they go through with tonight's presentation. We commend them for that decision. The comparison of abortion to the Holocaust is not only horribly offensive and inaccurate, it is deliberately designed to be inflammatory. This event is not intended to foster debate - it is designed to be provocative and to distract from meaningful discussion of abortive rights.
These are the sorts of issues that test our mettle. Either you support freedom of expression on the campus or you don't. There's no middle ground where you support some expression but not others.2
The editors of The McGill Tribune have just failed the test.
The SSMU Executive is incredibly concerned and upset about the response of McGill University to the recent "Echoes of the Holocaust" event, hosted by the SSMU club Choose Life. We feel that McGill University has not only disrespected the rights of the SSMU as the accredited representative body of all McGill undergraduate students, but also failed to protect students' rights.
McGill University has not respected SSMU Council and the SSMU Executives as representatives of the McGill undergraduate student population. When the SSMU Council passed a resolution officially and publically censuring the event "Echoes of the Holocaust", the SSMU Council clearly stated that for Deputy Provost (Student Life and Learning) Morton Mendelson to permit it to go forward would disregard the desire of the Council. In response Professor Mendelson argued that this resolution is a tyranny of the majority. Firstly, this is an offensive misrepresentation of the purpose of SSMU Council. The SSMU Council was acting on behalf of all undergraduate students, both in its representative capacity and in reaction to many conversations with students. Secondly, it is worrisome that the Deputy Provost interprets a large percentage of students being outraged and appalled at an event to be a tyranny of the majority. The SSMU had hoped that he would consider the impact as well as content of the presentation instead of ignoring the formal intervention of students' representative body by using the rhetoric of academic freedom.
So we're reduced to the point where academic freedom is just "rhetoric"?3
I remember the days when it was students who were advocating freedom of expression and administrators who were trying to suppress it. Now those students are administrators and we have a whole new generation of students who don't understand the meaning of freedom on a university campus. How times change.
Incidentally, a large group of students succeeded in preventing Jose Ruba from speaking at the event according to a report in The National Post: Tim Mak: McGill abortion advocates block opposing opinions. They sang songs for three hours until the organizers gave up and went home.
Here's a video of the first part of the event so you can see for yourselves what transpired. The students do not earn my respect for their behavior. They have the right of freedom of expression and they have the right to express their disagreement but they do not have the right to prevent contrary opinions from being expressed on a university campus.
The event prompts Tim Mak, a former employee of the Fraser Institute, to write ...
But these are university campuses nowadays, ruled by an arrogant minority on the left, who despite their paucity, believe they speak for everyone. "I don't think that this type of talk should be allowed to happen at McGill," said Eisenkraft Klein, one of the protestors arrested, in the McGill Tribune. "This is student space. This is not public property."
What conceit. Klein’s implication was that her opinions represented those of all McGill students, that student space was only for activities that conformed to her parochial political views. I’m by no means a supporter of the pro-life movement. But I am a supporter of the modern conservative movement – a movement that believes that freedom of speech means free speech for all. On the other hand, the left has found it convenient to hide behind the tenets of free speech when they want to, say, condemn Israel, but have found it much harder to extend the protections of free speech to positions they disagree with.
I’ve always found that the most interesting lecturers are those with whom I have the least in common. Who wants to spend a couple hours nodding affirmatively at PowerPoint slides? But we’ll never know what Ruba might have said, and all reasonable students have left to do is sing the free speech blues.
Some of you might be afraid that the world is coming to an end when I agree with someone like Tim Mak. Not so, there really are open-minded conservatives who defend freedom of expression. I'm proud to ally with them on this issue.
Call me an accommodationist ...
A good case can be made that exposing stupid ideas to the light of day—and to serious debate in the university community—is the best way to discredit them. (Ignoring them works, too.) Trying to suppress them is the best way to give them the publicity they thrive on and it has the exact opposite effect to what the protesters desire. So, in addition to objecting to the student's behavior on the grounds of protecting freedom of expression, I object on the grounds that it's a tactically stupid way to oppose kooks.
1. "Respected" doesn't mean you have to agree. You can vigorously oppose any idea that's expressed on a campus but you can't muzzle it on the grounds that you disagree.
2. Don't quibble about this. Yes, we can all think of some examples of expression that must be excluded—yelling "fire" in a crowded classroom—for example.
3. I'm aware of the fact that the term "academic freedom" can be misused. If Morton Mendelson used "academic freedom" to permit the event to go forward then that's unfortunate. There are better ways to describe the principle I defend—it's "freedom of expression on university campuses."
[Hat Tip: Canadian Cynic. I strongly disagree with him on this one.]
Some people seem to be under the impression that enrolment at the University of Toronto has not increased recently. Here's the data from the 2009 Enrolment Report.
Enrolment has doubled since 1970 with most of the increase occurring in the past ten years as the echo boomers reach university age. The participation rate is also increasing. We currently have about 64,000 students (actually they're full-time equivalents (FTEs), but who's quibbling?). There are roughly 13,000 graduate students and 51,000 undergraduates.
Expansion is a good thing. I support it. However, it would be nice to have the extra resources that are required to do a good job of teaching these extra students.
It's a well-known fact that the average intelligence of university students has been declining over the past four or five decades. This is true in spite of the fact that the average university grades have been going up.
The decline in average intelligence is exactly what one would expect, as Razib Khan explains on his blog Gene Expression: College students are not as intelligent.1
Surprisingly, the typical student at my university doesn't want to hear this. You'd be impressed by the number of explanations they can come up with to refute the data. Maybe we'll see some of them in the comments. Are they scientific explanations?
You might also be surprised at the reluctance to accept the fact of grade inflation. The most common explanation for grade inflation is that today's students are smarter than those of the 60s and 70s and that's why they get higher grades.
1. This is not an argument against increasing the participation rate and expanding university enrolment. I'm in favor of that. Let's just realize that there are consequences that universities need to deal with.
The real question we need to address is gradation rate. In an ideal world, what percentage of those who enter university should graduate? Should it be 100%? 50%?
It's probably just a coincidence but now that students have returned from their summer break there are more and more reports of hawks flying over the main open space on campus just outside my office. I seen them (it?) as well.
The latest issue of the University of Toronto eBulletin has a photo of a red tailed hawk—one of the regular visitors. Darryl Chow took the picture.
Does this explain the noticeable lack of doves on campus? I haven't seen any significant gathering of doves for many years. It used to be a regular occurrence on university campuses.
We had a fun visit with Cody Cobb the other day when he flew up to Toronto for a free lunch [Lunch with a winner].
I mentioned that Cody was a blogger but I didn't link to his blog because I wasn't sure if he wanted to be identified as the author of 90% True. Well, apparently he doesn't care, 'cause he's posted two articles about his visit to Toronto.
In Canadian Lunch he reviews a lot of the things we talked about, including our lunch debates with Alex Palazzo. In Science Blogging he covers the discussion about the value and purpose of science blogging. They're both excellent reads—pay him a visit.
Old fogies who grew up in the 1960s are constantly complaining that today's university students are different. Modern students are much more materialistic and much less concerned about the important things in life—or so they (we) think.
The chart shows the results of a survey of college students in the USA. They were asked to rate the importance of several goals including whether they wanted to become "very well-off financially" or whether they wanted to "develop a meaningful philosophy of life." Students who rated either (or both) of these choices as "very important" or "essential" were plotted by the year of the survey. The chart is shown below.
I can think of several problems with the data. The 60s were a special time, especially on college campuses. Everyone was an idealist and anti-materialism was very much in vogue. There really were students who wanted to spend the rest of their lives on communes in the countryside. Some of my friends are still there.
Those times are long gone and it's not reasonable to expect today's students to have the same attitudes because the culture is very different.
Another difference is that in the 60s most students didn't have to worry too much about money. As a general rule, they came from families who were well-off and when they graduated from college they were almost certain to get a good paying job if they wanted it.
As the participation rate increased and the economy went through ups and downs, more and more students came to college from a less financially secure background. They are rightly more concerned about having the minimum amount of wealth to be secure and happy.
But in one sense it doesn't really matter why today's students are more materialistic. It's a fact that professors have to cope with when teaching and designing courses. When you look at the chart it's not surprising that fewer students are interested in science careers or getting a Ph.D. in philosophy. It's not surprising that most of our biochemistry students want to be physicians, or dentists, or pharmacists.
One question remains. Should the old fogies continue to butt heads against the wall in order to try and change student aspirations? Should we just forget about our own values from the 60s and give up trying to explain why we thought they were worth pursuing back then, and are still worth pursuing today?
The whole point of the Happy Planet Index and the new economics foundation is to change attitudes and expectations. Their goal is to create a more sustainable lifestyle by convincing people to abandon the pursuit of wealth and material items.
In an age of uncertainty, society globally needs a new compass to set it on a path of real progress. The Happy Planet Index (HPI) provides that compass by measuring what truly matters to us - our well-being in terms of long, happy and meaningful lives - and what matters to the planet - our rate of resource consumption. The HPI brings them together in a unique form which captures the ecological efficiency with which we are achieving good lives.
This report presents results from the second global HPI. It shows that we are still far from achieving sustainable well-being, and puts forward a vision of what we need to do to get there.
The current economic and ecological crises have discredited the dogmas of the last 30 years. The unwavering pursuit of economic growth - embodied in the overwhelming focus on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) - has left over a billion people in poverty, and has not notably improved the well-being of those who were already rich, nor even provided us with economic stability. Instead it has brought us straight to the cliff edge of rapidly diminishing natural resources and unpredictable climate change. We need to see this current crisis as an opportunity. Now is the time for societies around the world to speak out for a happier planet, to identify a new vision of progress, and to demand new tools to help us work towards it. The HPI is one of these tools. We also hope that it will inspire people to act.
That sounds like something right out of the 60s. Those of us who were there have to recognize that we didn't succeed in changing society for the better in spite of our idealism. Are today's students going to do any better when they've even lost the idealism?
There's usually something exciting happening on the University of Toronto campus during the summer.
It's a popular location for shooting movies and TV shows and you never know what you'll find on any given day. This is the scene that greeted me today when I emerged from the subway station. It took a few seconds to realize that I wasn't in the middle of a real emergency.
Last week the front campus was the scene of a bank truck robbery in Germany, just in front of a sidewalk café. I wish they'd left the outdoor tables and umbrellas and kept serving the wine and food.
The course is over, the exam has been written, the marking is done, and the grades have been submitted. There's a short lag while the marks are checked and then they're posted so that students can learn how they've done in the course.
At my university we submit grades as percentages. They are converted to grade points (out of 4) in order to calculate a grade point average. The percent score is reported on the transcript and so is the grade point average. A mark of 76% is a 3.0, a mark of 77% is a 3.5 and a mark of 80% is a 3.7. A mark of 76% is a 3.0, a mark of 77%-84% is a 3.7, and a mark of 85% or above is a 4.0. There is no 3.5—shows you how much attention I pay to those sorts of things.
The email messages start as soon as the marks are posted. Every year there are students who want more marks. Usually it's just a few more marks to raise their grade points from 3.3 to 3.7 or something similar. That's by far the most common request. Sometimes the student wants lots more marks because they worked really hard in the course and deserve a much higher grade.
The most common reasons for asking for more marks are ...
losing a scholarship
not going to get into medical school/graduate school
grade doesn't reflect effort
parents will be disappointed
the final exam was unfair
student wasn't feeling well during the test that gave the lowest score
this is the lowest grade ever received
Some of the letters just ask me to give them more marks because I feel sorry for them. But many contain the suggestion that they are willing to pay for a higher grade. Fortunately, I can handle all these requests by just referring students to the standard appeal process. Once the grades are submitted to the Faculty I can't change them. It's one of the few times that I like the rules and regulations.
Every Professor in the Department gets these requests at this time of the year.
Here's the important part—it's not fair to put the entire blame on the students. There's something about the way we run the university that makes it seem acceptable to beg for higher marks. What are we doing wrong? How can we fix it?
I have a trivial solution that will deal with many of the problems.
