The students in my lab course are writing their final exam. Prior to the exam they were given 22 questions and they knew that five of them would be on the exam. I thought that Sandwalk readers might enjoy coming up with answers to some of the questions.
The possible remains of King Richard III of England have recently been discovered. His identity has been confirmed by DNA PCR analysis. Descendants of his mother in the female line have the same mitochondrial DNA as King Richard. However, the results with the Y chromosome were surprising. None of the descendants in the all-male lineage had the same Y chromosome markers as King Richard. This is almost certainly due to something called a "false-paternity" event. (There are other ways of describing this event.) Given what you know about PCR, what are some possible sources of error in this analysis? Would you be prepared to go back in time and accuse one of the Kings of England of being a bastard? [Identification of the remains of King Richard III]
(The lab experiment was to analyze various foods to see if they were made from genetically modified plants.)
Note: It's extremely unlikely that the "false-paternity" event occurred in the lineage leading directly to any of the Kings and Queens of England.
I believe that we need to change the way we teach. But not the way you probably think. Watch this video to see what's really important about teaching.
Hat Tip: Alex Palazzo, who I hope will help us make the transition to 21st century teaching.
Our Dean of Medicine, Catharine Whiteside, announced recently that the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Pharmacy are entering into a joint program for
Evaluating Complementary and Alternative Medicine. They will collaborate with a new Centre for Integrative Medicine (CIM) run by Lynda Balneaves.
It's not clear what form of "Complementary Medicine" (i.e. non-evidence based medicine) she (Lynda Balneaves) supports but it seems to include "natural health products (e.g., vitamins and herbal therapies), manipulative physical treatments (e.g., massage), and mindbody therapies (e.g., meditation)" [CAMEO]. Other websites mention acupuncture.1
"Alternative Medicine" is also another word for medical care that has not been proven effective by standard clinical trials. Otherwise it wouldn't be "alternative." What this means is that the Faculties of Medicine and Pharmacy have abandoned the ideal of evidenced-based medicine.2 You may want to take that into account next time you are choosing a physician.
There used to be a federal law in Germany that forbade charging tuition at German universities. The court decided in 2005 that it was okay to charge a moderate fee (€1,000). Gradually, over the next few years, 10 states introduced moderate tuition fees.
This proved so unpopular that parties supporting no tuition won elections in most of those states and next year the last state charging tuition (Lower Saxony) will stop. There will be no charge to students to attend university at every German university [Germany’s great tuition fees U-turn].
Germany is not alone. There are many European countries that provide a public university education at no charge to the student. (It's not "free"—the government pays and taxes cover the cost.)
Why can't we do this in Canada? Why can't they do it in the USA?
At many (most?) universities in North America the selection of a new President is a very secret affair. Students and faculty are not consulted during the process and the candidates are not known. In fact, the process is so secret that the search committee can't even ask for outside advice about the candidates because that would reveal that they have applied for the job.
This is a very dangerous way to hire a university President because there's a great danger that the members of the search committee will, out of ignorance, choose someone that the university community doesn't respect. I've seen it happen at my own university and it happened at the University of Saskatchewan leading to the President being dismissed [The Board of Governors at the University of Saskatchewan fires President Ilene Busch-Vishniac].
Fortunately, Florida State University doesn't operate like that. The leading candidates for the job of President were vetted at an open forum with students and faculty members. One of the leading candidates was Republican State Senator, John Thrasher. One of the things that students and faculty learned was that Thrasher doesn't believe in evolution and doesn't believe that humans are responsible for climate change [A Creationist May Become Florida State University’s Next President].
As you might imagine, the students and faculty were opposed to hiring him as President. That didn't seem to matter to the Board of Governors who voted 12-1 to hire John Thrasher [A Creationist Just Became Florida State University’s New President] [Thrasher is choice for FSU, despite loud opposition].
From the Tallahassee Democrat ...
Storbeck/Pimentel, the search firm helping FSU select its next leader, conducted surveys following each candidate's campus forums last week. Thrasher received favorable ratings from only 11 percent of the responders, while 87 percent said he was not fit to be FSU's president. By comparison, the other three candidates had favorable scores between 78 and 91 percent.
The FSU Faculty Senate, which represents all 16 colleges at the university, passed a unanimous resolution Friday calling for the trustees to hire one of the three academics among the four finalists.
"We deserve a president who plays on the national stage, one who walks the walk, one who won't put off potential donors in the other party," Michael Buchler, a music professor and faculty senator, said during the public comment period. "FSU has never hired a president who didn't have experience in the classroom."
Apparently the Board of Governors don't care what the students and faculty think. What could possibly go wrong?
Today's the day that clubs strut their stuff and try to get new students to sign up. It's an important part of campus life and an important part of a university education even though the majority of students don't participate.
There's a club for just about everyone, even biochemists!
All of that will disappear when universities shut down and undergraduate education is confined to MOOCs and glorified Skype conferences. You can't join a rowing club if you're a thousand kilometers from the clubhouse.
I suppose there are lot of business types out there who don't care about this sort of thing as long as you pay your money, get a degree, and go on to a decent job where you can pay back your student loan.
This month's issue of The Atlantic has another one of those boring articles on the imminent death of universities (colleges) [The Future of College?].
This time it's a new "university" called MINERVA that's going to kill off all the old-school schools. Minerva is a for-profit university where all the learning takes place in electronic seminars of up to 19 students. Sort of like a Skype conference call only it uses copyrighted software. Students will pay only $28,000 (US) per year for this experience.
There have been articles about the death of universities published every year for as long as I can remember. Almost all of them think that a "university" is just a place where you go to get an undergraduate education. That's because almost all of the potential murderers only experienced university as an undergraduate.
I got curious about student debt when I saw a YouTube presentation about the "squeeze generation." The point of the talk was to explain how difficult life is for the under 45 group compared to their baby boomer parents.
The video repeated the common claim that average student debt was about $23,000. I've always been puzzled by this claim since most of my friends were able to help their children get a university education just as our parents helped us. Most of our children were able to graduate from university (undergraduate degree) with no debt.
If about half the graduating class got help from their parents, as we did, then the average debt of those students with debt must be about $46,000 and that's unreasonable.
Micheal Behe came to Toronto a few years ago and gave three talks on the campus of the University of Toronto. One of them was in the big lecture hall in my building (Medical Science Building). I went to all three lectures and enjoyed them immensely even though I disagreed with what he was saying [Michael Behe in Toronto: "What Are the Limits of Darwinism?"] [Michael Behe in Toronto: "Evidence of Design from Biology" ]. It was fun meeting him again and talking to him about his views. You can learn a lot about what people think by attending a lecture and seeing how they respond to questions and debate.
That's what a university is all about. I also greatly enjoyed a lecture by William Dembski a few years ago. I got to meet him and I got to ask a question at his lecture. It was a very valuable experience. Over the years I've heard several creationists speak on my campus, even Hugh Ross. Attending those lectures has put me in touch with many creationist sympathizers in my area and I've formed a number of friendships. Some of them read my blog.
An old high school friend1 added a comment on a previous post where he alerted me to a new (for me) blog called "Piece of Mind." The author is Nassif Ghoussoub, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada) and a member of the Board of Governors of that university.
His blog post is: Return on investment in faculty rarely captured by university CFOs and it makes three important points.
- The faculty is the university.
- Budget models that invest in things like $140-million in online learning while cutting normal teaching and research are unlikely to work.
- Cutting normal faculty positions while advocating an increase in "professional programs" and an increase in enrollment seems illogical.
I like the opening and the closing ....
"Mr. President, We are not employees of the university. We are the university."
With these words, Isidore Rabi, a distinguished faculty member at Columbia University, interrupted Dwight Eisenhower, who had started off a speech by addressing the faculty as "employees of the university." [At the time, Eisenhower was President of Columbia University.] Generation after generation of faculty members has repeated this inspirational anecdote from the early 1950s, though they know very well that their universities are increasingly becoming about everything other than the faculty. And the situation appears to be worsening. To the professional managerial class that nowadays run the neoliberal version of post-secondary education, the faculty is often seen as merely the source of the university’s problems. So, before too many of my colleagues get used to being seen as a cost, not something that provides net positive value to the university, I would like to use charter accountants’ speak to argue that investment in university research excellence could be and should be viewed as a possible driver of future revenue.
....
As to the end of the Eisenhower tale, people assumed he might have taken offense by the somewhat confrontational remark of Rabi. Instead, the latter became his closest friend on the faculty – "and when Eisenhower became President of a somewhat larger organization than Columbia, he appointed Rabi to a number of influential positions."
1. It was Bob Woodham, and I mean a high school friend from a long time ago not a high school friend who is old. None of us are "old" yet.
Last week the Provost of the University of Saskatchewan fired Robert Buckingham, Dean of Public Health, for his outspoken criticism of plans to disband his Faculty and for his public criticism of the administration for attempting to muzzle him. Buckingham was not only removed from his job as Dean but fired from his tenured position as a Professor and banned from the campus.
One week later ...
- Buckingham has been reinstated as a Professor in the Faculty of Public Health.
- The Provost, Brett Fairbairn, was forced to resign.
- The President, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, has been fired.
This has been a good week for universities in Canada and for the principle of academic freedom. All the major TV networks and all the major newspapers were appalled at the actions of the University of Saskatchewan. Even the Premier of Saskatchewan and the minister in charge of higher education expressed their displeasure.
Watch the CBC excerpt at: University of Saskatchewan board fires president Ilene Busch-Vishniac. It gives you a good flavor of the way this is being covered in Canada. Nobody is defending the university.
Some of the best coverage of this sorry episode is by the Star Phoenix of Saskatoon: University of Saskatchewan president Ilene Busch-Vishniac fired. According to their reporters, the Chair of the Board of Governors (Susan Milburn) announced late last night that President Busch-Vishniac has been fired "without cause." She will retain her position as a tenured Professor in the College of Engineering where presumably she will assume normal teaching and research duties.
[Susan Milburn says] "The board feels strongly that the university’s ongoing operations and its reputational rebuilding efforts will be more effective with new leadership."
The board in its statement said it had been "a painful week for the University of Saskatchewan. Many students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the U of S, and the people of the province generally, were dismayed by news emerging from the campus over the last seven days. The board was deeply troubled by this situation and committed itself to repairing the university’s reputation."
The StarPhoenix went to the president's home on the U of S campus but husband Ethan Vishniac said Busch-Vishniac would not comment.
Busch-Vishniac, who began her term at U of S on July 1, 2012, was terminated without cause, which means she is eligible to collect severance and can take up a faculty post in the university’s college of engineering.
The backdrop to this story about academic freedom is "TransformUs"—a plan to drastically cut expenses in order to meet a $45M deficit. Apparently, students and faculty at the University of Saskatchewan were not brought on board during the discussion leading up to the decision and they are not happy with a budget plan that appears to be imposed by a small number of senior administrators.
The Board of Governors has restated its support for "TransformUS" in spite of widespread protests on campus. It looks like the Board will be the next target.
Meanwhile, the faculty is upset because the Board of Governors granted the President the right to veto tenure recommendations made by peer-group tenure committees. The Faculty Association will likely take legal action against the Board because their action violates the agreement between faculty and the university. (The faculty at the University of Saskatchewan is not (yet) unionized.) (The Faculty Association is a certified union under the Trade Union Act. They have been certified since 1977.)
Stay tuned.....
This is my fifth post on this subject. The others are at ...
The provost of the University of Saskatchewan, Brett Fairbairn, resigned yesterday (Monday, May 20, 2014) just before an emergency meeting of the university's Board of Governors. The President of the university, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, announced that she had accepted the resignation.
Last week the Provost fired Robert Buckinham, the Dean of Public Health, from his tenured position for disagreeing with the policies of the rest of the university administration, specifically the Provost and the President. They want to disband the Faculty of Public Health and the Dean disagreed and protested the attempt to muzzle him. Two days later the President offered Buckingham a tenured position and admitted that a terrible blunder had been committed on her watch.
The Provincial Minister of Advanced Education, Rob Norris, called the emergency meeting of the Board of Governors in order to determine if recent events at the University of Saskatchewan had violated the "University of Saskatchewan Act." He spoke to the Board at their 8pm meeting then addressed the press. According to CBC News ....
The decision to fire Robert Buckingham gets more and more interesting every day. On Wednesday, the Provost fired Buckingham and told him that ...
You are to receive your final pay on May 30, 2014, as per the normal payroll cycle. You are to leave campus immediately and are not to return to your office, the School of Public Health or the university. All benefits and pension cease as of today.
Please contact ... Human Resources ... to make arrangements for the return of university equipment and your office keys, as well as to arrange a time that is appropriate to collect any remaining personal effects.
(see the letter below)
I don't care how you spin this, the Provost made a very serious error and there's no way he should continue in his job. You can help him make the honorable decision to resign by signing the petition organized by University of Saskatchewan faculty at: University of Saskatchewan: Have Brett Fairbairn, Provost of the University of Saskatchewan, Resign.
The more serious question is whether the President, Ilene Busch-Vishniac, should resign. Watch this video of her apologizing for making a mistake and taking responsibility for it: "That should never have happened.". It seems to me that this is more than just a bureaucratic slip-up.
Here's a radio interview with Robert Buckingham and Ilene Busch-Vishniac on CBC's As It Happens: University of Saskatchewan President apologizes & admits school's reputation damaged. The President says that a mistake was made but she's not worried about her job. Apparently the university will launch an investigation to see what went wrong and who is responsible. (These things usually take several months.)
It really shouldn't take more than a few seconds to see that the Provost, at least, screwed up.
Meanwhile, there seems to be a bit of confusions about what kind of an offer is being made to Buckingham. He resolutely (and correctly) defends the idea that Dean's should speak out against university policies that they disagree with.
The Saskatoon newspaper, The StarPhoenix reports that ...
(Busch-Vishniac says), ""We, frankly, blundered. That should never have happened. Tenure is certainly one of the values that every university in the world holds dear. That's as true here as is it is anywhere else and I have no excuse for what happened."
She promised that "people will be held accountable" for the decision, but did not say whether her own job is on the line. "That's for the board to decide," she said."
It's difficult to see how someone who truly believes that academic freedom is important could have made such a mistake. It sounds an awful lot like someone who didn't really believe in academic freedom but is backpedaling furiously in order to avoid being fired.
I think she should be fired because she has done enormous damage to the reputation of the University of Saskatchewan and she has lost the confidence of the faculty. She can't continue to govern under those circumstances.
Apparently, some sane person at the University of Saskatchewan had a talk with the President and informed her that she was in very deep doo-doo [see Ilene Busch-Vishniac should resign immediately as President of the University of Saskatchewan].
According to CBC News: Robert Buckingham offered tenured role at Saskatchewan university after firing.
The University of Saskatchewan said today it will offer Prof. Robert Buckingham a tenured faculty position but he won't be returning to his old job after he was fired for speaking out against the school's cuts and restructuring plans.
In a news release, the university says Buckingham won't be given back his job as head of the university's School of Public Health.
“Academic freedom and tenure are sacrosanct at the University of Saskatchewan. This case, however, is not about academic freedom," U of S president Ilene Busch-Vishniac said in the release. "Dr. Buckingham was removed from his executive director position for acting contrary to the expectations of his leadership role.”
Buckingham was fired Wednesday morning for criticizing the institution's budget cuts as part of the TransformUS restructuring plan.
“The confusion on this issue stems from differing interpretations based on his contract," Busch-Vishniac said. "Because we hold tenure in high regard, we will immediately reverse that part of our initial decision.”
Busch-Vishniac also said Buckingham was not banned from the university.
Interesting. I assume that "differing interpretations" is a euphemism for "we really screwed up and I hope this will make it go away."
Good luck with that. She admits that her decision needs to be "reversed" and that means she made a very, very, serious mistake.
The Provost should resign (or be fired) today and so should the President. We all know where the buck should stop.
Meanwhile, Lindsay Tedds has a column in today's Globe & Mail that gets it exactly right [When you're a university dean, 'toe the party line' isn't your job].
The role of a dean, such as Dr. Buckingham, is to provide leadership for and protect the integrity of their unit. Dr. Buckingham did exactly that in his criticism of the university regarding the treatment of his unit through the TransformUS process. I expect that his actions were likely met with a great deal of support from his unit, as well as from many academics across this country who wish their deans were equally courageous. In the eyes of many academics, the only ones who ‘damaged the reputation’ of the University of Saskatchewan were those complicit in attempting to censor senior academic staff and the firing of Dr. Buckingham. After all, the University of Saskatchewan is a public institution, supported by taxes and student payments. Debates regarding its management of these resources should be held openly and freely in the public sphere.
The university of Saskatchewan fired Robert Buckingham the other day. Buckingham was Executive Director (Dean) of the School of Public Health. He objected to a policy called "TransformUS" that was designed to save the university money. It proposed to abolish the School of Public Health and merge it, and the College of Dentistry, with the College of Medicine.
He was not only fired from his administrative post, he was also fired from his tenured job as a Professor and banned from the University campus.
Buckingham and another Dean (Associate Dean Ken Sutherland of Dentistry) were warned that they should not speak out against the proposals that were being developed by the Provost and the President. He responded by publishing a letter titled "The Silence of the Deans."
According to a CBC article,
Security guards escorted Buckingham out of the building on Wednesday, the same day the Saskatoon-based university stripped him of his tenured faculty position. A termination letter reasoned that by speaking out against the school's restructuring plans, Buckingham "demonstrated egregious conduct and insubordination" and was in breach of contract.
He was also banned for life from the campus.
There are dozens of other articles in newspapers and blogs across the country that confirm these events and condemn the University of Saskatchewan.
Watch this Global TV video to get an overview of what happened and how the University of Saskatchewan Faculty Association intends to respond.
I can understand why the university might want to relieve Robert Buckingham of his job as Dean but, even then, they should tread very carefully if they are firing him only because he speaks out against the destruction of his Faculty. However, under no circumstances should the university fire a professor who is protected by the right to academic freedom—especially if the only cause for dismissal is a disagreement with the university administration.
The letter of termination has (rightly) been made public (see below). It's an extraordinary letter. I don't think this termination has a ghost of a chance in court if it should come to that. The irony is in the Provost's words, "you have damaged the reputation of the university." Any "damage" done by Robert Buckingham in speaking out against the destruction of his Faculty pales in comparison to the damage done by the Provost and the President. The stupid actions of Brett Fairbairn and Ilene Busch-Vishniac are being broadcast all over the world. It will take years to restore the reputation of the University of Saskatchewan after this.
As you can see from this CBC News report, the Saskatchewan Minister of Advanced Education is concerned about the firing. This CTV News video shows the NDP Leader of the Opposition referring to the "outrageous" actions of the university. Oops!
The first step is for the Provost and the President to reinstate Robert Buckingham to his job as professor and then the Provost and the President should resign. This should happen today, or tomorrow at the latest. If they don't resign then the governing body of the University of Saskatchewan should fire them from their administrative posts for cause. Administrative leaders of a public university cannot ignore academic freedom.
The faculty at most Canadian universities are unionized. Faculty unions are important for negotiating fair salaries and benefits but they play a much more important role in defending academic freedom and protecting faculty from administrators who don't understand what a university should be about. I served for many years on the Grievance Committee and I can assure you that conflict between faculty members and administrators is common. In 99% of cases, the issues are resolved by negotiations between the union and the administration.
We don't have a union at the University of Toronto. Instead, we have an "Association" that functions a lot like a union without the right to strike. Right now the University of Toronto Faculty Association (UTFA)is negotiating with the university to set up ways for faculty to play a more direct role in governance issues. Those negotiations have nothing to do with certification (unionization).
I suppose there's another option. University faculty members could abandon collective bargaining and rely entirely on the goodwill of administrators, much like the situation in the business world where you can be fired if the boss doesn't like you. I suppose it's possible that academic freedom could be protected entirely by the administration and individual faculty members could fend for themselves if administrators ever abused their authority.
That's apparently what some professors in the Rotman School of Management want. They wrote letters to the President of the University protesting an imaginary move toward certification. I assume they misunderstood what the University of Toronto Faculty Association was doing because they don't read the newsletters that all us received.
Here's one of the letters from Roger Martin, Premier’s Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity in the Rotman School of Management. It illustrates quite nicely why schools of management and business don't belong on university campuses.
Dear President Gertler:
I am writing to express in the strongest possible terms how outraged I am by UTFA’s decision to attempt certification. UTFA does not represent anything related to me, nor, I suspect, does it represent the faculty of the Rotman School.
The notion of unionization of employees who make six figure salaries and have job security and protection of the sort enjoyed by professors is ridiculous on its face. It is really an insult to all real laborers who fought for the right to unionize and collectively bargain. Those workers coped with subsistence wages, unsafe and inhumane work environments, and absolutely zero job security. They didn’t have intellectually rewarding jobs in completely safe environments with lifetime job security. Collective bargaining was put in place to protect basic human rights, not to enable highly paid employees to argue for richer dental plans.
It is simply outrageous that that the ideologues who purport to represent us even raise the notion. They should be embarrassed. Sure they can say that it happens at other Universities in Canada. But when ever was that robust logic for doing something incredibly stupid and destructive?
We simply can’t let University of Toronto be ruled and ruined by ideologues. This is a fight for the future of a great institution. UTFA, when not run by ideologues, works perfectly well and creates a positive dialogue with university administration and a pleasant work environment for the faculty.
My fond hope is that this gambit is defeated by the weight of faculty members across the University. Failing that, I believe that my colleagues at the Rotman School will disassociate themselves from the bargaining unit and refuse to be represented by a completely foreign force. But in the end, if that can’t happen, it will be a sad day for me. I can’t insult every brave union activist in history who fought for human rights for workers by accepting becoming a member of one of the cushiest unions on the planet. That is not the way to live a principled life.
Sincerely,
Roger Martin
Premier’s Chair in Competitiveness and Productivity
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto
In case some of you aren't familiar with unions, let me explain what would have to happen if UTFA ever wanted to certify. There would have to be a vote and a majority of faculty members would have to vote in favor of forming a union. That vote would be called by a group of faculty members and there's absolutely nothing that the President of the University of Toronto could do to stop it. It falls under labor laws of the province.
The current President knows this and I'm certain that he would have no objection to a certification drive if there ever was one. Apparently there are several professors in the Rotman School of Management who think that the President of the University could put a stop to certification. They must think the President functions like the CEO of a big corporation. (But even a corporate boss couldn't stop certification, so I don't know what they were thinking. Maybe they don't think.)
The one good thing about the letter from Roger Martin is the suggestion that the faculty at the Rotman School of Management might want to dissociate themselves from the university if the faculty ever forms a union. That might be a good reason for certification. If we play our cards right, the entire school of management might leave the university.
Today is the last day of classes at the University of Toronto and I have to submit a copy of the final exam to the Examination Supervisor. Actually, I have to submit a copy for each student PLUS 11 extra copies AND the "original." They have to be in two separate sealed packages with specified labels on the outside.
There's a set of rules and regulations that must be followed, including specific formatting rules. Some of the rules make sense and some don't.
Rule #12 is interesting. Here's what it says ...
Instructors and departmental offices should take stringent measures to prevent unauthorized persons from having access to the examinations. NO COPY OF AN EXAMINATION IS TO BE KEPT IN THE DEPARTMENT BEFORE THE FINAL EXAMINATION IS WRITTEN. This applies to electronic storage as well as to flash drives/usb key and paper copies.
Those of you who know me well will be able to imagine how much effort I have taken to erase everything from my hard drive and the automated backup drive attached to my computers. They will understand exactly how difficult it was for me to check my flash drive to make sure that no copy of the exam was stored there or in dropbox. They'll also know just how scrupulous I've been about not having a copy of my exam anywhere in my files. They can imagine that I've stored a copy safely at home so I can print out a version the day after the exam is written and put if back on my desktop hard drive.
I wonder how many of my colleagues will follow this rule? What do you think the penalty is if you don't?
Thank the gods for bureaucrats.
The President of the University of Toronto recently published an article about undergraduate education. I questioned whether my university really is committed to the ideals of undergraduate education (critical thinking etc.) [Does the University of Toronto really care about undergraduate education?]. The answer, IMHO, is "no."
Now I want to bring up something else from the article by President Meric Gertler. It's not a major point—more like a motherhood throwaway line—but I think it raises an interesting question. Gertler said,
U of T reaffirms the value of a broad liberal arts education at the undergraduate level, and we are working to help our graduates extract the full benefit from that education.
I suppose there are as many definitions of "liberal arts education" as there are teachers but I think we can agree on a few points. A "liberal arts education" does not put much emphasis on math and science courses. In fact, I'm pretty sure that there are many who would be happy with a "liberal arts education" that didn't include a single math or science course.
I think that there are some extremely important humanities courses that every student should take. Philosophy (logic and reasoning) is the most obvious one but there's also history and maybe even sociology. I think university students should be familiar with great literature and many other topics in the humanities programs. But I also think that every single university student needs to take (and pass) some math and science courses in order to call themselves university-educated.
This is the 21st century. Surely we can agree that science is at least as important as "liberal arts"? Maybe we should be talking about a "broad science and humanities" education as the important value that we are trying to achieve?1
I'm not sure where that leaves the thousands of students who are getting degrees in commerce and business. Perhaps we should admit that those undergraduate programs, like engineering, are not really education programs. They are job training programs.
1. I'm not talking about "astronomy for poets" and other watered-down science courses. Humanities majors should take the same courses that science majors take just as science majors take the same courses that humanities students take.
My university, the University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada), is huge. We have 60,000 undergraduates making it one of the biggest universities in North America. You'd think that undergraduate education should be a very high priority.
The university publishes an online "newspaper" called the Bulletin every Tuesday and Thursday. It's basically a PR ploy to advertise everything that's great about the University of Toronto. There was a time in the past when the Bulletin had editorials that were critical of university practice and policies but I haven't seen anything like that in years.
The latest issue has a link to an article by the President of the University, Meric Gertler. The title of the article is: Job Ready: U of T is developing new programs to help students succeed after graduation. I want to discuss two things in that article. The first is whether the university really is committed to the goals of undergraduate education (this post). The second is What does "liberal arts education" mean in the 21st century?.
From Tressie McMillan Cottom at tressiemc [The Audacity: Thrun Learns A Lesson and Students Pay].
Sebastian Thrun, founder of Udacity, one of the most high-profile private sector attempts to "disrupt" higher education discovered inequality this week. Thrun has spent the last three years dangling the shiny bauble of his elite academic pedigree and messianic vision of the future of higher education before investors and politicos. He promised nothing short of radically transforming higher education for the future by delivering taped classroom lessons of elite professors through massive open online courses. So what went wrong?
After low performance rates, low student satisfaction and faculty revolt, Thrun announced this week that he has given up on MOOCs as a vision for higher education disruption. The "godfather of free online education" says that the racially, economically diverse students at SJSU [San Jose State University], "were students from difficult neighborhoods, without good access to computers, and with all kinds of challenges in their lives…[for them] this medium is not a good fit." It seems disruption is hard when poor people insist on existing.
Thrun's goal was to market lectures by "elite" professors at places like Sanford1. His new company, Udacity, was going to make tons of money by selling lists of successful students to private companies who are looking for talent. Guess what? It turns out that there are lots of disadvantaged students in introductory courses at SJSU who don't learn from lectures given by elite Stanford professors. Who would have guessed?
In case you've forgotten the hype that Sebastian Thrun created when he formed Udacity, read: Sebastian Thrun Will Change Education. And watch the video.
1. My position on this is that the professors at Harvard and Stanford are not necessarily the best teachers. In my field of biochemistry, for example, we have direct evidence that professors at MIT do a horrible job of teaching biochemistry [Where Are the Best University Teachers?]. In my experience, the best biochemistry teachers are often located at small colleges where they pay attention to the latest pedagogical literature and actually read the textbooks they use in class.
