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There is no composition requirement at PSU. Instead, there is a required University Studies Program which consists (allegedly) of numerous writing-intensive courses which are supposed to make a difference in students' writing. I believe the courses are often staffed by instructors who may have little if any training in writing instruction, or in how to comment constructively on or judiciously evaluate student writing.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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See Marc Bousquet's How The University Works (also a website). Arguably, the number of full-time administrative positions has increased and the number of full-time instructional positions has decreased. The President's used the word "flat" to assure us they've cut the fat. I wonder.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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Absolutely, and did any of them answer this question? Hardly, and Ray's celebration of athletic programs is an embarrassment. As I said in my comments, to say that such programs are neat because otherwise underepresented groups would not enroll or hold on until graduation, is an insult to these groups.

Makes you really wonder how such people become College presidents. But then, look who we've had in the white house for 8 years.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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Several observations on last night's show on higher education. I am a retired college professor,

First, given the sad state of higher education in Oregon, it was regrettable that there were so many empty seats for this live event at PSU. Where were the students, or the faculty, or the union reps to put some tough questions to these Presidents? PSU prides itself on the E-word, "engagement," but it was hardly in evidence at this event. Except for a few attempts at tough questions from emailers, most from either the audience or Emily Harris were softball pitches, and the Presidents dutifully replied with obviously rehearsed monologues never interrupted by impolite follow-ups. (Harris generally is so cordial she never wants to appear argumentative. This was especially evident when President Wievel's specious free enterprise metaphor justified UO moving into Portland went unchallenged. How legitimate is it, anyway, to view Universities as competing corporations? That deeper question never came up.)

Second, it is astonishing that only 13% of the budget for higher education is supplied by the state. This diminishing support raises two questions: should college Presidents be held accountable for a failure to increase popular support for higher education and, should we, if this shrinkage continues, give over the idea that public higher education really exists, since so much financial support for it depends on private giving (as is the case for private schools). The answer to your first question "What's the solution to funding higher education in Oregon?" would seem to be that the solution is certainly not to be found in the public will expressed through the legislature.

Third, why was there no outrage, laughter or groaning when President Ray of OSU praised the value of his athletic program because it meant that those underrepresented student groups (hm? Blacks and Hispanics etc.) would otherwise fail to attend college and complete their degrees? I wouldn't go so far as to call this racism, but it's pretty close: you know, the best way to get diversity and increase opportunity for these folks is to get 'em to play ball for our entertainment. President Ray, incidentally, also thought it was pretty neat that schools like OSU, because of their sports programs, got really good publicity among Oregonians. Sadly, he did not address the deeper question of why, given such nice publicity and endorsement of his sports teams, this enthusiasm did not translate into greater fiscal support among legislators and the general citizenry for higher education.

Fourth, the question of the steady increase of contingent or part-time underpaid teaching staff was raised but not dealt with sufficiently. Shockingly, President Ray said they needed to do more research on this matter, but the fact is, lots of research has been done for years, and there is considerable evidence to suggest that there is a correlation between the percentage of part-time faculty, heavily concentrated in the introductory first and second year courses, and student attrition. President Wievel has a nicely rehearsed speech on this topic, defending the adjunct teaching staff as coming from the "real world" and promising to try to involve this staff more in the "community" at PSU. Any adjunct in the audience would understand this to be saying that that such "involvement" would hardly be compensated and that the real question parity and just wages remains ignored. Besides, how can you afford to be more "involved" if you're cobbling together several part-time positions just to survive (or to pay off your college loans?)

Incidentally, at the end of the show, President Frohmeyer had some glowing words to say about his "liberal arts education." But what he didn't say is that it is precisely in these general education or liberal arts courses that the abusive working conditions and inadequate class sizes predominate. (Anyone interested in pursuing this question further should visit Marc Bousquet's website: how the university works.com, and also read the book with this title. The PBS video, and accompanying book DECLINING BY DEGREES, is also instructive on this and other matters.)

Fifth, a steady mantra of the evening was that a quality higher education system is a good "investment" in Oregon overall. However, that truism does not seem to have much credibility among the tax paying public which, apparently, has not gotten the message and has grown increasingly stingy in its willingness to support higher education. The result: growing student debt, which, of course, is a joy to the lenders.

Now, as the film mentioned above argues, it is important to acknowledge history and to understand the shift in values that has occured with respect to support for higher education. Once there was a contract, especially evident after WWWII, that educational advancement was a PUBLIC GOOD, not merely a means to private enrichment. This public dimension meant that there was a kind of contract in play insofar as there was generous public support (investment) in such a good. However, steadily, over the years, and especially since the '70's, that contract has been shredded and education has become, like any other "good" or "service", something to be purchased only by those who could afford it, or by those willing to burden themselves with massive debt. As a result, the idea of broadening opportunity with public investment lost credibility so that now students bear an increasing percentage of the burden, and institutions must depend more on philanthropy and corporate giving (which always raises the question of autonomy and the extent to which colleges best serve "the public good" when they create employees for corporations the way the NCAA creates players for the NFL and NBA.)

Again, some students last night spoke eloquently about their debt burden and yet there was always the sense that such a burden was the needed price to "pay" for future success. The idea that matters could be otherwise, that there was a time when a relatively debt-free graduation day could be made possible by a generous public treasury, was unthinkable. How ironic, then, to hear President Wievel recall fondly his days in Holland when students demonstrated against a modest increase in tuition! Where have those students gone and why must all too many of them be locked out or allowed in only if they are willing to assume a debt burden that at one time would have seemed unduly harsh for people with higher educational aspirations?


Finally, I found it interesting that little time was really given to the quality of students' experience at any of these institutions. There was, of course, some dutiful praise from that PSU student for his political science teachers, but the paucity of students in attendance meant that there was little sampling of the range of satisfaction beyond the familiar complaints of deteriorating infrastructures. Generally education was seen as exclusively preparation for work, and there was no talk of the arts, of cultural enrichment, of opportunities for international study. True, one can only work with what one has on hand, but it seemed to me regrettable that while there was considerable monological speechmaking, there was little if any real dialogue or thinking going on. Perhaps these blogs can compensate for that

As for the question regarding the proper role of higher education vis a vis
"workplace training," doubtless those who trained in the past for jobs in the future which are now thriving offshore, will always be wondering whether universities can, as you put it, ever be "ahead of the curve" when it comes to anticipating the "needs' of the workplace.

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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1. Two recent articles on NCLB have been provocative: one is in the latest Harpers magazine and it reveals the experience of a high school chemistry teacher doing the work of the Kaplan testing organization; the other appears in The Progressive and reveals a teacher's personal and professional frustrations with this punitive "law" ostensibly passed to improve education.

I'd like to see a show which addresses the question of who is really benefiting from NCLB. I would hope teachers and students would be asked to participate. In fact, a separate show interviewing only primary and secondary school students about what their ideal school would be like would be most interesting.

2. Check out the website How the University Works and educate yourself on how higher education continues to eviscerate the teaching profession by continuing its practice of hiring only contract or contingency workers and shrinking the number and percentage of full-time positions. Learn about how this shrinkage obtains while the number of administrators expands. Watch the documentary, DECLINING BY DEGREES, and consider how market "values" affect higher education and also study the portrait of the sad philosophy professor, aging and struggling to live on a part-timer's salary and no benefits.

It would be interesting to examine the local higher education scene to see how its hiring practices work. What fields of teaching are most affected by these hiring practices? How, as the author of HOW THE UNIVERSITY WORKS argues, such exploitive working conditions in higher education are merely an extension of the same employment practices that are in play generally, and that there are, as usual, those who profit from them and those who, yet again, bear the burden in this zero sum game.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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In the radio announcement just before today's show, we heard, yet again, about a group of evangelicals "and pro-life" people. I grow weary of the media's uncritical habit of using this term for people who are "anti-choice," and protest, yet again to make the point that this sort of labeling automatically transforms those who want to protect a woman's right to choose into "anti-life" advocates --- which is just what the anti-choice people want to happen.

The fact is, there are plenty of people of many faiths who are pro-choice, and these groups, many of them quite well organized, never get any press. Also, why is it that the likes of mega church leaders like Rick Warren of the right,receive most if not exclusive attention while other evangelicals coming from a different position, like Jim Wallis, get little press? The full spectrum and diversity of evangelicaly influenced political positions is simply unacknowledged, which is sort of like limiting your news watching or talk show listening to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh.

Sadly, both presidential candidates are more worried about deferring to Rick Warren than they are, say, inviting some teachers, or political scientists, or philosophers, or artists, or representatives from other groups to interview them. I was appalled when I heard Warren on NPR, before his interview, say that he didn't want to ask Obama and McCain questions about "short term topics," but address bigger existential issues that had "long term implications." All well and good. But what did he say were those short-term issues? The war in Iraq and global warming. Calling these two issues merely ephemeral or consequential only in the "short term," is astounding and speaks volumes about the way Warren misjudges what's important. It is part of his juvenile apocalyptic theology which sees the end of days around the corner so it's Ok to keep driving our SUV's and trashing the planet since doomsday is immanent.

I'll close with the following item which I saw a few weeks ago during a news program that showed McCain addressing a large evangelical meeting. He opened his speech by proclaiming how nice it was to be there and how difficult it was to "do God's work in the city of Satan" --- presumably Washington DC. That's a direct quote and it reveals so much about his and his allies' continued contempt for government. And yet it is this very contempt, this radical, if you will, lack of any real FAITH in government, which ONE faction of evangelicalism insists upon, and it is the ONE religious position that receives almost exclusive attention by the media who, also, in habitually insist on equating "values voters" with conservative evangelicals, remains complicit in casting anyone liberal out into a desert of atheistic valueless reprobates. The right wing must be ecstatic every time a news "analyst" uses such language to describe the political landscape.

The irony, of course, is that it is precisely this satanic city and its governing structures which many conservative evangelicals want to control for their own benefit. It is an irony that is becoming increasingly difficult to bear.

posted 4 years, 9 months ago
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It is regrettable that some people carry identity politics so far as to believe that simply because a candidate comes from a particular class, they have an automatically superior insight with respect to that class, or that because someone comes from a relatively high class, they are automatically insensitive to the needs of those beneath them. We need to consider history. Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt both came from privilege, but clearly they felt deeply and spoke eloquently about the plight of the poor during the Depression. They also took action, as did many others who came from privilege. Also, it's quite possible to come from the working class, or even from poverty and still not be insensitive to the needs of that class -- indeed, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin --- here were clear examples of people who were supposedly sensitive to the plight of the less fortunate and we have the bloody history of the results.

Let's declare a moratorium on automatically judging a person's class as NECESSARILY determinative of their sensitivity or insensitivity to a given class. People from privilege are entirely capable of serving the nation's larger needs, and people who've come from the so-called lower classes are quite capable of causing harm. What we need to do is study history and the present to avoid snap judgments either way. No particular politician, because he or she is or was a member of a particular class should be given credit or discredited without a careful study of their words and deeds.

George T. Karnezis
Portland

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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It is possible, contrary to OPB's claim, to "not think." Emily Harris, following the knee jerk THOUGHTLESS verbal habits of her peers,referred in this program to the possibility of democrats wooing "pro-life" democrats. This phrase, "pro-life," glosses over the fact that such alleged "pro lifers" are, in effect, "anti-choice" --- that is, they reject a woman's right to choose whether or not to have an abortion. But verbal habits such as these mean that those who have opposed choice have won the name game. They are never called what they are. And, by implication those who are against these "pro-lifers" must be anti-life or "pro death." It's easy to choose sides once the discussion proceeds along these lines.

+The same thing happens when those who support a woman's right to choose are wrongly termed "pro abortion," eliding the fact that it is the question of CHOICE which they favor, while not necessarily favoring abortion. Many who support choice also work hard to minimize the choice for abortion, even tho they do not reject the right to choose one way or another

All this may seem a super-subtle point, but the fact is that such THOUGHTLESS labeling clearly favors the anti-choice people because it casts their opponents in the worst possible light, as if they were a rabid crowd of murdering abortionists eager to advertise their services as a convenient form of birth control. The fact that Ms. Harris"thought out loud" by using this terminology suggests to me that she, like her peers, has not THOUGHT sufficiently about the vocabulary in use whenever this sensitive political issue is raised. Again, it is possible, despite OPB's slogan, to NOT think.

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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