Quotes and Links for Class Session on Tuesday Sept. 10

On the mismatch between instructor and student expectations:

Corollary to #4:  Every instructor assumes that you have nothing else to do except study for that instructor's course.
From Murphy's Laws on Applied Terror

Gertrude Stein quote on Genius:  It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.
(Portrait of Gertrude Stein by Pablo Picasso)

Question:  Are "good students" today over programmed?

On the ideal for undergraduate education at research universities:

Boyer Commission report (1998)
The report offered a blueprint on how to redesign undergraduate education to make the students insiders and appreciative of an inquiry approach to learning.

Students readiness for such a program is a big issue.  If students are not yet ready, then the first year of college must be devoted to getting students ready.  This will require intensive instruction that is likely quite expensive.  Historically, the first year is where most of the large lecture classes are taught.  The U of I had a Discovery Program (small seminar classes) for first year students, but the recession in the early 2000s and then the Great Recession about six years later severely cut into the Discovery Program.

On betraying the trust in higher education:

Disengagement compact

Underlying this is the notion that grades are verifiable (a third party can learn the information correctly) but human capital accumulation is not.  In the absence of a standardized exam in the subject, instructor performance can't be measured by how much students learned.  Research output, in contrast, can be measured.  So faculty rewards (salary increase and promotion) are typically based on that.  Likewise, if students learned a lot but received mediocre grades, they don't have a credible way to communicate to others about their learning.  The potential future employer only gets "to see" the human capital as it is deployed doing work for the company.

Declining By Degrees

Documentary and Book  In addition to the disengagement compact, universities compete for students in a way that raises the cost of education (think of expensive athletic facilities) and this type of non-price competition may be socially destructive.

Academically Adrift

The book argues that many college students experience very little value added to their thinking by attending college.

Excellent Sheep

The book was based on the author's experience at Yale, where he then was an assistant professor of English.  The students were quite competent at jumping through hoops set by the instructor, but they were also very unhappy and didn't know how to go about pleasing themselves.

What Straight-A Students Get Wrong
A NY Times Op-Ed by Professor Adam Grant of Wharton.  It argues that these students are putting way too much effort into something that isn't all that productive and they should redirect their energies to other things that are.

Concluding question:

For there to be be improvement made, a SWOT analysis needs to be done on both the U of I and higher education as a whole and that must be done by insiders at the university, who then make their findings public.  While it is easy enough to discuss strengths and opportunities, can we have an open conversation about weaknesses and threats?