Educationally sound?

In this morning’s Inside Higher Ed:

• Composition, Overcrowded (3/16)

Class sizes and teaching loads for composition courses at community colleges – courses typically required of most students and seen as crucial for college success – appear to be growing well beyond levels that are considered educationally sound. ¶ That was the suggestion from preliminary data released here Saturday at the annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. The conference has long had standards for writing courses, based on the idea that composition teaching requires the assignment of more papers than is typical of college courses, quick turnaround on evaluating those papers, and detailed discussion of those papers with students. According to the conference's guidelines, undergraduate writing sections should be limited to 20 students (15 for remedial writing), and no faculty member should be responsible for teaching and grading more than 60 writing students a semester (or 45 students in remedial courses). ¶ It doesn't appear that anyone in charge at community colleges is paying attention….*

*Um, actually, the pic above is of some goofy event at Cornell U. Composition classes at Saddleback and Irvine Valley colleges are typically smallish. Nevertheless, in my experience, comp teachers (at Irvine Valley College, where I teach) seem to spend half their lives grading student papers. For them, the torture never stops. BTW, it seems best to prohibit student use of the semicolon altogether; they never seem to get it right;;

• Read Their Lips: No New Tenure (3/16)

In a one-sided vote, the Kentucky Community and Technical College System’s Board of Regents decided Friday to eliminate tenure for all new faculty hires. Though top system officials lauded the move, many faculty groups pledged to take fight to the state Legislature. ¶ In the future, the system will offer new faculty hires only short-term contracts….

From the New York Times:

• The Academic Freedom Agenda (3/10)

…[Former President Bush] had often said that he viewed the Freedom Agenda — his campaign to promote democracy around the world, and above all in the Middle East — as the great legacy of his time in office. And now, even as Obama and his foreign-policy team edge away from the language of democracy promotion, which they fear that the Freedom Agenda has rendered toxic, Bush has begun to shape what he has called the Freedom Institute, a policy center to be housed alongside his presidential library and museum on the campus of Southern Methodist University….

Imagine that! A Bush "think tank," likely run by Karl Rove, and answerable only to the Bushies. Imagine the scholarship! Did you know that Thurston Howell III was an SMU alumnus? 

 
From the Contra Costa Times:

• Colleges ill-prepared for influx of parolees (3/15)

A federal court has tentatively ordered California to release as many as 57,000 inmates to relieve overcrowded prisons. Although the state is fighting the order, it could bring thousands of new students to the colleges in the next two or three years….

I hear that Fuentes' pal Mike Carona is interested in taking some courses at IVC. He's a felon you know. I suggest that he take the new "paint ball war" course at ATEP. At left, we see him in his backyard, manning his paintball Howitzer.