The consequences of high textbook cost

• 7 in 10 Students Have Skipped Buying a Textbook Because of Its Cost, Survey Finds (Chronicle of Higher Education)
…"Students recognize that textbooks are essential to their education but have been pushed to the breaking point by skyrocketing costs," said Rich Williams, a higher-education advocate with the group, known as U.S. PIRG….

Meanwhile, the New York Times is holding one of its “debates”:

• Do We Spend Too Much on Education?
Americans are spending more and more on education, but the resulting credentials — a high-school diploma and college degrees — seem to be losing value in the labor market…. See the debate

Welcome Week!

Lots of balloons. No parking.

Rebel Girl

WELL, here we are, Day #2 of Fall 2011 and one can feel the crisis in California's higher education right here at the little college of the orange groves. Limited class offerings here meet greater demand because of fewer classes elsewhere. Crunch, crunch, crunch. So hard to turn so many away. Today's LA Times reports:

"As it is, the state's 112 community colleges will offer 5% fewer classes this fall, Chancellor Jack Scott said. Based on projected annual demand, an estimated 670,000 students who otherwise would enroll in at least one class will not be served, he added."

Unfair advantage

It seems as if IVC has more than its share of those 670,000 disappointed students. Many of them seemed to show up just in case, wanting to put their names on any wait list anywhere.

These same students also want parking spots. Their presence has been especially noticeable in the morning hours where cars circle and cruise looking for a spot, any spot. Yes, parking during the first week of classes has always been challenging but one could usually find a spot. Not so this week for many.

This week also marks a change in policy for parking enforcement. No longer is there a grace period. Signs were posted everywhere announcing the change in police as were uniforms enforcing it through vigorous writing of tickets.

Case in point.

Artist's reconstruction

Day One. One instructor arrived at 10:00 AM, an hour before class on Monday only to spend 30 minutes looking for a spot, any spot, staff or otherwise, to no avail. All the staff spots were full, full, full—though she wondered if they were full with staff cars. From the looks of it, no. She did get a little excited when she pulled into the lot near BSTIC (the Business Sciences and Technology Innovation Center) and spotted what appeared to be an open STAFF parking space—but the space was partially occupied by a shiny pick-up truck parked deliberately so that the vehicle would take up two spaces instead of one. Grrr.

"That's mine!"

Finally, the instructor followed others into the dirt lot near the Goodwill truck on Jeffrey. Two lots were marked out—or so it seemed. Both sported signs that read "No parking"—but people parked anyway. The instructor was feeling the pressure of impending class and followed suit. What's a girl to do?

So she parked, wishing she had her usual donation bag for Goodwill, ran across campus, taught one class, then another—ran back, worried about a ticket—found none, moved the car to a now open staff spot (the big shiny pick-up was still occupying two spots and had not received a ticket either) and ran back to teach another class.

Day Two. The same scenario. Arrive early, circle, circle, circle — to no avail. Drive by the shiny pick-up, still taking up two spaces, give up, park next to the Goodwill truck. Run across campus, teach two back-back classes, one in a non-air–conditioned classroom (Note that in the first class students joke about parking in the strip mall and the not-so-nearby church lot "They won't tow—they're Christians!"), finally return to lot to find—ouch. A $38.00 parking ticket.

From several years ago

Drive to the police station to pick up form to contest ticket. Drive by shiny pick-up and note it has no ticket. Stop by faculty office to receive comfort from colleagues and tell them about the shiny pick-up that takes up two places. Listen as they say: Oh that pick-up? He always does that. He never gets a ticket. People have complained for a long time but he's somebody's friend. They like him.

Drive home. Strategize about the next couple days. Should she follow the suggestions and arrive two or three hours earlier? But that would mean arrive at 8 a.m. on Thursday and teaching through until 10 at night. Should she park at the church? Bring a bag of donations and park by the Goodwill truck and place the receipt in the window? Buy a big shiny pick-up and become one of the guys? Park her tiny hybrid in back of the big shiny pick-up and see who gets ticketed first? —RG

• Removed coach Patton insists he did nothing wrong (OCVarsity.com)

State chancellors get blunt & sober; "Education" a "culture of low standards"

Thanks, Don

CSU, community colleges try to cope with cutbacks (San Francisco Chronicle)

     California is witnessing a slow and steady decline of its prized systems of higher education specifically because legislative Republicans have blocked efforts to raise taxes to pay for them, the community college and state university chancellors said Monday in a blunt and sobering back-to-school message.
     Both systems together lost $1.3 billion in state funding this year after Republican lawmakers invoked a pledge not to raise taxes, and the Legislature passed a budget with deep cuts.
     As a result, community colleges are offering 5 percent fewer courses across all 112 campuses this year, with an unprecedented 670,000 students turned away for lack of space, Chancellor Jack Scott said.
     Across CSU's 23 campuses, students will find fewer instructors and more crowded classrooms this year, while library shelves will be left unfilled and roofs allowed to leak, Chancellor Charles Reed said....

"I always got a A."

OTHER NEWS:
Study Critiques Disproportionately High Grades for Education Students (Inside Higher Ed)

     Students in education courses are given consistently higher grades than are students in other college disciplines, according to a study published by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Monday. The study, by Cory Koedel, an assistant professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Columbia, cites that and other evidence to make the case that teachers are trained in "a larger culture of low standards for educators," in line with "the low evaluation standards by which teachers are judged in K-12 schools."

"Jesus glasses" teacher prevails—but so does legal nebulosity

Note: a typically unfettered gabfest and foodfight has broken out among commenters over at the OC Weekly. Check it out for laughs.

5 Looks at the Appellate Victory for Capo Valley High Teacher James Corbett Through Jesus Glasses (OC Weekly/Navel Gazing)

[Here are] Five reactions to the ruling—which essentially states Corbett could not have known whether he was overstepping his bounds because no markers were set in previous rulings….

Analysis: Court evades central question in anti-Christian lawsuit (OC Reg)

The First Amendment court case brought against Mission Viejo high school history teacher James Corbett is likely to die at the 9th Circuit, experts say. 

     ...When the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pasadena tossed out former Capistrano Valley High School student Chad Farnan's case on Friday, the three-member panel of judges did so without ruling whether Corbett's tape-recorded statements were impermissible under the First Amendment's establishment clause. The clause has been interpreted by U.S. courts to prohibit government workers from displaying religious hostility….

James Corbett said...

     [C]had’s lawyers argued that questioning “Creation Science” violated the First Amendment, but American law gives no special place to any religion. One person’s religion is another person’s superstition. To Jews, Muslims, Hindus and dozens of other religions, the New Testament is “Christian Superstition,” just as their views are superstition to Christians. When I referred to a religious belief as “superstition,” I sought to show respect for all by favoring none. My classes have Jews, Hindus, Bahai, Muslims, Buddhists, and others. Chad would demand a special place for his views, but in America, all beliefs should be treated equally by government.

     Finally, here are two stanzas from Robert Service Poem (Reagan's favorite poet) that have been with me for 50 years--since my father read it to me when I was a teenager. At the time, he was fighting the blacklisters (and lost).

Carry On"

And so in the strife of the battle of life
It’s easy to fight when you’re winning;
It’s easy to slave, and starve and be brave,
When the dawn of success is beginning.
But the man who can meet despair and defeat
With a cheer, there’s the man of God’s choosing;
The man who can fight to Heaven’s own height
Is the man who can fight when he’s losing.

Carry on! Carry on!

Fight the good fight and true;
Believe in your mission, greet life with a cheer;
There’s big work to do, and that’s why you are here.

Carry on! Carry on!

Let the world be the better for you;
And at last when you die, let this be your cry!

Jim Corbett, still hokey after all these years. Born with nothin and still got most of it.

—11:13 AM, August 23, 2011

The faculty contract issue, 1997-8

 

     Re the “faculty contract” issue:
     As you know, Old Guard critics of the recently proposed faculty contract objected to adjustments that benefited all but the highest paid faculty. They seemed to view that as unfair. (See What's their beef?)
     I found a computer file of old newspaper articles (etc.) and came across several from 1997-8 that concerned the faculty contract. They reveal that, at the time, critics of the Old Guard's then-proposed contract emphasized that contract's concentration of benefit on senior full-time faculty to the detriment of junior faculty:

• South O.C. College District Salaries Are State's Highest Los Angeles Times, September 15, 1997

     According to figures published in June by the Sacramento-based Community College Assn., the South Orange County district is truly No. 1. As one professor put it, "We're the Nebraska Cornhuskers of community college salaries.". . .
     Kate Clark, a professor of English at Irvine Valley College, lists her salary at more than $70,000 a year, which she finds "embarrassing." More and more, Clark said, district salaries are also a story of have-nots helping to sustain the haves.
     "It's not a healthy circumstance when you have people on the upper end making disproportionately high salaries, compared to those on the lower end, who in my view are increasingly underpaid," she said.
     For those on the high end, [Wendy] Phillips said, district salaries are comparable even to those at UC Irvine, which as part of the elite UC system pays the best of any Orange County college.. . .
     In terms of salaries as a whole, [Bill] Hewitt said the highest go to professors with 30 or more years experience, constituting, in his opinion, about a quarter of the faculty or even less.. . .
     Phillips said the board is enthusiastically supported by the district's faculty labor union, which bankrolled the past campaigns of the current board majority—Frogue, Williams, Teddi Lorch and Dorothy Fortune.
     In return, the board has consistently voted pay raises that account for the district's No. 1 ranking.
     "Our union is incredibly strong," said Phillips, who makes $65,000 a year, "and they've consistently negotiated one of the best salary and benefit packages in the state. But it's come through buying board members, and now they're in each other's pockets."
     Irvine Valley philosophy professor Roy Bauer, who makes about $50,000 a year, said the union and the board share "a quid pro quo" relationship.
     "The union gives them the money to get reelected and they vote pay raises in return," Bauer said. "In recent years, the board has cut things to the bone and now talks of more cuts to come, but have they touched faculty salaries? Of course not, and they won't."
     While those in the top quarter are making $80,000 to $100,000 a year, those on the lower end are being paid much less, Bauer said, resulting in what he called an average salary districtwide that falls somewhere between $60,000 and $65,000 a year.
     Figures released late Friday by the district support Bauer's claim. Taking all salaries as a whole, the average for the 1996-97 school year was $60,969 at Irvine Valley and $69,097 at Saddleback. But average salaries for "academic administrators" who also teach were considerably higher: $91,966 at Irvine Valley and $91,664 at Saddleback.
     High salaries among the top one-quarter of the faculty have necessitated the hiring of hundreds of part-timers, with that group now making up about half the district payroll, according to Bauer and various faculty senate members on both campuses.
     "It's the union's strategy of rewarding those on the high end that's led to the wave of part-timers," Phillips said….

• Los Angeles Times Letters to the Times
March 8, 1998

Dorothy Fortune's Bankrupt Views [Times' title]

     I am a mathematics professor at Irvine Valley College who is very concerned about the proposed faculty contract.
     In a district full of faculty members who earn at the top end of the pay scale, administrative positions have recently been cut under the guise of financial necessity.
     In what smacks of payback, we are offering even more to certain faculty whose base salary is easily in excess of $80,000. Beyond that, more salary is earned for choosing to teach the two sections of summer school.
     The base salary is for 10 months of teaching 15 hours of class per week and attending one committee hour per week. Many of these faculty then choose to teach large lecture classes in excess of 45 students and also overload (beyond 15 hours per week) to greatly augment their salaries to be well in excess of $100,000 per 10 months—in some cases, in excess of $120,000. It is my contention that this faculty greed is at the expense of the students.
     A look at the new contract proposal shows the balance of the increased pay at the top end of the salary scale. The benefits to new hires have been reduced.
     Newly hired faculty members will be able to transfer in only five years of teaching experience, not the current 11 years. How do we attract the best and the brightest if we don't allow their experience to count? This new contract is irresponsible on many levels and certainly greedy. 

NANCY EVANS
Irvine

• Orange County Register
April 1, 1998

College teachers OK new contract
EDUCATION: Some say the raises put South Orange County Community College District in jeopardy.

By KIMBERLY KINDY

     …Under the new contract, pay raises will not begin until July 1. They will include an annual $2,500 stipend for 75 professors who have doctorates.
     It also would allow additional raises for 23 longtime professors who are reaching the top of the salary schedule, and commit the district to dividing all the money it receives for professors' annual cost-of-living increases as long as the district has 3 percent of its budget in reserve. That is 2 percent lower than the state chancellor's office requires for the district to be removed from the watch list.
     It also would allow professors who are teaching more than 15 hours a week to bank their time over 2 1/2 years and then take a paid sabbatical in lieu of overtime pay. About 66 percent of the faculty would qualify….

* * *

     Please note that I have provided a link to the entire Times article. No link to the Reg article is available (as far as I know).
     As always, do feel free to provide enlightening comments re context, etc.

Cause I need something to forget,

What got me in this mess

Feeling less and less

My judgment is not clear

I do things that I fear,

I would never do

Absurdity and opacity

     • EARLY COLLEGE. I'm told that, recently, the IVC Academic Senate was “honored” for its support of the Early College program.
     Absurd!
     In truth, the Early College program has never been popular with the AS (i.e., with faculty). Faculty were irked from the start—when it was rammed down their throats by administration, despite faculty concerns and objections, all of which have proved prescient. Faculty have attempted to determine whether the program is as fraught with difficulty as some participants have claimed, and thus far all of its findings have supported the voices of concern and alarm.
     Essentially, administration has ignored faculty concerns and, inexplicably, it seems determined to pursue the EC program despite its failings, its expense, and its lack of support among faculty.

     • ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION PARK. What’s up with ATEP? In fact, for quite some time now the two colleges of the SOCCCD have been seriously at odds over the development of this facility. Why is this “debate” still in the shadows? Why are we still in the dark concerning the future and fate of ATEP?

—BvT

snafu, phr., adj., and n.

Used acronymically … as an expression conveying the common soldier's laconic acceptance of the disorder of war and the ineptitude of his superiors.
. . .
1946 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol. Mar. 419 “Interestingly, the expression ‘snafu’, derived from this, ‘Situation normal, all f---ed up’, is coming into general civilian use.”

—From the OED

BEDTIME READING: the OLD GUARD, fifteen years ago: Adventures in Advertising: The real purpose behind gay-baiting at Saddleback College

Atheists in Orange County

• Atheist message adorns billboard near 55 (OC Reg, 8/18)
• Some take offense at atheist message on billboard (OC Reg, 8/19)
• Backyard Skeptics

     I dunno. I too want my fellow citizens to be more rational, reasonable. But I prefer an approach that teaches reasoning per se rather than one that “teaches” the alleged fruit or consequences of reason.* If people were taught to respect reason, avoid fallacy, refrain from thinking and behavior that makes sheep- and mob-like phenomena possible—well, if such were the case, I’d be in a pretty damned good community, or at least a far better one.** I wonder sometimes if these organizations (Backyard Skeptics, etc.) aren’t willing to skip that step. That makes me wonder if, in the end, they’re much better than the irrationalists they seek to convert.
     It’s like “teaching” democracy, I suppose. I wouldn’t want to impose democracy on a nondemocratic society.*** We need to ask first, what sort of person would be happy in a democratic society? For what sort of people is democratic government the best type? —BvT

NOTES(?!):

   *In my view, an embrace of rationality and reasonableness would inevitably weaken the hold most religions have on people. But it is impossible to be certain about such things.
   **I’m certainly open to the possibility (not the probability!) that a robust embrace of rationality and reasonableness may leave available modes of belief that are religious or at least quasi-religious. Some will be mystified by that position. They will insist that religious belief by its very nature is irrational—insofar as it entails such things as faith, a believing without evidence. They may be right. Being a conservative fellow, I’m not in a hurry to embrace a final conclusion about that. Certainty is usually evidence of folly.
   ***Of course, one might impose democracy as a way of getting people to be the sort who would enjoy democracy. Tricky business, that.

Highly recommended:

• Unemployment is rising – or is that statistical noise? (Ben Goldacre, the Guardian)

• The genius who lives downstairs – extract (The Guardian)

Aged three, Simon Phillips Norton had an IQ of 178. By five, he could rattle off his 91 times table. At Cambridge, he was the greatest maths prodigy they had ever seen. So what happened to his career? Alexander Masters on a story that doesn't add up