Tuesday, December 21, 2010

It All Revolves Around Economics

When I was in college, it took me a long time to decide what to major in.  I started thinking about Psychology; next considered Philosophy; and ultimately settled on Economics.  Actually there were a few more disciplines along the way that I considered.  When I encountered a terrific teacher, that swayed me toward a particular major and, not surprisingly, when the faculty member was the opposite, my reaction was also the opposite.  What finally convinced me, and it is still true today, is that I found my passion in economics, and I remain convinced that Economics is the key factor in many of the formidable problems that our country and our globe are continuously confronting.

As an economist and as a long time educator, I often dwell on the economic benefits of education, especially higher education, that accrue to the person being educated.  The data is compelling and clearly demonstrates that in terms of benefits to the person and benefits to society, education matters a great deal.  Not surprising to me at all, and I’m convinced we aren’t even capturing all the benefits that education provides to the person and to society.

But there is another economic benefit of education and higher education that we also need to acknowledge.  That benefit is the contribution that schools make to the local, state, and national economy.  For example, at the end of last week, New York’s Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities (CICU) released their annual calculation of the economic impact of New York’s independent higher education sector.  New York’s 100+ independent colleges and universities contributed $54.3 billion to NY State’s economy.  The CICU study also noted that NY’s private colleges and universities provided on-campus employment for 174,000 people.  For Long Island, where Hofstra is located, the overall private college impact is $2.8 billion with more than 22,600 jobs.  Hofstra alone provides over 2,700 of these jobs.  How known is it and how appreciated is it that private higher education is one of the engines that drives New York State’s and Long Island’s economy?

These numbers reflect only one important sector of education in one state.  Add to these numbers the national dollar  impact of k-12 public education as well as public higher education, and you start to approach the major magnitude of our education industry.  And remember, that we are a clean and relatively green industry so our impact on the environment is another plus.  And we are often a cultural center for the communities in which we are located, which is still another plus.  And I could go on and on.  And once again, how known is it and how appreciated is it that education is a key engine for our national economy?

The conclusion is clear.  The benefits of education, economic and otherwise, surround all levels of education and all facets of education.  In this holiday season, as in all the other times of the year, education is truly the gift that keeps giving. Happy Holidays.

Monday, December 13, 2010

Tis the Season

It is typical at the end of both the fall and spring semesters that there are extra meetings as every committee and aspect of University governance does all it can to complete the semester’s agenda.  And, of course, the tempo in courses is similar; as hard as we try to maintain an even pace in our courses, very often we accelerate at the end to cover all the material that should be covered.

At the end of fall semesters there is another happening that coincides with the end of the semester and that’s the holiday parties that inevitably take place this time of year.  For me this cycle of parties begins this week with the annual University alumni holiday party that takes place every year in Manhattan.  This party is usually followed by the University Holiday Party for all employees as well as various school, college, office, and related organization’s holiday parties.

There are individuals I work with that love this cycle of holiday parties and there are those that have no use for these events. After decades in higher education and decades of attending these events, where am I on the spectrum of party love/hate relationships.  I started my career as a fan, and yes, after all these decades I am still a fan.  I thoroughly enjoy attending these events.  Why is that?  And why do I not have this feeling of diminishing returns with each additional party?  The reason is simple.  I get a chance to talk to people I don’t normally see or get an opportunity to talk with.  At the alumni party, I am certain that there will be one or more of my former students, students I may have had in class decades ago.  I love having the opportunity to reconnect and get caught up on what they have been doing.  Similarly, I know many of the student leaders that have been active over the decade; with certainty, some of them will attend.  There are other alums that I don’t know who are interested in  getting caught up on what has been happening at the University; we have a lot going on in our efforts to enhance Hofstra’s growing reputation and I love to talk about what’s new.  Even the ride into this party, where the provost’s office and the deans go together is a chance to socialize in a way we don’t normally do.

I have the same feeling about the University Holiday Party.  Though there is a large percentage of the Hofstra community that I interact with continuously, there is also a large percentage that I rarely see.  All these individuals are crucial to the well being and smooth operation of Hofstra.  I love getting caught up at the University Holiday party.  I love reconnecting with colleagues and I love the holiday spirit.

Is there anything about these parties that I don’t like?  There is and it’s the tempting extra calories.  I can resist most and just spend my time sipping club sodas.  But if there is a chocolate dessert as part of the offerings, a club soda doesn’t do it.  In those cases I try the chocolate and if it is good, I try it again.  Good chocolate enhances a good holiday party; it’s a shame it enhances the waist line at the same time.

Monday, December 6, 2010

To Waive or Not to Waive; That is the Question

I am not in a position to gauge whether Cathleen P. Black should or should not be granted a waiver from the normal credential required by NY State law in order to serve as New York City Schools Chancellor. That responsibility lies with New York Commissioner of Education.  If she is qualified, she should receive the waiver.  If she is not qualified, the waiver should not be granted.  And yet, the actual conclusion regarding the granting of a waiver is neither the first alternative stated above nor the second.  It seems she will be granted a waiver on condition she appoint an experienced schools’ educator as the chief academic officer of the City schools. But is she qualified or is she not qualified?

When I arrived at Hofstra many years ago, there were a number of tiny departments—one such department was Art History and Humanities.  Yes there was already an Art department and yes, the Humanities person previously had a home in the English department. Why was this tiny four person department created?   The answer is simple; there were personality conflicts in the Art Department and there was a difficult tenure case in the English department.  The end result was that a new department was created which brought together the Art Historians, who were at odds with the Fine Arts faculty, and the Humanities faculty member who was the successful candidate for tenure in a very difficult tenure case in the English department.  Rather than try to resolve these differences (and perhaps they could not be resolved) another department was created. With this new department came the inevitable extra costs including a part-time secretary and extra compensation for the Chair.

A number of years later, when I became Dean of the Business School, I must admit I did something similar.  The computer center at the time was not particularly responsive to faculty needs and I was unsuccessful in getting them to change.  I traded in a new faculty line for a computer facilitator line.  Computer applications were becoming more and more critical in the education of our students.  Faculty needed support to build these applications into the curriculum.  I couldn’t get the support needed from the Computer Center so I provided the support in a different way.  I had no regrets then (and now) but there was a loss in terms of additional faculty.

There are often situations in education when confronting an issue is so difficult that we select a work around in order to resolve the situation.  We are all aware of such situations on our campuses and many of us have been involved in creating these scenarios.  In robust economic times, prosperity masks the actual costs involved.  But we are not in a prosperous situation today and as I have stated in multiple blogs, most of higher education (and public K-12 education) is considerably constrained.  We all need to stop creating cost increasing work arounds.  And though it is easier said than done (and will likely take a lot of time and patience), we also need to dismantle some of the existing work arounds.  It just makes good common sense that when resources are scarce we look first to trim those extra costs that will not adversely impact on the quality of education we provide our students.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Creeping Commentary

My expertise is in education and I have tried hard to keep my blog focused on just that topic.  I know from reading other blogs that many authors feel qualified and empowered to comment on almost any imaginable topic.  These authors are certainly empowered, they certainly have the right, and for the most part they write well.  It’s just that the expertise isn’t there and therefore for me the comfort level isn’t there.  And yet, I am about to violate my own guideline and talk about an area where I certainly have strong feelings but limited technical expertise.

For the last few weeks, before or after the start of almost every meeting and often also during casual conversation, colleagues have been talking about the new airport screening/scanning devices and the manual “pat down” alternative.  Major newspapers and national news broadcasts are continuously focused on airport security.  Invasion of privacy (both high tech and low tech) is a recurring theme.  And righteous indignation is the usual tone.  Even in casual conversation with friends and neighbors, the same topic keeps coming up.  Perhaps the additional holiday related travel is the reason.  Perhaps a few YouTube videos are the reason.   Perhaps it is the discomfort with what the screening device makes visible or what a “pat down” feels like.  And perhaps we are also encountering a fear of big brother.

I have just recently flown to Hawaii and will be flying to Hawaii again before the end of the year.  Airports don’t thrill me and standing on line waiting for a security screening while at the same time removing my shoes, my belt, and taking my computer out of my carryon bag, thrills me even less.  I imagine we would all agree that airport check-ins don’t quality as a wonderful experience.  But I do place a premium on being safe.  If that safety involves being scanned, I will willingly go through the scanner.  A “pat down” for me is not as desirable or comfortable but if that is the only “safe” alternative, I will comply and accept that alternative.

In a world where unfortunately there are some individuals who are crazy or misguided, we need all the help we can get to prevent their misdeeds from happening.  I would rather have some uncomfortable moments during check-in and a safe flight than an alternative which makes for a more pleasant check-in with much more vulnerability. In the trade-off between safety and comfort, knowing that “all of the above” is not an option, I will always opt for safety.


I feel better for having written this blog; however, my next blog will get back to a focus on education.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Undermatching

The phrase was new to me but the concept and the consequences are very familiar.  William G. Bowen, in giving the keynote address at the recent TIAA-CREF Higher Education Leadership Conference, talked about students and their families underinvesting in higher education. Given the important economic and social benefits of higher education, why would there be underinvestment and how does this work? The reason for the underinvestment is simple—many families are looking for a bargain. They are looking to get the degree at a lower cost or possibly at the lowest cost possible. The bargain priority skews the decision making process; instead of going to the best college or university that you can get into, students are going to the schools that offer the most attractive financial aid packages. Until the 2008 economic meltdown, my impression is that the decision making worked as it had for many years – families and their college bound children attended the (academically or academically and socially) best school they could get into assuming the finances could be worked out.

Now college-bound kids and their families are consciously rejecting the best schools for the best offer.  President Bowen gave the example of a young woman who had gotten into Princeton but without a scholarship.  This college bound student had gotten scholarship offers from all 10 other institutions she had applied to, and the family expected the same response from Princeton.  Princeton’s response was to ask the young women to decide what she wanted—did she want Princeton or did she want a scholarship?  Did she want a Princeton or a school with a lower (or no) net tuition?

There is nothing wrong is seeking out a bargain if the bargain provides the same quality education as the alternatives.  But is that what is happening in higher education?  Much of private higher education is engaged in an escalating tuition discounting (increasing scholarship) race.  Scholarships are increased so as to make one institution more attractive than another.  And the other institution typically responds by increasing its scholarships.  As more money is allocated to scholarships, less money is available for the others costs involved in providing higher education.  As this continues for an extended period of time, what is the end result?

For public higher education, more and more colleges are being asked to educate more students with fewer resources. Educate more but spend less?  Initially there are likely efficiencies to be realized. But when this has happened and the number of students still increases or the budget continues to decline something has to give. And when this happens for an extended period of time, what is the end result?

Those of us in higher education need to more forcefully make the compelling case for higher education.  At the same time we need to make sure we are operating as efficiently as possible.  Our students and their families expect and deserve no less.  We need to also draw the line on excessive tuition discounting or else we will begin to see a strong correlation between tuition discounting and quality discounting.  We need to remind public officials that doing more with less, can ultimately result in doing less with less.  And we need to be forthright in indicating to students, that one danger in undermatching is that if the quality has not remained constant, what appears to be a bargain is really second best.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Athletics on a Smaller Scale

I was at the last soccer match of the season and the tension level was very high.  Team “Blue” had won the last time “Blue” met “Purple” and now “Purple” was vocally calling for revenge while “Blue” wanted to make their superiority  even clearer by also winning this game. All around me the fans were in a state of heightened excitement yelling at the top of their lungs.   Behind me I could clearly hear “Go Blue” as well as “Go get them Purple.”  Next to me on the right, there was a fan yelling “Defense!!!” continuously at the top of his lungs, while on my left there was a fan yelling “Move the ball !!!”    I heard “Defense” and “Move the ball” so often that I’m surprised that I didn’t start saying it in my sleep. Various spectators also called players by name encouraging them to do more and especially to score more.  And if a player seemed reluctant, inevitably that person would be yelled at from the sidelines to get more involved and “PLAY THE GAME!” The coaches were also in a heightened state of tension and excitement.  Each team had multiple coaches working the game.  One advising the goalie of each team, one prompting the defense, and one prompting the offense.  This was clearly serious athletics.  And clearly serious pushing from the fans  who were encouraging  their team in the clearest and loudest ways possible.

I enjoy watching college soccer and I enjoy watching most college sports but this was different in that it wasn’t at the college level.  Actually, it wasn’t at the high school level either and it wasn’t middle school.  What’s left?  The pros?  A senior league?  Neither one.  This was a 4th grade girls’  community soccer match and my daughter was part of the “Blue” team.  Both my daughters played soccer from first grade on, and typically I am sitting on the sidelines watching the matches.  First grade soccer was more a social experience than a game with the kids often not yet fully understanding the concept of a goal or of teamwork.  By fourth grade many are good players and watching the matches is an enjoyable sports experience.  And for the kids involved the experience can also be invaluable—developing skills, the importance of practice, following the rules, being part of a team all teach key life lessons.  But if winning and coming in first becomes paramount, the kids lose.  Tension on the  4th grade soccer field is not a helpful experience and if we push that hard, that early what happens by the time the kids enter high school or college.  Competition is part of life and clearly kids should understand that.  We want our kids to compete effectively on the athletic field, in school, in their chosen profession and in life.  But we need for kids and for their parents to understand, that there is more to life and learning than just competition.

This game ended in a tie.  It was a great game but I am sure that some parents were disappointed.  I  couldn’t help but think about how this situation relates to the level of testing in our schools.  Testing is more and more prevalent in K-12 education.  We know it matters and for those of us in higher education we want our entering students to be as well prepared as possible,  We just need to make sure that in education at every level as well as on the 4th grade soccer field, there is a proper balance.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Technology Trumps Collegiality

Last night I had the pleasure of attending the drama department production of Cabaret.  I thought our students did a terrific job and the production was without doubt at a professional theater level.  During the intermission, I went over to a senior faculty member in drama and we had a chance to catch up for the first time since last spring.  The faculty member commented on how much harder it has become for faculty from throughout the University to just get a chance to talk.  And he talked with fondness about on-site registration.  Up to about 15 years ago, every semester just before the semester began, on-site registration took place.  During this registration, students who had not yet registered and those who wanted a change in program had the opportunity to do so by coming to a large room that had at individual tables, faculty representatives from every department.  For much of the time, the faculty in the room were busy advising students.  But there were periods of time before, after and during when the faculty had moments of time to mingle with other faculty.  It was a good opportunity to catch up with colleagues and inevitably you would also get a chance to meet new colleagues.   You would also interact with administrative colleagues, and in every administrative position I have had, I always made sure I attended at least part of the on-site registration. Every semester you could count on on-site registration to provide the opportunity for faculty from all areas to spend time together.  That opportunity ended when on-line registration began.  Much more convenient and a real improvement for students but the mingle factor was lost.

Also long lost is the social interaction that took place at the University Club when I first started teaching.  At the end of the day and especially at the end of the week, many faculty met for a drink. I don’t miss seeing my colleagues drink, but the socialization was welcome.  I know that faculty still have many opportunities to interact. There are department meetings, school or college meetings and full faculty meetings. The department meetings tend to bring together most if not all the full time faculty in that department.  The school or college meetings often bring together a substantial minority of the faculty in that unit (with smaller units tending to attract a larger percentage to these meetings) and the full faculty meetings at their fullest often attract just a fraction of those eligible to attend.  There are other meetings that attract faculty, most often along political or philosophical lines.   But the regular opportunity to have a large number of “random” faculty just meet—not united by a discipline, not united by a school or college, not united by politics or a philosophy, and not united by a drink, in fact often just united  by being assigned to registration duty, is sorely missed.
Add to this that as scholarly and family obligations have increased, faculty are much less likely to spend extra time on campus and you have a clear sense of the collegiality divide that now exists on most colleges and universities.

I have a very high regard for my colleagues.  Faculty tend to have a high regard for other faculty. We should all look for more opportunities to spend time together.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Parking Revelation

In coming back to my office from a University Lecture, I cut through a main administrative parking lot. The lot has three rows of cars and a total capacity of approximately 60 cars.  Though I don’t normally take much notice of cars in a parking lot, for whatever reason that day these cars caught my attention. In the entire first row of the parking lot, there was one American car.  In looking at the remaining two rows, there was perhaps one more American car. The American cars were not new models and the other cars varied from relatively old to new looking.

In a totally unscientific survey after this experience, I have been looking over the cars in whatever parking lot or street I happen to be in.  The proportions are very similar.  American cars seems always to be a minority, sometimes a small minority while foreign cars—especially Japanese cars—are an overwhelming majority of the cars in any garage, parking lot, strip mall, city street, or neighborhood I come in contact with.  And when there are a significant number of American cars, they tend to be SUV’s.

Given the difficulties that American car companies have encountered, given the American car brands that have disappeared (just recently Saturn, Pontiac, Hummer, Mercury) this is not that surprising. When I grew up, everyone I knew who drove a car drove an American car. The style, the power, the convenience features, the American cars had it all. Foreign cars existed at the fringes; American cars dominated the market.  But as I learned when I purchased a Chevrolet Vega, American cars are not always a solution and are sometimes part of the problem.  The Vega was a totally inadequate car and it took almost two decade before I returned to an American car.

American companies dominated the automobile industry for decades.  But then because the car companies were not listening to the consumer, or because they took the consumer for granted, or because build quality and/or gas mileage did not satisfy the consumer, or because the cost structure of building an American car was no longer competitive, the market for American cars disappeared.

American higher education is still the best in the world.  We deliver quality education on a large scale to a broad range of our college age population as well as or better than anyone.  But just as our dominance of the automobile industry eroded to a mere shadow we should not take for granted that our dominance of higher education will continue.  We have a series of challenges ranging from the increasing importance of distance learning, to the increasing impact of for-profit higher education, to the cost of higher education, to the lack of full appreciation regarding the importance of higher education to our society.  We also face the challenge of increasing foreign competition in the years ahead both for international students as well as our own students.  We need to formulate comprehensive responses to the issues that are confronting us.  And assuming we will always be fine, since it always has been fine, will prepare us as well as GM, Ford, and Chrysler were prepared for their competitive world.

Monday, October 25, 2010

You Never Know Who’s Looking Over Your Shoulder

Recently I attended a lecture where the audience included a significant number of high school students.  One of our most gifted teachers was lecturing and I was sitting in the audience directly behind a row of high school students, many of whom had brought their laptops to the lecture to take notes. I appreciated how conscientious they were.
Now, before I continue to talk about this experience, I want to go back to last week’s blog where I wrote about the advantages that classroom technology, including smart boards, can bring to the learning process.  I am clearly an advocate and as an educator and an economist, I understand what can now be easily done in the classroom that could not be done before.
At this lecture, the technology was not being used by the speaker though the teacher effectively introduced some drama into the presentation which did help highlight the points being made. Rather, at this lecture, the technology was being used by the students.  The student in front of me was especially facile with technology.  She was taking notes, responding to emails, using instant messaging and shopping on-line almost simultaneously.  At least two screens were always visible on her laptop and the shopping screen appeared on a frequent basis.  I am certain that there are some individuals who can undertake all four of these endeavors simultaneously and perform them flawlessly but I am also certain the number of such individuals is minuscule.  What is inevitably lost for almost anyone attempting this level of simultaneous multi-tasking is detail, context, and nuances.  In shopping and in doing emails, this may or may not be a problem.  But in the learning process, in listening to an important lecture, not paying attention results in sound bites rather than a fully textured educational experience.  Text messaging, social media and even, to an extent, email all promote sound bite questions and answers at the expense of completeness and perhaps to some extent accuracy.
Use of technology on the part of some students can also undermine academic integrity.  Cell phones, computers, the Internet have all made possible more sophisticated forms of cheating and all of us have to be more vigilant in making sure such cheating is prevented and, if it does take place, dealt with firmly (but within an educational as well as punitive context).  Technology also facilitates the invasion of privacy as the tragic death of Rutgers’ student Tyler Clementi makes clear to us.  Here too, we need to be more vigilant to make sure that technology is not used to undermine the respect, tolerance and civility we should have for each other.
We know that students benefit greatly from the use of technology.  Some of the benefits are more mundane, such as word processing; others, such as analytical tools and access to information, allow for vastly high quality student work.  But with the privileges that technology provides comes the responsibility to use the technology wisely and well.  All of us in higher education have a lot of work to do with our students to make that happen.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

K-12 Education Leads the Technological Way

My kids are in 4th grade and in 7th grade.  Two week ago we had “meet the teacher night” for the 4th grader and last week we had “meet the teacher night” for the 7th grader.  For the 4th grader, her education is centered around one teacher.  For the 7th grader, the day has nine separate periods—one is for lunch; the remaining 8, for 7 subjects since English has a double period of time.  For my middle school daughter, I followed her exact schedule, except each of the classes was substantially abbreviated.  What all the classes had in common (except for physical education), both in elementary school and in middle school, was that the teachers made extensive use of the smartboards in their room.  And this use was not just made to impress the parents; I know from my kids that the smartboard is utilized throughout their time in school.

My kids are both good athletes.  But when they are not involved in sports and when they have discretionary time, they are very into TV, the computer, the IPOD, the Wii, the DS etc.  They are very stimulated by technology, much more so than I was when I was growing up.  Of course, when I was young there were only seven TV channels, and when additional channels and the VCR arrived, those were considered major technological breakthroughs.

The norm in a college or university is not to have a smartboard in every classroom.  They tend to be available in the larger classrooms and less so in the smaller classrooms.  Is this lack of universal availability a plus or is it a minus?  I would not advocate for a smartboard in seminar rooms.  The interaction you are looking for in a seminar could be undercut by a smartboard which might be a distraction in this setting.  But what about the many regular classes that have between 25 and 50 students?  The visual display, the access to information, the ability to make the class notes available electronically (so that a student could just listen and watch and not have to take notes at the same time) are all tremendously appealing.  I know that an economics course could come more alive via a smartboard and I believe the same is true for other disciplines.

I am not looking for students to be addicted to a smartboard because in many real world setting, the boards will not be there.  On the other hand, more and more students are used to learning this way and it may be a more effective way to transmit knowledge and stimulate thinking. We need to test this hypothesis.  In addition, and this is simply a perception that may not at all be grounded in reality:  given that most colleges and universities have less technology in typical classrooms, does it give a sense to students and their families that in some ways this is not “higher” education. Is there a technology gap between many goods K- 12 schools and many good colleges and universities?

I am not ready to advocate for smartboards in every classroom but just as higher education looked carefully at the issue of requiring students to buy laptops and bring them to class, we should just as carefully study the smartboard issue.  We clearly have smart faculty and smart students: would a smartboard requirement make the picture complete?

Monday, October 11, 2010

Headline News

The Sunday September 26, 2010 edition of Newsday had the following front page headline, “ L[ong] I[sland] Colleges Change Course - Major Push for Jobs - How Schools Have Reshaped their Mission.”  This headline which covered the entire first page also had a background of a graduation cap and tassel.  The focus of the article was how colleges “have been shaking up curricula, adding job-friendly courses and majors- all meant to ensure that graduates don’t end up jobless….”  The subtext of the article, summarized well in a quote from a local college administrator, was the determination “to provide a relevant education to all students,” which certainly suggests what has been happening up to now has not been relevant.

We all want our graduates to end up with the jobs of their choice but have we been the cause of joblessness among college graduates because of a lack of relevancy?  I don’t think so.  I spent most of the 1980’s serving as the Dean of Hofstra’s Business School and I also spent a year serving as Interim Dean of the Hofstra School of Education.  In business and in education, we had a whole array of programs that were relevant and designed to help students successfully prepare for careers ranging from accounting to marketing; from administration to teaching.  We have even more such programs today. In the arts and sciences, the majors were equally relevant then and today, including areas such as computer science, communication, engineering, math, music, and writing/English.  My major was economics which prepared you well not only for graduate school but also for careers in finance and business in general. We can certainly do more but is the relevance of our education the real issue?

Higher education is not and should not be focused only on a first job but on a lifetime. We strive to educate critical thinkers.  Remember, even those majors considered most “relevant” may not be the area where our graduates ultimately end up working.  Critical thinking, therefore, is key in adjusting  to changes, including a changing world. We also strive to educate an informed public.  We strive to continuously strengthen the foundations of our society.  We strive to promote understanding and respect.  Is that not relevant?

If you are constrained by an economy struggling to recover from a major recession and having trouble doing so, job opportunities will be a real issue.  As the economy recovers, and we know this won’t be immediate, job opportunities will increase accordingly. We all have a responsibility to continuously enhance the education we provide and we can certainly do much more.  But what is most relevant for our overall jobs picture is the economy and the need for further economic stimulation.  As we look to be relevant, we shouldn’t underestimate the relevance of our national leaders in resolving a difficult situation.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Civil Engineering Yes; Tea No

Though it is difficult to demonstrate, even in the era of outcomes assessment, we all strive to provide an education that enhances integrity, civility, and compassion.  For years, many of us have emphasized that increased education makes us better parents, citizens, and voters.  And yet, today’s environment in the United States seems to be moving us in the opposite direction.   We appear to be less enlightened and less civil.  A mosque and community center near ground zero is challenged because the sins of a few radicals have been used to try and tarnish an entire faith. Health care access and reform becomes a political football rather than a mandate. Support for the poor gets tied to preserving tax breaks for the wealthy.  Washington is awash in deficits while states and localities collapse under the weight of decades of bad judgment.  And overall, politicians all too often look to blame rather than reform, to criticize rather than to cure.   Where are these benefits of education when we need them most?

Our economy is not doing well. Though the decline seems to have halted, the recovery lacks the momentum necessary to ignite a robust recovery.  How can this be?  Why aren’t we moving rapidly toward full employment and prosperity?  We are so used to fast response times in everything we do.  Snail mail is becoming a reminder of a world that was, rather than a powerful tool for promoting commerce and communication.  In its place, we find email, text messaging, social media and tweeting.  Regardless of what we now utilize, we are looking for a fast turnaround time.  When I started teaching, faculty had office hours two or three days a week at set times.   If students missed the office hours on a certain day, they would come back a day or two later.  And sometimes, given the delay in meeting together, with some study time, questions found answers and there was no longer the need to utilize office hours.  But office hours are no longer the communications method of choice.  Instead email or some variation has taken its place together with an accompanying expectation of a fast response.

Accessing information often also took substantial time. As an economist, I would often visit the government documents room and access the data there and work on it subsequently at home or in my office.  Now though the government documents room is located in the same building and same floor as my office, I never utilize these paper resources.  Instead I access government documents on line.  Not only is the process easier and faster but there is more information readily available in more formats.  No more paper for me.  I welcome the instant access and use it often.

But instant communication and instant access to information should not be confused with problem solving.  Nor should the questions and problems we need to answer for an exam or a term project be confused with real world problem solving.  There is much that we can access and or resolve instantly, but solutions to complex problems don’t lend themselves to quick solutions.  Turning around a weakened economy takes time. Unfortunately, the prevailing response from our leaders and the public often seems to be an escalation of the rhetoric and a hardening of positions.  At my most optimistic, I believe the generation we are educating now or have recently educated, will not follow this pattern.  Instead I like to believe that this is a holdover from the education that previous generations received.  Time and outcomes assessment will certainly tell if our civil engineering works.   In the meantime, however, given the present political connotations no one should be surprised that tea is no longer my drink of choice.

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Calendar

Most colleges and universities are on the two semester system – a fall and spring semester plus various sessions in January and in the summer.  When these semesters start, end, and have breaks is much less consistent.  And especially when the calendar is tied to religious holidays, you are subject to great variation.

Last spring for example, both Easter and Passover were late.  Consequently schools using the religious holidays as an anchor for scheduling spring break had a break very close to final examinations.   Losing momentum in a class just before final exam doesn’t serve the needs of students or  faculty.  It is in the middle of  the spring semester  (just before the winter weather moderates) that a break may be most  beneficial.

This fall, with the Jewish holidays almost immediately following Labor Day, many institutions had just a few days of classes before there was a significant break.  Taken to an extreme, in the New York City public school system, classes began the Wednesday after Labor Day and then immediately there was a break until the next Monday.  A one day start followed by an immediate two day stop is disconcerting for students, teachers, and parents.  Did education actually take place during that day?

For institutions with a faith based orientation, a calendar reflective of that orientation makes sense.  For the rest of us, given that we are enrolling an ever more diverse student body being taught by an ever more diverse faculty, we should carefully review the calendar.  We need to respect all the faiths and traditions you find on a University campus.  If a student or a faculty member cannot come to class because of a religious holiday, there need to be alternatives.  A person’s faith should not have to be compromised.  However that does not mean that the calendar needs to be constructed  canceling  classes during those holidays.  To the extent possible the calendar should be constructed in support of the education we provide and those breaks that are scheduled in a semester should be scheduled when a break makes the most sense.

Monday, September 20, 2010

Mentoring

Earlier today, a dean came to see me regarding the future of a faculty member. This faculty member came to Hofstra with outstanding graduate school credentials and is an outstanding teacher.  This person also has a much sought after area of specialty and has been very active in University service.  At this point in time, the faculty member is getting ready to stand for tenure and the dean voiced a concern that the faculty member did not yet have sufficient scholarship to stand successfully.  At the end of the day, the standards for tenure are the standards for tenure.  If at the conclusion of the tenure probationary period, the faculty member’s record in scholarship doesn’t meet the approved standards, the person should not and will not stand successfully.  This is especially clear since these criteria originated with the tenured faculty in the department involved.  But how does an untenured faculty member who is outstanding in teaching and service end up in a position like this?


There can be any number of reasons but one often stands out—a lack of mentoring.  Untenured faculty need systematic periodic feedback and higher education usually does that well: annual evaluations, reappointments, all provide (hopefully comprehensive) feedback on a regular basis.  But the feedback alone is a necessary but often not sufficient condition to assure a successful tenure candidacy.  Mentoring can make a enormous difference.  The human element—taking the time and effort to work closely with untenured faculty—is critical so there is not only regular structured feedback but also continuous informal feedback and support.  For example, a mentor with experience and a track record in research is in a position to co-author an article or book with the untenured faculty member.  In this way the person’s initial efforts to be published are supported and facilitated.  In other cases, having a mentor read your work before submission serves as a valuable review which can ultimately increase your chances of having an article accepted.  Even advice on which journals to submit to is another valuable mentor service.

Shouldn’t the chair carry out the mentor function for all tenure track faculty in that department.  There are good arguments on both sides of the issue.  A chair, in her or his role as a department leader, should view mentoring as part of the job.  It is not unreasonable to assume that for any chair, support of the department faculty has to be a top priority.  Some chairs do this very well; others rarely do it.  And it can’t work without there being a proper chemistry between the individuals.  But some tenure track faculty believe—rightly or wrongly—that having a chair as their mentor places them in  the awkward position of talking through issues and concerns with the person in the organization that will be making a pivotal judgment on their reappointment or their tenure or their promotion.  Can a chair be a source of both formal and informal feedback? Being candid with such a person raises the worry that the information you share will ultimately be used against you; usually not the case but there are no guarantees.
All departments should develop a formal mentoring process from the day that the person starts through the time the person stands (hopefully) successfully for tenure.  The process should start with and focus on the chair but there also need to be alternatives that involve senior faculty members in the department collectively (with the chair) making sure every tenure track faculty member is continuously mentored and supported. 
Many chairs and many faculty will tell you that mentoring takes places so that there is no need for another formal policy.  It does take place but this safety net isn’t always in place across the board and consequently good tenure candidates could be lost in the process.  We can do a better job for these candidates which ultimately means we are doing a better job for the department school or university involved.  We are also then treating tenure candidates the way we would want to be treated.

Monday, September 13, 2010

Park is Not Neutral

Parking on a University campus is always a passionate issue.  In many cases, the issue is the number of spots; in other cases it is the quality of spots.  There is a magnetic attraction—for faculty, students, staff and administration—to a parking spot adjacent to the building that one will be in.  And there is a priority order in place at many colleges and universities regarding who can park where.  Often, even on campuses where there are enough spots, there is a broad base support for construction of a multi-story parking garage so that more people can park more closely to the center of a campus.  My feeling has always been that parking matters but that faculty lines, classrooms, labs, instructional equipment, data bases should be accorded a higher priority. In fair weather, there is broad acceptance of this order of priorities.

On some campuses (as is the case in some cities), there is a protocol to parking.  Certain spots are reserved for compact cars, or hybrid cars, and in certain lots you are told to always park nose in and occasionally, you are told to back into a spot and park nose out.  I am a nose out person whether it is required or not.  In fact, unless it is forbidden to park nose in, I will always park nose out.  I just think it is safer to back into a spot than it is to back out of a spot.  A number of years ago, in an earlier decade, a senior manager articulated his philosophy of parking at a meeting with all those individuals who reported directly to him.  If you park nose in, you are anxious to get to work; and if you park nose out you are anxious to go home.

To this day, I don’t know if the manager who made these comments was serious or was kidding.  However, I can tell you, I decided to conclude that the person was pulling our legs (or our tires).  For me to come to a different conclusion, would also have required a psychological judgment.  As an economist, I strive not to make judgments of that type.  The effect, however, of the parking pronouncement was stunning.  The next morning in the parking lot that I parked in, where previously about one-third of the cars had parked nose out, there was only one car parked nose out, and that was mine.  Unbelievable!

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been that surprised.  There is an important lesson for all of us in this true nose in/nose out story.  Senior management in education, in government, in industry, has very considerable power and influence.  The power to change parking direction is just one small example.  In exercising that power, we should always take the steps necessary to make sure we exercise our power and use our influence as wisely as possible.

Monday, August 30, 2010

The End of Summer Sessions and the End of Summer Sessions

We are wrapping up the third summer session on campus.  We have three summer sessions and we also have a very active and heavily enrolled day camp which helps utilize our facilities during a time when there are fewer students on campus.  In addition to there being fewer students there are also fewer faculty, and summer classes which are typically held early in the day or in the evening tend to leave afternoons free of classes and also unfortunately free of faculty and students on campus.  Yes, there are certainly some faculty on campus in the afternoons and there are some students as well, but the environment lacks the intensity and dynamism present during the fall and spring semesters.  Most student clubs are dormant, few speakers visit the campus; governance slows down and a campus has a very different feel.  In the early weeks of the summer I welcome this tempo since it allows me to both catch up and also provides time to write personnel recommendations for tenure and promotion.  As the summer progresses, I more and more miss the faculty and the students.  I miss the collegiality and the collaboration and I am anxious for the fall semester to begin.  There is no life to a campus without the continuous presence of faculty and students.

The history of summer sessions going back to when I was an undergraduate always had classes clustered in the morning or in the evening.  Two reasons for this split scheduling.  Originally, when classrooms were not air-conditioned, holding classes either early or late helped assure that classes were not held when temperatures and  classrooms were at their hottest.  Second many students worked during the summer and others wanted to take advantage of the beach and other recreational activities.  Holding classes in the evening and the morning allowed students to combine work/recreation with furtherance of their education at off times.  But the winds of change are descending on summer sessions for just the reasons listed above—work and recreation – and these winds will remove more students and faculty from campuses during the summer.

There is no substitute for the fall and spring semesters educational experiences for our undergraduates.  Distance learning will always be a second best alternative during these time periods and the overwhelming majority of undergraduates and faculty will demonstrate with their presence the value and the popularity of this experience.  The summer, however, is very different.  I may be trying to accelerate my education or I may be trying to catch up but most likely I am doing this in addition to working or just relaxing and having a good time.  If I can take these credits via distance learning, it will be attractive – and more and more the norm – for me to do so.  I believe we are entering the twilight of summer sessions.  In not too many years, we will end a summer session and it will also be the end of summer sessions as we know them.  On some level this is progress—education will be a better fit with a student’s needs.  When this happens, a campus in June, July, and August will make today’s summertime campus look like a hotbed of activity by comparison.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Transparent

I have been spending the last few days reviewing my tenure and promotion recommendations to the President.  Each tenure and promotion candidacy has a file that has multiple recommendations, starting at the department level after the candidate has presented his or her tenure/promotion portfolio.  Once that portfolio is prepared and submitted, the candidacy is reviewed and a recommendation is provided by the department chair, and the Ad Hoc Tenure Committee or the Promotion Committee.  The process continues at the college or school/division level with another faculty review followed by a dean’s review.  After that review, if there are disagreements, the candidacy is referred to a University Appeals Board followed by my review, the president’s review and action by the Board of Trustees.  Copies of the substantial recommendations are always given to the candidate and the candidate is always given an opportunity to respond.  So far the transparency is clear.

However, for the process to work well expectations also need to be transparent and known from the point in time that the candidate first joined the University or first considered submitting for promotion. And here we are also doing well—the standard of teaching excellence and how we measure that excellence is well known and well established.  In regard to scholarship, we have reached the point where each department has clearly stated the qualifications (e.g., expectations in terms of number and quality of journal articles/books/presentations/grants/performances) for tenure and promotion.  The one area where there is still some ambiguity is service.  We want every faculty member to be involved and recognize that for a college or university to move forward, there needs to be a culture of faculty service.  However we have not spelled out specific service expectations in detail  but everyone recognizes that the service has to be significant.

What helps further minimize this ambiguity is the annual evaluation of every full-time faculty member (other than first year faculty members), which asks every faculty member to memorialize in detail what the person has done the previous year and then provides an opportunity for a chair and dean to comment.  If the faculty member is in disagreement with any of those comments, the person can add comments to the record.  We also have for untenured faculty regular reappointments which provide extensive feedback.  Therefore, not only is there a comprehensive tenure and promotion review process, but there are frequent (at least annual) reviews that serve as an important barometer of progress and lack of progress.  And there are clear expectations of what a person is expected to do.

The bottom line, which is inherent in transparency, is that there should be no surprises.  And we have come a long, long way in making this a reality that is fair to all concerned.  Higher education isn’t perfect in this regard but overall we are doing well. If you go back to when I started in higher education, there was a very different culture – little transparency, few expectations clearly stated, and a much greater ability to adjust the “standards” to fit whether you liked or did not like the person being judged.  Years ago, in going through some old files in the Provost’s office, I came across a personnel recommendation from a senior administrator that simply stated “Good guy.  Should be tenured.’’  We can all take pride in the progress we have made.  More work remains to be done but the commitment  in the higher education community is strongly in support of clear standards,  a transparent process, continuous feedback: all adding up as it should, to a fair chance to succeed.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Tabletop

Hurricane Katrina helped convince much of higher education that there is a tremendous need for emergency planning.  And many of us developed sophisticated plans to do what we need to do if an emergency strikes—resume full operation or get as close to that as possible, and do it in the least possible time.  But what has happened to those plans since then and how prepared are we?

Earlier this week the Provost’s Office, working with the University’s emergency preparedness person, undertook a tabletop (simulation) exercise to see how well our plans would work in the case of a severe (at least category 3) hurricane.  Overall, the plans were solid, but there were clearly lapses even though most were very minor.  For example, there had been some personnel changes but our notification information was not updated accordingly. Clearly, this would not have been a significant issue since all of us were aware of the changes and knew how to quickly contact anyone involved in the office.  But as we need to contact faculty, students, administration and staff, issues like this clearly magnify many fold.  How often do we proactively reach out to all the campus constituencies to make sure our contact information across the board is as accurate as it needs to be.  Likely not often enough.

Last year, when we were developing contingency plans for the possible flu pandemic, we reached out to all faculty to provide information on the tools provided by BlackBoard to help a class continue to meet if on -campus meetings were not possible.  But emergencies can be less or more predictable depending on the type of emergency and we should  regularly update the faculty on all the features of whatever classroom management system we use.

In the course of our discussion, we talked at length about how we would do all we can, remotely if need be,  to maintain the academic functioning of the University in a serious emergency.   Two areas where we spent considerable time were grant applications and payroll.  For grant applications, we cannot—especially if the emergency is very local in nature—assume that grant deadlines will automatically be extended.  For payroll, if an emergency comes at the beginning of a semester, it is not likely that every faculty member’s (or every employee’s), especially every adjunct faculty member ‘s, paperwork is already fully processed  on our payroll system and yet it needs to be a priority to get everyone paid in a timely manner.  At this point the discussion was going well and we seemed to have everything under control in terms of what needed to be done until… the lights went out.  When the simulation included the loss of electricity (which could be a very local problem or a regional problem) we were not fully prepared.  Our laptops might be fully charged but what happens after a few hours? Or what if internet service was down...how would we connect to this communication’s lifeline.  In the first case of the battery running low, the fix was easy.  If we all had car chargers, we could charge the computer batteries by using our cars. The loss of internet service was more difficult but could still be resolved with an aircard.  What matters most is that our simulation forced us to confront difficult issues and work through the resolution of key problems.

No one is looking for a serious emergency to happen.  On the other hand, ignoring the possibility of an emergency make us much more vulnerable.  We should all make sure our plans are as up to date as possible and regular tabletop simulations should for all of us be standard operating procedure.

Monday, August 9, 2010

3D Education

Within the last two weeks, I have taken my older daughter to see Eclipse in IMAX as well as Toy Story 3, Despicable Me, and The Last Airbender all in 3D.  You haven’t “lived” until you have seen vampires and werewolves in IMAX, and 3D makes animation more fun and people and events more real.  Having first seen Avatar in 2D and then subsequently in 3D, the difference for me is very much worth the difference in price.  And yet, of the five films I have mentioned above, 2 were excellent, two were good, and one was fair.  IMAX and 3D enhance but can’t overcome a weak story line.

Both my daughters now expect that, if we see a movie, we will look for the 3D version.  They have already looked at a demonstration of 3D TV and asked that we make this a priority purchase. My wife and I have responded in 3D that we are sticking with 2D TV for the foreseeable future. Technology has given my kids a very different growing up experience than I had.  On a car trip, in my youth, you would look to see how many different state license plates you could spot or you would sing songs or you would read. I list reading last here for a reason—reading would lead to car sickness for me which would lead to ….. .   Singing and license plates wouldn’t really carry the day for a long car trip and were supplemented by “how much longer until we get there” being asked more and more frequently.  Now, for any car trip over 2 hours, we take along the DS, the DVD player as well as the always present IPODs.  Yes, we also take along books, but on car rides this is hardly the first choice (and both my kids enjoy reading).  However, as the technology has increased, the complaining has decreased.  Another clear benefit of technology. On a recent “non-stop” ride back from Niagara Falls of over 600 miles and about nine hours, there were no complaints heard (except from the grownups).

We all know that technology has changed our lives but for many of us and especially our kids, technology has also changed our expectations and our patience level.  We expect more, and most certainly, we expect to be more entertained. And if the entertainment and the technological sizzle aren’t there, there is a real risk of being turned off by what we are looking at and/or doing.

In education, we constantly strive to harness the benefits of technology to enhance the quality of education.  Vastly more accessible and robust sources of information are clear examples of technology’s crucial benefits.  But reading, writing, thinking, reacting, and assimilating are critical on-going building blocks of a good education that are not fundamentally tied to technology.  But they are tied to patience so that learning has the time and the concentration to happen all through a person’s formal education and life. This is not an easy lesson but we all need to remember that if “let me entertain you” becomes our highest priority, we may have stripped away the essence of good education.

Monday, August 2, 2010

Essays That Lie

I was very pleased to read the recent news article in Inside Higher Education describing the new essay service that has been made available by Turnitin.com to uncover plagiarism in admissions essays. The article presented some compelling statistics for utilizing this service including that “36 percent [of the 450,000 admissions essays scrutinized] had enough in the way of ‘significant matching text’ to make it reasonable to suspect plagiarism or the use of purchased essays.”  I am clearly pleased that we will have a new tool in the fight against plagiarism.  Academic dishonesty should always result in serious consequences and imposing consequences can only happen if there is knowledge of what transpired.

But does this go far enough?  A number of years ago, a friend was talking to me about his son.  The son was in the process of applying to the top five national graduate programs/ schools in his subject area.  This friend talked about his son’s GPA, and his score on the standardized test and both were very impressive.  The dad also talked about his son’s essay which he felt was also very compelling.  The essay outlined a series of activities undertaken by the son to help economically disadvantaged youth.  I commented to the dad that I was enormously impressed by both the quality and quantity of the son’s community engagement.  The dad’s response, which surprised me, was that he wasn’t sure that his son had done all that was claimed but that the essay was nevertheless very compelling.  I very quickly responded that I have zero respect for someone who takes credit for important work that the person never actually did.  And the friend responded just as quickly that his son had done all the work claimed.

Did he actually do the work?  I accepted what the friend said but I’m not sure I believe it. And the reality is that we often have no basis to conclude whether an admissions bio or an admissions essay is true or is not true.  But we would be very safe in assuming that both alternatives are well represented in the typical pool of admissions essays.  Therefore, even if we can spot plagiarism, we may not have made the overall progress we need to make if major league lying is not detected.  What should we do?  Rethink the admissions essay and be careful that what we ask can help limit puffery.  But if a potential student talks about service or accomplishments and if this service or these accomplishments can make a difference in terms of the admissions decision, the student should be asked to include a reference from a person familiar with this aspect of the student’s accomplishments.  We should give credit where credit is due for a student’s accomplishments.  And we should do all we can to make sure that credit is not given and a penalty is imposed, if the reality is that there is no reality in what the student is claiming.

Monday, July 26, 2010

A Very Private Office

After I completed my PhD and accepted my first tenure track full-time teaching appointment, I was assigned a faculty office that I shared with three other full-time faculty.  I was on campus usually four days a week but I hated the office even though I liked my office mates.  Trying to talk with students and trying to grade exams, or trying to do research was seriously and negatively impacted.  It is impossible to talk to students about their future plans and ambitions, about courses they needed to meet requirements and graduate, and about economics.  Often I would just leave the office and do research in the library, and talk with students at a remote table in the cafeteria.  My situation was not unique in those days.  Many faculty shared offices with the same ramifications as I experienced.

Fast forward to today.  Every full-time faculty member at Hofstra has his or her own office and once again this is not a unique situation.  The facilities provided for faculty have been enhanced with the realization that a private office is a good investment.  The more comfortable a faculty member is on campus when having meetings with students and when doing research, it should follow that the faculty member spends more time on campus.  In turn the campus becomes more attractive to students with the easy accessibility to faculty. And for many years this relationship worked as predicted.

But the world has changed.  First of all communication is very different than when many of us went to school and very different from the way it was when we started working in higher education.  When I started teaching, a student would always be able to see me if they came during my regular office hours.  Typically, this was 4 hours per week.  Student could also make appointments to see me or any other faculty member; if the regular office hours didn’t work for a student or students, alternatives could usually always be found. Notes could be left in the department mailbox and a phone call to the office was also a possibility. Today, email, text messaging, Blackboard as well as other classroom management tools, provide a much faster and more convenient way of increased student/faculty communication (but you do lose the in-person contact).   In addition, the campus library, which often was key to a faculty member’s research or to a student’s education, has also felt the impact of technology.  As a starting faculty member, I often spent time in the Government Documents Room studying economic data and trends.  All the information is now available on-line with many more analytical options. 

Furthermore, many faculty look for a teaching schedule with fewer days per week on campus and often faculty live further away from the campus.  And students often have part-time jobs and some are looking for an earlier start and a later finish to the weekends which also leads to a more compact class schedule. For faculty the end result is less time on campus and less time in their private office.  Often an office is not occupied for extensive periods of time during the academic year.  Faculty need and deserve first rate office space.  But presently we are not using resources in the most efficient way possible. It’s time for a new model of space utilization.

Monday, July 19, 2010

The Neighborhood Effect

All of us have heard that the key bottom line in real estate is location, location, location.  The value of property, be it residential or commercial, is directly tied to the neighborhood and what positives or negatives are contained therein. How good is transportation and access; how good are the schools; how low is the crime rate; and what is the proximity to major attractions and critical needs.  Do we have a water view or a strip mall view; it all enters into the equation.

For a college or university, location presently has two major dimensions.  Why presently?  The world is clearly changing.  Students especially at the graduate level and especially also for part-time programs will, in the years ahead, no longer be attending class the way that we were educated or the way that we have taught most of our careers.  On-campus programs (once again, especially part-time and graduate programs) will gravitate to distance learning, most likely the blended variety.  On the undergraduate level, however, the campus experience remains crucial and the location factors are real assets or real concerns.

Going back to location - the first aspect of location is the neighborhood, the college or university is located in.  Is the school in an urban setting, in a suburban setting, in a rural setting? All have their advantages and all have their disadvantages and potential students and their families have feelings and concerns triggered by these settings.  We all know of schools that are located in “college towns” where the ambiance of the town directly enhances both the college experience and the attractiveness of the school or schools located there. Location as an absolute clearly makes a difference.

But there is another aspect to location and that is relative location, where you live in relation to the college or university that you are considering.  For a commuter campus, this aspect is direct and uncomplicated.  If you don’t live within a reasonable commute to the college or university involved, you will not be attending this school.  But what if the college or university nearby is significantly residential and what if you want to “go away” to school?  What happens then and what is the impact?  This is a much more complicated situation.  Potential students and their families often discount a very good college or university because it is too close.  Some students and their families feel that if the college or university is with an easy commute, it really can’t be a going away experience. And I have even encountered students and parents over the years who value going away to such a degree that distance away takes on a higher value than the quality of education provided.  Clearly somewhat flawed judgment. A good college or university educational and co-curricular experience is fundamentally different from high school.  And a university that attracts student from a majority of states and a significant number of different countries provides an environment that is very different from the neighborhood.  It really is a different world. Overall, location does matter but distance is mostly a state of mind.

Monday, July 12, 2010

When New is New

All of us are used to reading ads and seeing commercials for products and services that are characterized as “brand new” or “totally new.”  And the reality often is that these products and services aren’t really new but they aren’t really “old” either.  What they are, and there isn’t anything wrong with this, reflects evolutionary changes.  We know change is a continuum and that over time these evolutionary changes can be an effective vehicle for significant change and enhancement.

Evolutionary change often reflects constraints that make complete or total change (to something totally new) not possible.  On the product level, even if a car looks like it is totally new, the high cost of product development may dictate that the engine, the transmission, and much of what you don’t see is a carryover.  Or at times, much of what you see is unchanged or slightly changed but sometimes with (and sometimes without) new mechanicals; nevertheless, the car is promoted as “the all new” 2010 or 2011.  New is clearly relative.

In education, new is also grounded in constraints.  Programs and majors (and organization frameworks) change and evolve but often the pace is measured and sometimes it is glacial.  A measured pace makes sense to me.  Collegiality is best served by a full airing of the issues.  Glacial, though a comforting thought when the temperature outside is approaching 90, is not a productive approach for change.  A number of years ago, when a unit was unable after years of trying to pass by-laws, I involved the Provost’s office in continuous negotiations with all the different factions until the by-laws (and a framework for shared governance) were a reality.  Do we really need the Provost’s Office involved?  Certainly all the faculty members involved were intelligent and had a commitment to the University. But for some reason there was a long-term inability and unwillingness to talk through and compromise on what were minor differences.

 Tenure, for all its positives, is also a constraint.  As needs change in different areas and programs, the ability to respond to those changes is sometimes limited by a workforce that brings tremendous strengths to one area but doesn’t have the expertise in another area.  Having a structure that includes untenured faculty as well as adjunct faculty helps you maintain needed flexibility.

I have had the pleasure over the years of being in a lead role for the establishment of two new schools on the Hofstra campus (the School of Communication and Honors College) as well as numerous programs and other initiatives.  In virtually every case, “new” was built on an existing framework and existing constraints. I think the end results were excellent and moved the University forward but the magnitude of change had to be limited by the reality of constraints.

Just now, on the Hofstra campus, another new school has been formed.  The Hofstra University School of Medicine in partnership with the North Shore/LIJ Health System has received preliminary accreditation and will bring in its first class for the fall 2011 semester.  The School began with a broad vision from Hofstra’s President, and that vision was translated into reality by a Dean and his team.  This team designed an innovative curriculum that was much more integrated and patient centered and brought in those individuals that fit best with that vision. The end result is a new vision of medical education that would have been virtually impossible to implement at an existing school.  Yes, cost is still a constraint (as it is in everything we do) but the magnitude of change and progress at this new school is stunning.

The new medical school is an exception; virtually all change is evolutionary.  But we should all make a commitment, within the constraints we operate under, to make as much meaningful progress as we can.  Glacial for the sake of glacial just has a chilling effect on a college or university campus.

Monday, June 28, 2010

A Grating Exam

Anytime a semester ends, there are always multiple conversations about final examinations.  And final exams come in all sizes and shapes.  Not surprising, faculty focus their attention on the quality of the student work be it in response to short or multiple choice questions or in response to essay or term paper assignments.  Students tend to talk about whether an exam was “fair”: in other words did it cover the materials that the students were responsible for.  After that, the students tend to focus on whether the exam was clear or confusing and whether it was easy or hard.  Certainly there are extremes in all these categories but for the most part, faculty view the students’ work to be reasonable and responsible and students view the examination to also be reasonable and responsible.

A few weeks ago, I received a call from a friend who is also dean of a professional school.  Quickly the conversation evolved into a discussion of final examinations.  But this conversation was very different.  Normally as noted above, discussions regarding a final examination tend to focus more on the quality of the students work, and the fairness of the exam.  But this dean was focused not just on fairness but rather on exam appropriateness.  The dean’s point was that a faculty member had given an “F” exam, one which did not in any way cover the key points of the course.  On this exam, according to the dean, the student could receive a 100% and you would still not have any concrete notion as to whether the student did or did not understand the critical course material or did or did not achieve the course learning goals.

In higher education, for the most part, exam development is the purview of the faculty member teaching the course.  Exams are sometimes (but only sometimes) included in the teaching portfolios presented by candidates for reappointment, tenure, and promotion.  Exams are sometimes created by groups of faculty where there are multiple sections of a course and a common final exam.  But these examples account for a minority of all the exams given.  Mostly likely the faculty member develops, administers, and grades the exam.  Overall this system works well, but we also know for certain that it doesn’t work perfectly.  And just as there are brilliant exams developed on a regular basis, there are also very flawed exams developed as well.

Outcomes assessment and using exams in part to determine whether learning goals have been accomplished should help minimize the flawed exam problem.  But this is not enough.  Many department chairs and deans review grade rosters on a regular basis.  If there is something out of the ordinary (grades seem extraordinarily high or low), the department chair typically just asks the faculty member.  Chairs and deans need to follow the same procedures with final exams (and perhaps exams in general).  We all recognize that chair and faculty classroom observations are a tried and true method of enhancing a faculty member‘s teaching excellence.  The same type of support can also be invaluable in facilitating the most meaningful examinations possible.  All of us want more “A” students; we should also make sure there are “A” examinations for our students.

Monday, June 21, 2010

And the Winner is…

On almost every college or university campus, there are various awards given out on a regular basis.  Most typical are awards for student achievement: academic, co-curricular, or community service are just three examples.  Also very common are awards for faculty, most likely based on the quality of teaching, or innovations in teaching, or the quality of research.  Teaching awards often are based on student input while innovation and research awards are based on faculty/administration input.  For me a “teacher of the year” award based on student input is particularly meaningful.  We are all here to, hopefully, provide an excellent education to our students and I remain convinced that excellence in teaching is a key ingredient in making that happen.

The teacher of the year award program we have at Hofstra is based on the votes of graduating students.  For a faculty member to be selected as teacher of the year  we look at the cumulative votes of these students over a three-year and a five-year time frame.  We have one award annually for each school or college and winning this award is considered a singular honor.  However, once the award has been won by a faculty member, that person is ineligible to again receive teacher of the year recognition.  A number of prior award recipients have questioned the fairness of being forever excluded from future consideration saying that there are many prestigious awards that have no such restriction.  And if you look at the Tony Awards, the Oscars, the Pulitzer Prize, and many other awards, it is certainly possible for a person to win major recognition more than once.

We are now discussing whether a faculty member can be eligible more than once.  On one hand, with 500 full-time faculty and many many outstanding faculty within that number, it makes sense, especially given the stature of this award, to maximize the number of different recipients.  On the other hand, it is testimony to the on-going teaching excellence of the faculty member if that person can win this award more than once.  It shows that year after year the faculty member involved is an inspiring teacher. And that the person involved can clearly stand the test of time with very tough competition.

Where do I stand?  First and foremost I remain convinced that excellence in teaching is a key determinant in maximizing the learning of our students.  And I do believe a person should be able to win more than once.  How often?  Difficult question—later rather than sooner; my preference is that a person be eligible to win no more than once a decade.

Monday, June 14, 2010

All Other Things Being Equal

From my earliest days as an economic major, almost at the same time as I was studying supply and demand, I learned the phrase ceteris paribus which translates into “all other things remaining the same” (or remaining equal).  Almost every concept in economics was learned by manipulating one variable so that you could measure the impact of that variable while other variables were kept constant.  Going back to supply and demand, you would gauge the demand for a product (be it a car or a coat or a croissant) by keeping the price and the preferences for all other products exactly the same.  In other words, what happens to the demand for a croissant (my preference would be for a chocolate croissant) if the price of a brownie, a chocolate chip cookie, and a smore stayed exactly the same.  Certainly a food for thought example of how economics works.  In most cases, the rule is simply as price declines, demand increases.  There are important distinctions even in a concept as basic as demand.  If you are describing the demand for a life-saving drug, the demand would remain exactly the same within a wide range of prices.  You need a drug to save your life; you need a certain dose to achieve that result; and likely you will pay whatever needs to be paid (within reason) to get that drug.  Or the opposite example, you want “take out” pizza for dinner and in most neighborhoods, there are many sources of pizza.  Assuming you feel that most of the pizza is equally good, a small increase in price (above the norm) (all other things being equal) could result in a huge decrease in demand for this particular pizza.

But what does this have to do with higher education besides the fact that pizza is always popular on a college campus.  Economic modeling is all the rage on many, many college and university campuses.  Typically this modeling is in the financial aid area and it is a leveraging model.  Given a student with a particular profile (SAT score and high school GPA), how much financial aid will it take for that student to register at a particular college or university.  More complex models adjust for whether the student is local or lives at a distance, or is attending a highly rated high school, or is interested in a particular major.  These models make use of regression analysis to predict the future based on patterns of the past and as an economist, I appreciate the information provided.  And the presentation of these models is often dazzling.  Instantly, as you change an assumption regarding the financial aid offer for a particular cohort, the model will change its prediction.  Not surprisingly more money yields more students (and much of the time more net tuition income) and less money yields less students (and often less net tuition income).

All of this is very impressive and can at times be amazingly accurate.  However, building a future scenario based on past performance while in a serious economic recession may require more than any such model can accurately provide.  If the foundation of the model is replicating to some extent the past, the validity of the model may not be there if the future varies significantly from the past.  We should all keep in mind that ceteris paribus foundation is most likely to fail just when we most need it to succeed.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Appreciating Memorial Day

In addition to having a long weekend, Memorial Day should be appreciated for its original meaning.  And during the actual day or during the weekend, we should all make time to remember, reflect and honor those who gave their lives to protect our country and our quality of life.

For many people, in higher education and in many other areas, the Friday before the Memorial Day weekend is an extra day added to the weekend. But for me, the day serves another vital function for which I am very appreciative.  It is the first catch-up day after the spring semester.  In higher education administration, meetings are a fact of life.  A University functions best in an environment of collegiality and collaboration.  This doesn’t happen without good continuous communication and meetings are a crucial facilitator of this good communication. External relations, which are also vital to a University, also require continuous communication and they typically also take place in formal or informal meetings.  Add to this the ever escalating number of emails, the new issues that arise on a regular basis, a mini-crisis now and then, and the day is complete and fully occupied.

I’m not complaining (and I enjoy my job) but in addition to needing time to  think through issues, there are always responsibilities that are part of virtually any position that need not be done in the moment but certainly need to be taken care of.  For thinking through issues, I recommend a combination of a very early start time in the office plus lap swimming.  Going back and forth in a pool is mindless and consequently for me the perfect opportunity to think without being interrupted.  But as we all know, different strokes for different folks.

Under necessary responsibilities, especially at this time of year, is going through all the materials on your desk, and organizing the materials.  What better day than that Friday to start going through the piles of paperwork.  Phone calls were at 25% of their normal level; emails were also at the 25% level and meetings were almost non-existent.  I might be lonely if I didn’t have all those papers and memos to keep me company. And by the end of the day, I’m pleased to note that there were patches of wood among the sea of white paper.

Working the Friday before Memorial Day works for me but it clearly doesn’t work for everyone. And everyone has to do what works best and makes the most sense for them.  Time, for all of us, is a scarce resource.  The balance of your job responsibilities so as to do all that needs to be done and the balance of work/personal life responsibilities are challenges we all confront.  And we should all realize there is room for improvement.

Monday, May 17, 2010

Tis the Season to be…Hardy

Commencement is one week away and the end of the semester activities are in full swing.  I presented my annual comprehensive report to the full faculty last Monday, the University’s major annual fundraising gala was last Thursday and before, after, and in between there were and are end of the semester gatherings covering virtually every area of the University from the Phi Beta Kappa induction ceremony to the Senior Athletes Recognition Dinner.  We even added a new event this month, a hunger banquet organized by student leaders to remind everyone that hunger is a major problem for one third of our planet.  And though I ended up choosing a card that determined my fate to be a low income table at the banquet ( with just rice and water ) this event stands out for me as one of the most effective ways of highlighting the plight of  many in our country and many,many more in many other countries.

Major college and university events are cyclical.  Whereas most classes are clustered in the fall and spring semesters, most major social events are clustered at the beginning of the fall and at the end of the spring semesters. With so many events at these times (especially in the spring) it is impossible to attend them all.  What should you do?  A number of years ago, late in the spring semester, I attended an event every night for 27 nights in a row.  By the end, it was just too many continuous events, and my appreciation of each and every event was clearly starting to fade.  It was just about at the three week point in time, when a senior faculty member in management approached me at one of the end of the semester functions and told me how fortunate he thought I was.  I had no reason not to agree with this faculty member but what was the basis for his comment?  When I asked, he responded immediately: he felt it was a privilege to have a job that entails attending a reception every night and he was sorry that he didn’t have a job like that.

It is a privilege to represent the University and I both enjoy the responsibility and I take it seriously.  But it is important to remember that the job is much more than public events.  And all facets of the job need to be addressed on a continuous basis.  Twenty seven nights in a row, in addition to a typical day and especially given a family with relatively young kids doesn’t fit with the balance in life that we all should strive for.  At the end of the day, we all need to remember that time is a scarce commodity.

My goal is to attend as many end of the semester events as possible and I know that the other senior administrators and the deans feel the same way.  And, we also strive to coordinate our attendance so that no major event is without sufficient senior administration representation.  It is important to be part of these major events for our students (especially our graduating students) and we are pleased to be in their company.  In addition, we work hard to provide University visibility in the community by attending many community events, which also tend to come in large numbers at this time of the year.  The bottom line is that we should do as much as we can, attend as many events as we can, and be there for our students.  But just as we stress balance for our students and the importance of a well rounded student, we also need to maintain that balance for ourselves.  And sometimes, regrettably, “all of the above” is not a choice we are able to make.