Hofstra University Provost's Blog

Democracy on the Local Level

2012-01-30T09:00:00.000-05:00

Our local school board, of which I am vice president, recently held an open town hall meeting. The meeting was very well attended and the individuals present represented a broad spectrum of local opinion. These are challenging times for many local schools and in fact for many residents in the community. A sluggish economy and high taxes take their toll. But even with the formidable challenges present and the vast differences of opinion, I was impressed by the community and had great respect for all the voices that made their opinions known.In New York, we have a strict tax cap that will impact the school budget beginning next year. A very passionate resident who spoke early in the meeting pushed us to propose overriding the cap. Later in the program there were multiple retirees talking about the impact that the school budget and real estate taxes in general have on their well being. I understand and sympathize with both points of view. If resources weren’t scarce, we could do more in terms of serving the needs of our kids. If taxes didn’t rise, social security recipients who waited two years for an increase would have their purchasing power remain stable rather than being compromised by higher taxes. As the meeting continued, there were speakers who expressed concern about services for special needs children, speakers who questioned why there were defined benefit pension plans for individuals working in the school system, speakers who wanted to know the effect on class size and elective offerings under the tax cap. We reassured parents that special education programs were mandated and would not be trimmed. We talked about the problems inherent in a defined benefit pension plan but no one suggested or would suggest any change or diminution for existing employees. And we reminded the audience that defined benefit pensions were legislated by the state and that the school board had no options other than to adhere to the state requirements. We talked about the modest impact of the tax cap on class size, on elective offerings and the overall breadth and depth of the education we provide.At the end of the town hall meeting, almost three hours later, I think everyone in the audience had a clearer sense of the issues, of the opinion of others, and the fact that difficult questions rarely have black and white easy answers. What happens next? I have confidence that the critical issues are being aired in an open and transparent manner. I have confidence that the community is being well informed and that it has a real voice in the decision making process. And I also have confidence in the school board and especially in my colleagues and the superintendent that at the end of the day, we will make the decisions that are in the best interests of our kids, of our teachers, and of our community. Doing more with less should always be a goal but won’t result in major savings assuming that basic efficiencies are already in place. With mandated costs that are rising faster than the tax cap, there will be an impact and at the margin we will be making changes. But by hearing, listening, working together and striking a balance, I am convinced we will make the right decisions and serve the community well. Now if only Washington could function in the same collaborative way.

Carnomics

2012-01-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

I’m a car person as you may have gathered from previous blogs. But it actually makes good sense to be an economist who also happens to be a car person given the important role that the automobile industry has played and continues to play, for good or bad, in our economy.Right now it is certainly for good. It is once again a very positive time in terms of the domestic automobile industry and all three key manufacturers—Chrysler, Ford, and GM – are doing well, having demonstrated impressive growth for the 2011 model year. Automotive News reported that “U.S. light vehicle sales were up 10 percent to 12.8 million in 2011 after a similar rise the year before.” And the promise is there of even better times. Just look at three key domestic products introduced at the 2012 Detroit auto show. The three, in alphabetical order, are the Cadillac ATS, which has the promise of making the kind of impact on the entry luxury market, presently led by the BMW 3 class, that has never before happened with a domestic product. My brother had a Cadillac Cimarron. Saying the car was forgettable was the nicest thing that anyone could say about it. It was better than the Vega that I bought which was the pits but it was on the low side of mediocre which made it a strong catalyst for foreign cars sales. The second is the Dodge Dart which is a genuinely attractive, well designed compact car. It should be able to compete effectively with both foreign and domestic competitors in a way that the Dodge Caliber never could. And the third is the Ford Fusion. The Ford is a very attractive competitor to the Camry or the Accord. It looks better than both of the other cars and many other competing brands, and seems to have the functionality and the quality to be a major player in the major arena of car competition. There are other cars in the wings from all three manufacturers that have the promise of being just as successful and the evidence is clear and, in fact increasing, that Detroit can compete successfully with the best cars around the globe.At the same time that I am watching the latest Detroit success story unfold in the form of all these impressive products, I have also been reading and have just finished “Once Upon a Car: The Fall and Resurrection of America’s Big Three Automakers- GM, Ford and Chrysler” by Bill Vlasic who is the Detroit Bureau Chief of The New York Times. The book starts at a time (2007) when light vehicle sales were 3 million above where they are today and is must reading for a very comprehensive overview of what went wrong and what ultimately happened to these three automobile titans. What went wrong, and this was just a few years ago, was just about everything—building cars that weren’t responsive to what customers were looking for; building too many overly similar cars (with Mercury and Pontiac being just two examples); too many different platforms, engines, etc. around the globe undermining economies of scale; and labor costs including fringe benefits (and health care programs) that created a clear and very serious economic disadvantage. The failure was across the board— arrogant, isolated management together with myopic labor and this book chronicles it all in a well written fast paced and thoroughly absorbing volume. What went wrong was just about everything, and what is going right now is just about everything which I hope continues into the foreseeable future. The US government deserves great credit for engineering much of the turnaround (specifically the saving of GM and Chrysler), and the car companies (led by Ford) deserve great credit for designing a comeback which demonstrates the strength still inherent in American manufacturing and the US economy. We should all celebrate this success story but also remember for the automobile industry and all industries including higher education, that success taken for granted is just the first step toward devastating failure.

Film Ratings

2012-01-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Last year at this time, as a result of a snow storm, myfamily and I spent over two days at Newark Airport and ultimately returned homewithout ever getting on an airplane to take a scheduled vacation inHawaii. Newark is a nice airport but itcan’t compare to spending time in paradise. This year, we decided to stay local and all in all it was a very low-keyrelaxing week with lots of much appreciated family time. Also lots of time for movies and shows. So within the last ten days, we have seenAlvin and the Chipmunks, Sherlock Holmes, Mission Impossible, TinTin and Snowy,Bonnie and Clyde, The Artist, My Week with Marilyn, Ridiculous Broadway, andWar Horse. And what was myfavorite? Well the reality was I enjoyedall of the above.

Having enjoyed all the films and the shows does not mean,however, that I didn’t have favorites. The Chipmunks was pure fluff, a cute but slightly ridiculous story; howevereven a provost can’t help but appreciate three talented chipmunks. The stuntsand special effects on Mission Impossible were spectacular. I always enjoyed Mission Impossible when itwas a TV series, and the movies have just elevated the intrigue, the stunts andspecial effects to movie perfection. Thecharacters made Sherlock Holmes and TinTin very worthwhile action movies. Sherlock Holmes also had an interesting senseof humor and had no resemblance whatsoever to the Sherlock Holmes/BasilRathbone films I watched faithfully on TV. And TinTin had Snowy, my idea of the ideal dog (though the dog in The Artistalso comes close to meeting that ideal). Bonnie and Clyde was Broadway fluff—an engaging pair of stars withlackluster songs and featuring acontinuing combination of loves songs/scenes followed by bloody violence. Whatever happened to “make love, notwar”? The show was entertaining, hadgreat staging with real Bonnie and Clyde news stories flashed on the backgroundscenery but it was in no way memorable. RidiculousBroadway was great fun—especially the parodies of Les Mis, Fiddler, and LionKing—but once again nothing memorable.

And now memorable begins. My Week with Marilyn, couldonly have been better if it was MY week with Marilyn and if it starred the realMarilyn Monroe. Although she didn’t quite have the seductiveface and perfect gestures and timing of Marilyn at her best, Michelle William’sacting was great and at a distance, she had the look and shape of the realMarilyn. A movie without special effectsor animation but a film at its best, easily transporting me to a differentplace and time. Not profound but still amust see movie.

War Horse was a triumph. The film is terrific, and as I had earlier indicated, the Broadway showis also a triumph. For my olderdaughter, the film was better than the show. She loved the background and vivid details of the film. I loved the film but still prefer theBroadway show. For me the story seemedmore intimate and real on the stage, and the fact that the horses on stage weretotally lifelike puppets made it all the more impressive. Another must see film.

And the winner is The Artist. The film about the transition from silentmovies to talkies gave me a real insight on the effectiveness of a silentfilm. And the story of the silent screenstar, who doesn’t believe that talkies are here to stay until it is too late,is clear and compelling in intimate detail even without words. The Artist is my number 1 must see movie ofthis season.

Now admittedly, seeing all these films and shows does notmake one a better provost or a better economist. What it does, is help createthoroughly enjoyable family time. And even without going to a warm climate, itmade for an outstanding holiday break. Plus,a second career as a movie or film critic might be worth exploring.

The SAT Scandal

2012-01-09T09:00:00.000-05:00

I just finished listening to the Sam Eshagoff interview on60 Minutes. Before I comment on theinterview, I would like to commend 60 Minutes for decades of worthwhile newsand human interest coverage. 60 Minutesremains a leading example of TV at its best.

I am not as positive about either Sam Eshaghoff or ETS. I’m not sure that Sam has learned his lessonor that he understands the seriousness of what he did. He does understand he got caught and thatseems to have caused some regret. Butanyone who believes that he “saved the lives” of students with awful records bytaking the SATs for those students so they could get into schools that wereotherwise unachievable, but doesn’t understand that he likely adverselyimpacted the lives of students who presented honest records but were not acceptedbecause of space taken up by cheaters, doesn’t comprehend the seriousness ofhis actions. Students need to be judgedon their work; an awful record should not be neutralized or turned into apositive because the student and/or his or her family could pay for what the NassauCounty Attorney General rightly calls “an academic hired gun.” Sam may call his actions saving a life, Icall it criminal fraud. That Eshagoff doesn’t get jail time makes sense to mebut that his sentence is tutoring economically disadvantaged students on testtaking, at what seems to be at his convenience, is too lenient given the fraudinvolved and the righteous attitude of saving lives presented during the TV interview.Does he realize how wrong and how serious his actions were?

The attitude expressed by ETS on 60 Minutes also needswork. To be told we should not “overreact”to a system that lacked even minimal security is disconcerting. I would agree that the vast majority of testtakers are honest and therefore that the vast majority of test scores areaccurate assessments of test taking capability. But there clearly is and has been cheating. That there hasn’t been more cheating does not seem to be due to the efforts of ETS; ratherit is a reflection of most people being honest. Cheating needs to be dealt with firmly on all levels. The ETS test taking procedures are beingtightened up and that is a positive sign. But the policy where no action is taken by ETS after the fact against aknown cheater leaves much to be desired in my mind. Basically it says since we didn’t catch youin a timely manner, you get a free pass and are able to enjoy the fruits ofyour ill gotten gains. It may takesubstantial time to catch up with some criminals, including those guilty ofwhite collar crimes. But does it really make sense to say that since we didn’tcatch you at the time you took the test, you are free of all repercussions? Idon’t think so.

I hope the investigations continue and that as many aspossible of the individuals who wrongfully took exams for others are caught andheld accountable. And I hope that ETS isable to tighten procedures and restore the confidence we had in them. Aseducators we work hard to ensure that academic honesty is maximized. Part of our mission is to make clear to ourstudents the importance of honesty and its key role in our value system. But part of our responsibility is alsoexposing cheating when it takes place and making sure there isaccountability. And I think we all wouldagree that we can and should do more on both counts.

Write Timing

2011-12-19T12:20:00.003-05:00

As I am entering the library earlier this week, I pass by astudent on a cell phone and hear the student make the following statement: “Ifinished all my finals but I still have to write a 60 page term paper which isdue in two days.” As hard as it is tobelieve, the student clearly stated that the paper is due in two days. I’m a good writer and assuming all theresearch is done, I could write a good paper in two days but I seriously doubtthat I can write a first rate paper that is anywhere near 60 pages long (evenassuming I use large margins and type size) in such a limited time frame. I know nothing about the student I passed by;he could be an awesome student or an awful student but in either case, I wouldquestion whether time management was an area of strength for this person.

I think to some extent we all overestimate what we can doand how long it takes us to do it until the moment of truth arrives. A 60 page paper is clearly a moment oftruth. And what does the student do atthat moment—write continuously, ask for an extension, ask for an extensionbased on a traumatic event, borrow someone else’s paper? The alternatives range from not good, to notsmart, to counterproductive, to notethical, to perhaps fatal. I stillremember the person in graduate school who lost a grandparent every semester atfinal time. The first time it happenedeveryone was sympathetic and the student was given extensions in all hiscourses. By the third time everyone was skeptical. To my knowledge this person, though veryintelligent, never completed his degree.

One semester in graduate school I had the opportunity toschedule all my courses for the semester on one day, with classes from earlymorning until late at night. Since I wasdoing adjunct teaching at the same time, the one day schedule was irresistibleto me. Everything was going well, withall my exams and papers scheduled on different days until final exam time. Forfinal exams there was a set schedule where the exam was the last class of thesemester. In some colleges anduniversities there are provisions where a student can reschedule a final if theretwo other finals are scheduled the same day. There was no such provision that was available for me to make useof. And so, I came to class andcompleted the four finals in one day. Idid very well on the first two, well on the third, and just OK on the fourth(though I knew the material well). Bythe fourth exam, I was no longer exam focused. Not surprisingly, I never took advantage of a scheduling opportunitylike this again.

There are so many subjects that we teach well that arecritical to a good education but we rarely teach time management. Some university 101 courses do cover thismaterial but I believe it is presented to a smallminority of students and perhaps appreciated by even fewer. An educated person also benefits greatly bybeing able to allocate his or her time in the best manner possible. We should do more to reinforce this concept.

Right Time

2011-12-12T09:00:00.000-05:00

Late this week, I received a letter from our longest serving faculty member. This person has served for over 50 years as a full-time faculty member and continues to be an excellent teacher, an outstanding colleague and a respected scholar. The letter started off by stating “Much to my own dismay, I have come to the conclusion that now is indeed the time to begin the process of my retirement.” The letter continues by noting that “there are moments when inevitability takes precedence over all else and I must defer.”

This faculty member will be retiring at the end of the 2013-2014 academic year when she will have completed 54 years of service. Prior to that time she plans to maintain the same sustained high level of activity that has characterized her decades of service up to this time. In addition she plans to help create a new institute on campus and plan a detective-fiction conference. As you can tell, this person has been and continues to be a tremendous asset to the University and she will be missed.

Not every career works as smoothly. When I first arrived at Hofstra there was a person who was both an excellent teacher and a nationally recognized scholar. This person was one of a handful of Hofstra faculty that I had heard of prior to joining Hofstra. But this person never wanted to leave even though, over the years, the person’s abilities declined until what remained was a shadow of the original outstanding scholar/teacher. No colleague ever spoke to this person about what was happening but many colleagues suggested to department chairs and deans that it was, and had been for a number of years, clearly time for the person to go.

When is the right time to go? The easy answer is when you are still at the top of your game, or in baseball terms, when you are still a 300 + hitter. Life and finances sometimes makes that hard to do. Lack of feedback also makes it hard to do. I never cease to be amazed when faculty or administrators come to talk to me about the diminished skill set of a colleague without every talking to the colleague, even though this happens on a regular basis. Why can’t they talk first to the person they are talking about? Students also tend to talk to other students about faculty but you can’t expect them to talk to the faculty member about these issues even though they are being shortchanged. Teacher evaluation programs can help but that feedback alone may not be sufficient.

For someone who has served many years, a soft landing is essential. On-going comprehensive feedback is also essential. The feedback can’t just be there when everything is going well. With that combination together with the common sense of the overwhelming majority of faculty, I think the answer to when is the right time to retire will be clear.

Test Takers

2011-12-05T09:00:00.000-05:00

I had a terrific experience as a doctoral student. Thecourses, the faculty, the other students all made for a wonderful educationaljourney. I was certain economics was the right field for me before I began andI was even more certain by the time I graduated. Within this wonderful experience, one momentstill stands out, not because it directly involved economics, not because itrepresented an intellectual breakthrough, but rather because I learned animportant life lesson.

That moment was when I took my statistics qualifyingexamination. That day approximately adozen students came to take the exam. The faculty proctor handed out the exam and we all began. Now the statistics qualifying exam had areputation for being rigorous but also had a reputation as an exam wheretypically 5 people passed. If there werea small number of test takers or a larger number, the results always seemed tobe the same—five students passed. Aboutthirty minutes into a two hour exam, the proctor decided to leave the roomwhile we all continued working on our examinations. Shortly thereafter one thing changed. Even though this was not an open bookexamination, one of the test takers took out the textbook plus a notebook, andbegan working on the answers with the added support in clear view. What did Ido and what did the rest of the class do? Each of us just kept working on the examination and following the rules.

About an hour later, the proctor returned for the last 30minutes of the examination period. Within a few minutes most of us handed in our exams and left the room. I thought I did well on the exam but nevertheless,was a little apprehensive. I didn’t sayanything to the proctor as I was leaving about the person cheating, and to myknowledge neither did anyone else. A dayor two later, I found out that one of my classmates reported the student whocheated. His exam was disallowed and Iwas told he was suspended from the program. A penalty that was certainly deserved.

When the results of the exam became known about two weekslater, I was relieved to learn that I had passed. Five students passed this qualifying exam,and going from highest to lowest passing grade, I was number 5. If the cheater hadn’t been turned in, Iassume I would not have passed.

I have been thinking about the Long Island students who paidother students to take the SATs for them. For a few thousand dollars, they were on the fast track to a much moreimpressive SAT score and the resulting benefits in terms of gaining admissionor being awarded a scholarship. But veryoften, just as was the case in my statistics qualifying examination, someonecheating their way to admission or a scholarship likely precluded the persondeserving the recognition from receiving it. In all the publicity regarding the exam takersand those who paid for someone to take the exam, the real potential victimshave not been identified. They are the individuals who did everything right,but nevertheless would have been shortchanged out of thepositive results of their efforts. Iknow it can happen. It almost happenedto me.

I often think that we are not as stringent as we should bein our monitoring and enforcement of academic honesty and I also think that weare often too lenient in the penalties we impose for violations of academichonesty. If we are to be fair to theindividuals who do everything the way it should be done, we (faculty, students,and administrators) need to do more to eliminate cheating. If we turn the othercheek to cheating, we are hurting ourselves and cheating the system that we arepart of.

Failure

2011-11-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

The news from the congressional supercommittee wasnot surprising. No budget deal – meaningwe now will have an automatic triggering of across-the-board budgetreductions. What a bad decision by ourCongressional leaders, what a bad impact for our economy, and what a failure toread the will of the public.

How did we get here? Clearly, too many lines in the sand. A reluctance to cut spending coupled with anequally forceful reluctance to increase any tax rates. Leadership by following a "my way or thehighway philosophy." There arewithout question some areas in social services, health, and defense wherespending reductions should be very measured. There are also many tax rates that shouldunder no conditions be increased. Butthere is also without question justification for some spending cuts andjustifications for some tax increases (or loop-hole decreases).

But where we are now, with across-the-boardadjustments the default position, is on the verge of doings greater harm to theeconomy. With the triggering ofacross-the-board cuts, spending in areas such as health, research, some kindsof student aid, and even defense all are about to be reduced. Who loses by doing this, other than thosedirectly involved in these industries? We all do given the critical nature, the future consequences, and hugeimpact of the industries involved. And are we really sure that this budgetreduction number even makes sense for the economy or is it another case of aguesstimate by Congress, which can now lead to another line in the sand?

Most of us know that compromise is possible ifpolitics move to the sideline and national interest moves to the forefront. Most of us also know that the best interestsof our economy and our country require compromise. Will our nation's leaders jeopardize our bestinterests by cutting without thinking or will our leaders rise to the occasion? We don't need or want more politicalrhetoric. Instead, we need thoughtfulsolutions to cut the deficit brought about by thoughtful elected officials. For the current crisis, the last best time isclearly now.

Happy Birthday Chevrolet

2011-11-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

This month, Chevrolet turns 100 years old. Happy Birthday Chevrolet. In the Chevy line-up over the years are manyof the models that I fell in love with when I was growing up. I still love seeing an early Corvette and Ihave always been crazy about the ‘57 Chevy Bel Air hardtop, ideally in candyapple red though I could do without the fluffy dice hanging from the rear viewmirror. But the Chevies I most wanted,came out when I was nowhere near driving age. When I reached driving age, the first car I bought and paid for was a ‘69Chevy Nova. The car was OKtransportation. The car had threeoptions—a (powerglide) automatic transmission, an AM radio (with one speaker),and for $6.95, real vinyl upholstery. The car was reliable transportation but nothing more. I really wanted a car along the lines of themore classic Chevrolets. I wanted a car that I could connect with on anemotional level.

In 1974, a new Chevrolet Vega came out. The car was nicely styled, especially thehatchback and I purchased it with almost every option that Chevroletoffered. And in fact not only did Ipurchase a Vega, I convinced two of my friends who were in the market for newcars to purchase a Vega as well and by purchasing three at the same time, wegot as good a price for the car as possible. The car was a sales success, not only among the three of us, but it alsoresonated well among the general public. It may not have been a 1957 Bel Air or a Corvette, but I liked drivingit and even looked for reasons to drive. So far so good.

Within months, the three speed automatic transmission started slipping and shortlythereafter my three speed transmission became a one speed transmission. In rush hour, when I needed to drive at 15miles per hour or less, I was fine; otherwise I was going nowhere fast…exceptback to the dealer. The dealer wascourteous and immediately kept the car to repair the transmission. It seems that there was a synthetictransmission oil that had replaced the previous oil and no doubt GM saved a fewcents on each car by this change. Whichis fine…as long as the replacement was thoroughly tested and as durable as theoriginal product.

Now, any car can have a one-time problem and especially inthe mid 1970s one time problems were the norm on cars, not the exception. Butthere was one other flaw that quickly developed. Though the car was economical in terms of gas mileage (very important given there was a gas crisis afew months earlier), it tended to burn oil continuously which quickly negatedthe savings on gas. Lemon laws were no doubt inspired by cars like this.

Though I would pay the price for the Vega a second time interms of trade-in value, I was ready to trade it in ASAP. My next car was a ‘76Toyota Corolla. No problems whatsoever;no emotional attachment whatsoever. It took me more than a decade before Iwould drive another American car, and the vast majority of cars I havepurchased or leased since that time were not built in theUSA.

I wish Chevy well in its next 100 years and I like some ofthe cars that they are making today. ButChevy and GM will always provide a classic business lesson for all of us. If you take your customers for granted, ifyou always assume that people will see the USA in their Chevrolet, thecustomers and your market may diminish or disappear. In this very competitive environment,complacency will not carry the day in the automobile industry or in highereducation nor does it deserve to.

Pride

2011-11-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

About a week ago one of my earliest students was appointed superintendent of a very important neighboring school district. He was a very smart student more than 35 years ago and he is still smart today. The students will benefit greatly from his leadership and my sense of pride is enormous in recognition of his accomplishments. I have stayed in touch with this particular alum over the years. We even played tennis a number of times but I am a better educator and economist than I am a tennis player so the tennis matches were few and far between.

There are also some former students I have lost track of, and then fortunately we are able to reconnect. A few years ago, a personnel folder crossed my desk for a new hire in the education area. The person was an experienced high school teacher who was now beginning a new career in higher education. The name was familiar, though hardly unusual. And this person’s undergraduate degree was from the institution where I began first teaching as an adjunct while completing my doctorate. Sure enough when I looked further, he was my former student. He has been a tremendous asset to Hofstra in the decades since he first began teaching on our campus. Interestingly enough, when this person was an undergraduate and my student, he complained that I wasn’t liberal enough for his political positions. Decades have passed and he is still complaining. Middle of the road economists have trouble gaining appropriate respect from either the left or the right.

As I think back to the students I taught in my early years in teaching, I can easily identify a now university president, a professor of English, a number of psychologists, lawyers, successful business people, all individuals I have stayed in touch with. One of my former students is even a University trustee and a number of years ago, there were actually two of my former students on the trustees. There are other former students that I am not in touch with or have lost contact with and I am sure within this group are many successful individuals. I hope my economics courses made a difference in their education and their lives and I am humbled by the thought that I have had a positive impact. I want every Hofstra graduate to succeed but I do care even more about those I know and have worked with personally.

It’s interesting that as a dean and as a provost, I have hopefully impacted positively the education of tens of thousands of students. Knowing that I have been able to play a leadership role for decades and have made a difference on many key issues, brings a great sense of satisfaction. But in a University, it is ultimately the relationship between students and faculty, or students and advisers, or students and their coaches that make the greatest difference. That personal touch can help inspire and there is no substitute especially for an undergraduate. As we look to make the best decisions in a time of constraint, we should all strongly advocate for keeping as much of a personal touch in education as we can.

Occupy Wall Street

2011-11-07T10:04:00.000-05:00

As I’m walking in a midtown subway station, a group starts yelling “Occupy Wall Street, all day and all night” over and over again. And this is followed by “We are the 99 percent” also over and over again. The message is clear whether it is delivered in Zuccoti Park, in a subway station or anywhere across the country.

As I reflect on the movement, I am sympathetic to the calls for tax reform. There are, in my opinion, federal tax rates that are too low for the income involved, and there are rates that are too high. And yet many in Washington are opposed to any changes or fine tuning whatsoever. Many of these same individuals also champion a more balanced budget. That leaves spending cuts as our sole present fiscal policy tool. But cutting more in social services or in defense spending in the short term may not be a desirable option. And, besides, too many spending cuts are counterproductive to a struggling economy. Going back to tax rates, what makes our current structure so perfect (loopholes and all ) that there is significant opposition to any changes? Were they set with such precision or were they set through a series of political compromises that yielded the present matrix (which may or may not be the best possible matrix for our economy)? And if we focus exclusively on the top 1% of our population (in economic terms) , which is getting richer and richer over time, are they really paying the taxes they should or does the system provide them with more than their fair share of benefits?

Periodically, the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are joined by prominent individuals and celebrities in a strong show of support. The support leads to more airtime for the demonstration and as such serves to highlight both the person and the movement. I sometimes wonder how strongly the celebrities share an on-going commitment to change. How politically active are they and how involved are they in moving forward the agenda of needed change? Are some looking for a photo opportunity or to move forward a cause?

I have two other observations. The demonstrators clearly have Wall Street as their target giving a misleading sense that wealth is concentrated solely in these individuals. Wall Street employs many people who are far from wealthy, and there are many areas outside of Wall Street where the wealth and income of individuals involved is at the top 1% level. Though clearly there needs to be more transparency in the dealings of financial institutions and more reforms are still needed, the target should be the tax rate structure rather than the street address.

I worry about how the demonstrators will make the transition from protest movement to major political force to be reckoned with. If the major presence of the Occupy Wall Street movement is in Zuccoti Park and like places, the movement will have failed. It needs to transition to a strong political movement. The Tea Party is not my drink of choice but I give them great credit for not only standing up for what they believe in, but also in impacting the political landscape and the halls of government. To really be successful, Occupy Wall Street needs to march out of the park and into the 2012 election.

Inventory Time

2011-10-24T09:00:00.000-04:00

My kids and I decided that yesterday should be a day wespend in Manhattan. We were already setto meet a terrific former student of mine/good friend and her daughter to goshopping on the lower east side (Canal Street) but we decided to go for theentire day. We started at the Museum of Natural History where the regularexhibits as well as the special exhibits always fascinate. I have been a fan of Natural History all mylife. The dinosaurs have alwaysfascinated me and so has the planetarium. Even as a kid, when the dinosaurs hadn’t been extinct nearly as long asthey are now, I was captivated by what the Museum brought to life.

We followed the Museum by buying lunch at Shake Shack (apopular local hamburger place) and eating it, sitting on the Times Squaresteps. Times Square was crowded andwithin a few minutes of sitting down, a crowd began flash dancing right next tothe steps. Next we walked from Times Squareto the High Line, which was also very crowded. The High Line is an abandoned elevated railroad track that has beenturned into an elevated park. Theplantings in the park are sustainable and views of the Hudson River and theambiance is great. What a great visionand demonstration of creativity to turn an eyesore railroad track into a park.

Back in the subway, this time for a ride to CanalStreet. On Canal Street, which similarto the Museum and Times Square and the subway, was also very crowded, the kids eachbought a school bag as well as a $2.00 “bling” ring. A great in-person lesson for each of them into how barter works becauseon the lower east side the posted or asking price is merely an opening bid andthe final sales price is always significantly lower.

Now here we were on Canal Street having just ventured intoChinatown for a snack and wanting to get back to the Museum of Natural Historywhere my car was parked. For so many ofus, in areas with inadequate mass transit systems and an overreliance on automobiles,we never really experience an alternative that can efficiently move people frompoint A to point B, even if they aren’t going in a straight line. The NYCsubways are that efficient alternative. To get from Chinatown to the Museum wetook three trains—the “6” line to Grand Central, the shuttle to Times Squareand the “1” train to 79^th street. Every subway came relativelyquickly and in short order we were on 79^th street.

More and more colleges and universities realize thatresources off campus can substantially increase the learning experience, andthere are more and more organized opportunities to take advantage of thoseresources. Often this happens because afaculty member or an administrator is familiar with the resource and how itfits well into his or her course or the broader curriculum. What would helpeven more is for each college and university to prepare a comprehensiveinventory of what resources are readily accessible (including the costsinvolved) and see if and how going to these resources would enhance theeducational experience. Part of atransformative education is to have the students open their eyes to what isaround them. We all need to do our partto make that happen.

Demand and Supply

2011-10-17T09:00:00.000-04:00

The 2010 Georgetown University Center for Education and theWorkforce study of “Projections of Jobs and Education Requirements Through2018” concluded that “by 2018 we will need 22 million new college degrees- butwill fall short of that number by at least 3 million postsecondary degrees,Associate or better.” Furthermore, thereport states “we will need at least 4.7 million new workers with postsecondarycertificates. “ The report comes to two other conclusions, all conclusions thatwill not surprise the higher education community. First, the report notes that “between 1973and 2008, the share of jobs in the U.S. economy which required postsecondary educationincreased from 28 percent to 59 percent. And second that “as the economy evolved, postsecondary educationgradually became the threshold requirement for access to middle class statusand earnings.”

But there is a fundamental disconnect between the increasingneed for higher education credentials and the support by government of studentspursuing this education. Be it on thegraduate level or on the undergraduate level, financial support for students aswell as for institutions is declining. Consequently in a lackluster economy, with many families straining toafford the education for their children, the diminished support makes it moredifficult to pursue added education and less likely that this investment willbe made.

Education is first and foremost an investment, an investmentin the personal growth of the individual undertaking the education as well asan investment in the economy. Oureconomy needs workers with sophisticated skills sets to do the increasinglymore complex jobs that are available in fields such as the sciences,healthcare, business and education. In aglobal economy and in a highly technological time, there are no substitutes forsuch workers. As one example, if we lookat health care where we are striving, rightly so, to provide a health caresafety net for all our citizens, how will we be able to vastly increase theservices needed by this broader base of our population without expanding thesupply of educated workers? Laws canprovide accessibility but without the necessary supply, the results will not bethere.

Especially in those areas that are vital to our economicgrowth and to the well being of our population, there needs to be a wellthought out policy that provides more, not less, resources for highereducation. We should highlight the areaswith the greatest need for skilled workers, and I think we already know thisinformation for at least the next decade. Next, we should publicize where those areas are and what the requirededucational attainment is for a person to succeed in those fields. This information needs to be conveyed tostudents in middle and high schools and also to their families so that it canbe fully considered as part of the decision making process in regard topostsecondary education. And then to further make sure the supply of skilledworkers is commensurate with our needs, we need to develop specific economicincentives. These incentives should betargeted just to increase workers in areas of need; in a time of scarceresources we need to carefully and precisely allocate those resources. Yes, this will cost money; yes, we will needto increase our support of postsecondary education; and yes, this will impactthe decision making process of these students/future workers. But we have no choice. To allow a fundamental disequilibrium toexist between needed skills and the number of workers with those skills is torelegate our economy to clearly falling short of its potential. And the more we fall short of our potential,the more we face an economy unable to do all we all need done.

Cheating

2011-10-10T09:00:00.000-04:00

Six students from a top Long Island high school each hiredthe same recent high school graduate to take the SATs for them so that theycould submit a higher test score than they would receive on their own as partof their college admissions profile. Iam pleased they were caught but I’m certain that these students are not theonly students who have substituted other individuals in their place to takeimportant admissions and other examinations. What should happen to these high school students? The punishment should be severe (though Iwouldn’t advocate jail time). Howsevere? If they are guilty as charged, Iwould recommend they should be barred from submitting a SAT test score or ahigh school transcript for at least a year and during that time they shouldprovide extensive mandatory community service. A course on ethics should alsobe required. The test taker should alsoface at least as severe a punishment. And if there were any parents that aided and abetted this effort, theirpunishment should be much more severe. Furthermore, it appears that we need tosubstantially improve test security so that every possible safeguard is inplace to prevent anyone else from taking the place of the student who issupposed to be the test taker.

Academic honesty is a problem in many high schools and inmany colleges and universities. Attimes, especially since we are dealing with young adults, the plagiarism is unintentional. At other times, the cheating is bothintentional and on-going. Many teachersand professors will react forcefully to cheating as it happens but at the sametime intentionally moderate or eliminate long term consequences. Often cheating is not reported so as not totarnish the student’s record and often the punishment is determined based onthis cheating being a once in a lifetime occurrence, not a pattern. Once in a lifetime suggest that a moderateresponse is appropriate; a pattern suggests there needs to be an escalating response. How do we know what response is appropriateif the tracking system throughout much of a student’s education is rife withomissions? We really need to do betterso that the message is more clearly and emphatically that academic dishonestydoesn’t pay.

Students are very aware of who cheats and students can helpfoster an environment where academic honesty is valued but at the same time, Idon’t think we should count on students alone to play a lead role in moderatingthe cheating of other students.

What can we do? Everyincident of cheating—unless it is clearly not intentional—should bereported. The penalty for an individualoffense should be determined by the faculty member but there needs to be anadditional penalty triggered by repeat offenses. Every student can make a mistake and learnfrom his/her mistakes. But more than oneoccurrence should be accompanied by a zero tolerance response that should, ifit continues, result in suspension and, if justified, dismissal.

The penalty should also escalate as students advance intheir education. We should all be moretolerant of a high school student or a first year college student making amistake and much less tolerant of an advanced undergraduate or graduate studenthaving an ethical lapse. And in certainfields such as law and medicine, the penalty for academic dishonesty, if proven, should be immediate dismissal.

All of us comment with dismay on the widespread culturewhere academic dishonesty is more or less prevalent. But to change the environment we need to domore than comment and more than deal with individual occurrences. We need as a community to work together, to reportand to track academic dishonesty as it happens. If we are determined to reduce academic dishonesty, our actions can helpmake it happen.

Teacher Evaluation

2011-10-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

At all levels of education in the New York area, the keyconversation at this moment in time revolves around the APPR (AnnualProfessional Performance Review) which will beginning now affect NewYork’s K- 12 teachers andadministrators. Be it in public schoolsor in schools of education, the education community is focused on what APPRmeans and what the impact will be. Nationwide, the equivalent of an APPR (and a more common curriculum)seemsto be in various stages of development . For me, as a long time supporterof comprehensive on-going evaluationof faculty at the higher educationlevel, including student course and teacher ratings, peer observations, ongoingsupport and feedback, I also support K-12 comprehensive evaluation of teaching .

The major portion of these performance reviews will look alot like the performance reviews already been taking place continuously in K-12education. Classroom observations areand will continue to be an important part of this matrix. But there are differences between APPR andwhat has existed before. An importantfactor in the new evaluations will be the progress demonstrated by students onstandardized state or comparable local examinations. How much this componentwill actually be is still in dispute, and will depend on the results oflitigation as well as collective bargaining negotiations before being fullydecided. What is not in dispute is thatafter 2 years of being evaluated as ineffective, a teacher’s job could be onthe line.

As a school board member, I am more and more involved indiscussions on APPR and I also know that our School of Education, Health andHuman Services is fully involved in how to prepare our teacher education studentsfor APPR as well as how to prepare local school districts to be as successfulas possible with APPR. I want APPR towork, but I am very worried as to how it will work.

The economics of K-12 public education is not in good shape.A tax cap with too little legislated mandate relief will clearly require weeducate our students with less available dollars. Class size, support services and otherenrichment activities will likely suffer. At the same time, with theimplementation of higher standards on statewide examinations as well as atransition to a mostly national common core curriculum, we will be expectingour students to do more and do better. And our teachers will be judged individually on how successful they arein making this happen.

Even if our teaching becomes even more effective, the endresult when all the other factors are included could be students doing nobetter than before or perhaps even worse. How will that factor into the evaluation of teaching? And for those of us in higher education, asour future students go through what could be a less robust K-12 education, wemay end up with students who are less well prepared (even though the APPR andthe common core curriculum was motivated by our wanting to more effectivelyprepare students for higher education). And do we have the resources, if in fact that should happen? I know that as aneconomist, I have a bias in terms of how important economics is in so much ofwhat we do. But here is another exampleof, with the best of intentions but with far from the best of economic times,the results may be in question.

Race To Nowhere

2011-09-26T09:00:00.000-04:00

For almost a year, I have received a series ofrecommendations to see the film Race toNowhere by filmmaker and parent Vicki Abeles. Early last week I had that opportunity and Icertainly agree that the film presents a powerful message on the state of K-12education. The film focuses on the over schedulingand then consequent stress (and possibly worse) we inflict on the currentgeneration of students. Too many classes, too much memorization, too much homework, toomany after school obligations, too little downtime, too little sleep. And much of what the film shows, I seefirsthand in my kids, and in the kids of my friends and neighbors.

But in delivering a powerful and worthwhile message, thefilm also oversimplifies and distorts the answers to difficult questions andleaves out key facts that would help present a more complete and accurate picture. For example, on the issue of too muchhomework, the film includes a relatively young teacher stating that when hereduced the amount of homework, test scores went up. The inference is clear—if we reduced homeworkacross the board, test scores across the board would rise. I don’t doubt that this can happen in onecase and perhaps in more cases. But Ihave yet to see any proof of the strong correlation suggested and that thefirst happening (the reduction in homework) is the cause of the second happening(increase in test scores). This message from the movie actually gives me theopportunity to utilize the majority of my Latin vocabulary. First, we have here aclassic example (what could be better for Latin) of Post hoc ergo propter hoc. Inother words, it is a logical fallacy of that what comes second is caused bywhat happens first. On very hot andsunny summer days, I tend not to open the shades of south facing windows untilvery late in the day, to cut down in the heat in the house. Typically, almost immediately after theshades are opened, the sun goes down. But no one would argue that this is cause and effect and similarly, itis difficult to argue that less homework leads automatically to better testscores. My second use of Latin in thisblog is perhaps the favorite Latin phrase of all economists: ceteris paribus which translates intoall other things remaining the same. Less homework and a more dynamic teacher or a less rigorous test, canlead to higher test scores. Brighterstudents or better foundations courses together with less homework will stilllikely lead to higher test scores. Butbecause all other things did not remain the same, in no way did we prove thatless homework equals higher test scores.

The film also doesn’t really take into account the stressthat parents can place on kids. We allknow parents who consider any grade of less than an A to be failing, parentswho want their kids to take every advanced placement course offered, as well asparents who want their kids to accomplish – in the classroom and out on thefield—what they couldn’t accomplish. There may be too much stress placed on our kids but in searching out thecauses, looking in the mirror helps as well as looking at the schools.

But even with the concerns I have about this film, Iconsider Race To Nowhere worthwhile viewing for all educators. To the extent that our kids are overscheduledand overstressed, we need to improve our educational system but at the sametime not cut back on the important learning taking place.

Looking Forward

2011-09-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

As I write this blog on Labor Day, I am looking forward to the next day when fall semester classes will begin. For me a campus during the time period after summer sessions are over and before fall student move-in/the first day of classes is lacking in energy. I’m not suggesting that administrators lack energy; they don’t, but without students and without faculty, a campus has lost its heart and soul.

This time of year is exciting to me for another reason. Despite hurricane Irene, my excitement has nothing to do with now being hurricane season or the fact that the end is in sight for the hot and humid weather. Instead it is because on the Friday before classes begin, I had the opportunity to address new undergraduate students and this is often my favorite speech of the year. What do I say to these students who are less than half my age? What do I say to this group of students who are so different from the Baby Boomers that I grew up with? What should my message be?

My message has varied over the years. Last year, I spoke about the importance of academic honesty and why cheating and plagiarism has no place on a University campus. We know that plagiarism is unfortunately part of the fabric of many high schools and often is also present in middle school. We know that often it can start with parents being overly zealous in helping with homework; or it can start with students looking for the easy way out—copying takes less effort than learning; or on occasion, it even can originate from teachers being overly zealous in this environment when more and more they are being judged by their students’ test scores. However it starts, the message must be clearly delivered that students will be judged on their own work and that academic dishonesty and plagiarism will not go unnoticed and of course there will be consequences. I also spoke last year about the importance of diversity, all kinds of diversity, in promoting the best possible education. We all benefit from the value of difference; different points of view, a multiplicity of voices, different backgrounds, different orientations, multiple perspectives all serve to broaden our horizons and help us better understand the world we live in.

This year’s speech once again had a focus on diversity. I just feel that the importance of a respect for diversity needs to permeate all that we do and all that we say. But my other main theme this year was the opportunities that higher education provides to expand horizons, discover new fields, and stretch outside of your comfort zone at what is an ideal time in a new undergraduate’s life to do so. Courses as varied as ballroom dancing and personal finance enlighten and shape students. Others such as interpersonal communication, stress management, LGBT studies, contemporary art, and animal ethics all serve to increase understanding and expand horizons.

And how do I package my themes so that I can more easily relate to our new students? What I share with many of our new students is a passion for the Harry Potter books and films. I begin with comparing my years of service with Dumbledore’s years as headmaster of Hogwarts and end with a comment that Dumbledore makes to Harry about the importance of the choices we make. In between I make the critical points noted above. Without a spell or a potion, I’m not sure that the message always gets through but I know the message makes a difference and I hope the students were listening.

P.S. Visit Hofstra.edu for a copy of the speech

Hats Off

2011-09-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

I am writing this blog in a hotel in Seattle. I picked the hotel because it has LEEDS certification and in this way I am supporting businesses that share my priorities. I am here to attend the Bat Mitzvah of a close family friend's daughter and I am viewing the weekend as a nice change of pace.

In the temple for the Bat Mitzvah services, I am enjoying the music which comes with a piano, clarinet, and guitar accompaniment. Both Bat Mitzvah girls are doing great and we are up to the sermon. And what does the Rabbi talk about? Something in the bible? Something in today's Torah portion? Not at all. He is talking about the sad state of the U.S and world economy.

Now I recognize that in difficult economic times, everyone tends to give economic advice and that advice is often easier to give when you don't fully understand economic concepts and consequences. The less you know the more sweeping the changes you can advocate simply because you are innocent of the consequences of what you advocate. I often feel that many of our politicians on the local, state and national level should spend more time talking with economists and more time studying economics. This is not designed to ensure full employment of economists as much as it is designed to ensure the fullest understanding possible of complex alternatives to move our economy forward.

From my remarks above you can tell how sympathetic and receptive I was to this sermon when it started. But hats off to the Rabbi (perhaps not the best suggestion when it is recognizing a Jewish religious leader) for his advice. He made three critical points. First, even in difficult times, we need to remember that so many of us have so much to be thankful for and so many reasons to be happy. Second, we should never forget that our society and our world have many vulnerable people and that we should make sure their needs are met and they are protected. And third, there are limits to what we can do, limits to what we can spend, and what we can commit in resources around the globe.

I appreciate the Rabbi's priorities. I appreciate that he decided to give this sermon on this Saturday and that I was there. Whatever economic solutions we ultimately implement will be better if we keep this advice in mind.

Hurricane Rhetoric

2011-08-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

On Saturday just before Hurricane Irene hits Long Island, I venture, very early in the morning, into the local supermarket to make sure I have extra bread at home. My food passions are dark chocolate and good bread and if I’m going to be stuck at home, I may as well have the necessary comfort foods. As I am waiting to pay, there is a middle age man nearby loudly complaining and getting a sympathetic response from those around him. The complaint is in regard to the technological progress we have made in this man’s lifetime and before, and the fact that we have not yet learned how to tame the weather. And the bottom line of the rhetoric is that we are no better off in regard to Mother Nature then we were 50 or 100 years ago.

My goal that Saturday morning was to do what I needed to do in terms of getting ready. I was anxious to get back home to move the deck furniture into the garage and therefore I chose not to enter the conversation. In reality, it’s not my style to enter into someone else’s conversation, especially given I didn’t know the man doing most of the talking nor did I know the individuals that were now also part of the conversation.

On the Thursday before Hurricane Irene hits Long Island, our president convened the first of a series of meetings to coordinate the University’s efforts in regard to Hurricane Irene, and it is clear that much work has already been done. We are fortunate that the fall semester doesn’t start until the Tuesday after Labor Day, and therefore there is only a small minority of our students on campus. Nevertheless, we spend considerable time reviewing measures to ensure the safety of the students on campus, we review communications to all members of our community, we review facilities and we talk through that all contingency plans are in place. We listen to all the latest weather briefings and we are clearly well prepared. Subsequently, we also use our emergency communication procedures to reach out to our entire community via phone calls, text messages, as well as our website, Facebook and Twitter.

Listening to the Mayor of New York, and the County Executives of Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties, it is clear that careful planning for all likely contingencies has taken place throughout the area ( and throughout the entire east coast ). I don’t remember any other time in my lifetime when area mass transit as well as all local airports were all shutdown and closed. And Broadway being dark for weather related reasons for two days is also another first as is the mandatory evacuation of substantial areas on Long Island and in New York City. Safety concerns were clearly a top priority.

But the key to all this careful preparation is the much more precise knowledge we have in regard to hurricanes, and the much more sophisticated technology we have to reach out to members of our university communities as well as the larger area communities. Our tracking of storms is impressive and together with proper planning, the much more sophisticated communications capability makes an enormous positive difference, especially in terms of safety. We also have much more information available much more quickly to assess and respond to what has happened. Mother Nature hasn’t changed but we have—thanks in great measure to technology.

Well Protected

2011-08-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

With the growth of on-line services has come a wealth of convenience. I log into the Hofstra portal and my email around the globe. I rarely step inside of a bank. I purchase more and more products on-line, I pay more and more bills on-line, and I even access much of the national, regional and higher education news on-line. The rapidly increasing transition to more and more on-line products and services in the last decade has been a welcome change. I know I am more productive and efficient as a result and I even believe I have slightly more discretionary time.

Along with all the enhanced usage, there is clearly an increased need for security. My emails, what I buy, what I pay, and what I read is my business. Therefore with more and more of my accounts, there is a password along with the log-in ID and this is also as it should be. Initially, my approach was to use the same ID and the same password for almost all of my accounts. In a very few cases, there were password parameters that required I make changes and I did so whenever the need arose…but not more than that. As the accounts multiplied, it became clear to me that having so much reliance on one log-in and on one password diminished my security and increased my vulnerability; and so I began to vary both on a regular basis and to even change passwords on a regular basis. In all cases, I did stick to basic themes for both the ID and the password and so I ended up with many, many variations on a theme. I was clearly responding effectively to security concerns and to add further to the level of protection, I never wrote down any password and relied on my memory which served me well.

A few weeks ago, I needed to enter an important program on my hard drive that I had last accessed over a year ago. I open the program and get ready to enter the password but can’t remember exactly what the password is. And so I start to enter possible/likely passwords and nothing works. I even wrote down passwords as I try them since as I mentioned above, my passwords are close variations. Here too, nothing works. Periodically I come back to this program and to date nothing has worked. But I do feel confident that my data is secure. I have also opened two new accounts during this time and in each case have written down the ID and password information.

Since the technology exists I am ready for the ID/login function to be replaced by a thumb print or an eye scan. In the meantime I have started writing down this information for existing as well as new accounts on a secure site. I’ve learned my lesson. My memory is excellent but my many, many logins and passwords are more than a match. Maintaining security is critical but without accessibility, it leaves something to be desired. Having written this blog, I am feeling optimistic and heading right back to finding the right combination to access my data.

Administration 101

2011-08-15T09:00:00.003-04:00

A middle level administrator I know was faced with a dilemma. The person had agreed to make a program recommendation and immediately after sending the very strong recommendation began to have serious reservations about the program. To some extent these reservations were the result of information that became available subsequent to the recommendation being sent. And to some extent the reservations were the result of a more careful look by the administrator at the program being recommended. The end result was a 180 degree change from recommend to really can’t recommend.

But what does the middle level administrator do at that point? One possible response is to go back to the program developers and indicate that given this and that, the administrator can no longer support going forward. Another related possibility is that the administrator withdraws the positive recommendation. If one or both of these courses of action are your responses, you get Administration 101 advanced standing credit. However, what if this is not the response? What if instead the response is to contact the person the administrator reports to, and ask that person to turn down the recommendation? In that way, the administrator could go back to the program developer and indicate with sincerity that it was a higher-up that deserves the blame since the administrator had made a positive recommendation. With this scenario, what if the higher up refused to play this role?

Are there other alternatives? The administrator could write a detailed memo to the higher up indicating the flaws in the original recommendation and once again indicate that the higher up should turn down the recommendation. Why not at this point just rescind the original recommendation? The explanation could be that the administrator is still not comfortable saying to the program developers that the original positive recommendation was flawed and should be withdrawn. Once again, what if the higher up refused to play the role of nay sayer? What if the higher up very clearly indicated to the administrator that if there are such serious doubts the recommender should contact the program developers, explain the reassessment, and withdraw the recommendation?

One resulting possibility is that the administrator emails the program developers directly, spelling out in detail the concerns about the program. It should and could be a well thought out email. The conclusion, at this point, might go in one of two ways, with one punch line being that for the reasons noted above, the University had decided not to go forward. The other alternative would be for the administrator to state that it is he or she that is withdrawing the recommendation.

There are clearly moments in time when a recommendation looks sound initially and subsequently turns out to be very flawed. I think we are all aware of such situations. Absent extenuating circumstances, my Administration 101 advice is that the recommender should just go back to all involved and indicate that given all the information now available, that he or she can no longer make a positive recommendation. Think about it. Asking someone else to do your work or suggesting that someone else has made your decision, serves no purpose and more than likely is counterproductive to long term administrative advancement.

Moving Forward

2011-08-08T09:00:00.007-04:00

In my early days in administration, many years ago, I had the opportunity to serve on negotiating committees for various labor contracts and the position I held on these committees was the exalted chair-filler position. A chair filler has minimal involvement with the actual negotiations so expertise is not necessarily a prerequisite. Instead a chair-filler is selected based on his or her ability to fill a chair and look both intelligent and engaged at the same time. I did the best I could to meet these standards, and though I wondered initially why it was necessary to have such a position, I nevertheless found it to be a valuable experience. The “why” in my opinion is simply because if one side has a large number of individuals on their team, the other side needs an almost equal number to show it is at least equally engaged.

The reason I found these early career experiences to be invaluable is that almost at the beginning of the process I was able to gauge with a high level of accuracy exactly what the settlement would be. In an environment where everyone realizes that bargaining is a mutual benefit equation, it is not that hard to predict the conclusion. I believe the likely conclusion is known by the individuals heading the negotiations and those associated with the negotiations well in advance of the deadline date and perhaps even well in advance of the start of formal negotiation. However, the widely held belief is, if you settle too early, you are really not doing all you can to have your positions prevail.

In the recent budget/national debt debate in Washington, even though we came close to defaulting, I think our national leaders (as well as the accompanying chair fillers) knew based on clearly stated positions, exactly what the likely outcome would be. The fact that it took so long was designed to convince the public of how each side worked to have their position prevail. I think this strategy was a mistake. With an economy that is struggling, with a faltering economy, it is a serious mis-step to undermine confidence in that economy and not surprisingly in the Washington leadership in both parties. And yet we have done that. Would a settlement two weeks or a month sooner have made a difference? I believe it would have and that we would have been better off as a result of that earlier conclusion.

More and more we seem to be headed for confrontations and for blunt economic solutions. No changes in taxes, tax caps, and across the board spending cuts are blunt instruments. There are no doubt tax loopholes that should be closed or tax rates that should be adjusted. There are no doubt tax caps that will prevent real needs and priorities from being addressed. And across the board federal budget cuts, if it comes to that, will almost inevitably result in changes that undermine the national interest.

As I have said before we do need to contain spending, we do need to get a handle on the national debt and we do need to reduce the tax burden. But unless we move away from brinkmanship, and also substitute well thought out policy initiatives for blunt economics, these goals will not be achieved or if they are achieved, the costs could rival the gains. The economy is faltering and the clock is ticking. We need to do better and now is the time.

High on Imagination

2011-08-01T09:00:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite birthday gifts given to me this year was a membership to the High Line, and so a few days ago my kids and I went to visit there. What is the High Line? Before I answer that question, let me answer the question that should come first—what was the High Line? It was an elevated freight train structure including of course the tracks, and freight trains ran on this structure until the 1980s. And as a kid, riding in a car down or up the west side drive, I still remember the trains running. The High Line, and before that time, surface level tracks, were prominent parts of the west side of Manhattan corridor during the time that railroads were an indispensible mainstay of our transportation infrastructure. Those days are long gone, and even the rail facilities that continue to exist aren’t treated with the respect that this still important form of transportation should be accorded.

So what happens to the structure and the tracks when the need disappears? More than likely, in the name of progress, the raised tracks and the necessary elevated structure also disappear. And that was starting to happen here. But thanks to a group of individuals who had the imagination and the wherewithal to push for a park, the High Line now flourishes. We entered the High Line on 14^th Street. My kids were not really sure what to expect, and the thought of an elevated park seemed strange to them. I also had wondered whether this was really a park or was it a gimmick. From the second we got on, and from the walk to Gansevoort Street and then from Gansevoort to 30^th Street, we were enthralled. We walked, we sat, we looked at the sights including the buildings, the plantings, the art display, and the Hudson River; and we were all enthralled. The kids have already decided that we need to go back soon and take some of their friends along for the experience.

New York was fortunate that much of this structure was not torn down and that this park exists. But the greatest good fortune lies in the imagination of those individuals who pictured the High Line as what it could be rather than what it was.

The emphasis in much of education today is on testing. Test results carry great weight in evaluating a school district; test results carry great weight in determining where you will be able to go for higher education as well as graduate education. We are all familiar with school districts whose claim to fame is their test results and whose students help populate many of the best colleges and universities. But where does imagination play a role in this equation. We know it can make all the difference; we know that meaningful change often requires imagination and the ability to see things differently. I’m an economist. I think that economics is invaluable but I know that fostering imagination is enormously helped by a meaningful exposure to the arts. Music and art bring out the creativity and allow the mind to expand. In this era of constraints, when choices in education may become more limited, we have an obligation to support the arts and to encourage students at all levels to take arts courses. Test results do matter but test results without imagination lead to the same things being done in the same way. The arts are one meaningful way of expanding the possible. And for so many of the problems we face today, expanding the possible is the best hope we have for a better quality life for ourselves and the other inhabitants of our world.

The Return of/to Spider-Man

2011-07-25T09:00:00.002-04:00

An earlier blog focused on my family trip to see Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark. My wife, two kids, and I thoroughly enjoyed the production. Much of the staging was spectacular, and the story – though it faltered somewhat in the second act—easily held our attention. This original version closed for three weeks for some rewriting and reopened with much more favorable reviews. My kids very much wanted to see the revised version (and actually would also have been pleased to see the original version again) so this past weekend we made our second Spiderman trip. There is much good news and there is some less than good news.

The second act was a vast improvement over the original version. The story line was much crisper and clearer, and there was also no superfluous filler (such as a song about Arachne, the spider’s show wardrobe). There was also more of Dr Osborn aka the Green Goblin, a villain played with real gusto and talent by Peter Page. The music by Bono and The Edge was also enhanced and seemed to be much more effective in this revised version. The downside, to some extent the other side of the crisper story line coin, was that the story lost the nuance of the more complete Arachne story. My younger daughter missed the added focus on Arachne and felt its removal was a loss. For the rest of us, though we missed seeing more of Arachne, the gain much more than made up for the loss.

What makes this show special, in its first iteration or the new version, is the staging. It remains brilliant as do the costumes and the sets. Without the flair inherent in Julie Taymor’s vision of Spider-Man, no amount of revision could have been made this production memorable. And the producers and directors of Spider-Man were completely correct, the show needed the time and attention to go through the evolution that many Broadway shows need, and given the scale of the production that process needed it happen under the glare of the Broadway lights. Where the producers and directors were wrong is in underestimating the time this evolution would take. The resulting five postponements of the opening just served to erode confidence in the show, certainly not a help when the goal is at least earn back the $75 million that this production cost.

As I stated in my last blog on Spider-Man many of the most memorable authors often required many drafts and many rewrites before an outstanding final product emerged. And many educators recognize that the development of our most outstanding students and graduates is often also an evolutionary process. For Spider-Man, Turn Off The Dark the process is complete, the story did “Rise Above” and the result is certainly worth the wait. The evolution of Peter Parker and the evolution of many of our students is always a journey where the final product is certainly worth the wait.

Blunt Economics

2011-07-18T09:00:00.003-04:00

Across the country, virtually every state is trying to control spending, and nationally we are also working hard to control spending. Who could argue? No one wants additional taxes, so raising revenue (absent a more robust economy) on the state level will be difficult while raising the deficit on the national is equally unpopular. We all demand, and rightly so, fiscal discipline from our leaders.

To control spending, you could do a thorough national, state, and local review of all policies, programs and regulations. It is certain that some programs have a great deal of waste, or have outlived their usefulness, or provide only marginal benefit. It is equally certain that some unfunded mandates/regulations are costly and not needed. But doing a program by program or policy by policy review is difficult, time consuming, and often impacted by politics at least as much as merit. Given that difficulty, tax caps have become more and more popular. You can stringently limit spending increasing but avoid making the tough program by program or mandate by mandate decisions. We have such a cap now in New York, and as a school board member I can clearly tell that there are serious problems ahead that virtually all school districts will face as a result. With the legislation recently in place and given unfunded mandates, the built in annual education cost increase (inflation rate) will likely be higher than the cap. Overriding the cap will require a super majority (60%) and consequently be very difficult but living within the cap will squeeze education and in time almost certainly adversely impact quality. Tax caps are blunt instruments. I am not disputing that they can be helpful but there are certainly alternatives and there are certainly negative consequences.

On the revenue side, we also seem to be embracing a blunt approach. The mantra of no tax increases is alive and well at every level of government. The appeal is enormous and I’m certainly sympathetic. But once again there are consequences of following a one size fits all policy rather than taking a more micro look at taxes. Are there some tax rates that are still too high and tax payers paying more than they should? Are there others where the tax rate is too low and tax payers should be paying more? Remember that if there are no possible increases in tax revenues, we will likely be forced to cut important programs (such as in the education area), that are key investments in our future. Blunt instruments and one size fits all policies may be easier to articulate and implement but may have far greater negative consequences than a more thought through less arbitrary plan of action.

We are all invested in keeping spending under control at all levels of government. We are all invested in minimizing the tax obligation. Both need to happen. But moving forward wearing the blinders of blunt policy parameters can’t be the best decision making process when our future is on the line. Now is the moment for our government leaders to provide the sophisticated leadership that these challenging times demand.

The C Word

2011-07-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of attending my local high school graduation last week. This was a class that was recognized for their social action, for their sense of purpose, and for their involvement. A nice change in priorities from the “me” generation that we suffered through not that long ago. Early in the ceremony, there was a speech by the class valedictorian who as you can imagine was very bright and articulate, and had a sense of humor besides. Certainly an impressive young man with a great combination of positive attributes.

The speech by the valedictorian noted that their journey as students had progressed from the relatively simple learning early in elementary school (spell “cat”) to the more complex learning and socializing as you approached and entered middle school, to the much more complex environment in high school. According to the valedictorian, it was upon entering high school that the students were introduced to the “dreaded C word” where the “C” stood for college. At the point this comment was made there was a laugh from many of the graduates and an unhappy look from a few. Why the laughs, why the frowns, and why was there a sense of “dread” when it came to thinking about college?

The sense of dread didn’t really come from thinking about college. Rather it came from the realization that almost everything you did in high school would impact the chances of your getting into college, most especially perhaps the schools you most wanted to go to. Your grades, your standardized test scores, as well as your other school related activities all made a difference. Add to that, your economic situation, especially the ability of your family to help cover the costs of higher education which can also make a significant difference. As do any number of life events, from the most positive to the most tragic.

For some of the students graduating, the journey from high school to college was as smooth as can be and they were positioned perfectly for this next step in life’s progression. But for others in the audience the journey was more complex and the end result may not have been everything they desired. Sometimes the journey leaves the current graduate in an uncomfortable place and the disappointment permeates the person and perhaps also the family. At an early age, optimism is clouded by failure and a person may end up being judged solely by his or her SATs or high school average.

Students don’t always accomplish everything they want to, especially by age 18. But what makes our system of higher education work so well is that there are multiple opportunities provided to change schools, majors, career goals. In many societies and in many situations in life, there isn’t the opportunity to move forward from a difficult situation. Our system isn’t perfect but the opportunities are there. So, after high school, the old saying really does apply, “if you don’t succeed at first, try, try again.” And our role as educators at all levels of education is to help instill in our students the determination and ability to move forward and ultimately succeed.

Passion

2011-06-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve been waiting to write a blog with a racy message. However, my title of “passion” isn’t describing a steamy relationship; rather it describes an intellectual relationship between a dean, department chairperson, and/or tenure or promotion committee chair, and the accomplishments of the tenure/promotion candidate that is being written about. I have read thousands of tenure letters from all the participants in the process and I have written hundreds of letters recommending tenure. What registers most on the next step in the process – a letter that comes across as boilerplate or a letter that articulately and passionately describes why the person deserves tenure or promotion?

Too many letters are of the boilerplate variety. Each point is touched on that needs to be touched on – teaching, scholarship, and service are all discussed but often without noting why this is a compelling candidacy. The student evaluations and peer observations are OK; the articles, chapters and or books are OK; and the service is OK. If this is the standard for tenure and promotion, recommendations like this should serve the purpose. But often the standard for tenure or promotion requires excellence in one or more of these categories. And for tenure especially, there should be no doubts.

Boilerplate letters often don’t do justice to the outstanding candidate for tenure and or promotion. Sometimes such letters are prepared because “everything is OK” is the best that can be said. More than once in my career, a department chair, a committee chair, or a dean have written such letters, come to such conclusions because it really was the best that could be said about the candidate and perhaps even more than the best. If Ok is the best we can say, is this tenure or promotion deserved?

And sometimes, the letters that are written do a tremendous disservice to the candidate. The candidate is clearly outstanding, awesome, a tremendous asset, and deserving of tenure or promotion but the letters don’t convey that level of achievement. Every personnel statement should strive to do justice to the person’s record. If the record is outstanding, the letter documenting those achievements should make the case persuasively.

Everyone involved in the tenure or promotion process should make sure the letters written are the strongest most passionate accurate assessment that can be compiled about the candidate. If each of us viewed our letter as the critical document in the process and the key to the candidate’s promotion and or tenure, letters in general would be at a much higher caliber. Promotion or tenure should not be a judgment call; the facts and the resulting documentation should be compelling. What a loss it would be to the University if this person was not tenured or promoted. Let the passion be real and let the passion shine through.

Economics - The 360-Degree View

2011-06-20T09:00:00.010-04:00

Be careful what you wish for. By the end of last week, I was looking for a reprieve from Anthony Weiner stories. Every newscast I watched or listened to and almost every bulletin on the internet dealt with another facet of this widely covered and fully uncovered story. I am from the school of thought that public officials should not only provide leadership but should also serve as role models. I would like my kids to view public service as a desirable higher calling and view our elected officials as exemplary citizens. Sleaze and corruption undermines interest in government service and undermines the very fabric of our society. If you can’t have confidence in our elected officials, can you have confidence in our government?

What turned attention away from Anthony Weiner in this area was the Dow Jones Industrial Average closing below the 12,000 point level on Friday, June 10^th. The headlines now focused on the DJIA decline over the last month and the perceived increased weakness in our economy. What was happening to our recovery? What was happening to jobs creation, to housing prices, and what would the impact be on the 2012 elections?

Last October, I had the pleasure of being invited to an economic conversation with Netherlands Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende. As a higher education economist, I am always cautious in conversing about national and international economics (especially with a Prime Minister) but at that conversation I made one key point that remains fully relevant today. The economy is moving forward and the White House, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve all deserve credit. I am pleased to note the increasing viability of Detroit and I am pleased to see the increasing strength of our financial institutions. But without a 360 degree view, you are not seeing the entire picture and you are not in a position to accurately gauge our economic vulnerability.

I live on Long Island, in New York State. I like Long Island and I like the proximity to New York City, but Long Island, New York City and New York State are all encountering dire financial situations. New York in general and Long Island specifically, has lived outside of its means and newly elected government officials are working diligently to restore the financial viability of the area. Jobs are being cut on the local and state level, programs are being curtailed, benefits for existing workers and especially for new hires going forward are being reduced, and a tax cap has achieved more popularity than Lady Gaga. What is happening in New York is also happening in many other states. Often politicians defend these cuts as resulting in doing more with less. To some extent this may be true but to a greater extent we are doing less with less because there is no other alternative.

With states and localities cutting back, there is a significant drag on the economic recovery. A recovery requires a certain momentum and a certain velocity. We want that momentum and that velocity to result in a robust economy. But just as Washington has helped provide that initial thrust, New York and other states have provided increasing downward drag on the economy. This will not be a vibrant economy anytime soon, we will not be impressed with the gains in employment and in the Dow Jones. I think we are on the right track, however, and if we stay the course, the economy – absent any external shocks – we will continue to move forward.

Slow News Day

2011-06-13T09:00:00.001-04:00

On November 9, 1965, my doctor appointment in mid town Manhattan lasted longer than I expected and I needed to be at a meeting at The City College within less than 30 minutes. So instead of a casual walk from Madison to 7^thor 8^th Avenue to get on the subway, I decided to make use of connecting trains. I was very fortunate, the train came immediately (at about 5:25PM) and though it was very crowded, I was on my way. Well, on my way, turned out to be an exaggeration. We did get out of the station in a timely manner but somewhere between that station and the next station, the train stopped and everything went black. I was in fact caught in a major northeast/New York blackout and it took me and my fellow riders almost five hours to be led out of the train to an above ground exit. No fun at all. What made it especially difficult, in addition to the very crowded conditions, was the panic that set in among a number of passengers. An hour into our five hour ordeal, a passenger in the train indicated that she thought we were trapped because of a nuclear attack. The panic spread to a few more people in the train but luckily, cooler heads prevailed and we, for the most part assumed, what turned out to be the case, that we were in the midst of a major blackout.

The speculation regarding a nuclear attack most upset the few kids that were in the train. A blackout is frightening enough for children; add a nuclear attack and the situation becomes especially hard for most children to handle. The parents and friends of these kids did all that they could to calm them down but as their crying demonstrated, there was very limited success.

Fast forward through the decades to Saturday, May 21, 2011. According to Harold Camping, the world would end that day. An earthquake would spread through the time zones from east to west; the rapture day would be here at last. Yet, even though there was significant press coverage regarding the coming end of the world, no one seemed consumed by the prediction (though a few students – tongue in cheek – did ask if the grading process could be speeded up so that they would know their grades prior to the 21^st). But as the day approached, I did notice that my kids, who are relatively young, and their friends seemed somewhat cranky but I wasn’t sure why. On the morning of the 21^st as I am out running errands with my 9 year old daughter, I comment to her that after a week of rainy weather, it was great to have a beautifully sunny, clear day. She responds by asking if the world is about to end. I say absolutely not and try to assure her that periodically throughout time, people have been predicting the end of the world but the world keeps going. I stress that throughout her lifetime and many succeeding lifetimes, the world would be fine. She seems reassured but nevertheless does decide that she will wait to take a shower or do her homework until Sunday.

Dedicating as much press as was dedicated to an end of the world prediction shows it was a slow news period of time. And yet maybe during such periods, the press should still not highlight extreme predictions. As grownups, we pay no attention to such stories and continue to do what we do. We often even joke about predictions of this type. But for kids, with all the complexity and uncertainty that already exists, we do a tremendous disservice by highlighting predictions like this. Kids should have the opportunity to be kids. What we find funny or off the wall, they may find very scary. We should remember that before we highlight future predictions like this, and if they are highlighted, we should remember to explain in advance what they do and don’t mean. Since Camping has issued a revised end of the world schedule for October, we will get another chance to do it right.

Robert L. Payton

2011-06-06T09:00:00.000-04:00

Earlier today, I received a phone call from an emeritus faculty member telling me that she had just heard about the passing of Robert Payton, a major figure in the study of philanthropy. I had known and worked with Bob earlier in his career and this phone call immediately made me think back to a phone call I had received from him in 1975.

The call came on a Friday afternoon toward the end of August. I was an untenured assistant professor of economics standing for tenure at Hofstra and Robert L. Payton was the President. I had also just been appointed as the Associate Dean of University Advisement. My record was strong but Hofstra’s enrollment was declining at that time and the granting of tenure to me meant 100% tenure in the economics department at a time when all the enrollment indicators suggested that more fixed costs were not a great idea. I was home at the time, actually vacuuming my living room, and trying not to think about my tenure candidacy. But that wasn’t easy. Vacuuming for me is not a fascinating activity. And, as far as I knew everyone else standing for tenure that year had already been informed and I also knew that the Hofstra Board of Trustees had met earlier that week.

I answered the phone on the second or third ring. It was President Payton’s assistant indicating that he wanted to talk with me on the phone for a few minutes, and was this a convenient time to have that conversation. What can you say other than yes? Bob got on the phone and immediately stated that the Board of Trustees had agreed with his recommendation that I be awarded tenure and that he knew this was in the best interests of the University. I have always appreciated his willingness and the University’s willingness to take that chance in difficult economic times. And what a class act he was to call and personally inform me.

At the beginning of that academic year, Bob Payton and I team taught a course on the economics of higher education. I had been scheduled to teach this course and when he found out about it, he indicated he wanted to participate. Scary to some extent to have a President as a teaching partner but I give him enormous credit. He was exceptionally well read in all areas of higher education and I loved teaching this course. It was team teaching at its best—the academic rigor and the practical experience, all in one course. But it is important to note that Bob was not just informed regarding higher education, he was extraordinarily well read and extraordinarily worldly. Earlier in his career he had been the ambassador to Cameroon and he had a global orientation long before global was on most people’s radar. He also very much had that sense of style and polish that one associates with an ambassador. Bob had the highest regard for the liberal arts, a keen understanding of what constitutes a good education and the importance of good teaching in making that happen.

Bob was only President for 3 years and they were difficult years enrollment wise for Hofstra. After he left Hofstra he first headed the Exxon Education Foundation and later was a key figure in the founding of the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. In his leadership role at both Exxon and at Indiana he made enormous contributions. I greatly respect these contributions and Bob’s legacy is inextricably interwoven in this good work. But for me it was Bob Payton the person that made an indelible impression at a critical stage in my career. And I am a better educator, a better provost and a better person because of the example he set.

Accreditations

2011-05-23T09:00:00.000-04:00

I have just finished updating my profile for an accrediting agency that both Hofstra and I are involved with. The update was necessary if I wanted to be considered for a future accreditation review team. I recognize that being part of an accreditation team entails significant work but I do so gladly because I think that accreditation makes an important positive difference.

My first experience with accreditation was three decades ago when I was serving as associate provost (and subsequently business school dean) and was very involved in preparing for a visit by AACSB, the national and international business school accrediting agency. The end result of this effort was a stronger business school in every meaningful way, including the accomplishments of the faculty as well as the breadth and depth of the curriculum. My next experience occurred when I was serving a few years later as acting dean of the school of education and I was very much involved in an NCATE visit. Once again, in preparing for the visit and in adhering to the standards, we were clearly a better school of education. At this point in time, I have been involved in multiple accreditations, multiple times, and have also served on Middle States Periodic Review teams, AACSB visitation teams and ABA visitation teams. From my first impressions of accreditation to the current time, my opinion has stayed the same: I think that accreditations, both voluntary and required, serve enhance the education we provide.

Is this always a perfect process? Hardly! Two concerns stand out. Firstly, there are accreditation team members who view everything that anyone else does through the lens of what happens at their home institution. There is more than one curriculum structure that accomplishes what needs to be accomplished. There is more than one way of assessing outcomes. There is more than one way of doing much of what we do. Anyone who comes in with a fondness only for what is done at his/her home institution, at the expense of alternate philosophies that are within the accreditation standards, is doing a tremendous disservice. Hopefully the other visiting team members can moderate any such tendency in this direction, but especially if it is the visiting team chair that has this bias, it can be a real problem.

The second concern is when a member of the accreditation team or the chair of the accreditation team looks for perfection in measuring whether a standard has been met. A person new to an accreditation team is most vulnerable to having perfection as a standard. A person who has been on the receiving end of such an accreditation committee member may also be somewhat vulnerable to advocating this standard when they are part of a team. Perfection is not a realistic standard (or a realistic expectation) but overall high quality needs to be the standard against which an institution or a program is measured. And hopefully the efforts of the visiting team will help move an institution further in that direction.

Overall, for me, accreditation translates into verifiable quality. I am very pleased that so many of Hofstra’s programs are nationally accredited and I think we are all well served by accreditations.

Commencement Rules

2011-05-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

Whenever I think of commencement, I always think of President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech-making quote—“Be sincere, be brief, be seated.” For any and all speakers at a commencement, there needs to be a realization that this is the graduates’ special moment. The time should not be filled by long speeches, by overly technical speeches, by politically divisive speeches, or by crude humor. And having gone – to date – to approximately 200 commencement ceremonies, I have experienced all of the above (thankfully, very rarely) as well as many commencements that were virtually perfect.

The speaker at my own undergraduate commencement spoke endlessly (well over an hour). It became difficult to tell at the time whether this was a commencement speech or a filibuster. An endless speech together with being outdoors on a very cool night led to an audience flight of major proportions. My parents, my brother and my sister-in-law all left before the end of the ceremony. And since this was a time before cell phones or text messaging, I didn’t know they had left until I had waited almost 30 minutes at the spot we were supposed to meet at, after the ceremony. At that point, when I called my parents apartment, my mom answered the phone and said they were all waiting for me. With almost no cash in my pockets (my sister-in-law was holding my jacket with my wallet), I headed for the subway. During that ride, I had plenty of time to begin developing my guidelines for commencements. First rule, the length of speeches and the number of speakers needs to be limited. Second rule, a subway ride is not necessarily a moving experience when it takes place immediately after graduation.

Any rule book on commencements needs to include honorary degree recipients. Clearly in awarding an honorary degree, the single most important factor should be the accomplishments of the person being honored. An honorary degree recipient is present to not only receive individual recognition but also to inspire. Therefore the standard for anyone receiving an honorary degree should be nothing less than excellence. But accomplishment also needs to be accompanied by a high ethical standard. The person needs to be honorable. It makes no sense to recognize accomplishment but not take into consideration the person being honored. A political opinion, different from your own, however, should not be a disqualifier (though as I noted above, commencement is not a time for a politically divisive speech). Universities thrive on different opinions; a litmus test before an honorary degree is approved undermines the principles we work so hard to preserve.

The rule book on commencements should also strive to build as much of a personal experience into a commencement as possible. Easier said than done. There needs to be an opportunity provided for the graduates’ names to be read, for a handshake from the university president and/or other university leader, for a toast in honor of the families and friends that supported the graduating students all through their experience. If there is a very large graduating class, too large to do all of these things at the commencement itself there need to be other opportunities built in. Graduating is a job well done; the personal recognition should always be there. And for the highest achieving students, we should do even more.

Even after 200 commencement ceremonies, I still enjoy going to commencements. And what for me still matters most, going back to my own commencement, is the experience of the students. For all of us in higher education, it is the value of the student experience from day one through graduation that needs our greatest attention.

The Invisible Horse

2011-05-09T09:00:00.002-04:00

As an economics undergraduate major and subsequently a doctoral student, I remember studying World War I, especially the economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles. Impossibly large reparations were just one ingredient in setting the stage for another world war to quickly follow World War I. In high school and most likely in middle school, I also studied this war to end all wars. As I remember it, history in middle school and in high school was mostly a story of wars with only a brief focus on other events. And when the time came to discuss World War I, the enormous loss of human life was a sobering figure for us all to contemplate.

A few weeks ago, I took my older daughter to see War Horse, the story of a young man in World War I who enlists to find his horse who had been sold to be used in combat. The play was excellent. The horses were life size puppets and their movements were so real that it made the impact of the story that much greater. Horses are hurt by barbed wire in this play, horses die from hunger, horses are killed and the happy ending of young man being united with his horse is coupled with the unhappy fact of many soldiers on both sides dying and many horses also dying.

In all the courses I took that touched on World War I, I doubt if the loss of horses was ever mentioned. Yes we knew there were horses in combat, we knew this was a time for transition from horses to tanks and cars but that was all the attention I remember being paid to this subject. The reality, however is that a million horses died and that was just in the British armed forces; overall the number was closer to 8 million. Of the million horses to see combat for the British, only about 60,000 came home. And those that came home received no recognition for an important job well done. In fact, according to an interview in the London Evening Standard with Michael Morpurgo, the author of War Horse,

In its wisdom the British government decided to sell off many thousands of these war horses. In Egypt many ended up emaciated and maltreated in the streets of Cairo. In France and in Belgium, they ended up as meat on a butcher’s slab. It was the ultimate betrayal.

The education I received didn’t place a high value on a horse’s life or 8 million horses’ lives. And yet, a loss this great is clearly a tragedy. We all know, but sometimes we don’t make it clear to our students that our values permeate our view of reality and of history. That doesn’t mean that we should strive any less to be as objective as we possibly can be. But we also shouldn’t strive any less to make sure our remaining or inherent biases are as visible as they can be. If the reality we present is incomplete or in any way less than objective, a disclaimer is certainly appropriate. And for our students, the sooner they recognize that black and white is at least somewhat gray, the more we will help foster their intellectual curiosity.

Cyberbullying

2011-05-02T09:00:00.013-04:00

A few weeks ago, Hofstra Law School organized a one day conference on cyberbullying. I had the opportunity, in my capacity as Hofstra’s Provost, to say a few words at the beginning of the conference but I stayed for the keynote address because as a parent and also as a school board member, the topic has special importance for me. In my remarks I mentioned a news story that attracted major attention a few years ago where a 49 year old mom was convicted on misdemeanor charges for posing as a 16 year old boy on MySpace.com. This mom, Lori Drew, chose to pursue, woo, and then reject a 13 year old girl, Megan Meier. Along the way to make sure that Megan was as humiliated as possible, the mom/16 year old boy made sure to forward all the secrets learned in the relationship to Megan’s circle of friends. The reason for the mom’s involvement was a falling out between Megan and Lori Drew’s daughter. The end result was the tragic and needless suicide death of Megan Meier. What could the mom have been thinking?

I am no different than most parents of young and teenage kids in worrying about cyberbullying. None of us want our kids to be victims but this is certainly a more sophisticated, more anonymous, potentially more vicious and more difficult to confront form of bullying. What is cyberbullying? According to the National Cyber Alert System definition:

Cyberbullying refers to the new, and growing, practice of using technology to harass, or bully, someone else. Bullies used to be restricted to methods such as physical intimidation, postal mail, or the telephone. Now, developments in electronic media offer forums such as email, instant messaging, web pages, and digital photos to add to the arsenal. Computers, cell phones, and PDAs are new tools that can be applied to an old practice.

Forms of cyberbullying can range in severity from cruel or embarrassing rumors to threats, harassment, or stalking. It can affect any age group; however, teenagers and young adults are common victims, and cyberbullying is a growing problem in schools.

What makes cyberbullying such a problem is that the internet provides the protection of relative anonymity which in turn can increase the intensity of the bullying given that anonymity.

As educators and as parents we have an important role in protecting children and young adults from these anonymous attacks. First of all as parents, we need to clearly state that cyberbullying is unacceptable. We need to comfort the kids who have been bullied and we need to age-appropriately punish any child involved in these activities. Adults also need, in this and so many other areas, to model appropriate behavior for their kids and other kids. Lori Drew was clearly not a role model; she was a major contributor to a major problem.

As a parent and as a school board member, I want and expect the schools to play a very active role in combating cyberbullying and there is considerable activity that I’m aware of that has made a difference. Anti-bullying programs, codes of conduct, anti-bullying pledges, and parental education are all taking place locally and in school districts across the country. In an article on bullying in the October 27th issue of Newsday, there were statistics included for Long Island from the New York State Education Department showing that being proactive is working well with “a nearly 11 percent decline on the Island in incidents reported as intimidation or bullying from 2006-2007 to 2008-2009.”

These statistics are impressive but I still have concerns in regard to our schools confronting this serious problem.

One is the question of what schools can and can’t do. As noted by stopcyberbullying.com:

When schools try and get involved by disciplining the student for cyberbullying actions that took place off-campus and outside of school hours, they are often sued for exceeding their authority and violating the student’s free speech right. They also, often lose. Schools can be very effective brokers in working with the parents to stop and remedy cyberbullying situations. They can also educate the students on cyberethics and the law. If schools are creative, they can sometimes avoid the claim that their actions exceeded their legal authority for off-campus cyberbullying actions. We recommend that a provision is added to the school’s acceptable use policy reserving the right to discipline the student for actions taken off-campus if they are intended to have an effect on a student or they adversely affect the safety and well-being of student while in school. This makes it a contractual, not a constitutional, issue.

And the second concern is economics . We are entering an era of stringent tax caps, which of course have an appeal to a public that feels overtaxed or worse in a difficult economic time. What will happen to programs in areas such as cyberbullying as we try to limit our expenditures? Will they remain? Clearly not all these initiatives cost money and even those that do, cost limited amounts. But they are often not free and so require resources; if cutbacks happen these programs may be vulnerable. We should all exert our influence to make sure that this doesn’t happen.

Arts Priority

2011-04-25T09:00:00.007-04:00

Recently at a program presented by the Long Island Arts Alliance, New York State Education Commissioner David Steiner made an impassioned plea to a very friendly audience in support of arts education. The Commissioner feels strongly that art and music education not only has a place in K-12 education but that it is a very important place equal in importance to English, Math and Science. I very much agree and I would also add that health and physical education hold a place of importance as well. It all comes together as a well rounded education, which hopefully brings with it, well rounded students who do better in college, at work, and in life.

To make the case for the arts and music being important, the Commissioner advocates a New York State (Regents) exam in these areas much like the sate wide exams already given areas such as English, math and the sciences. And though the audience was completely on board in recognizing the value of the arts and arts education, there was no such unanimity regarding a standardized test in these areas. How would the test work; how would you assess both the theoretical as well as the performance elements of arts education? The Commissioner felt there were already examples in actual use elsewhere and he gave Britain as an example of a country where an arts test dealt successfully with the issues raised.

There was another concern raised during this discussion regarding the potential negative consequences from turning arts education into another area of test preparation at the middle school and especially the high school level. Would this limit creativity? Would this diminish enjoyment of the arts? And would the long term negative consequences create a population that moves away from these areas as soon as there are no more requirements and no more standardized tests. This is certainly a valid concern and could be a very negative unintended consequence of an effort to make the arts more prominent.

I have great difficulty conceptualizing a standardized examination in these areas. And I urge that no such examination be implemented without a full review and opportunity to provide feedback on what is being proposed. Schools of Education and university music departments can be of great assistance in both the development and assessment phases and should be fully utilized. But I worry in this time of potentially significant reductions in K-12 education funding, that implementation of an arts standardized exam will not follow such a comprehensive vetting process. And I worry even more in this constrained time that teaching to the test will provide the most economical and therefore perhaps most utilized response to the test.

We really need to be very careful that in our quest to give the arts their rightful place in a program of essential learning that we don’t weaken rather than strengthen arts education. The most important test is whether we can foster creativity as well as a long-term appreciation of the arts as part of every child’s education. For our children’s sake, we need to do well on this test.

Charging Into the Future

2011-04-18T09:00:00.000-04:00

For the last four days, I have been driving a Chevrolet Volt which is a real electric car (different from the typical hybrid) with a back-up gas powered engine to charge the Lithium-Ion batteries when necessary. The “when necessary” is when you drive the Volt for more than 40 miles. It’s been very interesting and the future is clearly visible here. The car will be displayed on campus (courtesy of East Hills Chevrolet) as part of the University’s Earth Day activities, and the dealer also invited me to drive the car for a few days before it goes on display.

Where I live is just less than 11 miles from the campus. The Volt is therefore good for my daily commute including a meeting or lunch off campus, which of course happens regularly. The car has keyless ignition, automatic transmission, Bluetooth, a highly interactive and well thought out instrument panel. leather seats, pleasant styling, and power window, mirrors etc. This is a very well equipped and very comfortable vehicle, it handles well and rides well, not that different from many other very nice sedans. Except there are differences—first and most noticeable, the car is silent. Not just quiet but beautifully silent (unless the climate control fan is on a higher setting, in which case the car is virtually silent). Even more importantly, there are no emissions when driven within its electric range and so the environment clearly benefits. The other major difference is that the car needs to be plugged in when I come home at the end of the day. So now when I come home, I not only make sure my phone is fully charged for the next day, I also make sure my car is fully charged as well. In fact I never travel anywhere without an extension cord. At the beginning of the day and the end of the day, I am liking this car.

What I am also liking, is what the car says about General Motors and by extension what it says about the American automobile industry. We can compete, and we can be at the cutting edge. Overall, the cars being produced this year by GM, Ford and Chrysler come closer to meeting the needs and desires of the American public than any product line-up in many years. There is no longer a need to go to a Japanese or German car to drive a top quality vehicle.

But there is still much more work to be done. The American automobile industry must show it can build quality cars responsive to consumer demand, not just this year but over the long term. And the cars must also last over the long run. Innovation must continue. Here too there is much more work to be done. The Volt is a great car but it is only a start. The battery capacity needs to be increased and the price needs to come down. The technology is brilliant but this is still not my idea of a $40,000+ car ($32,500+ after factoring the Federal tax credit). I would like to drive a green car but one with an electric range of closer to 200 miles. And if I spend $40,000 on a car, I certainly expect power seats rather than the manual adjustment the car presently has.

I will miss driving the Volt and I really like the car. Perhaps not in the next year or two but certainly in the next 5 or 10 years, I see myself driving an electric car on a daily basis. The world is certainly changing. In the car industry as well as in higher education, we need to make sure that what we do facilitates change, prepares us for change and respond to change. No short circuits welcome here.

Positive Disagreement

2011-04-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

At least one a year, an entry level administrator will ask me if it is OK to disagree with his/her boss and, if yes, how should s/he disagree. We all know that differences of opinion and the resulting discussions are valuable aspects of an enlightened decision making process. And I could just respond to the question (since I am a Broadway musicals fan) by saying (since singing is not my strong point): just do everything “the company way.” Instead, my answer is that it is certainly OK; if you keep in mind the time, the place, and the style.

The easiest to explain is “the place.” If you are with your boss at a meeting with others and a difference of opinion arises, it is not helpful to disagree with your boss in front of others. Whether you are right or you are wrong, airing a difference of opinion in front of others undercuts your supervisor and is not consistent with “positive disagreement.” If you can take a break in the meeting, if you can discuss after the meeting, if you can anticipate differences before a meeting, all of these provide appropriate alternatives. The only exceptions to these guidelines are life or death situations, and meetings where everyone knows, respects, and works well with everyone else at the meeting.

By focusing on “the time,” I am clearly not talking about whether early in the morning is better than immediately after lunch or just before going home. I am also not suggesting that disagreeing on Monday is fine but that we follow the rule of never on Sunday. The time needs to be as early in the decision making process as possible. Insights are most helpful early in the process; positions are most flexible early in the process. By sharing your thoughts early in the process you also have the maximum opportunity to make a difference in the process as well as the maximum opportunity to make a positive impression. What happens if your supervisor doesn’t agree with your position? It happens, and you need to understand that it can happen almost regardless of the level that you are at. You need to get used to it, and it really can be OK for the situation and for you. If your opinion doesn’t carry the day, but your argument or the points involved are well made, you enhance your chances of moving forward. However, if you disagree with almost everything your boss says or does, it’s time to look for a new boss and a new opportunity.

And of course, by focusing on style, I am not suggesting that dark business attire is prerequisite to a stylish difference of opinion. What is prerequisite is a sense of respect and the need to be a good listener as well as a good communicator. In making your point of view known, please understand that there are likely other equally valid points of view. Please also take for granted that your supervisor is a knowledgeable person. Never be insulting, derogatory, sarcastic; never question your supervisor’s intelligence. Just focus on the issue at hand and make you point.

Is this always easy? Clearly not. Can there be times in your career when the opinion you have of your supervisor for valid or not so valid reasons make it impossible to follow the rules of time, place, and style? What should you do? You needn’t spend a long time searching for an answer; search instead for a new position.

The Easy Choice

2011-04-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

I have been busy completing my remarks for this season’s first admitted students’ day event. Actually there are now multiple admitted students’ day events since we want the experience to be both as convenient and as personal as possible. And though my remarks are substantially changed from what I said last year, the message each and every year has been remarkably similar. I urge potential undergraduate students and their families to look for the long term value of the higher education the students are about to embark on. I encourage students and their families to find the education that is a “best fit” with the needs and interests of the students. I focus on the value of excellent teaching plus support services and I also stress that national accreditations equate to verifiable quality. And I note the importance of a fully textured undergraduate experience including internships, civic engagement and athletics. And this is an easy speech for me to deliver since I completely believe in what I am saying.

Earlier this week I went to a local swim center for an end of the day swim. Swimming laps for me is a mindless way of not only getting cardio-vascular exercise but swimming also provides a wonderful venue for thinking through what happened that day or just before or just after that day. While swimming I was thinking about admitted students’ day and whether I should make any major changes in the thrust of what I was saying. I was still thinking about my message when I left the pool and went back to the locker room to change. At the other side of the locker room there was a conversation in progress between what I gather were a handful of high school seniors. These young men were loud and they were talking about choosing colleges for next year. It didn’t appear that any of their parents were around and they did not notice me since there was a bank of lockers between where I was and where they were. One of the young men indicated he had already made up his mind to go to a local college (not Hofstra). He indicated it was an easy choice since the school selected offered more of what he wanted. Another kid asked him why not another area school. And the first young man volunteered without any hesitation that the local school he had decided on had “easier girls” and “easier courses” than the other choices. Unfortunately no one followed up by asking the first young man the basis for these conclusions. And the conversation switched shortly thereafter to weekend plans and cars, and a few minutes later the young men left the locker room.

What are the deciding factors in the selection of a college or university? I know what I want them to be for a decision of such importance. As indicated above, long term value, best fit, teaching excellence, verifiable quality, a fully textured experience are at the top of the list. I also recognize the financial constraints that many families face. But are these the factors that matter most, or is the decision made on the basis of factors that really shouldn’t carry the day? When a student selects a for-profit institution, is it based on the education provided or is it based on sophisticated marketing? When a student selects the absolutely lowest cost alternative, is it based on the education meeting the needs of the student, or simply the absolute cost considerations? Are easy schools favored; the closest schools favored; the furthest schools favored; a party school favored? A regional clothing chain has always stated that “an educated consumer is our best customer.” Our standard should be at least as high and we should all do whatever we can to increase the sophistication and expertise of our customer. We would all benefit: the student would have the education that was right for him or her, and we would have higher retention and graduation rates.

Evaluation

2011-03-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

Part of what attracted me to higher education in the first place and still attracts me is the shared governance environment. Economics was the discipline that excited me, and higher education was the environment where I felt most comfortable and most productive. And from my experience shared governance works well in most places and in most cases. My first experiences were in the area of curriculum, beginning with the department’s efforts to fine tune the economics major and subsequently extending to the committee that reviewed the undergraduate curriculum. On the department level and on the university level, the process went well. Faculty working with department chairs or deans scrutinized the curriculum, updated courses and reviewed requirements.

If you look at curriculum, if you look at standards, if you look at much of what happens in the academic area, we have a model for highly educated and highly intelligent individuals working together. But the shared governance process isn’t perfect and there are areas where the process is significantly less effective. Perhaps the area of greatest weakness is faculty evaluating other faculty. More than a few faculty are uncomfortable making any negative comments – even when fully justified and reflective of the faculty member’s opinion—about other faculty. In one of the first personnel cases that I had to deal with as dean, a department personnel committee chair said to me that he and his committee had only recommended positively on a personnel matter (and made only positive statements) because the committee knew that I would recommend against. They wanted to be the “good” person and they were more than comfortable with the dean being the “bad” person. And when the person I had just recommended against came in to see me, his first point was how could I have found fault with his record when all his colleagues in the department and in the same field had recommended positively. Not a comfortable moment.

More than a few times, faculty have come to see me to alert me that so and so is a “problem” for x reason and should not be (fill in the blank ) reappointed, tenured, promoted, selected as chair, etc. But the individuals talking to me are also candid in saying that they do not want their opinion made public because they have to work closely with that person, or have the office next door, or that person will be reviewing them next year, etc. I always indicate to the person talking to me that it is much much harder to follow up on a concern when the person raising the issue doesn’t want in any way to be identified. (In certain cases—such as allegations of sexual harassment—I also indicate that I need to report the allegation and cannot agree to not identifying the person who has brought the matter to my attention.)

In the vast majority of cases, the personnel process works well. Where it doesn’t, everyone is done a disservice. We are not providing the person being evaluated with the objective feedback necessary to resolve outstanding issues which can interfere with that person’s success. We are not providing the university with the complete accurate picture that will allow uncompromised merit based decision making in areas where the consequences of bad decisions are often long term. In this era of expanding outcomes assessment regarding curricular matters, we need to also undertake an outcomes assessment of shared governance and the evaluation process. Overall, I am sure we will get high marks, but I am equally sure there is substantial room for improvement.

Spider-Man: Turn on the Academic Parallel

2011-03-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Today was the day but it actually started last August. At that point in time, I purchased four tickets to Spider-Man so that my wife, my kids and I could attend. The tickets were full price and I was hoping this show would be a great family outing. But this is a show we have all heard about almost non-stop. There have been a number of accidents, equipment malfunctions, and delayed opening after delayed opening. This is also a show that has cost to date $65 million, a huge investment which requires, according to the press reports, at least four years of sold out performances before the opening costs incurred are covered. There have also been a number of critics who have provided reviews before opening night and it seems as if the majority of these preview /reviews have been far from positive. The story line was criticized, the music was criticized, and even the staging has been questioned.

As the delays mounted together with less than stellar reviews, I became more and more ambivalent about going. Why pay full Broadway prices for a production that was so wanting. My ambivalence was heightened when it was reported that the show with the most previews up to this time was Nick and Nora which had 71 previews and only remained open for a week after opening night. I saw Nick and Nora at the very end of previews even though I expected that these tickets would be for well after opening night. I am a long time fan of The Thin Man movies that this show was based on and for years the only dog I wanted was Asta. The show was a huge disappointment. I wasn’t surprised it closed almost immediately.

And so I entered the theater, as perhaps many others in the audience did, with ambivalence at best and perhaps even a feeling that an earlier closing could have saved me considerable money. And here is the bottom line—I loved the show. I though the staging was brilliant as were the costumes and sets, the story especially in the first act was fun as well as engrossing, the music was fine (not necessarily memorable but it certainly was enjoyable and worked well with the story line), and the cast first rate. I had thought that Julie Taymor’s work in Lion King was extraordinary. I first saw it in 1998 and I have been back two more times. I think her work here is even more extraordinary. And I have this very positive overall feeling even though, just as good has prevailed and the story was ending, there was a mechanical malfunction that left Spider-Man temporarily stuck in the air at the back of the theater.

Anyone reading this blog would be within their rights to say that I am not a professional theater critic and therefore really shouldn’t provide a review. It is true that I am an economist and an educator and not a New York Times theater critic. But I do have a considerable theater knowledge base. If you look at the shows playing on Broadway now, I have seen or have tickets for 22 of the musicals presently playing. That covers virtually all Broadway musicals. And last year, I also attended almost every Broadway musical. And I have been doing this for many years. I also take my kids to almost all the shows at the New Victory Theater and attend a number of off-Broadway and on-campus shows as well. Theater is my relaxation.

The producers and directors of Spider-Man have indicated that given the complexity of the show, there were no available theaters out of town that would provide a more secluded venue for previews, and I agree with them completely. The same requirements made it impossible for the show to start as an off- Broadway production that ultimately moves to Broadway and becomes a major success story. In the Heights is a perfect example of such a show. I loved it off -Broadway and felt that the Broadway touches made it even more effective.

At a faculty discussion earlier this week, the point was made that excellent writing and the works of our most memorable authors often required many drafts and many rewrites before the final product emerged. And when we read the final product, we can rightfully base our judgment on that product. We know that the effective teaching of good writing needs to be based on this evolutionary process. Some excellent writing requires more drafts, others require much less revision. We should accord the same rights to Spider-Man. This production is already excellent entertainment; it has the potential to even be much more. Let the evolution continue. It is certainly worth the wait. And, PS, I can already recommend without hesitation that you see it.

The Next Stage of Assessment

2011-03-14T09:00:00.000-04:00

For all of us as educators, the Lumina Foundation draft report on “The Degree Qualifications Profile” needs to be must reading. The Foundation in the first paragraph of the report states that the Profile is
“a tool that can help transform U.S. higher education.” Specifically, it “proposes specific learning outcomes that benchmark the associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees…regardless of a student’s field of specialization.” And for those of you who are not yet familiar with what the Foundation is proposing, the Degree Qualification Profile will validate “ five basic areas of learning: Broad, Integrative Knowledge; Specialized Knowledge; Intellectual Skills; Applied Learning; and Civic Learning.”

Clearly we are looking at outcomes assessment but not the outcomes assessment that we have been concentrating on in recent years. Our outcomes assessment looks at our learning goals and sees how successful we have been in meeting those goals, and also, as we make changes, whether we become more successful. The Lumina Foundation clearly takes issue with our present focus on outcomes by stating: Even as colleges and universities have defined their own expected student learning outcomes —typically to meet accreditation requirements — their discussions have been largely invisible to policy leaders, the public and many students. The Foundation continues by saying: Similarly, while higher education institutions have been under increasing pressure to be accountable for the quality of their degrees, institutions have frequently responded by testing samples of students in ways that say too little about learning and even less about what all students should attain as they progress through college. Without disagreeing with the need for a “Profile,” I’m not sure that the Foundation’s criticism of outcomes assessment and accountability is valid. As many outcomes or quality measures as we have had for many years, a formalized structure for outcomes assessment has not been easy for higher education to implement. It really requires assessment to be in place from the micro (individual courses) to the macro (the overall curriculum) plus a mechanism to take that assessment and translate it into cycles, once again at all levels, of continuous improvement. This is a process of continuous improvement that will take time to put fully in place. And rarely is this process as “invisible” as the Lumina Foundation states—we deal with 20 accrediting agencies plus our internal shared governance structure. We may not prepare press releases every time we assess an outcome or demonstrate accountability but higher education has made huge progress in recent years in validating and strengthening what we do.

But for Lumina this isn’t sufficient and perhaps they are right. For them, outcomes assessment should be in the context of standardized, by level of degree, outcomes that they feel every educated individual should attain regardless of his/her major; not just credits earned and grades achieved by macro competencies demonstrated and clear for all to see, and they have spelled out those macro competencies. As noted in the report, the “Profile” provides “reference points for accountability that are far stronger than test scores or tallies of graduates, research dollars, student satisfaction ratings, job placements or patents.” The report continues by stating that “more to the point, because the Degree Profile defines competencies in ways that emphasize both the cumulative integration of learning from many sources and the application of learning in a variety of settings, it can offer benchmarks for improving the quality of learning.”

Lumina is clear that they are not looking for standardized degrees. However, the inevitable conclusion of implementing required competencies and outcomes will be more standardization. It will also require a vastly more robust and sophisticated assessment procedure. Regional accrediting agencies are already gravitating toward the Lumina Profile. As educators, we need to participate in this unfolding debate. We need to help shape the competencies so that they demonstrate desired results without overly constraining or standardizing our higher education structure. Not an easy goal to accomplish. Meanwhile, for those individuals looking to see what accrediting agencies will be looking for in the next decade, just read the Lumina report. The handwriting is on the wall.

Target Practice

2011-03-07T09:00:00.000-05:00

I think we would all agree that our country is confronting a series of challenges in key areas such as the economy, health care, education, the environment, and national security. How we handle these challenges will determine whether the United States continues its global leadership role or whether we are eclipsed by other great powers on this globe. Regardless of your priorities, as we look to secure our future, education has to be a key part of any solution. But at this moment in time, education and especially schools of education are under attack.

The basis for the attack is that often in K-12 education, our students are not performing up to their potential and no one would argue with that assessment. The blame for this lack of performance or lack of progress is placed on the shoulders of our teachers and further blamed on the education they have received. The solutions suggest that a stint with Teach for America or an experience with a museum could provide the same or a greater level of expertise than pursuing a graduate degree in education. The threat is clear— if schools of education don’t change, students will be encouraged to go elsewhere to pursue their graduate education.

I happen to think that Teach for America is a terrific program and I love visiting museums and always find them to be a valuable learning experience. There is no question that such programs can enhance teaching techniques and content knowledge. But what about pedagogy? What about the learning process? What about a more in depth understanding of the students we are educating? What about the need for a strong liberal arts and sciences background? No one argues about the need for significant hands on experience for teachers but hands on cannot substitute for the proper educational foundation. Where is there any concrete evidence that teacher education has caused a lack of student performance?

Clearly student performance is impacted by teaching quality and I’m not sure that that the prevalent K-12 structure sufficiently recognizes merit and the quality of teaching. Yearly increases, step increases, and lane changes are almost totally tied to quantity of teaching and quantity of credits taken rather than the impact of the teacher. We have an obligation on the K-12 level and in higher education to give merit a more prominent place in the educational equation. But we also all have an obligation, and that includes our public officials, to recognize that school funding, the student’s family, the economic status of that family, the educational attainment of the family members, and discrimination all have significantly impacted student learning. And does anyone think that alternative paths to certification will remedy these issues?

I wholeheartedly support outcomes assessment and efforts to measure the learning that has taken place. I wholeheartedly support a continuous review of teacher education programs to also assess their effectiveness. We can do a better job in providing K-12 education and in providing teacher education. Change is necessary but so is an understanding of all the issues. Looking for a target, looking for a simple solution to complex issues, won’t solve our problems. You need to see the issues clearly and completely before significant progress can be made. As educators we have an obligation to help make that happen.

Getting Out More

2011-02-28T09:00:00.004-05:00

Many of us are active in organizations and on boards of other not-for-profits as part of our community service orientation. I very much believe in the responsibility of faculty, administrators, and students to contribute their time and resources (if possible) in support of providing a better quality of life for members of our community. And over the years I have been active in many very worthwhile organizations including my present service on the board of ProjectGrad Long Island. ProjectGrad has on Long Island and nationally partnered with economically disadvantaged school districts to provide extra support and enhance the chances of success for these students. I am not only active myself in organizations like this but I encourage my colleagues to also become involved in support of the community (broadly defined).

Every board I serve on also provides me with an enhanced education for myself. I learn by serving, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot more. About two years ago, some school board members in the district in which I live asked me to run for the school board. I actually already had school board service at a local Quaker school but I also already had continuing community service commitments. I ultimately said yes—how can you say no to helping enhance the schools in your own community and where your kids and their friends go to school ? The other board members are very smart, very dedicated, very focused on the kids, which for me are all positives; the time commitment, however, is more than I expected. But what also is much more than I expected is my learning about k-12 education and school finance. Especially daunting are the looming financial issues compounded by many unfunded state mandates. For example, New York’s new governor is talking about a 2% property tax cap which makes sense; however, at the same time mandatory increases in school district contributions to the state (defined benefit) pension plan plus increases in the cost of health care will also equal approximately 2%. But in any school budget there are likely other increasing costs such as compensation for all employees as well as steps and lane changes for teachers. Especially fascinating are the issues of more accurately measuring learning, increasing learning, and the impact of teachers on that learning. All of this gives me a much better understanding of teacher education and educational leadership, two key areas in our School of Education, Health and Human Services. And none of us in higher education should forget for even a moment that what we can accomplish in providing students with a first rate higher education is inextricably interwoven with what they have accomplished in their k-12 education.

Service to the community is part of giving back which we all should do. But it is also involves educating ourselves in ways that enhance our understanding of complex issues and our job performance. Doing our jobs as well as they can be done clearly requires to be involved in more than our jobs. We all need to get out more.

Athletic Success

2011-02-22T09:00:00.001-05:00

This past Tuesday evening, February 15, was special for a number of reasons. Hofstra played William & Mary in a great basketball game with a last second overtime victory by Hofstra. For the last ten minutes of the game, all eyes were riveted on the court with great basketball, great drama; and (especially since I am a Hofstra person) a great conclusion. But equal to the game, was the halftime happening.

Was it a halftime Superbowl type of show that captured my attention? Not at all. There was no show; instead this time was used to recognize the athletes who earned at least a B or better GPA in the previous year. The group recognized included more than 50 % of our athletes with a significant presence by every team, and 10% of the athletes who were recognized had perfect 4.0 (A) grade point averages. I was enormously proud of each and every athlete who earned GPAs between 3.0 and 4.0.

Being an athlete requires tremendous discipline. Being a good student and a good athlete besides requires much more discipline. Many of our students who are athletes, as well as many of our students who work at one or more part-time jobs or are active in volunteer and other co-curricular work, all demonstrate that discipline that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. Time management is an enormous skill. Without it, even the smartest person or the best athlete may not succeed; with time management it is far easier to fulfill your potential.

When I started in higher education, athletics and scholarship were often viewed as the oil and vinegar. They simply didn’t mix; there was no intersection. There were very few conversations. And no scholar athlete recognition event. Many faculty viewed athletes in a less than positive light; and a significant number of coaches viewed academic s as a distraction to their top talent. Thankfully, for the most part, the world has changed and continues to change.

Thanks to the efforts of the NCAA, thanks to a more student-centered philosophy of education, thanks to a new breed of coaches, thanks to a world where stereotyping is less the norm, we now find much greater collaboration and cooperation between academics and athletics. And nothing could be better for the students involved. Being on a team is a great experience but at the end of the day, very few college athletes enter the pros. It is therefore especially important that they succeed as students so that they graduate and have more options available to them. As faculty, administrators, and staff, we get great pleasure from our athletes and as faculty, administrators, and staff we have an obligation to our athletes and all our students, to see that they succeed and graduate. There is still work to be done in this area but nights like last Tuesday convince me we continue to make great progress. The goal is in sight and team work can get us there.

Plans

2011-02-14T09:00:00.007-05:00

We are in the process of preparing our next five-year plan which will cover the years 2012-2017. Our previous plan focused on providing additional resources to enhance the academic profile of the University and very substantial progress was made in enhancing undergraduate student quality as well as adding additional faculty lines and other resources. This new plan will again have an academic orientation but not the luxury of focusing just on what we would like to add.

Our previous plan predated the current economic recession. This new plan is taking shape as we are hopefully slowly pulling out of the economic decline. But as we all know the landscape has changed. There is more family and student financial need and consequently many institutions are responding by increasing need-based scholarships and increasing their discount rate. This money needs to be budgeted and some of the funds are reallocated from other present expenditure items in the budget. Some of this reallocation will come almost inevitably from the academic budget.

But if the economy is really improving can’t we go back to business as usual; won’t reallocations be reversed and need-based scholarships (and discounting) decline? I don’t think so. The expectations of need based scholarships and of tuition discounting are now so firmly implanted in the hearts and minds of our students and their families that we will need to continue our present discounting practices. But there is good news. An improving economy will allow for additional revenues and that includes tuition revenues as well as fund raising. We will have funding for new academic initiatives but we are still constrained.

New academic initiatives are the lifeblood of an institution but the usual practice is to implement the new without a careful look at everything we are presently doing, and whether the need still exists for every program that is being offered. As educators, I think we know we are likely offering some majors and some courses where there is not a critical mass of students (or a critical mass of faculty to teach the program). We are also likely still awarding some stipends or released time based on what existed before that doesn’t necessarily still exist today. We need, in preparing new five-year plans (and planning for the future in general), to look at everything we are presently offering. If the student demand isn’t there, if our resources are being overly diluted because of too many programs, if we have an ambitious agenda for moving the institution forward but not all the new resources we need to accomplish the goal, we need to be prepared to make the tough decisions. I am sure we have made some already but I am also fairly sure there are more that can and should be made.

We all know that it is easier to give resources than to reduce resources. But the age old definition of economics still holds true—we are dealing with the allocation of scarce resources among alternative ends. Scarcity is a fact of life. Our test is how well we manage in this reality.

Leaving the Comfort Zone

2011-02-07T09:00:00.001-05:00

Last Saturday, I took my older daughter and her best friend to a performance of Nearly Lear at New York’s New Victory Theater. The show stars Susanna Hamnett as the Fool. She also plays every other role in this adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy and she and Edith Tankus wrote the play besides. I am a major fan of the work done by the New Victory and have been taking my kids to shows there regularly for the last ten years, but I really hesitated to buy tickets to this show. I first read King Lear in high school and have seen it performed multiple times. Tragedies are not my favorite form of entertainment even when the story is brilliantly developed as it is in King Lear. And for a Saturday excursion with my daughter and her friend, something upbeat tends to create a more upbeat mood and a more fun day. I was going to the show but clearly this was outside of my comfort zone.

Susanna Hamnett was terrific. The show was terrific and with good humor and great talent Ms. Hamnett told the tale from beginning to end playing the Fool, King Lear, Cordelia, Regan, Goneril, and various other parts. Everyone died on schedule but we all laughed throughout. And this adaptation served to remind me of the mastery present throughout Shakespeare’s work.

Unrelated to Shakespeare, King Lear, or Nearly Lear, I was at a lunch at the beginning this week where one of the participants was a very sophisticated high tech person. During the conversation, she mentioned that when she found software or hardware that she liked or was helpful to her, she stayed with that product. And she completed the thought by saying she preferred to stay in her comfort zone. And to some extent we all do. I took my time to make the switch from a blackboard/whiteboard with overhead slides to PowerPoint. Now I couldn’t even tell you why I hesitated other than I was in my comfort zone. Human nature prevails.

Higher education is being challenged as never before. In a weakened economy, there are fewer family resources as well as less government and philanthropic support. But economies improve and we will in time weather that challenge. More serious, on-line delivery of education and/or for-profit companies providing education plus more international competition have turned our industry upside down and their presence will not diminish over time. Business as usual may be our comfort zone but it isn’t our future. As I have said for a number of years, we need to change, maintaining our quality and our integrity and responding assertively and expeditiously to these changing times. The last thing we want is to have our industry described the same way we describe the King Lear story.

Change

2011-01-31T09:00:00.000-05:00

I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to teach after just one year of graduate school. At that time, I was appointed as an adjunct to teach a basic macroeconomics course at the same institution that I had just graduated from a year earlier. My name appeared in the course schedule but thanks to the efforts of a friend of mine, no one knew that I was teaching this course. All my friend did was start a rumor that the Berliner who was teaching the economics course, was a “famous economist” by the name of Berliner who had taught at Leipzig before the war. I was, of course, unaware of this but noticed when I came into class the first day, that there was a great deal of conversation taking place between the students as soon as I moved to the front of the room. I could clearly hear one student near the front saying to another with almost a sense of disappointment “it’s only Herman.” What a way to start your teaching career.

I was especially fortunate that at the time that I started teaching, there was a program being run where a small number of new instructors were invited to a seminar on teaching and were even paid to attend the seminar. I was selected and was pleased to have the opportunity. The seminar consisted of weekly meetings and also consisted of the person teaching the seminar (a senior History faculty member) coming to your class to observe your teaching. The new faculty in the seminar were recent PhDs and graduate students, who were also teaching while completing their education. The conversations were great and allowed us to work through the issues that inevitably arise during the first semesters that a person is teaching. I was somewhat nervous when it was my turn to be observed; the lesson went well, however, and I felt very positive when I entered the meeting with the seminar teacher.

At the start of the meeting, I was told that I did an excellent job explaining economic concepts, getting the class to participate, and integrating current economic events into the discussion. I was next asked a question that I wouldn’t be asked today—how old was I? I didn’t have any sense as to why I was being asked an age question but it wasn’t a secret and I quickly answered 22. I was next asked what I thought the age range was of the students in my class. And though I didn’t understand the basis for this question either, I once again answered very quickly—somewhere between 18 and 24 years old. What was going on and how did this relate to an observation of my teaching?

The mystery was solved in the next minute. The seminar teacher summarized his observation by saying that he thought I did a terrific job and that the students were interested and involved in the class. He next said, and I have held onto this advice for decades, “please remember that as your teaching career continues and you get older, you will need to change how you relate and how you communicate with students.” What works when a 22 year old is talking with 20 year olds doesn’t work when a 40 or 50 or 60 year old is talking with and helping to educate 20 years olds. We continuously get older, and clearly our “traditional” students don’t. We also need to be cognizant of the fact that student demographics also change as we age.

It isn’t enough for us as educators to just remain current in our subject matter. We need to continuously reflect on how we are communicating and relating to our students. And we need to recognize that it becomes harder as the age gap widens and as there are various shifts in the age of the students we are teaching. However, without the communication working well, being an up-to-date subject matter specialist is not enough.

Highly Recommended

2011-01-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

I welcome the opportunity to provide recommendations for outstanding students. I believe it is part of our mission as faculty and as administrators to facilitate continued success for the top students. I always try hard to capture the essence of the student I’m recommending so that whoever reads the recommendation has both a better understanding of the student and of my motivation for providing the recommendation. Capturing the essence of the student isn’t easy but without that effort, all a recommendation comes down to is a collection of flattering words often without a context or a common thread. Isn’t almost everyone we provide a recommendation for, intelligent, hard working, and successful in their schoolwork? What makes the person you are writing about an excellent candidate for admission to a highly selective graduate or professional school? Why this person as opposed to another candidate who’s GPA and honors are equivalent.

To be in a position to write a recommendation for a student requires more than the act of writing itself. You should not only know the student (through class or through working in your office or through shared governance) but you should also ask for person’s transcript, their resume, and their personal essay. This should be followed shortly thereafter by a full conversation with the student asking what does the student have in mind and why. This actually provides a great opportunity to help the student reflect on exactly what he/she is thinking as a next step in his/her education/career. It was actually during such a conversation in my senior year in college that the faculty person I was talking to suggested a doctoral program in economics. Up to that time, I had actually focused almost exclusively on career opportunities and I have always been thankful for the conversation and the advice.

I have also learned over time to say no when asked by students I don’t really know or can’t recommend wholeheartedly to write recommendations on their behalf. I know that I could write the recommendation, not say anything negative, still tell the truth, and in that way avoid saying no to the student. But is it really helpful to say that student X has a nice personality, or came to class regularly, or handed in assignments on time? What does that really tell you? What value would be placed on such a recommendation? I think we all know the answers to these questions. Saying no can also at times open the door to a fruitful conversation that can lead to a much more positive outcome in the future.

I also read recommendations from applicants as well as recommendations for a union scholarship that I help to judge. My belief is that recommendations can be most helpful at the margin. When you are undecided as to whether a person should be accepted or rejected, or should or should not be awarded a certain scholarship, a good recommendation can be of enormous help. A mediocre or superficial recommendation, on the other hand, is of no value whatsoever. And too many of the recommendations I have read over many years fall into the superficial category.

If you believe a person should be highly recommended, go ahead and make the recommendation. Make it convincingly and passionately. It will matter. But if you don’t feel strongly about recommending the person, do yourself and the person a favor. Nicely suggest they look elsewhere.

Shopping Around

2011-01-17T09:00:00.002-05:00

In my household, I am typically the designated grocery shopper. I go once a week, and both my wife and I buy whatever remaining items we end up needing in between. Within about a mile, there are five major supermarkets. All have their strengths and weaknesses but I know from experience that they don’t have the best goodness of fit with the needs of my family.). So instead of choosing based on convenience, I choose based on the selection and go to another major supermarket that is almost 20 by-car minutes from my home. The supermarket I go to is the Long Island “branch” of what started as a local Manhattan store. Before the Long Island branch opened, I did much of my shopping at the Manhattan store, so a 20-minute commute is actually an improvement. (Under full disclosure, I like Manhattan so these shopping trips did allow the opportunity to do other things as well.) What specifically makes this store, the store of choice for my family? Simply stated, it is the selection of fruits, vegetables, fish, pasta, cheese, meat, frozen foods, diary, and also the selection of dark chocolate (a key part of our well balanced diet).

I made my choice based on years of experience but there are other ways to make this choice. Typically once a week, each of these stores publishes a flyer with their specials and these flyers are included with my newspaper delivery. I really can’t tell the differences in stores by looking at the flyers or at the store websites. I can’t tell the difference by looking at the store facades. The names of the stores tell me even less. I can only tell which is the best based on my needs and a careful evaluation over time.

In choosing a college or university, I always emphasize the outstanding education we provide at Hofstra but I also always stress the need for potential students and their families to carefully evaluate all their options and alternatives in order to make the “best fit “ choice for the individual involved (which very likely would be Hofstra). But you can’t find “best fit” by simply looking at websites or printed materials or guidebooks or even a visit to campus. You need to take your time, you need to talk with students and faculty, you need to especially follow up with individuals connected to your area of interest, you need to see how advisement works, you need to see the residence halls, the dining facilities, the recreational facilities, you need to immerse yourself and become as educated as possible about an institution before you commit to being educated at an institution. Some families do this very seriously and do it very well. Others are much more haphazard.

Higher Education needs to do a better job in encouraging all potential students and their families to view college as a life altering investment that needs to be researched very carefully. Perhaps some students may make a different choice, perhaps we will gain other students that had originally thought about going elsewhere. But what I am most certain of, is that there is a strong correlation between the effort that the students and their family makes to find the best fit institution and retention of that student. We are all invested in student success; that success starts with making the best choice.

The Holiday Break

2011-01-10T09:00:00.003-05:00

I really look forward to the December holiday break. Though the University is always prepared and staffed if any emergency arises, all offices (with the exception of admissions and public safety) are closed from just before Christmas to just after New Year’s Day. Emails decline precipitously during this time but fortunately I have no trouble adjusting to this change in volume. I use this time period to just relax and recharge and get ready for the January session and the spring semester. Not unlike so many previous December holiday breaks, we were all set to go to Hawaii where my mother-in-law lives and spend time with her and also with my wife’s sister. We had our airline tickets, we had rented a beautiful house, and even had restaurant reservations set (including at the same Asian restaurant just frequented by President Obama and his family). We were fully packed and certainly well prepared. I had multiple books and magazines to read. And then the weather forecast became more ominous.

By Saturday night, it was clear this was no ordinary or minor winter storm. More and more frequently the weather forecasts mentioned blizzard, gale force winds, heavy accumulation, white out conditions and other terms that hardly seem compatible with a trip to Hawaii. Not to worry, our flight was scheduled for Monday afternoon and we decided to go to Newark airport on Sunday so that we would be all set for the Monday flight without the concern about getting to Newark immediately after a major storm. We felt the night at a Newark airport motel was good insurance for a much desired trip to Hawaii. By early Sunday morning, the snow had stopped, some sun had appeared, and the clean up was well underway. And by late morning we were also underway to the airport. We were very optimistic and as I had mentioned earlier, we had prepared well.

It took over two hours for us to check our luggage. So many flights had been canceled, so many individuals needed to make other arrangements, that the check in line moved at a snail’s pace and even that might be an overly optimistic assessment of the speed. Our plane was still scheduled to go, but the departure time was changed from 1:30 to 3:30 PM. Certainly understandable. And then the departure time was changed to 4:30, then to 5:30, then to 6:30, then to 7:30, then 8, then 9, then 10, then 11PM…and then the flight was canceled. What now? Well there are no available seats in any airplanes going to Hawaii until either December 31 or January 1^st. And since we were scheduled to fly back on January 3^rd, departing on the 31^st or the 1^st on an eleven hour flight for a two day stay is not anyone’s idea of a good time. So we agreed to be ticketed on standby for the flight on Tuesday. The flight is again scheduled at 1:30 and postponed to 3:45, and at 3:30 the standby names are called. As it turns out some of us can get on the flight but not the entire family; we therefore decide not to go. So after spending 13+ hours at the airport on Monday and 5 hours on Tuesday (and two nights at airport motels) we are heading back home. Our luggage, by the way, was placed on the flight to Hawaii so at least our clothes are experiencing the aloha feeling.

We stop at a diner on the way home, have our first real meal in two days, and arrive home tired by still determined to make the best out of the remainder of the week. I turn up the heat (which I turned down when we left) and we settle in. The temperature slowly rises and then stops rising and stops working. Not only aren’t we in Hawaii, we are in a very cold house in New York. We go to sleep and wake up in a chilly 58 degree bedroom. We call our HVAC contractor immediately; he comes that morning and the heat is back on within 30 minutes. The contractor leaves, the heat stops working shortly thereafter, and it takes until the next morning for the contractor to make a return visit. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is 80% over and we are just starting to get comfortable again.

After a good vacation in Hawaii, I am always ready and excited about going back to work. Interestingly enough, I certainly have that same feeling after this “vacation.”

It All Revolves Around Economics

2010-12-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

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.

Tis the Season

2010-12-13T09:00:00.002-05:00

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.

To Waive or Not to Waive; That is the Question

2010-12-06T09:00:00.001-05:00

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.

Creeping Commentary

2010-11-29T09:00:00.004-05:00

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.

Undermatching

2010-11-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

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.

Athletics on a Smaller Scale

2010-11-15T09:00:00.001-05:00

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.

Technology Trumps Collegiality

2010-11-08T09:00:00.001-05:00

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.

Parking Revelation

2010-11-01T09:00:00.007-04:00

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.

You Never Know Who’s Looking Over Your Shoulder

2010-10-25T09:00:00.005-04:00

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.

K-12 Education Leads the Technological Way

2010-10-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

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?

Headline News

2010-10-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Civil Engineering Yes; Tea No

2010-10-04T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

The Calendar

2010-09-27T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Mentoring

2010-09-20T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Park is Not Neutral

2010-09-13T09:00:00.002-04:00

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.

The End of Summer Sessions and the End of Summer Sessions

2010-08-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Transparent

2010-08-23T09:00:00.008-04:00

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.

Tabletop

2010-08-16T09:00:00.008-04:00

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.

3D Education

2010-08-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

Essays That Lie

2010-08-02T09:00:00.005-04:00

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.

A Very Private Office

2010-07-26T09:00:00.002-04:00

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.

The Neighborhood Effect

2010-07-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

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.

When New is New

2010-07-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

A Grating Exam

2010-06-28T09:00:00.000-04:00

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.

And the Winner is…

2010-06-21T09:00:00.003-04:00

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.

All Other Things Being Equal

2010-06-14T09:00:00.005-04:00

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.

Appreciating Memorial Day

2010-06-07T09:00:00.010-04:00

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.

Tis the Season to be…Hardy

2010-05-17T09:00:00.013-04:00

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.

Resonating Requirements

2010-05-10T10:27:00.000-04:00

At this time of year, I spend a lot of time with accepted students and their families. My primary goal is to convince our accepted students to attend Hofstra. But inextricably interwoven into this goal is the corresponding desire for these students to make the best informed decision possible, the decision that best fits their needs, goals and aspirations.

It always resonates well with potential students to talk about the wide range of available majors. Most new students will tell you that they have made up their mind regarding a major and perhaps even a career path. But the reality is that some students change their mind and change their major and I am fully supportive of students doing so. A good college education provides the opportunity to explore new fields. If one of these fields interests you enough to make that your major, higher education is clearly facilitating your growth and development.

It also always resonates well with potential students and their families to talk about the high quality of the faculty and their commitment to teaching excellence. For me this has always been a pivotal point. Thinking back to my own education, the courses I liked and those I didn’t like were highly correlated with the quality of teaching. The more dynamic, knowledgeable, and articulate the faculty member, the more I enjoyed the course, and, in my opinion, the more I learned.

For families, at times even more than for accepted students, advisement, counseling, public safety, internship opportunities and placement all matter a great deal and all resonate well.

But what sometimes doesn’t resonate well are the degree requirements other than the major. By degree requirements I don’t mean the minimum number of credits or the minimum GPA. No one questions these requirements and everyone understands. The requirements that are sometimes questioned are the distribution requirements that ensure a student receives a well rounded education. The faculty, and this is true throughout higher education, carefully structure a foundation that any educated person should have and build in the curricular structure that provides that foundation. As we know, there is not one universally agreed upon foundation covering all of higher education, and there are often great discussions – and these typically include disagreements followed by compromises – on what should and should not be in the curricular structure. But if our goal is to educate a well rounded person, requirements that include exposure to a critical body of knowledge, are the necessary means to this end. Within this framework, in my opinion, we should provide for as much choice as possible.

I still remember my undergraduate experience that included passing a mandatory course in swimming as a graduation requirement. In those days, if you didn’t swim, you didn’t graduate. I am a recreational swimmer but a swimming graduation requirement (and there were no alternatives) made no sense. Today’s challenge in developing distribution/graduation requirements is still to make sure we include what is essential and stop there.

Dress Like a Dean/Provost

2010-05-03T09:45:00.000-04:00

After about a year of serving as Assistant Provost, the Provost called me in and indicated that he was more than pleased with my job performance and was ready, especially given the added responsibilities I had taken on, to recommend promotion to Associate Provost. I was thrilled and very appreciative and indicated as much to the Provost. He repeated that it was well deserved and then said there was one stipulation regarding the promotion. He made it clear that this wasn’t a “requirement.” However, he also made it clear that this was more than a casual suggestion. The stipulation was that I wear a tie each day that I was in the office. Now the reality was, up to that time (including my years as a full-time faculty member), that I tended to wear nice sport shirts. The provost at the time was a tie every day person and he wanted everyone in the office to have that more formal look. I agreed.

At first that agreement was my way of saying how much I appreciated the promotion. But over time and especially when I represented the office, I realized that the professional look, as opposed to the dress down/casual look, resonated better with all constituencies and was a far better visual for a provost’s office. But what about on your own time? Over a weekend, especially when there are no official events scheduled and you don’t plan to be on campus, how should you dress? My preference has been to wear jeans and under the heading of full disclosure I also tend not to shave. Is this a problem? Yes and no. Let me explain. One Saturday, I went to my local bank to ask for an account clarification. I was wearing jeans, a polo shirt and I was unshaved. I felt there was no reason to dress up and I also thought my local banker would be the best person to ask for clarification. She was. However, at the end of the conversation, after I had said thanks and goodbye, she commented that I looked much better at a recent University event she had attended. I didn’t comment, just said goodbye again and kept walking. Thinking over this event, having had some time elapse, I would not change anything I did. The banker’s comments were inappropriate; dressing casually on your own time is your own business.

Sometimes, dressing like a dean or provost even on campus isn’t always possible. I am a recreational swimmer; Hofstra has a great swimming pool and I try on a regular basis to swim after I leave the office. Now imagine a situation where after swimming I am in the shower room and in comes a faculty member who I had just written a negative recommendation on, for tenure. Mine was not the first negative recommendation written for this person’s candidacy, but this was still an uncomfortable moment. Wearing a suit and tie would certainly have been more comfortable at this moment, but a setting other than a locker room shower would have been a prerequisite. Fortunately, we both chose to not recognize each other and I was out of the shower before the next drop of water hit my body.

But there was another shower incident where leaving instantly wasn’t a possibility. I had just walked out of the shower, and was drying off. At that moment, a fully clothed young man came up to me and said: “Can I talk to you about the MBA program? I have a concern I would like to discuss immediately!.” The ultimate gotcha—wearing just a towel and needing to get dressed doesn’t give you a lot of coverage to say “I can’t talk now; please call my office.” I got dressed and listened at the same time. I was able to help the student and given the circumstances, I will resist saying I thought the student was very cheeky in how he handled the situation.

History Continued and Appreciated

2010-04-26T09:00:00.010-04:00

In last week’s blog, I talked about the importance of remembering key individuals in the history of an institution. Remembering key events and how those events happened is also critical and here, too, higher education doesn’t do well. All too often key events are mentioned briefly and clinically only in Board of Trustees’ minutes and in more detail, but often with substantial inaccuracy, in student newspapers.

Two examples come immediately to my mind. A number of years ago, I decided to recommend that Hofstra establish a School of Communication. We had strong majors in this area but Communication wasn’t receiving the time, attention, or the resources it needed as part of our liberal arts college. Our President at the time was supportive and was, in fact, willing to make the recommendation immediately to our Board of Trustees. Following this route, we could have a new school immediately. I suggested instead, that we go through the entire shared governance process, feeling that for the school to have faculty support required their investment in the process. We did go through this process and it was a grueling two year effort with unfortunately too much time spent on attempted turf protection by some of those favoring the status quo. But at the end of the day, we had our School of Communication and given the process we followed, very substantial faculty support. Now how has this process been memorialized on our campus? Very briefly is the best answer. A two-year effort resulted in a University Senate resolution, a Faculty resolution, a student newspaper article, and a President’s report to the Board of Trustees approving establishment of the School. Details were almost non-existent; nuances were missing in action; and different positions taken were glossed over. No doubt this was helpful to fostering a sense, going forward, of collegiality. But if we are to learn from the past, the information must be there to learn from.

Much more recently, when our new president took office, he made an almost immediate courageous decision that will help the institution for decades to come. That decision was to not build a $50 million plus performing arts center. This arts center was not designed to serve our students. It would not provide us with music rehearsal space or dance studios or any other academic facilities. Rather it was to be a professional arts and entertainment venue that would possibly run a deficit yearly in the millions of dollars in addition to the millions that would be spent yearly to cover the cost of construction. Clearly the performing arts are very important and we have a robust educational program and quality venues and facilities in support of that program. And professional performances are a valuable resource for the community but they are certainly not mission critical for the University. And the costs involved in the arts center would have diverted resources and attention from what was mission critical, the best possible education for our students. Our new president’s decision was enormously popular with the faculty, but received very little attention in our student newspaper and a relatively brief mention in our Trustee minutes. A defining decision for the institution and yet there was hardly a recorded history mention.

We know that every institution has defining events and yet we can be equally certain that the history of these events is often relegated to minimal mention. In understanding an institution, we need to know what happened when and why and how. A brief mention records the event but the full meaning and impact may be lost for all time. For institutions as well as for our students, there is value in a history requirement.

Every Department Should Be a History Department

2010-04-19T09:00:00.000-04:00

Recently I was asked to sit for an oral history interview covering my years at Hofstra. Since my years at Hofstra go back more than half the time the University has been in existence, I enjoyed talking about and recounting key happenings. At the same time, I was asked to suggest names for special 75th anniversary awards to those key individuals who made a major difference in the development of Hofstra from 1935 to the present. Having been here so many years, I was able to suggest individuals who clearly made a difference but who are also mostly forgotten today. True, these individuals, if they were faculty members, will likely be remembered by their students. Or they could be remembered for their scholarship. But what if they were administrators, or faculty who championed or created key programs? Who would know? Who would remember?

Shortly after I arrived at Hofstra, I met a faculty member in our business school, who already had a national reputation, perhaps more so than any other faculty member in the school. When you mentioned Hofstra to any scholar in the field the person would instantly say “Isn’t that where so and so is on the faculty?” This person was all the more remarkable because business schools at the time were dominated by men and it was highly unusual to find a woman in such a lead role. Clearly a remarkable accomplishment and clearly a role model for many of our students. Today, with the exception of a few “old-timers” this person is forgotten on our campus. The same is no doubt true for some of the founding deans of schools and colleges here and across the country, or faculty members who were noteworthy scholars and/or who developed programs which now are highly regarded nationwide, or administrators who provided key guidance and support during some difficult times in the history of a college or university. And, in what is truly an irony, a person who was a disaster in terms of job performance may actually be remembered more visibly and for a longer period of time than the person who made a significant positive difference.

For a fortunate few individuals, their roles are sometimes immortalized via a building being named in the person’s honor or an award or a professorship or some other memorable recognition. But these individuals are clearly the exceptions. For the most part, some of the individuals who have done the most to benefit their institution or higher education are all but forgotten. For those of us who have been able to build on their significant accomplishments, it is important to have a complete history and give credit where credit is due.

All of us should make a commitment to help fill in the blanks so that the history is as complete as possible and the record is as accurate as possible. None of us would like to have our major accomplishments forgotten. We owe as much to the individuals who preceded us and to those who work with us.

A Broad Education More Narrowly Defined

2010-04-12T09:00:00.008-04:00

My first full-time teaching schedule was a four course, Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule where I taught my first class at 9AM and my last class (a once a week graduate course ) ended shortly after 8 PM. For as long as I was a full time faculty member, my schedule was virtually identical. Only once did I complain to my department chair about my schedule – in my second year he presented me with a schedule that started at 8 AM and ended (one day a week) at 11PM. I thought the hours were unreasonable and he agreed and modified it back to the way it had always looked. My courses during those early years were filled regardless of the time. Many students, especially those who worked in addition to going to school, favored early classes or late classes and consequently almost every time slot had a robust enrollment. The expectation was clear that as a faculty member I would be teaching an evening class virtually every semester and a relatively early morning class as well.

Over time the typical full-time faculty teaching schedule has moved from 4 courses per semester to 3 courses per semester, coupled with more opportunities for sabbaticals, released time or light loading. This is a positive, not only in terms of making additional progress on a research agenda but also in terms of enhancing the quality of teaching. But coupled with the reduction in teaching load, there is another – less positive – trend. From my experience, many full-time faculty no longer look favorably on a three day a week schedule and strongly prefer a Tuesday-Thursday or a Monday-Wednesday schedule. Furthermore, a significant number of faculty would prefer not to teach an evening class (unless perhaps it was a graduate course) and many would also not look favorably on an early morning class. Department chairs try to the extent possible to take a faculty member’s preferences into account when constructing that person’s schedule and I certainly believe this is appropriate. The end result may reflect more courses concentrated into two day a week, prime time teaching schedules and more utilization of adjuncts for the three day a week or early morning or evening classes.

Students have also changed over time. More students, to the extent possible, would like to avoid having classes on Friday since there are clearly benefits to having a regular three day weekend. Early morning and late afternoon or evening classes, especially in very residential colleges or universities are also often not highly sought after class times. Student satisfaction, we all recognize, is dependent on more than the classroom experience. The ability to sleep late, the ability to have “free time” when most co-curricular activities are scheduled, and to schedule your classes when you want them scheduled are all parts of the satisfaction equation. Community colleges, given the numbers of students looking to gain entrance, are able to resist this trend; many other schools that are higher tuition and enrollment dependent will not be able to do so.

The end result is that higher education is making less and less efficient use of campus physical facilities. We gauge our need based on the number of classes we would like to schedule during the most popular time slots. Consequently, there are often pressures to build more classroom facilities to meet a peak demand when a more efficient scheduling matrix could easily accommodate all classes without additional bricks and mortar. We all understand that for four months a year (June, July, August, and January) our facilities are not fully utilized to educate our students. Now the reality is that we are also not fully utilizing our facilities early in the morning, late at night, and Friday’s (plus of course Saturdays and Sundays). As all of us look for economies that will not adversely impact the quality of our education, efficient utilization of space should not be left out of the discussion.

Title Wave

2010-04-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

Just recently I came across an organizational structure for a School that had both Directors and Associate Directors as well as Associate and Assistant Deans (plus, of course the Dean). The individuals holding the various dean and director positions were all very clear as to who did what and who reported to whom. The question was whether anyone outside of the administration had the same level of clarity. As it turned out, Assistant Deans reported to Directors but how would anyone know that or even expect it? . For many outsiders looking into higher education, the assumption is that anyone with a dean title has more of an academic leadership role. How did this happen ? The answer often is that a prior dean favored the dean title and the current dean favors the director title but so as to not make anyone feel bad, the current dean has decided not to take away the dean title from anyone who already had it.

When, as an assistant professor, I was first invited to move part-time into administration, the title I was given was Assistant to the Associate Provost title. A meaningful title but not for the job I was doing. At the time I was working on a program for student evaluation of teachers and courses. My title gave no clue. All too often in higher education (especially in non faculty positions) a person’s title doesn’t give sufficient information and consequently students sometimes have a difficult time determining who they should see when they need information or guidance or support in a particular area. My own title can also be a problem. At the time I was first appointed as Provost (and before Senior Vice President for Academic Aaffairs was added) I called my mom to tell her that I was moving from the business school dean position to the Provost position. After I told her, there was dead silence on the phone for easily a minute or two; followed by her asking me whether this was a promotion or a demotion. A comprehensive orientation program for all constituencies can be very helpful in regard to titles, but clearer titles would make an enormous difference.

We also need to contend today with title inflation (and I don’t see any likelihood of title deflation in the years ahead). The assistant dean title is the entry level title in more and more academic and non- academic offices in the typical college or university. Because assistant dean is entry level, we have more associate deans, who hold positions somewhat above entry level , and also more of a need to come up with additional hierarchical titles between associate dean and dean to denote real differences in job responsibilities. Therefore, it is not unusual to see senior associate deans or vice deans or senior vice deans ( but can anyone tell me whether and why senior is more senior than vice ?) And many of these same colleges and universities also have somewhat similar office that are headed by a director. Does having an assistant dean for recreation and at the same time an assistant director for career development make sense? We need not only clearer titles but we also need more consistent titles.

Higher education is the engine for personal growth, professional growth, and societal change. But just as outcomes assessment has helped us more clearly demonstrate outcomes, clearer more consistent titles will help all our students and the community more clearly understand who does what.

Undercover Economics

2010-03-29T09:00:00.008-04:00

Given the severity of our current recession, everyone I know has either been touched directly by this economic malaise or knows someone who has been adversely impacted – jobs lost or not found, salaries reduced or not increased, houses lost or not purchased, health insurance foregone, vacations foregone and the list goes on and on. People are clearly hurting. But the impact of this and any recession is on more than people; colleges and universities are good examples of institutions adversely impacted. The adverse impact can happen in many ways and take many forms; some are almost invisible with a price to be paid only over a long term time period.

We know that support from governments for public higher education has declined in many parts of the country. As support has declined, tuition has increased and often there have been major increases in fees as well. In community colleges where the cost of education is lower (both for the supplier and the consumer) there have been some dramatic increases in enrollment. In four year and graduate public institutions, enrollments are more likely capped and in some areas reduced. Often at the same time that tuition is rapidly increasing, so is the use of adjuncts and the average class size. Faculty travel and sabbaticals in support of research are often also adversely impacted.

Private higher education faces many of the same challenges. The difference between public higher education tuition (where there are varying degrees of government support) and private higher education tuition (where such support is much more limited and most likely tied to financial need) prompts some families, especially during economic uncertainty, to favor the lower priced alternative (even if they clearly recognize the benefits of private higher education). Or the uncertainty could lead to more commuter students rather than residential students. Private higher education’s response, almost across the board is to increase need and or merit based financial aid, which requires almost across the board tuition increases as the funding source. And here too, adjunct usage is increasing as is average class size.

The economic consequences of these actions are visible to either a greater or lesser degree to the student and his or her family. Tuition increases are clear to everyone; increased class size is clear only if you have a basis for comparison; and increased use of adjuncts is much less visible. But there are other effects which are even more undercover. First of all, what is taking place is a fundamental shift in the allocation of resources away from the classroom. Because funding has declined or because more dollars need to be allocated to financial aid, the dollars spent on education have been constrained. There is no alternative but unless too many resources were originally allocated to direct classroom education something has been lost. And it remains to be seen whether the allocation will shift back again to the classroom experience either in the short term or in the longer term. For faculty, and faculty clearly are the heart of the education we provide, the lack of job opportunities for new faculty, the increased economic uncertainly for continuing faculty, larger classes and the reduced level of support for research can result in a morale problem that could extend past the current recession. All at the same time as we look to faculty to play an increased role in retention.

Overall, as we move forward, we need to objectively look at what we have enhanced and what we have compromised. And where compromises have been made, we must look for opportunities to restore what has been lost.