Tag: college

Posted on

Inclusive Teaching 2.0: The Challenge of Equity in Anti-DEI Times

These days American universities find themselves at a peculiar crossroads. With the stroke of a pen, federal actions have swept away diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at institutions dependent on government funding. Yet in this moment of apparent retreat, one might discern not an ending but a beginning, creating the potential for a more profound transformation in how we understand the art of teaching itself.

equity, diversity, inclusion, DEI, university, teaching, learning, students, learners

The moment demands reinvention, not retreat. For decades now, inclusive teaching has been quietly revolutionizing classrooms, operating not by privileging some students over others, but by ensuring all students can thrive. The principle, though deceptively simple, borders on the radical: every learner deserves access to tools that support their academic growth. This principle can guide institutions toward a universal model of excellence, grounded in research, focused on outcomes, and aligned with the values of higher education.

Never has the need been greater. Today’s college student defies easy categorization. The stereotypical image of young adults attending full-time classes on residential campuses has given way to something far more complex, with students juggling work commitments, family responsibilities, and extended degree timelines to manage costs.[1] This demographic shift demands nothing less than a pedagogical evolution, one that acknowledges students’ multifaceted lives while maintaining academic rigor.

Enter Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an evidence-based framework offering a compelling vision for the future. UDL is defined as “a framework developed to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn.”[2]  Grounded in cognitive neuroscience and educational research, UDL principles encourage educators to present information in multiple ways, offer students various methods for demonstrating understanding, and foster engagement through real-world relevance and autonomy.

Continue reading “Inclusive Teaching 2.0: The Challenge of Equity in Anti-DEI Times”
Posted on

The Other Campus Gender Matter

Recent months have witnessed heightened gender-related conflicts in higher education. From debates over transgender athletes to challenges against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, a narrative portraying universities as ideological battlegrounds has gained traction. Political figures, including Vice President J.D. Vance, have amplified this perspective, saying “universities are the enemy” as sites of indoctrination rather than education.[1]

Beneath these controversies lies a significant but often unacknowledged factor: women’s dramatic ascendance in higher education. The gender gap in college enrollment has reached historic proportions, with female-identified learners constituting approximately 60% of U.S. college students.[2]  This unprecedented shift, a cornerstone of women’s empowerment and presence in the workforces, appears to have become a focal point for those seeking to reshape or constrain the university system.

The gender gap in education begins well before college, with girls outperforming boys in reading and writing during elementary years and making up 60 percent of the top students graduating from high school.[3]  In the 1990s, some universities began giving boys extra points on their applications, owing to concerns that students might avoid gender imbalanced schools. While federal law never sanctioned this kind of affirmative action, a Title IX lawsuit filed against the University of Georgia in 1999 effectively ended the practice.[4]  

The historical context illuminates the significance of this transformation. Before the mid-20th century men made up 80% of college students.[5]  Women’s integration into universities in substantial numbers, accelerating after World War II, represented a profound social change. This evolution challenged established gender norms, created pathways to professional careers for women, and contributed substantially to their economic and social independence.[6]

The increasing presence of women in higher education stands in direct opposition to reactionary ideologies evident in current university critiques. The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” with its emphasis on traditional family structures and gender roles, fundamentally conflicts with the educational empowerment of women in contemporary and growing representation in academic leadership.[7]

Continue reading “The Other Campus Gender Matter”
Posted on

Behind the New Diversity Culture Wars 

From Degrees of Difficulty: The Challenge of Equity in  College Teaching by David Trend, now free of charge from Worlding Books

Underlying current opposition to diversity programs lies the pervasive belief that inequity and bias barely exist in a “post-civil rights, post-feminist” era, and that efforts to redress them have gone too far. This mindset helps explain why, as American universities now face a federal ban on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, a majority of the general public supports eliminating the programs –– with a recent Economist/YouGov poll finding 45% in favor of ending DEI in education over 40% opposed.[1]   Already intense in state legislatures and conservative media, this resistance reflects deeply rooted American ideologies about meritocracy and individualism that clash with efforts to address systemic inequalities in higher education. The resulting political struggle has transformed campus diversity initiatives from administrative policies into flashpoints in America’s culture wars.

The controversies over this are no secret. Recent measures to ban or restrict DEI and the teaching of CRT in educational institutions reflect a longstanding political backlash. Leading up to the November election, 85 anti-DEI bills had been introduced in 28 state legislatures, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s “DEI Legislation Tracker.”[2]  These often broadly worded laws created confusion and fear among educators, while chilling discussions of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability on campuses.

Continue reading “Behind the New Diversity Culture Wars “
Posted on

14 Evidence-Based Teaching Ideas for Academic Equity

From Degrees of Difficulty: The Challenge of Equity in  College Teaching by David Trend, forthcoming from Worlding Books

In recent years, the premise of “evidence-based teaching” has emerged as a key strategy in addressing outcome disparities in higher education. Much like evidence-based practices in medicine and social science, this approach draws on empirical research to inform teaching methods, moving beyond practices based on personal experience or intuition. This shift represents a major change in how educators view the art of teaching itself, acknowledging that while intuition has value, it must be balanced with systematic investigation of what actually works in the classroom. The development of evidence-based teaching can be traced to the late 20th century, along with advances in cognitive science and educational psychology. As researchers gained new insights into adult learning and intellectual development, their findings found their way into the university classroom.

The earliest educational research came from simple comparative methods. Researchers typically would divide classes into control and experimental groups, with one cohort receiving standard instruction and the other a modified version. These “split-class” experiments provided the first rigorous evidence that teaching methods could affect learning outcomes significantly. While rudimentary, these early methods established the crucial principle that teaching effectiveness could be measured and improved through systematic study rather than innate talent alone. Educators also relied heavily on pre- and post-testing, administering assessments before and after interventions to measure knowledge gain. Though simple, this proved particularly good for seeing which teaching strategies led to lasting comprehension versus short-term memorization. Besides this, some faculty maintained teaching journals for documenting their own methods and student responses, which later would be shared with others. While lacking the sophistication of conventional educational studies, these varied methods laid the groundwork for an evidence-based teaching movement asserting that teaching effectiveness could be studied and improved.

Continue reading “14 Evidence-Based Teaching Ideas for Academic Equity”
Posted on

The Problem with Meritocracy

College students are a lot more worried about grades these days. This is something I myself have witnessed in the large general education courses I teach at UCI. My offerings are part of the breadth requirements common at most universities. These attract learners from a wide array of academic disciplines –– which at UCI translates into large numbers of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors. The changes I’m seeing manifest in a growing preoccupation with grades and rankings, as well as increasing concerns about future earnings potential. This shift has not gone unnoticed by my colleagues, many of whom express disdain for students more invested in grade point averages than the intrinsic value of learning. Some view this as a troubling trend towards a consumer mentality in education. But I take a more sanguine view.

While grade pressure always has been present to some extent, its recent intensification goes beyond individual classrooms. Almost every university uses these metrics as the primary measure of learning. This makes assessments and scores central to most university teaching for a variety of reasons: measuring comprehension, motivating student effort, providing feedback, generating student rankings, etc.  But grade-centric approaches also can fail to account for learners’ diverse challenges, and may undermine equity as a result. Moreover, too much attention on grades can compromise critical thinking and intellectual curiosity crucial not only for academic success but also for life after college.

Continue reading “The Problem with Meritocracy”
Posted on

The Shrinking College Premium

The “college premium”is the shorthand term for the income differential accruing to those who complete four-year degrees. Often attributed to research begun in 2011 by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and Workforce (CEW), the college premium concept came about from estimates comparing the average lifetime earnings of college graduates ($2.3 million) to those of high school diploma holders ($1.3 million).[i]  In the subsequent decade, the CEW estimate swelled from its initial $1 million to $1.2 million as the premium made college seem like a mandatory life choice.

But families often pay heavily for this benefit, as top-tier universities edge ever closer to tuition costs of $100,000. This year, Vanderbilt University came nearest to this much-watched threshold, projecting tuition of $98,426, though it also emphasized that most students receive financial aid. This trend is evident in other prestigious institutions like Brown, NYU, Tufts, and Yale, whose costs are similarly approaching six figures. While these universities cater to a specific segment, it’s noteworthy that the national average tuition is $56,000 for private colleges and $26,000 for public universities. The rising costs across the industry continue to be a significant concern.[ii]

Continue reading “The Shrinking College Premium”
Posted on

Racism and Sexism in Teaching Evaluations

David Trend

In the world of academia, where the pursuit of knowledge and excellence in teaching are paramount, one might assume that evaluation methods would be impartial and objective. However, a thought-provoking article by David Delgado Shorter, a UCLA Professor of World Arts and Cultures, sheds light on the problematic nature of student evaluations. In his article titled “Teaching Evaluations Are Racist, Sexist, And Often Useless: It’s Time To Put These Flawed Measures In Their Place,” Shorter questions the validity and fairness of using student evaluations as a basis for academic merit and promotion decisions.

Shorter’s journey into this subject began when he reviewed his own teaching evaluations from the previous years, aiming to compile them for promotion purposes. What he found was a mixture of bizarre comments and personal narratives that had little to do with the actual course content. He realized that this was not an isolated incident; many of his Black and Asian colleagues, especially women, faced even more problematic evaluations.

Pages: 1 2
Posted on

Losing Confidence in Higher Education

In recent times, America has been witnessing a seismic shift in the perception and value of higher education. Historically, a college degree had been regarded as a quintessential stepping stone to financial stability and a prosperous future. The early 2010s saw a high rate of affirmation from college graduates, with 86 percent considering their investment in college education to be worthwhile.[i]Additionally, 70 percent of high school graduates chose to pursue higher education directly after their graduation in 2009, showcasing the predominant belief in the benefits of a college education. The economic data around this time period significantly favored those with a bachelor’s degree, who were found to earn about two-thirds more than individuals with just a high school diploma. This earnings gap suggested that higher education could be a reliable pathway to greater financial security and prosperity.

Unfortunately, a stark contrast can be observed in recent years, as public sentiment regarding higher education has experienced a monumental shift. As of 2021, undergraduate enrollment figures plummeted to below 15.5 million, compared to over 18 million a decade earlier.[ii]Surveys conducted during this time reveal a staggering decline in the value attached to a college degree, with only 41 percent of young adults considering it very important, a dramatic decrease from the 74 percent recorded previously.[iii]  This waning confidence is mirrored in the diminishing trust towards higher education institutions, with only a third of the American populace expressing a high degree of faith in them.[iv]

Continue reading “Losing Confidence in Higher Education”
Posted on

The Changing Face of College

As the new academic year begins, the shifting demographics of undergraduates bear acknowledgment. Today’s students are navigating a profoundly altered landscape when it comes to higher education. Coming of age amidst shifting sands, they no longer view
college as a mere rite of passage into adulthood, a perception held by many in previous generations. Instead, higher education has emerged as a perceived bulwark against an unstable future, a necessary tool to secure a foothold in an increasingly competitive market. Armed with a critical eye and a deep-seated desire for value in their educational investment, these students are willing to devote the time and effort necessary to achieve grades that promise to pave a promising pathway into the workforce or further studies, viewing each step as a vital cog in the machinery of their future success.

The metamorphosis in the racial and ethnic composition of American higher education institutions is indeed noteworthy. According to data from the National Center for Education Statistics, there has been a discernible increase in the enrollment rates of several minority groups. In the fall of 2019, it was noted that the proportion of white students enrolled in colleges was around 55.9%, while Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander students represented 20.1% and 7.4% of enrollments, respectively.[i] Furthermore, the number of African American students enrolling has also seen an incremental rise, accounting for 13.2% in the same year. These developments illustrate a promising trajectory towards fostering a more inclusive and diverse educational environment. The progressive shift not only indicates a break from a predominantly white majority but also hints at an enriching academic milieu where perspectives from various backgrounds can converge. This diversification is a cornerstone in preparing students to navigate a globally interconnected world, where understanding and appreciation for diverse cultures and narratives is a critical asset.

Continue reading “The Changing Face of College”
Posted on

Stop Blaming Students: Toward a Post-Pandemic Pedagogy

David Trend

There’s trouble in the college classroom these days. But you can’t blame students. The pandemic and other disruptions of the past two years have shaken higher education to the core, casting doubt on how universities deliver instruction, pay their bills, and justify their existence. Enrollments are dropping across the nation, as students and their families increasingly see college as  overpriced, inequitable, and non-essential. More disturbing still are shifts taking place within institutions themselves, as dispirited students are losing motivation and enthusiasm for learning.  Clearly something has to change, with many pointing to the classroom as a key place to start.  But will it be enough?

“A Stunning Level of Disconnection” is the way one recent article described the situation. “Fewer students show up to class. Those who do avoid speaking when possible. Many skip the readings or the homework. They have trouble remembering what they learned and struggle on tests,” one professor reported.[1] Instructors are trying to reach and teach students, to figure out the problem, and do anything they can to fix things, with many now concluding in frustration that “It may be necessary to change the structure of college itself.” Call it a stress test for higher education – the seismic disruption of the college classroom during the COVID-19 years, and its ongoing after-shocks. At all levels of instruction, educators continue to voice alarm over the persistent malaise and underperformance of college students. 

Pages: 1 2
Posted on

The Problem with Rigor

David Trend

“It’s Time to Cancel the Word Rigor,” read a recent headline in the respected Chronicle of Higher Education.[1]  The article detailed growing concerns about hidden bias within what many see as conventional teaching practices. Here, “rigor” was taken to task for throwing roadblocks up for some students more than others, even as its exact meaning remains vague. Webster’s Dictionary defines rigor as “severity, strictness or austerity,” which educators often translate into difficult courses and large amounts of work, rationalized in the interest of excellence and high standards.[2]

While there is nothing wrong with challenging coursework, per se, this interpretation of rigor often becomes a recipe for failure for otherwise intelligent and hardworking students.  Such failures can result when rigor is used to incentivize or stratify students, as in gateway or “weed out” courses with prescribed grading targets, or situations where faculty overuse tests as motivation. Rigor discussions I have witnessed rarely consider instructional quality, teaching effectiveness, or principles of learning. Instead faculty complain about poor student attention, comprehension, or commitment. As the Chronicle explains, “all credit or blame falls on individual students, when often it is the academic system that creates the constructs, and it’s the system we should be questioning when it erects barriers for students to surmount or make them feel that they don’t belong.”[3] Continue reading “The Problem with Rigor”

Posted on

The Algorithm Rejected Me

David Trend

School is where most kids first become aware of what I call the  “update imperative.”  After all, education is a process continual improvement in a step-by-step process of knowledge acquisition and socialization. In this sense schooling represents much more than the beginning of education. For many kids it’s a time of moving from the familiarity of home into the larger world of other people, comparative judgement, and a system of tasks and rewards. Along the way, a package of attitudes and beliefs is silently conditioned: conformity to norms, obedience to authority, and the cost of failure. All of this is presented with a gradually intensifying pressure to succeed, rationalized as a rehearsal for adult life. Rarely are the ideological parameters of this “hidden curriculum” ever challenged, or even recognized. Much like work, American K-12 schools are driven largely by mandates of individual achievement and material accumulation.

By the time college applications are due, levels of anxiety can run out of control, given the role of degrees in long term earnings.  Many students start the admissions Hunger Games as early as middle school, plotting their chances, polishing their transcripts, and doing anything they can to get good grades. Everyone knows how admissions data now flows in an age in which students apply to an average of 10 schools each. Unsurprisingly perhaps, overall applications have increased by 22% in the past year alone.[i] And while the applicant side of this equation has been much publicized, what happens in the admissions office remains shrouded in mystery. Largely unknown are secret criteria driven by algorithms to determine things like likelihood to enroll or willingness to pay. Even less known are kinds of AI analytics used to monitor and grade students, sometimes making prejudicial judgements along the way. Continue reading “The Algorithm Rejected Me”

Posted on

Why Professors Ignore the Science of Teaching

David Trend

A recent article appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education explored the apparent reluctance of college and university professors to embrace the growing body of research about how students learn and what teaching methods work best. While many faculty simply cling to what has worked for them in the past, others feel overworked and unable the consider changing. In the meantime, an increasingly diverse student population experiences increasing inequity as a result.

Beth McMurtrie’s “Why the Science of Teaching is Often Ignored” opens with a discussion of a recent study by five Harvard University researchers who published some novel research. The group was trying to figure out why active learning, a form of teaching that has had measurable success, often dies a slow death in the classroom. They compared the effects of a traditional lecture with active learning, where students solve problems in small groups.

The results were not surprising; students who were taught in an active method performed better on standardized tests. The academic press praised the study for its clever design and its resonance with professors who had trouble with active learning. Yet despite being praised in some quarters, the study was criticized in others.

This mixed reaction reveals a central paradox of higher education, according to McMurtrie. Teaching and learning research has grown dramatically over the decades, encompassing thousands of experiments, journals, books, and programs to bring learning science  into classrooms. But a lot of faculty members haven’t read it, aren’t sure what to do with it, or are skeptical. Continue reading “Why Professors Ignore the Science of Teaching”

Posted on

Turn-U-In: Treating Students as Suspects

David Trend

It’s no secret that online learning has its problems, witnessed in the historic failure and drop-out rates resulting from thrown-together course overhauls in the early COVID months. Less widely reported has been another kind of failure owing to a loss faith in educational institutions and a widening trust gap between teachers and students.

Inherent school power inequities  have aggravated  antagonisms – now made even worse by a range of surveillance and security technologies. The distance in “distance learning” can create an atmosphere of alienation and distrust. When the in-person classroom is reduced to a screen image, teachers and students can seem more like abstractions than actual people.

This opens the door for all sorts of communication failures and misunderstandings, not to mention stereotyping and harm. The objectifying tendencies of media representations long have been associated distortions in the way individuals and groups view each other, whether in the marketing of products, sensationalizing news items, or spreading ideologies on social networks. When “Zoom school” does this, underlying beliefs and assumptions can overtake the reality of encounters, generating attitudes that destabilize the learning environment.

These problems have become especially evident in the panic about student dishonesty in online learning, as the absence of classroom proximity quickly escalated in into assumptions of cheating. Early in the 2020s a torrent of news reports warned of an “epidemic” of dishonesty in online learning, with some surveys showing over 90 percent educators believing cheating occurred more in distance education than in-person instruction.[i] New technologies often have stoked such fears, in this instance building on the distrust many faculty hold toward students, some of it racially inflected. [ii] Closer examination of the issue has revealed that much of the worry came from faculty with little direct knowledge of the digital classroom, online student behavior, and preventative techniques now commonly used.  Indeed more recent research has shown no significant differences between in-person and online academic integrity.[iii] Continue reading “Turn-U-In: Treating Students as Suspects”

Posted on

Government can overestimate college costs

David Trend

Federal listing of college costs often fail to calculate the rising supplements provided by student aid, grants, and loans.

As the New York Times reports, “The government’s official statistic for college-tuition inflation has become somewhat infamous. It appears frequently in the news media, and policy makers lament what it shows.No wonder: College tuition and fees have risen an astounding 107 percent since 1992, even after adjusting for economywide inflation, according to the measure. No other major household budget item has increased in price nearly as much.But it turns out the government’s measure is deeply misleading.

images“For years, that measure was based on the list prices that colleges published in their brochures, rather than the actual amount students and their families paid. The government ignored financial-aid grants. Effectively, the measure tracked the price of college for rich families, many of whom were not eligible for scholarships, but exaggerated the price – and price increases – for everyone from the upper middle class to the poor.The good news is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has gradually begun to change its methods since 2003, to capture the effects of financial aid. It will take more time to know how well those efforts are working. But the bureau won’t alter the historical data, which means the long-term comparisons will never capture the actual cost of college for American families.

“Those oft-cited comparisons, notes Sandy Baum, a George Washington University professor and an expert on college costs, says, are “certainly misleading.”

“The discrepancy matters because the country is in the midst of a roiling debate about whether college is worth it. Various pundits on both the left and right have taken to claiming that higher education is overrated and often not worth it. The shocking increase in college costs, according to the official Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers, is part of their argument. Continue reading “Government can overestimate college costs”

Posted on

Court upholds race in university admissions

From the New York Times: “In a long-running affirmative-action case, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday upheld the University of Texas at Austin’s consideration of race as one of many factors in admissions.images

“We are persuaded that to deny U.T. Austin its limited use of race in its search for holistic diversity would hobble the richness of the educational experience in contradiction of the plain teachings of Bakke and Grutter,” Judge Patrick E. Higginbotham wrote, referring to two previous affirmative-action rulings by the Supreme Court.William C. Powers Jr., the president of the University of Texas at Austin, said he was pleased with the decision upholding the admissions policy.

“This ruling ensures that our campus, our state and the entire nation will benefit from the exchange of ideas and thoughts that happens when students who are diverse in all regards come together in the classroom, at campus events and in all aspects of campus life,” he said.Texas’ “Top Ten Percent Plan” guarantees the top graduates of every high school in the state a place at the flagship Austin campus or other universities in the state system, and because many Texas high schools are largely segregated, many black and Latino students are admitted to the university under the plan.

“While the Top Ten Percent Plan boosts minority enrollment by skimming from the tops of Texas high schools, it does so against this backdrop of increasing resegregation in Texas public schools, where over half of Hispanic students and 40 percent of black students attend a school with 90 percent-100 percent minority enrollment,” said the majority opinion, in which Judge Higginbotham was joined by Judge Carolyn Dineen King.While the University of Texas does get some diversity from the plan, the majority opinion said, it can constitutionally make further efforts to increase diversity.

“U.T. Austin has demonstrated a permissible goal of achieving the educational benefits of diversity within that university’s distinct mission, not seeking a percentage of minority students that reaches some arbitrary size,” the opinion said.Judge Emilio M. Garza wrote a lengthy dissent, arguing that while the university claims that its use of race was narrowly tailored to meet its diversity goal, it never defined that goal, making it impossible to say whether the use of race actually was tailored to meet it. Continue reading “Court upholds race in university admissions”

Posted on

On paying for book publication

At almost any gathering of academic publishers or librarians, you’ll hear someone float the idea—sometimes phrased as a question—that the model for publishing scholarly monographs is broken.

imgres-3As InsideHigherEd reports: “Two sets of ideas aired at the Association of American University Presses’ annual meeting, held here this week, don’t say the model is damaged beyond repair. But the proposals, both from groups outside the university-press community, suggest that it needs to be retrofitted, at the least.

“One possible approach came from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the other from a task force on scholarly communications run jointly by the Association of American Universities and the Association of Research Libraries. Both raised the question of how to better subsidize the digital publication of scholarly monographs, and both included the notion that faculty authors’ home institutions might do more to help pay for those books to be published. Such support would help deal with what university-press people often call the “free-rider problem,” in which institutions without presses—most of them, in other words—leave it to those with presses to support the system that gives faculty authors publication credentials.

“The AAU/ARL task force describes its plan as a “prospectus for an institutionally funded first-book subvention” that would shift the burden of payment to authors’ home institutions. That would “address the principal causes and effects of the market failure for monographs,” the prospectus says. It envisions that colleges and universities would agree to pay for an openly available “basic digital edition” of some faculty members’ first books; scholarly publishers could offer those titles for sale in other formats too.

“The plan also envisions that universities with a high level of research activity would offer subventions for three or four books a year, with an “annual subvention exposure” of roughly $68,000 to $73,000. Small colleges would pay for one or two books a year, and offer more modest subventions.  Continue reading “On paying for book publication”

Posted on

On valuing teaching

How do you change academic culture? One reason that question gets asked a lot is that it’s so hard to answer. Another reason is that so much of academic culture needs changing.images

How might we create a culture that actually esteems effective teaching? The value of such a thing ought to be clear, if only because it would blunt some of the frequent public criticisms of universities for a too-narrow focus on research. But creating a teaching culture hasn’t proved so easy. It’s not that campuses don’t harbor great teachers—even the most research-intensive universities do. But those professors usually tend their personal classroom gardens on their own. They don’t labor as members of a community—or culture—that rewards their teaching and propagates their best ideas about it.

The challenge of how to make good teaching into a communal value has been the subject of the Teagle Foundation’s academic philanthropy for some years now. Last month the foundation convened a meeting, “Community of Scholars, Community of Teachers,” to showcase the efforts of some of its grantees. Professors and administrators described what they had done to create “teaching-positive” environments in the liberal arts at their institutions.

Every one of the grant programs centered on the teaching of undergraduates by graduate students. That’s not surprising. Graduate students do an enormous amount of that work at most universities, so they’re necessary members of any university’s teaching community. But the programs on display at different institutions employ graduate students differently, and at different levels.

Cornell University is working from the bottom up. The university’s teaching center recruited graduate students (in both the humanities and the sciences) for a new fellowship program that leads to a certificate. Fellows studied technology, assessment, and related topics, and did independent research on teaching. Continue reading “On valuing teaching”

Posted on

Who graduates and who doesn’t

When you look at the national statistics on college graduation rates, there are two big trends that stand out right away. The first is that there imagesare a whole lot of students who make it to college — who show up on campus and enroll in classes — but never get their degrees. More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any other country except Hungary.

The second trend is that whether a student graduates or not seems to depend today almost entirely on just one factor — how much money his or her parents make. To put it in blunt terms: Rich kids graduate; poor and working-class kids don’t. Or to put it more statistically: About a quarter of college freshmen born into the bottom half of the income distribution will manage to collect a bachelor’s degree by age 24, while almost 90 percent of freshmen born into families in the top income quartile will go on to finish their degree.

When you read about those gaps, you might assume that they mostly have to do with ability. Rich kids do better on the SAT, so of course they do better in college. But ability turns out to be a relatively minor factor behind this divide. If you compare college students with the same standardized-test scores who come from different family backgrounds, you find that their educational outcomes reflect their parents’ income, not their test scores. Take students like Vanessa Brewer, who do moderately well on standardized tests — scoring between 1,000 and 1,200 out of 1,600 on the SAT. If those students come from families in the top-income quartile, they have a 2 in 3 chance of graduating with a four-year degree. If they come from families in the bottom quartile, they have just a 1 in 6 chance of making it to graduation.

The good news for Vanessa is that she had improved her odds by enrolling in a highly selective college. Many low-income students “undermatch,” meaning that they don’t attend — or even apply to — the most selective college that would accept them. It may seem counterintuitive, but the more selective the college you choose, the higher your likelihood of graduating. But even among the highly educated students of U.T., parental income and education play a huge role in determining who will graduate on time. An internal U.T. report published in 2012 showed that only 39 percent of first-generation students (meaning students whose parents weren’t college graduates) graduated in four years, compared with 60 percent whose parents both graduated from college. So Vanessa was caught in something of a paradox. According to her academic record, she had all the ability she needed to succeed at an elite college; according to the demographic statistics, she was at serious risk of failing. Continue reading “Who graduates and who doesn’t”

Posted on

USC writing program heads for the hills

A private graduate college in Vermont stepped in to save a writing program axed by the University of Southern California.

The Vermont College of Fine Arts offered to take over USC’s master’s of professional writing program after the California private university announcedit would end the program, citing a “business decision” amid an ongoing review of its Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.images

Thomas Christopher Greene, the Vermont college’s founding president, said he decided to try to save the 43-year-old program in part because his college and USC share faculty. While the program didn’t fit USC’s vision, it fit Greene’s.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for USC’s arts and sciences college said that Dean Steve Kay and other officials are working to make sure current writing program students can graduate, either at USC or from Vermont.

“He recognizes the excellent pedagogy of the MPW program, but has made this determination as a business decision,” said the spokeswoman, Emily Cavalcanti.

For the Vermont College of Fine Arts, the acquisition – for free – of USC’s program may be something of a coup, if it can capitalize on it.

“Essentially, it’s really an opportunity to create a residential program with some wind at its back,” Greene said. Continue reading “USC writing program heads for the hills”