Universities Weblog

After 10 grueling years of doctoral study, you finally earn your Ph.D. from an elite university. You've honed your research skills and are primed to become a first-rate scholar in your chosen field.

Not so fast. Given the competition for relatively few tenure-track (and even adjunct) jobs at four-year colleges and universities, many newly-minted Ph.D.s are relegated to teaching at community colleges. Of course, most two-year schools don't require faculty members to hold a doctorate, but market realities are forcing the issue.

Some observers, as this San Francisco Chronicle article suggests, see beneficial outcomes for students and faculty. Top faculty are ramping up academic expectations and encouraging students to take their studies more seriously. And faculty are free to teach. Patrick Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, told the Chronicle that "These are faculty who really want to be teachers. You don't have the pressure to publish, you teach. You don't have people who do teaching between the other stuff."

I imagine some faculty feel that way. But that "other stuff" is what would make them competitive for more prestigious (and possibly better paying) positions at universities. It's hard to believe that many Ph.D.s from Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley, such as those mentioned in this article, would be satisfied with a community-college career. And if they want to concentrate primarily on teaching, they could do so at liberal arts colleges.

My guess is that most are there out of necessity, biding their time until something better comes along.

According to a new study released by the University of Southern California's Pew Hispanic Center in Washington, Hispanic students drop out of college at a more alarming rate than do Caucasian or black students.

Here's what CNN had to say about the study:

About 23 percent of the Hispanic freshmen in the study earned their bachelor's degrees by age 26, compared to 47 percent of white non-Hispanic students….

Hispanics also were likelier to attend community colleges and less-selective four-year schools, where the overall graduation rates are lower, Fry said.The study tracked 13,000 Hispanic students from 1988 to 2000.

Early admissions programs have come under scrutiny in recent years. Critics claim the system gives an unfair advantage to student and families with access to good guidance counseling—namely, white students from more affluent backgrounds. They also claim that many students aren't mature enough to make the critical decision about college choice so early in their senior year of high school.

Hogwash. Years ago, when few families understood the advantages of applying early (a greater percentage are accepted), perhaps the system favored those with better access to counseling. Today, just about everyone is aware of early admissions programs. And I don't believe a few months of one's senior year makes a tremendous difference; how much more mature will someone be in December as opposed to October? Does some magical epiphany occur in those intervening months?

Opponents of early admissions do have one good argument: Applying to only one college eliminates the possibility of comparing financial aid packages. In other words, students who don't need financial aid can attend their first choice college, pay the full tab (or most of it), and not worry about what kind of aid some other institutions might have offered. That said, elite colleges, where early decision programs have thrived, lead us to believe that admitted students receive their fair share of aid, based mostly on need (at the Ivies, entirely on need). Those who wish to compare aid packages, assuming they'd be radically different from one institution to the next, shouldn't apply early, and therefore won't benefit from the more relaxed standards. And that's how the system benefits the rich.

Enter a new wrinkle. As this Boston Globe piece points out, some students now take advantage of some colleges' later "early" deadlines. Let's say a student applies early to Dartmouth and doesn't get in. Given the timing of the decision, he can still apply early to Tufts using that school's second early deadline. This strategy violates the principle that students should have one "first choice" college and not apply elsewhere. But when that first choice says no, another college becomes the new first choice.

Loophole or forgiveness factor? Now that colleges are wise to such trickery, let's see if things change.

Wendy McElroy thinks so, and according to her, that's not a bad thing. In a Fox News opinion piece, McElroy says colleges and universities are retreating from affirmative action (she doesn't cite telling statistics to support her case, but includes a quote from the NAACP), and suggests that perhaps it's time to end the practice altogether.

To wit:

At its root, affirmative action is an ambitious campaign of social engineering. It is an attempt to redistribute social and economic power by forcing institutions—through law and court precedents—to prefer women and minorities. The underlying sentiment is a noble one that is being badly used.

Instead, affirmative action advocates see skin color and gender. There is nothing noble about that vision.McElroy also offers a brief history of affirmative action, tracing its roots to the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s. Obviously the history is more complex than what she details here.

She does, though, strike a nerve about the long-term viability of affirmative action. Even Justice O'Connor, who supported the practice in last year's Supreme Court rulings, suggested that in 25 years we may not need affirmative action anymore.

Will it last that long?

Worried about employment prospects following graduation, college students have shied away from liberal Arts majors in recent years. Noticing this migration, administrators are broadening the curriculum to allow students to take more "practical" courses to complement liberal arts offerings.

This curricular phenomenon, as discussed in a New York Times piece, has cropped up at NYU, Columbia, Southern Cal, Colgate, UVA and the University of Washington. At some institutions, students can take business courses and earn academic credit toward their liberal arts degrees. Other universities allow students to pursue non-credit certificates in various specialties such as publishing or finance.

Here's a relevant snippet from the Times:

The belief that college should train students for a career is widely held. When more than 1,000 adults were asked about the primary purpose of a college education in a survey four years ago, 64 percent said it was to prepare students for specific careers, 16 percent said it was to prepare students for work in general, and only 19 percent said it was to provide students with general knowledge. (An additional 2 percent said they did not know.)Let's hope those two percent figure it out soon enough.

But not everyone agrees with this commingling of the liberal arts with vocational studies. "To dilute the power of the liberal arts with premature professionalism," Amherst College president Anthony Marx told the Times, "will deprive our society of the thoughtful leadership it needs."

That view may be a bit extreme, but it's certainly reasonable to fear for the future of the liberal arts in this age of vocationalism.

(Source: University of Hawaii)It seems the honeymoon in Hawaii is over, and it's ended in divorce. Evan Dobelle, the University of Hawaii's president since 2001, was fired by the university's board of Regents "for cause." That phrase is significant because it means Dobelle must forego his potential $2.3 million severance package.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (here, for subscribers), not long after Dobelle arrived to great fanfare—from Trinity College in Hartford, where he reinvigorated that campus and the city—university officials began to question his actions. Supposed wrongdoings included shady spending, most notably a lavish refurbishment of the president's house, and his hiring of former colleagues for high-paying university positions.

Board chairwoman Pat Lee issued this statement to the Associated Press: "Sadly, we have come to the realization that the president no longer has our trust, and there is no longer a unity of purpose between the board and the president, or a clear recognition of his integrity, character and commitment."

What's more, Dobelle formally endorsed a Democratic gubernatorial candidate who lost; the Republican governor has since appointed adversaries to the university's board. You'd think someone with his background (he was a city mayor) would understand the dangers of betting on a political horse, especially given the governor's power to appoint his bosses.

In any case, Mr. Dobelle is out, and presumably his high-ranking cronies will follow. I wonder, though, if he'll stick around. His appointment carried full tenure, as is common, but will he want to stay on campus under those circumstances? And could his tenure be revoked if the "for cause" details reveal moral turpitude? We'll see….

(Source: University of Virginia)Not to be outdone by private universities, top public institutions are waging fund raising campaigns with staggering goals.

Here's a short list of current public-university campaigns:

University of Michigan, $2.5 billion
UCLA, $2.4 billion
UNC-Chapel Hill, $1.8 billion
University of Wisconsin, $1.5 billion
Michigan State, $1.2 billion
Texas A&M, $1 billion
UC-San Diego, $1 billion
University of Arizona, $1 billion

A generation ago, few public universities had sophisticated fund raising operations like those found at private colleges. After all, alumni knew that state money would take care of alma mater's needs. And if an alum lived in his alma mater's state, he figured his tax dollars in part supported the university.

Fast forward to today. In many states, public funds account for only a small fraction of a public university's income. That's why these institutions have turned to fund raising to survive and thrive. At the University of Virginia, a "public" institution, state funds offset only eight percent of the annual budget. Most of the revenue comes from tuition and fees, endowment returns, and gifts and grants. Sounds like a private university, no?

So UVA has launched a capital campaign seeking (gasp!) $3 billion. Harvard's last campaign, which ended in 1999, tipped the scale at $2.6 billion. Southern Cal's ended in 2002 after pulling in $2.9 billion. Virginia's effort is thus quite ambitious, although the seven-year window (extending to 2011) is somewhat long.

Nonetheless, UVA's president, John Casteen III, remains confident. "In the past," he told the Washington Post, "we have found that the targets actually grow as you move forward, and we expect that to happen this time also. Three billion is a fairly conservative target."

Harvard is due to announce its new campaign soon. America's wealthiest university and fund raising champ will no doubt aim to surpass current campaign goals. Stay tuned.

(Source: University of Pennsylvania)Not all commencement speeches are created equal. True, most of them strike similar chords, offering students the typical dollops of pablum. But some speakers manage to say something original, funny, controversial or memorable.

Herewith is a tour of commencement speeches on campuses across America.

Here's one from the "It Pays to be Ignorant" file.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a British student is suing the University of Kent because he got caught plagiarizing and the university is withholding his diploma. What's his beef? He thinks the university is negligent because it failed to inform him that plagiarism is a no-no.

I teach writing, and I've seen my fair share of plagiarism. Some cases, to be certain, are examples of poor paraphrasing or a lack of proper citation. Others represent pure cheating. While I'll acknowledge that plagiarism has its gray areas, I'll also bet that most universities do a pretty good job of letting students know what's right and wrong.

So what, specifically, did this kid do? Here's what he told the London Times (per the Chronicle):

"[...] I always used the Internet, cutting and pasting stuff and matching it with my own points. It's a technique I've used since I started the course. I never dreamt it was a problem."There's nothing wrong with that "technique" per se, as long as readers know which ideas are yours and which come from someone else. A student about to graduate from college should understand that elementary concept.

(Source: University of California, Berkeley)Next fall, fewer than 100 black students will populate UC Berkeley's entering class. Applications from black students are down 10 percent, and the admission of african Americans dropped 30 percent.

As an AP article points out, in 1997, the last year that affirmative action was permitted at the University of California, the Berkeley campus admitted 562 black students.

Driving this drop in black enrollments, observers say, is a growing hostility toward any efforts that support racial preferences. African Americans and other minorities, it appears, are shying away from campuses where racial battles have been publicly fought.

Perhaps equally shocking to casual observers is that last fall whites accounted for only 30 percent of Berkeley undergrads, while Asian Americans accounted for 40 percent. At America's premier public university, in other words, being white makes you a minority.