It kind of amazes me that guests in Lehigh dorms aren’t required to sign in at the entrances. At Rutgers you were required to be signed in by a resident with the front desk worker during certain hours, and you had to have an ID on you. Granted this is not a fool proof system, but it appears there’s nothing at all here. Aside from having a record of who is in the building when, it can help deter lesser incidents by visitors if they know they could be held accountable. Even with that kind of precaution, there was still an incident at my sister’s dorm at Rutgers where a man had been sleeping in the lounge, apparently waiting for an opportune moment to assault a woman. I can’t verify this story, but even at my time there someone in my dorm was threatened by an intruder in the building. I don’t know if there have been any incidents here recently, but it is something that concerns me, probably because I’m here over spring break in a very empty dorm. Walking around in the quiet halls is not the most comfortable feeling. Walk up to a dorm entrance behind any resident and they will, out of courtesy, hold the door for you. Residential services FAQs assures residents that the only people that have access to the dorm are other residents, residential services, and maintenance, but in reality that’s not really the case, is it?

http://media.www.thebrownandwhite.com/media/storage/paper1233/news/2010/03/05/News/Bilingual.Charter.School.Approved.By.Local.Board-3884578.shtml

Bilingual Charter School opening in Bethlehem which will have a tie in to Lehigh’s globalization program. Personally I think it’s a great idea, the best way to learn a language is to start young and practice continually. Both Spanish mother tongue and English mother tongue students can/will benefit from being taught in a bilingual environment. Unfortuantely attitudes like this aren’t unusual: ” one student who wished that his name be withheld said, “I wouldn’t send my kids there. My ancestors came to this country not knowing English; they had to learn English to get citizenship and make money. I think [they] would be rolling over in their graves if they knew that American tax dollars were teaching kids any other language but English.” ”

Sad.

The Comparative & International Education Society is holding its 54th annual national conference in Chicago this week. Representatives from various universities and institutes are in attendance and sharing their thoughts on ReImagining Education.

For those of you that utilize Twitter — we encourage you to follow our updates at #CIES2010. Attendees are live tweeting using this hash tag, which allows individuals to follow our progress throughout the week.

Even if you do not use Twitter, you can still follow the “conversation” by going to http://twitter.com/ and typing #CIES2010 into the search column.  Once the search is complete you will be able to see what all has been said by everyone “tweeting” the conference.

Off to the Windy City,
Kelly

From 2001 until 2008: Republicans use reconciliation to pass controversial legislation. Democrats use the filibuster and threats of a filibuster to further their agenda. Both sides accuse each other of abusing quirks in the Senate’s rules to subvert democracy.

From 2009 until until today: Democrats threaten to use reconciliation to pass controversial legislation. Republicans threaten to filibuster to further their agenda. Both sides accuse each other of abusing quirks in the Senate’s rules to subvert democracy.

Dr. Jack Lule, Lehigh journalism professor wrote an op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer this past Sunday re: Social Media & the earthquake in Haiti.

Check it out here.

See Lehigh’s efforts on fundraising for Haiti here.

Lule has been studying news coverage of Haiti for more than a decade and notes that social media may be the ticket to overcome “the restless spotlight” which switches to the next disaster before the first is a few days old.

For me this hearkens back to the recent revolt in Iran, when the government tried to shut down all outside contact and yet tweets and texts still broke through. Does social media bring hope as Lule suggests? Will it serve to illuminate what the mainstream media is leaving out?

The Citizens United decision has opened the floodgate for future campaign contributions. Below is a discussion between Bill Moyer and Jeffery Toobin about the recent Supreme Court ruling. The gist of the conversation centers on the probability of corporations putting money and energy into smaller, hidden campaigns—not nationally televised presidential, or even Congressional, campaigns. Toobin is insistent that local judicial campaigns will see the greatest increase in campaign contributions from corporations.

(Remember, there is a long history of corporations injecting money into judicial campaigns for particular candidates because of specific interests—because of the belief that judges will rule differently for those who helped in a campaign. It is naïve to think corporations have no vested interest in certain candidates holding power in the congressional, legislative, and judicial systems in our country. For instance, in his 1996 race for Texas Supreme Court, Tom Phillips raised $1.3 million, 43 percent of which came from parties with Supreme Court Cases. Talk about conflicting interests!)

After reading this New York Times magazine article about the controversial and all too powerful Texas Board of Education, I wonder if campaign contributions will increase not only for judges but also for state boards of education like the one in Texas. One of the most telling quotes from the article shows how conscious special interest groups are when it comes to local politics: “[Pat] Robertson’s protégé, Ralph Reed, once said, ‘I would rather have a thousand school-board members than one president and no school-board members’”

The increase of campaign contributions to state boards of education candidates around this country because of Citizens United is a real possibility, and one that might be even more “under the radar” than the judicial campaigns. In fact, it is already happening.  Local boards of education and local judges can have far greater power in altering how we think about education and law respectively than any Senator or Congress member.

What to read, what to read …

Lehigh University is about to begin it’s eighth year in their annual Freshmen Reading selection. Each year they ask for recommendations, and later will ask for faculty and staff to assist with the process by reading the book and agreeing to engage freshmen in discussions about it. The first year I was involved, we read Freedom in Exile by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in preparation for his visit to Lehigh University. Fast forward to Summer 2010 – the students will read Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson (really?). What do you think they should read in 2011?

Past Selections include:
(2003) Nickel & Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
(2004) Copenhagen by Michael Frayn
(2005) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
(2006) Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
(2007) Freedom in Exile by The Dalai Lama
(2008, 2009) Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
(2010) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson

Selection Process: The book is chosen by the Book Selection Committee which consists of faculty, staff and students. The following criteria will be considered when making the final selection: relevance to the student community and society as a whole; extent that the book explores multiple perspectives, ideas, backgrounds, or cultures; appeal to a wide audience across the colleges; opportunities for students to be engaged through the book themes and follow-up discussion; and general readability and literary quality.

Check out the Lehigh University First Year Experience

Web comment left by a global warming skeptic:

PERHAPS THE EARTH IS JUST SHIFTING & IT’S WARMER WHERE THE GLACIERS ARE MELTING. IT’S COLDER HERE ESPECIALLY SOUTH OF CONNECTICUT WHERE THE WINTERS ARE BECOMING EXTREMELY HARSH.

Sorry, that one cracked me up.

.. is a lot of money.

It’s also an estimate in “outstanding federal and private student-loan debt, says Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org, a Web site that tracks financial-aid issues—and only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid.” According to the Wall Street Journal, “the rest is in default, or in deferment, which means that payments and interest are halted, or in “forbearance,” which means payments are halted while interest accrues.”

Citing an unusual case (med student that admits to “missing several payments”) – the point is clear: Students are heading into the real world with real debt. Student loans can become unwieldy and near impossible to pay back in a timely fashion. So off we go into our futures with debt up to our ears and adding more to the pile: mortgages, cars, credit cards, and so forth.

Is there a solution to this mess in the foreseeable future? If so, what?

Check out the rest of the article here.

William Pannapacker (writing as Thomas H. Benton) has another article in The Chronicle attacking the institution of post-graduate education in the humanities. It is worth a read, since it may cause one to question their assumptions about education.

A lot of work has shown that increasing education has a corresponding positive effect on lifetime earnings. This is most often heard when encouraging high school students to go to college or when talking them out of dropping out. Why education leads to higher earnings is an open question, however it is safe to say higher education provides graduates with mix of networking opportunities, a higher level knowledge and skills (aka human capital) and an ability to signal to prospective employers some level of resilience or fortitude. Taken together these likely account for the higher wages.

Pannapacker argues that after a earning a four-year degree in the humanities the student hits a hard wall of diminishing marginal returns. The humanities PhD, he says, is worth little more than the BA. He then argues, by forcing grad students into the “life of the mind” the PhD becomes worth less than a BA, as newly-minted doctors struggle to live while serving as adjuncts with no hope of progress into the tenure track. It is a scary tale, and a warning worth thinking about.

ANYWAY, what I’m writing about is the use of anecdotal evidence. Pannapacker bases a large part of his argument on the story of a PhD who can’t get a job. He describes her below.

The myth of the academic meritocracy powerfully affects students from families that believe in education, that may or may not have attained a few undergraduate degrees, but do not have a lot of experience with how access to the professions is controlled. Their daughter goes to graduate school, earns a doctorate in comparative literature from an Ivy League university, everyone is proud of her, and then they are shocked when she struggles for years to earn more than the minimum wage…She was the best student her adviser had ever seen (or so he said); it seemed like a dream when she was admitted to a distinguished doctoral program; she worked so hard for so long; she won almost every prize; she published several essays; she became fully identified with the academic life; even distancing herself from her less educated family.

He goes on to describe her as taking networking courses, sitting in mock interviews and finally pulling the PhD off her resume. Nothing works.

But again and again, she is passed over in favor of undergraduates who are no different from people she has taught for years. Maybe, she wonders, there’s something about me that makes me unfit for any kind of job.

Pannapacker describes this as a process that goes on for years, and through this example condemns professors and higher education in general. Now, as someone contemplating a PhD, I am worried Pannapacker is correct. Who wouldn’t be, even if I am a social scientist. Perhaps this is a unique phenomenon in the humanities job market and I am safe? I sure hope so.

Or perhaps Pannapacker’s entire argument is based on false assumptions. He seems to be refuting a very specific premise: work hard in graduate school, earn a PhD, and you will get a job and attain happiness. He then provides us with one example of a student who is unable find employment or happiness after working hard in graduate school and earning her PhD. The premise is falsified! Therefore, graduate school is for suckers and the “life of the mind” is a myth.

Okay.

Or the premise wasn’t robust enough. So I will revise it to: work hard in graduate school, earn a PhD, don’t be a jerk or difficult,and you will get a job and attain happiness. Pannapacker assumes that this person does not have “something about her that makes her unfit for the job”. The last thing I want to do is slander someone I have never met, but we could consider it to at least be a possibility.

It reminded me too much of an article in Newsweek years ago. George Will was commenting on teacher education programs, arguing they do more harm than good. He says, in his typical style, “The surest, quickest way to add quality to primary and secondary education would be addition by subtraction: Close all the schools of education.” His reason is that ed. programs force teachers into a far-left conception of the world. Those who fail to fit the mold are thrown out. His proof, just like Pannapacker, is one student’s story:

Many education schools discourage, even disqualify, prospective teachers who lack the correct “disposition,” meaning those who do not embrace today’s “progressive” political catechism. Karen Siegfried had a 3.75 grade-point average at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, but after voicing conservative views, she was told by her education professors that she lacked the “professional disposition” teachers need. She is now studying to be an aviation technician.

Unlike Pannapacker’s doctor, I do know Karen. I was a member of her cohort in that UAF program. I can assure you, wholeheartedly, she lacked anything resembling a professional disposition. Many students, including myself, expressed so-called conservative views. Did we have to hide our beliefs or politics? Nope.

Yet Will uses this anecdote to affirm his assumption that education programs are ideologically biased. Will takes it for granted that Karen did had a “professional disposition”, just as Pannapacker does with his example. This is the problem with using anecdotal evidence, the whole argument rests on one individual’s personality or the particular details of their story.

What’s frustrating is how often this technique is used, and how often it is accepted. Read any newspaper on any given day and you’re likely to see more than one article that uses one person’s experience to draw a large conclusion. I am, of course, doing so right now by cherry picking two articles to attack all newspapers. Maybe that’s my point, using anecdotal evidence to prove your assumptions is just so tempting, but if we are social scientists we have to realize what a weak position it places us in.