You may recall that a couple of months ago, there was a “shocking survey” circulating around which showed that only 23% of Oklahoma students knew that George Washington was the first President of the United States. At the time, my colleague James expressed his extreme skepticism of this result, a skepticism shared by most of the commenters. Well, as it turns out, this skepticism was quite justified, as Nate Silver points out:

[Oklahoma State Representative Ed] Cannaday therefore had little difficulty setting up an experiment: he arranged to have all the seniors in the 10 secondary schools in his district take the Strategic Vision/OCPA survey. Cannaday tried to replicate the Strategic Vision survey to the greatest extent possible. The same exact questions were used, and as in the case of the original survey, the answers were open-ended rather than multiple choice. The survey was administered to a total of 325 seniors, including special education students.

Cannaday’s survey however, found his students doing just fine: They answered an average of 7.8 out of the 10 questions correctly. By comparison, the high school students that were purportedly surveyed by Strategic Vision had gotten just 2.8 out of the items correct. 98 percent of the students on Cannaday’s survey — not 23 percent — knew that George Washington was the first President. 81 percent — not 14 percent — knew that Thomas Jefferson had written the Declaration of Independence. 95 percent — not 43 percent — knew that the Democrats and Republicans are the major political parties. There was just no comparison between the two.

[...]

There is no reason to think, in other words, that the students in House District 15 should have gotten such profoundly superior results to the “students” in Strategic Vision’s survey. Nor could Strategic Vision’s results have been the result of any sort of mathematical or methodological oddity. Consider their claim that literally none of the 1,000 students they surveyed were able to answer more than 7 of the 10 questions correctly — lower than the average score achieved in Cannaday’s test.

There are, rather, only two possibilities. Either the Strategic Vision survey was entirely fabricated — or Cannaday’s was.

I would put every dollar to my name on Cannaday, who has kept the surveys and is happy to show them to them to anyone who comes asking.

So would I. Cannaday’s results appear to have a sounder methodology, and also make more intuitive sense.

A new Pew survey shows a rather steep “Partisan Knowledge Gap,” with Republicans and Independents generally better informed than Democrats.

Mary Katharine Ham finds this quite amusing and also notes that, “if the polling had gone the other way, the NYT would shout it from the rooftops.”  She provides examples of the mainstream press doing just that on previous occasions.

We’d need a more wide-ranging set of questions and more replication over time to make any definitive conclusions about the relative knowledge of various partisans.   This does, however, seem to belie the recent White House-approved meme that Fox News and its ilk aren’t really news outlets.   The fact of the matter is — and this has been borne out over time — that people who listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity are among the best informed people out there.   It’s not that those hosts are unbiased — Lord knows, they are — but because they draw an audience that’s much more interested in the news than most Americans.

CNN’s current business model is straight news, with the opinion shows pushed to their sister HLN.  But people actually watch Fox.

Gary Lewandowski and David Strohmetz, psychology professors at Monmouth University, argue at Inside Higher Ed that college professors have unrealistic expectations of their students.  They begin poorly, with several paragraphs of the “both professors and students have shortcomings” variety.  But they eventually hit on an essential truth:

We run the risk of using our own past experience as the default comparison group. This presents two problems. First, our recollection of our own college experience may suffer from retrospective biases where we recall things more favorably than they were. Did we really do all of our reading? Did we really avoid procrastinating? Did we truly devote ourselves to our coursework? Were we really attentive in class 100 percent of the time? Certainly, we are prone to some degree of rosy retrospection.

The second problem is that even if we have perfect and bias-free retrospection, it is likely that you were not a typical college student. In fact, it is much more likely that you went on to become a professor because you were not a typical student.

This is, of course, exactly right.  It’s a trap that I fell into more than once when I was teaching.   And Lewandowski and Strohmetz are correct that “we should be careful to avoid portraying our personal academic experiences and motivations as the benchmark for comparisons.”

And I think this is right, too:

By focusing on student deficiencies, you may inadvertently perpetuate the problem. Case in point, by developing a mindset that students have significant deficiencies, you may become more prone to developing a confirmatory bias that leads you to more easily identify and remember students’ deficiencies. Worse, negative expectations about students might lead you to act in a way (perhaps unknowingly) that elicits negative behaviors from students.

For example, if you became convinced that your class was unenthusiastic, you might devote less effort to your next lecture because quite frankly “why bother? They aren’t interested anyway.” Thus, your next lecture is subsequently less engaging, and the students are, as you predicted, unenthusiastic. By identifying and resisting this self-defeating pattern, you can take steps to avoid it. After all, you are the person with the most influence on the classroom and have the most ability to produce the desired change.

On the other hand, this misses the mark:

In reality, we are much more like our students than we care to acknowledge. Who among us can say they have read all of the recent journals in their field, have never submitted a less than perfect manuscript or grant proposal, have never procrastinated on a project, have never missed a deadline, have never been late to class, have never skipped a meeting, or have not paid astute attention while a speaker provided information? If you have any doubt about this last one, I urge you to look around the room during your next faculty meeting to see how many of your colleagues are otherwise occupied.

This is, of course, all true.  But it misses the point:  We’re held accountable for this behavior.  We’re ultimately judged on the quality of our work, our desirability as colleagues, and all the rest.

Yes, it’s unreasonable to grade freshmen in our survey courses as if they were prospective graduate students and professional colleagues.  But it’s not only reasonable but vital for professors to treat students as young adults.  Being penalized for tardiness and absence, failure to do the assigned readings, and the like can serve as a powerful incentive to behave more responsibly.  And, certainly, the consequences for doing these things in college are markedly less severe than after joining the workforce.

A rather bizarre case in Illinois — even by the standards of that state.

For more than a decade, classes of students at Northwestern University’s journalism school have been scrutinizing the work of prosecutors and the police. The investigations into old crimes, as part of the Medill Innocence Project, have helped lead to the release of 11 inmates, the project’s director says, and an Illinois governor once cited those wrongful convictions as he announced he was commuting the sentences of everyone on death row.

But as the Medill Innocence Project is raising concerns about another case, that of a man convicted in a murder 31 years ago, a hearing has been scheduled next month in Cook County Circuit Court on an unusual request: Local prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves. The prosecutors, it seems, wish to scrutinize the methods of the students this time. The university is fighting the subpoenas.

Lawyers in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office say that in their quest for justice in the old case, they need every pertinent piece of information about the students’ three-year investigation into Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of fatally shooting a security guard in 1978. Mr. McKinney’s conviction is being reviewed by a judge. Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.

[...]

A spokeswoman for Anita Alvarez, the Cook County state’s attorney, who was elected last fall, said the prosecutors were simply trying to get to the bottom of the McKinney case. “At the end of the day, all we’re seeking is the same thing these students are: justice and truth,” said Sally Daly, the spokeswoman. She said the prosecutors wished to see all statements the students received from witnesses, whether they supported or contradicted the notion of Mr. McKinney’s innocence. “We’re not trying to delve into areas of privacy or grades,” Ms. Daly said. “Our position is that they’ve engaged in an investigative process, and without any hostility, we’re seeking to get all of the information they’ve developed, just as detectives and investigators turn over.”

Well, no. Without probable cause to believe criminal action on part of the students, the state has no right to any of this material.  And why would it matter if the students thought they would get better grades for getting provocative statements?  Surely, people aren’t going to confess to crimes or commit otherwise commit perjury in order to help out some rich college students they don’t know.

On this matter, there seems to be wide consensus.

American University conlaw prof Darren Lenard Hutchinson:

The subpoena raises several red flags. First, the information the prosecutors seek is completely unrelated to the question of McKinney’s guilt or innocence. Second, student grades are normally protected from disclosure by federal law. Third, the program is operated by the school of journalism and likely qualifies for protection by state journalism shield laws and the First Amendment. Fourth, the professor’s course materials are possibly protected from disclosure by the concept of academic freedom — which the Supreme Court has construed as a value secured by the First Amendment.

[...]

Daly also likens the subpoena to the routine disclosure of information by “detectives.” Police detectives, however, work for the government and assist the prosecution. They are colleagues. Although private detectives do not work for the government, they have an unambiguous financial stake in the outcome of their investigation. The students, by contrast, are private citizens and journalists. The Medill project exists to monitor and improve the criminal justice system — not to service the prosecutor’s office or inmates.

[...]

Illinois prosecutors are blatantly using the strong arm of the state to harass Medill journalism students. The prosecutors’ behavior evinces a deep contempt for the law, which makes the students’ efforts to uncover wrongful convictions even more compelling.

Emptywheel’s bmaz:

The Cook County prosecutors cite no evidence to support a credible belief there is anything nefarious behind the student journalists’ work. The students work, conclusions and supporting materials are all part of their project report. The prosecutors already have access to all of said pertinent material, as well they should. But what they now want are “grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students”. Here is the actual subpoena. This is information that has nothing whatsoever to do with the students work on the project. “Fishing expedition” would be far too kind of a term.

The only visible purpose of the play by the prosecutors here is intimidation and instillation of a deep chill in the work of the Medill Innocence Project.

Retired federal judge H. Lee Sarokin:

I am always offended and annoyed with the labeling of some recent conduct or person with Nazism or Hitler or drawing analogies with the Holocaust and thereby belittling those horrific events in our history with some current less appalling and even minor occurrences. But I truly believe that the attempt of prosecutors to subpoena “the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of their journalism students themselves” at Northwestern University warrants and deserves the Gestapo label.

It is a flagrant attempt to intimidate the Medill Innocence Project and other similar projects which have been so successful in overturning wrongful convictions. The alleged justification is that the prosecutors want to determine “whether students believed that they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.” So I take it that would mean that every time a detective obtained incriminating evidence, his entire background could be examined in order to determine his motives when interviewing a witness; whether he had received or expected a raise or a promotion; and if so whether he needed money; how much his debt was; what he was paying for rent and alimony, etc. In other words, the scope of the investigation would be extended to the motives of the investigator rather than the witness being investigated and interrogated.

Wisconsin lawprof Ann Althouse asks “what information about students and classes should it be able to look at?”  She does not attempt to answer the question.  Her commentators give it a shot.

Tennessee lawprof Glenn Reynolds, aka InstaPundit, snarks, “Hey, it’s the Chicago Way. But the parallel is pretty striking — if you don’t like what they’re reporting, why, then, they’re not really journalists!“

Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying.  But she makes a good point here about the fact that those who enable cheating never seem to get much attention:

Everybody notices the crooked defiant coach, the hapless sputtering president, the anonymous guys on the academic support staff who sit next to the players as they take the online quizzes and tell them what the answers are — but the professors who make the courses… who police the department for evidence of academic integrity…

These guys are the brains behind the operation! Lose the whore in Human Development and the stooge in Sociology, and game’s off, people. And yet “the public face,” as the New York Times puts it, of SUNY’s scandal is Sally Dear, a mere adjunct in Chair Leo Wilton’s department.

UD understands that you need whores up and down the line to produce outcomes like Binghamton’s and Auburn’s. Without “see no evil apologists” like Donna Shalala (who may be about to hire the most disgraced medical school professor in the country to run her school’s psychiatry department), the University of Miami couldn’t field what was recently the most violent team in university football; without national embarrassment T.K. Wetherell running it, Florida State couldn’t produce the biggest sports cheating scandal in the country, etc. But why overlook the tenured department chairs who use their curricular and hiring powers to turn large academic units into national laughingstocks?

Indeed, you’d think professors and department heads would get in especial trouble given that their mission is theoretically unclouded, whereas college presidents and athletic directors have terrific pressure to win at all costs.

Of course, if the system won’t even punish serial cheaters like John Calipari — who get caught cheating, leave their programs in shambles, and then move on unscathed to do the same elsewhere for more money — then it seems silly to bother with the small fish.

Morehouse, the top historically black college for men, has issued a new dress code of which Bill Cosby will approve but gays groups do not.

Since he was named as president of Morehouse College in 2007, Robert M. Franklin has stressed the importance of defining education broadly, well beyond courses. He has been talking about the social and ethical obligations of those who are studying at the elite historically black college. Of late he has been calling for students to have “five wells” — to be “well read, well spoken, well traveled, well dressed and well balanced.”

Last week, the idea of being “well dressed” became much more specific, with the start of an “appropriate attire policy,” under which Morehouse is joining a small group of colleges that have in recent years adopted dress codes. Morehouse’s policy is generally being well received by students — and college officials stress that 90-plus percent of students are already in compliance. But the policy is getting some criticism from gay students over the idea of regulating dress, and specifically for banning the wearing of women’s attire.

Here are some of the policy’s features:

• Caps, do-rags and hoods are banned in classrooms, the cafeteria and other indoor venues. Do-rags may not be worn outside of the residence halls.
• Sunglasses may not be worn in class or at formal programs.
• Jeans may not be worn at major programs such as convocation, commencement or Founder’s Day.
• Clothing with “derogatory, offensive and/or lewd messages either in words or pictures” may not be worn.
• “Sagging,” defined as “the wearing of one’s pants or shorts low enough to reveal undergarments or secondary layers of clothing,” is banned.
• Pajamas are banned in public areas.
• Wearing of “clothing associated with women’s garb (for example, dresses, tunics, purses, handbags, pumps, wigs, make-up, etc.)” is banned. (Morehouse educates only male students.)

William Bynum, vice president for student services at Morehouse, said that the clothing rules are part of a broader agenda to develop students’ minds and “social consciences.” He said that Franklin, the president, has pushed President Obama’s idea that there should be “no excuses” for black men in an era when one of their own has been elected president of the United States.

Even the opposition from gay groups has been mild.

Kevin Webb, co-president of Safe Space @ Morehouse, a gay-straight student alliance, said that under Franklin’s leadership, the college has been more committed to equity for gay students than ever before, and that “as an openly gay student, I feel privileged to have matriculated now.”

Webb said that gay students are divided about the dress code. But although he will not have to change his style, he said he was bothered by the new rules. For many gay students, fashion is an important part of self-definition, he said. “Once you try to stop people’s expression, everything that is unique about people is going to start to crumble, and you will produce robots, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”

A few gay Morehouse students do dress in women’s clothing sometimes, and Webb said that should be allowed. While all Morehouse students are covered by the new clothing policy, Webb said he was bothered that a specific rule singled out a style popular only with some gay students. “I think this borders on discrimination,” he said. “While someone can say that it applies the heteronormativity of other students in terms of do-rags and sagging of pants, I can also say that there are gay people who sag their pants and wear their do-rags, but you don’t find people here who identify themselves as straight walking around in feminine garb.”

If male students wear feminine clothing, he asked, “what impact does it have on how intelligent they are, their grade point average and how much community service they do?”

He also questioned the idea that someone who wears more formal clothing is necessarily a better person. “We are focusing too much on the exterior,” he said. “If you put a clown in a suit, he’s still a clown.”

Webb is right, of course.  One can be intelligent and dress like a slob — or someone of the opposite gender.  Conversely, one can dress like an executive and still be a fool.

But Franklin is carrying on a longstanding tradition at places like Morehouse.  Because it was harder for a black man to be considered intelligent or worthy of respect, a culture developed where black men of a certain station tended to dress much better and pay more attention to his manner of speaking than white men of similar status. It’s not as true as it was even twenty years ago — it’s been half a century since Brown and a generation since the Civil Rights Act of 1965 — but vestiges of that tradition remain.  Most black professionals in their 50s or older still tend to pay more attention to their clothing and public image than their white counterparts.

Franklin, Cosby, and Obama clearly want to keep this culture alive.  They realize that young black men running around with their underdrawers showing not only hinder their own chances for advancement but reinforce negative stereotypes.

Beyond that, Morehouse sees itself as something unique.  Being a “Morehouse Man” is more akin to being a graduate of the Citadel or VMI than of, say, one of the Ivies.  It’s a brand, not just an institution of higher education. And they want Morehouse men to project an image of success and professionalism.  And, it would seem, manliness.

Amusing parody of the University of Phoenix ads by SNL:

Bonus: Fred Armisen in whiteface.

via Inside Higher Ed

Inside Higher Ed points me to a new study [PDF], “What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization,” on how academic libraries should cope with the increasing availability of scholarly journals in digital form. They go through great pains to argue the need to maintain print. From the executive summary:

This analysis finds several rationales for retaining some copies of the print version: the need to fix scanning errors; insufficient reliability of the digital provider; inadequate preservation of the digitized versions; the presence of significant quantities of important non-textual material that may be poorly represented in digital form; and campus political considerations. The appropriate disposition of print copies of a given journal should vary depending on the characteristics of the print original and its digitized version in each of these categories.

Because many of the rationales for retaining print are likely to decline over the course of time, this report introduces time horizons for print preservation. Librarians have often discussed preservation responsibilities as if it were possible to undertake perpetual commitments, but specified time commitments coupled with regular reassessment of priorities and responsibilities permit better decisionmaking. The model we propose therefore examines the minimum period of time that access will be
needed to at least one copy of the print original.

While complex, this methodology provides for preservation frameworks that vary based on risk profiles. For example, text-only materials require less concern than image-intensive materials, while high-quality digitization processes digital preservation practices similarly indicate lower concern. These rationales indicate the need for at least one print copy of well-digitized digitally preserved text-only materials to be available for at least 20 years.

In order to guard against losses over time and assure the availability of a single copy after the stated time horizon, a greater number of print copies of any digitized title need to be secured today. In the exemplar scenario, a minimum of two page-verified print repository copies would be needed. When such well-digitized digitally-preserved text-only journals are held in two page-verified print repository environments, therefore, other libraries can safely withdraw their print holdings if they so
choose.

In candor, I haven’t read — nor am I likely to read — beyond the executive summary.  But it strikes me that these rationales mostly apply to archival libraries — the Library of Congress being the most obvious example — rather than to working university libraries.  There’s simply no reason for the average PhD-granting institution — let alone regional universities — to budget for print editions of journals, which are 1) ridiculously expensive, 2) take up enormous space, 3) can be accessed by only one user at a time, and 4) easily damaged through use or malice.  (Pages being ripped out are not uncommon.)  Most scholars will simply conduct their research from the comfort of their office computer, which has become increasingly the norm over the past 15 or so years.

A recent survey of Oklahoma public high school students found that the overwhelming majority can’t answer even simple questions about U.S. government and history.

A thousand students were given 10 questions drawn from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services item bank. Candidates for U.S. citizenship must answer six questions correctly in order to become citizens. About 92 percent of the people who take the citizenship test pass on their first try, according to immigration service data. However, Oklahoma students did not fare as well. Only about 3 percent of the students surveyed would have passed the citizenship test.

Below are the questions and results:

Question		% of Students Who Answered Correctly
What is the supreme law of the land?		28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?		26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?		27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court?		10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?		14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States?		61
What are the two major political parties in the United States?		43
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years?		11
Who was the first President of the United States?		23
Who is in charge of the executive branch?		29

Shocking, no?

This meme is spreading through the blogosphere with the consensus being that our education system is failing and our students are dumber than a bag of hammers.

But here’s the thing:  I simply don’t believe these results are accurate.   I taught Politics 101 to college freshmen for a decade, so I’m under no illusion that our kids have a strong working knowledge of how our system works.  (Indeed, having administered basic geography tests as part of my World Politics course, I’m shocked that 61% not only know the Atlantic Ocean but that they know east from west.)  I could see students not knowing the answers to several of the questions above, especially framed as they are.  But, seriously, your average 6-year-old knows who George Washington is.  They couldn’t tell you anything about his administration, of course, but they know:  wooden teeth, chopped down cherry tree, couldn’t tell a lie, Martha, and 1st president.  It’s, frankly, trivia.  (And hagiography in the case of the cherry tree fable.)  But they know it nonetheless.

Tom Maguire took the time to click the link to the actual survey results. He observes, “in defense of the Oklahomans, a ten question test was administered by telephone to one thousand high school students. That has to be an unfamiliar format for the respondents, and probably not all of them gave it their best shot. Still, this is pretty grim.”

Actually, it’s worse than that.  The exam was commissioned by a conservative activist organization whose mission is to show how lousy public schools are so as to advocate for home schooling and private, religious schools.  Read the long diatribe that serves as the press release for the survey’s results.

Here’s how they describe the methodology:

In Oklahoma, the telephone surveyors called a sample of 1,000 public high-school students and read the following statement: “On the next 10 questions, I will be asking you questions about American government and history. Give me your best answer, and it is permissible to respond ‘I don’t know.’”

Guess what the most popular answer was on just about every question was.  Yes sir: “I don’t know.”  It was the majority response on the two parts of the Congress (58%) and who’s in charge of the executive branch (51%) question and was in the 40’s on three others.  It was the number one answer on eight of ten questions.

How many of those were actually non-responses?  Given the purpose of the exam, I wouldn’t be at all shocked if the survey firm wasn’t instructed to code non-responses as “I don’t know” rather than going on to a student who would take the time to give thoughtful responses.  (The only thing holding back my confidence in this regard is that the Atlantic Ocean question is listed 6th and got a very high right answer rate.)

Interestingly, too, the right answer was the plurality actual response answer on almost every question.   And the runner-up answers were, for the most part, non-idiotic.  So, 17% thought the Declaration of Independence was the supreme law of the land, compared to 28% correctly identifying the Constitution and 41% “I don’t know.”  Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Roosevelt, and John Adams were the most popular wrong answers on 1st president.

The chief “wrong” answer on the “Who is in Charge of the Executive Branch” question was “the Governor,” which garnered 10%.  That’s actually right, since the question doesn’t specify federal or state.  Similarly, shouldn’t the 11% who answered that the two parties are Communist and Republican be scored correctly?  (I jest, of course.)

Again, I’m not Pollyannish on how much our kids know.  In 2001, Steven Taylor had a bonus question on a multiple-choice test he administered to 101 students at the university where we both taught at the time asking who the vice president was.  A woefully small number got it right.  (In fairness, Dick Cheney was  new in office and much less controversial than he’d be later.  Also, Steve’s eldest son, then perhaps 6, knew the answer.)   But a telephone survey of 17-year-olds who have no incentive whatsoever to take it seriously administered by a group that wants to prove how lousy our schools are is simply unfair.

UPDATE:  Kevin Drum emails to point out something I totally missed:  “not one single student got even 8 answers right.”

Kevin says, “That’s just not credible.”

No, it isn’t.   Indeed, few people got more than 4 right!  My strong guess is that:  1) they rotated the questions, rather than asking them in the order above and 2) the vast majority of students hung up after no more than three or four questions.

Saif Qaddafi, son of Libyan dictator Muammar, has completed a doctoral dissertation bemoaning the lack of democracy in the world.

Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said the current system of global governance was “highly undemocratic”. He hit out at undemocratic states whose governments were “authoritarian, abusive and unrepresentative”.

His father Muammar Gaddafi came to power in a coup in 1969 and has ruled Libya for 40 years. Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, 37, continues to play a prominent role within the Libyan political landscape.

[...]

The dissertation is called “The Role of Civil Society in the Democratisation of Global Governance Institutions: From Soft Power to Collective Decision Making?” Mr Gaddafi wrote: “I shall be primarily concerned with what I argue is the central failing of the current system of global governance in the new global environment: that it is highly undemocratic.” He continued that his dissertation would “analyse the problem of how to create more just and democratic global governing institutions”, focusing on the importance of the role of “civil society”.

I’m not sure what’s more amusing: The incongruity with his research findings and his father’s station or, as Josh Keating points out, that he hired the Monitor Group to do most of the actual research.  Somehow, that seems to violate the spirit of the thing.  Not to mention, a touch undemocratic.

DC’s Southeastern University has lost its accreditation, canceled its fall term, and is seeking to merge with another school.

The institution’s accreditation from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education lapsed Aug. 31. A report from the commission found that the small private college lacked rigor and was losing faculty, enrollment and financial stability. Southeastern has operated since 1879 and has long served a population of lower-income and international students.

Of the 645 students enrolled at the Southwest Washington campus last fall, more than 300 graduated in a poignant ceremony in late June. Many of the rest transferred to the University of the District of Columbia, Trinity Washington University or Washington Adventist University, said Elaine Ryan, Southeastern’s interim president. Nineteen of Southeastern’s 60 faculty and staff members remain.

[...]

There remains the possibility of a merger with GS Graduate School, an institution that provides continuing education for 150,000 students a year, most of them government workers. Officials with the two institutions, which are a few blocks apart, had spoken of creating a combined school with a wider range of degrees and a focus on public service and federal job training.

Given how ridiculously lax the accreditation process is, Southeastern had to be really, really awful to be stripped completely. That it is seeking to merge with a degree mill established to provide “degrees” to employees of the Department of Agriculture so they will have the necessary “education” for promotion reinforces my suspicions in that regard.

One wonders how long it’ll take Google to update their listing:

via Inside Higher Ed

Boston’s Bunker Hill Community College is experimenting with midnight classes.  Wick Sloane, who teaches a full class from 11:45 pm to 2:45 am, explains:

Two thirds of my class this morning enrolled at midnight because all the day, evening and weekend sections were full. The rest have night jobs, most of them at hospitals, and one is a taxi dispatcher. Almost all plan to go on to a four-year college. One loves physics. One is earning the credits to transfer to become a doctor of pharmacology. It was midnight or put their ambitions on hold.

Is this a good news story, or what?

No. This is a national nightmare. Not a cry but a scream for help from these students. Sure, it’s great that community colleges are finding ways to respond to the huge enrollment increases they are seeing. But, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, do we want to be citizens in a country that forces its poorest students to go to college at midnight?

So, why not just offer more classes during reasonable hours?  Sloane blames federal education policy,

But actually providing community colleges with enough money to meet the demands of their very hard working students? Actually give these institutions enough money so that there are professors and classroom space before midnight? No one is really talking about that – and students are being denied sections in massive numbers, nationwide this year.

[...]

As I’ve noted before, the federal tax policies of we, the people, through deductions on donations and tax-free endowments, subsidize Ivy League and other wealthy-college students by at least $20,000 per student. A single mother at a community college or a 23-year-old student supporting her parents are lucky to win a full federal Pell Grant. Harvard lost $8 billion from its endowment and Williams College, where I went, lost hundreds of millions by taking their charitable, federal tax-deducted dollars to the dog track. So what? We haven’t changed any of the federal tax rules, and these wealthy colleges are out panhandling for more money.

But what does any of that have to do with scheduling classes during the day? Presumably, teaching at night is more expensive than teaching during the day given that administration, climate control, and the like are largely fixed costs.  Maybe there simply aren’t enough classrooms available?  I’ve never seen that in the institutions where I taught but maybe it happens at Bunker Hill.

And what does that have to do with Pell Grants?  Presumably, if it were easier to get subsidized tuition, there would be more students competing for space.  (I’ve emailed Sloane and will update if he responds.)

Interesting sidebar to the story:  The guy who came up with the idea of midnight scheduling is John P. Reeves, chair of the behavioral sciences department, who’s been at Bunker Hill since 1967.  He was the inspiration for the Robin Williams character in “Good Will Hunting.”

UPDATE: I’ve heard back from Professor Sloane and, indeed, the issue is simply one of space:  “This semester, yes, all the classes, evening and weekends and days are full.  There is no room.  The registrar has added 109 new sections.”  He agrees that more Pell Grants would add to the problem but he’d welcome it nonetheless.  I gather, then, that this is just one of his frustrations with the system and largely unrelated to the midnight classes phenomenon.

It’s interesting how these problems vary from state to state.  In Alabama, the state where I got all three of my degrees (four if you count a high school diploma) and did the majority of my teaching, higher education is woefully underfunded.  But one can scarcely throw a rock without hitting a community college, thanks to George Wallace’s logrolling.  For that matter, there are really far too many four year schools, too, in a smallish state with only 4.3 million people.   So, while money for faculty and technology was limited, classroom space was always in abundant supply.  That was true in Georgia and Tennessee, the other states in which I taught, as well.

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern.

Dave Schuler and I will talk about President Obama’s education speech and related topics.

We’ll also be taking calls at (646) 716-7030. Owing to a high trolls to legit callers ratio, however, we’ll be using the BTR chat feature to screen for legit calls.

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Matt Yglesias takes mock exception to President Obama’s assertion to our nation’s schoolchildren that “You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it.” He notes that, “My father dropped out of tenth grade and has had a totally solid career as a novelist and screenwriter.”

Indeed, as several commenters point out, all manner of people drop out of school and wind up having enormously successful careers in business, the arts, and athletics.

Presumably, though, such people are covered by the president’s exhortation.   I’m sure Rafael Yglesias not only learned quite a bit at the elite private schools he attended for nine years but continued to work and train to become successful as a writer.   Certainly, Bill Gates didn’t stop learning after he dropped out of college to found Microsoft.  And even rock stars and athletes have to work and train and learn to excel in their chosen endeavors.

For especially talented and self-motivated people, formal education may actually be a hindrance to achieving their goals, since it at the very least requires divided concentration.  For most, however, that process will expose them to new insights and discipline that will improve their chances at figuring out what they’re good at and making a living doing it.

President Obama is set to address the nation’s schoolchildren next week, presumably to propagandize them into his evil agenda of turning the country into Communist Russia (pronounced “roo-shuh”) and offing granny to save money on health care just as they do in his native Kenya. There are even instruction manuals to enlist the support of the teachers unions in brainwashing our youth.

Michelle Malkin has a huge exposé on this scandal:

Instead of practicing cursive, reviewing multiplication tables, diagramming sentences, or learning something concrete, America’s kids will be lectured about the importance of learning. And then the schoolchildren, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, will be exhorted to Do Something — other than sit in their seats and receive academic instruction, that is.

What is it that something they’re supposed to do?  They’re not saying but apparently they want the kids to figure it out for themselves.

The activist tradition of government schools using students as junior lobbyists cannot be ignored. Zealous teacher’s unions have enlisted captive schoolchildren as letter-writers in their campaigns for higher education spending. Out-of-control activists have enlisted their secondary-school charges in pro-illegal immigration protests, gay marriage ceremonies, environmental propaganda stunts, and anti-war events.

And that’s without the cult-inducing powers of a presidential speech!

Stephen Green would keep his son out of public school that day if his son were old enough and he urges you to do the same.

Nope, Obama can’t just say hey to the kiddies and encourage them to do their homework. He has to make this a — what does the Left call it? — a teachable moment. A speech-in, if you will. Teachers have even been given handy instructions on how best to integrate The One into the classroom.

AllahPundit thinks this is overreacting a mite,

One pap-filled 20-minute speech about working hard and serving others is so lethal a threat to tender minds that they have to be yanked off the premises for the day to shield them from it?

[...]

If this turns out to be some hamfisted attempt by The One to pitch his agenda to kids — which would be politically insane given the outcry it would cause, a sneak preview of which may be found here — there’ll be ample time for outrageous outrage later. For all the media fainting spells over Obama’s oratory, you can count on one hand the number of truly memorable lines he’s uttered; I doubt he’s going to come up with such a corker next week that kids will be planning their lives around it. Remember, this is the same guy who can’t sell universal health care, the virtual raison d’etre of the Democratic Party these days, to the Blue Dogs.

Steve retorts:

Yes, the speech itself will almost certainly be harmless. I don’t expect anyone’s kids to be coming home and berating their parents for being against this program or that agenda. I do expect Allah has it quite right, that this speech will be just another Daddy Speech, meant to encourage my son to work hard in school.

But you know what? The President of the United States — whether an Obama a Bush or a Lincoln — is not my son’s daddy. That’s my job. We’ve had enough nannystatism, and enough daddystatism, too.

I actually agree with every word of that. Granted, “stay in school” is such an innocuous message that it’s hard to object to its being presented.  But do we really need to add to the already inflated sense of the president of the United States as our national daddy?  The man’s in charge of one branch of the federal government; he’s not king.

Still, as Doug Mataconis points out, this is hardly new.  Why, Ronald Reagan himself gave such as speech. So did both Presidents Bush.  Indeed, Reagan went to far as to answer questions from the kiddies on federal budget priorities and gun control!

MichaelW thinks the whole thing is “creepy” and says it’s different than what Republican presidents have done.  For example, Bush 41 was telling kids to stay off drugs.  He sees a more nefarious agenda from Obama:

President Obama has already shown that he’s not above using children to advance his political agenda, so it’s not surprising that those opposed to his aims would be a bit skeptical of his speech. Adding to the wariness is the fact that he only seems to make these speeches when he needs help with bolstering his political capital (e.g. the “race speech” after Jeremiah Wright blew up in his face). After the battering his health care insurance reform plans took in August, it almost seems too convenient that he would suddenly want to address all the school kids in the nation, right about when he’s planning to try and save the one program he truly wants to enact.

But Allah’s right on this.  Not only is it hard to believe Obama is going to say anything that rises above the level of pabulum but, if he does, the national outrage will make the health care town halls look like love-ins.

I tend to agree with Joanne Jacobs that the whole thing is innocuous, if unlikely to much matter: “I think the president is going to ask kids to work hard in school and teachers will try to get them to pledge to work hard in school and most of them will work just as hard this year as they did last year.”

AP Photo