MODIFICATION TO MEDICAL EDUCATION IMPERATIVE

I watched an ad on TV urging teachers to learn how to be more efficient in teaching science. Although I watched with bored disinterest, the message did not leave me. That message is knowledge is accumulating so rapidly; we cannot keep up. Like water flooding into a boat, we as educators are becoming overwhelmed and, as a result, are sure to sink unless we do something. The question is, what should we do? As a professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine, I was aware of the changing ways we were teaching medicine and surgery in my profession but it never registered with me what was happening and why. Administrators classically divide the veterinary curriculum into basic science and clinical science. They framed the curriculum around a strong prerequisite program at the beginning and extended it with a voluntary internship at the end of four formal years. The modern or lecture/apprentice mixture of medical education developed in essentially the 19th and 20th century grew out of what had been strictly an apprentice program that had been in places since ancient times. Obviously, a professor could teach the signs and symptoms of hundreds of diseases in a lecture hall that he or she could never accomplish by exposure to the diseases in question in a clinic setting. Those of us teaching in the basic science or interface between the basic sciences and clinics were acutely aware that we did not have time to teach what most of us felt needed teaching. Knowledge in basic science is expanding exponentially. We urged those teaching prerequisite course to expand their courses and for clinicians to include more basic science in their clinical teaching. There was strong pressure not to increase the number of years in professional school. Of course, jamming more and more material into the eight-hour day has natural limits. The point is basic science knowledge was overwhelming everyone. What happened was internships expanded to a bewildering plethora of residencies, which soon came to include both species specialties as well as of discipline specialties; equine surgeons, poultry medicine, and small ruminant specialists, for example. Also to residencies, there was the classic advanced PhD research degree hovering in the background of residencies. In some disciplines, PhD research degrees replaced residency board certification. At the end of a PhD program, the college administration awards an academic degree. In contrast, at the end of a residency, a board of specialist representing that specialty administers a certification examination. The difference is board certification can be and often is not under the control of academicians. In my discipline of veterinary pathology, the result was that the academician were teaching pathology of dog, cat , horse, cow, pig, sheep, and goat, while the board examination under the control of people working in industry (drug and chemical companies) examination was on the pathology of rat, mice, and Guinea pigs. The obvious problem of students who desired to become diagnostic pathologist did not want the burden of doing, writing about, and the defending a complicated research project. It should be obvious that residencies were an attempt to respond to the great expansion of basic science knowledge. It should also be obvious residency program concept has overwhelmed. Examining new and proposed curriculum clearly indicates a new direction to meet the challenge of expanding basic science is taking place. Colleges of veterinary medicine and medical colleges are teaching their students to be the equivalent of highly trained nurses, the doers, and not the thinkers, which creates an obvious void. The professions are rounding out their ranks with non-veterinarian or physician with holders of Ph.D. degrees in myriad disciplines such as genetics, pharmacology, pathology, microbiology, virology, and on and on. New curricula reflect this by a great diminution of time devoted to basic science and an equally expanded expansion of clinical courses based on the classic apprenticeship approach to medical education of the early centuries. The curious thing is Deans and educational administrators vehemently deny what they are doing. Apparently, they do this to protect the high station held in the public for medical professional. I was inclined to do, as a professor, was to tell my students, veterinary medicine is in the mind of the veterinarian and not in the eye of those who can see what they do. Students subject to this; they want of fix broken legs and diagnose disease, and neuter animals, and that entire lexicon of special skills veterinarian commonly exhibit. At the end of a long career, it is hard to admit I was wrong, but I was. It is time for the profession to agree; there is just too much knowledge for one person to comprehend, and educational administrators have to modify our education system to acknowledge this development. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated

NEVADA DRIVEN BY GREED

The Washington Post carries some bad news from time to time, but they yesterday published they worst story I have read in a long time. They titled the story as, The ultimate in school choice or school as a commodity. The legislature in Nevada passed a law saying that in the coming year, “any parent in Nevada can pull a child from the state’s public schools and take tax dollars with them”, the ultimate in voucher programs Republicans from around the country are advancing this program. The chief executive of the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has been working for this for years, and it finally happened. Of course, the name ‘Friedman’ in his title refers to the free marketer Milton Friedman, who happens to be the economic equivalent of political philosopher Ayn Rand; if you are rich great, if you are poor screw you—you just do not count. People who are interested in education know laws like this have nothing to do with education but have everything to do with tax dollars. Show me a Republican who is willing to pay to educate someone else’s children and I will show you a pig that flies; however, that is exactly the principle on which our ancestor built America. Every child in our country is given an equal opportunity to do well. That dream died in the Nevada legislature. Freidman presented the idea in 1955, and it died, as it should have. He presented the idea as the “ultimate expression of free choice for families”. Everyone but greed-driven Republican, joined by some economically depressed Democrats, recognized this law for what it is. Republicans designed the legislation to cut the costs of public school, which in turn means tax cuts. They argue the tax dollars go with the student as a voucher, so the tax is still collected. The truth is children of rich families move leaving the poor children in poorly funded deteriorating school. Also, from the social point of view, the private schools use the money for such nonsense as teaching religion, which Republicans designed to ally churches with their party, which gets us to the debate about Common Core. Church-affiliated school demand the constitutional guaranteed freedom to teach what they want but even the best teachers object to meeting “government” standards of excellence even when they know intelligent high school graduates that do not know how to read, write and do arithmetic but can cite a flawless summary of the principles of Christian religion, which means they can pass grades if they know religion, but academics do not count. Church schools object, to the government telling them what to do. They demand their constitutional guaranteed right of free speech. Of course, a tax cut mantra is always popular as a vote getter because it is one or more steps removed from the consequence. The consequence, in this case, is a poorly educated class of children. In the Republican mindset, this is OK as long as it is not “my children”, just as Ayn Rand feels it is ok to starve if you are of low IQ, crippled or otherwise handicapped as long as it is not her. The only way someone would vote for this type of legislation is if driven by greed. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated

WRONG DIRECTION FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL

A sore spot for almost all college professors is athletic coach salaries at their institutions. I heard on the evening news that the football coach North Carolina State University is to be paid 2.2 million dollars with bonuses. Shocked I went to the internet and searched for football coach salaries. OMG. I found that the top five university college coaches around the country were above $4.8 million dollars with the top being $7.3 million dollars. This is an obscene figure in view of the educational funding status of universities.  Headlines around the nation are now decrying Gov. Scott Walker’s $300 million dollar cut to the University of Wisconsin; Walker is a man who wants to be President so is making what he thinks will be politically popular decisions. How can any of this make sense to the parents of college age students and people in general? If I can be presumptuousness enough to speak for them, “it doesn’t”. It has to do with economics and not education.

Lawyers head the American Bar Association, physicians head the American Medical Association, etc so why are academicians not heading universities, which business people and politicians head or are subservient to them. The University of Minnesota for example, has a chemical engineer as president who has set the requirement for faculty to grant tenure to a young professor to have documentable “contribution to entrepreneurship”. Scott Walker is playing to taxpayers of his state; if he can add the $300 million cut from the University of Wisconsin to the $120 million of the state education budget he has already made, he can lower taxes. What about the foot ball program? The reputation of the University of Wisconsin will depend on a winning football team; academics will take care of themselves.

I live in the state of North Carolina where the state education budget is under constant and severe attack by the Republican legislature. Did I mention we have $30,000 year student tuition while we pay our football coach $2.2 millions dollars? We entice industry into our state by not collecting property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and cutting their utility rates. Guess who pays for police and fire protection, for the highways and byways. Guess who pays twice the rate for electricity than industry pay. Do I have to ask why my property taxes are so high? What the hell, we can hire educated engineers etc from India, so why should we pay high taxes to educate people. Who cares as long as we can afford a can of cold beer, set in front of the TV, and watch a hell of a good football game—live the good life?  Go Wolfpack, go!  

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CRITICIZE COMMON CORE IF YOU MUST

In contrast to sustentative criticisms, as opposed to political criticisms, of the Common Core (CC) program bothers me. Our state (North Carolina) passed a law to prevent its application in our school system based on the argument that it “usurps state sovereignty”. At least one member of the Google discussion group,” Education Revolution” voiced opposition to my criticism of a person who was complaining about Common Core. As with others, he focused his criticism on two things; one; teaching mathematics, and two, the lack of recognition of teacher professionalism. If one person is moved to write a complaint, it probably means many people did not agree with me but chose to remain silent.

In respect to criticisms of the CC approach to teaching mathematics, in his mind it was apparently sufficient if a student came up with the right answer. One of my favorite sayings is Maya Angelo, who said, “If you learn teach.” However, that falls short. There should be an extension, which says, “but, first learn how to teach”. Apparently, like teaching mathematics, people seem to think knowing “how to teach is” intuitive; it is not! We see this in the argument of homeschooling; parents assume “anyone can do it”. I had an experience in my life where I unexpectedly learned this lesson.

The scene was a classroom in the school of electronics in the U.S. Navy training center. The Navy selected a group of young engineers to teach electronic equipment repair to intelligent young Navy recruits, fresh out of high school. They selected students for the class based on their above average intelligence and not by any prior knowledge of electronics. The Navy tasked the young highly educated engineers to teach these students how to analyze component by component assembled into extremely complex instruments: communications, radar sonar, everything electronic. Those responsible for the program gathered the young engineers into a classroom to teach them, “how to teach”. The introduction in that class was simple; the teacher’s teacher handed an unopened package of cigarettes and matchbook to a volunteer from the class and asked him to teach him how to smoke a cigarette. Everyone knows how to smoke a cigarette so what is the challenge? You just do it. It is an insult to think otherwise.

The teacher’s teacher played the role of student. He opened the demonstration by asking “his volunteer from the class” to teach him how to smoke a cigarette. The “new” teacher asked his student to take a cigarette and put it in your mouth. By the time the demonstration was finished, the package was torn open with bits and pieces of cigarettes on the floor and in his mouth; this was all before he got to the matches. The obvious point was that a college-educated person could not even teach and intelligent student how to do something as simple as smoke a cigarette if he relied on what he “assumed” that person knows.

You cannot teach mathematics addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication unless you teach theory of numbers. Each one of these processes is a laborious step-by-step process on the way to learning higher mathematics and a “good” teacher has to know his or her students know the steps in this long, long path. Of course, everyone knows “theory of numbers” is a graduate course in college and you are dealing with young grade school students. Common Core teaches teachers and parents, who are willing to listen, how to bridge that gap. The result is that some take this as an insult to their intelligence; unfortunately, even some teachers see it this way.

Criticisms of CC remind me of how often I see references to Einstein in the Google discussion group; all indications are that this great theoretical physicist, just as a graduate engineer teaching Navy recruits electronics, was a rotten teacher unless trained to teach. Parents, administrators, politicians, etc may not appreciate what you as a teacher do; however, you should respect yourself for what you know and what you do—respect your profession. Criticize Common Core if you must but do it only to make it better.     

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TEACHERS PLACE IN SOCIETY

Teachers often complain that parents do not do their part in educating their own children. Without question, this is true. In fact, it is unusual to have a parent or parents really participate in any form of didactic activity in the context of their family. Unfortunately, when homeschooling does happen it seems motivated by closely held religion or regional beliefs. Of course, those isolated areas, where schools are not available are different. Unfortunately, in either case, the parents often think they are qualified as competent teachers. Even with commercially available teaching aids in hand, this is rarely the case.

Recently, I have been asking myself what part do professional educators actually play in “classroom” teaching of children. Of course, we all know about teaching aids, films, computers, demonstrations, etc. We learn how to impart details of study aids, how to provide study material, and write sensible, meaningful questions among all of the other things teachers do. We are aware of the constant social pressures parents and school boards subject teachers; teachers should teach this or that and teach whatever it is this way or that way. Good teachers do not have enough time in one day to do everything—those who do not care have too much. This is when the principle show up in your classroom with the news that you are not the new swimming coach because the states legislature says we have to have a swimming team and there is no one else to do it—you do know how to swim don’t you? Beleaguered teachers often resort to writing easy to grade tests, occupy students with reading while they mark tests but resort to the most common of all techniques, which is to assign hours and hours of homework. In the light of the acknowledged lack of parents’ interest in their children, it is unassisted homework. Of course, the opposite happens as well; the parents often do the homework for the student; the classic example of this is the outstanding and professionally done sixth-grade space explore rocket science fair project. Recently, the Common Core project revealed another problem; some parents do not know enough to assist their children, so they complain the homework is too difficult.

When you assign homework, are you asking parents to be “homeschoolers”? When they fail is that why you are so unhappy with parents? When teachers assign homework are you angry with them for asking you to do their work? Does anyone think this will end well?

Good teachers are professionals, but they are also innately driven. Teachers have a desire to teach children what they know but what the student does not. Maya Angelo said it succinctly when she said, “If you learn teach”. Teachers have gone to college and learned many things, but they have not learned everything. Common Core is much more they setting standards for students. It is setting standard for teachers but also setting standards for students and parents. In other words, it is establishing a common core or theme to work around for all elements in education, but especially educational administrators. A parent reading Common Core standards should better realize what a teachers’ job is, what a teacher is trying to accomplish in the classroom. A student knows what the teachers and parents expect they should know when they are at his or her grade level. Done right, the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) will eventually reflect all of this.

A professional teacher, not the parents but the teachers, is trained how to evaluate student learning and to modify and expand that learning to each students’ ability. Some students are not capable of reaching Common Core standards while others will easily exceed those standards. That evaluation is the principle task unique to each classroom. Only a teacher can do this in the intimate setting of a classroom, not at home, or on the playground or in an educational administrators’ office, especially in a local School Board meeting. The most difficult task for a teacher is to know how and when to convey that information to the parents.

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UNIVERITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, UNIVERISITY ATHLETICS AND INDUSTRIAL COMPLEXES

Amid all the hyperbole over Ebola and ISIS terrorism that affects very few people in the United States, there is a crisis being revealed that affects us all; the epicenter of that crisis is the University of North Carolina (UNC). In truth, the crisis includes every university and college across the nation. Those who follow the news might be led to think of sports programs because of the reference to UNC and the unraveling of their “paper courses” in which student athletes can take courses that require a paper no class work; thus taking away much needed practice time. In addition, an investigation revealed for 20 years “a” university administrator gave marks on the papers according to the needs of the student as told by the coaches not to mention that a whistle blower told investigators that “someone” paid a ghostwriter to write the papers. The connection between having a wining team in a major sport and grade corruption of student athlete should be obvious to everyone—it is not new nor is it complex.

University administrators brag that major sports teams are as big money makers for their institutions; however, when someone searches for serious balance sheets, we cannot find them. The reason they do not exist is they reveal the cost of equipping the teams, paying for team travel, maintaining stadiums, and paying for coaches salaries exceeds income, at least according to some people such as Murray Sperber in his well-researched book, Beer and Circus: How Big Time College Sports is Crippling Undergraduate Education (2000). How could we overlook the fact that they pay exorbitant salaries to coaches; often the highest paid individuals in the state, more than the governor of the state or the president of the university. In addition, it is common knowledge that the student athletes are in truth unpaid professionals. The entire system stinks of corruption from top to bottom and worst of all we know it. We know that this corrupting influence travels from high schools to graduate school leaving a trail of glorified ignorance in its wake.  

What is also shocking is that most people do not appreciate the athletic programs are not the major corruptor of university level education embraced by university administrators, in fact, most people have no clue of what is happening behind the “white tower” façade of our universities. The hidden corruptor is the pervasive industrial driven patentable research, which has all but replaced taxpayer driven basic research; tax payer based research that benefits specific industries and not of general benefit to everyone. The drivers are not only in industry and government but also and especially in the front offices of the universities. The average American brags about our educational system being the best in the world even though we have hints from time to time that it is not. We see all these wonderful inventions coming out of our universities but seem not to see the ever-increasing deficit in education of their graduates. Because we have “enough” excellence in our system of higher education to hide from us what is bad, we have no idea of how good it really could be.  

Many things are causing the pendulum to swing away from classroom and into support for athletics and industrial research but I believe its root-cause is good old innate human greed at all levels; not someone else’s, but yours. Greed has taken over the innate need or drive to teach what we learn. Maya Angelou said it so succinctly and beautifully; “If you learn, teach.” Innate need for education is what drove us to build our great universities since the beginning of time and now innate greed is tearing them apart; a conflict of innate drives. I look at my own Alma Matter, the University of Minnesota, undergraduate, professional, and graduate schools, and see an institution totally in the gripes of athletics and industrialization under a leader corrupted by greed. The President of that university, a chemical engineer not an educator, exemplified his ignorance of education by instituting a “demonstration of entrepreneurship” as a tenure requirement.

University athletic complexes and university industrial complexes are destroying us. Driven by the mantra of “no more taxes”, state governments are not supporting our universities. The failure of taxpayers that is you and I, to support higher education causes university administrators to seek other sources of income. The rules of supply and demand prevent them from charging for admission to games and charging students tuition to pay the entire cost of the institution, which now includes paying research professors who never see the inside of a classroom and are required to support themselves with grants. Universities administrators use what little taxpayer money there is to build stadiums and research laboratory thus shovel taxpayers’ money to benefit a few, including private hands, via circuitous routes.  

Of course, “you” understand the significance of a university having more professors and service personal than they do have students in a university. Of course, “you” know some professors never enter a classroom. In addition, because of the UNC revelations that people who we call educators give credits toward earning a degree without the student taking a class and doing it for 20 years. I am here to tell you it is not just athletic programs and it is not just UNC. Because it has been happening for 20 years, we know universities have no quality control of their major purpose, which should be education but isn’t—zero control. I personally know it is much longer than that since it has been 47 years since I entered the professorial roles. It is all athletics and industrial research and has to do with making money and not educating students. Cutting your taxes is costing us dearly as a nation. It is also hurting those outstanding educators who are struggling mightily to do things right.

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COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY ADMISSION DIRECTORS

A dear friend shared a Sept. 19 article published in Insider: Higher Education, More Pressure Than Ever: The 2014 Survey of College and University Admissions Directors by Scott Jaschick; a well written and comprehensive article intended to cover some of the problems college admissions officer have of filling their classrooms. Although not said, the article screamed out the lamentable state of our current system of educations for profit. The merits of small private schools are that instructors can provide special attention to individual students as well as being able to focus on one general educational aim, technical verses academic for example. Because of the nature of the “beast”, private school and colleges focus almost entirely on academics and administrators divide their schools curriculum from there into things like engineering, medicine, business, etc; thus, avoid the costly pitfall of trying to teach everything to everybody, which is the shared weakness of public institutions.

No longer student merit based as it should be but family wealth that is the deciding factor in college education or not. Private institutions exist because they can clearly do better than public schools. I appreciate the idea that a family can send their child to the best school “they can afford” because they are interested in educating their child but I think we can do better. As a liberal I am interest in education all children; my feelings have something to do with treating all children equally. Someday as a rich society, I hope we mature to the point where college education will be free and merit based. I saw what turned out to be a great boast the GI bill had in lifting society was after Second World War and the Korean War. Suddenly, legions of students had money to pay tuition; those were halcyon years for college admission officers. Think of what that legislation would do for our country if that legislation had included everyone, not just ex GI’s.

Now, we can reduce the problems to the availability of qualified student with enough money to pay the tuition. The invisible hand of Adam Smith has been laid on education; which is what is wrong with education for profit. It is my strong opinion that free enterprise has no place in education. The author of the cited article mentioned a reference that suggested but not forcefully, “open enrollment is hurting community colleges and their students”.  Of course, open enrollment is the back door way of addressing the subject of tuition free or very affordable situations in public institutions.  As a retired college professor, I endorse the concept of community colleges with open enrollment. This takes the burden of evaluating SAT, ACT results off admission officers, and puts it on the backs of professors, who should be trained professional. The thing that is wrong with “open enrollment” is that professors do not do a good job of weeding out the non qualified to move on to the next level, or as the saying goes they are not tough enough; altruism is a inborn quality of teachers. A freshman class is not the placed for being a nice person. The result is grade and degree inflation, which is what eventually hurts students and society. Of course, both private and public colleges avoid this difficulty up front by not admitting students they judge will fail. Unfortunately, once admitted they are likely to graduate, which relates to the reason community colleges with open enrollments fail to weed out poor students.

To the credit of professional enrollment staff, simply having enough money to pay tuition does not guarantee admission, hence graduation. Although, the logic is a bit forced, I graduated from a profession school in which for course after course for four years of professional school, not one student in my class failed. It had been that way with many classes for many years. Obviously, they all had enough money to pay their tuition, or they would not have been there. In addition, they all had passed the rigors of pre-professional college. Someone was doing something right. If this is true of private college with high graduate rates, would this mean that admission officers have infallible judgments or are the students there to pay tuition? Stated another way, every student with enough money to pay tuition graduates or is this indicating free enterprise; has hit: college degrees for sale. Careful analysis of graduation rates related to tuition rates could tell but suitable data is not available or ever will be; The author of this article repost that 9 in 10 admissions directors believe that other colleges submit false reports.

Colleges that practice faulty admission policies create real dangers for ordered society. All admission officers know they could fill their classes to overflowing by not looking just for “students who can afford it, and throw academic qualifications to the wind. We know there is some of that going on all the time in the most prestigious institutions. Of course, the easy way to fill classes, especially in professional school, is to lower tuition and allow every student to graduate with a degree, which soon ruins the prestige of their degrees and that college, just like charging more than the market will bear will ruin their prestige; in either case, the eventual result is empty classrooms. This is the “dance” admission officers and college administrators face everyday. This is why the professions have the requirements that say degree in medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, and law are not enough; holders of those degrees have to pass board certification or in the case of the law, bar examinations.

Many practices fall outside of the main streams that are important sidebars to education. Prospective students use many devices and tricks to gain entrance to the best of colleges. The most common I am aware of is the rich foreign family sending their children to the U.S. with hands full of money to compete with low income students from this country. Some are qualified academically but others not. In some college’s, foreign nationals fill entire classes especially graduate programs, especially in the most expensive colleges. For example, pathway programs for foreign students designed to teach English are often associated with collage admission upon success completion. In addition to private money, undergraduate degrees paid for by foreign government for country development programs sometime award money to children of prestigious families but they are marginal students. The idea is that the student will return to his or her home country but that student ends up in the graduate program in the same U.S. university and eventually U.S. citizenship; thus out of the reach of that government.  

We all know that any time money is involved nefarious activities are not far behind. The proof is “gapping” a term I had not heard of before reading this article. Gapping, if I understand the  term, is the practice of admitting students to the best schools, thus enticing prospective students to borrow more money than they can really afford. It is reminiscent of the mortgage crisis; unscrupulous lenders allowed people to move into houses they could not afford. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has been a champion of guarding students against unscrupulous lenders of all kinds. President Obama has been trying to work with an unwilling congress to cut excessive student loan rates and institute regulations controlling student loans, hence student debt. Financial institution lobbyists are the most powerful on Capital Hill.   

Over sixty colleges and universities have endowment of over one billion dollars; ironically, those university and colleges have the highest tuition rates; in a chilling way, this makes sense. The author of the above-cited article points out that a recent report “blasted colleges for devoting large shares of their aid budgets to non-need-based scholarships”; I wonder if the billion dollar colleges were the ones being talk about?   

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WHY UNIVERSITY RESEARCH?

The University of Minnesota Alumni news featured research in one of its articles. This is not new; in fact, it is expected. I resigned from the University of Minnesota as a full University over 31 years ago; I did not even have a job to go to, I just quite in disgust of what was happening then and has continued to happen ever since. Obviously, from that history it should be clear that I am now an old man, much too old to cry, but I do as I watch my university continue to deteriorate with a clamor of accolades for its research prowess. The uproar of success has drowned out the truth as the “band played on” as the Titanic glides under the waves. I have never been able to make the simple point; the major purpose of a university, no matter wherever you find it, is to educate students. Our government, shepherded by corporate greed, has drastically cut taxes on corporations, consequently forcing cuts in government university support. We see universities getting bigger and more expensive, hiring more research scientists and technicians, building buildings, expanding campuses while we see expanding research efforts. The Centennial Campus in North Carolina is a prime example.

Read the Alumni news letter and watch the video clips; an unabashed cry for more research support. Desperate university administrators close their eyes to huge endowments (60 colleges with over one billion in endowments) and raise tuition to meet the rising costs and lowering of state support, concentrating the burden of support of higher education to student families, which quashes the American dream, equal opportunity for all. What father of four or six children can afford $50,000 tuition a year for four years of medical school? Check out activity of your current president at the U of M, a chemical engineer, and your will find great efforts to push entrepreneurial ship but not one word about education. He does not understand what tenure means because he demands candidates for tenure entrepreneurial ability at faculty tenure hearings. At the time, I wrote letters in opposition to his appointment, which didn’t even arise eyebrows; I couldn’t even get a letter to the editors published.

Few seem to remember the University of Minnesota president, at the helm with the ship first hit the iceberg; switched from putting teaching first to putting research first—ironically; it was Malcolm Moos, he was the man who wrote the most famous of all Eisenhower speeches warning of the military-industrial complex. Patentable research, the kind that can lead to the formation of new companies and make money for old companies, has come to dominate universities across the nation—it was made into federal law by the Bayh-Dole amendment. It is also the kind of research that causes professors to forget about teaching after all the dreams of a huge fortune beats the hell out of a professor’s salary.

     

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COMMON CORE AND GOVERNOR LEVEL POLITICS

After loudly proclaiming he supports education, like other Republican governors who make such claims, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has proved he does not; he has moved to drop Common Core. Obviously, he is playing to the radical right wing base in his state. When these things happen, observers should stop and ask why—in not a superficial way, but an in depth look. First, it should be obvious that it is the wrong thing to do for the children in his state therefore counter to his campaign rhetoric. It should be noted that since hurricane Katrina, Louisiana educations system ahs been on an upward roll in its ranking among the nations schools, which means the Common Core would not be a challenge to implement as it would be in some states. Therefore, there must be another reason for the Governors action that has nothing to do with the schools or even education.

It should not surprise anyone that he is up front in telling the people why he is doing it; he publically claims he does not want the federal government involved in education, which brings it back to states rights; a socially conservative position—a socially conservative things required for support of the Republican Party. The demand for states rights in the plantation south is unquestionable a racial thing, which could be awkward for a dark skinned man of Indian descent to play in a conservative state where xenophobia runs rampant in politics but he is skilled at doing it; after all, he is governor. When an observer tries to puts it all together it is clear; Jindal is scared of a primary Tea Party challenge. Republican party hate for teachers unions and collective bargaining is commonly used in the politics of anti public education; however, this is the first time I have seen a challenge to Common Core used to influence politics at the state governor level. The bottom line is simple. Playing with the future of our nations children for political advantage, no matter the excuse, is despicable no matter where you find it.  

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REPUBLICAN, JOE SCARBOROUGH, AND HIGHER EDUCATION

Republicans voted down legislation designed to help students go to college proving that the duplicity of the #Republican Party knows no end. This morning the usually sickening +Joe Scarborough (MSNBC) was especially disgusting. The subject of the discussion was Senate failure to pass the student loan refinance act, which would allow students, who are drowning in debt, to lower significantly their student loans debt. The vote, although a majority, was not enough to overcome a Republican filibuster. Scarborough, after proclaiming that he was upset that the bill failed to pass, offered his analysis.

This is the Republican Party line, hence his line; they constantly promote themselves by saying they support equal opportunity for all including public education, that is K-12 education. They do not. We in North Carolina know that; they cut the education budget drastically—elementary teachers are leaving our state in droves. However, it is not just North Carolina; Republicans around the nation are passing voucher programs and starting charter schools with the idea of replacing public schools with private schools poor families cannot afford. It is not just K-12 education but includes all state universities—read public universities as distinct from private colleges. Although they have essentially done it the same as they have done with public schools, it is a little more complicated because of research. Let me explain how they done it starting out with Joe’s political philosophy. 

Joe Scarborough started out by proclaiming how upset he was with the Senate for not passing the Elizabeth Warren bill to allow students to refinance their student loans. He is proud to be a “small” government conservative, which puts him in the cut taxes category, which is something everyone endorses, which he thinks makes him one of us; by the way the TEA party name is the acronym for taxed enough already. In other words, he started his discourse by endorsing Grover Norquist’s cutting taxes agenda to starve the government. He, along with most of us, is always proclaiming the government is too big, costly, and cumbersome. I have blogged before concerning the illogic reasoning involved, conflict really, before. The people—“we the people”—want the government to do many good things but “we” do not want to pay for them. Constitutional fundamentalists base their argument on this premise; the only thing the government should do is support and army—period. They, including Joe, literally “hate” public health care, environmental protection, public education, social services of any kind, and a long, long list of etceteras. That is socialism, or to Koch brothers, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio it is communism. This conflict is what Joe, along with his simplistic Republican friends, cannot understand.

I consider (most) Republican live in a simplistic yes or no, black and white world. They seem not to be capable of understanding that life is not like that; it is complex. You cannot have, for example, affordable health care in a free enterprise economy—everyone knows free market health care failed miserable yet Republicans hate the Affordable Health Care act. You cannot have a free enterprise economy without regulations yet they are always calling for deregulation; if you have three business people in a group, they will work in collusion to cheat their customers even if it deals with life’s essentials such as food or housing. Or, if you are a #John McCain, you cannot understand why we can not go around the world bombing everyone who does not agree with the Untied States and be called a man of peace. Finely, you cannot have equality and justice for all in education unless you have public education and you cannot have public education unless you are willing to pay for the children of poor families to go to schools and universities as good as those for rich families. This premise is what we built this country on. For example, this was not happening in even in public schools, which was the basis for introducing the controversial “common core curriculum”. That is elementary education but there is higher education as well. I have been writing and arguing about what is happening in universities for over 40 years (University-Industrial Complex: The Erosion of Undergraduate Higher Education; Amazon.com). Thus, the failure of the Elizabeth Warren legislation opened up an old wound for me.

Republicans with the help of Democrats have cut taxes to the bone. States’ support for universities has dried up because there is no tax money to support them; because state legislatures no longer have money to fund state universities, they force university professors to solicit grant money for patentable research to the benefit of industry. Republican even passed legislation (Bayh-Dole Act: 1980) to allow government money for secret industrial research project by allowing professors to patent results. Professors are greedy just as anyone else and they will lie, cheat, and steal for profit. If you  do not think this is a problem, ask yourself, why are there more professors and service personal hired by universities than there are students in those universities. Like three business people, professors, industrialist, and professors work in collusions and devote all their time to “for profit research” and not teaching.

More and more professors support themselves with grant money; 25%, 50%, and even 100%. The University of Minnesota is a prime example of such a corrupt university administration—can you imagine a university president demanding that teaching professors to gain tenure must demonstrate entrepreneurship; it is an abomination. Industrialist, that is Republicans, applauded long time Cornell University president Frank H. T. Rhodes who wrote “Creation of the Future: The Role of the American Universities” and said that industrials should have a say about which professors is hired and given tenure. Applaud; hell, he should have bee shot.

This brings us full circle: Republicans cut taxes so much that states cannot support universities and greedy industrialist add to the problem by diverting as many tax dollars as possible in to their own pockets by shutting down their research laboratories and having professors do research in universities. The only thing source left for starving universities is student tuition—university presidents raise tuition to the point where college is not affordable for anyone but the very rich: fifty and sixty thousand a year tuition.

Joe Scarborough tells us Republicans are doing everything they can to support education because they stand for equal opportunity and things constitutional. What do the American people do? They believe them. Pollsters tell us that “we” are going to vote in a Republican majority into the Senate to cut taxes because taxes are too high.

Somehow, all of this makes sense to the warped Republican mind. There is no way a working person’s family can afford a higher education putting an end of the American dream. The people thought they found a way of supporting students by making loans affordable. However, if students borrow money they have to pay interests that are higher then they can possible afford, which puts a stop to that solution. Did I mention that Elizabeth Warren’s legislation proposed to cut tax loopholes on industries to pay for the government loans, which is precisely why Republicans voted it down?  The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, the guy who directed the filibuster of the legislation, claimed it was a democratic trick to raise taxes. He was right! The American people want to live the American dream; while Republicans are doing everything, they can to destroy that dream. You are hurting yourself to help them do it; because you like guns, or think abortion is wrong, or are a raciest and believe some black guy is setting on his backsides collecting tax dollar, or some welfare queen receives food stamps, or some illegal alien is getting free healthcare. Maybe you have an evangelical preachers tell you the only way to live is under biblical law.  Maybe, you just hate Obama but really do not know why. Regardless, the consequences are that your children are not being educated.

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REASONS TO SUPPORT COMMON CORE

An interesting facet of “the option of school choice” came to mind during the Joe Scarborough (MSNBC) show this morning. The guests couched the subjected in the surprising idea that New York State has the “most segregated schools in the nation”. Joe himself jumped in to the conversation with the remark that school boards should always give parents a choice of where to send their children to school. Of course, he had to add that the South is where people falsely accused of being segregationists. Of course, he failed to add that it is the “plantation South” where civil rights movements have focused their attention and now, the fact that it is a northern state that label applies, should be celebrated as a victory for the integration efforts of the federal government. Nevertheless, the question I ask is what is the effect school choice has on those problems that remain for parents.

Parents have the responsibility to educate their children as best they can; some take this more serious than others but I believe that is a universal desire. If parents can send my child to the best school possible, they will pick well-funded schools. The propensity of people not to wanting to pay taxes means introduces some complex gyrations in tax laws but essentially that means the best schools are in areas where the richest people live; areas where the property has the highest values are areas where that taxes are the highest and schools are the best. This has resulted in a parade of students moving from low income areas to high-income areas. Although, the rich neighborhoods have taken many complex moves to prevent this, they have not been able to stop it to their satisfaction. Public schools suffer because they cut state level department of education budgets, then shift the burden to local school boards to pass school bonds, which parents are willing to vote for because the schools in the poorest areas, where they live, are deteriorating. The result is that they are resorting to other means of providing the “best possible schools” for their children at the same time, as they advocate cutting taxes on themselves. Anti-busing, school bonds, charter schools, voucher programs, and privatizing of educations are for examples of changers related to school choice. Still, the schools are funded.

It is mindboggling but when we throw it all up into the wind and look at what falls out, “we judge” our children are not adequately educated. Are we expecting too much of the education system? I do not think so because we are judging education based on comparisons of our children with those from other countries. When we compare our system to the extreme approaches to education of such diverse countries as South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Japan, and China, we see great differences but seem unwilling to adopt one system over another. If we reject the way, we educate children, as being wrong, perhaps it is what we are teaching them is what is wrong. That seems unlikely; fundamentals are fundamentals. When I think about all of this and recognize that parents’ choices in educating children cause huge problems but they still want their children educated. We may all agree we are educating children in the best way possible but agree that we do not want to change the approach. What we are teaching our children is correct, the only thing that seems left to challenge is the amount we are teaching them. If it is not about quality, or the way we are doing, but is isolated to the quantity.

Arne Duncan, United States Secretary of Education and a guest on the Morning Joe Program didn’t even mention it but Common Core, his program, hit the mark and is doing it in an acceptable way. Teachers around the nation should accept the fact that Common Core is the long sought for solution that transcends myriad problems and work as hard as possible to implement it. We the people, a way of saying the government of the United States, have the responsibility of providing support for our teachers to do it. Join me in giving them that support.

  

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RIGHT WING COMMON CORE TRAP

Those of us who are interested in education know there are people out there who want to destroy public education. I categorize them into two camps, (1) those who want to commercialize education, and (2) those who hate centralized government. The hate for federalization has been with us since the1776, those who wanted each state wanted to be a little country; it was the major issue in the constitutional convention in the State House in Philadelphia that lasted for four months. Fifty-five men labored over the question and eventually framed the “Constitution for the Republic”. We have been enjoying the fruits of their work for a long, long time. There has been issue after issue where groups of individuals have challenged that outcome for myriad reasons, some big some small ranging from slavery to grazing rights. Until recently, we have stuck to the principle that our strength as a nation relies on the idea of one-man [person] one vote; in a great judicial overreach, the Supreme Court has changed that. Money is now power.

The individual vote still counts collectively. If everyone voted to overturn the Supremes Court decision, we would be free of that curse on democracy. However, it would take an amendment to the Constitution and that is not very likely because our democracy is bases on one-man one vote and dollars are votes—Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy used the First Amendment to destroy the entire document.  What all of this has to do with education is that “big” money is being used to destroy segment after segment of the government and there is no better example of that then public education: the Department of Education. Rich donors are feeding millions of dollars into politics to “buy” candidates who support what big money wants and they want to make money off selling textbook, privative schools, testing of our children, abandoned buildings and then buying them dirt cheap and a long, long list of etcetera.

The objective of this posts it to express my concern about how they are using the misery of people to promote their greed. The money grabbers are quick to use everything they possibly can to further their cause. By cutting taxes the underfund public schools. Building maintainers are first to go (janitors, building repair; teachers can do it), then teachers are asked to work longer hours (they already work 60 hrs a week), class sizes are increased, student have to supply their own paper and pencils, and in some cases, that is toilet paper. The politicians they elect destroy teachers’ unions as we have seen Republican governor after Republican governor do: Wisconsin, New Jersey, Ohio, North Carolina, etc. They under pay teachers to the point where even teachers most devoted to education resign simply because they have to eat. Once that have made public schools miserable they introduce charter and private schools: nice buildings, and other amenities for a price.

What the voter appeal for all of this was, it shifted the tax burdened off the backs of people and business, those who did not have children, and put it on the backs of the parents. Of course, the poor families have no choice but to send their children to public schools. That is what the voucher program is all about; it puts tax money in the hands of politicians to give to private schools at the expense of public schools. Various religious organizations support the right of churches to run schools to indoctrinate children into their religion every Sunday to their captive audiences. There were many reasons to want private schools. The lack of qualified teachers for special education, huge class sizes, crowed public school districts, and leaky roofs for examples. The fracas over bussing was an example—especially in the South.

  

Now they have a new focus of attack, which is Common Core. The cry is get the federal government off my back! Just as the ranchers that support Clevin Bundy, they want local control! If students can add and subtract by the time they are seniors that is all they need, or it is OK to believe dinosaurs did not exist, or that the Civil war was a war of aggression, climate change does not matter, etc as long as it cuts taxes. This greedy element is trying to find teachers that do not want to give tests for fear of administrators using the tests to evaluate their teaching and not the evaluate what the students learned so they know what to teach. Teaching is a sweaty palm profession and all “good” teachers question if they are doing a good job with the idea of doing better next year—that is the nature of being a good teacher. These business types cash in on disgruntled teachers who resigned because of salaries by blaming Common Core; better yet blame the “Federal government overreach”. Citizens United is reaching into the classrooms—to hell with the children if some business can make a few bucks.

Don’t you get caught in the Common Core trap. You and all other teachers who have resigned, try not to fall into their trap. I can forgive you for resigning because I know you have to earn enough money to eat but educations is still important. Common Core is a big step in the right direction, don’t throw it away. As a postscript; Google “public educations as a communist plot”. It will give you an idea of how far they will go to label public education as the untimate evil.  

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COMMON CORE, TEACHERS COMPLAINTS, AND POLTICIANS

This morning on Steve Kornacki’s show, UP as aired on MSNBC, Rob Astorino made the most obvious attempt I have ever heard to distort the meaning and purpose of Common Core for political reasons. By echoing all the rhetoric used by the Tea Party to generated hate for Affordable Health Care, he is attempting to create hate for Common Core. Just to show how low-level his reasoning was, he explained that he could not solve the homework math problems his 5^th grade daughter brought home: if he could not solve the problems, he “sincerely believed”  his daughter should not be challenged with “such hard problems”. I wonder if she was studying history and leaned something, he didn’t know, she should not know it; talk about race to the bottom.

Common Core is an educational program, initiated and designed by the National Governor’s Association, to improve education. The educational system in this country is broken. Secretary of Education Ernie Duncan and President Obama endorse Common Core and promote it; therefore, it is just a case of another “Federal Government” overreach, it is socialism or communism, or just plain evil. This morning, Astorino was digging as deeply as he could to find something wrong with it. His talking points are shallow and pointless; they are those the Republican Party is now developing. By the way, he is candidate for Governor in New York.

All of this smacks of the recent health care debate; no one in the United States, even in the world, could understand why we had such poor distribution of health care. It was because we have a free enterprise system for everything; it was tired in health care and did not work. A congressional committee designed, publically debated, and passed into law legislation to take care of the problem. The result was an amalgamation of free enterprise insurance with a government mandate; that is government encouraged with monetary support for the poor. This morning, if the listeners substitute ‘education’ for ‘health care’, the Astorino political argument was an echo of the last four years. The message, conservatives hate Federal overreach in education and in Health care.

Of course, they have a plan of their own that is much better. I will guarantee you that no one will ever see that plan because it does not exist. It is not the plan they hate, it is the idea that Common Core, once again, proves we need a strong Federal Government in well-ordered modern society. Think of foreign relations, trust busting, Keynesian economics, and interstate commerce in general, and think of old age poverty, think of Federal Lands, think of health care, and now think of education. Contrast this with Rand Paul politics; people who want to live like hermits in downtown New York; these conservative views make no sense.

I belong to a discussion group on +Google education Revolution. For the most part the participants in the group are young enthusiastic teachers; the people who are most affected by the implementation of Common Core; of course, the students will eventually be the most affected by the program, but that will take time. There is unrest in this group that I find interesting. This morning I read the posts and found the following:

+Pauline Hawkins:

My resignation letter brought many like-minded people into my life. Ann Snuggs shared her story with me, and I asked her to share her story with my readers. http://paulinehawkins.com/2014/04/26/public-education-has-become-un-american/

Teacher Hawkins resigned because of wages; she could not live on what she was being paid. She included some criticism about Common Core in her letter, which was what attracted the attention as is made abundantly clear in the letter from Ann Snuggs. I was one of those who encouraged Pauline Hawkins to give wider distribution to her letter. Almost everything in that letter needs to be debated, but first it has to be understood.  

That is where politico Rob Astorino reinters picture. He attacked testing “mandated’ by the program; teachers Hawkins and Snuggs did as well. Of course, the teachers comments were much more significant but his characterization was more blunt; hence, revealing of their misunderstanding. He said, “Common Core requires teachers to teach tests”; it does not. It requires testing, which is a world of difference.

It is common debate strategy to misstate the premise being debated and then attack the misstatement. What testing is and every teacher knows this, is to evaluate how well the students mastered what a teacher taught. Every teacher knows that every student is different and that the teacher and educational administrator have to consider that in evaluating test scores. Teachers also know that every class has a personality, collective history, and standard of conduct. They cannot expect that a class (collectively) that has not been exposed to the Common Core will perform as well as if they have had that experience. What every teacher also knows is that testing reveals how good he or she is at their jobs.

What a teacher fears is that the educational administrator will not appreciate the difficulties inherent in teaching. Therefore, they distort the purpose of testing: they teach so the average score will be high, meaning the administrator will think they did a good job of teaching; the individual student is lost in the smog of teacher self-aggrandizement—self-preservation. Every case of fraudulent testing I have ever heard of has that objective as the motive. In addition, it is the reason every teacher has distorted the word ‘tenure’ to mean job protection or seniority and not mean to protect their right to teach controversial subjects, if they chose.

A person who has accumulated a high college debt; who is willing to teach at a low salary and suffer the consequences of that low income; more than likely are devoted to their profession and are good teachers; that does not mean that all teachers are good nor does it mean that all educational administrators are fair and honest. What it does mean is that teachers are people; exceptional people, but still people. Worst of all, certain politicians are saying to hell with the children, what is important is that everyone hate the intrusive Federal Government—Oh, of course, hate #Obama. They are not above misusing teachers’ sincere complaints made with the intention of making things better for students to destroy common core; remember all the complaints about Obamacare before the Federal Government instituted it and the people found out that it is a great program. 

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HATE COMMON CORE LIKE YOU HATE OBAMACARE

More and more the same theme is cropping up in right-wing rhetoric even when it is embarrassingly wrong. That theme I goes beyond, “If the government is involved it is bad” and has now reached the emotional, fevered, and angry pitch, “If the government is involved it is something to be hated”. The Obamacare battle is over and now they are replacing it with the Common Core issue. Obviously, this is wrong for a number of reasons. The principle one is that when the hates is so intense it blocks out even reasonable consideration.

For example, it is the same thing with President Obama personally; no matter what he does or says, it is bad. The people who believe this way free him of the fear of criticism. He already is in the most powerful position in the world; however, if no matter what he say or does not matter; he will not be restrained for fear of being criticized. What control his critics might have  had has been lost. He and the American people know that Obamacare is good and is working. We all know social security is good and working. We know the same about Medicare and welfare programs. Go ahead and “hate” these programs all you want, but do not admit they are good.

Obama’s hate-crazed critics are creating pervasive anomalies of reason; the person who says “I hate government programs” are screaming that politicians had better keep their hands off “my” social security, or “my” Medicare or, “my” unemployment insurance, etc. The one I like the most is,” I hate Obamacare but keep you hands off my Kynect: Kentucky's Healthcare health care”. The point is, their hate is divorced from issues; it a freestanding “thing” or “issue” like puppet they can manipulate; thus, lives on by itself.

Recently, the State of North Carolina is taking up the issue of Common Core. As the
Charlotte Observer said:

A state legislative commission proposed Thursday that North Carolina drop Common Core and replace it with a new set of learning standards for public schools. Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2014/04/24/4863727/nc-committee-recommends-replacing.html#.U1vLEIFdUrA#storylink=cpy

Where have you heard that song and dance before? Common Core is a well thought-out program intended to assist K-12 education. Unlike Obamacare, that had tremendous insurance company pressure to distort the purpose from health care to profit, Common Core hit the mark exactly; it does what it is supposed to do. However, in the eyes of some in North Carolina, it is the Federal Government taking over education. It is a power mad Obama pushing to take over local issues. I have news for them; if the State adopts it, it will be the Federal Government replacing a hodgepodge of inferior educational state programs based on everything from Sunday school, climate change deniers, and creationists and replacing them with reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The State Legislator in question, a product of the existing North Carolina educational system, wants to drop Common Core and replace it with “a new set of learning standards for public schools”. You do know this North Carolina legislature is responsible for passing a law to prevent courts from following Sharia Law, a law to create a state religion, and many laws aimed at suppressing voters’ rights. We heard the drop and replace argument with Obamacare; therefore, we also know that a “new set of learning standards” does not exist. Apparently, their hope is that the people of the state will be blinded by the hate they are working so hard generate against the Federal Government will turn us into a “Posse Comitatus”, a group of men (no women allowed) armed with guns bigger than they are, ready to die rather than let the evil Federal Government rule their lives. Didn’t we just go through this idiocy with Rancher Bundy, the deadbeat who was caught stealing the use of federal lands? Will it never end?

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NEED FOR MORE RESEARCH FUNDING

Research funding, rather the lack of research funding, was the subject of this morning’s round table discussion on #Morning Joe (MSNBC). The invited guests point out that it was causing a brain drain; researchers were going overseas where they could obtain money to peruse their research ideas. It was an interesting discussion but was so narrowly focused (medical research) and superficial as to be almost nonsense. It was also interesting and surprising that Joe Scarborough was there but did not blame social spending—attack blame Obama—for the lack of research funding.

The actual situation is very complex and with the shift in our government from democracy to an oligarchy, it is getting more complex every day. It is a problem that the bigger it gets, the more insolvable it becomes. Start with the fundamental problem, which is that people do not want to pay taxes. Sometimes I get tired of going back to the same old theme in my blogs but innate human greed it is at the heart of our being. We hear it every day in political rhetoric; I earned it, I want to keep it; it is my money the evil government is spending; and most famously, read my lips, no more taxes. Now, we have to face the results of our greed and it is not simple that there is no government money for medical research; it goes much deeper that that.

Few people seem to realize that universities are the principle place where scientists do research. There has been a great shift from company owned research laboratories and facilities into educational facilities. This move has multiple parts. The teachers of students, the professors, are doing the research and not their students after they graduate; the universities have become the employer of their graduates and not the industries. This slowly shifted the costs of research, especially the salary responsibility, from industry to the governmental unit funding the universities, which are the people in the states and federal governments. Of course, this was the economic stimulus for industries to shift research from their laboratories into publically funded institutions; taxpayers were paying for the research from which they profited. In response, the elected representatives and universities administrators recognized the problem; therefore, they evolved a complicated system of research grants, which provided for the granting agency to pay some of the costs with money intended for research, put into the Universities general fund spent at the discretion of the university administrators—attractive to the politically ambitious among them

With the shift of research projects into public institution came the problem of ownership of research results. When research is done in private laboratories, the ownership is obvious but in a public institution, there is a question. The Bayh-Dole amendment solved that problem with government sponsored research grants; the research scientists and his or her institution owns the results. University administrators solved the problem with patentable research funded by industrial grants in essentially the same way. If a university scientist can patent his research results, he can become very rich doing marketable research. This shifted research from basic science, which college professors should do with government money, to for profit industrial research. Suddenly, professors were no longer interested in teaching but were interested in writing research grants and not teaching students and university administrators were interested in attracting the money paid by grants to general funds. Of course, with this in mind administrators hired researchers and not teachers and started to hire more researchers and to build new buildings to house the research—this all cost money, lots of money.  

We do not elect people who will raise our taxes. The legislative body decides how much money to raise (taxes) and where to spend it (to get votes). As the amounts of money paid to taxes decreased and costs went up, universities were underfunded. University administrators struggled to make up the difference; they raised tuition, increased class size, hired cheap teaching assistants, and shifted teaching responsibilities to lower ranked academicians. As this sequence spiraled out of control and tuition became outlandish, administrators raise the overhead costs for research grants; especially on federally funded grants (taxes again).

Because of our greed, we have forced university administrators to dig a hole so deep they cannot get out. The most ambitious among them have increased the size of their institutions and disregarded teaching responsibilities. The Federal Government Department of Commerce has seminars for college administrators to teach them how to co-opt their institutions with industries. Consequently, they do some terribly detrimental things for educations. State funding for universities is sometimes only at 20 to 25% of their budget where it had been approaching 100% of their budgets. Tuitions are commonly reaching $50,000 a year; thus, are prohibitive for all but the very rich, which reinforces the oligarchy; thus, digs the hole deeper and deeper. U.S. graduates are not able to find jobs because we are poorly training when compared to foreign-trained graduates. Research in the United States Universities is becoming so expensive that it too, is moving overseas, which was the only part of the problem Morning Joe and his guests, who are champions of small government and lower taxes—which makes them popular with the people!  

Our nation’s debt is out of control. The answer is simple; collect more taxes from the people who can afford it. Shifting the tax burden from the haves to the “have nots”, as they did in North Carolina is not the answer. Our rich are getting richer and our poor are getting poorer as the widening income gap proves and everyone of us knows is the case. The fact that our citizens cannot afford to attend our universities and when they do, they cannot find jobs when they graduate, is only one symptom of something much, much, deeper, our own greed!  After all, we are the ones who vote.    

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ON MAKING CAREER AND COLLEGE CHOICES

In the recent past, grand children asked my advice about choosing a college and a career. My advice to all of them is that they should let a career chose them, meaning that should let their own propensities guide them. By giving experience a chance, they will end up in a career that fits their talents and personality. One of those choices should be that college is not for them. Obviously, most people have their choices somewhat limited by innate mental and physical abilities and associated drive and determination, likes, and dislikes—you cannot be a football quarterback if you are not an athlete nor can you ever be rich if you choose a career as a classroom teacher.

Start with generalities such as a desire to be a teacher, or take advantage of art or music talent, or the enjoyment of working with animals. Academic talents including mathematics, writing, politics and extend to technical skill, electronics, mechanics, construction, etc and then go on to such specifics as business verses biology verses physical sciences verses arts, etc. This all sounds complex but it is not. By the time they are asking for advice, they have answered most of these questions by introspection—and should be pointed out—that is what adolescence is all about.

If college is an option, student should focus on specific careers by judging their likes and dislikes based on experience in life as well as their success in courses they take. This should start with selection of courses the like. Why, for example, would a student interested in biology register for a course on graphic design. Obviously, if you registered in a calculus course but failed or did not enjoy it, then theoretical physics is probably not your best career choice. Starting with entry-level courses, by the time students are seniors, for or five years later, they will finalize their career choice by job opportunities. It usually does not work to choose a career before the college experience. So much for career choice; now, thought about making a college choice.

After a life long career as a professor in a professional school, a difficult truth for me to accept is our current government has allowed business interests to corrupt of our state universities. As a liberal, I believe that college level educational opportunities should be available for everyone according to talent, drive, and determination and not just those who can afford it. Therefore, the utopian interpretation of this is that anyone who desires to go to college should be able to register in what every they choose. Reference here is to the career choice matrix as presented in the first three paragraphs. Tax supported public universities with open doors for everyone but close the doors on those who lack the talent and drive to succeed, an educational system of “natural selections” based on trial and error. This smacks of social Darwinism, but so what as long as there is equal opportunity.

The fear that the freshman class would be huge would be realized but by far, most people do not want to go to college. Most young people know when they do not have the desire, talent, or drive for these type of careers. Second, the “trail by fire” will eliminate many who have made a mistake in assessing their own ability or cannot fulfill a parents dream. By adhering to rigorous standards, the size of the class would drastically diminish with only the most talented being able to complete the curriculum even extend it into the master degree level and finally the PhD level—no grade or degree inflation.

What has gone wrong with this dream and how has our state universities been corrupted is the objective of this post. There is a thing called human greed. It is something we all have; we do not want to pay taxes. In addition, we have a strong dislike of cheating. We would not want someone going to college on my tax dollars just so he or she did not have to go to work. The third and most complex and difficult thing to understand is the impact industrialization of our university system has had on higher education.

We do not want to pay taxes. Politicians we elect grant tax money to all level of education including state universities. We have had a never ending series of confrontations over taxes since government were formed. The “cut taxes mantra” has bankrupted our government. Therefore, the amount of money available for state legislature to support universities has fallen dramatically; “you” have bankrupted the institutions of learning. The universities, in compensation for loss of tax support, have raised tuition making higher education a rich family’s game. A yearly tuition of $60,000 over five years in a public” university is untenable and the cost of seven to ten years for professional degrees is ridiculous. The student loan situation make is worse: the government guaranteed student loans so lending institution can charge less, but “banker greed” steps in and the interest rates do not fall, in fact, they increase. A $300,000 to $600,000 debt with a 6% interest on graduation discourages parents and students like.

Corporations corrupted institutions of higher learning and changed them into research institutes. There is a great need for non-patentable or “basic science research” results in universities; however, professors seek research grant that pay overhead costs, including part if not all of the so-called “professor’s” salaries and not for scholarly merit. These grants are the ones that yield profit to the researcher. Consequently, university administrators hire “research scientists” as professors and not “teaching” professors to supplement their budgets because of the lack of tax support of higher educations. This becomes complex when we realize that all professors apply for and receive government research grants to pay part of their own salaries, the state taxpayers pay for the buildings, and the remaining overhead costs, which is huge, but industry can patent the research results for their own benefit. Taxpayers are deceived into thinking they benefit from all of this when industries benefit from tax dollars. Their money is going into the pockets of industries and not into educating our children.

Even though I strongly believe in public education, it is sad to have to recommend that aspiring college students choose to go to private colleges where their tuition, which is still high, goes to hire “teaching professors” and not researchers. The situation is different in K-12 education because there is a politically backed but greed motivated intentional move to destroy public education by the voucher program. I fully support the K-12 public schools in all but rare circumstances. It will take a serious political move to separate out the research institute from state universities and allow the universities to go back to doing what they were intended to do—educate students and push back the frontiers of science. Until that happens, young students should consider going to carefully selected small private colleges; they are not all good, there are some real loser out there.  A law school that teaches biblical law or a biology course based on creationism is not “good”.  

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PRIVATE SCHOOL NIGHTMARE FOR DEMOCRACY

Private schools are a self-fulfilling nightmare. While engaged in a brief discussion over private schools on Google +EducationRevolution, I realized they are self-perpetuating even though “for profit schools” are pernicious monster gobbling up public schools with the blessing of parents. In an unrelated comment, another contributor asked if there were any examples of income disparity playing out in education. I would like to point out that the heart of privatization of education is income disparity; widening the gap between the rich and poor.

The original contributor to the discussion was advocating the use of a certain program to introduce quantum physics to kids.  My response was that in my state (North Carolina) we would love to have the luxury of dong that but are fighting to keep teachers in public school. Among other things, our state government gutted public education by cutting 5000 teachers 4,580teacher assistants, cut public school budget by $500 million, and gave $10 million taxpayer dollars to voucher programs to support private schools. In response to all of this, a friend of mine responded that if they destroy education they would destroy democracy.  I support the fellow who suggested that teachers introduce quantum physics into kids the curriculum. He will want the best for his children and will send them wherever he has to send them to achieve that goal. He will support politicians who will provide his child the best education.  If politicians destroy public schools to make private schools better, he will send his children to private school. So would I and every other parent concerned about the education of his or her children.  I want his child to have the best education possible. The problem is, he wants his child to have the best education possible but never gave a moments thought to the education of my children.

Let me redefine the words ‘altruism’ and ‘greed’ in political terms. Republicans want to destroy the U.S. Department of Education. Republicans do not want the minimum standards imposed on them. Republicans control the state Government in North Carolina. Republicans want to privatize education to cut taxes but use taxpayers dollars to education their own children but do not want to pay taxes to education other peoples’ children. They want the right to close the school doors to anyone they chose to close the door to; some of us call this for what it is, re-segregation. They want to overturn the Constitution by turning the publically funded schools into church basements. Above all else, they want an easy way to put their hands into the great pot of gold at the end of the taxpayers’ rainbow; they will aim at putting charter schools in poverty areas if they can make money—lots of it. The sad fact is that private schools add 20% on the cost of education.

The move to destroy public schools has been proceeding at lighting rates. Ask yourself, do you want to send your child to public school? Why not? For those who have the money, why are you willing to pay 20% more to education your own children? Your response makes my point; Republicans are winning and parents, the people who will be hurt the most, are helping them.   

When I review the situation, the only conclusion possible is that the objective of private schools, which is the same as the Republican objective,  is to increase the gap between the rich and the poor—Reaganomics. My friend who wants quantum physics introduced to kids should stop and think about schools with leaky roof and teachers asking kids to bring coats to wear in class and carry their own toilet paper to school. The best way to insure that the Republican mantra is true that there always will be poor people is to make sure “their children” are not educated.  

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USING TITLE IV HEA TO FORCE COLLEGE EDUCATIONAL REFORM

I wrote the following as a response to the call by the U.S. Department of Education for new ideas and innovations in higher education to combat rising college costs, of course, I did not submit it. It should be obvious to the Secretary of Education that our higher education system in the United States is severely broken. There is no system change in the Title IV HEA program that will allow lending institutions to make more money off students and their parents than they will do now—the economic institutions through lobbying have maximized profits for themselves at the expense of education. What truly should be done is to raise taxes, but increasing taxes is impossible with the current political situation. Changing Title IV will not have any real positive effect. The changes needed are more fundamental than that. The only alternative is to change the nature of institution by loaning money only to students that are attending good programs, which opens up the question, what is a “good program”.

The lending institutions have the working poor as their target population; the economic elite do not borrow tuition money. The government, in the social-capitalist democracy we fashioned for ourselves in 1776, exists to insure fair and equitable distribution of the wealth in the form of salaries, taxes, and in this specific case, college tuition to insure educations of all who want it receive it. It should be obvious to all that federal and state subsidies to educational institutions have decreased in all states, not just in K – 12 but also K through PHD. The decline is directly related to a shift in the tax burden from corporations to the working class. The decrease in government subsidies to educational institutions is dramatic, as demonstrated by the percentage drops of over 50%, a figure leaned from the limited information available on line. This change has forced universities and colleges to do several things, none of them for the good of education; first, force professors to apply for federal and private research grants that will support their own salaries; second, to dramatically raise tuition to meet expenses; and third, force administrators to cut institutional expenses.

As a caveat, many of my remarks focus on material and medical sciences. When I write about cuts in subsides for a university, it applies to all of the departments in that a university. There are some great biology departments, social science departments, etc and even some surviving engineering departments, but the take away is that they all could do a better job of educations students and for a lot less money.    

The decrease in subsidies is due to a decrease in government tax income. The shift in the tax burden has been from the economic elite to the working class, the very people who need but cannot afford to send their children to be educated. The moneylenders have responded with Title IV remedies, some of which are hideous in nature, which is why there is the call for innovative ideas. The Obama administration, much to its credit, has recognized this and is trying to correct it. The moneylenders, being in the lobbying position they are in, will insure that changes in student loan programs will fail to change anything, except to increase their profits. These people charge market rates even when government guarantees remove the risk and they are the ones who changed the bankruptcy protection laws to exempt student loan debt.

The decrease in federal and state subsidies has forced university administrators to ask their professors to seek outside salary support in the form of grants. Industrialist, including universities, openly corrupted government research grants with the 1980 Bayh-Dole amendment, which allows private ownership of federally funded research results. This amendment was an echo of the urgencies that grew out of past wars that first opened the doors of educational institutions to government money for military needs then kept the doors open to industrialists with hands full of cash. CEO’s learned how to profitable use taxpayers subsidized state institutions to do their profit oriented industrial research. In essence, this slow evolution turned emphasis away from education and educational oriented basic research to patentable research. In addition, this decrease and misuse of tax subsidies forced professors to seek salary support from the government or a private entity, which not only shifted institutional loyalties but shifted work objectives from teaching to research. Yes, university professors should do research but not for economic gain. Retire Cornell President F. H. T. Rhodes in his book Creation of the Future, which is probably the worst book about education that I have ever read. This ex-college presidents advocates allowing industrialist to have a say in who is hired and who is fired as a professor. The University of Minnesota has a non-educator president, a chemical engineer, who thinks he has done a great thing by making a young professor’s contributions to “entrepreneur adventures” part of the professorial tenure question for faculty.

There are more professors and staff in some major universities that there are students. The class sizes are expanding at a rapid rate while the people who teach these classes are lower and lower in professorial rank. University administrators hire professors to do research and not to teach; if you hire researcher you get researchers; if you hire teachers, you get teachers. As undergraduate education deteriorates, graduates students are becoming cheap labor. We have grade inflation and degree inflations. We have a shift from professional to technician training. Postgraduate education has deteriorated to an apprenticeship program. In an era when basic science knowledge is expanding exponentially, medical and veterinary medical schools are expanding clinical exposure and cutting basic science exposure.

Universities become bigger, building more and more research laboratories and buildings, and hiring new professors to do the industrial research, not teaching. The cost of higher “education” skyrocketed but the “dirty little secret” was that cost escalation for state institutions was not for education. The educational cost usually paid for by state subsidies is now paid by tuition; tax supported subsidy money went to support research. Students will not go to college because it is too expensive and if they do go, they graduate with such tremendous debt that they cannot recover. Fifty thousand dollars year tuition for medical school, for example, is ridiculous. What is happening is that the foreign economic elite join U.S. economic elite in our higher educational institution. They are the only ones who can afford the costs. As the second alternative, our U.S. industries are hiring students educated in foreign countries and come to the U.S. to fill jobs not filled by American students.

If the state is not willing to support an institution with tax subsidies, the federal government should not support students who attend that institution. Chase the “money changers” out of the “temple of learning” by repealing the Bayh-Dole amendment. If the state wants to support a research institute fine; if the federal government wants to support a research institute fine,  but the federal government should not loan money to students to go to “college” in a research institute were education is clearly deteriorating. Allow Title IV student loans only where the administration of the university is distinctly different from that of a research institute. Only allow loans for students who are taught by assistant, associate, and full professor hired as teachers and are taught in small classes. Use the title for assistant associate and full scientists for researchers or medical scientist as I was when working for the Atomic Energy Commission; it didn’t hurt my ego a bit.. To allow students to put themselves in deep debt to earn a worthless degree is amoral; allowing them to be uneducated.

If you are one of those people who think our higher educational institutions measure up, then these suggest would change nothing, but I bet if these suggestions were followed, they would empty the halls of many department in many institutions. The only think I feel bad about these proposals is that I am suggesting that the government use students to do what university administrators should do. In my own defense, I say the students motivated by a desire to be educated apparently are the only adults in the room filled by people with profit motives. 

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