The Public University

If There Was a Contest for Moronic Surveys, You'd Get the Prize

2006-03-03T14:41:00.000-05:00

In an effort to make Americans feel worse about themselves, the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum published a survey that claims that Americans know more about the animated show The Simpsons then they do about their First Amendment freedoms.

An article published by the Associated Press cites that the survey found that "The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22% of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms."

As I'm sure that this was a scholarly and scientifically responsible survey, the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum must have had a myriad of controls, sample groups, a complete and thorough methodology, and a correctly analogous comparison and hypothesis. Oh wait, I can't find the survey anywhere because it is a bullshit promotional tool for this stupid museum.

A word of advice to the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, who's fault is it that the First Amendment isn't funny, animated, or aired ad nauseam on Fox? Well, I'm sure that it is the fault of the American public. Hey, here's another question. Why this specific (and irrelevant) comparison. Hey assholes, I'm not going to come to your museum because you are portraying Americans as idiots for an advertising stunt based on specious reasoning. Go fuck yourself McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum! Look at me, I'm exercising my First Amendment rights.

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$900 for textbooks or $9 for a case of PBR? Hmmmm. . . let me think.

2006-02-06T18:01:00.000-05:00

Books cost so much for college-students now that many don't even consider it a dilemma. If it's a choice between harvesting kidneys to pay 2 bills for a systems analysis paperback or keeping your organs and guessing on a multiple-choice examination, some are reluctant to pay down for every piece-o-crap title listed on the syllabus. This is because the cost of books has swelled at twice the rate as has American inflation across the past 20 years. It's not quite oil, but it's not quite right either.

“Students have plenty of conspiracy theories for the rising prices: Greedy publishers who change the cover just to charge more. Self-absorbed professors who assign their own masterpieces or forget to list the books till it's too late to find a used copy. Overpriced stores.” (Kinzie)

Read the rest of this interesting article to find out that they're not really doing anything to change the problem.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/22/AR2006012201290.html

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Cheating at George Bush's Alma Mater? Get the Fuck Out of Town!!

2006-02-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

Most Yale students agree that cheating is just a means to an end. I suppose if I had to pay $40,000 a year to do anything, I'd do whatever it took to get my money's worth. This article, drawn from The Yale Herald, suggests that these kids ain't in it for the hot Ivy League ass. They's in it fo the grades, biatch!

“Three students approached their professor after they witnessed a student copying from their tests on multiple occasions. The professor said he didn't want to know the student's name; rather than investigate the situation or hand the case over to the Yale Executive Committee, the professor simply moved subsequent exams to a larger room without addressing the specific allegations of cheating. A senior in the class said that he wasn't offended that a peer was cheating and didn't care that his professor did not punish the student. "All people have the same motive," he said. "The people who cheat and the people who study all just want good grades. Cheating is just a more efficient way of doing it, and no one's against efficiency." (Thompson)

The rest of the article has some good suggestions on how to cheat in class. Check it out here or by clicking on the title link:

http://www.yaleherald.com/article-p.php?Article=4147

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Which of These Things Is Not Like the Other?

2006-01-31T17:11:00.000-05:00

This week in education news has yielded the "Teen Mental-Health Survey". This article, taken from the Ohio Dispatch on January 30, 2006, highlights a new survey which, as stated by test makers, "seeks to pinpoint who needs mental-health services". Students taking this survey will have the rare opportunitity to either make a desperate cry for help or further isolate themselves from peers and teaching staffs alike.

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Harvard: The Pot Calling the Kettle Black

2006-01-25T13:03:00.000-05:00

The NPR News website directed me to this Harvard study released on Jan 12 2006 which basically argues that recent findings have led these researchers to the conclusion that public school are more segrated today than they were 15 years ago. The Harvard study blames de facto segregation for the decline of racial diversity in our schools stating that:

The resegregation of blacks is greatest in the Southern and Border states and appears to be clearly related to the Supreme Court decisions in the l990s permitting return to segregated neighborhood schools. These changes, and the continuing strong relationship between segregation and many forms of educational inequality, compound the already existing disadvantage of historically excluded groups.

Check out this study, especially Harvard's solutions for improving integration in schools; also, keep in mind the source of this advice.

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Trouble on the Horizon for Clown Colleges???

2006-01-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

This Jan. 21, 2006 New York Times article reports that hard times are ahead for profit designed, "commercial" colleges which offer non-degree education programs to students who do not graduate from high school. As of January 20, 2006 The New York State Board of Regents imposed a moratorium on new commericial colleges within the state in an effort to better regulate and monitor these "non-degree" commercial colleges and the financial aid that the draw from the state. The Times writes that:

The flow of public money to such schools is one reason they are drawing scrutiny. A recurring question is whether some schools are enrolling students who have little hope of graduating simply to capture the financial aid. In New York, their students drew $136 million in state tuition assistance grants in 2003-4 - 17 percent of the those grants - even though they accounted for about 7 percent of the undergraduates.

Basically, the disparity of these numbers (17% of the financial aid for only 7% of the undergraduates) suggest that these non-degree progams are purposefully enrolling students that will, in all likelihood, fail to graduate in order to get more financial aid while spending less.

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College: America's Greatest Bargain

2006-01-23T22:10:00.000-05:00

While college tuition prices are on the rise; they take this course at slower pace than in the last two years. According to a Wall Street Journal article about tuition costs for the 2006 school year:

On average, public-college tuitions will increase 8% this year, estimates Travis Reindl, director of state policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. That is well below increases of 10.5% and 13% in the two previous academic years -- and the first time since then that increases would be in the single digits.

That saved money can and, in all likelihood, will be used to compensate for the rise in gas prices and textbooks for the average college student. Awesome.

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College Students tapped for Financial Aid to Cash-Strapped President Bush

2006-01-16T17:09:00.000-05:00

With all of the nation’s money invested in war and affluence-based tax cuts, it is only natural that the government would turn to America’s college students for a bail-out. Passed in the Senate last month, a bill which the House of Representatives will vote upon in two weeks will fall well short of addressing America’s destructively imbalanced budget. It will, however, make it much harder for aspiring students to choose between paying for school-books and affording food.

“Part of nearly $40 billion in budget cuts, the bill would slash $12.7 billion over five years from federal financial aid. That amounts to about 15 percent of the $83.3 billion total in federal aid for 2003-04.”

“Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, say students are bearing the brunt of the deficit reductions because the Bush administration and Republicans want to finance new tax cuts for the the rich. Instead, the Democrats say, the federal government should be doing more to lower the cost of college.” (Luhby)

Traveling Without Moving

2006-01-14T13:29:00.000-05:00

The internet moves instantaneously with the will of its consumers in that, because of the almost instant access to information, products, etc., one must only "wish and click" and the internet supplies the answer. However, for organizations that wholly rely on curriculums and set budgets such as education, the onslaught and instant availability of information makes for a massive filtering and sorting process that is extemely taxing in terms of labor, time, and finance. Today's link deals with the specific problems that public schools have adapting their "traditional" methods of teaching to the modern and instant availability of information that the internet provides in the 21st century. The following is the opening to the article, it makes many good observations about the problems that public schools are sure to face in the coming decades.

When former Yale University librarian Ruther-ford Rogers told a New York Times reporter in 1985, "We're drowning in information and starving for knowledge," he was referring to the incredible increase in the number of books published each year.A decade and a half later, his words are just as applicable to the explosion in technology and the information accessible through technology. The potent tools of technology and the Internet can be used to manage this explosion and the learning process. (Angulo, 2001) Blog sponsored by Paper911.com

With Saddam Behind Bars, Iraqis Enjoy Internet Proliferation: Democracy and Porn for All

2006-01-11T20:24:00.000-05:00

Heavily restricted during Saddam Hussein’s rule, the Internet is slowly edging its way into an Iraqi society already inundated with cell phones since America’s 2003 invasion. Though the service remains comparatively expensive when measured against the average Iraqi household income, patterns suggest that web access and use are steadily increasing in the gulf state’s homes and cafes. If America can’t light the way to democracy, maybe some open source education will help. And if not, at least it’ll be easier for Iraqi’s to download the hot new Ashley Simpson joint as a cell-phone ring.

“In 2003, there were only about 10,000 users in a country of 26 million people. Content was filtered and sites offering free e-mail were blocked, forcing people to use the government-monitored e-mail.

Today, the state company has 200,000 subscribers on dial-up, for which it has a monopoly. And it increasingly offers services to private Internet cafes, universities and other public buildings. New technologies are arriving rapidly, include DSL broadband and wireless broadband for government offices around the country.” (Sabah)

Land of the 'Free'

2006-01-10T14:14:00.000-05:00

The opening text from Project Gutenberg, perhaps the biggest and best known resource for free use of entire published books addresses and relates the idea of 'freedom' to the site's mission. It says:

The word free in the English language does not distinguish between free of charge and freedom.

Free of charge means that you don't have to pay for the book you received. Freedom denotes that you may do as you like with the book you received.

This distinction is immaterial if you just want to read a book privately, but it becomes of utmost importance if you want to work with the book:

you are a teacher and want to use the book in class,
you wrote a thesis about the book and want to distribute the book along with your thesis,
you have a literary web site and want to distribute the book to your audience,
or you are a writer and want to adapt the book for the stage.

If the book you got is just free of charge, you may do none of the above things. You may not even make a copy of the book and give it to your best friend. But if the book you got is free as in freedom you may do anything you like with that book. Clearly free as in freedom beats free of charge.

Fortunately almost all Project Gutenberg ebooks are free of charge and free as in freedom.

What can one say???? What a wonderful undertaking. The availability of free resources to the student, teacher, and researcher creates a myriad of limitless possibilities. Hats off to free sites such as this one, and even paid sites that provide custom research for the teacher or scholar such as www.paper911.com.

The Internet and Cheating: A Major Issue Currently Facing Our Schools

2006-01-05T03:10:00.000-05:00

Information accessibility on the Internet is leading to discrepancies in academic integrity. With cheating in high-schools and colleges on the rise, educators are concerned about the ways in which the web is being used as a tool for academic assistance.
The research considered in this article suggests "that Internet plagiarism is a growing concern on all campuses as students struggle to understand what constitutes acceptable use of the Internet and that studies of 18,000 students at 61 schools suggest that cheating is also a significant problem in high school.” (Ortega)