Archive for April, 2012
The Shrinking Middle–A Review of From Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on April 19, 2012
The “crisis in Higher Education” has had so many studies written on it that its books alone could easily fill an entire library. Adding to this number is Richard DeMillo, a former Dean of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett Packard. In his 2011 book From Abelard to Apple, he makes a case that due to changes in both technology and educational cost those colleges and universities who reside “in the middle” of the Higher Education rankings should hasten to assess their current mission if they plan to survive.
Most of the schools in the middle addressed by DeMillo are state colleges and universities that flourished under the land grant act and the expansion of the pool of undergraduate students made possible by the G.I. Bill. Caught between the high prestige schools such as Harvard and M.I.T. and the for profit schools that have emerged in the latter half of the 20th century such as DeVry and the University of Phoenix, these schools in the middle are torn between “prestige envy” and a desire to be relevant to their prospective students.
DeMillo (as Jennifer Washburn before him in her book University Inc.) clearly illustrates that this push-pull between wanting to live up to the Germanic ideal of a University, a place where knowledge is studied and created for its own sake, and a desire to train students for specific careers has long dominated discussions of Higher Education. If nothing else, DeMillo’s book is useful for reminding us that the “end times” we feel that we face in 21st century Higher Ed are part of a much larger trajectory that is as much circular as it is a straight line. We are reliving many of the debates (DeMillo shows) that once dominated American discussions on the role of a college education in the early 20th century.
His book is non-linear in nature and provides a series of loosely interlocking vignettes that each provide a different piece of the puzzle necessary to prove his argument. It is not until the last chapter that DeMillo offers something of a blueprint for those leaders of colleges and universities in the middle who want to survive the coming extinction of the land grant institution.
The most pertinent suggestions he offers are to: Focus on what differentiates you from other institutions and establish your own brand. Then create a new balance between faculty interests and student interests using technology as well as locally created assessment tools to maintain it.
Although there isn’t much to argue with in DeMillo’s assessment of the problem, his solutions are problematic. Their heavy reliance upon the language of business enterprise makes me wonder if he believes there is any hope for the 19th model of the college and university imagined by Thomas Jefferson, Justin Morrill, and John Dewey. The ending of his book leaves one thinking that a “market correction” awaits in Higher Ed and that when the dust settles only the prestige institutions will be left with for profit online schools picking up most of the students once taught by the land grant school and community college.
From Abelard to Apple offers one more facet to our understanding of the problems in Higher Education that face the United States in the 21st century but it remains unable (as most of the books that preceded it) to offer a roadmap out of our current difficulties. This is not DeMillo’s fault but reflects a larger tendency in Higher Ed to overcomplicate the problem to hide its source. If everyone is to blame, than no one is to blame. We are all at fault and can therefore sit on our hands and feel bad for ourselves while sipping an over-priced latte.
Read DeMillo if you want to see another side of the problem but don’t bother if you want to find a way out.
Quality Over Quantity–Computer Assisted Grading Revisited
Posted by johnacaseyjr in Higher Ed on April 3, 2012
A Reuter’s report describes recent efforts to create computer software that could scan and grade common errors in student essays. Mark Shermis, Dean of the College of Education at the University of Akron, is supervising a contest created by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation that would award $100,000 to the programmer who creates an effective automated grading software.
Shermis argues that if teachers weren’t swamped by so many student papers in need of grading, they would assign more writing and student’s would greatly improve their written communication skills. He sees this new technology as an aide to the overworked writing teacher rather than a potential replacement.
Steve Graham, a Professor at Vanderbilt who has conducted research on essay grading techniques, argues, in contrast, that the replacement of writing teachers by grading software is not only “inevitable” but also desirable as “the reality is humans aren’t very good at doing this.”
As the writer of the Reuter’s article notes, talk about paper grading software is not new. It began in the 1960s. Now, however, technology has reached a level where such grading is not only possible but also probable. But the question still remains: Is it a good idea?
Leaving aside for a moment the question of faculty employment, machine grading sidesteps a more important question than how to get students to write more and grade that writing effectively. Namely–what is writing and who is responsible for teaching it.
In too many schools writing is viewed as the “problem” of the English department. Students are sent to writing classes to learn essay structure, research techniques, and grammar. Only the last of these is universal. The other two skill sets are discipline specific. I guess that explains why to my students everything they read is a novel and every paper a literary analysis. They’ve been taught after all that writing equals English.
If we really want students to learn not just writing but effective communication, parents, teachers, and administrators need to spread the responsibility for this instruction across the curriculum. Some schools already do this but most are content to leave communication training to literary scholars. Machines won’t change this. They will be programmed to evaluate whatever curriculum is currently in place. Until the curriculum is changed, the machine will not only replicate the error but multiply it.
Moving on to the issue of employment, part of my unease with a machine that grades papers is it would most likely put me out of a job. I have 48 student essays in need of grading that are staring at me right now as I pen this post. Of course, the curricular changes I suggest would more than likely have the same effect, with or without machine assistance. The way to counter this, however, is to lower class sizes.
This is the other aspect of the issue that is completely ignored by most research. If class sizes are lessened, not only will more teachers have employment but writing will become a less onerous task to teach and evaluate. It could also then be meaningfully integrated into the entire curriculum and not remain the purview of the English Department.
Would such changes cost a lot of money? Yes. But it is a good investment. Far better than the money we’ve wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan and the even larger sums of money we spend incarcerating drug offenders. It’s even better, dare I say, than the cost of a certain software currently being designed to solve all my problems.
John A Casey Jr 