Links for 2/17/10

Kevin Carey

the Binghamton University basketball scandal… wave of academic misconduct and criminality, including assault, thievery, and sale of crack cocaine. Now we learn that assistant coaches helped players plagiarize, … Failing grades were changed to passing, players dropped regular courses for “independent study,” and some were allowed to transfer in courses with titles like “Bowling I” and “Theories of Softball.”…

Why, for the most part, do universities get away with it? Binghamton just happened to get caught. Most universities are a little more discrete…

I think the answer lies with the nature of academic reputations. Binghamton, like nearly all well-regarded colleges and universities, owes its reputation to two–and only two–things… Terrific students + terrific faculty = terrific reputation…

The problem is that neither factor has anything to do with the university’s academic standards for teaching and the awarding of credit…

Keith Hampson interviews Chris Finlay.

Q. Innovation in education is everywhere. Yet, it seems that we are constantly reinventing the wheel: innovations are often not widely or quickly disseminated, and thus we don’t seem to learn as much from our successes and failures as is common in other sectors. How can an organization avoid this trap?

…there are people contributing valuable innovations locally but are often not collecting results or case studies in useful ways…

Q. Are there specific colleges whose efforts to innovate have caught your attention?
Arizona State University continues to impress me. They are combining student centered design and the power of hard data to define their New American University initiative. It is exciting to see a school that size taking such smart steps…

Grant Wilkins

Everyone knows we are past the point of taking budget cuts by giving back vacant positions, reducing expenditures for supplies and travel, shuffling budgets, or other administrative sleights of hand. No, that last round of cuts resulted in real people losing real jobs, in full view…

This wasn't what I signed on for: to destroy careers and make "least worst" decisions. I had a vision, dammit, to create a center of excellence and guide young faculty members so they could achieve their full potential…
At least I'm not a beneficiary and no one can detect a bulge in my belly whenever a nontenured faculty member disappears from the coffee room.

But that isn't true, I am benefiting. My position is secure, my salary is elevated, my access to privileged information guarantees my survival, and my cold-blooded efficiency puts me in a position to rise even higher in academic administration…

here is what I think the snake would say to the mice: "We find ourselves in a terrible situation not of our making and certainly not of our choice. I will do what must be done, not because I want to but because it is required, and I will do everything possible to minimize our collective loss while assuring our collective survival. Your sacrifice is necessary for the community to survive, and your sacrifice will be honored and respected even as I extinguish your existence. Please try to understand."

MARY PILON

When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.

It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.

"Maybe half of it was my fault because I didn't look at the fine print," Dr. Bisutti says. "But this is just outrageous now." …

There is an estimated $730 billion in outstanding federal and private student-loan debt, says Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org, a Web site that tracks financial-aid issues—and only 40% of that debt is actively being repaid…