Links for 2/23/11

Kevin Carey

the 180 or so regional public universities that were founded, often in the 19th century, as “normal schools” to train teachers. Over time, they’ve all followed the same pattern, first becoming “Teachers Colleges,” then dropping the “Teachers,” then trading the “College” for “University.” Now they have, or are trying to get, all the trappings of a research university: multiple colleges and academic departments, stadiums named after corporate sponsors, $20 million gymnasiums–sorry, “Integrated Wellness Centers”–and so forth.

The problem is that they’re not actually research universities. Most of them don’t train graduate students in significant number or conduct much funded research. So they’ve adopted the most expensive and student-indifferent organizational model available even though many of them are still responsible for what they were founded to do: training the state’s teachers. This makes them low-hanging fruit for future disruptive innovation…

Sandy Baum on fixing Higher Ed

2) Stop trying to make individual institutions be all things to all people…

3) Find ways to use technology to both improve the quality of teaching and reduce the cost of educating large numbers of students…

6) Collect better data so we can really understand what is happening…

7) Simplify pricing and student aid systems…

8) Loosen the anti-trust restrictions on colleges and universities so they can work together…

Thomas H. Benton

Students are adrift almost everywhere…

Here are some reasons:…

college professors routinely encounter students who have never written anything more than short answers on exams, who do not read much at all, who lack foundational skills in math and science, yet are completely convinced of their abilities and resist any criticism of their work… Such a combination makes some students nearly unteachable…

It has become difficult to give students honest feedback…

some majors have become an almost incoherent grab bag of marketable topics combined with required courses that have no uniform standards…

Scott Jaschik

The median base salary increase for senior administrators in 2010 was 1.4 percent, up from no increase at all in 2009…