Newmark's Door

"Stanford Computer Science is Broken"

A mostly funny rant but one that could apply to virtually all college majors at all colleges.

"Colleges Still Recruiting for High-Paying DEI Administrator Positions"

Example: a "Talent Diversity Champion" at UC San Diego, to work primarily from home, supposedly will pay $100 to $130 grand.

"‘Grade grubbing’ explodes as students beg for better grades, educators give in"

For me, probably the most unpleasant aspect of college teaching.

44 percent of the educators reported that they’ve had students demand a higher grade than they’ve earned “very often” or “somewhat often.” Another 24 percent said they get asked “every so often.”

"The Truth about College Costs"

Detailed article explaining something more people should know about: in the vast majority of U.S. colleges and universities few students have to pay the full list price for tuition.

By the way, to find out the net price for a U.S. college or university, type "[name of college] cost" into Google. Here's Colby College in Maine, acceptance rate of 9%: "Average [annual] cost before aid," $78,655; "Average cost after aid," $17,739. Wake Forest: $79,886 and $29,214. Univ. of Chicago, $84,126 and $22,690.

"What It Would Mean to Abolish the U.S. Department of Education"

Frederick Hess argues it's sheer illusion that we could get rid of it.

"Math disaster in college: Would-be STEM majors can't add 1/2 + 1/3"

A wee bit difficult to do college-level work in the sciences or engineering if you don't know how to add fractions.

See also "Students are entering college unable to write". (And for some, leaving college unable to write, too.)

 

"Jordan Peterson - The Best Way To Learn Critical Thinking"

A four-minute video that should be shown to every college student. (Probably high school, too, but I don't want to carried away.)

"The Thales Way: The Book That Can Save American Education"

Great, American story. Businessman has a problem:

In hiring young people for his large private business, Bob Luddy of Raleigh, North Carolina, ran head-long into the problem shared by other employers — namely, that many potential employees with a public-school education did not have the elemental skills required to hold jobs, some unable to understand basic logic or even to read.

So Mr. Luddy decidee to do something about it. He, like Eva Moskowitz in New York City and others, didn't complain, he just fixed our education system, one school at a time.

"The End of Progressive Elitism?"

Good article. It the first one I've read that points out admissions office folks in elite schools--consistent with my impressions of admissions people--like to play God:

Faced with a surge of applications as Millennials came of age, Feeney posits, “admissions people came to grasp that the selection power this competition had given them was also a deep and subtle sort of moral power … They could now tell their applicants which extracurriculars were better, and which sort of personal confessions were more pleasing in admissions essays, which sorts of person, as manifest in these essays and extracurriculars, they liked more.” By signaling these behavioral preferences to parents, teachers, counselors, and anxious young strivers highly susceptible to small gradations of status, admissions officers found that “they could now induce their applicants to become such people.”

 

A number of scholars and practitioners have called for using selective college admissions to “nudge” parents and students in several ways. In 2017, for example, Thomas Scott-Railton published a provocative article in the Yale Law & Policy Review urging elite colleges to give a substantial admissions bonus to applicants who had attended high-poverty K–12 schools even if they were not from low-income households themselves. “By rewarding applicants for attending socioeconomically integrated schools,” he argued, “colleges would mobilize the resources of private actors across the country towards integration.”

"The Biggest Myth In Education"

That would be the "learning styles" baloney. Another piece of (mostly) baloney: "Does a 'Growth Mindset' Really Help You Succeed?"

If you think of educational "research" as a search for the next fad, you won't usually be wrong.