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Oh, I guess I should cross post this here. Newly minted PhD trying to teach a course, but ONE student makes her life hell:
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Archive version: https://archive.ph/fWvgy
and, also:
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The bottom line: The expanded eligibility moves Indiana to a near-universal voucher program, as itâs estimated that fewer than 5% of households make too much to qualify.
Nearly 100% of families in the state will be eligible, and based on last yearâs smaller pool of vouchers, nearly 100% of those vouchers will go to religious schools.
https://www.axios.com/local/indianapolis/2023/07/24/indiana-private-school-vouchers
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Itâs segregation schools all over againâŚ
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Lower test scores, lower GPA, the school isnât even accepted in any collegiate sports association yet, and yet the new âscholar-atheletesâ are getting the lionâs share of merit scholarships, because who wants a high-ranking liberal arts college when you can make sports the real focus instead?
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Turning schools into prisons.
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I think part of the problem is that all sorts of involved players and decision makers feel a panicked rush to âget on boardâ with AI.
Itâs happening, itâs right now, we gotta incorporate it, we gotta show that weâre incorporating it, gaaaah!
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looks at AI widget here
I blame the ongoing corporization of education, personally.
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Spotify playlists have had various levels of machine learning underpinning them for years.
One of the things that really launched the ML competition site Kaggle was Spotify offering a giant stack of cash for making a model that would be good at recommending another track to someone.
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Question of the day: Where are the kindergartners?
I didnât realize this was an ongoing issue. Itâs something thatâs apparently impacting my youngestâs school. Her kindergarten teacher, who had to be hired in mid-fall because the original teacher left, was let go over the summer due to lower enrollment.
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A follow-up to the shenanigans at New College in Florida:
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Gift Link:
I wish I could say this shocks me, but it really fucking doesnât. This is what you get when you have an entire cultural movement dedicated to tearing down anything that will help the public good, and instead try to make everything look like corporate America.
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My alma mater joins the enshittification. But, E. Gordan Gee was one of the board of directors of that University of Austin scam a few years back. Sadly, it does not surprise me that he would join in making WVU into an industrial trade school.
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Iâm going to agree with both you and @Mindysan33. And Iâm going to add that at the same time, we have tenured faculty who refuse to teach anything other than the same vanity courses using the same boring lecture material that theyâve had for 20 years. The âcurriculumâ in the major isnât âcurriculumâ itâs a collection of specialized courses that certain faculty like to teach, but provide no real coherence to the major.
You probably know that each state has rules for public institutions about how many majors you have to graduate each year in order to have a program, and itâs administered by a higher ed board. (SCHEV in Virginia, ACHE in Alabama). Itâs generally calculated on a 3-year rolling average. In my own state itâs 7.5 per year, on average, for undergraduate baccalaureate programs. It was the same in my last state as well.
If youâre below that for some number of years, you get a warning. It doesnât matter your subject, if you canât maintain the numbers, and if you donât come up with big reforms to the major that seem to revamp the program in a way to attract new majors, the state makes you âteach outâ the program and close down the major. You can still teach courses in the subject, you just donât have a degree program anymore. So tenured historians are generally safe, job-wise, because while the university might not have a history major, the university will always want to have history surveys in its Gen Ed programs. But people with degrees in Physics, Chinese, etc etc are generally not safe because without a major they generally donât fulfill a requirement. Sad, but thatâs the structure.
My own department major is under the gun. We have a horrible curriculum, loaded down with silly courses the âold guardâ love to teach. However, those classes rarely meet enrollment minimums, so while they get scheduled they also get canceled a week or two before the semester starts, with faculty reassigned to teach surveys. And when the administration shows up to say âthe state tells us that you have 3 years to turn it around, or weâll have to make plans to teach out the majorâ how do the Old Guard respond? âHow can we get the state to change its rules?â âMaybe the numbers arenât correct?â âMaybe we can ask for an exemption, because we have to have a history major?â and âHistory major numbers are down all over, so we should be excused.â
Meantime, the âYounger Guard,â along with full-time lecturers and adjuncts â people who will lose their jobs if the major goes away â have great ideas. âHey, we should focus our major on Civil Rights since, you know, weâre here in the heart of it!â âMaybe a focus on rural history, more Alabama history? My students ask for that a lot.â Which is met with âNo way! Students need to take my course on the Reformation, which I absolutely will not adjust to include the Renaissance because thatâs out of my periodâ and âBut my six different-topic courses on Ancient Rome, what about those?â
So, yes, I agree, this is the result of a national campaign against the Liberal Arts, and one which is dumbing us down considerably. But weâve got a lot of rot on the inside, and that rot sits on cushiony tenured jobs and have no incentive to make things better.
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Fancy new buildings, you say? While getting rid of various Humanities programs?
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