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Revamped UM Student Recruitment

kemajic said:
IdaGriz01 said:
Headline seems like an interesting premise (which I agree with, BTW, from personal experience). However, the article is behind a sign-up wall.
I got it fine without sign-up. I'm generally not a fan of Will, but he get's it on this.

Much of today’s intelligentsia cannot think

Opinion by George F. Will Columnist; June 26, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. MDT

A nation’s gravest problems are those it cannot discuss because it dare not state them. This nation’s principal problem, which makes other serious problems intractable, is that much of today’s intelligentsia is not intelligent.

One serious problem is that the political class is terrified of its constituents — their infantile refusal to will the means (revenue) for the ends (government benefits) they demand. Another serious problem is family disintegration — e.g., 40 percent of all births, and 69 percent of all African American births, to unmarried women. Families are the primary transmitters of social capital: the habits, dispositions and mores necessary for flourishing. Yet the subject of disorganized families has been entirely absent from current discussions — actually, less discussions than virtue-signaling ventings — about poverty, race and related matters.

Today’s most serious problem, which annihilates thoughtfulness about all others, is that a significant portion of the intelligentsia — the lumpen intelligentsia — cannot think. Its torrent of talk is an ever-intensifying hurricane of hysteria about the endemic sickness of the nation since its founding in 1619 (don’t ask). And the iniquities of historic figures mistakenly admired.

An admirable intelligentsia, inoculated by education against fashions and fads, would make thoughtful distinctions arising from historically informed empathy. It would be society’s ballast against mob mentalities. Instead, much of America’s intelligentsia has become a mob.

Seeking to impose on others the conformity it enforces in its ranks, articulate only in a boilerplate of ritualized cant, today’s lumpen intelligentsia consists of persons for whom a little learning is delightful. They consider themselves educated because they are credentialed, stamped with the approval of institutions of higher education that gave them three things: a smattering of historical information just sufficient to make the past seem depraved; a vocabulary of indignation about the failure of all previous historic actors, from Washington to Lincoln to Churchill, to match the virtues of the lumpen intelligentsia; and the belief that America’s grossest injustice is the insufficient obeisance accorded to this intelligentsia.

Its expansion tracks the expansion of colleges and universities — most have, effectively, open admissions — that have become intellectually monochrome purveyors of groupthink. Faculty are outnumbered by administrators, many of whom exist to administer uniformity concerning “sustainability,” “diversity,” “toxic masculinity” and the threat free speech poses to favored groups’ entitlements to serenity.

Today’s cancel culture — erasing history, ending careers — is inflicted by people experiencing an orgy of positive feelings about themselves as they negate others. This culture is a steamy sauna of self-congratulation: “I, an adjunct professor of gender studies, am superior to U.S. Grant, so there.” Grant promptly freed the slave he received from his father-in-law, and went on to pulverize the slavocracy. Nevertheless . . .

The cancelers need just enough learning to know, vaguely, that there was a Lincoln who lived when Americans, sunk in primitivism, thought they were confronted with vexing constitutional constraints and moral ambiguities. The cancel culture depends on not having so much learning that it spoils the statue-toppling fun: Too much learning might immobilize the topplers with doubts about how they would have behaved in the contexts in which the statues’ subjects lived.

The cancelers are reverse Rumpelstiltskins, spinning problems that merit the gold of complex ideas and nuanced judgments into the straw of slogans. Someone anticipated something like this.

Today’s gruesome irony: A significant portion of the intelligentsia that is churned out by higher education does not acknowledge exacting standards of inquiry that could tug them toward tentativeness and constructive dissatisfaction with themselves. Rather, they come from campuses, cloaked in complacency. Instead of elevating, their education produces only expensively schooled versions of what José Ortega y Gasset called the “mass man.”

In 1932’s “The Revolt of the Masses,” the Spanish philosopher said this creature does not “appeal from his own to any authority outside him. He is satisfied with himself exactly as he is. . . . He will tend to consider and affirm as good everything he finds within himself: opinions, appetites, preferences, tastes.” (Emphasis is Ortega’s.)

Much education now spreads the disease that education should cure, the disease of repudiating, without understanding, the national principles that could pull the nation toward its noble aspirations. The result is barbarism, as Ortega defined it, “the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.” A barbarian is someone whose ideas are “nothing more than appetites in words,” someone exercising “the right not to be reasonable,” who “does not want to give reasons” but simply “to impose his opinions.”

The barbarians are not at America’s gate. There is no gate.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.


Wonder if he's addressed our journal editors and the peer review process in this publish or perish environment? I actually enjoy reading him. He reminds me of an articulate PR who speaks his mind but unlike PR, does not get baited into meaningless "discussions."
 
IdaGriz01 said:
He's probably only partly right in saying they "can't" think ... i.e., don't have the proper tools for clear thinking. Some might, but they refuse to try, because it might threaten their cast-in-stone beliefs/opinions and take them to a very uncomfortable place.
...
Or perhaps they are people who want to vent because they basically have no useful purpose in life.
I think there's a ton of truth in these two statements. And for many college students, immense peer pressure to follow a particular line of groupthink sometimes plays a role too. Unfortunately, this tunnel-vision inability to consider all angles of an issue also destroys their ability to engage in any discussion with other people.
 
Here's an article the Georgia schools are dealing with right now. I'm not going to get into my opinion(s) about the differences between an Ed.D. and a Ph.D. or for that matter whether or not a teacher has to sit through all the b.s. methodology, pedagogical waste of time crap--damn, I guess I just did...let's hope Steve Alphabet with the Montana Digital Academy can help the old dinosaurs develop a huge dual-enrollment program in this state for all the rural schools and educators.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/pressure-georgia-university-system-require-masks-classrooms/eJ4TBb1PipZriIIVgy7sdN/
 
CatGrad-UMGradStu said:
Here's an article the Georgia schools are dealing with right now. I'm not going to get into my opinion(s) about the differences between an Ed.D. and a Ph.D. or for that matter whether or not a teacher has to sit through all the b.s. methodology, pedagogical waste of time crap--damn, I guess I just did...let's hope Steve Alphabet with the Montana Digital Academy can help the old dinosaurs develop a huge dual-enrollment program in this state for all the rural schools and educators.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/pressure-georgia-university-system-require-masks-classrooms/eJ4TBb1PipZriIIVgy7sdN/
I'll stay away from that hot potato too.

But here's a funny story from way back. George, a good friend of mine, graduated with a BA and was working on an MA in history (at New Mexico State, where I was working on my Ph.D.). Then he married a lady who was pursuing a degree in education (not sure what specialty). She persuaded him to go after a teaching certificate as a fall-back position if he couldn't get a job with his history degree(s). They took most of the ed classes together, but she finally made him stay away unless there was a test scheduled. He'd already read all the assigned material and was so bored in class he'd last maybe 10 minutes before falling sound asleep. And he was pretty good snorer. (His wife told me she regularly had to poke him at night so she could sleep :p .) She'd bring home her notes and any assignments. Since George could already write a well-thought-out and coherent essay, he had no trouble. He often got the highest scores on his finals and never less than an "A" grade ... back in the days before grade inflation set in. He later claimed that he'd never spent more than 4 hours of actual class time in any course, and his wife didn't dispute that.
 
IdaGriz01 said:
CatGrad-UMGradStu said:
Here's an article the Georgia schools are dealing with right now. I'm not going to get into my opinion(s) about the differences between an Ed.D. and a Ph.D. or for that matter whether or not a teacher has to sit through all the b.s. methodology, pedagogical waste of time crap--damn, I guess I just did...let's hope Steve Alphabet with the Montana Digital Academy can help the old dinosaurs develop a huge dual-enrollment program in this state for all the rural schools and educators.

https://www.ajc.com/news/local-education/pressure-georgia-university-system-require-masks-classrooms/eJ4TBb1PipZriIIVgy7sdN/
I'll stay away from that hot potato too.

But here's a funny story from way back. George, a good friend of mine, graduated with a BA and was working on an MA in history (at New Mexico State, where I was working on my Ph.D.). Then he married a lady who was pursuing a degree in education (not sure what specialty). She persuaded him to go after a teaching certificate as a fall-back position if he couldn't get a job with his history degree(s). They took most of the ed classes together, but she finally made him stay away unless there was a test scheduled. He'd already read all the assigned material and was so bored in class he'd last maybe 10 minutes before falling sound asleep. And he was pretty good snorer. (His wife told me she regularly had to poke him at night so she could sleep :p .) She'd bring home her notes and any assignments. Since George could already write a well-thought-out and coherent essay, he had no trouble. He often got the highest scores on his finals and never less than an "A" grade ... back in the days before grade inflation set in. He later claimed that he'd never spent more than 4 hours of actual class time in any course, and his wife didn't dispute that.

Many examples of this, unfortunately. I actually suffered through a graduate class that the final consisted of doing a damn concept map...the professor was not amused when my last slide stated I learned to color in the lines in first grade...

I know 330,000 students represents a pretty decent chunk of change. Dime a dozen doctorates are easily replaced via legislative and university systemwide reorganizations.

Your Ph.D. is from America's best kept secret? Impressive credentials.
 
sounds as though the university is hoping for the best, but expecting the worse.

Like every university across the country, we are responding to severe economic impacts associated with COVID-19, both those that have already occurred, as well as those that are likely to occur this coming fiscal year. The ultimate impact of COVID-19 on our student enrollment, and the level of resources provided to the University from their attendance cannot be determined with precision, but are estimated to be substantially lower than in prior years. Already this year, we’ve experienced millions of dollars of COVID-19 financial impact from increased costs, canceled events, refunds from the spring semester for housing and dining, increased waivers provided to students enrolled in summer courses, reduced revenues in nearly all auxiliary operations and reduced endowment distributions to support the University’s operations. In April, President Bodnar shared these challenges with the campus in a note that announced temporary furloughs within auxiliary operations. Subsequently, other employees have been furloughed throughout our campus, including athletics.
 
See I almost wonder how bad enrollment will be in the fall. It may not be as bad as we all think it might be. 2 factors to look at here. The first is that every student in the fall has been given the option of either returning to in person instruction or taking the fall semester online, with the exception of labs and such.

The other thing to think about is if kids want to stay closer to home in the event of an outbreak, UM may also be able to pick up new students that way. For example, if a kid is from Polson, but doesn’t feel comfortable going to MSU 4 hours away from home, he may transfer to UM this year because he’s closer to home and his parents if something were to happen.

Just a couple of things to ponder?
 
Here are two thoughts on the direction(s) colleges are headed. FWIW, why does UM charge more for an online course than in-person? lol

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/02/guest-commentary-university-of-colorado-cu-spending-cuts/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/us/coronavirus-college-professors.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
 
Griz til I die said:
The other thing to think about is if kids want to stay closer to home in the event of an outbreak, UM may also be able to pick up new students that way. For example, if a kid is from Polson, but doesn’t feel comfortable going to MSU 4 hours away from home, he may transfer to UM this year because he’s closer to home and his parents if something were to happen.
Probably more than offset by the kid from Billings who finds Bozeman 200 miles closer than Missoula.
 
CatGrad-UMGradStu said:
Here are two thoughts on the direction(s) colleges are headed. FWIW, why does UM charge more for an online course than in-person? lol

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/02/guest-commentary-university-of-colorado-cu-spending-cuts/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/us/coronavirus-college-professors.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

The divide between the cost of college and American wages, rooted in several issues, has been a problem for decades now, as you know, and this pandemic may really transform higher ed for the long term. Of course state funding will be an even bigger issue than normal for many places this year, unfortunately.

I understand the fear of coming to campus, though I'm both young(ish) and free of any underlying conditions, so it's not actually been of personal concern to me. The brief bit on Georgia Tech in the NYT piece - I wonder what steps they're taking to protect faculty and students. Surely they're all doing socially distanced classrooms, going to a hybrid model where possible, etc.? It would be crazy, IMO, to be forcing completely "business as usual" classes onto the faculty and student body. I do, like someone in the article mentioned, regret that classes this fall will be missing something that can only come (IMO) from a normal, non-distanced, lively face-to-face classroom, but it is what it is.
 
Side note: CU-Boulder has twice held formal votes on the possibility of going private, since state funding in Colorado is so atrocious. The last vote was relatively close. I wonder if this could eventually push them over the edge.
 
kemajic said:
Griz til I die said:
The other thing to think about is if kids want to stay closer to home in the event of an outbreak, UM may also be able to pick up new students that way. For example, if a kid is from Polson, but doesn’t feel comfortable going to MSU 4 hours away from home, he may transfer to UM this year because he’s closer to home and his parents if something were to happen.
Probably more than offset by the kid from Billings who finds Bozeman 200 miles closer than Missoula.

That is the case with my grandson from Billings going to MSU.
 
Berkeley_Griz said:
Side note: CU-Boulder has twice held formal votes on the possibility of going private, since state funding in Colorado is so atrocious. The last vote was relatively close. I wonder if this could eventually push them over the edge.

My soon to be daughter-in-law will be in Boulder this afternoon as she's being transferred from D.C. and will reside in Broomfield for a short period of time. I kind of enjoy the entire Denver area except for all the people and the traffic. As I'm still learning the area and the politics and it's amazing to me how many useless course offerings have been axed in such a short period of time! Try that with the MUS...

As I've made the assumption this is your first year on staff at UM, perhaps you can explain to the older faculty members that online courses ought not cost more, online degree programs ought not have a nonresident fee schedule attached, and it'd be fine to learn something from schools such as Purdue (Wait! I believe the young major tried that!) as educational delivery models undertake a huge transformation. Even Arizona State has a decent online set of degree offerings. The elder professors who frequent this site can better explain the resistance to change we all know has to happen or our field is going to get gutted.
 
CatGrad-UMGradStu said:
I kind of enjoy the entire Denver area except for all the people and the traffic.
I lived in the Boulder/ Denver area for 7 years, including doing my MS at CU. If I ever had to live in a large metro again, it would probably be that area, but I hope not to. The population growth over the past 15-20 years has been unreal. The access to nature is great, but crowding on the trails is sometimes ridiculous. On decent days of June - September many of the 14ers practically have conga lines up their slopes.

CatGrad-UMGradStu said:
As I've made the assumption this is your first year on staff at UM, perhaps you can explain to the older faculty members that online courses ought not cost more, online degree programs ought not have a nonresident fee schedule attached, and it'd be fine to learn something from schools such as Purdue (Wait! I believe the young major tried that!) as educational delivery models undertake a huge transformation.
I'll do my best good sir.
 
This article ought to have some influence on those in academia rather than sit and wait for the axe to fall...

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/06/students-college-federal-aid-coronavirus/

I mean, this is reality:

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/05/higher-education-budget-cuts-colorado-coronavirus-recession/
 
Damn it! If you would go back to the beginning of this pandemic and not test anybody that wasn't sick, the Air Farce Academy wouldn't have any positive tests! Jesus, if you won't manipulate the data, at least learn how to manipulate the sample like a good humanities professor! God!!!!

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/03/air-force-academy-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak/
 
This is going to hurt. (I suppose my bi-annual physicals will have different doctors or nurse practitioners in the near future too?). What is this going to do to our professor's employment data nationally?

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/06/international-students-online-classes-guidelines/
 
CatGrad-UMGradStu said:
This article ought to have some influence on those in academia rather than sit and wait for the axe to fall...

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/06/students-college-federal-aid-coronavirus/

I mean, this is reality:

https://www.denverpost.com/2020/07/05/higher-education-budget-cuts-colorado-coronavirus-recession/
And the pot tax was to cover all this....
 
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