Just a Thought
When the Journal of the American Medical Association
published a report comparing
Disease and
Disadvantage in the United States and in England,
the result was a minor stir. The media was shocked!
shocked! to hear that the United Kingdom spends less
than half as much money per capita on health care
than the United States, and yet, for people in late
middle age (when most of the highly feared diseases
start appearing), Americans suffer noticeably greater
incidence of diabetes, hypertension, heart disease,
myocardial infarction [heart attack], stroke, lung
disease and cancer.
There were several usual suspects available.
But while the study tended to suggest that they had
parts to play, there always seemed to be something
else left unaccounted for. For example:
- The American insurance industry consumes a
growing amount of money in order to, ahem,
manage our health care. This leads to denial
of care for low-income Americans and delays
and complications for medium-income Americans.
But while the discrepancies were greater for
"low" and "medium" education and income, the
fact that for some diseases, the discrepancy
remained for "high" income and education
suggested that availability of health care
isn't the only issue.
- The stereotype is that Americans eat too much
while the English drink too much. And both
smoke too much. The study was designed to
look at the effects of "a standard set of
behavioral risk factors, including smoking,
overweight, obesity, and alcohol drinking."
But these factors did not explain the
discrepancy. For example, among 55 - 64
year-olds, diabetes is twice as prevalent
among the Americans. But the authors conclude
that most of this discrepancy cannot be
ascribed to American supersized portions.
- The public health community has been aware of
America's relatively poor health for some time,
but the usual explanation has been ethnic and
other pockets of poverty. The authors
controlled for this by looking only at
non-hispanic whites of ages from 55 to 64.
And the discrepancies are still there.
So while health care administration, life style,
and marginalization of minorities probably have
some effect, that isn't the entire story.
The discrepancy for diabetes is striking,
for it holds for all education and income levels.
Strokes, on the other hand, are more subtle:
among those with "low" (high school or less) and
"medium" (college but no BA), Americans suffered
almost twice as many strokes per person, but the
rates for those with "high" education were about
the same. Curiously, the pattern for strokes
continued through income levels, with a much
higher incidence for "low" (family income less
than $ 322 / week) and "medium" (weekly family
income $ 322 - $ 635 -- which translates to
$ 17,000 - $ 33,000 per year) income, but about
the same for "high" income groups.
At this point we should note that the "low",
"medium" and "high" income groups each consisted
roughly of about a third of their subjects. Of
course, "low" income Britons have greater access
to basic needs -- including health care -- than
"low" income Americans.
In answer to the question everyone wants to
know, 5.5 % of the British reported cancer, while
9.5 % of the Americans did. In both countries,
cancer varied little with income or education.
One should remember that "cancer" is an umbrella
term for a large family of quite different
diseases, and thus analyzing such lumped-together
numbers can be a dubious business.
So what's going on?
The discrepancies for these populations
seemed surprising: Richard Suzman of the U.S.
National Institutes of Health (which helped fund
the study) told AP that "It's something of a
mystery." Others weren't mystified: Johns
Hopkins professorof health policy and pediatrics
Barbara Starfield told AP that "Countries oriented
toward providing good primary care basically do
better in health." Meanwhile, Harvard professor
of health policy Robert Blendon said that
America's more laissez faire economy may be at the
root of it: "The opportunity to go both up and
down the socioeconomic scale in America may create
stress."Indeed, at all income and education levels,
the Americans report higher levels of hypertension.
This aspect of the study was picked up by New York
Times columnist Paul Krugman, who noted that in
America, an average full time week is 46 hours,
while in England it is 41 hours. Krugman noted
that in Europe, "regulations and union power have
led to shorter working hours."
This brings us to a comment by co-author
Michael Marmot of University College in London,
who told AP that "It's not just how we treat
people when they get ill, but why they get ill in
the first place."
This is an article about disease and
disadvantage, and in their conclusion, the authors
suggest that part of the reason may be the growing
inequality in the United States, as opposed to
England. Considering England's class system, this
may seem an odd explanation, but their point is
that recently, American income inequality has been
increasing.
This has two effects.
First, there is the simple matter of
available resources. If there are real or
perceived obstacles to getting preventative health
care, then such care will become something that
can be put off until tomorrow. Compared to bills,
food, etc., health care does not come with a clear
due date on it. One result is that some Americans
do not see doctors. In fact, one recurring
problem that Florida's Department of Children and
Families keeps bumping into is the number of
children who arrive at kindergarten, never having
seen a doctor since birth. It's a matter of
priorities, and one thing that Public Health has
long recognized is that when it comes to disposing
of income, people spend on immediate needs (and
even desires) first. And so the level of
disposable income impacts health.
Second, there is the stress involved. In
a nation with fewer social services and supports
as well as fewer and weaker unions, there is a
greater sense of being on one's own. In addition,
with fewer and weaker unions, working conditions
deteriorate. Recall Krugman's observation that
the full-time American spends five hours a week
more than the full-time Briton. Pundits talk about
how pressed for time Americans are, as if it is a
choice that individual Americans make to work an
average extra five hours a week. But this is also
something imposed on employees with no means to
balance their employers' power. And the costs show
up in our public health.
Recently, epidemiologists have become
interested in a "Socio-Economic Status (SES)
gradient." Low SES status has been correlated to
several diseases, including heart disease, diabetes,
and some cancers. Some of this may be due to the
social stress of being low on the pecking order
(something the stereotypes might suggest would be a
bigger problem in England), and some may be due to
the physical stress of poor working conditions and
poor pay.
And the greatest force for better working
conditions and better pay have been the unions.
About an eighth of the American work force is
unionized, as compared almost a third of Britain's.
Unions have been declining in both our nations in
the last few decades (as opposed to many other
nations, where it is rising: as of 2000, according
the Boston Globe, the most highly organized nation
was Iceland, at 84 %, with Scandinavia -- notable
public health success stories! -- following). But
the unions are still stronger in Britain than in
the United States, with all that implies about
salaries and work conditions. And Americans suffer
more ill health.
UFF Senate Report, Part III
Twice a year, the Senate of the United Faculty of
Florida meets in central Florida to review the past
and to plan for the future. The Senate met in
Orlando over the April 8, 9 weekend. The meeting
began with a campaign speech by Florida Education
Association vice president Joanne McCall, described
in
the April 20 Biweekly,
and then proceeded to UFF President Tom Auxter's
report, which was described in
the May 4 Biweekly.
Then the meeting broke into bargaining committees.
There are four bargaining committees, which
consist of the senators of four groups of chapters
of the UFF: the eleven university chapters
(including USF's), the three graduate student
chapters (including USF's), the ten public college
chapters, and the three private college chapters.
The State University System Bargaining Committee
(SUSBC) is chaired by our own Sherman Dorn, USF
Professor of Psychological and Social Foundations.
The purpose of these meetings is to discuss
bargaining (which is now conducted between
individual chapters and their university
administrations) and common issues. It is a good
way of finding out what is going on at other
universities. This session was not as rollicking
as usual, although there were moments (FIU's
administration wanted a dress code for faculty) (now
what inspired that proposal, one wonders?).
Bargaining is most difficult at FAMU and UF, and it
is not at all clear when they will get contracts.
There were two other issues at the SUSBC
meeting.
* First, the chapters are getting more and more
work (the number of grievances filed is
increasing), and we need faculty who are
willing to help out. UFF is a volunteer
organization, and much of its work --
assisting grievants, bargaining contracts,
keeping track of everything that affects
faculty -- is done by volunteers.
* Second, many universities are having problems
with the question, "what is the bargaining
unit?" The bargaining unit is the set of
employees represented by the union, and it was
determined by the Public Employees Relations
Commission (PERC) long ago, and for USF
essentially consists of those employees
enumerated in Appendix A of the
contract.
The USF administration has been shuffling
employees' classifications around, while FIU's
administration is creating a new medical
school. FAMU's law professors are in the unit,
while UF's are not. Since the definition of
the bargaining unit is one standard target for
union-busting, UFF is dealing with this
situation very carefully.
The Bargaining Committee meetings go into the
evening, and are followed up by the Senate when it
reconvenes the following morning.
And so the morning of April 9 consisted of many
reports. The Community College Bargaining Committee
(for public colleges) reported a push by
administrations to fingerprint faculty. The
Graduate Assistant University Bargaining Committee
is pushing for health insurance and concerned about
limits on state support for out-of-state students.
And our own Roy Weatherford was unanimously endorsed
in his campaign for Florida Education Association
Director of Higher Education.
Readers who have been following these reports
may notice a returning sense of ... normalcy ... in
this meeting, as compared to other recent meetings.
However, the next meeting will be shortly before the
fall elections, so there may be more excitement.
Self-Discipline versus IQ
The two national unions UFF is affiliated with -- the
American Federation of Teachers and the National
Education Association -- are composed of educators, so
when they launch publications for their members, they
wind up running a lot of articles on our common
obsessions. One of these publications is the "AFT On
Campus", whose
May/ June issue
features rebuilding efforts in New Orleans and plans
for the fall elections (this may be an important
transitional election, so stay tuned). Amidst the
major articles is a section of
Campus Clips.
One of the clips is on a study of the relative effects
of native ability (well, IQ scores) versus
self-discipline (well, some personality measures) on
academic performance. As curmudgeons everywhere have
been saying for years, "hard work and self-discipline
... more accurately predict grades than ... the
intelligence quotient ... ."
The study was conducted under the auspices of the
Positive Psychology Center at the University of
Pennsylvania, directed by Fox Leadership Professor of
Psychology and former President of the American
Psychological Association Martin Seligman, who is best
known for his book "Learned Optimism", in which he
contends that there is a strong correlation between
how well people think they can do, and how well they
wind up doing. The study was conducted by him and one
of his students, Angela Duckworth. The resulting
article, "Self-Discipline Outdoes IQ in Predicting
Academic Performance in Academics," is in Volume 16,
Number 12 of the 2005 issue of "Psychological Science,"
a publication of the Association for Psychological
Science available via the USF Tampa Library.
The report covers two surveys, one year apart, of
eighth graders at a magnet school. "Native ability"
was measured by one of the standard IQ tests, which
like almost all IQ tests measure the ability to rapidly
and reliably answer a lot of little mechanical
questions. (This native ability may or may not be
correlated with other, less measureable abilities.)
"Self-Discipline" was measured with a battery of
questionnaires filled out by parents, teachers, and
the students themselves. Academic achievement was
measured in terms of grades, performance on
standardized exams, and evaluations by a committee of
teachers. They also looked at numbers of school
absences, the average time spent on homework (and
the time of day when students started work on
homework), and, inevitably, the amount of time spent
in front of the TV set.
First of all, there appears to be a weak
correlation between IQ and academic performance. This
correlation was "statistically significant" only in
the second survey (!), and was not striking in any
case. One reason for this was hinted at in the
conclusion: the study was conducted at a magnet
school, and the variance of IQs was smaller than
usual. Thus more students than usual were of
"average" IQ (relative to the average IQ at the
school), and that might magnify the effects of other
phenomena, e.g., self-discipline. The authors said
that for the future, they intended to conduct surveys
of more heterogenous samples of students.
Second, there is a strong correlation between
the "self-discipline measures" and "academic
performance." To quote the report, "... highly
self-disciplined eighth graders earned higher GPAs
and achievement-test scores, were more likely to
gain admission to a selective high school [this was
the evaluation by a committee of teachers], had
fewer school absences, spent more time on their
homework, watched less television, and started
their homework earlier in the day." The correlations
here were much stronger: while the bottom IQ
quintile (lowest 20 %) had a final GPA of 85 and the
top IQ quintile had a GPA of under 91, the bottom
self-discipline quintile had a GPA of under 81 and a
top of 93, doubling the effective range.
The authors concluded, "Underachievement among
American youth is often blamed on inadequate teachers,
boring textbooks and large class sizes ... We suggest
another reason for students falling short of their
intellectual potential: their failure to exercise
self-discipline." With this, the authors leave us at
the threshold of one of the most intractible problems
in modern psychology.
"Self-discipline" is one of an archipelago of
"self-regulatory disorders," ranging from
alcoholism to gambling addiction to failure to
reliably take prescribed medications. Despite the
vast array of treatments -- much of the self-help
section of the average bookstore is devoted to
self-treatments for self-regulatory disorders --
there has been little (statistically measurable)
long-term success in any treatment. And these
disorders are not well understood. Are they the
result of lack of skills of some kind? Are they the
result of inner conflicts or complexes? Is it
simply a lack of "will-power" (whatever that is)?
Despite our poor understanding of these
problems, this study does suggest that remedial
courses may be more effective if they dealt
explicitly with study skills.
Supreme Court Update
The May 4, 2006 Biweekly outlined the case of Garcetti
v. Ceballos, a case then before the U.S. Supreme Court,
which raised the issue of whether a public official is
protected for speech made on the job for the job: see
the Biweekly story.
The speech was in fact mandated by the official's
code of ethics: Mr. Ceballos reported to his superiors
at the Los Angelos District Attorney's office (under
the D.A., Mr. Garcetti) that there was evidence of
police misconduct (largely falsifying affidavits).
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling
in support of the D.A.'s office (which was supporte by
the Bush Administration). Associate Justice Kennedy,
supported by Chief Justice Roberts and Associate
Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas, held that because
Ceballos was doing his job when he wrote the offending
memo to his superior warning of the misconduct, he had
no constitutional protection against a superior who
would prefer that such warnings not be committed to
writing: "If Ceballos's superiors thought his memo was
inflammatory or misguided, they had the authority to
take proper corrective action." The issue of whether
the D.A. should have disciplined an official for
exposing police corruption was dismissed as irrelevant.
The opinion is
on-line.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Souter found the
ruling difficult to reconcile with precedent. In
addition, Souter said that the majority's opinion --
that the First Amendment did not apply to speech by
public employees in the course of their professional
duties -- created a "domain beyond the pale of the
First Amendment ... spacious enough to include even
the teaching of a public university professor," and
Souter hoped "that today's majority does not mean to
imperil First Amendment protection of academic freedom
in public colleges and universities, whose teachers
necessarily speak and write 'pursuant to official
duties.'" The majority opinion was all the more
disturbing as the precedent in contention (Pickering v.
Board of Education 391 U.S. 563 (1968)) had clear
academic freedom implications. Nevertheless, even
though Roberts had raised the issue of academic freedom
during oral arguments, Kennedy chose to punt, writing,
"We ... do not ... decide whether the analysis we
conduct today would apply in the same manner to a case
involving speech related to scholarship or teaching."
But of course, that's where the majority is going,
which is why the United Faculty of Florida has made
sure that our academic freedom is protected by our
contract; for contracts tend to get greater respect in
court.
Not With a Bang ...
The Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) was the
first community college in Pennsylvania, opening its
doors to its first class of 426 students in 1964. In
some ways a successor to Hershey Junior College (which
was absorbed in 1965), HACC started building its first
campus in 1965 and was the first community college
accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges
and Schools, in 1967. Since then it has opened four
additional campuses, and offers more than 120 associate
degree, certificate and diploma programs to over 15,000
students.
This was the site for the last (currently) planned
performance of the Select Committee that the
Pennsylvania House of Representatives authorized to
investigate the rampant (liberal) bias allegedly now
oppressing Pennsylvania higher education. The mood was
somewhat dampened by the recent primary defeat of the
Committee's initiator, Representative Gibson Armstrong,
R-Lancaster; Armstrong told the Chronicle of Higher
Education that some professors in his district had
campaigned against him. But the show must go on, and
even if the hearing was at a community college, it was
the universities that were on the menu.
There were the usual administration claims that
there was no problem to investigate. Peter Garland,
Vice Chancellor for Academic and Student Affairs at the
Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, said
that the system of 14 universities and 107,000 students
had received 14 formal complaints over the last five
years. The students themselves reported problems other
than academic bias: one recent graduate told the Select
Committee that "Classroom bias, in my experience, just
isn't a problem. Paying for the schools is." In the
end, while Armstrong said that he hoped for a resolution
"without having to resort to legislation,"
Representative Dan Surra, D-Elk, said, "It just became
so blatantly obvious ... [that] there is no problem."
Armstrong did get some support, notably from
Pennsylvania State University Professor David Saxe, who
proposed that a new "Center for the Study of Free
Institutions and Civic Education" be founded at Penn
State. "Thirty years ago, higher education in
Pennsylvania as well as the nation began a track toward
multiculturalism, diversity, and social justice," Saxe
lamented, and he proposed that his center could be
modeled after the James Madison Program in American
Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and
would serve as "a remedy" to liberal bias.
Representative Patrick Fleagle, R-Franklin, asked for
examples in American history and culture where Saxe
would return to a more ... traditional ... approach,
and Saxe responded with a contention that the American
Indian contribution to American culture was being
over-emphasized: "You can spend all the time you want
studying Native American life pre-Columbus ... [but]
you're never going to find rule of law, grand jury,
Magna Carta." After some time on this sort of thing,
Representative Lawrence Curry, D-Montgomery/
Philadelphia, suggested that they were wandering a bit
afield from the oppression of (conservative) students
-- which was what the hearings were supposed to be
about.
While the Chronicle of Higher Education and the
Harrisburg Patriot News covered the story (and this is
where most of the material in this article came from),
most of the mainstream media ignored it. HACC itself
did not bother to post a press release on a visit by a
legislative committee (although, to be fair, as
Harrisburg is the state capital, this may not be a
particularly uncommon event). And Armstrong's defeat
(in a Republican primary) suggests that this carnival
may be unsuccessful in advancing the interests of the
more predatory participants.
But the national campaign may continue, if only
because bias in academia, like witchcraft in Salem, is
both alarming and ultimately impossible to disprove.
Moreover, Professor Saxe's testimony shows a real
temptation some of our colleagues may succumb to.
Whether or not America owes more to King Arthur
Pendragon's Round Table than to Deganawidah and
Ayenwatha's Great Law of Peace, the sad fact is that
Saxe was supping with the Devil, and with a
dangerously short spoon. It is one thing to propose
that a government support an academic institute to
research a field of study; it is quite another to
propose that a government support an academic
institute in order to generate research and teaching
materials endorsing the government's current
policies and politics. What the government needs,
and what the people have a right to, is honest and
disinterested counsel, and what Saxe was proposing
would inevitably lead to very real occurrences of the
problem the Select Committee purports to confront.
Preparing for College
In 1999, Clifford Adelman, a Senior Research Analyst
at the U.S. Department of Education, produced a
"Toolbox" for everyone interested in how students
can ultimately attain a Bachelor's degree. Noting
that "Degree completion is the true bottom line for
college administrators, state legislators, parents,
and most importantly, students —- not retention to
the second year, not persistence without a degree,
but completion," Adelman said that completion rates
were being affected by quite new developments, in
particular, the trend to hold institutions
responsible for their graduation rates, the greater
proportion of students going to college, the
greater proportion of students transfering from
one institution to another (making it difficult to
get good numbers describing what's happening), and
squabbles over affirmative action. The report is
available on-line.
Note that the phenomenon itself -- students
not completing their college education -- is not
new. In 1951, the president of an exclusive
liberal arts college greeted the class of 1955
by saying to his nervous audience, each student
look at the student to your right, and at the
student to your left; by next year, one of you
three won't be here. One difference between now
and the 1950s is that modern college presidents
don't brag about low retention rates.
Anyway, there were several findings, one of
which the gentle webmaster gratuitously brings to
his colleagues' attention: "Of all pre-college
curricula, the highest level of mathematics one
studies in secondary school has the strongest
continuing influence on bachelor's degree
completion." And despite the grousing about the
diluting standards, "Advanced Placement course
taking is more strongly correlated with bachelor's
degree completion than it is with college access."
Some of the findings should be weighed
guardedly, e.g., "For students who attend 4-year
colleges at some time, the only form of financial
aid that bears a positive relationship to degree
completion after a student's first year of college
attendance is employment (principally College
Work-Study and campus-related) undertaken (a)
while the student is enrolled and (b) for purposes
of covering the costs of education." Of course,
students requiring financial aid may be less
prepared in certain ways, and in addition, it
might be that work study motivates students to
take their studies more seriously, and thus
assure a greater return on the money invested in
a financial aid package that includes employment.
Anyway, for better or for worse, the report
concluded with a "toolbox" recommendation saying,
"we must focus our efforts on aspects of student
experience that are realistically subject to
intervention and change," and adding, "We do not
have tools to change intentions or perceptions,
or to orchestrate affective influences on
students' decisions." Adelman concludes that
academically intense high school programs are the
most successful in assuring ultimate acquisition
of higher degrees.
That was 1999. In the latest issue of AFT
On Campus, we are told that Adelman has just
composed a Toolbox Revisited report; the article
entitled "How to graduate in less than nine years"
is on the
Campus clips page,
in the right column. This was a report of a
subsequent longitudinal study of college students
who took at most 8.5 years (!) to get a Bachelor's
degree; see the
study's web-page.
Things have changed, reports Adelman, which
has made our numbers (like "attrition rates")
even more dubious. In an era where students
"swirl" from institution to institution, Adelman
sought to track the students themselves. After
all, one thing that did NOT change is Adelman's
view that "The core question ... is about
completion of academic credentials."
Apparently poked by the reviewers, the core of
Toolbox Revisited is organized chronologically,
following the tracked cohort through college. His
basic conclusion is unchanged: "The academic
intensity of the student's high school curriculum
still counts more than anything else in
precollegiate history in providing momentum toward
completing a bachelor's degree." This includes at
least 3.75 units each of English, mathematics, and
science (including computer science), excluding
remedial courses, and in addition, at least one AP
course. Alas, the next paragraph begins, "Provided
that high schools offer these courses ...,"
presumably referring to courses that actually
fulfil these requirements, as opposed to merely
having course descriptions fulfilling these
requirements (he does address this issue). Adelman
still has not untangled the knots of
Social-Economic Status (SES); as in the previous
report, Adelman doubts that SES directly affects
outcomes, but he does grant that it is mysteriously
correlated, e.g., students of low SES are more
likely to go to high schools that do not have
sufficient course offerings.
The gentle webmaster cannot resist mentioning
Adelman's remark that mathematics has become even
more indispensible since 1999: "The world has gone
quantitative: business, geography, criminal
justice, history, allied health fields -— a full
range of disciplines and job tasks tells students
why math requirements are not just some abstract
school exercise. By the end of the second calendar
year of enrollment, the gap in credit generation in
college-level mathematics between those who
eventually earned bachelor's degrees and those who
didn't is 71 to 38 percent ... ."
Adelman argues that students must be made more
aware of their responsibility for their own
prospects. "Student responsibility ... is a major
theme of The Toolbox Revisited," says Adelman;
"students, who are partners in their own education
fate, ... shouldn't wait around for someone else to
do something for them." One example is his sharp
criticism of withdrawals without penalty. In the
report, he says that withdrawals from or repeats of
20 % or more of one's courses decreases the
probability of ultimately graduating by about a
half, and in the summary, that letting people
withdraw (after the add-drop period) keeps more
serious students from taking courses that are short
of space.
What The Public Thinks of Us
Recently, Academia has been the target of some sharp
if nebulous rhetoric, mostly on alleged bias in the
classroom and occasional mention of un-American
activities. There has been some concern about how
far this could go, and that depends on how much
traction Academia's opponents could get in public
opinion.
Academia has a long collective memory, so the
appearance of popular books with subtitles like
"The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America" revive
old memories. It is true that in absolute terms,
Academia is not being targeted much (Lexis reports
that in the category of General News / Magazines and
Journals, for the last six months, there are six
hits for "the Academic Bill of Rights" and 24 for
"liberal bias," compared to 391 for "Hillary
Clinton"). On the other hand, during the McCarthy
era, Academia wasn't the main target then, either.
So it is not surprising that the American
Association of University Professors conducted a
survey to find out what the American public makes of
us. And the news is: Americans think that tuition
is too high. Of the eight issues listed in the
survey, the percentages who listed the issues as
"very serious problems" are:
- High tuition: 80.5 %
- Student binge drinking: 66.2 %
- Low standards: 48.9 %
- Crime on campus: 45.5 %
- Political bias in class: 37.5 %
- Overemphasis of athletics: 36.3 %
- Incompetent professors: 34.6 %
- Lack of support for diverse student pop.:
30.2 %
At first glance, as political bias is just a wee bit
more of a concern than varsity sports, we might feel
reassured. But the authors warn that "the tempest in
a teapot view, though not entirely unsubstantiated,
underestimates how upset a sizable minority of
Americans are about the perceived politics of
professors, and, perhaps at some peril, fails to
recognize how soft are Americans' views on academic
freedom." The peril is, as the authors note, that
this unhappiness and softness comes at a time when
"the university has become something of a political
football."
This is not the first such survey. In 1999, the
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education
published a study by Associate Vice President John
Immerwahr, of Academic Affairs at Villanova University,
on "Doing Comparatively Well: Why The Public Loves
Higher Education and Criticizes K-12." Immerwahr
reported that professors were regarded more highly
than schoolteachers. The cost issue was already
present: Immerwahr reported that the public was
becoming worried about access to higher education. But
returning to K-12 versus higher education, Immerwahr
found that businessmen were coming critical of colleges
and universities: "If business leaders, who are more
knowledgeable, are also more critical of higher
education, is this a harbinger of the future? Will
other groups also become more critical as they learn
more about higher education?" Michael Usdan,
President of the Institute for Educational Leadership
-- which co-sponsored the study -- said, "some of the
issues currently faced by K-12, such as accountability,
will soon surface in postsecondary institutions as
well." See
an ad for the study.
We pause for an editorial comment. First, whether
or not business leaders are "more knowledgeable," they
do have perspectives of their own, and they have the
resources to broadcast their concerns to the public.
Thus whether or not the public does "learn more about
higher education," the public would hear criticisms
about higher education from business-funded groups.
This brings us to the second comment, that business
leaders worry about "accountability," which the
business community has come to regard as a need for
standardized exams. But the use of standardized exams
has become an partisan issue: in Florida, Jeb Bush
managed to link standardized exams, vouchers, weird
funding formulas, and union-busting into a single
politicized package that has made rational discourse
on educational issues much more difficult. The
national No Child Left Behind act has had a similar
effect. The political temperature rises, and Academia
does not do well in high temperatures.
Returning to previous studies, in 2004, the
Chronicle of Higher Education conducted a study
(posted for subscribers in the May 7, 2004 Special
Report), whose results were summarized as "U.S.
Public's Confidence in Colleges Remains High" but with
"concern over costs, sports, and 'legacy' admissions."
Costs were the big issue: 83 % agreed or strongly
agreed that students had incurred too much debt, 65 %
at least agreed that the government should make more
grant money available for financial aid, while 74 % at
least agreed -- perhaps paradoxically -- that colleges
should offer more loans to students. Bottom line:
94 % agreed that "every high school student who wants
a four-year college degree should have the opportunity
to earn one."
The Chronicle's 2004 survey explored what the
public expected of a university, finding that 70 %
thought that it was very important for academia to
prepare undergraduates for careers, and that 67 %
thought it was very important for academia to prepare
undergraduates to be responsible citizens. 58 %
thought it was very important for academia to "help
students develop good values and ethical positions,"
and 14 % thought that varsity sports were very
important. Interestingly, 49 % thought that
university research to "discover more about the world"
was very important, but only 39 % thought that
university research to "make American businesses more
competitive" was very important. It appears that there
is support for the traditional mission (making students
better people), and for the mission that Harvard & co.
sold to America over a century ago (making students
better corporate executives).
The Chronicle also explored concerns about bias in
academia. About half at least agreed that "colleges
and universities improperly introduce a liberal bias in
what they teach," yet at least 60 % at least agreed
that tenure is necessary for academic freedom. And
academia was ranked high among institutions: the
percentage of respondents expressing "a great deal"
of confidence in the given institutions were:
- The military: 68 %
- 4-year private academies: 48 %
- Churches &c.: 44 %
- Community Colleges: 41 %
- 4-year public academies: 40 %
- Public K-12: 29 %
- The U.S. Presidency: 28 %
- Health-care providers: 26 %
- Local government: 17 %
and so on. Notice that public community colleges and
universities and colleges were virtually tied,
substantially ahead of Public K-12, somewhat
consistent with the 1999 results.
The AAUP survey was taken two years later, and
was structured differently, so perhaps it is not
surprising that the results were different. For
example, respondents had "a lot of confidence" in:
- The military: 54 %
- Colleges & universities: 42 %
- Organized religion: 30 %
- The White House: 21 %
The AAUP survey was designed to develop a more clear
picture of who said what, and it appears that having
a "lot of confidence" in colleges and universities is:
- Negatively correlated with age
- Positively correlated with amount of formal
education
- Higher among registered Democrats and
"liberals"
In particular, 53 % of "liberal Democrats" have a lot
of confidence in colleges and universities, but only
27 % of "conservative Republicans" do.
The AAUP presented the results of the survey in
a "working paper" on "American's Views on Political
Bias in the Academy and Academic Freedom" by Harvard
Sociology Professor Neil Gross and sociologist Solon
Simmons, which is
posted on-line.
The AAUP issued a
press release,
announcing a panel discussion on the subject, as well
as a
commmentary by AAUP Director of Research James
Curtis.
Several significant things surfaced in the AAUP
survey.
First, about half of the respondents said that
both "professor" and "elementary school teacher" are
very prestigious positions, from which it might
appear that there is some comparability in prestige.
This appears to be a change from the 1999 study, but
one that the 1999 study anticipated might happen.
(It is not clear what part, if any, standardized
exams played in such a change in the public view.)
Recalling the United Faculty of Florida's affiliation
with the Florida Education Association, we should
notice (whatever our pretentions) that from the
public's point of view, we are in similar boats, if
not the same one. Incidentally, the correlations for
prestige are similar to the amount of confidence ...
except that the correlations are weaker.
Second, Gross and Simmons argue that most of the
public tends to fall into two groups. These groups
are a bit fuzzy, with membership varying depending on
the issue at hand.
- 70 % fall into the "no funny business" group,
which tends to believe that the government
should keep its fingers out of academia -- and
that academics should keep their noses
(relatively) clean. This group seems to be
divided over how clean academics have to be.
Just over 60 % of all respondents believe that
anti-war professors should be allowed to express
anti-war views in the classroom -- while about
the same percentage feel (more strongly) that
public universities should be able to fire
professors who join organizations "like the
communist party"; more decisively, about 80 %
of all respondents would keep politicians out
of academia.
- Meanwhile, 20 % fall into the "no restrictions"
group, which believe that professors should be
free, for example, to join the American
Communist Party.
Then somewhat under ten percent is undecided.
Curiously, even though Gross and Simmons worry about
public support for Academia being soft, they did not
explore divisions or indecisions within this huge
"no funny business" group, and it is these divisions
and indecisions -- between those who agree that
professors should be free to speak on the job and
those who strongly agree that professors should be
subject to dismissal for joining the wrong political
parties -- that may become critical in any coming
political battle.
Third, much of the public does not perceive a
problem with bias. While 68 % said that universities
tended to favor liberals (compared to 60 % who said
that professors should teach more and research less),
57 % said that professors' political views do not
affect their teaching while 72 % said that professors
are respectful of students expressing opinions
differing from their own. And 81 % said that
universities welcome students of faith (69 % said
that the typical professor was only somewhat
religious). In general, Gross and Simmons said that
about 56 % of the public could be classified as
"unconcerned" about "liberal bias" in academia, while
about 30 % of the public was "critical" of such bias.
A real problem appeared in surveying views of
tenure and academic freedom. It turned out that only
55 % of the respondents knew what tenure was. Given
past knowledge or a brief description, three-fourths
of the respondents liked the idea of using tenure to
defend academic freedom. But, as Gross and Simmons
pointed out, this "suggests ... that there is
considerable room for partisan framing of the issue."
Indeed, as respondents with less education -- i.e.,
less exposure to academia -- tended to be more
critical or undecided, ignorance of academia could be
a problem.
It is revealing in another way. The current
notion of academic tenure may trace roots extending
back to the ancient immunities of prophets and
scribes, but it also owes much to the version that
unions presented in the Nineteenth century. Perhaps
there was no halcyon day when every worker knew what
"tenure" was, but when half the public is unfamiliar
with the notion, that is a sign of how weak unions
have become.
One final point. What the public really seems
bothered by is cost. The colleges do not seem to
have persuaded the public that the problem is a
lack of state and federal funding: in the 2004
Chronicle study, over two thirds agreed or strongly
agreed that colleges and universities could cut
costs without cutting quality. This view, coupled
with hostile attitudes, could hurt us: consider
Ann Coulter's recent quote of a consumer activist
saying, "Every time you see the price of tuition
go up, you can hear 'ka-ching, ka-ching' in the bank
accounts of the college professors." If we don't
explain the problem more openly, Ann Coulter will be
only too happy to explain it for us. And anyway, if
the politicians could be persuaded to constructively
address the issue that the PUBLIC wants addressed,
that would be very helpful.
UFF Needs Your Help the Effect of Travel Restrictions
The United Faculty of Florida needs help from members of the bargaining
unit on specific effects of the law signed last month by Governor Bush,
prohibiting the use of funds provided or handled by the state and state
universities, for travel or related activities to, in, or involving
nations that the U.S. State Department has designated as "terrorist
states.” The UFF is gathering evidence about the concrete harms of the
new law. If your research or teaching is directly affected by this law,
please contact the chapter IMMEDIATELY through e-mail at
travel-ban@ourusf.org.
An automatic reply will acknowledge your e-mail.
Recent News on the Travel Restrictions
The National Education Association Representative Assembly approved a
resolution earlier this month that was sponsored by UFF and the Florida
Education Association delegation and expresses faculty concerns with
this bill specifically:
“NEA will alert its members through its regular publications and the
internet about threats to academic freedom in recent federal regulations
and state legislation preventing educators in the United States from
teaching and conducting research in so-called ‘terrorist states.’” (New
Business Item 18, listed
on-line.)
The UFF and our state affiliate FEA is currently considering what steps
can be taken on the law. The question of whether to join the month-old
lawsuit by the ACLU of Florida may depend on the specificity of
information that is received from faculty.
Background Information
It started five years ago, when the FBI began investigating two faculty,
a married couple who worked at Florida International University. Carlos
Alvarez of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
(Foundations / International and Intercultural Education) and Elsa
Alvarez of the Counseling and Psychological Services Center (in Student
Affairs) are active members of the on-campus and off-campus community.
The FBI followed them, bugged their bedroom, and finally last year,
agents stopped Carlos Alvarez at a Publix and persuaded him to come with
them to an apartment to talk. The FBI talked to him about his future,
his family's future, his children's future, his plans to retire, and had
a request: "Since you helped the, the Cuban government, we want you to
help the United States now." Apparently, something went wrong, and this
January, the Alvarezes were indicted for being unregistered agents of
the Cuban government (the indictment is
on-line).
The government accused them of providing information about anti-Castro
activists, and other prominent members of the Cuban-American community,
to the Cuban government, and of recruiting Cuban-American youth to
support the Cuban government.
FIU promptly placed the Alvarezes on paid leave (compare that with USF's
almost as immediate dismissal of Al-Arian), and hired counsel to conduct
an independent review. Miami being a community where Castro is much on
people's minds, the fallout began immediately. "This opens the door to a
witch hunt," worried one, while another countered, "Only those who are
doing something illegal should be worried about the U.S. government's
actions." One professor, once arrested on an explosives charge, accused
another professor of providing a list of allegedly subversive professors
to reporters. There was a squabble over whether or not a quarter century
ago Elsa Alvarez had been associated with a group allegedly sympathetic
to the Cuban revolution. Naturally, Miami's legislators felt a need to
legislate ... something.
Enter
David Rivera, R-Miami/Dade & Collier. Stating that, "The FIU spy case vividly
demonstrates the security risks associated with state employees
traveling to terrorist countries," Rivera proposed that travel to Cuba
be restricted "to protect higher education from the threat of espionage
activities." His bill,
HB 1171
(which was superseded by SB 2434, at
SB 2434) actually consisted of four insertions placed in ongoing legislation,
regarding "Travel To Terrorist States: prohibits use of funds from
Community College Program Fund, or funds made available to community
colleges from outside fund, to implement, organize, direct, coordinate,
or administer activities related to or involving travel to terrorist
state; prohibits use of state or nonstate funds made available to state universities to
implement, organize, or direct activities related to or involving travel
to terrorist state, etc."
The "terrorist states" are the nations listed by the U.S. State
Department as "State Sponsors of Terrorism". The list is
on-line; and currently six nations are
listed: Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Notice the
"prohibits use of state or nonstate funds made available to state
universities to...": external funding processed by the university cannot
be so used. This effectively eliminates almost all academic travel to
these countries. While academics visit most of these nations to study
current affairs, archeology, biology, etc., the primary issue was Cuba.
As Cuba is a Floridian obsession, so it is a focus for Florida
academics, and their work would be compromised by not being able to
visit Cuba. And Cuba dominated the Florida Senate analysis, which noted
that U.S. law currently permits asking for permission for travel to Cuba
for government business, professional research, journalism, educational
activities, and other purposes. (Presumably -- although the analysis did not make the
point -- if the state department was concerned about a particular visit,
it could deny permission.)
The Senate analysis mentioned that the Florida Board of Governors had
four objections:
- That there were already a lot of travel restrictions.
- That these restrictions further limit "the exposure of persons living
in designated terrorist states to the ideals and values of persons from
the United States and Florida." [It should be noted that in classical
Stalinism, to which North Korea adheres if Cuba does not, the movements
of visitors is severely curtailed to keep them from ... contaminating
... the populace.]
- These restrictions limit what we can learn about conditions in those
countries, compromising advice academics can give.
- These restrictions also curtail "academic and individual freedom."
Two house committees produced six rather sparse analyses.
The public fight began almost immediately. In February, Stanford
University history professor and former president of the American
Historical Association James Sheehan told the Miami Herald that
"Visiting a place, studying a place, speaking freely about a place --
these are things that are really essential for a democracy to work."
Added University of Florida Professor of Latin American Studies and
Political Science Terry McCoy (who is also Director of the Latin
American Business Environment Program and Associate Director of the
Center for International Business Education and Research), "The
post-Castro era is getting closer ... It's going to happen probably
within the next five and certainly within the next ten years. And that's
going to be an unstable time. It would be in [America's] interest to
have institutional academic relationships in place."
Florida International University Professor of Sociology Lisandro Perez
(and Director of the Cuban Research Institute) said, "[Rivera] wants to
build a career using the Cuba topic, which you can always count on here
locally to grab people's emotions ... This is just a blatant effort on
his part to get some political limelight." Curiously, there was little
mention of the academic conferences that take advantage of Havana's
weather and prices -- and the consequences to Florida if, say, Florida
faculty are not permitted to attend conferences in Cuba (readers can
imagine the discussions among European, Asian and especially Latin
American academics should Floridians suggest that conference organizers
boycott Cuba in order to appease Floridian politicians). (Indeed, a
recent change in federal rules makes travel to academic conferences in
Cuba much more difficult.)
It is not clear that Rivera understood the effect of his own
legislation. Inside Higher Ed reported that Rivera called on professors
to seek external funding for travel to Cuba: "Any professor who feels
they cannot justify their research enough to receive private, direct
funding is probably not worthy to teach in Florida." But of course, such
funding is processed by the university, and so public university
professors are barred by Rivera's law to use such funds for travel to Cuba.
Nevertheless, in spite of the criticism -- or perhaps, because of it
("Legislators just don't pay too much attention to what academics
think," Rivera said, reported Inside Higher Ed; "I always welcome their
opposition") -- the Legislature passed the senate version of Rivera's
bill. The American Association of University Professors then sent an
open letter to Governor Jeb Bush, saying "... SB 2434 cannot be
reconciled with our nation's commitment to academic freedom. The
legislature has not demonstrated that these restrictions are essential
to our security. Nor has it shown that these restrictions should be
added to those that have already been promulgated by the federal
government for academic research and learning related to these
countries. The bill will also take its toll on the willingness to accept
faculty appointments in Florida colleges and universities ..." (see the
letter).
Bush signed the bill anyway. Heading for the courts takes time, usually
many months at least. First at the courthouse door was the FIU Faculty
Senate, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union. Unlike
legislation, a lawsuit (like a grievance) must be based on a violation
of something: to overturn a law, it is not sufficient to prove that it
is stupid or that it was passed with demagogic intent. The lawsuit filed
by the FIU Senate and the ACLU (and slowly accumulating a growing crowd
of co-plaintiffs) contends that the law violates the U.S. Constitution
in two ways:
- First, the State of Florida does not have the power to regulate
international travel, to regulate international commerce, or to conduct
foreign policy, and the suit contends that this is what the law tries to do.
- Second, the suit contends that the law violates the First and
Fourteenth Amendment rights of faculty attempting to travel to Cuba.
The ACLU issued a press release, which quoted ACLU Executive Director
Howard Simon saying, "Crude censorship like this only serves to keep
Americans uninformed about climate changes that may affect our economy,
the understanding of diseases necessary to protect our health, and
information about political and economic developments that may be vital
for our national security." The press release is
Rivera was outraged by the suit, telling the Miami Herald that, "The
ACLU has hit a new low by filing a lawsuit that will aid terrorist
countries," and that he planned to propose further restrictions next
year (Florida House Speaker-elect Marco Rubio has expressed support for
further restrictions).
Delegates from the United Faculty of Florida are elected by the
statewide membership of UFF every two years. The next statewide UFF
election is in the spring of 2007. News from the convention was starting July 2
covered daily by the NEA. The next
biweekly newsletter will cover the AFT convention.
The Growing Divide
"Never before has a college degree meant more in
determining social class in America ... [and] ... Never
before have American colleges been asked to play a more
crucial part in educating a generation of students for
a global economy." These were not the first words that
the Chronicle of Higher Education published on what
they called "the growing divide" between the haves and
the have-nots -- the Chronicle has been running
articles on the subject for years -- but it was part of
an announcement of a new focus, an "occasional series"
designed "to examine the broad issues as the United
States prepares for a time when the student body will
look a lot different, and have much more financial need,
than those of today."
The Chronicle of Higher Education is perhaps the
pre-eminent academic newspaper in America. A weekly
covering administrative, political, and social science
issues and (with less intensity) other areas of academia,
it can be found in departmental and administrative
waiting rooms in colleges and universities across the
country. A few of its articles are available to browsers
at its website at (although much
of the site is restricted to subscribers), and it
maintains a page with links to all you could possibly
want in academic punditry (the Arts & Letters Daily, at
). Its influence is substantial
enough to inspire grumbling and imitation.
The initial April 7 Special Report, "The Rich-Poor
Gap Widens for Colleges and Students" concentrated on
the wealth of institutions, noting that per-student
instructional spending at institutions in the top
quartile of baccalaureate colleges have increased 37 %
in the last ten years, while such spending among colleges
in the bottom quartile increased 6 %. Meanwhile,
endowment assets per student increased nearly $ 127,000
at the top, and by $ 8,600 at the bottom.
As an example, there was a comparison of Clarke
College (an old Roman Catholic institution in Mississippi
with about a thousand students, an operating budget of
$ 18 million and an endowment of $ 17 million) with
Grinnell College (an old frontier institution in Iowa
with about 1500 students, a budget of nearly $ 70 million
and an endowment of $ 1.4 billion). Clarke is trying to
raise $ 5 million with which to replace 40-year-old lab
equipment (and to do something about temperature control
in the labs), while Grinnell is finishing a $ 43 million
science addition, part of a $ 160 million construction
effort during the last six years. The implication is
that Grinnell could do a lot for disadvantaged youth, and
yet "Grinnell gets a solid failing grade from us," the
Chronicle quotes a senior scholar at the Pell Institute
for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education saying;
"Other elite schools do, too."
There are some consequences: the average pay for a
full professor at Grinnell is $ 100,000, while at Clarke
it's $ 61,000, and Grinnell's student-to-faculty ratio
is 9:1, while Clarke's is 11:1. More strikingly, about
a third of Clarke's faculty is part-time, while at
Grinnell less than a fourth are. But the difference in
resources may be reflected in one obvious difference
between preparation at Clarke versus Grinnell: it is
Grinnell that has the more financially successful alumni.
But some observers did not think that more money bought
a better education: a later May 12 article would quote
the Director of the John William Pope Center for Higher
Education Policy saying, "You're not going to learn
English better at Harvard ... You're not going to learn
calculus better."
Yes, on May 12 the Chronicle was poking the rich
with the report that "Elite Colleges Lag in Serving the
Needy: The institutions with the most money do a poor
job of reaching the students with the least." The article
used a convenient indicator -- many needy students receive
Pell grants -- to compare institutions and found that in
the 2004 - 2005 academic year, colleges and universities
ranged from Berea College, with 80.8 % of its student body
receiving Pell grants, down through many institutions in
the teens to Yale at 10.4 %, Harvard at 8.1 %, and
Princeton at 7.5 %. Grinnell had 12.9 %.
The May article touched on the problem, reporting
that "And as college-going rates increase, the wealthiest
and most prestigious institutions have become even more
selective, crowding out needy students, who are less
likely to attend academically competitive high schools or
earn top SAT scores." Noting that the Supreme Court's
recent restrictions on Affirmative Action programs had
thrown more attention on class distinctions, the article
quoted a senior fellow of the Century Foundation saying,
"The dirty little secret is that low-income students are
even more underrepresented than underrepresented
minorities..." One recurrent concern was that
financially disadvantaged students would not survive
academically, although so far the Occasional Series has
not covered the mechanics of remedial work.
The traditional route for working class students
was to work one's way through college, but on June 9
the Chronicle reported that "Working-Class Students
Feel the Pinch: Longstanding aid formula can make it
seem that have-nots have more money for college than
they really do." This concerns a familiar glitch: as
tuitions rise, fewer working class parents can afford to
send their children to college, but the formulas presume
that they will try and thus reduce the aid by presumed
parental contributions. Indeed, the U.S. Department of
Education now requires that financial aid offices
presume that students are not independent, which often
has the effect of simply deducting much of a student's
own salary from that student's aid, making the job into
a liability.
The institutions that serve working class
students are not able to make up the difference. The
article looks at California University of Pennsylvania,
an Appalachian school serving the children of coal and
steel -- as coal and steel decline. Also declining is
the state's support of the university, and as the state
support falls, tuition, room and board have risen. And
student employment being transformed into liabilities,
the primary recourses are increasingly debt or stints
in the military: at CUP, student debt has doubled in
the last ten years. Worse, the loans available are
increasingly private. The ultimate result is that
nationally, during the last quarter century, the
percentage of bachelor's degrees going to "upper middle
income and affluent" students has risen from 44% to
58 %. One by-product is that "Working-Class Students
Increasingly End Up at Community Colleges, Giving Up on
a 4-Year Degree."
On July 7, the Chronicle described a pilot program
in a North Carolina county where 8 % of the population
have bachelor's degrees. The program pays for academic
expenses during the first year, presuming that the
students will find support for subsequent years. The
program was launched by former U.S. Senator John Edwards,
who described it in an interview with the Chronicle.
Saying that "Education is absolutely critical in ['poor
kids'] being able to be successful," Edwards said that
"the trend away from getting poor kids, poorer kids,
into college is such a disturbing thing." Edwards said
that it is more than just money: "When their parents
didn't go to college, when they don't live in an
environment where most people go to college and it's not
a given, then inertia pushes them in a different
direction or keeps them from going in the right
direction," and furthermore, there are also "the
bureaucratic hurdles that they're confronted with, which
are worrisome and frightening for a 16-, 17-year-old kid
whose parents didn't go to college, and they don't know
what they're supposed to do."
In the July 21 issue, the Chronicle turned to
the geographic distribution of National Science
Foundation grants, in particular, to the Experimental
Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Epscor),
which is intended to encourage research in 23 largely
rural and largely western and midwestern states that
get very little NSF money even though they have
20 % of the population. (Florida is not an Epscor
state.) The difficulty is that major league academics
go to where the money is, which is where the hi-tech
industries go, bringing in more money, more major
league academics, and so on. A recent study says that
75 % of the companies exploiting university discoveries
were founded in the same state as the university where
the discovery was made. The report was accompanied by
an article on Oklahoma -- an Epscor state -- which is
using money from Epscor for initiatives in weather and
nanotechnology, among other things. The difficulty is
that when the state recently found an extra billion
dollars in its budget, the legislature's first thought
was ... tax cuts. Still, the universities did get
$ 150 million, and the president of the University of
Oklahoma said that if they ultimately get only half a
billion, that would spell success.
Readers may now let their eyes drift up to the
top of this review, and notice that yes, Grinnell
College, with 1500 students, has an endowment of
$ 1.4 billion dollars, nearly ten times what the
state of Oklahoma has scraped together for its
research budget.
The series is continuing, usually producing a new
report each month. The USF Tampa Library subscribes to
the Chronicle, which is available via MyUSF.
Bargaining
The current contract, the United Faculty of Florida /
Board of Trustees Collective Bargaining Agreement is
for a term of three years, with salaries and benefits
renegotiated each year, along with a few other articles
named by each side.
The bargaining process for the 2006-2007 academic
year began with a letter dated April 5, 2006 (sent
shortly after the belated conclusion of the previous
year's negotiations) sent by USF/UFF Chapter President
Roy Weatherford. Weatherford appointed the UFF's
bargaining team, which includes Mark Klisch, Kathleen
de la Pena McCook, Steve Permuth, Art Shapiro, and
Sonia Wohlmuth, with Bob Welker as Chief Negotiator.
Our team prepared with six or seven pre-bargaining
strategy and planning sessions to begin developing the
UFF proposal. The USF Administration team was a little
slower to get going, so actual bargaining did not begin
until June 2. There have now been seven formal
sessions of approximately three hours each, with many
more hours of research, writing, scheduling, venting,
and exchanging endless e-mails. None of these
individuals has received any money for this huge
contribution of time and effort, and Bob Welker's lone
one course of released time scarcely compensated for
the many nights he worked until one in the morning and
several hours the next day drafting, rewriting,
researching, and refining our positions.
We still are not over the main hurdles of
bargaining, and tension is rising. If you see any of
these generous colleagues who have been working so hard
on your behalf, please give them some thanks and
encouragement. They are pulling far more than their
share of the load in advancing our common interests.
Logistics Changes
The official purpose of this Biweekly (which, as has
been noted before, really should be called a
"fortnightly") is to announce the meetings of the USF
Chapter of the United Faculty of Florida. The Chapter
is the primary policy-making body of the union at USF,
and all UFF members are welcome. (Non-members are
invited to come and see what we're up to. Lunch is
free.)
Tomorrow, Friday, the Chapter meeting will be at
noon at CDB's at 51st & Fowler, when the schedule for
meetings in the fall semester will be set. After the
meeting, there will be a UFF Biweekly Extra announcing
the fall schedule, and henceforth, the UFF Biweekly
will continue to be broadcast the night before the
Chapter meeting, serving as a reminder of the meeting.
Thus this UFF Biweekly, and the upcoming UFF
Biweekly Extra, will be the last Biweeklies that have
"Gregory McColm" as the sender. The next regular
UFF Biweekly will have "uff" as the sender. The UFF
Biweekly will still be broadcast from an off-campus
server which maintains our off-campus page,
http://uff.ourusf.org/, where past issues of the
UFF Biweekly are archived.
The Biweekly will continue to be sent in plain
text. This may be boring (most newsletters are sent
in HTML, at least), but our primary concern is that
the newsletter gets through. As we are all aware, the
tide of junk mail continues to rise to the point that
some of us (including this webmaster) receive over
200 items a day. USF's various machines have various
filters, none perfect, and all requiring supervision.
Just in case you haven't read the missives from IT,
the primary concerns are:
- The filters make mistrakes. In dealing with such
tides of spam, they almost always junk the
refinancing ads while putting the conference
announcements in the inbox, but even a 1 % error
rate can mean one, two, or three goofs a day,
including that critical memo from one's colleague
down the hall.
There are two things one must do. One must
be aware of mail that one expects to get but does
not. (The UFF Biweekly is an example: if you do
not get it for several weeks, it could be a sign
that your filter has decided UFF is a suspicious
organization.) So one must check one's junk mail
folder periodically, for that could be where the
missing UFF Biweekly -- not to mention your
colleague's critical memo -- has been dumped.
Second, Some mailtools get ... unhappy ... when
their folders get too full, and an unhappy
mailtool can complicate one's life. It is
probably a good idea to empty one's junk mail
folder periodically.
- The filters are not only to protect us from viagra
and ink cartridge ads, they are also to protect
our computers from viruses and worms. One of the
most popular routes for attacking computers is via
their mailtools. The filters thus function a bit
like the security guards at airports, looking for
hidden weapons.
One consequence is that filters are very
sensitive to attachments. Like airport security,
when a particular kind of file is used in an
attempt to breach security, the filters become
VERY paranoid about all attachments of such types.
For example, while ZIP and TAR files can be very
convenient sacks for carrying many files around,
they are also great hiding places for worms and
viruses, which is why some junk filters simply
delete them. That's why some mail comes with a
TXT attachment saying something like 'for your
privacy, we removed this attachment and if you
want it back, contact us at ...' That's one
reason why the UFF Biweekly avoids sending
attachments.
Of course, there have been cases of overzealous filters
(the union brought such a case to the Administration's
attention recently, and the Administration has assured
us that they will have a firm talk with the filter).
But as long as former dictators discover millions of
dollars to be smuggled into the USA, we will continue
to get spam. Like washing machine and air conditioner
filters, spam filters need to be watched.
At any rate, the UFF Biweekly will continue to be
broadcast in plain text with no attachments, using the
subject line "UFF (Faculty Union) Biweekly". If you
have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me at
uff_biweekly-owner@ourusf.org.
Welcome Back!
Happy Labor Day!
The computers are compiling our enrollment lists,
we are compiling our reading lists, and students are
getting oriented. The academic year is upon us.
Teaching is an ancient profession. While there
may be some question about ants teaching ants, there
seems little doubt about meerkats, those social African
mongeese that live peaceably among TV cameramen in the
Kalahari. Alex Thornton and Katherine McAuliffe of
Cambridge University describe in the July 14 issue of
Science magazine how meerkat cubs learn to deal with
tricky prey ... like scorpions. Adults present very
young pups with dead scorpions, and then present older
pups with live scorpions whose tails have been bitten
off. Pups presented with increasingly challenging prey
learn more effectively how to deal with it, especially
with adults looking on, occasionally providing, um,
hints for pups experiencing technical difficulties.
Ours is an ancient profession. It is also hard
work. And not just for us.
Herbert Simon has called chess the Drosophila for
cognitive psychology. Human grandmasters and computer
grandmasters follow very different kinds of strategies;
the computers relying on their ability to rapidly assign
numerical values to vast arrays of possibilities, and
then choosing a possibility with maximal (theoretical)
potential, while the humans rely on their ability to get
a gist of the position by breaking it into "chunks" and
looking at how the chunks fit. This "chunking"
operation is not unique to chess: we see it in how
students learn to read, write, and compute.
But it takes a long time to learn how to almost
effortlessly "chunk" a chess position into two central
pawns controlling the center here, a bishop lurking
behind a ridge of pawns there, and so on, and then
being able to abstract a next move. It takes playing
literally thousands of chess games to develop this
ability.
The strongest indicator of how well a person will
learn chess is the amount of time and energy that that
person puts into it. The amount of coaching, the
number of chess books, the joining of chess clubs,
while somewhat helpful, are weaker indicators than the
amount of time and effort the player actually spends
practicing chess. Like adult meerkats, we do not so
much impart knowledge to the next generation as provide
them with the chance to develop that knowledge
themselves.
This is hard work for both teachers and students.
It is a calling, but recognition and compensation
are nice, and that is why the USF Chapter of the UFF is
launching a campaign to strengthen the union so that it
can more effectively defend our rights and interests.
And what the Chapter needs is members. What the union
can do for faculty and university professionals depends
substantially on how many of those faculty and
university professionals are union members. While
voting for the union, participating in ratification
referenda, and being supportive of the union's goals
are somewhat helpful, what really makes the difference
is actual, dues-paying -- and even actively participating
-- membership. Dues-paying membership is the strongest
single indicator of the bargaining strength of a union.
This year, Sherman Dorn
(at dorn@mail.usf.edu)
and Steve Permuth will be leading a Membership Campaign.
So for this Labor Day, we ask everyone who is
interested in meeting people, making friends across
campus, and helping their colleagues, to contact Sherman
Dorn and join the effort.