Criticism vs. Attack?
March 30, 2015 8:44 AM Subscribe
Last week, two critiques of Kevin Carey's new book, The End of College, coincidentally appeared on the same day in Inside Higher Ed: one by Joshua Kim and the other by Audrey Watters and Sara Goldrick-Rab.
The next day, Kim posted a response to Watters' & Goldrick-Rab's critique, wondering, among other things, if they had "crossed the divide that separates criticism from attack."
Kim's response sparked a flurry of tweets, including a response from David Perry, who asked Kim to Own up; Apologize; Try to do Better.
Kim responded to the tweets and posts, which prompted another response from Perry.
The next day, Kim posted a response to Watters' & Goldrick-Rab's critique, wondering, among other things, if they had "crossed the divide that separates criticism from attack."
Kim's response sparked a flurry of tweets, including a response from David Perry, who asked Kim to Own up; Apologize; Try to do Better.
Kim responded to the tweets and posts, which prompted another response from Perry.
Higher ed, and education technology specifically, likes to pretend we don't have the exact same issues we see in the tech industry at large. (Spoiler alert! We do.) Joshua Kim's day job is the Director of Digital Learning Initiatives at Dartmouth. If you think his attitude -- and the attitudes of so many other white men, who overwhelmingly hold positions of power and influence in the field -- doesn't affect the way our institutions talk and think about online learning, technology in the classroom, etc? I have a bridge for sale.
posted by zebra at 8:59 AM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by zebra at 8:59 AM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
From just reading the two main leads, Watters and Goldrick-Rab write a more convincing review of the faults of Carey's book, while Kim's reads like a very light piece/review. (and that's not just based on column-inches)
posted by k5.user at 9:05 AM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by k5.user at 9:05 AM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
So many words, and more words, to correct/explain/chastise/reform/enlighten and what have you. As far as I can see there is no way that Kim can reasonably defend/explain himself given the substance and nature of Perry's critique and I am not sure why Perry needed to comment on the review rather than the article. Unless it is considered poor form for the authors (Watters/Goldbrick-Rab) to respond on their own I think Perry was presumptuous if not patronizing. As far as I am concerned these folks have too much time of their hands and too few problems of daily living.
posted by rmhsinc at 9:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by rmhsinc at 9:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
The topic here is privilege, power, race, gender, and tone arguments, in addition to, or instead of just, Carey's book.
I don't know if I agree that Carey's book is so beside the point here — probably there are several directions a discussion about this spat could go, to be sure, but it seems far from accidental that this spat occurred around Carey's book, specifically. He has a long, long track record of cheerleading for neoliberal-technocratic education "reform" — so it's not a huge surprise (though it is, in general, a pleasure) to see his political stance being attacked, though I think it's certainly still worth considering whether the critical side of this particular micro-controversy attacked it using some of the wrong weapons.
posted by RogerB at 9:28 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
I don't know if I agree that Carey's book is so beside the point here — probably there are several directions a discussion about this spat could go, to be sure, but it seems far from accidental that this spat occurred around Carey's book, specifically. He has a long, long track record of cheerleading for neoliberal-technocratic education "reform" — so it's not a huge surprise (though it is, in general, a pleasure) to see his political stance being attacked, though I think it's certainly still worth considering whether the critical side of this particular micro-controversy attacked it using some of the wrong weapons.
posted by RogerB at 9:28 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
College (or "university" as I've been taught to say in Canada- "college" is analogous to JC or CC in then US but I digress) isn't about learning. It's about credentialing. All the MOOCs in the world will get you as far as "the college of hard knocks" did in the analogue age: a conversation starter and ender. No job, no network, no credential.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:30 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:30 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
From just reading the two main leads, Watters and Goldrick-Rab write a more convincing review of the faults of Carey's book, while Kim's reads like a very light piece/review. (and that's not just based on column-inches)
I agree, and Carey's politics with regards to those issues deserve to be punctured with facts. But I do wonder how much trust can be placed in their arguments when they got more than one easily-researched fact wrong in their critique. They had to include an editor's note correction in their piece after Carey and others pointed out errors.
posted by zarq at 9:31 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
I agree, and Carey's politics with regards to those issues deserve to be punctured with facts. But I do wonder how much trust can be placed in their arguments when they got more than one easily-researched fact wrong in their critique. They had to include an editor's note correction in their piece after Carey and others pointed out errors.
posted by zarq at 9:31 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
his attitude -- and the attitudes of so many other white men, who overwhelmingly hold positions of power and influence in the field -- [affects] the way our institutions talk and think about online learning, technology in the classroom
Right, yeah. To me the very best outcome here would be wider exposure for the kind of covert light-neoliberalism and administration-centrism that is so endemic in the edu-tech world, reframing it as a form of right-wing ideology rather than the apolitical solutionism that it pretends to be.
posted by RogerB at 9:33 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
Right, yeah. To me the very best outcome here would be wider exposure for the kind of covert light-neoliberalism and administration-centrism that is so endemic in the edu-tech world, reframing it as a form of right-wing ideology rather than the apolitical solutionism that it pretends to be.
posted by RogerB at 9:33 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
This post with a review of two books critiquing another book gives me tummy pains,
When I read about the mess oh higher Ed, I always look to see how this simple fact is treated...if schools use more and more part timers,ie, adjuncts, and grad school teac hers, thus greatly reducing costs, why do tuition increases always far exceed all other price increases in our country?
posted by Postroad at 9:33 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
When I read about the mess oh higher Ed, I always look to see how this simple fact is treated...if schools use more and more part timers,ie, adjuncts, and grad school teac hers, thus greatly reducing costs, why do tuition increases always far exceed all other price increases in our country?
posted by Postroad at 9:33 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
Carey responded to the "Techno Fantasies" review in the comments. The brouhaha over Kim's review seems to be rather besides the point (or more uncharitably, an example of picking on an easy target).
posted by topynate at 9:33 AM on March 30, 2015
posted by topynate at 9:33 AM on March 30, 2015
The largest problem for "The University of Everywhere" is laid out by Watters and Goldrick-Rab at the beginning of the article. Yes, the issues of student prep, access to technology and connectivity, and the free time to engage in weakly-structured study (which have strong class, and therefore race, connections) are very significant. However, a more significant problem is that it doesn't work (except in very specific and not-particularly-lucrative) cases.
Online students perform poorly compared to face-to-face students, even when the online courses have a lower student to teacher ratio. Obviously, we are in the infancy of this particular kind of teaching and learning, and it's quite possible we will get better at it, but the track record for online teaching is not great. The track record for MOOCs, the darling of the "The University of Everywhere" people, is not just weak, it is catastrophic. San Jose Sate's program (mentioned by Watters and Goldrick-Rab in that second link), despite involving the most MOOC-friendly subjects imaginable, crashed and burned in less than one semester.
Now, graduate students and people in post-graduate certificate programs do better than undergraduates in online courses, and there is some effective teaching there (and MOOCs might work), but graduate teaching is not the major cost and revenue center for most universities (leaving research out of it). Really, at the heart of this "movement" is the naked desire for Capitalism to get its fingers into Higher Education because it's desperate for new markets to exploit. Taking a long view, "business methods" have not been shown to do all that well as a guideline for how to run a business, and they have been disasters when applied to government and K-12 teaching, so really the only reason to champion this particular scheme is because you are a shill for companies that hope to drain the public coffers of education money before the whole edifice collapses. Private profit, public loss, this time on the back of students.
Now, once we have got to that ugly point, you can add racism as the fetid cherry on the sundae. Hurrah!
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:40 AM on March 30, 2015 [35 favorites]
Online students perform poorly compared to face-to-face students, even when the online courses have a lower student to teacher ratio. Obviously, we are in the infancy of this particular kind of teaching and learning, and it's quite possible we will get better at it, but the track record for online teaching is not great. The track record for MOOCs, the darling of the "The University of Everywhere" people, is not just weak, it is catastrophic. San Jose Sate's program (mentioned by Watters and Goldrick-Rab in that second link), despite involving the most MOOC-friendly subjects imaginable, crashed and burned in less than one semester.
Now, graduate students and people in post-graduate certificate programs do better than undergraduates in online courses, and there is some effective teaching there (and MOOCs might work), but graduate teaching is not the major cost and revenue center for most universities (leaving research out of it). Really, at the heart of this "movement" is the naked desire for Capitalism to get its fingers into Higher Education because it's desperate for new markets to exploit. Taking a long view, "business methods" have not been shown to do all that well as a guideline for how to run a business, and they have been disasters when applied to government and K-12 teaching, so really the only reason to champion this particular scheme is because you are a shill for companies that hope to drain the public coffers of education money before the whole edifice collapses. Private profit, public loss, this time on the back of students.
Now, once we have got to that ugly point, you can add racism as the fetid cherry on the sundae. Hurrah!
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:40 AM on March 30, 2015 [35 favorites]
if schools use more and more part timers,ie, adjuncts, and grad school teac hers, thus greatly reducing costs, why do tuition increases always far exceed all other price increases in our country?
sports, rock walls, sushi in the dining hall, never ending capital expansion and 97 people to run the IRB office.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:50 AM on March 30, 2015 [6 favorites]
sports, rock walls, sushi in the dining hall, never ending capital expansion and 97 people to run the IRB office.
posted by Lutoslawski at 9:50 AM on March 30, 2015 [6 favorites]
if schools use more and more part timers,ie, adjuncts, and grad school teac hers, thus greatly reducing costs, why do tuition increases always far exceed all other price increases in our country?
Less Government funding, and lots more administrative bureaucrats with half million dollar salaries who are essentially corporate parasites.
posted by ovvl at 9:53 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]
Less Government funding, and lots more administrative bureaucrats with half million dollar salaries who are essentially corporate parasites.
posted by ovvl at 9:53 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]
The rapid growth of an administrative class within the academy is definitely a significant portion of the problem but not the only source.
Demands of 4-year "traditional" students to experience the college experience with all the bells and whistles has dramatically fueled capital expenditures on new dorms, apartments and residence halls as well as new amenities.
IT costs are extreme and while efforts are made to constrain their costs it's not like the average campus can go "let's not have a SIS or ERP solution".
Regulatory compliance has dramatically increased the number of administrative workers. Factor in the high level of complexity that is student financial aid and all the other required programs and yes most campuses have had a massive increase in administrative budgets vis-a-vis academic budgets.
Costs of providing the needed infrastructure at research institutions are extremely high. Lab space, IT support, instrumentation, research support, etc. And this is just to be able to have researchers compete for the increasingly smaller amount of available grant funding.
I'm not saying that MOOCs and distance learning are the ultimate answer but the reality is that most universities have had large increases in enrollment due to the echo boomers but from a demographic perspective that's liable to result in a bust cycle unless universities can attract and retain non-traditional students for which the brick and mortar classroom experience is either not wanted or it doesn't meet their needs.
Yes, it's quite likely that in-class students outperform their distance education peers but when many students are mainly looking at increased education as a way out of poverty, or a way to lift up their family situation I'm not sure that student performance is necessarily the only measurement of success.
posted by vuron at 10:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
Demands of 4-year "traditional" students to experience the college experience with all the bells and whistles has dramatically fueled capital expenditures on new dorms, apartments and residence halls as well as new amenities.
IT costs are extreme and while efforts are made to constrain their costs it's not like the average campus can go "let's not have a SIS or ERP solution".
Regulatory compliance has dramatically increased the number of administrative workers. Factor in the high level of complexity that is student financial aid and all the other required programs and yes most campuses have had a massive increase in administrative budgets vis-a-vis academic budgets.
Costs of providing the needed infrastructure at research institutions are extremely high. Lab space, IT support, instrumentation, research support, etc. And this is just to be able to have researchers compete for the increasingly smaller amount of available grant funding.
I'm not saying that MOOCs and distance learning are the ultimate answer but the reality is that most universities have had large increases in enrollment due to the echo boomers but from a demographic perspective that's liable to result in a bust cycle unless universities can attract and retain non-traditional students for which the brick and mortar classroom experience is either not wanted or it doesn't meet their needs.
Yes, it's quite likely that in-class students outperform their distance education peers but when many students are mainly looking at increased education as a way out of poverty, or a way to lift up their family situation I'm not sure that student performance is necessarily the only measurement of success.
posted by vuron at 10:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
if schools use more and more part timers,ie, adjuncts, and grad school teac hers, thus greatly reducing costs, why do tuition increases always far exceed all other price increases in our country?
sports, rock walls, sushi in the dining hall, never ending capital expansion and 97 people to run the IRB office.
If it were those things, then the cost increases would be limited to colleges that had those things. But it's not. It's system-wide. Community colleges without sports, rock walls, or sushi in the dining hall have had similar cost increases. If the situation could be ascribed to simple mendacity or foolishness, you'd expect to see at least occasional exceptions. But there aren't any.
Less Government funding, and lots more administrative bureaucrats with half million dollar salaries who are essentially corporate parasites.
Government disinvestment is a major cost driver, yeah, but it's not everything. Private schools have had massive cost increases as well. The "proliferation of bureaucrats" argument is kinda true and kinds not -- it's less that there are a bunch of guys rolling in thousand dollar bills and more that colleges have been subjected to intense mission creep that's not about sushi bars and rock walls.
Another large part of the cause is Baumol's cost disease: "...rates of productivity growth are uneven across industries, and that the products or services of the industries with lower productivity growth will gradually and inexorably become more expensive than those of the industries with higher productivity growth."
Oh, and health insurance costs. Gotta love those.
The ubiquity of the crazy cost increases points to a systemic issue, not individual acts of greed and mendacity.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 10:18 AM on March 30, 2015 [10 favorites]
sports, rock walls, sushi in the dining hall, never ending capital expansion and 97 people to run the IRB office.
If it were those things, then the cost increases would be limited to colleges that had those things. But it's not. It's system-wide. Community colleges without sports, rock walls, or sushi in the dining hall have had similar cost increases. If the situation could be ascribed to simple mendacity or foolishness, you'd expect to see at least occasional exceptions. But there aren't any.
Less Government funding, and lots more administrative bureaucrats with half million dollar salaries who are essentially corporate parasites.
Government disinvestment is a major cost driver, yeah, but it's not everything. Private schools have had massive cost increases as well. The "proliferation of bureaucrats" argument is kinda true and kinds not -- it's less that there are a bunch of guys rolling in thousand dollar bills and more that colleges have been subjected to intense mission creep that's not about sushi bars and rock walls.
Another large part of the cause is Baumol's cost disease: "...rates of productivity growth are uneven across industries, and that the products or services of the industries with lower productivity growth will gradually and inexorably become more expensive than those of the industries with higher productivity growth."
Oh, and health insurance costs. Gotta love those.
The ubiquity of the crazy cost increases points to a systemic issue, not individual acts of greed and mendacity.
posted by Harvey Jerkwater at 10:18 AM on March 30, 2015 [10 favorites]
As a lefty Creative Commons type, I want to believe in the University of Everywhere, but as someone fairly acquainted with the inner workings of higher ed, it's true outcome seems obvious:
The children of the wealthy will continue to learn and more importantly network at elite, private institutions, as they always have. Meanwhile, accessible institutions like state universities and community colleges will continue to be defunded and under-served until they cease to exist at all, and are replaced with the University of Everywhere. Poor and middle class students will be encouraged to "better themselves," while lacking any kind of support or safety net and essentially being left to sink or swim. All failures will be seen as direct evidence of personal inadequacies. As MOOCs replace actual college, they will begin to charge fees... and more fees... and more fees, which the government will encourage by offering large loans to 19-year-old kids. Even for those who do manage to educate themselves brilliantly via their self-guided access to online courses, their credentials will be inferior; the unequal two-tier degree system will instantly mark via resume the haves from the have-nots, returning to the days of yore when a graduate degree actually meant something. The professors who teach these online courses will be exploited even more thoroughly than adjunct professors are today and paid at poverty rate wages -- the new Uber drivers of the educational world -- while the institutions that employ them enjoy record profits. The wealthy will benefit immensely and everyone else will suffer. But that's nothing new.
Yeah, Watters' and Goldrick-Rab's critique was pretty acerbic. But I don't blame them for being bitter and angry. And I think it's worth asking, when certain people are singing the praises of "disruptive models," if these brave new opportunities are ones they'd actually want for themselves and their kids, or just, you know... those "other" people, the ones they think should be grateful to get anything at all.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 10:19 AM on March 30, 2015 [29 favorites]
The children of the wealthy will continue to learn and more importantly network at elite, private institutions, as they always have. Meanwhile, accessible institutions like state universities and community colleges will continue to be defunded and under-served until they cease to exist at all, and are replaced with the University of Everywhere. Poor and middle class students will be encouraged to "better themselves," while lacking any kind of support or safety net and essentially being left to sink or swim. All failures will be seen as direct evidence of personal inadequacies. As MOOCs replace actual college, they will begin to charge fees... and more fees... and more fees, which the government will encourage by offering large loans to 19-year-old kids. Even for those who do manage to educate themselves brilliantly via their self-guided access to online courses, their credentials will be inferior; the unequal two-tier degree system will instantly mark via resume the haves from the have-nots, returning to the days of yore when a graduate degree actually meant something. The professors who teach these online courses will be exploited even more thoroughly than adjunct professors are today and paid at poverty rate wages -- the new Uber drivers of the educational world -- while the institutions that employ them enjoy record profits. The wealthy will benefit immensely and everyone else will suffer. But that's nothing new.
Yeah, Watters' and Goldrick-Rab's critique was pretty acerbic. But I don't blame them for being bitter and angry. And I think it's worth asking, when certain people are singing the praises of "disruptive models," if these brave new opportunities are ones they'd actually want for themselves and their kids, or just, you know... those "other" people, the ones they think should be grateful to get anything at all.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 10:19 AM on March 30, 2015 [29 favorites]
if schools use more and more part timers,ie, adjuncts, and grad school teac hers, thus greatly reducing costs, why do tuition increases always far exceed all other price increases in our country?
Sometimes the answer is simple:
They don't. What you're seeing is in large part a decoupling of published tuition and what people actually pay. Average net tuition and fees is increasing faster than inflation, but not drastically and not monotonically. Here's a half-assed graph of average net price by year for public and private 4-year schools in constant 2014 dollars from collegeboard data. In public schools I would bet a nice meal that at least 90% of the increase in real net prices is just making up for drops in state appropriations.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:27 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]
Sometimes the answer is simple:
They don't. What you're seeing is in large part a decoupling of published tuition and what people actually pay. Average net tuition and fees is increasing faster than inflation, but not drastically and not monotonically. Here's a half-assed graph of average net price by year for public and private 4-year schools in constant 2014 dollars from collegeboard data. In public schools I would bet a nice meal that at least 90% of the increase in real net prices is just making up for drops in state appropriations.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:27 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]
Yes, it's quite likely that in-class students outperform their distance education peers but when many students are mainly looking at increased education as a way out of poverty, or a way to lift up their family situation I'm not sure that student performance is necessarily the only measurement of success.
Part of the problem, though is that the gap between online and face-to-face classes is even worse than the picture I gave above for students with weak educational traiing and poor or non-existent support structures.
MOOCs are way way worse. In "traditional online classes," the drop rate is 2-3 times that of similar face-to-face classes and can reach 50%. In MOOCs, the successful completion rate is in the single digits in the most positive cases. Which is fine for a free "study if you feel like it" model for life-long learners. The moment you charge as much as a dollar for the course, being aware that more than 90% of your students will get nothing for that dollar, you are not an educator; you are a scam artist.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:31 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
Part of the problem, though is that the gap between online and face-to-face classes is even worse than the picture I gave above for students with weak educational traiing and poor or non-existent support structures.
MOOCs are way way worse. In "traditional online classes," the drop rate is 2-3 times that of similar face-to-face classes and can reach 50%. In MOOCs, the successful completion rate is in the single digits in the most positive cases. Which is fine for a free "study if you feel like it" model for life-long learners. The moment you charge as much as a dollar for the course, being aware that more than 90% of your students will get nothing for that dollar, you are not an educator; you are a scam artist.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:31 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
Do paid MOOCs have such low completion rates?
San Jose's experiment says yes.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:36 AM on March 30, 2015 [4 favorites]
San Jose's experiment says yes.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:36 AM on March 30, 2015 [4 favorites]
The retention rate for Distance Education classes is concerning and unfortunately a large percentage of that is due to the limited technical literacy of many non-traditional students. This is pretty much a problem with just about every distance education program and is probably much worse with MOOCs. The unfortunate thing is that we do need these alternative models because increasingly you absolutely need an undergraduate degree or even graduate degree to get into even moderate levels of social mobility and unfortunately not every potential student lives within an acceptable radius of a 4 year institution.
The reality is that the elite institutions can charge whatever the market will bear but every other institution is largely scrambling to make due with limited resources and increasing demands.
posted by vuron at 10:41 AM on March 30, 2015
The reality is that the elite institutions can charge whatever the market will bear but every other institution is largely scrambling to make due with limited resources and increasing demands.
posted by vuron at 10:41 AM on March 30, 2015
The retention rate for Distance Education classes is concerning and unfortunately a large percentage of that is due to the limited technical literacy of many non-traditional students.Do you think? Anecdotally, I work mostly with traditionally-aged students, many of whom enroll in both online and traditional classes, and they have a much, much higher failure/ withdrawal rate in the online classes. There are ways to design online classes that can mitigate that, but my sense is that traditional, technologically-literate students also struggle with online classes.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:46 AM on March 30, 2015 [4 favorites]
Yeah, I suspect it's just harder to motivate yourself in a distance learning environment, and also that MOOC users are more likely to be holding down full-time+ jobs. (But I don't have data, that's just speculation, so maybe I'm wrong there.)
posted by en forme de poire at 10:49 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by en forme de poire at 10:49 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure why Kim even bothered to respond to his critics. Is it ego? Anyway, I was surprised to this in the comments to his response:
posted by MikeMc at 10:51 AM on March 30, 2015
Prof. Kim,TRP is everywhere...[cue scary music]
Welcome to the "red pill" (i.e. reality, as opposed to the "blue pill", i.e. illusion).
...
Now that you've been treated this way, perhaps the real lesson from this experience wou ld be to reevaluate whether the ideology you have supported is worth your time and effort.
It can often be a shock to have ones illusions shattered, but in the long run it can be valuable. I hope this experience opens your eyes.
posted by MikeMc at 10:51 AM on March 30, 2015
In public schools I would bet a nice meal that at least 90% of the increase in real net prices is just making up for drops in state appropriations.
You'd come close, I think, to winning that bet, but it would depend a little on definitions. The drop in state funding is the largest source of the fee increases at state universities but it is also true that tuition is increasing above the rate of inflation. And why? Because the single biggest component in tuition is salaries, and salaries for people with advanced degrees have increased faster than the rate of inflation pretty steadily over the last several decades.
The reason people turn to the dream of MOOCs to solve the cost problem is because they look like the solutions that have held costs, on average, to the low rate of inflation in other industries: automation, mass-production etc. The problem is that education simply doesn't scale all that well for most purposes.
But higher education is not at all anomalous: the most expensive part of any industry is people, and highly skilled, highly qualified people are the most expensive subset. All professions in which large gains in efficiency by automation or outsourcing (etc.) are hard to come by have become relatively less affordable over the course of the C20th. Handmade objects which were once relatively utilitarian become luxury goods; doctors who used to do housecalls now make you wait weeks for a fleeting clinic visit, etc. In the academy you can do a certain amount of cost-shifting by replacing tenure-track lines with adjuncts, but you can't have a university staffed entirely by adjuncts, so costs inevitably continue to rise faster than inflation.
The cost of dorms and climbing walls and so on are a rounding error on the institutional budgets--that stuff is just an eye-catching but actually irrelevant piece of window-dressing. The increase in admin staff is real (though offset in ways people don't see by the decrease in minor administrative support staff--profs, by and large, do all their own typing and photocopying and arranging of their calendars and so forth these days), but much less dramatic than people think.
As for the brouhaha in the FPP nobody who hasn't read Carey's book is qualified to offer an opinion on Kim's argument that Watters and Goldrick-Rab are too one-sided in their critique. What Kim is offering is not a "tone" argument, it's an argument about intellectual honesty. He is saying that they have mischaracterized Carey's argument in a one-sided way. That is a perfectly respectable criticism to offer. Whether or not it is correct can only be judged by people who have read Carey's book and are sufficiently au fait with the field to offer an informed opinion. That means most of us (including myself) have no valid opinion to offer.
posted by yoink at 10:51 AM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
You'd come close, I think, to winning that bet, but it would depend a little on definitions. The drop in state funding is the largest source of the fee increases at state universities but it is also true that tuition is increasing above the rate of inflation. And why? Because the single biggest component in tuition is salaries, and salaries for people with advanced degrees have increased faster than the rate of inflation pretty steadily over the last several decades.
The reason people turn to the dream of MOOCs to solve the cost problem is because they look like the solutions that have held costs, on average, to the low rate of inflation in other industries: automation, mass-production etc. The problem is that education simply doesn't scale all that well for most purposes.
But higher education is not at all anomalous: the most expensive part of any industry is people, and highly skilled, highly qualified people are the most expensive subset. All professions in which large gains in efficiency by automation or outsourcing (etc.) are hard to come by have become relatively less affordable over the course of the C20th. Handmade objects which were once relatively utilitarian become luxury goods; doctors who used to do housecalls now make you wait weeks for a fleeting clinic visit, etc. In the academy you can do a certain amount of cost-shifting by replacing tenure-track lines with adjuncts, but you can't have a university staffed entirely by adjuncts, so costs inevitably continue to rise faster than inflation.
The cost of dorms and climbing walls and so on are a rounding error on the institutional budgets--that stuff is just an eye-catching but actually irrelevant piece of window-dressing. The increase in admin staff is real (though offset in ways people don't see by the decrease in minor administrative support staff--profs, by and large, do all their own typing and photocopying and arranging of their calendars and so forth these days), but much less dramatic than people think.
As for the brouhaha in the FPP nobody who hasn't read Carey's book is qualified to offer an opinion on Kim's argument that Watters and Goldrick-Rab are too one-sided in their critique. What Kim is offering is not a "tone" argument, it's an argument about intellectual honesty. He is saying that they have mischaracterized Carey's argument in a one-sided way. That is a perfectly respectable criticism to offer. Whether or not it is correct can only be judged by people who have read Carey's book and are sufficiently au fait with the field to offer an informed opinion. That means most of us (including myself) have no valid opinion to offer.
posted by yoink at 10:51 AM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
I expected that the Waters and Goldrick-Rab piece was going to be some hyperbolic jeremiad, because of the drama, but it seems like a solid and careful critique. Maybe it's unfavorable, but the world is not a refrigerator for people to hang their work on and expect only praise.
posted by thelonius at 10:52 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 10:52 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]
it is also true that tuition is increasing above the rate of inflation.
I meant to add: this fact (above) means that even if states were to continue funding higher education at exactly the same level as they had in the past (that is, as a total percentage of the state budget--or, if you prefer a different formula, in constant-dollars per-student), those institutions would still have to raise tuition to cover their costs.
posted by yoink at 10:54 AM on March 30, 2015
I meant to add: this fact (above) means that even if states were to continue funding higher education at exactly the same level as they had in the past (that is, as a total percentage of the state budget--or, if you prefer a different formula, in constant-dollars per-student), those institutions would still have to raise tuition to cover their costs.
posted by yoink at 10:54 AM on March 30, 2015
The retention rate for Distance Education classes is concerning and unfortunately a large percentage of that is due to the limited technical literacy of many non-traditional students.
It has to do with weak technological literacy across the board -- "traditional" students are really not that much better at using online tools. The "digital native" has a superficial ability to do what commercial services like facebook and gmail want them to do, but that ability does not mean they quickly pick up course management tools. Add to that that 18 year old people do not generally have a clear understanding of their own learning style, much less discipline and focus, all of which are required to do well in an online learning environment. Graduate students do better, but they succeed despite the drawbacks of online learning.
This does not say that online learning isn't possible -- we can see what we need to do -- but, then, we have a fairly good idea of what it will take to get us to Mars, too. MOOC bosters are the Mars One enthusiasts of higher education, except that getting to Mars will be a simple task compared to moving higher education online.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:56 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
It has to do with weak technological literacy across the board -- "traditional" students are really not that much better at using online tools. The "digital native" has a superficial ability to do what commercial services like facebook and gmail want them to do, but that ability does not mean they quickly pick up course management tools. Add to that that 18 year old people do not generally have a clear understanding of their own learning style, much less discipline and focus, all of which are required to do well in an online learning environment. Graduate students do better, but they succeed despite the drawbacks of online learning.
This does not say that online learning isn't possible -- we can see what we need to do -- but, then, we have a fairly good idea of what it will take to get us to Mars, too. MOOC bosters are the Mars One enthusiasts of higher education, except that getting to Mars will be a simple task compared to moving higher education online.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:56 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
I'm surprised that most of the comments seem to be bypassing one of the main topics of this post to focus on success rates of MOOCS. I think Omniewise hit the nail on the head:
The topic here is privilege, power, race, gender, and tone arguments, in addition to, or instead of just, Carey's book.
That does not make him a sexist. It does mean his critique operates within sexist norms whether or not he intended it to do so.
You can substitute the word critique for book in the sentence above, and see Watters and Goldrick-Rab's critique even more clearly. To me, this the most damning criticism of Carey's book. I also think the privilege Watters and Goldrick-Rab highlight fundamentally hobbles edtech and an argument can be made it does so because edtech inherits from it's parent paradigm, the Silicon Valley start-up culture. It's surprising to me how easily that privilege slips in, since I had thought Higher Ed was a more rigorous and vigilant culture. Then again, the back and forth between Kim and Perry demonstrates that there's still an ongoing struggle there.
posted by herda05 at 11:03 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
The topic here is privilege, power, race, gender, and tone arguments, in addition to, or instead of just, Carey's book.
That does not make him a sexist. It does mean his critique operates within sexist norms whether or not he intended it to do so.
You can substitute the word critique for book in the sentence above, and see Watters and Goldrick-Rab's critique even more clearly. To me, this the most damning criticism of Carey's book. I also think the privilege Watters and Goldrick-Rab highlight fundamentally hobbles edtech and an argument can be made it does so because edtech inherits from it's parent paradigm, the Silicon Valley start-up culture. It's surprising to me how easily that privilege slips in, since I had thought Higher Ed was a more rigorous and vigilant culture. Then again, the back and forth between Kim and Perry demonstrates that there's still an ongoing struggle there.
posted by herda05 at 11:03 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
The drop in state funding is the largest source of the fee increases at state universities but it is also true that tuition is increasing above the rate of inflation.
I don't think distinguishing between tuition and fees is useful given that they're entirely fungible. ISTR that the Cal schools used to have very low "tuition" but charged "fees" that brought tuition+fees up to some normalish amount?
But yes, you'd expect higher ed prices to go up higher than other sectors given how labor-intensive it is.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:07 AM on March 30, 2015
I don't think distinguishing between tuition and fees is useful given that they're entirely fungible. ISTR that the Cal schools used to have very low "tuition" but charged "fees" that brought tuition+fees up to some normalish amount?
But yes, you'd expect higher ed prices to go up higher than other sectors given how labor-intensive it is.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:07 AM on March 30, 2015
Completion rate seems like a terrible way to judge an open-enrollment course except against another open-enrollment course. Or am I completely misunderstanding what's being talked about here?
I think it's clear that the "fair" price for a MOOC would be way, way less than a traditional college course.
Yeah, I suspect it's just harder to motivate yourself in a distance learning environment, and also that MOOC users are more likely to be holding down full-time+ jobs. (But I don't have data, that's just speculation, so maybe I'm wrong there.)
Yeah I know someone who learned enough from Udacity to completely change his career (from biology to software development) but he had the luxury of being able to quit work entirely for months to do it.
posted by atoxyl at 11:09 AM on March 30, 2015
I think it's clear that the "fair" price for a MOOC would be way, way less than a traditional college course.
Yeah, I suspect it's just harder to motivate yourself in a distance learning environment, and also that MOOC users are more likely to be holding down full-time+ jobs. (But I don't have data, that's just speculation, so maybe I'm wrong there.)
Yeah I know someone who learned enough from Udacity to completely change his career (from biology to software development) but he had the luxury of being able to quit work entirely for months to do it.
posted by atoxyl at 11:09 AM on March 30, 2015
What Kim is offering is not a "tone" argument, it's an argument about intellectual honesty. He is saying that they have mischaracterized Carey's argument in a one-sided way.
To quote from Kim's piece:
"What bothers me more is the overall tone of their review.
"I see no space for conversation, for the finding of common ground, or for listening to views that may differ from their own. It is great to disagree with Carey’s arguments - I disagree with many of them. What I think is unfortunate is to close off the space for dialogue."
What you say does not match with what Carey says.
posted by wyndham at 11:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
To quote from Kim's piece:
"What bothers me more is the overall tone of their review.
"I see no space for conversation, for the finding of common ground, or for listening to views that may differ from their own. It is great to disagree with Carey’s arguments - I disagree with many of them. What I think is unfortunate is to close off the space for dialogue."
What you say does not match with what Carey says.
posted by wyndham at 11:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
I don't think distinguishing between tuition and fees is useful given that they're entirely fungible.
Sorry--I wasn't distinguishing; I'm using the terms interchangeably.
posted by yoink at 11:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
Sorry--I wasn't distinguishing; I'm using the terms interchangeably.
posted by yoink at 11:16 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
What you say does not match with what Carey says.
This extended bit you quote:
posted by yoink at 11:19 AM on March 30, 2015
This extended bit you quote:
"I see no space for conversation, for the finding of common ground, or for listening to views that may differ from their own. It is great to disagree with Carey’s arguments - I disagree with many of them. What I think is unfortunate is to close off the space for dialogue."is precisely what I was talking about. He is saying they do not pay sufficient attention to the full range of Carey's arguments, that they present a one-sided account of them and do not give a fair hearing to what is valuable in his book. I have no idea if they do or if they do or don't and neither, I suspect, do you. Without reading Carey's book, it is impossible to form a valid opinion on the subject.
posted by yoink at 11:19 AM on March 30, 2015
GenjiandProust: The retention rate for Distance Education classes is concerning and unfortunately a large percentage of that is due to the limited technical literacy of many students.
You know, in my experience a lot of students have fine technical skills and often exceed the ability of their instructors. The problem with online classes is that they require a level of self-discipline almost nobody has.
Learning is hard, and requires a lot of effort, and most people in most classes don't really care about the subject. So it's really hard to convince yourself to do the work when the only consequence is impersonal numbers or letters on a screen. Sure, passing the class might help you get a job... in theory, in like five years, assuming everything else goes right. It's not very visceral. Having an instructor who at least notices you are gone does actually help. At least in my experience, both as a student and an instructor.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:21 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
You know, in my experience a lot of students have fine technical skills and often exceed the ability of their instructors. The problem with online classes is that they require a level of self-discipline almost nobody has.
Learning is hard, and requires a lot of effort, and most people in most classes don't really care about the subject. So it's really hard to convince yourself to do the work when the only consequence is impersonal numbers or letters on a screen. Sure, passing the class might help you get a job... in theory, in like five years, assuming everything else goes right. It's not very visceral. Having an instructor who at least notices you are gone does actually help. At least in my experience, both as a student and an instructor.
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:21 AM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
You are saying that they have mischaracterized Carey's argument. Kim is saying that their piece does not allow for rebuttal to their argument. Kim is saying they have closed "off the space for dialogue." I do not see how that speaks to their mischaracterization of Carey's argument but instead only the way that they have put their argument forth.
But yes, you're right, I haven't read the Carey book.
posted by wyndham at 11:25 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
But yes, you're right, I haven't read the Carey book.
posted by wyndham at 11:25 AM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
Also let me just quote this again for fun:
"What bothers me more is the overall tone of their review."
posted by wyndham at 11:26 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
"What bothers me more is the overall tone of their review."
posted by wyndham at 11:26 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
nobody who hasn't read Carey's book is qualified to offer an opinion
Nah, unless Carey has actually made some significant change in his thinking recently — which no review of this book I've seen, having read maybe a half-dozen, even hints might be the case — this is not really true at all. Carey has a very long track record (a broken-record record, in fact) of virtually 100% ideological predictability; this particular review of this particular book is just one more in a decade-plus-long line of substantially identical critiques of his position, to which he has for the same decade-plus demonstrated a genuinely remarkable level of obliviousness. When every single review indicates that it says much the same things that its author has been saying for a long time, you don't actually have to have read the latest book to have a pretty clear sense what is going on. In any case, having in fact read plenty of his writing in the past, I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to go read more of it — and if that leaves some debates over it regrettably "one-sided" in condemning him, well, that's pretty much okay by me. Life's too short to spend your time reading books just to give an unearned fifth or sixth chance to a dull technocratic pundit.
posted by RogerB at 11:28 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
Nah, unless Carey has actually made some significant change in his thinking recently — which no review of this book I've seen, having read maybe a half-dozen, even hints might be the case — this is not really true at all. Carey has a very long track record (a broken-record record, in fact) of virtually 100% ideological predictability; this particular review of this particular book is just one more in a decade-plus-long line of substantially identical critiques of his position, to which he has for the same decade-plus demonstrated a genuinely remarkable level of obliviousness. When every single review indicates that it says much the same things that its author has been saying for a long time, you don't actually have to have read the latest book to have a pretty clear sense what is going on. In any case, having in fact read plenty of his writing in the past, I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to go read more of it — and if that leaves some debates over it regrettably "one-sided" in condemning him, well, that's pretty much okay by me. Life's too short to spend your time reading books just to give an unearned fifth or sixth chance to a dull technocratic pundit.
posted by RogerB at 11:28 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
Completion rate seems like a terrible way to judge an open-enrollment course except against another open-enrollment course. Or am I completely misunderstanding what's being talked about here?
Completion rate is a pretty good (although only one of many) metric of how a course is doing. Look at it this way -- if a student in a semester system, 120 credit program is not earning at least 15 credits per semester, they will not graduate in 4 years. If they go into a fifth year, they have increased their tuition and fee costs by 25%. If they go into a 6th year, they are paying 150% of what it took a speedier classmate to get the same degree. So if face to face classes have, say, a 10% drop rate and an online class has a 30% drop rate (these are made up numbers, by the way), students in the online courses are much more likely to pay more for their education.
I think it's clear that the "fair" price for a MOOC would be way, way less than a traditional college course.
Well, yes, if they worked. MOOCs are an attempt to cut employment costs drastically, and that would bring costs down for the end user. In their current state, the completion rate is pathetic, so most of those "saver" students would be paying for nothing, which is not really a savings. Education is reliant on a large number of very skilled employees, and, so far, attempts to reduce this have had significant negative side effects.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:45 AM on March 30, 2015 [4 favorites]
Completion rate is a pretty good (although only one of many) metric of how a course is doing. Look at it this way -- if a student in a semester system, 120 credit program is not earning at least 15 credits per semester, they will not graduate in 4 years. If they go into a fifth year, they have increased their tuition and fee costs by 25%. If they go into a 6th year, they are paying 150% of what it took a speedier classmate to get the same degree. So if face to face classes have, say, a 10% drop rate and an online class has a 30% drop rate (these are made up numbers, by the way), students in the online courses are much more likely to pay more for their education.
I think it's clear that the "fair" price for a MOOC would be way, way less than a traditional college course.
Well, yes, if they worked. MOOCs are an attempt to cut employment costs drastically, and that would bring costs down for the end user. In their current state, the completion rate is pathetic, so most of those "saver" students would be paying for nothing, which is not really a savings. Education is reliant on a large number of very skilled employees, and, so far, attempts to reduce this have had significant negative side effects.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:45 AM on March 30, 2015 [4 favorites]
You know, in my experience a lot of students have fine technical skills and often exceed the ability of their instructors. The problem with online classes is that they require a level of self-discipline almost nobody has.
You must have met different students than I (or, evidently, my colleagues) have. Those students are bright enough, and they have more experience with online tools than their parents have (and I have met some really tech-averse faculty), but that expertise is very shallow. They are not quick adapters to new online tools, especially when that tool isn't streamlined to trade them access to their friends in exchange for personal data.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:51 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
You must have met different students than I (or, evidently, my colleagues) have. Those students are bright enough, and they have more experience with online tools than their parents have (and I have met some really tech-averse faculty), but that expertise is very shallow. They are not quick adapters to new online tools, especially when that tool isn't streamlined to trade them access to their friends in exchange for personal data.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:51 AM on March 30, 2015 [3 favorites]
Perhaps this was an unfortunate sentence in Watters’ and Goldrick-Rab’s review. What bothers me more is the overall tone of their review.
I see no space for conversation, for the finding of common ground, or for listening to views that may differ from their own. It is great to disagree with Carey’s arguments - I disagree with many of them. What I think is unfortunate is to close off the space for dialogue.
This is 100% a "tone" critique. Kim is calling Watters and Goldrick-Rab out for not allowing space for dialogue. To me that's 100% bs. Kim should be looking at their critique and showing how Carey does address privilege, racism, and gender-bias if he thinks they are wrong. OR he can simply own up and say "You're right, Carey doesn't address that. Actually the fact that (ed|fin|service)tech's approach doesn't ever seem to address the complexities of the markets/areas they look to 'disrupt' is an eerily similiar approach to the corporate 'externalities' solution to cost intensive problems. But here's an argument as to why this is a good thing....".
Instead he accuses them of "closing off dialogue". I think Perry's response to Kim lays out exactly why anyone who thinks this isn't about tone and is completely accurate.
nobody who hasn't read Carey's book is qualified to offer an opinion
Also, as someone who is in tech, I get to hear evangelists talk everyday about bs like this. MOOC happens to be the edtech buzzword that upon hearing, the reader should immediately be skeptical of what is being sold.
I'm planning on reading Carey's book just to ensure I'm not missing anything that might be new or actually well thought out. However, I don't need to be an ornithologist to recognize the bird quacking in my yard is a duck.
posted by herda05 at 11:55 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
I see no space for conversation, for the finding of common ground, or for listening to views that may differ from their own. It is great to disagree with Carey’s arguments - I disagree with many of them. What I think is unfortunate is to close off the space for dialogue.
This is 100% a "tone" critique. Kim is calling Watters and Goldrick-Rab out for not allowing space for dialogue. To me that's 100% bs. Kim should be looking at their critique and showing how Carey does address privilege, racism, and gender-bias if he thinks they are wrong. OR he can simply own up and say "You're right, Carey doesn't address that. Actually the fact that (ed|fin|service)tech's approach doesn't ever seem to address the complexities of the markets/areas they look to 'disrupt' is an eerily similiar approach to the corporate 'externalities' solution to cost intensive problems. But here's an argument as to why this is a good thing....".
Instead he accuses them of "closing off dialogue". I think Perry's response to Kim lays out exactly why anyone who thinks this isn't about tone and is completely accurate.
nobody who hasn't read Carey's book is qualified to offer an opinion
Also, as someone who is in tech, I get to hear evangelists talk everyday about bs like this. MOOC happens to be the edtech buzzword that upon hearing, the reader should immediately be skeptical of what is being sold.
I'm planning on reading Carey's book just to ensure I'm not missing anything that might be new or actually well thought out. However, I don't need to be an ornithologist to recognize the bird quacking in my yard is a duck.
posted by herda05 at 11:55 AM on March 30, 2015 [5 favorites]
...and an online class has a 30% drop rate (these are made up numbers, by the way), students in the online courses are much more likely to pay more for their education.
As a general rule, online classes have higher dropout rates than either face-to-face or hybrid classes. That suggests there are unique factors that can't be reconciled through direct comparison .
posted by zarq at 12:08 PM on March 30, 2015
As a general rule, online classes have higher dropout rates than either face-to-face or hybrid classes. That suggests there are unique factors that can't be reconciled through direct comparison .
posted by zarq at 12:08 PM on March 30, 2015
The review by Watters and Goldrick-Rab definitely feels cherry-picked, like they came to the book with an opinion they weren't willing to change. Mixed in with some relevant criticisms, there's a bunch of motivated reasoning and ad hominem attacks; the review reads like a premeditated smear. Carey does a pretty good job in his comment of pointing out when they're reaching.
So does it matter that Kim delivered his criticism as a tone argument when in actual fact the review he's criticizing is about thirty percent tangential rant? Absolutely. He should apologize. That doesn't have anything to do with Carey, though.
Even if Carey is biased and largely wrong, so are Watters and Goldrick-Rab, and I think that's worth pointing out if we're interested in discussing the original topic. MOOCs may be a mixed bag, unproven, replacing one power structure with another, but you can't claim that everything is happy and shiny in university-land without getting the side-eye from me and the $300K in student loan debt my spouse and I share. Don't tell me that costs are going to go up forever and there's nothing to be done, but everyone loves their alma mater so it's okay.
posted by WCWedin at 1:27 PM on March 30, 2015
So does it matter that Kim delivered his criticism as a tone argument when in actual fact the review he's criticizing is about thirty percent tangential rant? Absolutely. He should apologize. That doesn't have anything to do with Carey, though.
Even if Carey is biased and largely wrong, so are Watters and Goldrick-Rab, and I think that's worth pointing out if we're interested in discussing the original topic. MOOCs may be a mixed bag, unproven, replacing one power structure with another, but you can't claim that everything is happy and shiny in university-land without getting the side-eye from me and the $300K in student loan debt my spouse and I share. Don't tell me that costs are going to go up forever and there's nothing to be done, but everyone loves their alma mater so it's okay.
posted by WCWedin at 1:27 PM on March 30, 2015
So if face to face classes have, say, a 10% drop rate and an online class has a 30% drop rate (these are made up numbers, by the way), students in the online courses are much more likely to pay more for their education.
If the fees are similar - which I already said they clearly should not be. I'm not arguing about whether Program X is a scam right now, just that a low expected return doesn't mean no expected return.
Show me how participation unfolds over time, show me what the pass rates are for students who do stick it out, etc, and make sure any comparison is done with modes of education that are similarly open, similarly low-commitment. I'm sure taking this all into account there exists a pricing model that's fair to the student, though my ideal would probably be free course material and paid testing for a formal credential. Whether the same model would be fair to educators is another issue.
posted by atoxyl at 1:46 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
If the fees are similar - which I already said they clearly should not be. I'm not arguing about whether Program X is a scam right now, just that a low expected return doesn't mean no expected return.
Show me how participation unfolds over time, show me what the pass rates are for students who do stick it out, etc, and make sure any comparison is done with modes of education that are similarly open, similarly low-commitment. I'm sure taking this all into account there exists a pricing model that's fair to the student, though my ideal would probably be free course material and paid testing for a formal credential. Whether the same model would be fair to educators is another issue.
posted by atoxyl at 1:46 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
The argument that one has no privilege (or even better, qualification) to critique Carey's ideas as expressed unless they've read the book is one that the author himself is also fond of deploying -- on Twitter and elsewhere -- against people who raise touchy questions about the book. If that's not a way of closing off dialogue, I don't know what is. Of course you should read the book -- that goes without saying, if you want to fully engage with what it says.
But Carey wants to sell his book, above all. He's made no secret of what all of his main arguments and conclusions are, and has put them out there in the open, in lengthy interviews and elsewhere, and in fact has made a campaign of peddling those ideas to sell the book (of course). To shut down any dissent from those ideas on the basis that the book is far more "nuanced" and therefore must be read before making any judgment of the ideas contained in it (as he does) is absurd. In what way is the book more nuanced? If it is, what does that nuance do to change the core arguments and conclusions, if anything? If there is some reason that the nuance isn't already on the table (other than Carey's bald admission in interviews that "Oh, pushing the more nuanced arguments along with a more nuanced title won't sell enough books and get enough media attention"), what is it, and why isn't it on the table? Did he not anticipate the arguments that would be raised? Or perhaps he did anticipate them, and kept the nuance out of the way in order to provoke the arguments and then loftily claim that there's no place for them because they misinterpret what he was "really" saying?
posted by blucevalo at 1:54 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
But Carey wants to sell his book, above all. He's made no secret of what all of his main arguments and conclusions are, and has put them out there in the open, in lengthy interviews and elsewhere, and in fact has made a campaign of peddling those ideas to sell the book (of course). To shut down any dissent from those ideas on the basis that the book is far more "nuanced" and therefore must be read before making any judgment of the ideas contained in it (as he does) is absurd. In what way is the book more nuanced? If it is, what does that nuance do to change the core arguments and conclusions, if anything? If there is some reason that the nuance isn't already on the table (other than Carey's bald admission in interviews that "Oh, pushing the more nuanced arguments along with a more nuanced title won't sell enough books and get enough media attention"), what is it, and why isn't it on the table? Did he not anticipate the arguments that would be raised? Or perhaps he did anticipate them, and kept the nuance out of the way in order to provoke the arguments and then loftily claim that there's no place for them because they misinterpret what he was "really" saying?
posted by blucevalo at 1:54 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
Carey himself focussed on where the review got it wrong, factually. Seems pretty thick skinned from his comments in reply. Don't know why this Kim guy felt compelled to come to Carey's aid...he doesn't need it.
posted by mrbigmuscles at 2:38 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by mrbigmuscles at 2:38 PM on March 30, 2015 [1 favorite]
If the fees are similar - which I already said they clearly should not be.
At most universities I have encountered, the online courses are counted and costed pretty much the same way as the face to face classes. As far as I know, the costs to the students are the same -- after all, the central cost is the professor teaching, and online courses tend to be smaller, so the savings are logistical rather than financial for the university (no classroom to schedule). Since the costs don't drop much, the university can't afford to reduce online tuition (and online-only undergraduate majors are still rare-ish in nonprofit higher education.
The place where there could be (massive) savings is MOOCs, where one professor theoretically teaches thousands of students.** The problem is that 90+% of the students will fail to complete the course (note, not pass, even get to the end to earn a grade), making charging anything a significant moral problem for a university (and nonprofit universities, for the most part, have the moral intent to educate).
What online courses theoretically offer a student is connivence, temporal and geographical, rather than financial savings.
*Which I stress are made-up numbers; I don't have time to hunt up the real figures, although they are roughly in line with numbers I saw about 3 years ago.
** Industrializing educational labor, you know.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:03 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
At most universities I have encountered, the online courses are counted and costed pretty much the same way as the face to face classes. As far as I know, the costs to the students are the same -- after all, the central cost is the professor teaching, and online courses tend to be smaller, so the savings are logistical rather than financial for the university (no classroom to schedule). Since the costs don't drop much, the university can't afford to reduce online tuition (and online-only undergraduate majors are still rare-ish in nonprofit higher education.
The place where there could be (massive) savings is MOOCs, where one professor theoretically teaches thousands of students.** The problem is that 90+% of the students will fail to complete the course (note, not pass, even get to the end to earn a grade), making charging anything a significant moral problem for a university (and nonprofit universities, for the most part, have the moral intent to educate).
What online courses theoretically offer a student is connivence, temporal and geographical, rather than financial savings.
*Which I stress are made-up numbers; I don't have time to hunt up the real figures, although they are roughly in line with numbers I saw about 3 years ago.
** Industrializing educational labor, you know.
posted by GenjiandProust at 3:03 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
At my JC, students are beset by jobs and children poverty. Quite a few of them, their first semester, need to learn how to be able to ask questions and carry on a discussion in a way that is productive, using their vocal cords and their mouths. Moreover, if I taught for a MOOC I'd never get out of my fucking house, so it seems good for nobody.
posted by angrycat at 3:26 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by angrycat at 3:26 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
I started my academic career at this community college where the woman in charge of the math department (she was really the only full time person) was a big big believer in online ed. She really really wanted it to work, because in rural NM, logistics are nontriv. If you could actually have folks in whatever far flung corners of the Navajo Nation or the various pueblos able to access degree-applicable coursework without 3-hr one-way journeys, that would be huge. She was someone who really was unideological about it.
Sometime after I left she went to upgrade her masters, not sure whether to a PhD or an Ed.D, and did her work on online ed, I think both drawing on programs locally and more nationally. And her conclusions is that from the student's perspective they basically add no value over just possessing the textbook. Either the student can learn the material on their own or they can't.
She was really bummed about this.
MOOCs are not anything new. They're just an attempt to keep selling the same platforms, papering over their well known flaws with wild claims of the benefits of scalability.
You don't have to worry about second order effects to object to online ed. It fails on its own terms.
posted by PMdixon at 4:44 PM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
Sometime after I left she went to upgrade her masters, not sure whether to a PhD or an Ed.D, and did her work on online ed, I think both drawing on programs locally and more nationally. And her conclusions is that from the student's perspective they basically add no value over just possessing the textbook. Either the student can learn the material on their own or they can't.
She was really bummed about this.
MOOCs are not anything new. They're just an attempt to keep selling the same platforms, papering over their well known flaws with wild claims of the benefits of scalability.
You don't have to worry about second order effects to object to online ed. It fails on its own terms.
posted by PMdixon at 4:44 PM on March 30, 2015 [8 favorites]
The place where there could be (massive) savings is MOOCs, where one professor theoretically teaches thousands of students.** The problem is that 90+% of the students will fail to complete the course (note, not pass, even get to the end to earn a grade), making charging anything a significant moral problem for a university (and nonprofit universities, for the most part, have the moral intent to educate).
I am talking about MOOCs. Again my point is that it's a moral problem only if fees are incommensurate with the value of the course, which is not zero. I'm sure you're correct that they are a bad deal right now but are the economics such that they will always be? And what's the best indicator of the value of the course? Overall drop rate is a good choice if students have to pay up front. That is fairly unconscionable in my mind, but it doesn't have to be that way - a several week trial period would be much fairer. I don't think drop rate alone is a good indicator of quality because we're talking about very unselective courses advertised toward "nontraditional" students. I'd expect only a small proportion to commit. Do students tend to drop en masse at the beginning - which is addressed by the trial period concept - or is there a high degree of continuous attrition such that it wouldn't really help? Can universities not afford more student-friendly pricing as I've described?
I know very little about how MOOCs have been implemented thus far. It's just that in the absence of other information the (estimated) figure you keep citing seems to give an incomplete picture, of problems that may be fixable.
posted by atoxyl at 6:52 PM on March 30, 2015
I am talking about MOOCs. Again my point is that it's a moral problem only if fees are incommensurate with the value of the course, which is not zero. I'm sure you're correct that they are a bad deal right now but are the economics such that they will always be? And what's the best indicator of the value of the course? Overall drop rate is a good choice if students have to pay up front. That is fairly unconscionable in my mind, but it doesn't have to be that way - a several week trial period would be much fairer. I don't think drop rate alone is a good indicator of quality because we're talking about very unselective courses advertised toward "nontraditional" students. I'd expect only a small proportion to commit. Do students tend to drop en masse at the beginning - which is addressed by the trial period concept - or is there a high degree of continuous attrition such that it wouldn't really help? Can universities not afford more student-friendly pricing as I've described?
I know very little about how MOOCs have been implemented thus far. It's just that in the absence of other information the (estimated) figure you keep citing seems to give an incomplete picture, of problems that may be fixable.
posted by atoxyl at 6:52 PM on March 30, 2015
As an aside, if it worked, I think online ed would be a huge boon towards preserving traditionalish cultures (like the various tribes) as living societies. Brain drain is a huge problem, and while you can't and shouldn't force people to stay if they don't want to, I think allowing them to stay in situ while gaining whatever skillset (education was always seen as the lowest hanging fruit, probably just because that's the largest target in terms of # of guaranteed degreed spots/capita, though there's probably also value per se in having educators generated locally instead of imported) would tend to help folks maintain whatever connections to their roots.
But, again, in the forms that it's been tried in, it doesn't. I'm fairly certain that any form that could work wouldn't entail any significant labor cost savings. Emotional labor and intersubjectivity don't scale like that.
posted by PMdixon at 7:18 PM on March 30, 2015
But, again, in the forms that it's been tried in, it doesn't. I'm fairly certain that any form that could work wouldn't entail any significant labor cost savings. Emotional labor and intersubjectivity don't scale like that.
posted by PMdixon at 7:18 PM on March 30, 2015
Back in olden times there were correspondence courses and distance education. These could be very useful for certain purposes, but were not really designed to replace the entire college system. A well-designed MOOC, like a well-designed textbook, is just a tool that can be used to supplement learning in the right situation if applied properly. But MOOCs are not the entire future of education as we know it, just like correspondence courses were not the entire future of education. Disappointments occur when administrators just view MOOCs as cheap cash-grabs. Any decent distance education experience requires a reasonable investment in resources for proper feedback.
posted by ovvl at 7:56 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 7:56 PM on March 30, 2015 [2 favorites]
This infuriating “but what if students TEACH THEMSELVES” level of discourse around higher ed is a huge part of why I left it. My former colleagues often teach online courses, and they are nightmarish. Students sign up for them and then don’t check their university email accounts for three months and are baffled that they fail. The system shows that huge portions of them never even download the files required for them to do their work.
I think this, like so many “disruption” narratives, is based on this idea that human interaction is sloppy and confusing and therefore needs to be corrected or streamlined or “unbundled”, and that these courses are the way to do it. The problem is that human interaction, in most places but ESPECIALLY in the classroom, is part of the alchemy of learning. The people who write these books and come up with these plans seem to believe that their own educations were an unending series of bootstrapping themselves into knowledge, and to forget the role that actual educators played in any of their breakthroughs.
Here are just a few classroom interactions from my years of teaching undergrads that can’t take place online:
-the time a student looked upset, and I asked what was wrong, and she told me about a family crisis, so I excused her from class and gave her an extension on the assignment (she was not going to ask of her own volition, but, being in the same room as her, I saw her face)
-the class discussions where students practiced disagreeing with each other about the material while remaining respectful to one another personally (they find it very alien at first to disagree verbally with someone sitting next to them at all, but they get better at it through repetition, and it helps them differentiate between criticizing a person’s ideas and criticizing a person)
-anything involving reading out loud
-the “asking stealth questions” method I developed where I would give an incredibly easy reading quiz, and students used the back of the paper to write down questions about the reading (this enabled students who were too shy to speak in class or too embarrassed to admit they were confused to participate in discussion by presenting topics/questions which I could then introduce on their behalf)
-any of the times we all joked around regarding some class topic and created a sense of communal investment
-callbacks to previous discussions (ex: ME: Remember when [Student A] said [thing] about [book]? STUDENTB: Oh yeah, that is kind of like what [character] in [other book] is doing here, right?)
-the way one student’s erudition and investment in the material often makes other students increasingly invested/step up their game
-the student who started a semester sleeping in the back row and gradually woke up, moved forward desk by desk from week to week, until finally he was participating in discussions and bringing up specific parts of the reading by the last month of class
-underlife (an old chestnut of comp theory, the idea that when students are whispering to each other during class, they are often doing so not out of distraction, but out of engagement with the material. Not always true, but often enough— and those students begin to work with each other and the material in concert.)
-discussions about the classroom space itself/struggling with the class computer/going outside together to visit historical sites on campus/the students laughing at me (with my encouragement) when yet another whiteboard marker died in the middle of class
And on and on and on. The people who perceive the value of the classroom experience as negligible when compared to pure content are wearing blinders about what actually happens in the classroom. A lot of what I reference above are experiences that breed actual collegiality— and its power in a classroom is immeasurable. It also is one of the things that most inspires students who are otherwise disadvantaged by class/race/gender, because being treated as equals with ideas and perspectives worth listening to makes them more invested in sticking it out through projects/books/grades that are otherwise UNinspiring.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 7:45 AM on March 31, 2015 [10 favorites]
I think this, like so many “disruption” narratives, is based on this idea that human interaction is sloppy and confusing and therefore needs to be corrected or streamlined or “unbundled”, and that these courses are the way to do it. The problem is that human interaction, in most places but ESPECIALLY in the classroom, is part of the alchemy of learning. The people who write these books and come up with these plans seem to believe that their own educations were an unending series of bootstrapping themselves into knowledge, and to forget the role that actual educators played in any of their breakthroughs.
Here are just a few classroom interactions from my years of teaching undergrads that can’t take place online:
-the time a student looked upset, and I asked what was wrong, and she told me about a family crisis, so I excused her from class and gave her an extension on the assignment (she was not going to ask of her own volition, but, being in the same room as her, I saw her face)
-the class discussions where students practiced disagreeing with each other about the material while remaining respectful to one another personally (they find it very alien at first to disagree verbally with someone sitting next to them at all, but they get better at it through repetition, and it helps them differentiate between criticizing a person’s ideas and criticizing a person)
-anything involving reading out loud
-the “asking stealth questions” method I developed where I would give an incredibly easy reading quiz, and students used the back of the paper to write down questions about the reading (this enabled students who were too shy to speak in class or too embarrassed to admit they were confused to participate in discussion by presenting topics/questions which I could then introduce on their behalf)
-any of the times we all joked around regarding some class topic and created a sense of communal investment
-callbacks to previous discussions (ex: ME: Remember when [Student A] said [thing] about [book]? STUDENTB: Oh yeah, that is kind of like what [character] in [other book] is doing here, right?)
-the way one student’s erudition and investment in the material often makes other students increasingly invested/step up their game
-the student who started a semester sleeping in the back row and gradually woke up, moved forward desk by desk from week to week, until finally he was participating in discussions and bringing up specific parts of the reading by the last month of class
-underlife (an old chestnut of comp theory, the idea that when students are whispering to each other during class, they are often doing so not out of distraction, but out of engagement with the material. Not always true, but often enough— and those students begin to work with each other and the material in concert.)
-discussions about the classroom space itself/struggling with the class computer/going outside together to visit historical sites on campus/the students laughing at me (with my encouragement) when yet another whiteboard marker died in the middle of class
And on and on and on. The people who perceive the value of the classroom experience as negligible when compared to pure content are wearing blinders about what actually happens in the classroom. A lot of what I reference above are experiences that breed actual collegiality— and its power in a classroom is immeasurable. It also is one of the things that most inspires students who are otherwise disadvantaged by class/race/gender, because being treated as equals with ideas and perspectives worth listening to makes them more invested in sticking it out through projects/books/grades that are otherwise UNinspiring.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 7:45 AM on March 31, 2015 [10 favorites]
FWIW one of my university professors 30 years ago ran some distance learning courses for the university. These would have been mail-in correspondence courses or something of that ilk.
"How can the University afford to offer the same exact course you are taking now through Distance Learning at a fraction of the cost?"
It turned out that something over 90% of students paid the tuition but then never returned even the first few assignments, let along completed the entire course.
I don't think we are going to change human nature just by putting a computer and some gee-whiz technology in between, rather than the USPS.
posted by flug at 8:46 AM on March 31, 2015 [3 favorites]
"How can the University afford to offer the same exact course you are taking now through Distance Learning at a fraction of the cost?"
It turned out that something over 90% of students paid the tuition but then never returned even the first few assignments, let along completed the entire course.
I don't think we are going to change human nature just by putting a computer and some gee-whiz technology in between, rather than the USPS.
posted by flug at 8:46 AM on March 31, 2015 [3 favorites]
The argument that one has no privilege (or even better, qualification) to critique Carey's ideas as expressed unless they've read the book is one that the author himself is also fond of deploying -- on Twitter and elsewhere -- against people who raise touchy questions about the book. If that's not a way of closing off dialogue, I don't know what is.
You can critique ideas which you've seen expressed in interviews, in review snippets or wherever to your heart's content. What you cannot plausibly do is weigh in on the question of whether a given review of the book did justice to the book's arguments or not unless you have read that book. You can say "I like the argument made in the review" or "if that review characterizes the book's argument correctly, then I think the book is stupid" or what have you. But you quite literally can have no valid opinion whatsoever as to whether the review was fair and even-handed in its treatment of the book unless you have read the damn book.
posted by yoink at 10:21 AM on March 31, 2015 [1 favorite]
You can critique ideas which you've seen expressed in interviews, in review snippets or wherever to your heart's content. What you cannot plausibly do is weigh in on the question of whether a given review of the book did justice to the book's arguments or not unless you have read that book. You can say "I like the argument made in the review" or "if that review characterizes the book's argument correctly, then I think the book is stupid" or what have you. But you quite literally can have no valid opinion whatsoever as to whether the review was fair and even-handed in its treatment of the book unless you have read the damn book.
posted by yoink at 10:21 AM on March 31, 2015 [1 favorite]
The people who perceive the value of the classroom experience as negligible when compared to pure content are wearing blinders about what actually happens in the classroom.
I think the people who run a lot of these initiatives to "revolutionize the classroom" are people who are successful autodidacts/felt underserved by the traditional classroom. Despite coming from a family of teachers - no, seriously, all of them are teachers - I've always defended the potential of online and self-directed education because I was one of those guys who went through most of, say, calculus only showing up to class for exams. At the same time though I know it doesn't work for everybody and there were also plenty of classes, in my major (CS) and outside, that I was really happy to have the opportunity to attend in person.
posted by atoxyl at 11:59 AM on March 31, 2015 [1 favorite]
I think the people who run a lot of these initiatives to "revolutionize the classroom" are people who are successful autodidacts/felt underserved by the traditional classroom. Despite coming from a family of teachers - no, seriously, all of them are teachers - I've always defended the potential of online and self-directed education because I was one of those guys who went through most of, say, calculus only showing up to class for exams. At the same time though I know it doesn't work for everybody and there were also plenty of classes, in my major (CS) and outside, that I was really happy to have the opportunity to attend in person.
posted by atoxyl at 11:59 AM on March 31, 2015 [1 favorite]
Update: Joshua Kim revisits his position: "My blindspot is not that I thought about gender when I wrote my critique of their review, it is that I did not.
posted by DiscourseMarker at 10:29 AM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by DiscourseMarker at 10:29 AM on April 1, 2015 [1 favorite]
Carey directs the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program, though he might more accurately be called the organization’s chief leveraged buyout consultant. Silicon Valley startups will not merely change education, but will “disrupt” and “scale” it for a global market, he writes in the governing clichés of the age. Like the visionary caste of Silicon Valley disruptors he so ardently admires, Carey seems to have swallowed the blue pill, so his prose is suffused with the breezy techno-utopianism found in your typical Thomas Friedman column. Digital technology will democratize knowledge. The masses, long excluded from access to higher education, will discover that liberation is now at their fingertips. The beautiful souls clinging to personal instruction in traditional classrooms will find the proverbial dustbin of history sweeping them away. You’ve read it all before.Chris Rasmussen for The Baffler's blog: The University of Nowhere
posted by RogerB at 12:21 PM on April 20, 2015 [1 favorite]
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This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
The topic here is privilege, power, race, gender, and tone arguments, in addition to, or instead of just, Carey's book.
posted by OmieWise at 8:51 AM on March 30, 2015 [7 favorites]