College students “unimpressed” with their professors’ use of technology

Campus Technology reports:

While students and faculty seem to agree on the importance of technology in education, the two groups do not agree on how well it’s being implemented. According to new research released Monday, only 38 percent of students indicated that their instructors “understand technology and fully integrate it into their classes.” Students also rated that lack of understanding as “the biggest obstacle to classroom technology integration.”

Despite this, 74 percent of higher education instructors polled indicated that they “incorporate technology into every class or nearly every class,” and 67 percent said they were “satisfied with their technology professional development.”

The debate over 3-year bachelor’s degrees

Recently, NEWSWEEK published this cover story by former US Secretary of Education (and current Republican senator) Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Sen. Alexander argues that four-year bachelor’s degrees are outmoded and too expensive to maintain in the current economic climate. He concludes:

Expanding the three-year option or year-round schedules may be difficult, but it may be more palatable than asking Congress for additional bailout money, asking legislators for more state support, or asking students for even higher tuition payments. Campuses willing to adopt convenient schedules along with more-focused, less-expensive degrees may find that they have a competitive advantage in attracting bright, motivated students.

 

In the same issue, NEWSWEEK published this very interesting debate between five researchers and policy makers from around higher education. Both these articles are well worth reading.

US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan rails against “mediocre” schools of education

Jay Mathews reports in the Washington Post:

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, in prepared remarks circulating in advance of a speech Thursday, accuses many of the nation’s schools of education of doing “a mediocre job of preparing teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom.”

The full text of Duncan’s speech can be found here.

UPDATE: As expected, Sec. Duncan’s speech has elicited much reaction. Here are examples from Education Week, Inside Higher Ed, and Reuters.

Are 3-year degrees the wave of the future?

Inside Higher Ed reports on the increasing popularity of 3-year bachelor’s degree programs.

Keeping grade appeals to a minimum

I typically post ’straight news’ stories but this op-ed piece from Inside Higher Ed’s Shari Dinkins is thought provoking enough that I wanted t share it.

Community colleges may be insufficiently challenging, reports suggests

USA Today reports:

Though many community college students say their coursework is challenging, there is “ample evidence” colleges can do more to help more students do their best work, a report says.

The report, including findings from a survey of more than 343,000 students on 585 community college campuses in 48 states, aims to help colleges assess the quality of education their students receive. Questions are based on research showing that the more engaged, or actively involved, students are in their schoolwork, the more likely they are to meet educational goals.

Of this year’s respondents, 59% said their primary goal is to earn an associate’s degree, and 52% planned to transfer to a four-year college. Nationally, about 36% of community college students earn a certificate or an associate’s or bachelor’s degree within six years, according to a federal data analysis by the Community College Research Center at Teachers College.

Many said they were working hard, but overall findings offered a mixed picture of the intersection between student effort and faculty expectations.

For example, 49% of students said they often or very often worked harder than they thought they would need to meet an instructor’s standards, and 68% described their exams as more than moderately challenging.

Yet 67% of full-time students said they spent 10 or fewer hours preparing for class in an average week, and 24% said they always came to class prepared. Among full-time students, 29% said they had written four or fewer papers of any length during the current school year.

“Students aren’t going to learn to write well at that rate,” survey director Kay McClenney says.

When her organization asks students in focus groups about their academic experiences, she says, “one of the more poignant things we hear, and we hear it relatively often, is: ‘They don’t expect enough of me.’ “

Feds investigating Title IX violations at grant-receiving universities

The NY Times reports that

The National Science Foundation, NASA and the Department of Energy have set up programs to look for sexual discrimination at universities receiving federal grants. Investigators have been taking inventories of lab space and interviewing faculty members and students in physics and engineering departments at schools like Columbia, the University of Wisconsin, M.I.T. and the University of Maryland.

So far, these Title IX compliance reviews haven’t had much visible impact on campuses beyond inspiring a few complaints from faculty members. (The journal Science quoted Amber Miller, a physicist at Columbia, as calling her interview “a complete waste of time.”) But some critics fear that the process could lead to a quota system that could seriously hurt scientific research and do more harm than good for women.

The members of Congress and women’s groups who have pushed for science to be “Title Nined” say there is evidence that women face discrimination in certain sciences, but the quality of that evidence is disputed. Critics say there is far better research showing that on average, women’s interest in some fields isn’t the same as men’s.

The passing of the Baby Boom in academia

The NY Times reports on the coming wave of retirements among Baby Boomer faculty, and the differing worldviews of many of the younger academics who are taking their places:

Baby boomers, hired in large numbers during a huge expansion in higher education that continued into the ’70s, are being replaced by younger professors who many of the nearly 50 academics interviewed by The New York Times believe are different from their predecessors — less ideologically polarized and more politically moderate.