What Other Teachers Need

Schools are run by administrators with students as the target market.    The teachers are given tenure and academic freedom, which is a pretty good deal.  What more could we want?

The tenured professors are a miniscule portion of those who carry the teaching load.  It would be interesting to know what percent of college teachers, or FTE, is tenured, and what the trendlines are.  My rough guess would be 80% of the instructors at a state college would be tenured, and maybe 25% at a community college.  In any event, given the amount of continuing and unaccredited ed going on in USA, I'd guess the majority of FTE in adult ed in USA is taught by not-tenured instructors.

The lucky few who have tenure are out of the debate, so a powerful voice in benefitting instructors is in effect bought off.  Nobody minds a system at which they win.

There is no doubt that this group would like representation.  We have the term "gypsy instructors" and there is a lovely website called http://www.adjunctnation.com which advocates for adjunct rights.

Now, what rights?  It seems to me that is heading in the wrong direction.  To try to struggle with administrators is to play their game, acknowledging the administrators as the source of instructors weal.

Now instructors are as varied in their needs as students.  Why sign on to a group that will necessarily fight limited battles for limited gains?  Why put any energy into fighting at all?

Why not an organization that is designed for the instructors, not the students?  What teachers want essentially is steady work, academic freedom and just compensation.  The definition thereof will be unique to each instructor.  They also want as little administrative requirements as possible.  Then the instructors need a means for promotion and enrolling students.

The Seattle Teachers' College provides precisely that.  It is modeled on the ancient system of the student paying the instructor directly.  Instructor quality is doubly assured by a combination of online feedback and reviews plus student payment of instructor directly upon performance.

We need to build up a cadre of instructors so we can get a critical mass of 300 instructors and 400 courses in order to have a solid launch of one working model from which to duplicate into as many markets as the world needs.  That is the task at hand.  let me know if you can join us either live in the Seattle area or online worldwide.

Advice on Continuing Education Programs

Here a California State educator lays out advice for continuing education programs.  Click through and download the .pdf.  It is a pretty good handbook on running a program.  It is remarkable for the granularity of the understanding of the field as it is in California today.

Better Websites

From Google:

Moving ads higher up on a page is a simple yet effective change that can have a big impact on your ad revenue. The area that's immediately visible when a page is loaded without scrolling down is known as "above the fold."

Here is a tool google offers, I used it, i'll see if it helps...

The Coming University Bust

A correspondent studying Chinese in Taiwan sends me this article, which states, inter alia,

At the Juilliard School, which completed a major renovation a few years ago, debt climbed to $195 million last year, from $6 million in inflation-adjusted dollars in 2002. At Miami University, a public institution in Ohio that is overhauling its dormitories and student union, debt rose to $326 million in 2011, from $66 million in 2002, and at New York University, which has embarked on an ambitious expansion, debt was $2.8 billion in 2011, up from $1.2 billion in 2002, according to the Moody’s data.

Well, yes.  The theme is students must pay for this.  Indeed, where else does money for a college come from, except tuition.  Largely borrowed.  There are alumni donations, and government grants, but these debts are in the range of impossible to repay.  And if impossible, they will not be repaid.  At some point, the schools will default on the loans, and the balances written off, and although the bondholders should suffer, where we have state intervention we have chaos, so we cannot know who will bear this burden.

One group that will, no matter what, is the students themselves.  Their tuition contributes, so the cost of the education comes with the gilt-premium.  But it is unlikely they can ever earn enough to cover the cost of the education.

Almost no one is predicting colleges will experience default rates on par with those of indebted students and graduates, at least not anytime soon. While payments on debt principal and interest have increased over all, they remain a manageable piece of the expense pie for most institutions, partly because of historically low interest rates, financial analysts said.

The low interest rates caused the misallocation of resources and the malinvestment in the building boom.   The interest rates will not stay low forever.  Then comes another boom, as in the lowering thereof.  But my jaw dropped at the implication:  "hey, who cares about the students and graduates insolvency problems after getting "educated" as long as the institution does well."  How come the attitude?  Adminstrators pensions.  That is all that matters.

The article goes on:

“We borrowed a lot of money, but we had no choice,” said Thomas H. Powell, the university’s president, who maintains, despite the credit rating, that it has regained its footing and has no need for additional debt. “I wasn’t going to watch the buildings fall down.”

False dilemma and straw man argument, at once.  You always have a choice.  The problem is gilding the lily, misallocation and malinvestment, not "buildings falling down."  Maintenance of beautiful 100 year old buildings would have cost mere millions.  Trying to buy your way into the USNews top 25 costs hundreds of millions in smoothie machines and rock walls.

Still, higher debt payments and other expenses have contributed to the runaway inflation of college costs, and the impact on students is real and often substantial. New financial realities on campuses are imposing conflicting demands on college administrators: do they make their institution more affordable, or continue to spend money to make their campus more attractive?

Did you notice anything?  The word "education" is not in that paragraph.  College costs, demands on administrators (poor things), institution, expenses, even "institution more affordable" but not "education."  How come?

Despite a lull in construction after the financial crisis, borrowing has continued to grow, Moody’s data shows. “Schools are behaving like the Greeks, irresponsibly,” said Richard K. Vedder, an economics professor at Ohio University and director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

And why not?  Those Greek leaders were often educated in USA, one prime minister was actually born in USA, educated at Amherst and Harvard, was the son of an econ prof, so naturally, he would be a socialist.

By comparison, the cost of instruction grew 5 percent in that time period. The Bain report estimates that a third of colleges and universities are financially weaker than they were a few years ago.

That is actually a reduction in actual costs.  I have two daughters at university, and from their comments it is clear that this money is not making it into the classroom or to the instructors.  The universities are pulling emeritus back into the classroom to keep from hiring young new stars, ones whose cost includes pension contributions.  Cutting corners today that will lead to deleterious effects tomorrow.

“How do you bring people to teaching facilities that are really subpar?” he said. “It’s not a matter of gilding the lily, in many cases.”

False dilemma again:  We have an excess of first rate instructors looking for work.  A university is a library with faculty associated.  If you have more than a library, some classrooms, faculty offices and maybe some dorms, you are over doing it.    

David K. Creamer, vice president for finance and business services at Miami University, said the importance of college rankings had pressured administrators to spend more and more. In some rankings, the effect of spending is direct because institutions with “the best dorms” or “the best athletic facilities” are singled out. The effect on other rankings is indirect: better facilities attract better students, and that ultimately raises rankings, Mr. Creamer said.

Ah yes.  We get better students.  And how do we know?  Why, the SAT scores of our applicants are higher.  Never mind that SAT scores are no predictor of success in college or life.  Never mind that SAT scores have been inflated and with the self-selecting teaching to the test prep classes a school would have had an "improvement" in SAT scores anyway.   Just blow smoke.  "I'm getting $285k a year in salary alone (back in 2008, who knows how high it is now) and an astonishing pension ahead.  This will blow up on someone else's watch."  

One rule if you have kids heading to college: no student loans.  This whole problem is based on "easy credit."  You expose your child to being chained to this looming disaster if you burden them and yourselves with student loans.  It may be harder to get an education without student loans, but not impossible.  I've got two kids through and one with a year to go.  No student loans.  It can be done, it is a discipline.  But teaching kids economic discipline is important, since they certainly will never learn it at a USA university.

Direct Granting

I like this trend, in this case a University is facilitating alumni giving money directly to entrepreneurs.  I would say that of course, we need customers, not money, but money can speed things up.

That is fascinating, somethign I think should have started a while ago.  The kickstarter people are finding challenges, the SEC is getting involved, and it may be a tax-free donation to the donor but it is taxable income to the recipient, or so it will probably turn out.

I hope those are pushed back and this direct financing thing works out.

Wy They No Longer Teach Latin

Because people might start getting ideas...

"Quid autem interest quomodo sapiens ad otium veniat, utrum quia res publica illi deest an quia ipse rei publicae, si omnibus defutura res publica est?" (Seneca, de otio, 8.2)

in this case, otium is time characterized by private/social reading/writing as opposed to public involvement (sylvias explanation)

"But what does it matter how a wise man comes to otium, whether because the state is unavailable to the man or the man is unavailable to the state - if the state is going to fail everyone, no matter what? " ( trans sarah stroup from her book catullus, cicero, and a society of patrons,

Track Your Amazon.com Ranking

Here is a way to track the Amazon.com ranking for your book...  pretty cool.  He provides the code so you can do it for your own book.

What Is Your Website Worth?

I went to http://www.freewebsitereport.org/ and put in my www.johnspiers.com website and found out it is the 4.5 millionth most viewed site on the web.  Say!  And it is worth $539 in advertising revenue per year!   Well, that's about right.  It pays for itself.

I put in http://hbhblog.blogspot.com/ which must bring in more revenue, but there is no report.  Sigh.

Promo Potentials Roundup

Assuming one is self-publishing and gets Bowker ISBN,  then...

1. Amazon

A. Amazon marketplace...  personal account, to sell your defective and signed books ON amazon.com.

B.  Amazon associates... personal selling THROUGH amazon.com... links to your own books and other goods on your own website, blogs, etc... for affiliate fees income.

C. Amazon.com Advantage... corporate selling TO amazon.com, your USA biz wholesaling books to amazon.

i. list your books for sale

ii. set up author central to promote yourself

iii. KDP facilities... book to kindle

iv. inside the book so amazon peple can read the entire book before buying (similar to google books)

D. Amazon.ca Advantage ... 

i same as item C but for for canada, 

ii. needs canadian bank account.  Easy to get.

2. Google books

A. read for free with sales link to self and amazon

b. Worldcat (automatic)

C. distribute droid versions instead of Kindle.

3. Apple iPublish.  So far, I know nothing about this.  I need to develop.

World Association for Online Education (WAOE) invites active global scholars

One of the first global virtual organizations, the WAOE is a free academic association for
individual educators concerned with distance education, e-learning, and online education.  
We are not just seeking to increase membership but rather to give active educators an 
opportunity to make a difference in this sometimes murky field, by collaborating with 
other idealistic educators around the world. We started in 1998 with the purpose of  
turning online education into a new professional discipline, and as an international NGO  
now we see much more to do. So with renewed energy, we are calling for active new members. 

Please take a glance at some of the current WAOE elected and appointed officers:  

President: Prof. Steve McCarty, Osaka Jogakuin College and University, Japan  
Vice-President: Dr. John Afele, U.S.-West Africa Group, Tunisia / Ghana 
Membership Chair: Dr. Ramesh Sharma, Indira Gandhi National Open University, India 
Executive Secretary: Dr. Jodi Richardson-Delgado, Mesa Community College, U.S. 
Treasurer: Mike Holmwood, retired Division Chair, Langara College, Canada 
Chief Technology Officer: Ms. Victoria Ramirez, EFL Teacher / Designer, Mexico 
Cyber-Parliamentarian: Michael Warner,Tempe H.S. / Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, U.S. 
Publicity Coordinator: Dr. Begum Ibrahim, MARA Institute of Technology, Malaysia 
Publications Coordinator: Dr. David Sidwell, Utah State University, U.S. 
Journal Editor-in-Chief: Dr. Rozhan Idrus, Open & Distance Learning, Universiti Sains Malaysia 
Officer At-Large: Dr. Gary Wixom, Assistant Commissioner, Utah System of Higher Education, U.S.

Volunteers are sought for Research Coordinator, Program Coordinator, Associate Editors, etc. 

To reassure everyone, we have endorsements from scholars familiar with WAOE history:  
Society for College and University Planning senior executive Terry Calhoun recently  
called the WAOE a "very good organization." UNC Chapel Hill Professor Emeritus of  
Educational Leadership James L. Morrison added: "with an important mission."  

Dr. Ramesh Sharma writes: "As a member of the WAOE we look forward to your input, ideas, 
insights, interviews, write-ups, videos, etc. on online education. You may like to share 
innovative practices at your institution so that other members can benefit from them too." 

The WAOE is establishing the _International Journal of Online Education_, 
using our imagination to accommodate various categories and media besides double-blind 
reviewed papers. It will be an online journal and an open educational resource. Join us 
as a contributor or section editor for a content area, language, or world region. 

We have opened up our moderated discussion list WAOE-Views so you can join directly: 
http://groups.google.com/group/waoe-views 

You can also like us on Facebook to share resources: http://www.facebook.com/waoepage 

It is best to study our main Web pages (Home, Vision, More About Us, and Archives), 
then go to the Participation page to become a member for free and join WAOE-Views:  
http://www.waoe.org/ 

e-mail membership questions: rc_sharma@yahoo.com | to volunteer: waoe@mail.goo.ne.jp 

Free Stuff vs Free Education

I was having a Basil Gimlet at the new bar in San Francisco called Rye with a continuing education director, with whom I shared the idea that a way to sell classroom seats would be to auction them off.  He replied the idea appalled him, that he believed education should be free.

I replied I though that kind of free is far too expensive, and the auction idea had merit, for say we have 30 seats to auction off, and the dentist who badly wanted into the class bid $250 for the seat and won a place, and son on down to the last seat, which sells for $6 to the nurse's aide who badly wants to take the class. He asked what is all 30 seats went for $250, and the nurses aide never got in.  I assured if I sold 30 at $250 I would add more seats until the $6 person got in.   It is a hypothesis that needs to be tested. 

But in his sense "free" is where economy is ordered to where a basic good, education, is available to everyone, ability to pay of not.

This is a fine sentiment, and it reflects the reality that many worthy people find they cannot afford or otherwise access education.  But pause and ask "how come?"  We once had free trade in education, with people opening colleges as fast as a need was perceived.  We had that with parks, doctor offices and HMOs, housing, food, well, everything.  I remember this very well.

But I also remember the state finishing up on say, parks.  Once upon a time people would take a big piece of land next to a lake and turn it into a place for families to spend a day picnicing, baseball and swimming, for a fee.   The fee was cheap, it covered the overhead, the park owners had a good life, all was well.  but the state came along and starting making rules and regs that made it harder to turn a profit, and then started buying up these parks with taxpayer funded bonds, and made the parks "free."  Hence every city now has "parks and recreation" departments, which cost so much to run that the fed and state ones are all now fee based, and hefty fees at that, and city ones are not afraid of a fee either.

I think it was Aristotle said the thing that creates it sustains it. So it is with small business. One thing we could do to cut the deficits is to return those parks to their original condition, to people who start parks.

Community colleges has only been around about 50 years.  Before that there were some "junior colleges" and very many private voc tech schools.  Like parks, the squeezed these schools and then took them over.  And now, the cost/benefit is out of control.  Before, students could afford to pay cash at these schools and learn a trade, probably less than students pay now. What students paid covered 100% of schools cost, with a profit.  But what students pay now is less than 1/5th of the costs, because these schools have so featherbedded their operations.  Taxpayers are mulcted for the rest.

We can have free trade in education, well we have it.  This is an area where many good things are percolating up.  If you love education, it's time to come up with solutions to problems you experience.

The solution is not free stuff, a band aid over a gaping wound.  The solution is free from force and fraud.  The state uses force to limit who can offer an education.  And they use fraud saying "this is what an education costs." The solution is an alternative in which you can afford what education you need, out of your own pocket.  Let that with the gaping wound bleed to death.  Grow something just instead.

Insights On Online Education

Callum sent in this hour long discussion that I recommend for a listen.

http://files.libertyfund.org/econtalk/y2012/Klingeducation.mp3

I referred to it last night when mentioning the idea of “flipping the classroom.”

I’ve been thinking this through, what would it look like?  I’d put my lectures online for free (done) and assign the lectures as the weekly homework.

What is not the weekly homework...  find a product, name the customers, approach the customers.  How would they approach customers while in class?  Well, what if I was at my desk while the students headed out to businesses (open evenings?) and everyone was tweeting or email or phoning in their experiences?  And then do the research steps in the allotted class time...

Ken Lay, of Enron fame, made an insightful comment:  the point of the web is mass customization, not mass distribution.  For example, to use the web to offer a course to 150,000 students does not help much, anymore than making in essence a video free online.

But to sell a course to 100 participants each quarter, giving them customized attention to their particular problem, and let 149, 900 people observe no charge, might be very helpful to all concerned. those not paying and not participating yet observing will be drawing their own conclusions and can make efforts parallel to the course.

A few other random ideas form the conversation:

The fellows were talking about a teaching technique in which a quiz is given say every ten minutes in class to see if everyone got it.  If vast majority got it, move on.  Vast majority did not, re-present the material.  If it is 50/50, then stop teaching and tell students to convince each other they have the right answer.  The retest to see if the people with the right answers carried the day.  Struck me as a good idea.

IRC is controversial among those who have not taught online because it is ancient technology.  Yet there is none that allow more interaction more efficiently, and one in which that quiz technique above is easy to accommodate.  IRC allows everyone in the class to go into private IM and communicate.  After arguing, they could present their decisions.

Testing was an interesting topic, and they noted how it is conflict of interest for the teacher who teaches to also test the students.  A teacher who grades tests will grade easy so he can get good reviews.  It is proven the easier the grader the higher the ratings.  i did not know this.

So is the answer to have independent grading?  They talked about how hard it is to have even say one economics professor grade another's tests.    I imagine so, there are plenty of  other business teachers out there, how could any of them grade how well my students understood my material?

But the upshot would be with independent grading students would want tough teachers who got them well prepared to do well on tests.  Maybe.

I never liked giving instructor feedback in college as a student.  The rationale is by being secret the student is not subject to retaliation by the professor.   First, I don’t like the idea that professors might retaliate.  Second, it had to be secret, and that offends my sense of fairness - if I’ve got something to say I should say it to his face, the instructor should be able to face his accusers, etc.  Third, adults making secret assessments of other adults is just too much like snitching, and Soviet style reporting on people.  

But what about signed feedback? That is exactly what I do in my classes.  Especially face to face schools all have secret feedback forms, and I also offer signed feedback forms, of my own composition.  

Doesn’t this solve the problem of easy grading?  If feedback is in the open, won’t students be frank and open and thus teachers do not have to worry about poison pen feedback?  It seems to me it would defuse the problem.

There was some discussion of accreditation,  of teacher and school and student.  I think any accreditation is very bad news. the only accreditation needed is student feedback.

They were concerned about community colleges have less than 50% completion rate....Once here were Junior colleges which were mostly private, cheap and plentiful  You paid your own way to learn bookkeeping, haircutting or auto mechanics.  Now they are terribly expensive to run, taxpayer subsidized and crammed with people who don’t care to graduate.  

Partially because the students read at a 4th grade level and cannot understand the anthropology textbook.

The solution is to simply get the state out of education.  Just as there are enough restaurants without state intervention, so there would be schools.

Some talk of degrees, and what it confers.  Why not an unaccredited degree ...? but no, such a person would just be self-employed, and not a cog in the wheel.

You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

Minnesota Bans Free Online University Courses from Outside Minnesota

Gary North

Oct. 20, 2012

The state of Minnesota has discovered a fiendish plot against the residents of the state. Thirty-three major universities are offering free courses online.

The state has warned its residents not to take these courses.

Why not? Because the law says that no out-of-state university can sell education in Minnesota unless it is registered.

But the courses are free.

Yes, but they involve the use of time.

But the law -- decades old -- does not mention the spending of time. Only money.

Well, that doesn't matter. What matters is that the state of Minnesota is determined not to have its residents cheated of their valuable time by such fly-by night diploma mills as Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech, Columbia, and Duke. No, sir. The residents of Minnesota are defenseless sitting ducks who must be protected from academic predators.

The target is Coursera, which makes these courses available online for free. No degrees are granted or promised.

Coursera has posted this warning on its site.

Coursera has been informed by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education that under Minnesota Statutes (136A.61 to 136A.71), a university cannot offer online courses to Minnesota residents unless the university has received authorization from the State of Minnesota to do so. If you are a resident of Minnesota, you agree that either (1) you will not take courses on Coursera, or (2) for each class that you take, the majority of work you do for the class will be done from outside the State of Minnesota.

The Department of Higher Education says that residents may take such courses if they are out of state at the time.

Across the Web, howls of derisive laughter have greeted the decree.

This policy by the state is an example of North's Law #1 of bureaucracy: "Some bureaucrat will eventually enforce the letter of the law to the point of absurdity."

In every bureaucracy, there will be a George Roedler. These people are determined. They say things that get normal people to start giggling uncontrollably, yet they say them with a straight face. Forbes reports:

Defending the statute, George Roedler, Manager of Institutional Registration & Licensing for the state of Minnesota says, "We regulate colleges & universities that enroll Minnesota residents. They are required to register as degree granting institutions with us." When I pointed out that students are not actually obtaining a degree upon the completion of these online courses, he argued that, "Our statute does not exempt free and non credit bearing courses."

At some point, the legislature will intervene and re-write the law. It will do this in order to get college-educated people around the world to stop giggling. It is one thing to have Garrison Keillor tease the state of Minnesota. But what if Jon Stewart does a segment on the The Daily Show?

Coursera

With so many top universities offering their best courses free online, it was inevitable that someone would package and offer them on a profitable basis.  So it has happened.  I am working with WAOE.org to do something similar, instead of getting everything up, just get a liberal arts education up on a website for free.   I'll let you know how that goes.

Israel And University of California

The State of California passed a unanimous resolution directing its University system policies to forbid any teacher or student saying, among other things:

that Jews in America wield excessive power over American foreign policy;

Read the list of what is not allowed.  Surely something are already not allowed, but law, regardless of the topic.  So why only Jews?  This is a bad idea.

It is further reason why we need separation of school and state.

Political Theatre in Chicago

The dismantling of the now unnecessary teachers unions, and their pensions, continues on a new stage, this time in Chicago.    Publicity is relentlessly bad: average salary 79K per year, 89% of 8th graders are below proficiency in reading.  Ouch.

Most teachers will ride this down in flames, making no effort to adjust.

Education and California

Remember all those years when right wing crazies said there was a problem with unfunded pension liabilities?  Well now Gov. Jerry Brown, uber-liberal is saying just that.

But Brown told a news event in Los Angeles that the changes would ensure the state's pension system would be sustainable.  "We have lived beyond our means," he said. "The chickens are coming home to roost and this is just one in a series of countermeasures that will be required over the next decade."

And there is no rational limit to the state taking away.  "Just one is a series..."

The beneficiaries are sore wroth:

"We are outraged that a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature are taking a wrecking ball to retirement security for teachers, firefighters, school employees, and police officers," said Dave Low, chairman of Californians for Retirement Security, which represents 1.5 million public employees and retirees.

The beneficiaries have exactly what choices?

You can be stuck in a false dilemma, or, if you love teaching, make it your career by stepping outside the system and teach and write.  See www.perishyourpublisher.com.

Get an Education, Not a Degree

Mish Shedlock is discovering what we've known for quite a while, and he goes one better by graphing it all out.  I can only agree with his conclusions, but I'd go one better.  Says Mish:

Education is rife with "no child left behind" madness, free tuition for veterans, and for-profit school scams that flourish only because student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The student loan and Pell Grant  programs should be abolished. 

Say I: Get an education, not a degree.  That is the idea behind Seattle Teachers' College.

Adjunctproject

Alternet has a pretty good summary of the conditions of the adjunct lecturer/professor.  It provides a link to which any adjunct should bookmark, the adjunct project.

The writers nails it when she says in part:

In May 2012, I received my PhD, but I still do not know what to do with it. I struggle with the closed off nature of academic work, which I think should be accessible to everyone,

There it is, closed off to professors, not accessible to everyone.  Later I'll look at "how so?"

One observation the article makes is -

In most professions, salaries below the poverty line would be cause for alarm. In academia, they are treated as a source of gratitude. Volunteerism is par for the course - literally. Teaching is touted as a "calling", with compensation an afterthought. One American research university offers its PhD students a salary of $1000 per semester for the "opportunity" to design and teach a course for undergraduates, who are each paying about $50,000 in tuition.

The writers complaint relates to the paucity of teaching positions and the poverty that results.  She shares advice she received at one school to which she applied:

When I expressed doubt about the job market to one colleague, she advised me, with total seriousness, to "re-evaluate what work means" and to consider "post-work imaginaries".

I suggest it is great advice, if oddly expressed.

The article makes some minor notes about academic publishing, and the injustice of it all.

So here goes.  If your mind is limited to the same construct that has rejected you, then you will stay rejected.  What is the system into which you cannot break, and does not admit enough students?  It is accredited education.  Accreditation is how schools qualify for student loan participation.  Student loan funds shift the schools' responsibility to the payer (students and parents) off to no one in particular, a collection of taxpayers via the agency of the state.  Expenses can be jacked up without much problem, so "costs" go up, and thus the price must go up, and can, because student loan allowances can go up unchecked.  Rockwalls and smoothie machines, triple-dipping admin, adjuncts in the classroom. Student loan debt has surpassed credit card debt.

The problem is accreditation.  We will not get rid of it, but think outside of that box.

1.  Think like you are self employed.  You are.  The brand will be you, not the school.

2.  The self-employed are usually pursuing their work as a vocation, compensation is an afterthought. Sound familiar?  But the difference between a college adjunct and a self-employed anything is most expenses are pretax, an effective 30% raise on your income right there.  But more important, as self-employed you work when you want, where you want, for how much you want.

3. Get published.  Not print on demand vanity stuff, but work thats sells on Amazon.com.  Publishing is now a process in which you can be guaranteed a worthy book and a perennial seller.

4. Give up the idea of tenure at a university and the lovely lifestyle.  It is not sustainable, and those professors you despise for their luck at tenure are more miserable that you are.  I dined with a full prof at a faculty lounge at a major university.  Yech...  not what it once was.  They have to keep a sinking ship afloat.

Is this a fantasy?  I've been doing it since 1984, on the side.  I am no expanding it to $100,000 per year at full load (15 contact hours per week, 36 weeks per year) including book profits.  The field is noncredit education.  It is bigger in dollars than K-16.  It is completely merit based, and you design your courses to meet the needs of the students you teach.

You can read all about it for free on google books.  Let me know what you think.

Tolstoy Rejected Copyrights as Evil

Which I suppose is easy when people say about you:

Later critics and novelists continue to bear testament to Tolstoy's art. Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists. James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!". Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature". Such sentiments were shared by the likes of Proust, Faulkner and Nabokov. The latter heaped superlatives upon The Death of Ivan Ilyichand Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of War and Peace, and sharply criticized Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata.

Or maybe he was great because he rejected copyrights.

Libraries

This is extremely difficult to engineer, but cool...

SEO & Google

Here is an interesting review of Search Engine Optimization and Google.  One point it makes is viewers do not necessarily translate into sales.  This point was made by David Ogilvy long ago, and his work is essential to this day for anyone who wishes to advertise.

Yes, we nobodies have no real chance to advertise effectively on the web.  But we can use the web to communicate with those we reach through school catalogs.

Need Help Finding the Right Book?

Here is a neat website which suggests books after you indicate what you are in the mood to read.  No doubt they make their money from affiliate fees when you buy the book.

Avatars In Education

A German fellow based in Hong Kong has taken an older idea and seems to be actually making it work for education.

A Meditation on the Library

www.lorinix.net/images/the_city/02.jpg/

How Come Great Courses Is Still In Business?

Here is a blog with 144 high quality no cost sources of first rate education.  OK, so how come Great Courses is still doing well?  They sell CDs and downloads of courses!

1. The courses are curated, that is knowledgeable people say the courses are good.

2. The delivery method is attractive, CDs, for in your car or elsewhere, or downloads otherwise.

3. They market through a catalog, still the best way to market courses of any sort.  You can browse through a paper catalog, or slog through 144 sites.

There is an opportunity here, to come up with a reader for all those online courses, and a website to curate them.  The thing is the reader.

City College San Francisco Woes

Reuters reports on the troubles CCSF is experiencing, and how it may shut down, California's largest community college.  The article talks about budget cutbacks and the commenters talk about illegal aliens and wasted money on overpaid instructors.

But there is a better story buried in the article:


The two-year college that serves 90,000 students risks becoming the first in California to lose its accreditation since 2006, triggering funding cuts that could shutter the school.


So the real problem is accreditation.


The Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges this week notified the 77-year-old City College that it must prove its worthiness to continue operating.


How is it the ACCJC is a judge of worthiness?


The commission is authorized to operate by the U.S. Department of Education and oversees institutions in the West. It evaluates community and junior colleges every six years.


So people in DC decide the standards for SF?


In a letter to the college's interim chancellor, Commission President Barbara Beno said an accreditation team in March found the school had failed to react to funding cuts and had reached "a financial breaking point."

So accrdeditation is not just about "quality" it is down to the school's books.

The commission cited a lack of administrators as one chief concern and also criticized the college for insufficient assessments of student learning and achievement.

How can a school have too few administrators?  Featherbedding admin has been a problem at schools since the beginning.  Weird.  Student assessments are easy, and done inside the classroom.  How is that a problem?

This year's evaluation of City College of San Francisco criticized it for having too few administrators. The evaluator's report describes the college's 39 administrators as "overtaxed" and insufficient in number to support the college's more than 1,800 faculty members.


OK.  what is the correct amount of administrators?  Time for schools to reject accreditation and go independent.

Amazon Launches New Talent

Amazon has launched the career of yet another author, one who says, in passing:

And I can assure you that freedom fuels creativity, risk-taking, and passion. We get to bring you our stories in the way we want to tell them, without the dilution and sculpting from publishing houses. 

Just so.  When I had an agent in the 1980's I was told to never write more than 2 chapters and an outline, because the publisher would want to "shape the book."  I took that to mean censor it and change it to support the beast. The old model is built on a free press in which the industry is given in essence tax exempt status if the industry will in turn only proffer books that support the regime.

IN the Soviet Union you could go to prison for writing something critical.  In USA if you write something critical is will not see the light of day.  But but but...  anyone can publish anything!  Yes, but will it get distribution?

A big reason I left iUniverse was they said my book sold exceptionally well, and they would get behind it if I changed it.  Wait, what?  I have that in writing.

Things might be changing.  Self-publishing may actually work, what with the reach of the internet.

Khan Academy & the Future

Here is an interesting exchange on education:

Is there anything to be done about the rising price of higher education? That was the question posed to John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, and Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit online-learning organization. They sat down with The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg to discuss how technology might be part of the solution.

Here are edited excerpts of their conversation.

Cost Curve

MR. MOSSBERG: Is it either moral or sustainable for elite colleges and universities to be charging what is approaching $60,000 a year to go to college?

MR. HENNESSY: I think the real question is whether or not what we're charging is a worthwhile investment for the American public and for families. That's the key question. 

***Why did he not answer Mossberg’s question? This is an example of the elite at work.  Even if the right question si asked, they shift it away to a different question.  So much in life is just asking the right question.***

The elites (schools) have the advantage in that they have been able to significantly subsidize what they charge with financial aid. It's a really interesting business we're in. First we charge less than it costs us to provide an education, because we subsidize everybody to some extent. And then if you can't afford it, we give you a discount.

***Asonishingly disingenuiness.  You may charge less than you spend, but not less than it costs.  You endowments are tax exempt. which is a subsidy from those who do pay taxes.***

MR. MOSSBERG: You have a lot of money at Stanford. I've been, until recently, a trustee of Brandeis University. It's a very good university. It charges about what you do. But it doesn't have your money, and there are a lot of colleges like that.

MR. HENNESSY: Agreed, and if you look at the vast majority of colleges in the U.S., there are way too many that are [dependent on tuition to fund their budgets]. That is not sustainable. We have to do something to bend the cost curve, and this is where technology comes in.

***Why is living within your means not sustainable?  Only a college president would say this.  True, technology lowers costs.  But what costs, and what technology?   There is a scam going on where state schools are pawning off online classes as “education.”***

MR. KHAN: 

There is a fundamental disconnect happening between the providers of education and the consumers of education. If you ask universities what they are charging the $60,000 for, they'll say, "Look at our research facilities. Look at our faculty. Look at the labs and everything else." And then if you ask the parents and the students why they are taking on $60,000 of debt, they'll say, "Well, I need the credential. I need a job."

So one party thinks they're selling a very kind of an enriching experience, and the other one thinks that they're buying a credential. And if you ask the universities what percentages of your costs are "credentialing," they say oh, maybe 5% to 10%. And so I think there's an opportunity if we could decouple those things—if the credentialing part could happen for significantly less.

***This is the old teaching school versus research school debate.  But Khan has it right, the credential could be delivered for far less.  BUt I find it appalling that any parent would send a kid to school so they could “get a job.”***

MR. MOSSBERG: What do you mean by the credentialing part?

MR. KHAN: If you think about what education is, it's a combination. There's a learning part. You learn accounting, you learn to write better, to think, whatever. Then there is a credentialing part, where I'm going to hand you something that you can go take into the market and signal to people that you know what you're doing.

Right now they're very muddled, but this whole online debate or what's happening now is actually starting to clarify things. At Khan Academy we're 100% focused on the learning side of things. And I think it would be interesting [if credentials could be earned based on what you know and not on where you acquired that knowledge].

*** Credentials, or accrediatation is the Berlin Wall of education.  There are no student loans without accreditation - to get accrdited you must have certian books in alibrary, use certain txts, a whole ecology of that which orients peple to the needs of the powers that be,***

MR. MOSSBERG: The highest rates of tuition increase have been at public institutions. Out-of-state students going to these public universities are paying $25,000 to $30,000 now?

MR. HENNESSY: The biggest tragedy is if you pay that and don't get your degree. We need to deal with this problem. Costs are going up because educational institutions are driven by wages.

***I think this would be news to 99.5% of the college professors.  Again, I am astonished any college president would say this.***

MR. HENNESSY: We started with the view that the large lecture no longer works for this generation of students. So the whole flip classroom idea is something that's appealing. That simply means you do the lecture online and use the classroom to do something that's more interactive and more engaging.

We put some of this stuff online and then all of a sudden we got 100,000 students around the world signed up. We've learned a bunch of things. One of the phenomenal things we saw in our experiment was how quickly the community would answer questions when students in the class posed them. What I told my colleagues is there's a tsunami coming. I can't tell you exactly how it's going to break, but my goal is to try to surf it, not to just stand there.

***We’ve seen this model before, it is called the Globe Theatre.***http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303640104577440513369994278.html

Why Poets Love Piracy

Here a successful poet explains how he came to love copyright violation and piracy, in 4 minutes.

If you listen about half-way through, you'll see where bookstores have gone wrong.  Since bookstores can return books, they really do not care if any given book sells.  If they could not return the goods, as is normal in retail, they would be careful what they bought, and they would get busy guiding customers to good works.  There would be more of the good this fellow identifies as lacking, and that is booksellers introducing authors to readers.

This echoes what s in my free book (on google) or you can buy on Amazon.com, Perish Your Publisher.

More Google Goodies

There is no doubt in my mind that Google is an arm of USGovt Total Information Awareness, but who cares?  One of the delightful things about having your book up "for free" on google books is it will start to track any other book that cites your book or talks about the same things.  For example, here is a listing of my book cited in other's books. It also quickly shows if anyone has purloined your work as theirs.  What fun!

Free Trade in Education

Education money, if $35.9 billion is being spent in USA, the point is minimum 3.59 billion being grafted off to the politically connected for their cut.  So what if 32 bil is wasted, as long as we get our 3.59. He who pays the piper calls the tune, and what sails down this info superhighway will be branded "status quo."    In USA we call it capitalism, or more specifically and universal, crony capitalism.

The best part is he who calls the tune actually mulcts the pay from the target population, not unlike when communists billed the family for the bullet that executed the malcontent.

Again, Australia may be different, because USA is second to none in election fraud.  When we vote for change we get even more of the same.  Good and hard.

In USA education costs too much because it is heavily subsidized.  Costs can go up and up, because no one can compete against a subsidy.  "Private" schools compete, by charging more than the government, and using the government to back govt-guaranteed loans to "students" that are neither repayable nor bankruptable. There is a way out, just as in a bad mortgage in USA: join the military.  (Eliminate govt backing, then watch these people serve students or go away.)

Three Nobel Laureates in economics demonstrated the regulators are always captured by the regulated.  Look at heavily regulated Wall Street and its control over the USA govt.  We don't mind regulation of education, because we make money at it.  Just like Wall Street bankers don't mind "regulation" of banking.  It works for them.

Just as bankers do not turn on bankers, so teachers do not turn on teachers.  But someone has got to say it: we need free trade in education worldwide.  We need to get government completely out of education, so we can get more better cheaper faster. More options, better quality, cheaper costs, and better access. We need private associations providing QC, and and break the funding/accreditation cartel.  Accreditation is the Berlin Wall of education.

What does it look like?  Math teacher Sal Khan is making millions teaching math for free on the internet with his non-profit.  (Non-profit means he can spend money as he desires and directs on the really big things, tax-exempt.) Another I know, a Canadian is making scores of thousands charging to help the marginal who still need more help than Khan offers for free.  (HIs seed money, for the whiteboard software and youtube channel, he made as an Indian actor, voted the "Best Looking Man in India.")

Too few have too little access to education.  A separation of education and state would lead to lowering of cost and widening of access while ever improving student and instructor satisfaction.  Ask Khan.  It is what I am experiencing.