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.