I have recently encountered several articles in prominent sources explaining that many have begun to question the value of a college education. While the data continue to show a significant financial advantage – the average college grad will earn 2.3 million more over their lifetime than a high school grad – an increasing number are looking for options. 

Here are some key points I gleaned from a recent Wall Street Journal article “Why Americans have lost faith in the value of college.”

• Since 2011, the number of campus-based college students has declined by 3 million. About 60% of those who enroll will graduate by the end of 6 years.
• Parents are also less committed with 50% of parents saying they are less interested in sending their kids to a four-year school right out of high school even if finances were not an issue.
• Two-thirds of high school grads believe they would be fine without a college degree.
• Compared to Europe, the U.S. invests far more heavily in higher education in comparison to vocational institutions and apprenticeship programs.
• The processes by which institutions of higher education adapt react slowly with multiple levels of decision-making. Technology-focuses businesses change very quickly.
• – Courses and majors such as computer science are oversubscribed and students are unable to enroll while fewer students are interested in humanities majors such as history.
• Many students are unprepared for demanding college majors and institutions are unprepared to provide assistance. This said, students report spending half as much time studying and attend class more sporadically than was the case when compared to students in the early 1960s. Still, grades awarded are radically inflated. Students are now 3 times more likely to earn an A.
• Cost of a degree has increased dramatically – 180% between 1980 and 2020. Increases appear due to a combination of state support, administrative bloat, and amenities students expect institutions to provide. The cost per year at a public institution is now estimated to be $36,000. Note: I looked up the present tuition at the state institution where I last worked and it was $10,951. Just to be clear, expenses such as room and board also play a large role in what are regarded as college costs.

The WSJ generated enough attention that other bloggers responded. Bryan Alexander in the Future of Education suggests the WSJ article offers an important perspective, and adds some additional comments. For example, this writer notes regarding University STEM, health, and business enrollments that actual enrollment has soared. Some are concerned that the enrollments are an overreaction and may surpass hiring opportunities. In summarizing recent criticism of higher education, He also notes that frequent criticisms seem focused on vocational skills and the lack of attention afforded such skills in so many majors. Why not get kids into the workplace more quickly?

I have fairly traditional beliefs related to student education partly because my career-long vocation was in higher education. I keep wondering what has changed that would negate society’s commitment to learning beyond high school. Are the work skills critics imagine all that citizens need to prepare them for life? Are most high school graduates prepared to function as citizens, parents, and employees? Do they have the social skills, general knowledge, and basic maturity we want adults to have? 

Yes, many 18-year-olds would probably benefit from a gap year traveling or living on their own working a low-income job. Not every learner is prepared to take advantage of higher education. The idea of apprenticeship programs appeals to many. Just what vocations want to support 18-year-olds as apprentices? Is an apprenticeship right out of high school rather than vocational school what employers would prefer? 

From personal experience, many beginning college students have limited skills as independent learners. Colleges indeed struggle with how to serve these students, but assuming the students are prepared to take on challenging work is ridiculous.  A surprising number are poor readers and writers. It takes more time to develop sophisticated critical thinking, creativity, and social sophistication all of which come with exposure to challenging learning experiences in multiple content areas. 

I have another traditional reaction to the vocational orientation argument. The response to this perspective used to refer to data on how many different jobs the average adult had in a lifetime and question whether specific training prepared individuals for this range of work. When is more general preparation suited to a variety of occupations? Programming/coding is a good example. While we are obviously in the age of digital, is the preparation as a coder a golden ticket to a lucrative career? Consider the massive recent layoffs at the big tech firms. Also, recognize that AI now threatens to drastically reduce the number of low-level code monkey jobs. 

One other insight is important. Universities are about more than teaching. Those of us who have held these positions typically had contracts that identified responsibilities in the areas of teaching, research, and service. These areas are not as isolated as some might imagine when they advance a stereotype of the pure researcher indifferent to teaching and undergraduate students. First, like any stereotype, there are likely some instances in which the stereotype holds. However, the correlation between research productivity and student instructor ratings is positive and not negative. On average, students evaluate more prolific researchers as slightly better teachers. Research is just a different type of experience and it makes sense that those with actual experience doing something have more to draw on when teaching what they do. Why it is assumed that individuals would be indifferent when describing what they know and do? 

If there is what I would consider a legitimate issue, it is that research comes with the time to do research. Hence the 60, 30, 10 contract that is typical of tenure-track faculty members. By the way, the 60% is teaching and the 30% is research. Universities are indeed hiring more adjuncts to do teaching, but here is the irony in what so many critics contend. You can’t both complain about teaching time and also complain about adjuncts who frequently function as full-time teachers. 

One final comment regarding the overlap of these areas and the investment in teaching. We spend a great deal of our time doing research with our students. Much of this time is 1:1. Should working directly with students in this capacity be considered research or teaching? Research is very rarely a solitary endeavor and working with students in this way is a form of apprenticeship.

Regarding complaints about publication pressure and the resulting focus of academics. Yes, the pressure is real. So, by the way, is the pressure to generate positive student teaching evaluations.  The pressure to publish is related to the pressure to generate grant applications and grant applications bring in a good proportion of the money needed to fund research and the infrastructure of universities. Grant funds are available for most disciplines, but it is far easier to generate big money in some disciplines than others. The cost of research is also very different across disciplines. My point is that money explains a lot when it comes to how faculty members spend their time. The money states and students pay is not sufficient to support the multiple missions of higher education.

What about the research itself? What would happen if universities were downsized to trade teaching time for research time? Who would decide which research efforts were worthwhile? It is certainly the case that corporations and other areas of the economy (e.g., medical institutions) engage in research. However, this research is likely applied rather than basic and is focused on immediate rather than long-term goals. Advances would grind to a halt without being constantly stimulated by advances in basic knowledge. There is also the significant challenge of who trains the researchers. Basic research skills take time and experience to develop and this simply does not happen without universities providing the experience to develop the necessary skills.

Conclusion: I have no idea where all of this is going. Some experimentation will certainly be involved and people have very different ideas about what alternatives should be explored. My intent here was simply to expand how the issue is presented.

We have left the snow and cold of Minnesota to spend some time in Kauai. As always I share some image and impressions on my travel blog. I try to make the posts informative and we have been lucky enough to travel to many parts of the world so you may find the post archives of interest. Aloha.

I want to offer some observations on the plagiarism charges brought against Harvard President Claudine Gay that resulted in her resignation. Obviously, this resignation was part of a broader political context related to statements made by Gay and two other Presidents while being questioned by politicians. The claims of plagiarism were a completely separate issue in Gay’s situation, but part of a general argument claiming she was not suited to lead a major university.

I have no interest in defending Gay, but I was personally interested in the plagiarism issue as I am a retired professor and have experience with the scholarship we are expected to pursue. I can offer a couple of things. First, I was interested in reviewing examples of the plagiarism Gay was accused of committing. Copy the work of others without attribution can be purposeful or accidental and it can be extensive or limited. I found a source with examples. 

Second, I wanted to comment on a NY Times opinion piece by Charles Seife that suggests plagiarism is but a sign of broader misconduct or lack of sound values in higher education. 

Aaron Sibarium is the author of “This is definitely plagiarism” which appears in the Free Beacon. I had not heard of this publication, but I found descriptions describing it as a conservative source with a mixed record for accurate reporting. I had trouble locating examples showing plagiarism and prefer a source I and others know more about, but this source did provide the type of data I wanted. What was the original source and what did Gay write without clear attribution? 

I would encourage your own review of the examples keeping in mind my claim that plagiarism can be purposeful or accidental and it be extensive or limited. I found the examples to be minor and limited. 

If you have not been through the process of generating lengthy formal academic documents, allow me to speculate about how such errors of sloppiness or laziness happen. It is my guess that the type of plagiarism Guy is accused of is more common than people would expect. For example, someone checked the dissertation of Bill Ackman’s wife Neri Oxman who received her PhD from MIT and found she also had plagiarized several small segments of her dissertation. Ackman is a conservative Harvard donor largely responsible for the scrutiny of Gay. A dissertation can easily run a hundred and fifty pages or more. If you do a research-focused dissertation that involves the collection of data, your writing contains a lengthy introduction describing the existing work on the topic and then identifying the purpose of your extension. You also describe the method you are taking to describe the way you are going about collecting the information to support or reject your proposed extension. So, let’s say you have 50 or so pages of content to write for the Introduction. Typically, you go about this using the notes you have taken from many existing studies and position papers. When you take these notes, you sometimes copy down segments or arguments of descriptions from these other studies. If you then recopy parts of these notes verbatim to your own paper, this is technically plagiarism. You are expected to accurately summarize or paraphrase what the other studies said, but sometimes you overlook the difference between when your notes were already summaries and when they were straight copies of other material. By the way, this problem is getting more frequent now that most of us read the original material in a digital format and export our own notes and highlighted material to a document we save to refer to for later writing activities. The highlighted content would be a copy of the original and if pasted into new content would represent plagiarism. 

I cannot be certain and I am not approving of this type of sloppy scholarship, but what I describe seems consistent with the examples I read attributed to Dr. Gay. The impression that large sections were simply moved from one document to another without attribution does not seem to be the case here. The examples also do not seem to me like someone was trying to take credit for significant insights or new discoveries, but perhaps was lazy in generating original text to summarize generic material from another source. 

Like I said. Take the time to read the examples and decide for yourself.

In the second article “Plagiarism in Academia,” Charles Seife argues that institutions are partly to blame for the high rates of plagiarism in academia. Seife argues that institutions often have lax review practices and that they do not do enough to educate students about plagiarism. Seife describes the review practices for both dissertations and scholarly publications as lacking in care and skill. With manuscripts being reviewed for publication, Seife speculates that faculty members often pass on the manuscripts to graduate students rather than do the work of carefully going through the review process themselves. Seife is correct in that journals do not compensate reviewers. We make the effort as a professional responsibility expected by our institutions and typically counted as part of the service portion of our contracts. 

I can say from having received possibly a hundred or more journal manuscripts that Seife has extremely unrealistic expectations. I would say that for the average manuscript, I would have read only about 50% of the articles cited by the author. Just starting with this situation, recognizing word by word copying would be impossible. With student work that concerned me, I would copy a paragraph of work I found suspect and search for this content using Google. I required access to a digital copy of writing assignments because it was easiest for me to comment on documents in this form. I have found a few examples of plagiarism. There are now digital tools available for doing more sophisticated searches. Modern course management systems (e.g., Blackboard) make such tools available to both students and faculty members. If similar tools would be used with manuscripts submitted for publication, it would seem reasonable to require manuscripts that be examined by the journal staff before being sent out for review. I have not reviewed manuscripts in a few years now, so it is possible this approach is already in place.

Sometimes I feel academics are targets for one reason or another. We do work many do not understand and are sometimes considered out of touch with real issues. While there are certainly examples that fit such perceptions, to stereotype intelligent and hard working people in this way is also typically due to a lack of experience on the part of those circulating such claims. 

The end of any year seems a time to focus on the past year and to set an agenda for the year to come. I have this feeling that 2024 will be pivotal. My feeling is one of foreboding. It is the sense that if things go wrong, things will go very, very wrong. Recent times have certainly been trying times, with COVID, the danger of climate change, and threats of war on a massive scale. I cannot escape this sense that we will not respond to these dangerous issues until we take care of something more basic. How will we get past the deep and hateful political divide that seemingly limits our collective ability to address problems that threaten all of humanity? When it comes to solving world-altering problems, political disagreements seem relatively trivial. Big challenges are supposed to unite people, but we have big problems and we remain divided and hateful. 

Let’s be honest, 2023 wasn’t exactly a banner year for unity. The political landscape remained a tempestuous battleground, where compromise felt like a relic of a bygone era. From social issues like abortion and gun control to economic policies and foreign entanglements, our elected officials seemed more adept at stoking division than forging common ground. This perpetual state of partisan warfare has left us paralyzed, unable to effectively address even the most pressing issues.

Compromise on most issues would be relatively easy for me. I have the advantages of being a healthy, retired, white male. I likely have sufficient funds to live out my days having to make few sacrifices. How many recognize they are in a similar position, but many others are not? I understand the notion of compromise, but what are the issues on which I feel it would be ethical and moral to do so. Choice for women is not an issue I feel I have a right to decide. Climate change is a danger to the survival of my grandkids. Should addressing this problem be something I can ignore. There are so many inequities and government seems the only means by which these can be addressed. How do you allow others to be as selfish as they are willing to be?

Civility is a different matter. Try spending a little time on TruthSocial if you need a dose of extremism and hate. Without backing down from core values, it would seem possible to argue for an issue without violating norms of decency. I have the time and the motivation so making my position known is what I must do. 

Here is hoping for the best in 2024.

We have been receiving cards from a few holiday diehards still committed to the use of the mail. It makes me feel guilty. I write enough stuff I should generate something to celebrate the season and share a little news.

It looks like a brown Christmas here in the upper Midwest. A couple of our kids will bring their families to the lake and Lynn is on the road to spend time with Josh’s extended family.

Health status – we are presently doing well. Cindy did have a pacemaker installed to keep her heart rate up. I am wearing a monitor because I passed out and nothing obvious can be identified as a cause. The big money is on dehydration as I am not one of those who walks around with a giant jug of water. I had oral surgery and no water the day of the incident and then took a narcotic to ease the pain. Not a good combination. Cindy said she was trying to remember how to do CPR and thought she would not be able to move me out of my chair anyway so it gave her a bit of a scare. Aside from this info, health is good

Note: Health report seems mandatory for we senior citizens. I turned 75 this year and Cindy is not far behind.

Cindy and I took an expedition ship to Patagonia in the Fall. It was a great trip and our first adventure in South America. Pretty amazing experience. We head to Kauai in a couple of weeks and the families will be joining us for their Spring breaks this year. Our annual Hawaiian winter break allows us to avoid the dull part of winters and to be able to get out without worrying about falling on the ice.

The kids and families are doing well. We have a wide assortment of activities to watch – volleyball softball, and basketball, plays, and even circus. The great thing about our location in a suburb of Minneapolis/St Paul is our proximity to all of this. Our lake place gives us the opposite of the urban experience and provides swimming, boating, biking, and skiing for those so inclined. I can find a coffee shop to escape the excitement, read and write.

Lynn finished her PhD and just graduated. She splits her time between directing physical therapy research and her new med tech startup. The world of venture capital is new to all of us. Josh no longer sees clients but not has worked for a few years in medical administration. Kim works with concussion patients and took on Todd who had a serious mountain bike crash. She has a great reputation for work in her special niche and she was able to direct Todd’s rehab. Jim and Jess both continue as educators.

I tried to find some seasonal photos I could add. We do have our tree with the blue lights. We started the blue tree during the pandemic as a gift to our neighborhood and continue to have it lit since. No, I am not responsible for stringing the lights. I had hoped to have picture of a Cardinal in the snow as several continue to populate our backyard, but there is no snow. This device is called a Bird Buddy and combines a motion-triggered digital camera with a bird feeder. The entire thing runs on solar power and is accessible from my phone. Interesting video, images, and sound. Tech nerds forever.

A tradition at the lake is to take any kids who want to go along on the trip to the dump and then get ice cream on the way home. This trip near the holidays sometimes results in a worker or two dressed in holiday gear. This was the case this year.

I was moved to write a poem (AI added the final verse).

It was the day before Christmas

And all cross the lot.

The boxes were flattened

And stacked in one spot

Workers dressed In red flannels

Not their typical attire

Smiles on cold faces

Warmed by a fire

In this kingdom of castoffs,

Under a sky so vast,

The spirit of Christmas

Found a home at last.

Happy Holidays

Today is my birthday. I am 75. I seldom use a blog post to recognize my birthday, but 75 seems different. It is not a nice round number, but I would guess you know what I mean. It seems a milestone or an accomplishment in a way that other birthdays do not. We had a great time with our kids and grandkids yesterday and I was very well treated. So my birthday received plenty of recognition. Yes, I will check who says hi on Facebook.

Until recently, I have not spent a lot of time thinking about getting old. This is probably a good thing. If you focus on other things, getting old will take care of itself. I find plenty in the world to concern me and these issues are enough to keep my natural anxiety occupied. I have been very lucky and have not experienced serious illnesses or accidents. This has not been the case for those close to me and the combination makes me appreciate my situation.

If I have a concern it is probably that of feeling productive. I retired at 65 although many academics do not. As a consequence, Cindy and I have had the opportunity to travel and spend time exploring and doing interesting things without the limitations of jobs. There are only so many opportunities to be employed as a professor and there are many who want very much to have this opportunity. I felt I had my time and we had the resources to allow others the same chance. At its core, a life of learning and sharing is very satisfying and there continue to be ways to have these experiences whether or not it comes with a job and a paycheck.

The time I spend writing means a lot to me. Others value other things. I understand that Cindy and my continuing interest in technology probably violate the assumptions many make about older (experienced) people. Still, I hope the combination of living the history of the more personal role technology now plays in our lives and the opportunity to continue to explore and communicate insights offers some value to others. I have contributed posts to blogs since 2002 which is as long as anyone has made use of this type of outlet. I know I have people who take the time to read my comments on the role of technology and education, my commentary and images from our travels, and the random and sometimes strange comments I make about life in general. I appreciate this attention very much. I am an introvert by nature and writing provides the closest thing I have to interacting with a larger circle of people. Thanks.

P.S. Certain challenges remain. I have read many things about A.I. and can only understand the basics of large language models and machine learning. I do recommend the following books – Fei Fei Li – The worlds I see and Stephen Wolfram – What is ChatGPT Doing? If you get through the entirety of Wolfram’s book, get back to me. I need some help.

It is Fall in Minnesota and time for the Apple harvest. As a recent Minnesota transplant, I am enjoying the season. It is interesting to me that my first job was in Cortland, New York, home of the Cortland apple and I now live in Minnesota home of the Honeycrisp and other popular apples. In between, I lived in North Dakota home of wheat and sugar beets.

I have spent a good proportion of my life around college campuses and I find all aspects of colleges and universities fascinating. I was educated at Iowa State University which is Iowa’s land grant institution. You can translate land grant as agricultural institution if you are not familiar with the label. The University of Minnesota is also the state’s land grant institution with one facility in Minneapolis and the other, the agricultural-focused programs, in Saint Paul. It just occurred to me that there are twin universities in the Twin Cities.

The horticulture program at the University has been very successful and one of the major accomplishments has been the development of apple varieties. We visit the Arboretum and buy some apples grown in the university orchards. I spent a little time in the store taking a few pictures and looking up some facts about the program.

The university’s apple breeding program has released 29 apple varieties in its history. The first was released in 1920. The most successful release was the Honeycrisp which was first available in 1991. This apple has made the university a great deal of money and is ranked as the 9th most popular apple and the best tasting apple. It is also the most expensive apple, but we buy them anyway.

I read an opinion piece in Medium that lamented the domination of technology tools and services by fewer and fewer companies. Too many get sucked in by the free or ad-supported services which many companies share and subsidize by other income streams, e.g., Apple, Google, Microsoft. Smaller companies do not have these secondary revenue streams and must sell their tools or services or try to get by in other ways.

The Medium article was written by the CEO of Obsidian which created and continues to improve the note-taking system I use. I use the personal version of Obsidian which is free and I do not need the shared version which the company sells to groups needing such a product. The company has come out with an Early Access program allowing individuals like me to pay $25 for a few additional services I also would probably never use, but I did purchase as a way to support the company.

I find myself making these small contributions more and more simply because I can and I recognize that many companies are struggling. Another example of this for me is the This Week in Tech Club. TWIT offers several podcasts I listen to religiously. The podcast network does embed ads but again is struggling financially as ad revenue for free-standing podcasts has declined. My interests are unique and I want to see the smaller companies serving niche markets survive.

The reality is that there is no such thing as free and there is a legitimate concern that the big actors will squeeze out the little guys. Think of this as a small business issue.

I have not posted in some time. We have been traveling and I focus on my travel blog when I take a trip. I welcome people to read the stories from my trips, but I write about the places we go partly to have a record I can review. Photos without information lose their meaning.

I suppose there are people who focus a blog on their dreams. I remember very few of my dreams and the following may be the first and only dream I ever record for public consideration. I don’t understand exactly where dreams come from. I say this even with a background in cognitive psychology. There are elements of memories dredged up from who knows where and then there is a creative element that seems close to random. No wonder Freud and others thought there must be some useful rationale for the dreams his patients had.

I just returned from a trip as I mentioned above and was likely sleep-deprived which may explain some of the unusualness of this experience.

In my dream, I was a volunteer acting as a trainer in a “Women in the outdoors” program. The idea of such programs is to encourage women to explore outdoor experiences long the interest of men – e.g., camping, fishing, hunting. For some reason unrelated to my own life experiences, I was involved in encouraging hunting experiences. Perhaps my lack of experience has something to do with the creative aspect of the dream.

The first idea for this group was to prepare those interested to hunt upload birds. Provide basic shotgun skills and safety training (e.g., how to cross a fence). Then, the group would visit a pheasant game farm and have a guided experience hunting pheasants.

Things made sense to this point, but then the dream went completely off the rails. Visiting a game farm was too expensive for the group and so a decision was made to shoot chickens. If that were not strange enough and because the group was being hosted by a local church, the idea of releasing several chickens in the church basement and then searching for and shooting these birds seemed a possible solution to the money problem. This is what I mean by creativity. No one could possibly ever have had this thought before.

The birds were secured and released at the next meeting, but before any hunting could take place the pastor who had given us permission to use the facility got wind of the plan and drove to the church. Realizing we were in trouble we did our best to round up the chickens and secreted the birds, the women, and the guns out the back door.

That was the dream and I woke up and sent myself an email with the rough structure of the dream because I did not want to forget the strangeness of the experience. Any now you too, must trouble yourself trying to understand how such thoughts can emerge from a human mind.

No actual chickens were harmed in experiencing this dream