Higher Education Observer

 I am writing my memoir of 45 years working in higher education and 50 years studying the communication discipline.  Has anyone else out there thought about doing this?  It has to be a balance of good stories, reflection, best practices, and theory/research. It's also tips on teaching "speech," which is the hook. My life is not that interesting to write about, but ..... teaching public speaking is a lot of fun sometimes. And it's hard not to laugh when a student says "Jeffrey Dahmer discombobulated his victims." (despite the horrid subject)

 Bots? Spam? I got 222 hits this week. I don't have that many posts here! I am going to write a book: What You Need to Know About College* (before, during  and after). It will explain to non-academics what college is really about.  I. Why higher education is higher: the goal of college II. Accreditation  II. The truth about costs and how to pick a good college/university III. How colleges are set up, or should be IV. The culture of higher ed: The myth of ivory towers V. How to succeed in college with really trying VI Supporting one's family member in college VII. The care and feeding of college professors. Any other chapter ideas???

 It's time to start admitting, college is not for everyone. It may not even be for most. It may not be for most NOW. I teach freshmen. OOPS, I'm supposed to say first year students (which I understand and am not mocking). A lot of them do not belong there--YET.  Colleges exist for a purpose, but the first one is to keep existing as an entity. When a college goes "out of business" it is seen as a tragedy. I'm not entirely sure why, except that people lose their jobs.  So we in higher education have a basic ego driven motive to keep students in the college so we have decent enrollment. Each student equals a certain amount of money, of revenue.  BUT, why don't we try to get more adult learners and serve them, since the 18-year-old population is diminishing and being dispersed among so (too) many colleges?  But there is a bigger issue. Why shouldn't a young person just do something else for a few years? Grow up; we know they are not mature enough; Jean Twenge ...

The QEP is a group effort, and I am not sure we have explored that in the literature. SACS tells you what the QEP is supposed to look like. It doesn't tell you how to get there. That is done through messy group processes.  My first QEP was a dream in this regard because the group working on it was homogeneous. Pretty much the same discipline, pretty much all faculty. At that time the QEPs (post recession) were being scaled down and ours was very focused.  Now we're back to bigger scale and "student success" orientation rather than just student learning outcomes. My group is diverse--faculty and student affairs staff and students. It's just been....different. I say that because the last meeting was a bit of an ambush on me by four of the members, but the rest I think were surprised by that. Like I say, group processes are messy. I won't get into my personal feelings, etc., but I'm working through it with the help of my supervisor, who was there and able to ...

 I am currently the Chair of the Quality Enhancement Plan Committee at my institution. Unlike most, this is my second time. More on that later. I am going to be blogging about this experience, the good, the bad, and the .... well, not ugly.  The good and the bad will do. I hope to keep it neutral because I want to keep my job! (Just kidding. I don't engage in unprofessional social media posts, unlike some.....) But I'd like to start--with your comments. If you come here, post about your own QEP situation, please.  I do have to say I have a unique situation because most faculty/administrators don't lead a QEP effort twice. But the two experiences are ending up quite differently, not the least because of COVID, which I'm not sure SACS is all that concerned about.  For those who are unaware, the Quality Enhancement Plan is a vital requirement of the decennial reaffirmation of accreditation for colleges under the Southern Association of Accreditation Commission on Colleg...

  This is not an argument against undergraduate education or the bachelor’s degree. It is an argument against the unreasonable expectation of finishing in four years. One could argue that our higher education credential is fundamentally flawed. Why the Bachelor’s degree of 120 (more or less) hours? (no longer just B.A. or B.S. but with lots of different letters following the B.) Isn’t that essentially anachronistic? We’ve been using it since the deep Middle Ages. We don’t hold to much else from then, so why the term and concept of a “Bachelor’s” degree (itself man-centered, and heaven knows we don’t want any gender-bias now). So why do we? For one, it’s controllable. Everyone knows it. Eight neat little fifteen-hour semesters. Mathematically easy.   All the programs have been built around it. It makes money for colleges—there’s a disincentive to do Prior Learning, condense hours, go to a competency-based model. But assuming we stay with 120 (give or take) hours, wh...

 Very few people even come to this blog; I think mostly it's porn sites trolling me. But I write anyway.  Many, perhaps most, people in higher education claim this to be worst semester we have ever spent. Perhaps. Perhaps collectively; I would not say that for individuals, because Fall 2001 would have been really horrific for people in the Northeast, and there have been regional national disasters that have wrecked havoc (wreaked?) on colleges and universities. But COVID affects everyone, at some level.  We are wrapping up final exams, thankfully before Thanksgiving, and in the midst of grading at my college. I have been told how bad it is every day since August 1. Many of my colleagues said repeatedly, "We're going to shut down after two weeks, the cases will be so high." We did not. Cases did not get "spikey" until last week, and there are a few reasons for that I'll get into below. Many faculty prepared their classes in case of shut down in September....