Education and Administration – Page 11

What is the purpose of higher education? Live chat, 16 December

I have been invited to join a live chat on What is the purpose of higher education?. This is being organized by the Guardian Higher Education Network. I’ve never done a live chat like this, so it will be interesting to see how it works. The question we will be addressing is one posed by Aidan Byrne in his live blogging of “The Politics of the Univesity”:

Since the 2000s, academic managers and leaders have adopted the discourse of neoliberalism, presented as neutral truth, ‘common sense’ or realism. ‘Choice’ trumps all other ideas. Universities form businesses, conduct marketing, undertake ‘esteem indications’ and surveys. Private income is lionised. Students are encouraged to pursue self-interest: public service is derided. What of the future?

Research Infrastructures in the Humanities

The European Science Foundation has released a report on Research Infrastructures in the Humanities. The report has a nice Introduction on the origins of Research Infrastructures like the library and museum. It presents a taxonomy and a number of case studies. By and large the report argues “that digital RIs offer Humanities scholars new and productive ways
to explore old questions and develop new ones.” (Foreword, p. 2) The report is by the European Science Foundation and is designed to encourage appropriate development of digital infrastructure for the humanities which bridge to traditional resources.

Digital infrastructures are developing rapidly but unevenly, and there is an urgent need for coordination, standardisation and sharing of experience to prevent unnecessary duplication and the atomisation of good initiatives. (Foreword, p. 2)

I’ve only skimmed the report, but it doesn’t seem to raise the question of exactly what is suitable as infrastructure and what should stay open research. The report concludes with a nice set of priorities including the need for evaluation systems.

Introduction to Digital Humanities « Brian Croxall

Brian Croxall has put up a useful reflection on a course he is teaching on an Introduction to Digital Humanities. His post describes his approach to the class (it is organized around some projects) and he provides his syllabus with links. I like how he used DH resources like DH Answers putting the course together.

#alt-academy: Alternative Academic Careers | a mediaCommons project

I’ve been meaning to blog about the MediaCommons collections edited by Bethany Nowviskie titled #alt-academy: Alternative Academic Careers. This collection of essays is long over due and corrects the view that the only way to do the digital humanities is to get a tenure-track job. This collection calls into question the relatively fixed boundaries between academic staff (faculty) and alternative academic staff (alt-ac). I would go so far as to say that humanities computing was a field primarily populated by alt-ac folk that is only recently getting colonized by academics. Anyway, I expect to assign essays from this collection to my students.

From Metadata to Linked Data Summer School | Digital Humanities Observatory

This week (July 4th, 2011) I’m instructing at the From Metadata to Linked Data Summer School at Trinity College, Dublin. I’m teaching a half-day hands-on workshop on Voyeur. You can see my workshop script here. I am trying a new version of our workshop script which will include worksheets.

I’m writing my notes at http://www.philosophi.ca/pmwiki.php/Main/FromMetadataToLinkedData – these are not a conference report so much as reflections on stuff I’m learning.

Academic Amazon Machine Images (AMIs)

From Twitter I learned about James Smithies
Academic Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). These are images for setting up cloud services on Amazon. The two that he now provides are for Omeka and Open Journal Systems. They are not for the technically challenged, but they could be a way for a digital humanities center/project to be set up in the cloud for those who don’t have good university server support. The day may come when you don’t need university infrastructure, but can set up your own. For that matter, this blog is on my private site which gives me a bunch of tools (like WordPress and a wiki) for about $7 a month.

Humanities (dot) Net

As part of the CHCI annual conference at the Toronto Jackman Humanities Institute they scheduled a special day with centerNet titled “Humanities (dot) Net”. The program is on 2011 Annual Meeting « Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (scroll down). The event is a bringing together of these two associations of centres connected to the humanities, one digital and one “traditional.” Of course there is nothing traditional to the CHCI centers. Some of the things that link us include:

Interdisciplinarity. Of course, interdisciplinarity happens at all levels and in all sorts of organizations, including departments, but generally it is centers/institutes that develop structures for encouraging interdisciplinarity.
Collaboration. Both types of centres structure forms of collaboration. I think the CHCI centres tend to be more conservative, often also supporting “lone” scholars, but we both try to imagine ways of bringing the right people together for research and learning.
Legitimization and Leadership. Both types of centres can serve to legitimize activities that are not always recognized. They lead by recognizing new interdisciplinary configurations through fellowships, project support, workshops and so on.
Experimenting with Futures. Both types of centers can be sites of experimentation with new types of courses, new collaborations, and new research practices. Experiments emerge out of reflection which is why these centers are a site for thinking through where the humanities are going.

Humanities (dot) net as an event brings together leaders in both types of centres to learn about each other and to reflect together on the agenda of the humanities.

Inside Higher Ed: Major Decisions

Inside Higher Ed is reporting on another study looking at earning potential and choice of major. This one is from the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce and comes to similar depressing conclusions about the earning potential of humanities and arts degrees.

Some of the results are to be expected. Science, engineering, and business majors tend to be better-off financially than majors in liberal arts and humanities, education, and counseling. In addition to a wide discrepancy among average salaries, the study finds that the most popular majors have not been the ones leading to high-paying jobs, that female and minority students have tended to cluster in low-paying fields, and that graduate degrees have been essentially required for some undergraduate majors if those students were to find good jobs.

One interesting point they make is that many arts/humanities degrees lead to careers where there isn’t a lot of mobility. If you get an engineering degree you often end up in management later in your career while those who become teachers don’t have the same opportunities. At the same time, the report mentions how the breadth and communication skills of the humanities are still valued:

Surveys routinely find that employers want their employees to have a deep knowledge of their topic but a broad range of skills, and some worry that undergraduate programs too chock-full of math and science courses are producing individuals who can’t handle managerial responsibilities.

I wonder if we will shift to a model where the arts and humanities become increasingly service disciplines that provide breadth to the majority of majors in business, science, and engineering.

Is College Worth It? Pew Social & Demographic Trends

I came across this chapter from a report from the Pew Research Centre on
Is College Worth It?. The report looks at the value of education over a lifetime of work and concludes that “The typical college graduate earns an estimated $650,000 more than the typical high school graduate over the course of a 40-year work life…”

This chapter is part of a larger report on The Value of College. The authors make a number of points:

“A majority of Americans (57%) say the higher education system in the United States fails to provide good value for the money students and their families spend, and about four-in-ten college presidents say the system is headed in the wrong direction”
“just 19% of the 1,055 college presidents surveyed say they believe that the U.S. system of higher education is the best in the world. And just 7% say they think it will be the best in the world 10 years from now.”
“most college presidents (52%) say college students today study less than their predecessors did a decade ago, while just 7% say they study more. And 58% say that public high schools are doing a worse job of preparing students for college now than they did a decade ago, while just 6% say they are doing a better job.”
“the Pew Research survey finds that college graduates, on average, are happier and more satisfied with their jobs, their financial situation and their education than are those who did not attend college.”
“When asked what it takes for a young person to succeed in the world, more people point to traits such as a good work ethic (61% say this is extremely important) and knowing how to get along with people (57%) than say the same about a college education (42%).”
“the cost of a college education—at both public and private institutions—has roughly tripled since 1980 in inflation-adjusted dollars”
“By a small but statistically significant margin, the public says that the main purpose of a college education should be to teach work-related skills and knowledge (47%) rather than to help an individual grow personally and intellectually (39%). … College graduates tend to place more emphasis on personal and intellectual growth (52%) over career preparation (35%), while those who are not college graduates lean the other way, emphasizing career preparation (51%) over personal growth (34%).”

All of these quotes are from the Overview of the full report.