Universities
Here I will put links to entries on various university subjects (none right now) and notes.
Tuition at Colleges
Johns Hopkins Lies about Budget to Cut Faculty Salaries
Miscellaneous
Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education, a big, well-funded attempt to set up Centers at elite universities to teach the humanities outside of the official framework. A very good idea. They could be self-funding by alumni donations if it does good work, and will rightly die if used for grifting.
Thank you for alerting me to the Foundation for Excellence in Higher Education's Centers. It's a great idea. They will eventually be self-funding from grateful undergrad alumni, if successful; they will die if they are just grifters, as will be the case with some of them.
It reminds me of the idea of medieval universities. Students came to Paris or Oxford and went to lectures and read books in company with each other. The University had exams they could try to pass to get a credential. Students assembled in colleges that were really just dormitories with tutoring and older people to bail you out of jail, etc. Nowadays, the official Yale University provides the credential, in exchange for big bucks. But the education doesn't have to come from official Yale professors; it can come from hanging out with Center people and other students who also want to learn. This is aided by massive grade inflation, which means spending time on your official classes is optional and you have plenty of time for real learning.
Universities don't care about teaching quality. What they care about is keeping students happy. That's why they use student evaluations despite their obvious flaws in measuring learning. What the university wants to find out is
(a) do students think they're learning something?
(b) are students enjoying themselves?
I wonder if hospitals evaluate doctors in the same way. We'd expect that, I think--- bedside manner is what patients care about, and someone who *looks* like he's competent, and who gives them a lot of pills and procedures and tells them they're working if only they keep on paying for more of it. The big difference is that the insurance companies, who are paying, get involved. Universities make sure to keep parents, who are paying, far away from knowing what is going on in classes and dormitories. That's what FERPA is for.
