Check out this morning's story from Inside Higher Ed for more information and questions. I'm told we can expect details from UW System soon, and I know many of us eagerly await them.
Welcome to another new miniseries of the Education Optimists. Once in awhile we get a chance to sit and read-- it's rare, but when it happens it's crazy fun. Here's a taste of what we've liked lately. For those pondering the reform of financial aid programs, I want to draw your attention to two papers--one very new, and one a year old. In Postmortem for the Current Era: Change in American Higher Education, 1980-2010 , Penn State historian Roger Geiger cogently tackles the many dismal trends of the last several decades. Among my most favorite of his observations is the following: "The four vectors of the current era—-the financial aid revolution, selectivity sweepstakes, vocationalism, and research intensification—all bear an underlying signature by invoking private, as opposed to public or social, interests. They do not necessarily contradict public interests. On the contrary, to significant degrees, financial aid has allowed students with limited means to pursu...
Recently, another study ( Researchers Probe Causes of Math Anxiety : It's more than just disliking math , according to scholars) has appeared proposing to explain the causes of mathematics anxiety. It shows up as part of a book called CHOKE: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To, by Sian Beilock. If what's in the article is an accurate depiction of what the study has to tell us, there's not much new to see. On my view, math anxiety is obviously not something many people, if any, are born with: for the most part, we catch it from others. However, it is worth noting that there are many carriers who are not themselves suffering from the disease. Contemptuous, arrogant math ematics teachers can readily drive someone into math anxiety , and frequently do, I strongly suspect. So can rigidity about what doing and being "good at" math ematics entails. Given how most US teachers present the subject in K-12, math is only or ...
At 3:51 pm, I received the following letter from UW-Madison Human Resources Director Bob Lavigna in response to the Change.Org petition. The full text follows. I have underlined key sentences since it is rather long and inserted with ** some comments of my own. I am very pleased with this display of engagement on the part of the administration and shared governance units, and hope you will agree with me that this is a significant step forward. On Wisconsin! November 2, 2012 Dear UW-Madison colleagues: I am writing in response to the October 30 petition asking me to, “… issue a list of written assurances regarding all planned significant changes to the Human Resources Design Strategic Plan on which the Faculty Senate will vote on Monday, November 5, 2012.” First, I want to outline where we are in the process of finalizing the HR Design Strategic Plan, and what will occur as we move forward. On September 21, we posted the plan for campus-wide review and comment. S...
Comments
Post a Comment