It didn't take long for the story to get around the world. For his convocation speech, the Dean of Medicine at the University of Alberta apparently used extensive material created by an American professor last year, without attribution. The Edmonton Journal reported that a number of students had read the speech last year, recognized it immediately, and were able to download said material to their phones in mid-speech.
Most, but not all, of the smoke from this fire cleared away by today, and the Dean has resigned his appointment but not his position. In other words, he is no longer the Dean but he still has a job. One of my colleagues said he understood the professor in question was going on administrative leave for a couple of months, which seemed odd to him. Our workshop on paraphrasing and citation practices is, at most, a half-day.
My colleague is one of those Academic Integrity Officers (AIO) at his university, you know, the ones that hear the original allegations made by professors of their students re: questionable integrity, the most common of which is plagiarism. He works exclusively in a graduate setting so the bar is set rather higher than it might be for undergraduates. He said he had noticed a pattern at his university in that there were a disproportionate number of complaints directed at PhD students who had earned a Master degree from a particular faculty and school on his campus.
"I'm tempted," he said, "to go to the library and randomly grab a dozen Masters theses from that program."
"That's a lot of reading," I pointed out.
"Oh, I'm not going to read them," he smiled. "I'm going to digitize them and then turn them in to turnitin.com."
This approach invites some really exciting results. The rule at this university is that if we find significant integrity violations after someone has received the degree, we rescind it.
Take back from the graduate.
It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. As a matter of fact, we are in the process of identifying the rescinded degree recipients of the last 20 years now to make sure that their submissions are pulled from the permanent record held by Libraries and Archive Canada (LAC). LAC is in the process of digitizing their own collection, hence the concern. This digitization is going to increase the likelihood that plagiarism will be much easier to find in the future.
That's something to think about. Imagine - you get out of university with your PhD, where you cut a few corners getting done. Ten years later, you're running for public office, and someone discovers exactly where you cut the corners. As has been noted before in this blog, that is exactly what happened to the Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and he paid a heavy price for it.He resigned and his chances for Chancellor seem very slim now.
When I wrote my Master thesis lo-these-many-years-ago, it was bound and put in the library too, where it languished, save for 11 people who checked it out over a 25 year period. If I had cut corners, discovering it 25 years later would have been impossible.
Not today with digitization. Not even for a document 25 years old.
But I digress. Back to my colleague about to test his implied theory about the qualtiy of teaching and supervision on the research front in the program I haven't yet identified, by randomly testing theses from ten years ago.
"And what happens if you find half of them have serious problems that warrant further investigation?" I asked him.
This line of argument gave him serious pause. The role of AIO is painful, time-consuming, and dispiriting enough dealing with what is happening today, without dredging up the past.
"That would create a serious ethical problem," he said. "But of course, that fact I have these suspicions also creates a moral dilemma too, whether I can ethically choose not to act."
There doesn't seem to be an obvious answer to the implied question, does there? It just seems to me that his life would be a lot simpler if he weren't quite so thoughtful.
At Dalhousie University, all graduate programs are subject to periodic academic review. Reviews are normally carried out on a five- to eight-year cycle. Programs are either reviewed by FGS alone, or by FGS in conjunction with the teaching Faculty. For joint reviews, graduate concerns are explicitly addressed. Reviews of existing programs include FGS reviews (at least once every 8 years), unit reviews, periodic surveys (Medicine), and post-accreditation reviews for accredited graduate programs. For FGS reviews, Faculty Council will appoint an internal review committee of three to five members, depending on the complexity and size of the program. For joint reviews with the Faculties, Faculty Council will appoint at least one member of the joint review committee.
Most Universities link effective assessment practices with cyclical program review in one form or another. The purpose of program reviews is best captured in the foreword by Ralph A. Wolff to “Outcomes-based academic and co-curricular program review: a compilation of institutional best practices”, a recent book by Marilee J. Bresciani (published by Stylus Publishing, LLC., 2006). Mr. Wolff wrote this foreword in his capacity as President and Executive Director of the Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities, Western Association of Schools and Colleges. He says “…..If done appropriately, program review provides a singularly effective way of addressing both the need for internal improvement and external accountability. It allows each program or unit to review itself in light of its outcomes and in relation to the institution’s mission and goals. Such outcomes information can be used by the program and the institution to document learning (and research) results and program improvements. In turn, they can be part of a program’s or institution’s external accountability report. Equally, if not more important, however, outcome-based program review can assist each department or unit to determine the extent to which it is successful in serving a wide range of students; identify indicators of learning effectiveness at the program, not just the course level; and assist the program or unit in assessing how well it is contributing to general education or institutional goals and objectives. Outcome-based program review can also be used to assess issues of retention and graduation rates, since these are often best considered at the departmental level. In light of each academic unit’s performance, the role of support services can also be reviewed in terms of their contributions to addressing retention and graduation…..”
When I arrived in the FGS office some time ago, many faculty and units viewed academic program reviews (both at the FGS and Senate level) as processes “run by people who were equal parts Darth Vadar and Dr. No” (Philip Cohen, Academe Online, May-June 2007). Like at Philip’s institution, the academic program review process at Dalhousie that my office, the Senate office and the office of the Associate Vice President Academic Programs oversee (depending on the type of review) was broken. To cite Philip again “our practices resembled nothing so much as the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You’ll recall that at the conclusion of that movie, the ark of the covenant is deposited deep in the bowels of a mammoth U.S. government warehouse, presumably never to be heard from again. Like the ark, the reports and recommendations from our academic program review teams disappeared somewhere in the FGS, Senate or the Provost’s office.” Thus, the key players from the three offices got together and devised and implemented a process whereby the program now responds to the review teams’ reports. The respondents develop a specific action plan with short- and long-term components and timelines. Like in other places “the recommendations of review teams are never accepted wholesale, of course, and sweeping changes do not occur overnight. But improvements that strengthen programs as a result of the review process are now the norm instead of the exception” (Philip Cohen, Academe Online, May-June 2007), also at Dalhousie.
Although the Darth Vadar/Dr. No perception of the people overseeing/coordinating the process may not have changed, academic program reviews can be an effective process to respond to external concerns, challenges and opportunities, while at the same time providing much needed information for improvement of quality and the effectiveness of each program or academic and/or supporting nonacademic unit as well as capacity planning. Thus, when taken seriously, academic program review can lead to discussions that are much needed within a program or unit about these important issues, and external reviewers can bring invaluable insights and significant recommendations for improvement, based on a broader perspective.
One of the huge benefits of working in a place like the Faculty of Graduate Studies is that it's a great perch from which to get a comprehensive view of the university. In a research intense university there are a lot of programs from a lot of different disciplines which have programs at the graduate level.
And we get to learn about them, not deeply perhaps since each one of us gets exactly one lifetime. But still. I'm just saying.
I come from the Faculty of Management - the School of Business Administration specifically, although I spent a lot of time as a professional management consultant both managing and helping others manage. It has always been puzzling to me why there are so few plays and movies about managers and organizations. In my experience there was never any shortage of conflict, emotion, challenge, excitement, humour, even romance (I speak here as an observer...).
So it is with some trepidation that I sit down early this Good Friday morning with a cup of coffee and a copy of last week's Sunday New York Times section entitled "Education Life" to learn two things. That business students are among the students that do the least amount of work, and the "B" in the phrase "B-school" stands for "boring".
I hope the Dalhousie business school, its Faculty of Management and the broader university isn't fairly described as boring. We want students to graduate with a sense of genuine accomplishment, with a sense of being prepared for their futures. We want what they learn to be of value to them for their entire careers, and if at all possible to be transformative.
That can only happen if we hold to high expectations, and communicate clearly the conflict, challenge, emotion, excitement, humour and even romance of our individual disciplines.
Here in the deep winter doldrums, I struggle with brain cramps brought on by limited sunshine and cognitive vapour lock. Not a pretty picture on so many fronts...
You may have seen my Twitter plea for a blog topic (http://twitter.com/#!/SunnyatDal). My good colleague Rick Nason responded right away with a provocative question (it's pretty much the only kind of question he asks).
Would education be valued more if it were free but only one tenth of current students could attend?
The first thing that springs to mind is what we might mean by "education" - university, community college, private trade school, for profit university? I have taken the liberty of restricting the question to graduate studies given that this blog belongs to the three Deans in the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Even in that narrower context, this is a complicated and interesting question. It invites a whole lot of clarifying questions.
Do you mean valued by students who get in? The students who didn't get in? Parents? The community? Employers?
Does the word "free" include tuition, books, transportation, residence, food? Does "free" mean with no strings attached, or would it require service to the community on graduation?
What are we going to do with the other 90% of the students who could attend? Create a different form of schooling, such as technical training?
What would we teach this small elect group, and how would we choose them?
As Rick very well knows, "value" is one of those attributes that depends heavily on perception rather than objective measures. Usually our perception of value is shaped by cost. It's certainly the way most people buy luxury goods such as jewelry and wine . When a man buys an engagement rings, the colour of the box is an important semiotic to "value" (i.e., the blue box from Birks or the light blue box from Tiffany's). The colour, cut, clarity, and carat weight of the stone is something most of us are unable to judge. When it comes to wine, the empirical evidence is that it is easy to change perceptions (cf. http://tinyurl.com/48bpwua), and in my experience the simplest way is through the price signal. We know this wine is good, because it is expensive.
On the other hand, restricting access to graduate education to a small elite (using that word in its most positive sense) would change the perception. Certainly universities generally and graduate school specifically are serving a much different community that they used to 30 years ago.
There is a middle ground. Folks in my office have described in which the barrier to entry in first year and the cost of the program is very low. Thousands taking first year medicine, say. But the number of seats available for second year is very limited, and everyone knows teh rules before signing on That's an interesting model too.
It turns out there is exactly such an institution here in Canada, one which is "free". It's the Royal Military College. It is free in the sense that tuition, books, residence, meals, summer employment / training, uniforms are all paid for. But there is an obligation to serve. So the counter-example is not exactly what Rick is thinking about. Is the education there valued more than many students at civilian universities?
I suspect so. But speaking from personal experience, the other costs are much higher.
Maybe the real lesson in today's reflection is that we should think more carefully about the expectations and demands we make of students. Maybe we are not asking enough.
On November 1, we had the annual Killam celebration here at Dalhousie University. A big success. The Killam Scholarship and Prize Programmes were established in memory of Izaak Walton Killam through the Will of his wife, Dorothy Johnston Killam, and through gifts made during her lifetime. Their primary purpose is to support advanced education and research at five Canadian Universities and the Canada Council for the Arts. Dalhousie University is privileged to be one of the lucky five.
The Nov. 1 celebration moderated by Sunny started with the opening remarks of Dalhousie President Tom Traves, in which he recognized the Killam pre- and post-doctoral scholarships for what they are. The most prestigious scholarships at Dalhousie University. Tom's introduction was followed by a summary of Izaak Walton Killam's and Dorothy Killam's life, achievements and goals, given by George Cooper, the managing trustee of the Killam Trusts. Since absolutely nobody can tell the story better than George, I don't even try to reproduce it in my own words, but let George do the job again in an abbreviated version in the video below. This video and videos portraying Killam scholars can be found at the Killam Trusts at Dalhousie web site.
The value of the Killam Trusts now exceeds that of the Rhodes Foundation and approximates that of the Nobel Foundation. It has had a huge impact on Canadian research and the development of "Stars of Tomorrow," both nationally and internationally.
Following George's address, the new Killam pre- and post-doctoral scholars as well as those who successfully renewed their scholarships were recognized; the new Killam scholars received their Killam pins at this occasion. Likewise, the current Killam professors and the Killam prize winners at Dalhousie were honoured. Finally, the only thing that stood between the audience and an absolutely gorgeous reception with fantastic food was the speech by Russ Boyd, who in his younger days was the recipient of both a Killam post-doctoral and a senior Killam fellowship. It was a truly inspiring talk, well worth waiting for the food. I'm reproducing it below with Russ' permission and hope it will serve as an inspiration to our current Killam scholars as well as an appreciation of what Killam support has achieved in the past and continues to achieve today.
----------
The Influence of the Killam Legacy on my Career
by
Russell J. Boyd
Associate Vice-President Research and Alexander McLeod Professor of Chemistry
Izaak Walton Killam and his wife Dorothy Killam shared a strong, indeed passionate, commitment to use their wealth for the benefit of advanced study and research in Canada. Izaak Walton Killam died in 1955 at the age of 70 before they could bring their plans to fruition. Dorothy Killam died ten years later, but during those ten years she very carefully laid plans to realize the dream that she and her husband had shared. The legacy of the Killams is truly tremendous.
In her will, Mrs. Killam established endowments to help in building Canada’s future by encouraging advanced study. She aimed “to increase the scientific and scholastic achievements of Canadians, to develop and expand the work of Canadian universities, and to promote sympathetic understanding between Canadians and the peoples of other countries”.
Izaak Walton Killam was born in Yarmouth where he was a paperboy. I was born in Kelowna where I was a paperboy until just before I turned 15. Although Mr. Killam and I both worked as paperboys, the parallel in our careers ends there.
Prior to obtaining a paper delivery route, I sold newspapers in front of the post office. It was a hard way to make money. As I recall, I sold the Kelowna Courier for five cents a copy, of which two cents was pure profit. Rarely did I sell more than ten papers a day and most of those were sold to relatives or friends of my parents who felt sorry for me.
One day I learned that there was more money to be made by delivering the Vancouver Sun, which was an evening newspaper in Vancouver, but delivered the following morning in Kelowna. When I went to apply for a paper route, the manager of the delivery operation looked at me for a second or two and said that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” and went back to barking commands at the paperboys. At ten years of age I was small for my age and I felt especially small that day and so I hopped on my bike and slowly pedaled home trying to figure out what was meant by his metaphor.
I had been challenged by metaphors from an early age. When I was about four, my parents and maternal grandparents travelled north to Vernon, a major trip in those days, to visit some relatives. As we returned home along a dark highway, my Grandpa said, “Ed, can you pull over a minute so I can water my pony”, to which I am told I asked why Grandpa kept his pony out in the middle of nowhere. Given the fact that I was challenged by figures of speech when I was young, I can now appreciate why I struggled with Shakespeare in high school. Eventually, I realized that if I were to obtain a paper route I would have to persevere. I went back to the paper shack every week until I got a paper route.
At the age of 15, Izaak Walton Killam joined the Union Bank of Halifax. He had a great entrepreneurial drive. If he had lived in Kelowna when I did, he would have obtained a paper route much faster than me and in a very short time he would have become the manager and started planning to buy the entire newspaper. He went on to have a very successful career as a financier and later he became a philanthropist. At the time of his death, he was the wealthiest person in Canada.
Just before my 15th birthday, we moved to the Vancouver area, where by circumstance I became more interested in academic matters. I did well at UBC and upon graduating in 1967 I was awarded an excellent scholarship by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) with the condition that I had to pursue postgraduate studies at another university in Canada. It was Canada’s centennial year and the country was celebrating like never before. I decided to go to Montreal, which was the centre of the party. In my first few weeks at McGill, I had the good fortunate to meet Susan. We were married the following year. In 1971, Susan and I went to Oxford to do postdoctoral research. I was again fortunate to be supported by the NRC.
While we were at Oxford, it became apparent that the great expansion era of Canadian universities had ended and that the prospects of an academic career were slim. I did not know what I should do and so I wrote to Charles McDowell, the legendary Head of Chemistry at UBC who had nominated me for the NRC 1967 Science Scholarship that had led to Montreal. He wrote back and said that it was true that there were fewer positions than there had been in the recent past and that I would be in a better position to search for a position if I returned to Canada. He offered to nominate me for a Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship tenable at UBC and said I would have the freedom to continue with the research that I had started at Oxford. During my Killam Postdoctoral Fellowship, I published about eight papers, including a single author contribution to Nature in 1974, which likely had a huge impact on my future.
I held the Killam Fellowship from May 1, 1973 to April 30, 1975. While I was at UBC, I jogged two days a week with a group of postdoctoral fellows and young professors and I played volleyball two days a week. David Suzuki was in the same volleyball group. On May 1, 1975, I went to UBC as usual and realized that I had a problem: Susan was at home with our two very young children and we had no income for the month of May. When my friends came by just before noon and said, “Come on, Russ, it is a beautiful spring day for a run”, I replied that I would catch up with them later. A short time later the telephone rang and I was offered a position at Dalhousie. I joined the Department of Chemistry on July 1, 1975. Thanks to the wonderful legacy of Izaak Walton and Dorothy Killam, I was about to realize my dream of becoming a professor in a respected Canadian university.
In the mid to late 1980s Dalhousie University appointed several Senior Killam Fellows. The Fellowship relieved mid-career professors of all teaching and administrative responsibilities for one year. Jan Kwak, the Chair of Chemistry at the time, nominated me for the Senior Killam Fellowship, which I held during the 1989-90 academic year. The Fellowship had a significant impact on my research career. In the years that followed the tenure of the Senior Killam Fellowship, I was able to attract more outstanding people to my research group, our productivity increased dramatically, the impact our publications increased correspondingly and international recognition came in many forms, including being the first Canadian to be elected to the Board of the World Association of Theoretical and Computational Chemists.
I have been fortunate to have had eight Killam Postdoctoral Fellows in my research group, four are tenured chemistry professors in Canada and three became professors in their home countries. I have not communicated with the eighth one since 2005, but I believe he is an active researcher. I have also had nine Killam Predoctoral Scholars as PhD students. Eight have completed their PhDs and like the Killam Postdoctoral Fellows have embarked on successful careers.
The generosity of the Killams has benefitted me in many ways. In fact, I would not be standing at this podium today, if it were not for the Killams. The Killam legacy made it possible for me to build an international reputation in the field of computational chemistry. Furthermore, several of the Killam scholars who spent time in my research group have gone on to become international leaders in our field.
In closing, I note that Izaak Walton Killam gave anonymously to charities throughout his lifetime. I suspect he never forgot that he had been born in modest circumstances in Yarmouth and wanted to use his wealth to improve the lives of others and to make Canada a better country. The Killam legacy, Dalhousie University and Canada have enabled me to enjoy a great career, but if I could have taken a different path, I might have chosen to be a philanthropist, provided that I had lots of money to work with.
----------
So, now it was time to socialize and to enjoy the excellent food and the well-stocked bar.
Before I post this blog though, I like to take the opportunity to thank all of the FGS staff at Dalhousie, whose tireless efforts made this celebration the success it was, in particular Susan Hooper and Marsha Scott. I also would like to extend our gratitude to the Killam trustees, George Cooper, John Matthews, M. Ann McCaig and John Montalbano, for a job well done in managing and growing the Killam Trusts in economically difficult times.
Participation grades are often used as a tool to evaluate student performance in undergraduate as well as in graduate courses. That said there is general agreement that grading class participation is one of the most difficult aspects of student evaluation. Bean and Peterson (New Directions for Teaching and Learning 74, 33-40, 1998), for example, when discussing the cons of grading classroom summarize their observations as well as those by other by stating, “that most professors determine participation grades impressionistically using class participation largely as a fudge factor in computing final course grades. This phenomenon helps explain why assessment and measurement scholars almost universally advise against grading class participation.” According to others (cited in Bean and Peterson's article), weighing student behaviors into a course grade “contaminates the grade as a measure of achievement of the course objectives.”
Antagonists to class participation grades agree on several reasons for not grading class participation: professors generally don’t provide instruction on how to improve participation; interpretation of student behavior is difficult and subjective; participation often depends on a student’s personality thus disadvantaging shy or introverted students; record-keeping is problematic - participation scores for a given individual are hard to justify if challenged.
On the other hand, class participation has the potential to be particularly suitable to support conditions that influence effective adult learning. There are substantial if’s though for this approach to be effective. The most significant if’s are that (1) class participation has to be well thought out and properly designed, (2) its values, anticipated outcomes and student benefits as well as ground rules, expectations and evaluation standards have to be well articulated and clearly communicated to students at the beginning of the exercise, and (3) interim feedback on what went well and what didn’t and advice on how to improve participation has to be provided on a regular basis to each student. Other challenges include to effectively coach students who are quiet in class, but otherwise brilliant, to distinguish shy students from those who are not successfully participating and to develop techniques for quieting discussion dominators. The latter category of students is particularly difficult to deal with when it comes to grading class participation, since they are in fact participating, but in a problematic way. Such students may talk too much, make rambling or tangential contributions, continually interrupt the instructor and/or their peers with digressive questions (often to show off), bluff their way when unprepared, or otherwise dominate discussions.
So, why do professors want students to participate so that they can learn from each other? Traditional evaluation methods often suffer from placing excessive emphasis on memorization. In contrast, incorporating class participation as one aspect of evaluation offers an alternate means of developing learning for capability rather than learning for the sake of acquiring knowledge. This learning method is consistent with adult learning principles and takes account of the need for courses not only to teach well, but also to lay the foundation for a lifetime of continuing education, formal and informal. When done well, student benefits from class participation potentially include
adapting to and participating in change,
dealing with problems and making reasoned decisions in unfamiliar situations,
reasoning critically and creatively,
adopting a more universal or holistic approach,
practicing empathy and accepting the other person’s point of view,
collaborating productively in groups or teams,
identifying own strengths and weaknesses and undertaking appropriate remediation, e.g., through continuing self-directed learning,
active learning, through posing own questions and seeking the respective answers,
learning in the context in which the learning is to be applied in real-life situations,
cumulative learning to achieve growing familiarity through a sequence of learning experiences that are relevant to the student’s goal,
learning experiences that become progressively less straightforward but more complex, as well as non-threatening but progressively more challenging,
learning from understanding, rather than from recall of isolated facts, through appropriate opportunities to reflect on educational experiences, and through frequent feedback, linked with opportunities to practice the application of what has been learned.
In conclusion, there are two key components to a positive student experience in class participation exercises: (1) Well-defined and consistent standards for assessing class participation, which are clearly communicated to students early in the class. The problem of impressionism in assessing class participation can be substantially alleviated through, for example, scoring rubrics. (2) The opportunity for interim performance review and feedback. Feedback from faculty to students about the quality of participation and its evaluation is critical. Ultimately, as Martha L. Maznevski said it in her article, reproduced in an extended version in “Teaching at the University of Manitoba: A Handbook”, “one of the best ways to evaluate performance is to develop a set of behavioral indicators of good performance.”
Ph.D. theses converted to dance! A fantastic idea. Michael Bliemel sent the link to Sunny, who tweeted about it last Saturday. One of my favorites, among many, is the video where Michelle Williams dances her Ph.D. “CT coronary angiography: Application and clinical validation.” There are two primary reasons why this is one of my favorites. (1) Blues dancing is a very versatile dance with no real "steps." Since I can't dance very well, this works for me. (2) The topic is close to my area of expertise, which helps to understand what the artists are trying to express. So, here we go.
In any case, I like the concept a lot. No PDF/A's, but a very creative and personal way of summarizing the punch line of a doctoral thesis in an unconventional and entertaining format.
That said, a lot has happened during the last month that potentially has quite an impact on graduate (as well as undergraduate) students. That said, none of these emerging trends in higher education is really new and unprecedented; we all have heard and/or read about these issues in one form or another, depending on our age. Before I start my take on some of last month's highlights, I'd like to give you the heads up that I have no intention to exceed the word count of Mike's latest blog.
Closest to home, Dr. Tim O'Neill's long-awaited report on the university system in Nova Scotia was released on September 17 at noon. Two significant recommendations are worth mentioning in the context of this blog: (1) Create key performance indicators for quality assessment and accountability for educational programs and (2) allow tuition fees to increase, with a possible cap on rate increases. That said, Dr. O'Neill qualifies the latter recommendation by saying that tuition increases would also require a better system of student assistance with more grants. He notes that Nova Scotia's current student assistance system is one of the worst in the country with the second-highest level of "unmet need," i.e., the gap between assessed financial need and financial assistance provided. He recommends raising or eliminating the cap on student loans, with a substantial increase in the non-repayable grant portion of student loans, which would cap the amount of debt a student could have. Immediate reactions to the report by student (and other) groups were split (see, for example, CBC News and MacLeans On Campus).
It goes without saying that I share the sentiment Dalhousie President Dr. Tom Traves expressed this morning in his e-mail to the Dalhousie community. When commenting on the section of the O'Neill report that considers issues related to research, technology transfer and commercialization in the context of Nova Scotia's need for economic development, Dr. Traves notes "If I have one reservation about this section of the O'Neill report, it is that nowhere is the importance of graduate students (and the importance of graduate student support) addressed. Graduate students fuel, to a large extent, the ability of universities to carry out research and transfer our findings and know-how to the wider community."
The pay-off from post-secondary education is still good, both for the individual and the economy. This is despite the fact that rising numbers of students and overlapping academic programs in post-secondary institutions makes both students and degrees less distinctive. Education still pays! This seems to be the credo of the month, independent whether you look, for example, at the latest iterations on the value of investing in education by the College Board (a membership organization representing colleges; its mission is "to connect students to college success and opportunity") or by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD; a rich-country think-tank). Most (but not all, see below) graduates take jobs fitting their qualifications, earn more than non-graduates, and consequently pay more taxes (also see The Economist, September 11th 2010, page 72, Critical thinking). Graduate jobs also fared better during the global recession. The OECD data show that those who had completed post-secondary education were more likely to be employed and less likely to be unemployed in 2008. Thus, it comes as no big surprise that, for example, graduate-school applications in the U.S. spiked after the economic downturn. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (the numbers therein are based on a new report (Graduate Enrollment and Degrees 1999-2009) by the Council of Graduate Schools), "applications to graduate schools in the U.S. rose by 8.3% from the fall of 2008 to the fall of 2009. By contrast, over the previous five years, from 2003 to 2008, the growth in applications to graduate schools had been relatively flat, rising by an average of less than 1% annually. Historically, applications to graduate schools generally have surged in recessions, as people who have trouble finding work have gone back to school to earn advanced degrees expected to help them in the job market."
Education pays, but how much? Let us now examine the flip side of the "education is good" mantra. According to the U.S. Department of Education data (discussed in The Chronicle of Higher Education on Sept. 13), "the percentage of borrowers defaulting on their student loans has risen for a third year in a row, reaching an 11-year high of 7 percent. As usual, the "cohort default rate" for 2008, the most recent data available, is highest at for-profit colleges, averaging 11.6 percent, a 0.6-percent increase over the previous year. The rate for public colleges is 6 percent, up from 5.9 percent. For private colleges, the rate is 4 percent, up from 3.7 percent." These data will definitely add more fuel to the fight over the "gainful employment" rule. In brief, the U.S. Department of Education’s "gainful employment" rule arose during the 2009-10 regulatory review process, and is envisioned to become an important tool for ensuring that for-profit schools, and potentially under-performing public and nonprofit schools, don’t take advantage of students. It requires these programs to prove that they prepare students for “gainful employment in a recognized occupation.” And the Department of Education has begun to take the initial steps toward enforcing this goal by wrestling with how to measure the quality and value of a college education. And, not surprisingly, universities in Nova Scotia may soon have to wrestle with "the quality question" as well, if the provincial government were to act on Dr. O'Neill's recommendation to create key performance indicators for quality assessment and accountability.
The gainful employment rule is at its core an emergent tool to begin measuring the public value of a post-secondary education. From a rather simplistic viewpoint, public value is generated by graduating more students within a performance (= students complete their education), quality (= students demonstrate learning that is linked to career and life success), and value (= performance and quality are delivered to students at a fair price in a competitive marketplace) framework. The value variable brings us back to the O'Neill report and puts a qualifier on raising tuition fees.
Finally, one has to realize that the "education is good" mantra does not work everywhere. According to The Economist (September 11th 2010, page 72, Critical thinking) "In some countries many students have to be content with the intellectual rewards of study." In Canada, for example, ~38% of college- and university-educated youngsters (as % of total graduates aged 25-29, source: OECD) are working in low-skill jobs. Spain, America, Poland, England and Australia also have high shares of graduates working in jobs for which they are overqualified (above the OECD average of ~22%). In Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Hungary, for example, this percentage falls below the OECD average.
The Economist (September 11th 2010, page 72, Critical thinking) makes another important observation. "Salaries vary sharply too." Hungary, for example, has fewer graduates in menial jobs than Canada, but the gross earnings of 25- to 34-year-olds with post-secondary qualifications in Hungary is ~US$ 25,200 compared with ~US$ 50,500 in Canada (Source: OECD). The Economist concludes "Hardly surprising therefore that Polish and Hungarian graduates hanker for jobs in North America and that North American companies like investing in places such as Poland and Hungary, where they can hire highly qualified labor for far less money than at home."
Now, if somebody can convert all of these trends in higher education to a dance, I'm really impressed. Have a great weekend.
There were a couple of presentations planned last week here at Dalhousie around the topic of choosing a vendor with software for recording student learning outcomes. On the face of it, this hardly seems like news. Except of course for the fact this is 2010, and we don't have such a formal system in place already. We have a way of recording grades, of course, but that isn't the same thing at all, is it?
In all of the counsel I have had about becoming a better academic in the last 10 years, while moving through the various stages of tenure and promotion, the phrase "learning outcome" was never mentioned to my recollection. "Teaching" was frequently mentioned of course, but "learning"? - not so much. Maybe everyone was assuming some kind of immutable relationship between these two activities.
As a person who works assiduously at hiding the fact he has an undergraduate degree in economics, I can assure you such a relationship is primarily theoretical, and often very tenuous. I had good teachers and I learned very little.
In the early days of my university career, I learned that the harder I worked at teaching the more I learned about the subject. Needless to say, this is not what the university of was paying 40% of my salary for. Gradually I figured out that there was different guideline worth considering: the harder the students worked, the more they learned.
This guideline is subject to a number of important cautions. The activities the students work hard at have to be specifically designed to improve the likelihood of them learning something worthwhile, and if possible, learning something related to the course. These are different ideas. (In an e-commerce course, I had the students submit five different reading and analysis portfolios on e-commerce in the context of a company of their choosing. When questioned about what they had learned from the experience, one student said he was astonished at how much he could produce in five chunks compared to what he could produce in one extended chunk. A great lesson. Nothing to do with the course.)
At the end of the first presentation, it occurred to me that the biggest challenge of the project is not going to be choosing a software vendor. It's going to be getting the faculty to articulate what learning outcomes they seek in each course, and how each student activity is connected to the learning outcome, and what might count as evidence the learning outcome was achieved.
This is going to be a non-trivial challenge, but a worthwhile one, it seems to me. The initiative is focussed on one of our undergraduate programs, but why wouldn't this apply to graduate course and program quality measures too?
When I was a D.Sc. ("Privatdozent" or "Dr. med. habil.") candidate in
Germany some time ago (I won’t tell you exactly when, but it has been a while),
Bruce Alberts’ text on the “Molecular Biology of the Cell’ was required reading
for every graduate student and PDF in the area of cellular
physiology/biochemistry/biophysics. Since that time, my focus
has changed several times, from primarily researcher to primarily teacher and,
most recently, to academic administrator. Still, I’m trying to integrate the
experiences from previous careers (some successful and some not so successful)
into what I do on a daily basis in my role as academic administrator at graduate
studies.Thus, it may come as no big
surprise that I bookmarked a 2005 "Leading Edge Commentary" by Bruce Alberts (Cell 123,
December 2, 2005) (
Download Alberts' Cell article as PDF file). Its summary really struck a nerve. It reads, “By changing
the way we teach the introductory science courses in our colleges and
universities, we can attract many more talented students to science careers. At
the same time, we will be fostering positive public attitudes about science
that are critical for a successful modern society.” Being unsure of what to make
of it when I bookmarked Bruce's 2005 Cell commentary shortly after my appointment in graduate studies, I kept it on the backburner. Now, for reasons outlined below, it seems to me that such a change in attitude toward science education may prove to become a critical tool in rejuvenating and recruiting to Dalhousie’s
undergraduate and graduate programs.
Now, seriously, what triggered me
to revisit a 2005 article in Cell? First, it was my last blog on mentoring
and that mentoring of future research stars should start early in their undergraduate years
(as successful examples at Dalhousie suggest). Second, more importantly, it was the rapidly increasing frequency of concerns in all kinds of media about the ambivalence of the world of science toward education -- especially at research-intensive universities. The most
telling one was the executive summary of a recent study from the Nature Publishing Group (NPG) entitled “Science education vs. research: a zero-sum game?” It
concluded, “It appears, then, that many universities -- and by extension, their
faculty -- treat research and teaching as a zero-sum game: as more time and energy
is invested in one endeavor, the amount of resources that can be allocated to
the other drops. Since most scientific funding and prestige are bestowed upon
faculty for accomplishments in research, education
may fall by the wayside as scientists strive for success in the lab rather than
the classroom.”
The NPG in its Nature Education Position Paper suggests
that, in order to improve scientific education, “this contradiction must be
resolved. In order to excel in science generally, education and research should
not be at odds with each other. Academic institutions must take a look at their
priorities to determine whether their hiring and workload policies are in fact detrimental
to student success.” The graduate studies team is well aware of this issue and is trying to address it as good as possible in the current environment of economic challenges to academic institutions. Such times are daring, to say the least, but they also provide great opportunities for change.
Ultimately, the graduate studies team at Dalhousie wants all students (graduate as well as undergraduate) to succeed and prosper after graduation and we're working hard to achieve this goal. Especially during convocation, we don’t want Dalhousie graduates to wonder if the implications of the recent
cartoon on the title page of “The New Yorker” (see below) are,
"Ho, ho, now everyone is coming home after college, even graduate
students." [See The Chronicle of Higher Education for debate.]
Finally, the graduate studies team also wants to ensure that another possible implication of the cartoon isn't that Dalhousie Ph.D.'s are worth as much as
third-place ribbons [next to the Ph.D. we see (in my case with a strong magnifying glass), a scotch-taped award for being "Student of the
Week," a third-place ribbon for some undefined achievement, and a
fourth-place award for golf, a poster of a rock band, a spelling trophy, a toy car, etc.] -- or are as easy to obtain. That said, I leave it to qualified Ph.D.’s
to (over)analyze a cartoon.
"Graduate Students a Priority for
the Incoming University of Calgary President" announced UToday on May 11, 2010. Speaking
at the University of Calgary's annual graduate research conference on May 7,
incoming president Dr. Elizabeth Cannon said positioning the university for the
future is top of the agenda as she assumes her job in July and that graduate
students and graduate education is a key part of that. She further told
attendees that graduate students are “hugely valuable” for research-intensive
universities and that the University of Calgary has a large responsibility to
develop the needed programs and support for them. “The University of Calgary needs
to be very disciplined to ensure graduate students get the training and skills to
be successful while also engaging in classrooms to expose undergraduates to
their knowledge and enthusiasm. ….. We have to look at ways that we can do
things better, that we can position you better so that you can leave our
institution feeling more confident, feeling better prepared, and have that
capacity to be successful—whether you carry on to do academic work, community
development or work in industry,” Dr. Cannon said.
On graduate student funding, an
issue close to my heart, Dr. Cannon said “the University of Calgary needs to be
more successful in the federal granting councils, encouraging faculty members
to compete and be competitive in the search for highly sought-after research
dollars that directly contribute to the number of graduate students that can be
supported.”
“There’s a whole trickle-down
effect of being competitive at the national level in the tri-council. To me,
that is one area where we as an institution support and expect our faculty
members to be both active and successful.”
If I could add one more point to
Dr. Cannon’s passionate engagement with a wide array of graduate student issues,
it would be the concept of graduate student mentoring, a concept that we are
actively promoting at Dalhousie University and which has already been
successfully adopted by some graduate departments.
In 19th-century
graduate education, the student-professor relationship looked a lot like the
worst kind of apprenticeship: the prize of admission to the craft was to do the
bidding of the master. Today, that model is as obsolete as writing a
dissertation on a typewriter. The landscape of today’s graduate education is
much different, and so is its population. The quantity of knowledge has
exploded, the boundaries between disciplines have blurred, and advances in both
the resources and methods available for study and research fuel both phenomena.
These factors have necessitated
both a broader, more sophisticated notion of graduate student supervision, and
a heightened recognition of its vital role in the preparation of the next
generation’s intellectual leaders, both within and beyond the academy.
Some faculty limit their
responsibilities of supervision to simply discharging their role as advisors.
While advisors can certainly be mentors, and often are, effective mentoring
requires playing a more expansive role in the development of a future
colleague. The role of advisor usually is limited to guiding academic progress.
The role of mentor is centered on a commitment to advancing the student’s
career through an interpersonal engagement that facilitates sharing guidance,
experience and expertise.
Effective mentoring of graduate
students by faculty members is one of the most important keys to a successful
graduate program because of the one-on-one nature of most graduate programs. That
said, one would have expected that academic administrators alike recognize
that mentoring takes work, experience, patience, and time. Unfortunately,
that’s not necessarily the case. To quote from the introduction to the Nature awards for mentoring in science “Of
all the activities that take place [in the lab], perhaps the least remarked upon
and the least rewarded is that of the mentorship of young researchers. This is
why in 2005 Nature launched its
annual awards for outstanding scientific mentorship.”
According to the National Council of Graduate Schools and the National Institutes of Health, mentors are:
Advisors, who have career experience and share their
knowledge.
Supporters, who give emotional and moral encouragement.
Tutors, who provide specific feedback on
performance.
Supervisors, who monitor their student's academic and professional progress.
Masters, who serve as employers to graduate student
“apprentices.”
Trainers, who teach professional responsibility.
Sponsors, who are sources of information about opportunities and assist students in obtaining them.
Role models, who exhibit the qualities and ethical values that academics should possess.
In other words, the roles of mentors constantly vary. Often simultaneously, mentors need to be:
Disciplinary guides.
Skills development consultants, honing
Oral and written communication skills,
Team-oriented/interdisciplinary skills,
Leadership skills,
Grantsmanship skills.
Career consultants.
Quality mentoring greatly enhances graduate student success in many
aspects. Graduate students who receive effective mentoring demonstrate greater:
Productivity/Competitiveness: in research activity, conference presentations, pre-doctoral
publications, instructional development, and scholarship/grant writing.
Academic success: in persisting in graduate school, taking a shorter time
to earn a degree, and performing better in academic coursework.
Professional success, with greater chances of securing tenure-track
positions if seeking employment in academe or career advancement if seeking
leadership positions in other educational settings or economic sectors.
In summary, good mentoring can
make the difference between not only recruiting good students but also
retaining the student and helping the student to be marketable upon graduation.
With good mentoring, a student will be well prepared to enter his or her
profession not only with the requisite disciplinary knowledge and skills but
also with an understanding of the pathways to success and the self-reliance to
embark upon them with confidence.
Becoming a mentor is like making
a wise investment; it can be costly at first but the long-term returns are
surprisingly large. Being a mentor can be a personally fulfilling experience,
one in which the mentor benefits at least as much as the mentee. The rewards
continue long after one's student becomes one's colleague, often for a
lifetime.