Calm Before the Storm: Gearing Up For 2010/2011

Q&A is an irregular series on SOTA which will pose a question to a small group of faculty, staff or students from different campuses and compile their responses. If you would like to respond to the question, please do so in the comments section of this post or email ucirasota@gmail.com. Thanks to Ken Ehrlich, Marc Herbst, Peter Krapp, Brett Stalbaum, and Fred Lonidier for their responses. “Calm Before the Storm” is the 3rd installment of Q & A:

Q: Recently on Remaking the University blog Michael Meranze (UCLA) reflected on the summer and the upcoming school year: “This year crucial issues about the organization of University life and work, about the relationships between the campuses, the intersection between UC and the larger Higher Education system, about pensions, staff layoffs, and student fees are going to confront us all. This summer may have been quiet—but in all likelihood it is the calm before the storm.” SOTA wants to know what challenges do people need to be preparing for, thinking about as the school year begins? What is on your mind?

A: Ken Ehrlich (UCR – Lecturer, Art Department) – The seeds of non-cooperation have been planted. Students I’m speaking with are organizing a massive outreach campaign to refuse to pay further fee increases. They understand that such an action would only work if significant numbers of students were willing to face the consequences of non-cooperation. Faculty members on several campuses have also been mulling over active refusal of certain restrictions that limit the productive pursuit of research and instruction. One concrete proposal put forth that seems to be gaining support is actively opening classes to the un-enrolled so long as it does not disrupt the learning environment. The contest over the meaning of “public” education is far from over. It seems clear that both faculty and students refuse to make demands on an administration whose priorities lie not with education but with efficiency and further marginalization. Students, in particular, are shifting from protest to action.

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Online Education: Q&A with Peter Krapp (UCI) and Brett Stalbaum (UCSD)

Q&A is an irregular series on SOTA which will pose a question to a small group of faculty, staff or students from different campuses and compile their responses. If you would like to respond to the question, please do so in the comments section of this post or email ucirasota@gmail.com. Here is the 2nd SOTA Q&A:

Q: Online education is getting pushed in the UC Regent’s Commission on the Future report and through Regent Blum’s direct ties to for-profit online education companies. We are wondering what arts professors across the system are thinking they will do when it gets proposed that art classes be taught online?

Photo by Arvind Balaraman

A: Peter Krapp (UCI) – This is a major scandal. If the US Senate hearings have started to shine a light on the practices of for-profit higher ed, then why is UC still indulging in dot-com fantasies? Who does [UC Dean Christopher] Edley hope to please with his authoritarian imposition of wage suppression, layoffs, and watered-down education?

A: Brett Stalbaum (UCSD) – My experience is that when faculty committees examine the application of online education to large undergraduate classes, they properly identify the hidden costs, the mixed experience of peer institutions, and very real concerns about quality. These same committees often find on the contrary that distance education could be a real revenue generator at the graduate level – especially in programs where producing a thesis requiring the student to be in a different location. (Say a deeply engaged, situated anthropology study or special collections.) Drafts and viva voce examination and support can be done with word processors, email, Skype, and other low cost tools. Using online technologies for “savings” is probably a folly tied to special interests who want to sell the UC on expensive platforms, and simultaneously distracts from the development of potentially very profitable, specialized graduate programs that are bound to our main mission as a research system.

On Efficiency: Q&A with Peter Krapp (UCI) and Brett Stalbaum (UCSD)

Q&A is an irregular series on SOTA which will pose a question to a small group of faculty, staff or students from different campuses and compile their responses. If you would like to respond to the question, please do so in the comments section of this post or email ucirasota@gmail.com. Here is the first SOTA Q&A:

Q: How are you balancing the need for efficiency in your programs with the recognition that the arts cannot fit into an efficiency model?

by jscreationzs

A: Peter Krapp (UCI) – Efficiency does not have to be defined by corporate metrics. UC is a global leader in research, education, and service. Why can’t we
stop making important what corporate managers consider measurable, and start making measurable what is important?

There seem to be too few people in positions of influence at UCOP who have any significant experience on a UC main campus teaching undergraduates. Appropriate metrics need to be developed by faculty who are fully engaged in, and familiar with, the core mission.

A: Brett Stalbaum (UCSD) – The arts can and often do fit into an “efficiency model”, that they don’t is a canard that we largely impose on ourselves when we nod in agreement with the president. UC Administrators regularly fail to take into account that all enrolled students bring in the same state funds, and especially with fees increasing in recent years, departments such as English and Literature are cash cows because the students themselves don’t use nearly the same capital intensive infrastructure as students in the sciences do. Further, humanities and social science departments tend to have heavier teaching loads and lower salaries! The president’s assumption is almost certainly false, but don’t expect robust apples to apples efforts to correctly quantify any of these questions to come from UCOP. This president is not an honest player.