They always make you take history in school. I’m more of a math and science girl and will always choose a good chemistry lab over a history lecture. However, having been expected to complete several history courses (for the well-rounding of me and my education), I did pick up on the patterns we humans cycle through as decades and centuries go past. The technology we create for ourselves, ostensibly to make our lives easier/better/faster, seems always to impact more than just the job it was created for. I’m talking about wheels and looms, satellites and cotton gins, not Silly Putty and Flowbees.

Dean Shareski over at Ideas and Thoughts wrote a piece about technology in education and whether or not its just a tool. We’re in the midst of that changing moment, the one some hardcore science geek college girl will have to learn about a few centuries hence.

Further Reading:

Literacy: We’ve Still Got It
Another New and Exciting Way to Be Driven Over the Edge by Technology
New Essay Writing Apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch
Implementing Different Tools
Launching the Emerging Media Major
“Don’t Teach Your Kids This Stuff. Please?”
The Future of Education
Digitizing Knowledge
21st Century Learners

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(technology)

I don’t want to agree with Michael Platt that for-profit schools succeed and not-for-profit schools are seemingly always in financial straits, but he makes a certain amount of sense. I’m not saying I’d relish earning a degree from a for-profit college, but there must be some way for traditional colleges and universities to support rich and deep learning while also not sucking fumes financially.

From the press release:

It is the LACK of profit/incentive that has caused many of the primary and postsecondary schools in this country to fail the students.

If primary schools were profit-driven, maybe they wouldn’t hold onto crappy teachers. Maybe they would abandon the ridiculous agrarian calendar. Maybe they would stop allowing unions to place teachers’ rights above student rights. Our government should not be running the business of education.

If universities were profit-driven, maybe they would stop misleading students with noted professors who then rarely step into a classroom. Maybe they would strive for better graduation rates as opposed to throwing out challenged students because they are afraid it might hurt their overall outcomes/reputations. Maybe they wouldn’t have one placement advisor for every 2,000 – 5,000 students. Maybe they would warn students who pay $80,000 for their education that their starting salary is likely to be well below DOE-proposed GE metrics. Our government should not be running the business of education.

Ooof. And then the big fat bucket of True Knowledge Must Never Be Based On Financial Gain worms is dumped unceremoniously in front of me and it’s back to square one. Damn I loathe square one.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(square one)

There will be no more complaints regarding the impossibility of studying in high-volume dorms: Army staff sergeant Dysha Huggins-Hodge is currently pursuing a transfer studies degree while serving in Afghanistan. Sometimes she’s forced to stop studying until the direct-fire attacks are over. It puts the hyperactive-psycho-alcoholic-death-rock roommate in perspective, doesn’t it?

Further Reading:

Online Education A Solid Option For Veterans
Unique Perspective On the GI Bill

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(loud)

I’ve always suspected that the morally screwed essay-writing-service industry was real, but couldn’t quite let myself believe that such moral larceny could occur in academia. I’m sure everyone else has always understood its existence to be true, but I’ve always worked hard to maintain the lie (to my obsessive, rule-following little self) that essay-writing services were evil myths, like Munchkins, that thing under my bed that won’t stop drooling, and that freaky tooth fairy bitch–stealing children’s teeth? Not unlike collecting the ears of your enemies.

It turns out you really can pay someone to do your writing for you in high school, college, and grad school. You just need a fistful of cash and a moral compass that’s lacking a true north. Outsourcing your brilliance is dumb. But apparently if you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed and your written communication looks like this:

“You did me business ethics propsal for me I need propsal got approved pls can you will write me paper?”

This:

“did u get the sorce I send
please where you are now?
Desprit to pass spring projict”

Or this:

“thanx so much for uhelp ican going to graduate to now”

Then maybe paying a professional is the way to go.

Oddly, I have a huge amount of respect for pseudonymity guy, Ed Dante, who wrote about his career writing strangers’ papers for money in The Chronicle of Higher Education. I somehow find only his clients to be reprehensible. He’s part of the machine, sure, but I’m going with the argument that if there weren’t a market for his services, he wouldn’t be writing other people’s essays. Please add to that the fact that Dante makes more money writing emergency thesis chapters for sub-par grad students than he could at almost any above-board writing gig.

Here’s what he says about the money:

I live well on the desperation, misery, and incompetence that your educational system has created. Granted, as a writer, I could earn more; certainly there are ways to earn less. But I never struggle to find work.

The endless admissions essays:

I have become a master of the admissions essay. I have written these for undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs, some at elite universities. I can explain exactly why you’re Brown material, why the Wharton M.B.A. program would benefit from your presence, how certain life experiences have prepared you for the rigors of your chosen course of study. I do not mean to be insensitive, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been paid to write about somebody helping a loved one battle cancer. I’ve written essays that could be adapted into Meryl Streep movies.

Seminary students:

I do a lot of work for seminary students. I like seminary students. They seem so blissfully unaware of the inherent contradiction in paying somebody to help them cheat in courses that are largely about walking in the light of God and providing an ethical model for others to follow.

And retirement:

…there is little discussion about custom papers and how they differ from more-detectable forms of plagiarism, or about why students cheat in the first place. It is my hope that this essay will initiate such a conversation. As for me, I’m planning to retire. I’m tired of helping you make your students look competent.

You should read Dante’s whole confession. He’s damn smart, and makes such beautiful points about higher education and the levels of academia that are shockingly (maybe only to me) rife with cheating. It’s an unpleasantly shite-ful situation, but Dante’s article made me feel all warm inside. I do love honesty, but I think perhaps it was seeing the dirty unmentionables behind the curtain that did it for me in the end.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(moral compass)

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has this article up. Several nurses are interviewed and are asked what it takes, critical-thinking wise, to be a nurse. It’s clear the meek and the untrained wouldn’t survive. The statements made by the nurses show, with no room for disagreement, that the nurse with the solid education and some years of experience will get to that excellent place where the new information coming in about a patient flows into the nurse’s noggin, and the next words and actions are the result of said education and the catalogued accumulate of hundreds of patients.

Have you ever experienced one of those badass super-bitch nurses? I mean “super-bitch” in the way of highest compliments. I enjoy Western Medicine and all it can offer me, especially when a human being is about to walk out of my womb. It turns out that narrow-waisted little me is really good at birthing the babies. Which means my kids show up sooner than either myself or the hospital staff ever expect.

That’s fine (no one likes a long labor), but sometimes it means the doctor is still home in bed when things start to happen in earnest. I remember everything getting loud and chaotic very quickly. There were several nurses in the room, along with my husband and his parents. I didn’t give a crap about any of them except the quiet British nurse who looked me in the eye and spoke to me, causing the room and everyone in it to go all Matrix-y. She smiled calmly and told me, “Your doctor isn’t here. Don’t worry—I’m a midwife.”

My eyes widened in the exact way you’d expect a first-time mother’s eyes to widen while she’s thinking, What the f*ck are you telling me, woman?!. But I said nothing, because Sweet British Nurse Chick held my gaze for one more second, which was all the time it took for her–in my undrugged mind only, no one else noticed–to rip open her scrubs, revealing the caped, Super Bitch unitard (there were boots too, thigh-high ass-kickers).

I understood then that I didn’t need a damned doctor; this RN/midwife was going to get my kid out alive no matter what. She’d seen it all before and she was prepared to think her way through any new twist I threw at her.

She did, too. I still have a crush on her.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: CrisVector)

Martha Hill, the Dean of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, wrote this piece about the nursing shortage. It’s not just a problem in the U.S.–it’s global and the numbers are staggering. Here in the U.S., we’ve only got 1,000 nurses per 100,000 people. In developing African countries like Uganda, there are only 20 nurses per 100,000 people. I don’t see that as a workable situation.

Nursing is a solid career choice these days. If you’re leaning that direction but haven’t made your final decision, Hill’s words could very well convince you:

Nurses are well positioned to be major actors on this global stage. Despite the growing nursing shortage, they remain the largest, most widely distributed and most respected group of health care professionals in the world, with an estimated 12 million nurses working to improve health in 125 countries. They are among the world’s thinkers, decision-makers, innovators and trail blazers who are on the front lines in dealing with national and international health issues. And they are poised to address — and capable of resolving — the world’s most pressing health concerns.

But we need more of them. Through global nursing, we can grow and expand the education and positioning of more nurses. These nurses will develop and lead health care delivery capacity — from systems-building to policy making. They will conduct the research essential to determining and measuring the best practices of nursing in an endless variety of settings and locations. They will partner with others to collaborate across borders and overcome obstacles. They will create global solutions.

Further Reading:

Nursing Shortage to Be Addressed by Grant to School of Nursing
Community Healthcare System’s Innovation Keeps Nurses Satisfied, Retained
High Licensing Exam Pass Rates for NMSU Nursing School Grads
New Nursing Degree Program
Top Ten Recession-Proof Jobs
RN Fast Track for Vocational Nurses

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(nurses, nurse with patient)

For-profit colleges, the schools for which I employ my “If you can’t say anything nice, then please keep your sarcastic mouth shut, woman!“ policy, have angered consumer advocacy groups. The advocacy groups have officially complained to the U.S. Department of Education, and now there will be official rules. That’s right. Official. Rules.

Starting in July 2011, for-profit schools, like DeVry and Phoenix, will be required to tell prospective students statistical facts concerning the school’s track records in two specific areas: Graduation rates and post-graduation job placement rates. This information must be handed over to students prior to the application process.

Additionally—and I particularly adore this part—if the Feds find out a given for-profit college is spewing graduates who can’t pay back their student loans (usually due to the fact that the school is academically shoddy and a certificate or a degree from said institution is meaningless in the real world, thus resulting in a significant portion of the institution’s graduates being less than hireable), the school loses its funding. It is an effort for me to dial down the giddy and only hum (not sing) the super fancy Diploma Mills Suck song. It’s really good. And it rhymes.

Further Reading:

Government To Hold For-Profit Schools Accountable To Pricey Tuition
Career Schools May Lose Loans

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(image: University of Phoenix)

Arjun Muralidharan, aka the Productive Student, has a list of 14 ways college students can strive for greenness on Earth. You’ll want to do them all to slow the destruction of the planet, but you’ll actually do them to save yourself some coinage.

14 Ways to Be a Greener Student (and Save Money Doing It):

-Eat less meat or go vegetarian
-Do more efficient laundry
-Buy groceries with less packaging
-Eat out less
-Buy a greener computer
-Optimize your commute
-Decompose organic waste
-Bring your own bag for shopping
-Recycle paper
-Buy recycled notepads and textbooks
-Put old and unwanted textbooks up for sale
-Use a durable water bottle
-Be conscious about lights everywhere
-Reduce and manage electronic devices

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(recycled notebooks)

I don’t care how high your SAT scores are: if you’re planning to attend any institution of higher education that isn’t blatantly obvious in its accreditation (Stanford, Yale, etc.), and you don’t take the so-easy-a-monkey-could-do-it step of checking your intended school’s official accreditation status, then you’re an idiot.

Go here or here and get it done. You’ll spend hours more time texting today than you will ascertaining that your institution will hand you a valid degree after you’ve given said school your blood, sweat, tears, time, and money. Avoid this woman’s mistake.

Accreditation Resources:

Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA)
U.S. Dept. of Edu. Database of Accredited Postsecondary Institutions and Programs

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(graduation joy)

Oh, it’s coming. Denying it won’t help you. Fall Term is starting up soon whether you’re ready or not. When the first week of classes have been attended and while you’re still focusing on first chapters, small quizzes, tolerable assignments, and the finer points on your professors’ syllabi, at the very least please skim this: How to Study: A Brief Guide. Learning how to learn is, how do you say, crucial, of the essence, invaluable, indispensable and totally effing necessary.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

(take notes)