This is a boon not only to those who want greater access to these collections but to students and academics who now have a streamlined, organized way to use these resources for research and learning. While the DPLA has made waves among those who keep up with library and education news, many students may not yet be aware of what the DPLA has to offer and how they can get the most out of it. Luckily, getting started is easy, and students can access the amazing resources collected by the DPLA without much expertise or know-how.

What Is the DPLA?

Launched in 2010 by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and opened to the public in April 2013 (and still technically in beta), the Digital Public Library of America was conceived with a pretty big goal in mind: creating a large-scale, public, digital library that brings together information and resources from a wide range of different sources in one easily accessible place. So far, it seems to have done a pretty good job, creating a portal that makes it easy to search and access materials from dozens of American museums, archives, universities, and libraries.

Currently, just under 2.5 million books, images, records, and sources are archived and are searchable through the site. The bulk of these come from large institutions, like Harvard, the Internet Archive, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian, which combined account for almost half the items in the site’s database.

Yet one of the best things about the DPLA is that it isn’t just focused on America’s biggest collections. State, city, university, and specialized archives are also included. These provide researchers and students with access to some of the amazing items that reside in smaller libraries and museums, including the David Rumsey Map Collection, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the New York Public Library, and state archives in Kentucky, Georgia, Minnesota, South Carolina, Utah, Nevada, and many other western states.

As the DPLA builds its resources, it’s likely that even more small and state-based libraries will share their collections. Of the 42 state and regional libraries that have digitized their archives, just seven are currently partnered with the DPLA, something the DPLA plans to change as it grows. And it’s not just already digitized material the library is after. In fact, one proposed future project of the DPLA is the “Scanabago,” a mobile scanning unit that would travel the U.S. to digitize and curate historical materials, allowing small facilities with limited budgets to share their collections with a much larger audience.

While much of the DPLA’s content today is in the public domain, that may not always be the case in the future. The project’s executive director, Dan Cohen, told The Atlantic, “We really want to work to expand the realm of publicly available materials. So, obviously, a big part of that is working with non-profit groups like libraries, archives, and museums to get that stuff online and out to the public, but there will also be a component here where I’m going to push, along with my colleagues at the DPLA, to see how we can get other materials into the DPLA and out to the public.” This many eventually mean that the DPLA contains not only archival materials but also books, journal articles, and other copyrighted materials. While these may have greater limitations on how they can be accessed and shared, they’ll provide users with an even greater range of information.

A New Type of Library

So what’s the big deal? After all, digital library archives have been around for decades, and much of what is accessible through the DPLA could already be accessed on individual institutions’ sites.

Essentially, it comes down to ease of access. In the past, archives from partner universities, museums, and libraries may not have always been easy to navigate. The DPLA changes that with an easily understandable interface that allows even those who aren’t especially tech-savvy to easily find what they need. Even better, a single search now makes it possible to see results from multiple archives at once, saving time and effort in heading from site to site.

Through the DPLA, it also becomes easier for researchers to bring together resources from more than one institution, compare them side by side, and make connections. Mary Minow, a professor at the Graduate College of Library and Information Science at Dominican University and a leading expert on digital libraries, says that the sum is greater than the parts when it comes to the DPLA.

“Think about letters in particular,” Minow says. “Correspondence from two people can finally be brought together online, even if the physical letters reside 3,000 miles apart.”

A huge digital archive like this isn’t likely to revolutionize library collections, nor will it render traditional brick-and-mortar libraries obsolete (though some have expressed worry that it may mean reductions in funding, the full impact of which is yet to be seen). What it does do is make library information much more useable and accessible, and not just to those in academia or the research community. The easier it is to get information, the more likely people are to use it, learn about their heritage, and make connections between information stored in different regions of the country. And that, in itself, is a very big deal.

Using the DPLA for Research

Ready to use the DPLA for your own academic needs? Get started is actually pretty easy. For the most basic searches, students will simply enter the topic they’re trying to find more information about and hit Enter. From there, searches can be refined further, with filters placed on the type of media (image, text, sound, etc), the archive it comes from, who owns it, the language it appears in, location, and subject. It’s all very easy to use, and anyone familiar with modern search engines should be able to navigate it with relative ease.

While the basic search function of the DPLA is fairly self-explanatory, the site does feature some unique options for searching that can come in handy when trying to ferret out the best resources for a project.

Geographical Searches

By far one of the most exciting and innovative features of the DPLA is that items can be searched for and located on a map. To use the map feature, students can select “map” from the toolbar at the top. From there, it’s just a matter of executing another search, putting in the terms you want to look for. The results will be organized by location, with those related to certain states or cities placed in the corresponding area on the map.

“When I look at my home state of California, it is stunning how many resources on local matters are found in collections outside of California, “Minow says. “For example, I found and this old color postcard of the Carnegie Library in Los Gatos. It’s actually held by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.” This ability to easily find resources from anywhere in the U.S. is incredibly useful, as sometimes the best information won’t be located in local communities but miles away.

Timelines

In addition to the map search feature, students can also take advantage of the timeline. This is accessible both through the DPLA’s main page and on every resource in the database. Once in the timeline, it’s easy to find information that comes from a particular year or time period, or to see how a certain piece of information within the archive fits in with other images, documents, recordings, and information from a given year.

For those doing extensive research on the site, it comes complete with one incredibly useful feature. Simply create an account with the DPLA (free of charge) and you can save resources as you search, making it easy to return later to a customized collection of anything you feel is relevant to your project. This could be especially useful for creating multimedia presentations or any other type of project that would require bringing together numerous images from the site.

Social Sharing

The DPLA also has some social features that can make it helpful to use in class or to share information with fellow researchers or academics. In addition to saving resources, you can also easily send them to Facebook, Twitter, or Google+. This can be both fun and a great way to show others what you’re working on and get feedback on your progress.

The search features on the DPLA aren’t yet perfect. There are still some big problems with metadata that can make it frustrating to find items related to a given topic. Still, it’s a promising start to a resource that could prove incredibly useful among students, academics, and the general public alike.

Taking the DPLA Further

The DPLA is very much a work in progress, but for students that can be a good thing. It offers the opportunity to actually play a role in how information within the system — and perhaps even the system itself — is organized, accessed, and used.

Perhaps the most notable way this can happen is through the site’s open API. An open API means that anyone can access the proprietary software used to organize the site, allowing for outside developers to build their own apps based around the DPLA. This offers the potential for a lot of creativity when it comes to using the DPLA.

As Cohen told The Atlantic, “If you’re a developer of a mobile app, maybe one for a local walking tour of a city, you can take the material you already have and mix it up with all the great content from the DPLA for that particular location.”

A number of DPLA apps have already been developed, with two of the most-talked-about coming from Harvard, one of the DPLA’s largest partner institutions. Right now, apps allow users to do everything from look at DPLA photos on-the-go to source information based on the user’s current geographic location, and the DPLA encouraging this sort of development.

While applications play a major role in the future of the DPLA, it’s not just through them that students can help shape what the resource becomes.

“Students are encouraged to get involved in building the DPLA, and this gives them the opportunity to not just learn about digitization, organization, copyright and related issues, but actually put their skills to use,” Minow says. “Dominican doctoral student Maurine McCourry wrote a brilliant paper suggesting future directions for the DPLA. We gave her paper to DPLA leadership, and they were extremely interested. The doors are open at DPLA to all good ideas.”

The commitment to openness makes it possible not only for the DPLA to bring together information from a wide range of sources, but also to crowdsource the best solutions for getting it to a wider audience, which is exactly what any great library should do.

Whether you have a research project to complete or just want to learn more about American history and culture, the DPLA offers a new, easier way to find information and explore some of our country’s richest archives. It’s well worth your time to get to know more about the DPLA, as it may just grow to be one of the best sources for online research in the coming years. It offers a chance to access an amazing wealth of primary source material. It’s not something to pass up.

The post What the DPLA Means for Students appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

Table of Contents

• Plagiarism: What It Is and What It Isn’t
• How to Verify Sources
• Citing Sources: How and When to Do It
• How to Make Sure You Aren’t Plagiarizing

Plagiarism is a dirty word that you’ve probably been hearing since middle school, often accompanied with vague threats of failing or being expelled. But it’s a problem that has extended far beyond the walls of middle school, high school, or college, and has brought down highly influential people. To avoid plagiarism, it’s important to understand what it is, how to avoid it, and most importantly, why it’s wrong.

In Germany, several politicians have been accused of plagiarism within their doctoral theses, and the list seems to keep growing. In 2011, German Defense Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg had to resign, and his doctorate was revoked. Then plagiarism resulted in the downfall of the education minister, a district judge, the minister of defense, and a handful of other politicians. Other countries have been affected as well, with President Pal Schmitt of Hungary and Ioan Mong, the education minister of Romania, stepping down in 2012. The chief rabbi of France, Giles Bernheim, has refused to quit even though he has admitted to plagiarizing the work of many authors.

Even well-respected researchers and academics can fall into the plagiarism trap. Jane Goodall, the world-renowned primatologist, was recently cast into the spotlight when her newest book, Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants, appeared to copy material from several different sources, including Wikipedia. Goodall’s response implied that the passages had just been cited improperly or skipped over unintentionally, but accidental plagiarism is still plagiarism.

If even doctoral students and expert researchers can’t use material and cite sources properly, how can a high school or college student ever hope to? While there are always complicated cases where it’s unclear what must be cited, most students can avoid unintentionally plagiarizing by taking the time to understand what plagiarism is and how to give credit where credit is due.

Plagiarism: What It Is and What It Isn’t

In a culture where students grow up downloading music and photos, and where ideas are passed around the Internet without always knowing the original source, plagiarism can be a hard concept to understand. “It’s not like people are growing up into a culture that makes a clear distinction between what’s yours and mine,” says Dr. Barry Grant, the Associate Dean of the Center for Academic Excellence at Northcentral University. Luckily, he says, the definition is much clearer in academic institutions.

Every college has a plagiarism policy. They typically outline exactly what will get you in trouble with that institution, and though they may vary slightly in phrasing from school to school, they normally cover the same fundamental idea. Plagiarizing, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is stealing and passing off someone else’s ideas or words as your own or using someone else’s production without crediting the source. Your school’s plagiarism policy will likely say something similar.

Of course, the part about crediting the source is essential in understanding how to write a research paper. You won’t be creating all new material; rather, you’ll likely be using a variety of research published by other scholars to create a new argument or back up your own research. The work of others will be incorporated into your writing, but with accurate quotations and accurate credit for others’ ideas and findings, Grant says.

Paraphrasing, or rewording, another person’s work is a great way to convey the information and make it fit into your argument and structure of your paper. When paraphrasing someone’s original idea, though, make sure to properly cite the information. Your paraphrase must also be different enough from the original that it doesn’t appear to be a quote without full credit.

“Students with good intentions are aware of the need to put information in their own words, but often the result is called “patchwriting,” an attempt to paraphrase by rearranging words and phrases, substituting synonyms for original words, or deleting a word in a sentence,” says Dorothy Mikuska, a retired high school English teacher and creator of PaperToolsPro, software to teach students write better research papers and discourage plagiarism.

Patchwriting often happens when a student hasn’t taken the time to fully comprehend and analyze what he or she has read. Instead of being able to put the idea into their own words and voice, the student relies on replacing select words or phrases, a practice that could very well be considered plagiarism. If you need more help determining if you’ve paraphrased correctly, Grant suggests visiting your school’s writing center.

Using pieces of your own previous writing is also a form of plagiarism. Self-plagiarism, though potentially harder to catch if your work hasn’t been published, is still a punishable offense under most school’s ethics policies. Author and journalist Jonah Lehrer caught heat in 2012 for copying paragraphs and passages from his own published work. While he doesn’t run the risk of being sued by the original author (since it’s, you know, himself), magazines did have to publish addendums to his work to tell readers that pieces of his work has been previously published elsewhere. Lehrer’s reputation took a hit.

How to Verify Sources

While the Internet is a great resource for uncovering research and opinions for your writing, it is also full of unverified information. It can be difficult to determine if a source is appropriate to use in an academic paper.

“The question needs to be asked: what are credible research sources?” Mikuska says. “Should serious academic research be based on a knee-jerk comment on Twitter, an opinion expressed in a blog by someone who may or may not be a credible thoughtful source, or a website without a stated author?”

Though some non-traditional sources might be called for in certain papers — a look at how Twitter affected a news event, for example — in general, you’ll want to stick with traditional research. Some examples of traditional sources include periodicals, peer-reviewed journals, primary sources, and trade publications. Higher education institutions likely have suggestions on how to determine a source’s validity. The Simon Fraser University Library in Canada gives some advice on its website of indicators of a strong source; they include things like an author who is clearly identified and credentialed, a publish date that isn’t too old as to make the information irrelevant, a bibliography and clear research methods, and an emphasis on facts over opinions.

Citing Sources: How and When to Do It

How you cite sources depends on the style your professor or industry requires. MLA Style is often used in the humanities, Chicago Style may be used in the humanities or sciences, APA Style is a favorite in science, and Turabian style is often used in history and the arts. The style will determine exactly how the bibliography is written, as well as whether you use in-text citations, footnotes, or endnotes.

You should give credit whenever you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or use original data from a source. “Citing sources is part of the conversation between the reader and the writer,” Mikuska says. “A writer should want to display where they found their information so they can establish their credentials as a credible, accurate, and trusted researcher. If material is controversial or questionable, citations tell the reader: don’t blame me for what I wrote, because I am merely reporting it—go see for yourself. Because good writers anticipate their readers’ needs, citations tell the reader where to track down the original source or to verify the validity and accuracy of the information. Writers should want to provide this transparency.”

There are, of course, borderline cases. You don’t need to cite common knowledge or common phrases, but these can sometimes be judgment calls. Grant gives these examples: you wouldn’t need to cite the phrase “full speed ahead” even though you didn’t come up with it on your own; it’s a common phrase. Common knowledge can also be relative to your field. If you’re writing a master’s thesis in psychology, some concepts by Freud may be common knowledge in your field. If you’re not sure whether to cite something, ask your professor or a trusted advisor.

How to Make Sure You Aren’t Plagiarizing

Even the best students (and politicians, and researchers, and…) sometimes fall into the plagiarism trap, whether it comes from sloppiness or not understanding the guidelines. But there are steps you can take to make sure you don’t overlook any citations or quotes when writing your paper.

• Be a good reader: Mikuska says that one of the most important steps to avoiding plagiarism is using good reading skills, especially when doing research online where so many distractions exist. Research has shown that readers tend to skim web content in an F-shaped pattern, meaning they read the top line and then only read part of the next before moving down or clicking on a link.When researching in order to write a paper, it’s important that you take in what you’re reading so you can analyze it, work it into your argument, and put it in your own words. Mikuska’s PaperToolsPro software helps writers learn to connect with what they are reading; while researching, you paste quotes in one text box and then put the passage into your own words in another text box, allowing you to see side-by-side whether your version too closely matches the original. Other tools in the software also help students think critically about what they’ve read and would like to include in their writing.

• Take careful notes: The number of articles, books, and other pieces of material you’ll use when writing a research paper climbs the farther you get into your education. As you start using 10, 20, or 30 sources, you’ll quickly find that it’s impossible to keep track of each one’s content without being really organized during the note-taking process.”Think of the process of writing a paper,” Grant says. “You might have three articles in front of you, and you’re taking notes from each one. You can easily get what you copied directly mixed up with what you wrote.” Make sure you denote each time you paraphrase, summarize, or quote a source. It will save you a headache later and keep you from unintentionally copying someone else’s work. Mikuska also suggests creating your bibliography as you go so that you can cite the sources as you take notes and write the paper. “Too often students postpone citing sources as the last step before handing in the paper, often missing information that needs citing, inaccurately citing it, or forgetting to do citations,” she says. “Keeping track of sources must be done during the process of note taking, not at the end where errors accumulate and memory fails.”

• Take the time to do it right: No other advice matters if you don’t give yourself enough time to follow it. “Keep yourself out of desperate situations,” Grant advises. If you’ve only given yourself 12 hours to finish, you’re more likely to cut corners, overlook citations, and take sloppy notes that lead to plagiarism. Research papers are often overwhelming for students, Mikuska says, so they develop coping mechanisms as they write more or face tighter deadlines — copying, keeping poor track of sources, skimming through research, etc. Procrastination and plagiarism often go hand-in-hand, so give yourself a head start so you don’t rely on bad research habits to finish an assignment.

• Use the tools available to you: When teachers are looking for plagiarism, they often use tools like Turnitin, which checks a student’s paper against a database of web pages, other student papers, and publications. If your teacher uses Turnitin, you may have access to it, allowing you to check your paper and any red flags it raises before officially turning it in. Turnitin also provides a service to students called WriteCheck that provides a plagiarism and grammar check. You can purchase the service for one, five, or 20 papers. There are also free tools that can give you some insight into passages that should be cited, like Plagium, SeeSources.com, or Viper. You can also try the “quick and dirty” method, as Grant calls it. If you’re reading through your paper and something doesn’t sound like your words, copy and paste it into Google and see if any exact matches show up. It’s a good final check of your work — and something your teachers might try if a passage or sentence stands out to them.

While it may be possible to get away with plagiarism occasionally, the consequences if you’re caught are too great to risk it. They depend on your school’s policy (or your publisher or boss), and even the lightest punishment will mean a warning and rewriting the paper, if the administration decides that’s appropriate. More serious cases may call for expulsion, something that can follow you around and make it harder to earn your diploma or degree. In the working world, plagiarism is usually a fireable offense and could even get your company sued, depending on what was copied. Just keep the risk of a tainted reputation or the voiding of your degree in mind when you’re tempted to copy something or not give proper credit.

In our digital world, it’s easy to get in the habit of taking someone else’s work without giving credit. We download and share photos, movies, music, and anything else we can get our hands, and our culture has become one that accepts this kind of stealing. But in writing, copying or not citing sources properly is as wrong as it’s ever been. There are serious consequences for plagiarism, and writers need to take the necessary steps to ensure there’s never any doubt where their information came from.

The post The Plagiarism Problem: How to Stay Honest in the Digital Era appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

Table of Contents

• Why Online Courses?
• The World of Free Education
• How to Pay for School When You’re Unemployed
• How to Sell Your Online Education

Few things can make a person feel as powerless as losing a job. Starting the job search and putting yourself at the mercy of one hiring manager after another can add to the sense that you don’t have control over your fate. But rather than just sending out your resume and playing the waiting game, perhaps there’s something a bit more active you could be doing to pave your own road back to the workforce. With the ubiquity of online education outlets, unemployment can become a time for sharpening job skills, acquiring new ones, obtaining job certifications online, and more.

Why Online Courses?

If there’s one upside to being unemployed, it’s that you have all kinds of time to do the things you never had time to do when you were working, or even the things you never saw a need to do while you had a job. Online education can help offset the degradation of skills while you’re unemployed and also take you to new heights of job qualifications.

• Developing new career-focused skills: One of the most basic yet most helpful benefits of online courses is the ability to sharpen old career skills and develop new ones. Because of the medium, online courses can serve as an introduction for those unfamiliar with computers, an educational necessity as an estimated 75% or more of all jobs today require functional computer skills. Several resources for developing these rudimentary tech skills — like working with Microsoft Word, navigating the Internet, and checking email — can easily be found for free online.
  Of course, that is the shallow end of the online education pool. There is virtually no limit to the level of advancement you can reach in a subject with online education, from taking a course or two all the way up to earning a degree. Want to learn how to write a computer program? Take a course from MIT. Interested in building a startup? Study under renowned entrepreneur Steve Blank. Looking to become an Excel expert? With a course from Infinite Skills, you’ll be SUMIF-ing and VLOOKUP-ing in no time.
• Gaining professional certifications: Because they’re more readily quantifiable to other industry professionals and hiring managers, professional certifications earned online show employers that you are up to date on the latest developments in your field. Certifications run the gamut of industries, and some industries can have dozens of different recognized certifications. To search a complete list of certifications by name, industry, issuing organization, or occupation, visit CareerOneStop, sponsored by the Department of Labor.
  Some providers, like Harvard University, offer online certificates in conjunction with their graduate programs. Others, like Stanford University, have online programs dedicated to professional education in areas like computer security, risk management, and project management.
• Networking: Many people who have a job and are happy with it join networks like LinkedIn but never update their profile because they don’t see the need. And yet they’re constantly adding new professional connections. This is because they’re networking just by being employed — meeting new clients, connecting with coworkers from different departments, and going to conferences. While you’re unemployed, you have to seek other avenues for making connections with your peers, and online courses can be a way to do that.
  For online college students, this will occur somewhat organically, as class participation and collaboration with classmates will be a significant portion of your grade. If you opt to pick and choose classes apart from a university, you’ll have to put yourself out there a bit more, but if doing so results in a connection that leads to a job offer, you’ll be glad you did. Online course providers usually have forums for students to interact and discuss class material and set up study groups. Community learning sites like Stack Overflow or Livemocha are fantastic venues for both expanding your knowledge of a topic (programming and foreign languages, in these two sites) and building a reputation for yourself as a knowledgeable industry professional.

The World of Free Education

Free online education has exploded in the last few years, providing more fascinating info than a lifelong learner could learn in a lifetime. It’s arguably easier to find free online courses now than paid courses. However, as an unemployed worker seeking courses to help you up your professional game, your task is to weed out those “Child Nutrition and Cooking” and “History of Rock, Part One” free courses that are no doubt enlightening but won’t help you find gainful employment.

One of the earliest iterations of free online courseware was MIT’s OpenCourseWare. While job-oriented courses can be taken, many of OCW’s offerings are more academic in nature and some feature limited class materials. A more recent offering from the school is edX, a MOOC (massive open online course) provider that’s a partnership with Harvard to offer full-fledged online courses with video lectures from professors from major universities.

However, edX is far from the only game in town when it comes to MOOCs. Coursera and Udacity are the two major names that operate similarly to edX. For the unemployed, Udacity might be a better fit, as it offers courses with no start or end course times, so if you’ve suddenly lost your job you don’t have to worry about having missed an enrollment window. On the other hand, Coursera offers far more courses — 337 as of this writing — so your odds are a little better of finding a class that intrigues you.

You can even find free online education opportunities that aren’t affiliated with a particular university. Certain businesses have gotten into online education, like Google with its Google Developers University Consortium. Ireland-based ALISON (“Advance Learning Interactive Systems Online”) is a great resource for workers employed or not, offering more than 400 vocational courses with more on the way. Its healthy page of job testimonials is proof that online courses can lead to employment. Though it does partner with New York University and Yale Law School, among others, the University of the People is a tuition-free online university with the only charges being nominal exam processing fees and an application fee.

How to Pay for School When You’re Unemployed

It’s entirely possible that you may not be able to find a free course that covers what you want to learn, or you may decide you want to enroll either full- or part-time at an online university. Professional certification exams also cost money. Being unemployed, cash may not be readily available. But don’t lose heart; there are a couple things you can do other than pinch pennies.

• Tax breaks: Depending on your annual income, educational history, and how involved you plan to get in becoming a student, you have a few options for getting tax help from the government that can offset some of the cost of online college courses. For those who have already completed a degree and are taking courses to acquire new skills, there’s the Lifetime Learning Credit. Even if you take just one non-degree-seeking class, you can have 20% of your tuition expenses covered (up to $2,000 max).
  If you are still in your first four years of an undergraduate degree, you could be eligible for the American Opportunity Credit. This credit is refundable up to $1,000, meaning you could receive a refund if your tax bill is below $2,500. Also, the AOC covers a wider variety of expenses, including textbooks, supplies, and equipment that you aren’t buying or renting from your school. You may only take one educational tax credit, or none if you are trying to claim a tuition fee deduction.
• Grants or scholarships: You can also get some help in the form of scholarship or grant money. Several online schools like Kaplan University and Western Governors University offer scholarships for specific types of students like single parents and aspiring nurses. Veterans and their spouses also have a number of scholarships available to them.
  For further financial help that may be available to you, check with your local branch of American Job Centers. According to Dowdy, at Workforce Solutions, people can have the cost of professional certification exams covered (up to $200) if they are able to prove a financial need.

How to Sell Your Online Education

Acing online classes doesn’t do you much good if you don’t have any way to communicate your achievements to employers. Lucky for you, online ed’s explosion of popularity has brought with it a number of methods to help you “sell” your degree.

• Get a verified certificate: Digital certificates are garnering a huge amount of attention in the online education scene today. MOOC providers are looking heavily at selling certificates of completion as a way to make money off free courses. Coursera has announced a plan to offer verified certificates for $30-$100 for four universities, and the number is likely to grow. Udacity already has a certificate system that students can share with employers or friends via social media or email. Udemy community manager Kyle Pennell says his company should be offering completion certificates for all courses by July 2013, if not before.
• Sign up for job placement services: MOOC providers are also beginning to serve as go-betweens for companies and job seekers. Udacity boasts more than 400 companies as hiring partners and invites students to upload their resumes to online profiles. Coursera currently offers job placement help to software engineering students, with plans to expand to new majors in the future. Through Careers 2.0, programming education site Stack Overflow lets certain users post resumes free of charge. The catch is that a user has to be invited to do so, either by a peer or by contributing enough answers and being upvoted by enough other users (hence the importance of networking).
• Use a badge system: Badges are similar to certificates except they’re easier for an online student to display all at once. Just like the badge system used by the Boy Scouts, digital badges are interactive medals that show what a student learned and where they earned the badge. Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU) was one of the first organizations to use badges, and today they can be had for over 100 different skills. Mozilla is probably the biggest proponent of badges and it not only offers them, it offers a way to display them across the Web, from blogs to websites to Twitter.

If you’re willing to commit the time and effort, taking online classes is truly one of the best plans of action an unemployed person can take. From the comfort of your own home, at your own pace, you can add bullet point after bullet point to the “Qualifications” section of your resume. Treat those classes like your job. Fire up the computer in the morning and close out the lecture window at 5 p.m. When that job offer does come through and you return to the workplace, you won’t even feel like you’ve been gone.

The post Online Education: A Guide for the Unemployed appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

Table of Contents

• What is Tuition Assistance?
• How Does It Differ From the G.I. Bill?
• What Would Happen Without Tuition Assistance?
• What Are Your Other Options?

Jerri Stephenson is a combat medic who’s been with the U.S. Army for three and a half years. She’s committed to her job and her country, but like a lot of people in the armed services, she’s also committed to her school work. Stephenson’s currently in a six-year degree program for a Ph.D. in clinical psychology that she’s been able to pursue thanks to the military’s tuition assistance program. Unfortunately, the recent threat of cutting tuition assistance to help slash the federal budget has made her worry that her degree will take even longer than planned and leave her with a mountain of debt.

Stephenson’s planned Ph.D. will likely mean career advancement: she’s planning to commission into the Army Medical Service Corps as a clinical psychologist. For many other service members she knows, tuition assistance has funded their bachelor’s degrees so they can move forward in their careers in the Army and beyond.

“Once you have that (bachelor’s degree), an enlisted service member is eligible to commission as an officer, which means more money, better career options, and more leadership,” Stephenson explains. But getting that degree might become that much harder as the government looks for places to cut back.

Early in March 2013, after taking hits in federal spending, the branches of the U.S. military announced they’d be suspending their tuition assistance programs, which provide active-duty service members with financial aid to apply toward education. Fortunately for service members and the military as a whole, Congress passed a bill to restore these programs, which President Obama signed into law.

For now, tuition assistance programs are safe from the desperate, automatic cuts the government must make, known as the sequestration, but for how long? As Congress looks for ways to further trim the budget, tuition assistance could be on the chopping block again in the future. What would this mean for service members and for the country?

What is Tuition Assistance?

In the 2011 fiscal year, the Department of Defense spent $563 million on tuition assistance. While that’s just a drop in the national-budget bucket, it’s an attractive cut when decision-makers are trying to make up a difference of trillions of dollars. But those funds are making a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of our country’s most selfless citizens.

If you’re a member of the military, including the Coast Guard, you can use tuition assistance, or TA, to help fund your studies. It can be used for courses toward completing a high school diploma, vocational and technical programs, undergraduate programs, graduate programs, or independent study. TA is available to active-duty service members as well as National Guard and Reserve service members, and it can be used by officers, warrant officers, and enlisted active-duty service personnel.

If you qualify, TA programs will cover up to 100% of your college tuition and certain fees, but there are limits. The cost of your tuition can’t exceed $250 per semester credit hour or $166 per quarter credit hour, and it can’t be more than $4,500 for each fiscal year, which runs from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30. Any college courses you hope to have funded must be completed before you leave the service.

Before choosing an institution for a program you want to pursue, make sure it meets the military’s requirements for tuition assistance and that you get approval from your service’s education center. Check the school’s accreditation; if you’re pursuing a degree program, the college or university must be regionally or nationally accredited by an accrediting body recognized by the U.S. Department of Education.

How Does It Differ From the G.I. Bill?

Both tuition assistance and the G.I. Bill go toward educating our service members — and both could be affected by budget cuts in the future — but there are important differences if you’re looking to use these benefits. Tuition assistance comes directly from your branch of the military, while benefits from the G.I. Bill come through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

The G.I. Bill (officially, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944) came into being after World War II to provide benefits to returning veterans, including low-interest loans and mortgages, unemployment compensation, and funding for education and related expenses. It has gone through several transformations through the years, and the most recent version is the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill (or more formally, the Post-9/11 Veterans Education Assistance Act of 2008), providing benefits for those veterans who have served since Sept. 11, 2001. Chapter 33 of this bill is what most people refer to as the “G.I. Bill”: it provides funding for tuition and other education expenses for veterans. Veterans may qualify for tuition, housing allowances, and a books stipend if they’ve served at least 90 days of active duty. You can use these benefits for up to 15 years after leaving the service.

Tuition assistance programs are only available to service members while they are on active duty, and courses that are being funded by the program have to be completed before the person’s service ends. The G.I. Bill, though, can provide benefits for both active-duty service members and veterans, as long as they qualify. G.I. Bill benefits can even be stacked with tuition assistance while on active duty through the Top-Up program. If tuition assistance doesn’t cover the full cost of a course, the Top-Up program allows you to have the difference paid by the VA.

What Would Happen Without Tuition Assistance?

The number of lives affected by tuition assistance programs can’t be downplayed. In 2009, the program provided funding for 377,000 service members to take college courses. In 2012, members of the military completed 870,000 courses and 50,500 degrees, diplomas, and certificates overall.

These service members are bettering their lives and those of their families with these hard-earned tuition benefits. Without the funding, many wouldn’t be able to finish their studies. Even with the short gap in tuition assistance when it was cut by the sequester, many service members were out of luck for the spring 2013 semester. Nathan Page, who is in the Air Force, told us he was forced to take a semester off because the funding cut fell right in line with his school’s registration and knows many others in the same situation.

Stephenson didn’t face any problems this semester, but she said that if tuition assistance was nixed permanently, she’d have to take out private loans, which often come with high interest rates. Her other option would be to stop her studies while she saves up money to pay class by class, meaning she’d also have to find a school that offered her program part-time. Many military colleagues have told her that they would probably have to stop going to school for a while if the benefits stopped.

Veterans, particularly “new veterans” who are just leaving the service, have a higher unemployment rate than non-veterans. It can be hard for skills learned in the armed forces to transfer directly and obviously into the civilian workforce, and that puts many veterans at a disadvantage when looking for their first job out of the service.

“Because TA is available to active-duty (service members), they can get their education before they separate from service and be qualified for civilian jobs,” Stephenson says. “It’s difficult to adjust to civilian life, so being able to hit the ground running is a huge advantage.”

Tuition benefits aren’t just good for the individual soldier, either. They help the entire military. Since becoming an all-volunteer force in 1973, the U.S. military has relied on recruitment efforts to bring in enough soldiers and benefits to retain them. Without the opportunity to fund their education, many recruits may not join at all, Stephenson says. Because a volunteer force obviously relies on these recruits, any serious shortage could have the nation’s leaders looking to enact a draft if a crisis arises. Some experts predicted that further cuts to defense spending in 2011 could lead to the reinstatement of the draft, and as we look down the barrel of the same funding gun in 2013, a draft isn’t out of the question if tuition assistance and other benefits are cut.

Our nation depends on the military for protection and expects it to be one of the most advanced in the world. That privilege doesn’t come without funding and education. “An educated military makes our country stronger,” Stephenson says. “The military relies on innovation and intellect to succeed, so educated service members help our nation succeed.”

What Are Your Other Options?

With defense spending dwindling, the near future could very well bring an end to tuition assistance benefits, but that doesn’t mean military members can’t find ways to pay for their educations. Many schools and organizations value the skills service members bring to the classroom and workplace; you just have to know where to look. If you’re looking for financial aid and scholarship opportunities, start with these resources:

• Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, Chapter 33: As we mentioned above, the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, Chapter 33, provides up to 100% of tuition for veterans who have served on active duty more than 90 days. The percentage that the G.I. Bill covers is determined by how long you’ve served on active duty.
• Yellow Ribbon Program: The Yellow Ribbon G.I. Education Enhancement Program is part of the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill. The G.I. Bill covers up to the highest in-state public school tuition; private schools and out-of-state schools can partner with the VA to cover the expenses that aren’t covered by the G.I. Bill.
• Montgomery G.I. Bill: This bill has options for both active-duty service members and reservists. For active-duty members, enroll and pay $100 a month for a year; after that, you’ll receive a monthly education benefit if you’ve finished the minimum service obligation.
• AMVETS Scholarships: AMVETS provides a variety of scholarships to veterans, guardsmen, reservists, and active-duty service members. Fifty scholarships are provided through a partnership with University of Phoenix.
• Loan Repayment Programs: Available through the Army, Navy, and Air Force, these programs help service members pay off student loans taken out before joining the service.
• Testing programs: Testing programs allow students to earn college credit for skills they’ve learned in the military. The tests are available at a discount to service members.
• Tillman Military Scholars program: The Pat Tillman Foundation chooses scholars who will receive financial aid based on leadership potential and ambition. Both active-duty members and veterans can apply from any branch of the armed forces.
• School and state programs: Check with schools you’re interested in attending or the state you’re residing in to see if they have any financial assistance available for service members. New York and Texas, for example, have awards and exemptions to help veterans attend school in the state.

Educated soldiers can better protect our nation, innovate necessary military technologies, and integrate more seamlessly into civilian life when they’re done serving our country. While military tuition assistance programs could disappear at any moment, there are still numerous other options available to service members who want to pursue more education from the VA, schools, and other organizations. No service member or veteran should have to miss out on an education because of a lack of funding.

The post The Future of Education Funding for the Military appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

Every year, the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation awards the Prize for Urban Education to a large urban school district that, over the course of the school year, has shown the most academic improvement in student achievement while making strides towards minimizing or eliminating achievement gaps between white and minority students, and middle-class and low-income students. The four finalists for the $1 million award were announced this Wednesday, and the districts that made the cut are Corona-Norco Unified School District in California, Houston Independent School District in Texas, Miami-Dade County School Public Schools and the School District of Palm Beach Country in Florida.

This is the fifth year as a nominee for Miami-Dade, which, according to U.S. News & World Report, puts it on an inside track to win the award this year. Since 2002, when the Prize was first awarded, all winners had been selected as finalists in the previous years.

United Teachers of Dade President Karen Aronowitz, politicians, including state Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, the House Republican leader, and Miami-Dade business leaders hailed the nomination Wednesday. “We’re going to celebrate the opening of the Marlin’s stadium tonight,” Frank Nero, president and CEO of the Beacon Council. “Perhaps this is the real big celebration, because the reality of it is this is really the key issue of the economic vitality and future of this community.”

The Superintendent of Miami-Dade, Albert Carvalho, said that the Broad Prize is widely considered to be the Nobel of education, and based on the fact that the district had performed even better this year than the previous four years when it received a finalist spot, it is now in a great position to walk away with the prize.

Not only is its performance data more “powerful” than previous years, but also the district has continued to improve, rather than peaking. “This is a testament to the sustainability of long-term progress over time,” he said.

Houston Independent School District, which is the largest school district in Texas, is not only a repeat finalist, it is also a previous winner of the prestigious award. HISD was awarded the inaugural Broad Prize in 2002, and Superintendent Terry Grier thinks that they have an excellent chance to nab their second win.

“HISD won the first Broad Prize in 2002 because this district was led by visionary people who truly believed that every child has the ability to excel in the classroom if we give our teachers and principals the tools they need,” Grier said. “I’m proud to say that this children-first philosophy still guides every decision we make in HISD today and that it is producing results.”

The district is in a good position to do so, thanks not only to an increased graduation rate among its African-American students, but also to a significant bump in minority and low-income students taking advanced classes and AP tests. The 2002 prize helped to publicize the so-called “Houston Miracle,” and it also landed the then-Superintendent Rod Paige the Secretary of Education position in the administration of George W. Bush.

HISD’s nomination did result in some gnashing of teeth in the second-largest school district in the state: Dallas.

Those of you who have been around for a few years are familiar with Broad (rhymes with “road”). It was former Superintendent Michael Hinojosa’s five-year goal to win the coveted prize by 2010 using a plan called “Road to Broad” under the Dallas Achieves reform initiative. DISD has made some academic improvements, but not enough to reach the finalist stage.

All the finalists are guaranteed at least $150,000 in prize money from the $1 million pool, to be awarded as scholarships for high school seniors graduating in 2013. The winner will be awarded $550,000 in scholarship money.

The next step will involve a group of education experts selected by the Broad Foundation, who will visit local schools, observe classes, and analyze district achievement statistics before presenting their findings to the review board which will select the winner. The final results will be announced on October 23rd, in New York City.

The post Broad Prize for Urban Education Finalists Announced appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

While online education is slowly coming into its own, and as more and more colleges and universities are dipping their toes into online-only degree programs, it is an incontrovertible fact that an online degree doesn’t enjoy the prestige of a traditional college diploma. The industry is bedeviled with problems such as lack of oversight, or recognition by an accreditation body. Fake schools and dodgy diploma mills also muddy the water, making many schools reluctant to put real resources behind their online-only programs, fearing that they will be considered an inferior substitute for a brick&mortar degree.

Now, a four-year-old education startup 2tor is aiming to change that. 2tor, which completed the fourth round of financing this week, hopes to partner with traditional universities in order to help design, implement and administer degree programs that would make putting the schools’ reputations behind the effort a more inviting proposition.

By making the digital equivalent of classroom-based degrees advocated and supported by universities, it is hoped that in the future they will be a stronger contender for higher education student choices.

It focuses on promoting a visual, social and digital educational platform. The web-based infrastructure that 2tor has developed encompasses the means to provide lectures and interactive learning material, mobile support, live webcam classes and 3G/4G networking.

Since its launch in 2008, 2tor has already experimented with this formula in a limited way by putting together online graduate programs for Georgetown University, the Chapel Hill campus at the University of North Carolina, and two University of Southern California schools. The fact that all these schools are considered prestigious and enjoy high reputation in the education community is one of the main reasons 2tor became involved. According to Chip Paucek, 2tor’s chief executive, since the company invests nearly $10 million into every program is designs, partnering with “brand name” institutions is vital to making other schools more willing to take a similar plunge.

2tor’s big investments pay for Web platforms that allow students to attend online classes with their professors in real time. Another portion of the money bankrolls the company’s course videos, which feature production values closer to documentary films than lo-fi YouTube clips.

When working on a new project, the company participates in every facet of the students’ educational experience, even if the challenges involved are unique to a specific program.

“There are four pillars associated with every program,” [Paucek] said. Firstly, 2tor doesn’t believe in talking heads to educate. “If you want to teach someone how to deliver a baby, we show them how to deliver a baby. You don’t sit and watch a lecture,” he said.

Secondly, all students attend classes weekly with about 10 other students. The class attendance is recorded, just like a typical on-campus class. The third pillar is a social network called 2U, which is more like Facebook than a traditional Learning Management System, built by companies like Blackboard. Finally, 2tor helps the students get placed in in-field work. If USC requires a student to have teaching experience, 2tor will work to place the student and record that experience to share with a teacher or fellow classmates.

In addition to handling the academic side of things, the company also invests quite a bit of effort into what the experts calls “search engine optimization” in order to get potential students interested in the new programs. Any leads 2tor drums up are forwarded to the schools’ admission departments, where, says Paucek, the applicants are subjected to the same admissions process as the all the other perspective students. Who gets an invitation to enroll is controlled entirely by the schools themselves.

Still, the online component does make the program attractive to a wider pool of applicants.

2tor’s platform has allowed one of its partners to scale its degree program to thousands of students. Before teaming up with 2tor, USC’s on-campus master-of-arts-in-teaching program enrolled 81 students. The 2tor-built online program has enrolled more than 2,500 online students so far, and those courses are taught by two dozen full-time instructors and a large group of adjuncts. Each class section includes live meetings—even the ones where instructors and students live in distant time zones.

Such early successes are bringing 2tor not only new partners, but new investors as well. During the latest round of funding, the company raised $26 million from WSI Investments, which will allow the it to hire 150 new staff members, in addition to the 377 full-timers and 20 interns it already employs.

The post 2tor Hopes to Bring Prestige to Online College Education appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

By Elyse Morrigan

A new report, ‘A Crisis of Competence: The Corrupting Effect of Political Activism in the University of California,’ from the California Association of Scholars accuses professors of forgetting that their job is to teach their subject and instead focusing on ‘advancing social justice’. Far from being a place to encourage intellectual curiosity the report alleges that the University of California has become dominated by stifling ‘Groupthink’.

The report cites studies which have focused on the increasing political imbalance in academia. A 2004 study found that there were eight Democrats for every Republican on UC Berkeley campus. This ratio was 21-1 in the social sciences.

“The most plausible explanation for this clear and consistent pattern is surely that it is the result of discrimination in the hiring process.”

“This hiring pattern has occurred just as the quality of a college education has sharply declined.”

UC Berkeley professor of political science Wendy Brown argues that this accusation is unfair and that the reason there are so few Republicans studying political science is that when they go to graduate school they usually gravitate towards studying business or law.

However, this argument that Republicans aren’t in academia because they don’t want to be is reminiscent of old arguments about equality that were overcome in pursuit of equal access to opportunities for minorities and both genders. Perhaps part of the reason is that when the imbalance is so great, and the political leanings of their professors are so obvious, that academia just isn’t a particularly welcoming place for students with right-wing views. Nor does it provide a suitable forum for them to develop these ideas with their peers and guidance from sympathetic professors.

This lack of encouragement for students to develop intellectually doesn’t merely stifle right wing philosophy it also has a negative impact on the growth of every student. The National Center for Education Statistics noted that only 31% of current college graduates could explain a complex book they’d read, and that average hours per week of homework for each student had dropped from 24 to 14 over the past 50 years.

“A Crisis of Competence” concludes, “far from performing their role as the university’s quality control mechanism, (they) now routinely function as the enablers, protectors, and even apologists for the politicized university and its degraded scholarly and educational standards.”

The post CA Association of Scholars: UC Should Teach, Not Inculcate appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

The Texas Catholic Conference Education Department has called for review of the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools in light of the recent controversy that arose over a high school basketball championship. In an open letter to the TAPPS leadership, the group’s education director Marget McGettrick wrote that TAPPS has not been doing a good job of addressing the needs of denominationally and institutionally diverse membership, and unless steps were taking to rectify the situation, TCCED would consider withdrawing from the Association. The TCCED, which represents 43 Catholic high schools in Texas, makes up about 20% of TAPPS’ membership.

McGettrick’s letter was prompted by the refusal of TAPPS to accommodate a member school on the issue of scheduling. Beren Academy, an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva, made the semi-finals of the state basketball tournament, but both the semi-final game and the final were scheduled for Saturday, which interferes with Jewish Sabbath.

Beren Academy, an Orthodox Jewish day school whose boys basketball team advanced to the state semifinals this month, was initially forced to forfeit its spot because game times for the semifinal and ensuing championship game conflicted with the Jewish Sabbath. The school appealed the decision twice, but was denied both times.

The school and TAPPS drew national attention, and after parents filed lawsuits, Beren was allowed to play in the rescheduled semifinal. The Stars won and reached the championship game, which also was rescheduled. Beren lost that game.

This isn’t TAPPS’ first go-around with controversy. In 2010, another Texas parochial school, the Iman Academy, applied for membership and after being asked to fill out a questionnaire that the school principal Cindy Steffens described as “loaded,” their application was denied. The questionnaire, passed along to Iman by TAPPS along with their standard application form, contained questions such as:

 “Historically, there is nothing in the Koran that fully embraces Christianity or Judaism in the way a Christian and/or a Jew understands his religion. Why, then, are you interested in joining an association whose basic beliefs your religion condemns?”

“It is our understanding that the Koran tells you not to mix with (and even eliminate) the infidels. Christians and Jews fall into that category. Why do you wish to join an organization whose membership is in disagreement with your religious beliefs?”

“How does your school address certain Christian concepts? (i.e. celebrating Christmas)”

It went on to ask if the school taught its students that the Bible is corrupt: “When was the Bible allegedly polluted? Does the Koran actually state that the Bible is polluted?” Also, it asked: “What is your attitude about the spread of Islam in America? What are the goals of your school in this regard?”

Iman Academy filled out and returned the questionnaire, but two other Huston-area Islamic schools declined to do so. Steffens defended the school’s decision to answer the questions, saying that it gave the school an opportunity to address these issues in an inclusive manner. After the questionnaire was returned, Steffens and other Iman Academy administrators attended a meeting with the TAPPS board where they were asked their opinion on the proposed Ground Zero mosque in New York. Shortly after the meeting, the TAPPS board voted to deny Iman Academy’s application.

After the Iman decision, TAPPS sent out a survey to some of its member schools, canvassing their opinions on admission of other Islamic academies. The survey also asked if member schools would consider leaving the Association if Islamic schools were admitted. Brian Yager, the head of Keystone School, said he felt uncomfortable with the survey and declined to respond to it, choosing instead to write a letter to the TAPPS board expressing his discomfort. Overall, 220 schools received the survey but only 83 chose to fill it out.

On Dec. 8, 2010, Tapps representatives distributed the results of the survey, reporting that 83 of 220 schools had replied, Yager said in his letter. Some 37 percent of respondents felt that it was in Tapps’s best interest to accept Islamic schools, and 63 percent said it was not, Yager said. Ten schools said they would leave Tapps if a majority said yes to admitting an Islamic school; one school said it would leave Tapps if the majority said no

When asked to address the controversy, the TAPPS director Edd Burleson remained unrepentant. Burleson claimed that TAPPS made a mistake when it admitted Beren in the first place, and he was certain that the organization would have prevailed in court but chose to compromise only in the interest of saving time.

“If we had fought it, we would have won,” Burleson told the newspaper. “But that would have taken weeks. We didn’t have the time.”

“What else would you want me to say?” Burleson said in the interview. “Want me to come up with some politically correct gobbledygook? I can’t. I’m telling you that’s how I feel.”

The post Texas Catholic Schools Challenge TAPPS over Religion appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

With the combined college debt about to surpass the $1 trillion mark, the priority on education establishment is to bring the cost of a college degree to an affordable level. In his editorial for the Washington Post, David C. Levy, who is a former chancellor of the New School University in New York, writes that one of the ways to bring down university costs would to be to reexamine the terms under which professors are employed in primarily teaching institutions such as community colleges.

Looking back on the early years of the twentieth century, Levy explains that when university teaching was considered less a career and more of a calling, talented professors accepted lower paychecks in exchange for the university atmosphere, and constant interaction with the most promising minds of the next generation. The easy schedule, lots of vacation time, and the general bonhomie of fellow professors and students, served as sufficient compensation for the slimmer wallet.

Things changed, however, during the 1970s, with the general unionization of university staff, and the improved negotiating position due to the collective bargain agreements.

The result has been more equitable circumstances for college faculty, who deserve salaries comparable to those of other educated professionals. Happily, senior faculty at most state universities and colleges now earn $80,000 to $150,000, roughly in line with the average incomes of others with advanced degrees.

Not changed, however, are the accommodations designed to compensate for low pay in earlier times. Though faculty salaries now mirror those of most upper-middle-class Americans working 40 hours for 50 weeks, they continue to pay for teaching time of nine to 15 hours per week for 30 weeks, making possible a month-long winter break, a week off in the spring and a summer vacation from mid-May until September.

Unlike in research universities, where light teaching responsibilities are offset by other scientific commitments, schools whose primary purpose is to teach, such as “many state colleges, virtually all community colleges and hundreds of private institutions,” allow their teaching staff similar liberties, without requiring from them any kind of additional labor.

Montgomery College in Maryland, one of the best community colleges in the state, is one such example, where an average full professor’s salary is $88,000 a year, while the workload is only 15 hours of teaching, plus 3 mandatory office hours per week for 30 weeks a year.

I take no issue with faculty at teaching-oriented institutions focusing on instructional skills rather than research and receiving a fair, upper-middle-class wage. Like good teachers everywhere, they are dedicated professionals with high levels of education and deserve salaries commensurate with their hard-earned credentials. But we all should object when they receive these salaries for working less than half the time of their non-academic peers.

The cost for such sinecures is particularly galling when it is passed on to the rest of the middle class and to taxpayers in states that are struggling to support higher education. Since faculty salaries make up the largest single cost in virtually all college and university budgets (39 percent at Montgomery College), think what it would mean if the public got full value for these dollars.

It didn’t take long after Levy’s piece hit the press for it to draw criticism, with one of the loudest dress-downs coming from Jill Kronstadt, an Associate Professor of English from the very Montgomery College that Levy used to demonstrate his point. Kronstadt begins her response by calling into question Levy’s educational bonafides:

Levy, who defines himself as an “educator,” does not list a single teaching position in his entire biography. David C. Levy is a former director of Washington, DC’s Corcoran Gallery and is now president of Cambridge Information Group, a firm best known for acquiring companies in the information industry – including ProQuest, a staple of library databases, and Sotheby’s.

According to Kronstadt, however, the problem with Levy’s editorial has less to do with determining whether he’s qualified to speak on the subject, and more with him, having chosen to address the issue, using factual distortions and outright lies to make his point.

Okay. First of all, only 50% of the employees at MC are teaching faculty, according to the same page Levy cites in his $88,000 figure. What the website doesn’t say, but which would have been easy for Levy to find out with even cursory research, is that of those, only about half are full time, and of those, few are full professors. (The starting salary for an instructor is 56,000.) Interestingly, he does not attribute any higher education costs to our having 20 vice presidents, 11 of which were added in the past year.

Kronstadt breaks down her own workload to show that her 15 hours of teaching usually means that she is teaching at least five different classes that are made up, optimistically, of 25 students, thus her grading commitments add at least 13-20 hours per week to her teaching hours.

That’s not counting office hours, meetings with students outside of office hours, or prepping. If Levy thinks he can do a good job teaching without spending at least a couple of hours outside of class for every hour in class, he has no business calling himself an educator – and, based on the inaccuracies this essay, it’s clear that he needs to spend a little extra time fact-checking what he puts in print as well.

Another critique was authored by Robert Farley of the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog. Farley first dispatches Levy’s argument that it’s high faculty salaries and underutilization of teaching staff that has led to an increase in tuition, by linking to the document that shows that it’s the actually the administrative costs that generally drive the budget increases at universities.

This is helpful; we now know that David Levy is lying about cause and effect, and can adjust our expectations for the rest of the op-ed. This is aggravated by a second (obvious) fallacy; the “insufficient” teaching time is almost invariably made up for by cheap, temporary, low cost adjunct faculty, lecturers, and grad students. Having senior faculty double their teaching load wouldn’t have faculty costs; it would simply push out the very low cost workers we now hire to fix the “shortfall.”

Farley also points out that contrary to Levy’s assertion, faculty positions at most colleges and universities do require their professors to dedicate a significant portion of their time to research, and those schools that don’t have similar requirements, tend to pay their professors lower salaries. But, like Kronstadt, it is Levy’s tricks with numbers that Farley finds most objectionable:

In case you’re wondering, 12-15 hours per week is a 4:4 load or a 5:5 load; I have NEVER encountered anyone able to undertake such a load on less than fifty hours per week of actual work. Indeed, I’d guess closer to sixty hours. I simply cannot believe that Levy is ignorant of this; he’s just lying. He wants his readers to believe that an assumption of 1:1 inside-outside the classroom is standard, which is simply absurd, even if faculty do their best to ignore student e-mails and grade completely through scan tron. And it should be noted that research and service requirements are ON TOP OF THIS load.

Either way, whether you find yourself sympathizing with Levy’s arguments, or not, a more thorough analysis of the reasons behind skyrocketing college tuition is long overdue.

The post Are Excessive Professorial Salaries Driving Tuition Costs? appeared first on Education Debate at Online Schools.

The food industry and the government call it “lean finely textured beef” or “boneless lean beef trimmings.” U.S. Government scientist Gerald Zirnstein, who coined the term in 2002, calls it, “pink slime.” Whatever you call it, until recently it was ubiquitous, appearing in frozen hamburger patties, discount brands of frozen beef, on menus of fast-food restaurants, and in meat sold by the USDA to school districts around the nation for their school lunches. Consumer journalists who blew up this story in the past month call it “scandal.”

Now, school districts around the country are trying to beat each other in the race to distance themselves from the not-quite-meat product. Last week, the Anchorage School District has made the decision to stop serving the USDA ground beef that contains “lean beef trimmings.” Although the USDA buys nearly seven million pounds of this beef filler for the school lunch program every year, the recent outcry from consumer reporters, educators, scientists and parents meant that the agency will now allow school districts to opt out from purchasing it. The ASD will be one of the first to make use of the new latitude, but the district’s Student Nutrition Director Ardene Eaton still wants to reaffirm that the filler is completely safe. The ASD has been buying beef from the USDA for its school lunches for years, and Eaton stresses that the change has less to do with the safety of the beef and more with assuaging public concerns.

“It’s what the public wants. It is and has been a safe product, certainly records would indicate that, but the public would like to change and we respect that,” said Eaton.

It’s likely not all of the beef will be used by the end of the year, but Eaton says schools won’t be bombarded with the product.

For the rest of the year, schools will still serve the beef as scheduled but that doesn’t mean students have to eat it.

ASD is not the only consumer turning away from the meat filler.

Since the controversy made the front pages, McDonald’s, Burger King and Taco Bell also announced that they will no longer be using it in their products. Made up primarily of connective tissue instead of muscle and treated with ammonia hydroxide to kill bacteria, Zirnstein, who considers himself the “reluctant whistle-blower,” has steadfastly maintained that it isn’t really meat, but a cut-rate meat-substitute. He attributes his renewed drive to publicize the use of “pink slime” in school lunches this year to being a father of a two-year old and not wanting his son to eat the filler in his school lunchroom.

“You look through the regulations and a lot of that stuff was never approved for hamburger. It was under the radar,” said the 54-year-old Zirnstein. “It’s cheating. It’s economic fraud,” he said in a telephone interview.

Last week, Miami-Dade, one of the largest school districts in the country, also made the decision to drop beef containing “pink slime,” although it admitted that this choice will probably impact their costs. In South Carolina, officials have said that, while they will continue to use the stock of beef they have bought, once the filler-free version comes on the market, they will buy it exclusively.

But for some school districts — with administrators fielding phone calls from concerned parents and fretting about past food scares — next fall is not soon enough. The Boston school district, among others, has taken the step of purging all ground beef from its menus. Other districts, like the New York City schools, have begun phasing out ground beef containing the additive from their lunchrooms.

Michael Peck, the director of food and nutrition services for the Boston schools, said the district had decided to hold and isolate its entire inventory of ground beef, leaving over 70,000 pounds of beef — worth about $500,000, Mr. Peck estimated — confined to a warehouse until the district knows more about what is in it.

Peck calls the filler just the latest example of the “adulteration of our food supply” without due regard to safety of the resulting product.

In response to consumer complaints, several large grocery chains have also opted out of beef containing the controversial filler. Stores that will no longer stock this meat include Albertson’s, Safeway, and Walmart among others.

The nation’s largest retailer, Kroger Co., announced yesterday it would stop buying the beef for its 2,400 stores in 31 states.

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