When I read about the University of California's proposed changes to their admissions standards, which would deemphasize test scores in favor of class rank (Hat tip: Education Optimists), I realized that proposal is a partial outgrowth of a decade of work on higher education access by Marta Tienda. Among educational researchers, Tienda, a demographer and sociologist who teaches at Princeton, stands out for her record of doing research that informs public policy debates about educational opportunity for disadvantaged kids, and for the passion and flair with which she does this work.

After the Hopwood case temporarily ended affirmative action in Texas, the state adopted a plan that gave the top 10% of each graduating high school automatic admission to the two flagship campuses. Tienda mounted a major study of the policy change under the auspices of the Texas Higher Education Opportunity Project, and has since produced dozens of articles on the policy's impact. Her recent paper with colleague Sigal Alon, Diversity, Opportunity, and the Shifting Meritocracy in Higher Education, is a real tour de force for the ground that it covers. They analyzed four datasets covering high school classes graduating in the 1980s and 1990s in order to determine how the relative weights put on grades and test scores in the admissions process have changed over time. Their results support the "shifting meritocracy" hypothesis; selective colleges have increasingly relied on test scores to screen students, which, because of persistent test score achievement gaps, has made it difficult to admit a diverse group of students to these colleges in the absence of race-sensitive preferences. Alon and Tienda, through a series of simulations, show that deemphasizing test scores would allow institutions to admit diverse classes without lowering graduation rates.

Their conclusion is far-reaching, but can be summed up in just one sentence: "The apparent tension between merit and diversity exists only when merit is narrowly defined by test scores."

Tienda's personal story is also quite remarkable. As one of five children and the daughter of illegal Mexican migrant laborers, she planned to become a hairdresser until the 7th grade, when a teacher noticed her talent. As she explains in an interview, "It was such a riveting moment for me that I even remember what the teacher was wearing that day. Until then, I thought that college was only for rich people and I was from a working class family. But when my teacher suggested college and told me that there were scholarships to help good students like me get to college, that was it." Since then, she has been awarded honorary degrees from multiple universities, and has served on the boards of RAND, the Carnegie Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, Brown University, TIAA, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a dozen other major organizations.

But she's never forgotten where she came from, and continues to do outreach work to encourage disadvantaged kids to go to college, and to make them feel comfortable once they're there. In this profile, you'll see her take no prisoners attitude in full effect. As she exhorted a group of students to carry the torch, "Let me tell you something. If you were admitted, you belong. Your job is to do the very best you can and to bring up two of the classmates you left behind.” Through her research, which has drawn our attention to the potential for disadvantaged kids to succeed and excel in higher education, Tienda has done just that.

Posted by eduwonkette at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

William Deresiewicz, a Yale English prof for the last 10 years, has written a downright haunting essay in The American Scholar on the many ways that elite colleges fall short. He charges that elite colleges:

1) "Teach students to believe that people who didn’t go to an Ivy League or equivalent school weren’t worth talking to, regardless of their class."

2) Inculcate a false sense of self-worth ("Getting to an elite college, being at an elite college, and going on from an elite college—all involve numerical rankings: SAT, GPA, GRE. You learn to think of yourself in terms of those numbers. They come to signify not only your fate, but your identity; not only your identity, but your value.")

3) Initiate the winners into a club that's almost impossible to get booted out of once you're in ("Here, too, college reflects the way things work in the adult world (unless it’s the other way around). For the elite, there’s always another extension—a bailout, a pardon, a stint in rehab—always plenty of contacts and special stipends—the country club, the conference, the year-end bonus, the dividend.").

The most "damning disadvantage," he writes, is the anti-intellectualism that is encouraged by rewarding "hoop jumpers" and "teacher pleasers:"

"But if you’re afraid to fail, you’re afraid to take risks, which begins to explain the final and most damning disadvantage of an elite education: that it is profoundly anti-intellectual. This will seem counterintuitive. Aren’t kids at elite schools the smartest ones around, at least in the narrow academic sense? Don’t they work harder than anyone else—indeed, harder than any previous generation? They are. They do. But being an intellectual is not the same as being smart. Being an intellectual means more than doing your homework.

If so few kids come to college understanding this, it is no wonder. They are products of a system that rarely asked them to think about something bigger than the next assignment. The system forgot to teach them, along the way to the prestige admissions and the lucrative jobs, that the most important achievements can’t be measured by a letter or a number or a name. It forgot that the true purpose of education is to make minds, not careers.

Being an intellectual means, first of all, being passionate about ideas—and not just for the duration of a semester, for the sake of pleasing the teacher, or for getting a good grade. A friend who teaches at the University of Connecticut once complained to me that his students don’t think for themselves. Well, I said, Yale students think for themselves, but only because they know we want them to. I’ve had many wonderful students at Yale and Columbia, bright, thoughtful, creative kids whom it’s been a pleasure to talk with and learn from. But most of them have seemed content to color within the lines that their education had marked out for them. Only a small minority have seen their education as part of a larger intellectual journey, have approached the work of the mind with a pilgrim soul. These few have tended to feel like freaks, not least because they get so little support from the university itself. Places like Yale, as one of them put it to me, are not conducive to searchers.

Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it’s almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it’s even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A’s in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they’re exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn’t get straight A’s because they couldn’t be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resumés.

The world that produced John Kerry and George Bush is indeed giving us our next generation of leaders. The kid who’s loading up on AP courses junior year or editing three campus publications while double-majoring, the kid whom everyone wants at their college or law school but no one wants in their classroom, the kid who doesn’t have a minute to breathe, let alone think, will soon be running a corporation or an institution or a government. She will have many achievements but little experience, great success but no vision. The disadvantage of an elite education is that it’s given us the elite we have, and the elite we’re going to have."

Does this square with anyone else's teaching and learning experiences?

Posted by eduwonkette at 3:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

The American Association of University Women released a 124 page report this morning debunking the myth of a "boy crisis" in education. Lots of long-term NAEP and ACT/SAT trend data to mull over.

The real trend story, though, is not about test scores, but about how girls have overtaken boys in college completion. 65% of all bachelor’s degrees were awarded to men in 1960; by 2005, women received 58% of all bachelor’s degrees. Gender disparities are even greater among some minority groups, with women earning 66% of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to African-Americans, 61% of those awarded to Hispanics, 60% of those awarded to Native-Americans, versus 57% of those awarded to whites.

Beyond the impact of the women's movement, my money is on girls' advantage in non-cognitive skills (i.e. motivation, sticktoitiveness, engagement) which may have grown over time, or alternatively there may be increasing returns to non-cognitive skills in finishing college. No evidence for this assertion - just a hunch. Feel free to offer other interpretations of the graph below, which shows trends in BA attainment by race and gender from 1971-2006.

Posted by eduwonkette at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I broke a few hearts with my take on graduate student unions. Mike Antonucci, who desperately wanted to out me as Randi Weingarten or Reg Weaver, probably won't be able to crawl out of bed tomorrow. (But Leo, this is what the Walmart-sponsored anti-union flag really looks like.) So let me say a few words on this issue, and since my heels aren't deeply dug in about it, invite you to convince me that I'm wrong.

I don't have new angles to offer on the worker versus student question. Nonetheless, it strikes me that just as aspiring teachers must student teach to complete their degree requirements (performing the same job as other employees), graduate students are also students, not workers. (There are arguably many differences between student teachers and grad students as well, as I'm sure someone will point out.) The central purpose of graduate school is to train students to become professors, and part of that training involves learning to teach. Here's the other side of the coin from FACE talk, a new AFT higher ed blog:

Beyond the legal and institutional definitions, the argument that graduate teaching and research assistants are students, not employees, and that their work is training as part of their student experience is problematic on at least two levels. First, graduate employees are responsible for a critical university function: undergraduate education. To suggest that they are not qualified to teach courses, run discussion groups, lead labs, etc.--that is, that they are untrained apprentices who should not be considered employees--is both demeaning and contradictory....Second, the notion that employees learn on the job should not affect their employee status....they are still considered employees from the moment they begin providing a service to an employer in exchange for wages.

Unrelated to the student vs. worker issue - the claim that graduate student unions will address the problem of contingent labor in higher ed hasn't borne much fruit in public universities with unions, has it?

That's all I've got for tonight. Readers, take it from here.

Posted by eduwonkette at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

I didn't notice until a friend pointed it out, but there are no female profs quoted in this NYT article on professors' internet show-and-tell:

Certainly, professors have embraced the Internet since its earliest days, using it as a scholarly avenue of communication, publication and debate. Now it is common for many to reveal more personal information that has little connection to their work.

Some do so in hopes it will attract attention for a book or paper they have written; others do so inadvertently, joining Facebook to communicate with students and then finding themselves lured deeper by its various applications.

Many, though, say that by divulging family history and hobbies, they hope to appear more accessible to students.

Her take was that it's trickier for female academics - especially young ones - to be taken seriously with personal information aflutter. Certainly I've heard more junior women on the job market belabor their personal presentation - the website photo, the outfit, the shoes, etc. Too bad the NYT missed the gender angle. But who needs insight when you've got professors on roller skates?

On a related research note, check out Daniel Hamermesh's paper, Beauty in the Classroom, which finds that attractive professors receive better course evaluations. Hot male profs receive higher returns to their attractiveness than do hot female profs (which also means that unattractive male profs get penalized more than unattractive female profs). The authors argue that the positive relationship between beauty and evaluations represents a productivity effect, not just a discrimination effect. In other words, are attractive faculty really better teachers, perhaps because students pay more attention? Could the same apply in high school? If Alexander Russo's TFA crushes tell us anything, the answer may be yes.

Posted by eduwonkette at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Following up on the Quick and the Ed's March Madness graduation rate post, check out the black-white grad rate gaps for players on this year's teams:

* 61 percent (33 schools) of the men’s tournament teams graduated 70 percent or more of their white basketball student-athletes, while only 30 percent (19 schools) graduated 70 percent or more of their African-American basketball student-athletes, creating a 31 percent gap.

* 83 percent (45) graduated 50 percent or more of their white basketball student-athletes, but only 57 percent (36) graduated 50 percent or more of their African-American basketball student-athletes, creating a 26 percent gap.

Posted by eduwonkette at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

What's worse: evaluating college quality using standardized tests (Madame Secretary's pet project), or relying on Rate My Professors? At Rate My Professors, students rate their professors on "educational" qualities like their hotness, their easiness, their helpfulness, and their clarity. (Here's a nice Village Voice article about RMP; hat tip: Mike Arnzen). Now MTV has kicked off a spoof called "Professors Strike Back," in which profs respond to comments ranging from "I want to be her slave" to "Eats children for breakfast."

A mocking blog called Rate Your Students has emerged in response - you can read about some unbeloved students in this post (Head-Nodders, Laptop Kids, Winter Flip Floppers, and Some Nefarious Wannabe Gangsters. Where is that Walmart Application?).

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for the course evaluations that are typical at most campuses. Because everyone (who shows up) completes one, you have a full sample of students - not just the angry and elated - and narrative sections allow students to provide meaningful feedback on how to tweak the course in the future. Propositioning is generally not included, though students still throw in the occasional pediatric temper tantrum.

I'm undecided on whether and how colleges should make course evaluations public. On one hand, the public release of formal evaluations would help students decide among many courses. On the other hand, a student-driven evaluation system creates incentives to pander to Gen Facebook, and further encourages the "I'm paying, so I deserve an easy A" consumerism of many students.

So I'm on the fence about the role of course evaluations in assessing college teaching. Readers, what's your take? How should profs' teaching be evaluated?

Update: To clarify, there are at least 4 questions raised by this post:

1) How should learning be evaluated in college?

2) Are course evaluations a fair and comprehensive measure of college teaching? (Of course not, in my opinion.)

3) What should universities do with student course evaluations?

4) What are the potential risks/benefits to students and profs of making them public?

Posted by eduwonkette at 12:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Now that the spring semester is in full swing, I’ve concluded that excuse writing deserves its own genre. College-level excuses are a) painfully specific and b) include details better kept to oneself.

Profgrrrrl’s recent post sparked a personal mission to track down the best excuse ever given. (Hat tip: Sherman Dorn.) There are excuse generating websites (if you need to squeeze out of a wedding or work, click here), but my colleagues can beat them all. Some candidates included missing the final exam because of a heroin overdose, having “totally THE WORST cramps ever,” winning last minute tickets to Spamalot, and getting stuck in an earthquake in Pennsylvania. But this one beats them all, and even ended up in the Chronicle last year:

I will be unable to be in class today because every year we have a Jell-O wrestling competition on campus, and it has just come to my attention that the 50 gallons of Jell-O that we previously made has spoiled. So now I have to remake the 50 gallons before 9 o'clock tonight. ... I understand this is a really weird circumstance, but without the Jell-O we have no competition, and without the competition we lose all of our fund-raising. Thanks you, and have a good weekend.

Image credit: trpaulsen.com

Posted by eduwonkette at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

On Sunday, the NYT wrote about admissions anxiety stemming from a larger than average senior class in Connecticut. It turns out this isn't just another case of helicopter parent mania - economists John Bound and Sarah Turner analyzed 50 years of data and found that the size of the cohort in a state actually does affect the percentage of students getting a BA (Paper here). After ruling out competing explanations for this outcome – for example, that larger cohorts are less prepared for college – Bound and Turner concluded that a 10% increase in the size of the college cohort within a state leads to a 4% decrease in the college completion rate within that state.

If there's a lesson here, perhaps it is that luck, and states' failure to fully adjust for these bulges, matter.

Posted by eduwonkette at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In October, I awarded the first "Gold Star Book Award" to Mitchell Stevens' Creating a Class: College Admissions and the Education of Elites. (You can read more about the book here.)

In this week's Chronicle of Higher Education, Stevens turns in an incisive op-ed that serves as a powerful rejoinder to the absurdity bug that bit the Wall Street Journal last week:

By the time upper-middle-class 17-year-olds sit down to write their applications, most of the race to top institutions has already been run, and they already enjoy comfortable leads....For those kids, the big question is not whether they will be admitted to an elite institution, but which ones will offer them spots. Even while the fate of individual applicants at particular colleges remains uncertain until decision letters are mailed, the overall distribution of outcomes is heavily skewed in favor of affluent applicants. That is not the result of discrimination by admissions officers, but rather the consequence of privileged families deftly playing by the rules of the meritocratic game.

My research convinced me that the ever-more-frenzied activity surrounding selective admissions is essentially ceremonial — an elaborate national ritual of just desserts. The fact that the fates of particular applicants at particular colleges remain uncertain until the end enables us to believe that the winners earn their victories in a fair game. That is how the anxiety that attends the application season is deceptive: It encourages those who experience it to believe that the outcomes of the process are considerably more uncertain than they actually are.

Posted by eduwonkette at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)