Graduation ... the end is here ... then what?

Given the grim economic conditions everywhere, I do not know whether to congratulate the students who are graduating, or to commiserate with them.

The American economy had barely come out of a recession when I completed my PhD.  But, that recession in the early 1990s was nothing compared to this Great Recession.  I did manage to find a job, and then lucked out by coming back to academia, which I truly enjoy as a calling, starting in California and then on to Oregon.

But, unemployment as a result of this Great Recession continues to remain high, and analysts forecast that it could hover at between 8.5 and 9 percent nationwide even at the end of 2011!

Studies also point out that when careers begin at such unfavorable economic conditions, earnings tend to be low—at the starting point as well as throughout the career. 

Job prospects for graduates are bleak.  I am willing to bet that this is not what students had imagined will be the case, as they worked through the four to six years of college.  One of my students, who is completing the undergraduate program in four years, masked her concerns in a rather humorous manner when she said that she cannot go back to living with her parents because of the attention that she will receive as the only child.  A sense of humor certainly helps! 

On the other side, when we look at the employment data, it does seem like we have inflated the academic credential requirements for jobs where that high level of investment in education might not be required at all.  One of the often cited examples is the data that fifteen percent of the mail carriers are college graduates.

By encouraging, nudging, and even forcing youth to head to college, we find ourselves in a situation where there is no comparable taxpayer expenditure on higher education.  In fact, with budget deficits over the next couple of biennia, further reductions in government support for higher education are guaranteed.  This then will further compel state-assisted institutions to increase tuition and fees, which in turn will force students to borrow loans.  At the end of it all, even now, a typical graduate exits with a diploma, about 20,000 dollars of debt, and no job. 

Meanwhile, we taxpayers expect and require colleges to demonstrate, with appropriate measures of efficiencies and effectiveness, increases in utilization of their capacities, while learning itself gets pushed to the side.  A factory system then serves as the model for education, when, ironically, the country has been rapidly shedding factories from its economic structure.

All these strengthen my worries that we are setting up a system that is bound to fail, or is already failing.

Volatire remarked that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, and nor an empire.  Well, higher education is increasingly neither higher nor education.  Perhaps we could use the context of graduation “commencements” and commence a sincere, serious, and systematic revolution in education here in Oregon.

The Euro crisis, and what Congress plans to do ...

First, the Eurozone crisis .... try your best not to laugh; after all, this is one serious crisis:

(ht) So, if that amused you, welcome to my world.  Perhaps you will then like the following one on what Congress is planning to do:


Congressmen Submit Emergency 3 AM Bill Demanding IHOP Stay Open All Night

A riddle for you :)

After a string of well-received topical posers, Motley asked the following:
A pocket-hole that grew so large,
A giant couldn't eat it.
A cache of gold that never was,
But nonetheless depleted.

So, what is the answer to this riddle? 
Hint: think economics, think country, think government, and the answer is ....

"the National Debt, of course."

A pretty neat one; but then what else can one expect from America's most trusted news source! :)

Anyway, speaking of debt, the new coalition of the willing--the Tory/LibDem alliance--has begun that most difficult task of tackling the debt.  The graphic below (ht) shows how difficult the challenge is ...

As You Like It

Yes, I have been thinking ... about life ... triggered by my dad saying that the dentist extracted three more teeth of his, and mom goes in next week for another tooth extraction ...

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Of course, it is from Shakespeare's As You Like It (Act II, Scene 7)

On energy and the environment :)

More on restructuring higher education .... go multinational!

Professor Sheila Croucher likens academic departments to nation-states, and provides a fantastic argument on why that model will not work.
She wants us to go multinational--well, not by starting branch campuses in the Dubais and Bangalores of the world, but by doing away with this old, parochial, department nation-state model.

Croucher writes:

[Disciplinary] identities and departmental attachments are somehow irrational, or that their promoters and defenders have bad intentions. Traditional disciplines and departments have met, and may continue to meet, important needs and serve valuable purposes—for the individual faculty members within them, the chairs who lead them, the institutions that house them, and the students who are educated by them. Disciplines, like nations, constitute a community of kind—of shared interests, ideas, and intellectual commitments. Members of disciplinary communities share a language (some literally); they share a history, heroes, sacred texts, symbols, vocabulary. Having been powerfully socialized into those communities, most faculty members find a stable, fulfilling source of intellectual and perhaps social belonging in their disciplines, and are likely to see departmental status as the means of preserving their interests.
Yet, as has happened with nation-states in a global era, there are now educational and practical reasons to question the utility of existing models.

As one who has been educated in, and has worked in, many disciplines (electrical engineering, urban planning, economics, environmental resource management, geography) I suppose I could be one of the easiest to be convinced :)  As Croucher points out, "discipline" does not equal "department" ...
Croucher adds:

As universities ponder transcending the conventional model of academic nation-states, those with concerns about their attachments to disciplines need to be assured that these forms of belonging are valued and can be preserved. In fact, scholars of interdisciplinary learning, such as Veronica Boix-Mansilla, have emphasized the need for rigorous engagement with disciplinary knowledge to advance interdisciplinary learning. Integrative or interdisciplinary learning is not antidisciplinary. Similarly, those faculty members who fear that departmental status is the only possible path to safety and security need to be assured with open conversations as well as transparent and democratically conceived policies that that is not the case.
If the international system (comprising a wide diversity of nations, states, ethnic groups, and identities) can recognize and give way to new, multiple, and fluid forms of attachment and governance, surely agreeing on some form of academic reconfiguration is feasible. First, however, people need reminding that "discipline" is not a synonym for "department," that disciplines themselves do, or should, regularly adapt to changing contexts and undergird rather than detract from integrative efforts, and that the freedoms and fairness important to us all can and most certainly should be preserved, whatever the emergent structures.

Yes, Prof. Croucher!

Burqa, Hijab, Niqab, ... they are NOT the same ...

So, is there is a difference? Yes.  Yes :)

Hijab: it can be conceptualized as a head scarf.

A couple of years ago, we had a visitor from Bahrain as a house-guest for ten days or so.  She always wore a hijab.  And, it turned out that it was her choice to wear a hijab--even her mother does not wear one.
But, this was in Bahrain, which is one of the less restrictive Persian Gulf societies.

Now, let us suppose we expand the covering to most of the body--except the face.  In other words, anybody can see the entire face of the woman, despite that all-covering garment.  Well, that is the chador.

As a kid growing up in India, I think I have seen many women in chadors.  But then in India, I recall that everything was given a common word of purdah.  Purdah itself, according to Wikipedia, has Persian/Urdu origins.  But, the purdah that we generically referred to in India is more like the Niqab or burqa.

With the niqab, well, one can at least see the eyes and eyebrows.  This is also what a German reporter wore for a day to get an idea of how others might respond to a woman wearing a niqab. 
With the burqa, there is a small veil/slit for the eyes.  This is one serious covering up.
(Source for the images used here.)

As a kid, I did not see very many women in India in a burqa.  Even now, when I visit, maybe I see a lot more of the chador and niqab, but not many burqa-clad women.

Here is one of my favorite Hindi songs where you ... well, watch it :) Click here for an English translation of the lyrics

Bring on the learning revolution!

Sir Ken Robinson says it is time to bring on the learning revolution, and quotes the following from Lincoln's message to the Congress in December 1862:

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.

As I have noted many times in this blog, higher education in its current format ought to be re-structured in more ways than one.  But, the status-quo preserving education system ... well, ... if the change does not come from within, I bet it will be forced on the system from the outside ... sooner than one might think.

Quote of the day: on academia

[Being] an intellectual entails analyzing and understanding issues from multiple angles. I hope that in advising their undergraduates, academics will encourage their students to share that view.

I hope so, too.  Click here for the essay (subscription might be required) 

But, that is not the reality that I experience and witness--neither about being an intellectual, nor about advising students. Unfortunately :(

Market down. Korea tense. Euro burns. So ...?

More here
ht

War. War. War, forever :(

The state of the union, as Glenn Greenwald describes, is awfully depressing ... Sometimes I do think that a permanent state of war is merely the other side of the professional military coin.  If it were a citizen military, well, we will have a military only if there is a "real" war emergency.  It is like how when citizen legislatures are replaced by year-round ones, we have now ended up with a system where incumbents stay on forever .... Oh well. 
Here is an excerpt from Greenwald:

war is basically the permanent American condition:  war is who we are and what we do as a nation.  We're essentially a war fighting state.  We have been at "war" the entire last decade (as well as largley non-stop for the decades which preceded it), and continue now to be at "war" with no end in sight.  That's clearly true of our specific wars (in Afghanistan).  And, worse, the way in which The War, more broadly, has been defined (i.e., against Islamic extremism/those who wish to harm Americans) makes it highly likely that it will never end in our lifetime.  The decree that we are "at war" has been repeated over and over for a full decade, drumbed into our heads from all directions without pause, sanctified as one of those Bipartisan Orthodoxies that nobody can dispute upon pain of having one's Seriousness credentials immediately and irrevocably revoked.  With war this normalized, is it really surprising that nobody debates it any longer?  It'd be like debating the color of the sky.
That's why I always find the War Excuse for anything the Government does so baffling and nonsensical.  Any objections one voices to what the Executive Branch does -- indefinite detentions, presidential assassinations of citizens, extreme secrecy, etc. -- will be met with the justification that such actions are permissible "during wartime," as though "wartime" is some special, temporary, fleeting state of affairs which necessitates vesting powers in the government which, during "normal" times, would be impermissible.
But the contrast between "war and "normal times" is totally illusory.  For the United States, war is normalcy.  The "war" we're fighting has been defined and designed to be virtually endless.  Political leaders from both parties have been explicit about that.  Here's how Obama put it last May in his "civil liberties" speech:

Now this generation faces a great test in the specter of terrorism. And unlike the Civil War or World War II, we can't count on a surrender ceremony to bring this journey to an end. Right now, in distant training camps and in crowded cities, there are people plotting to take American lives. That will be the case a year from now, five years from now, and -- in all probability -- 10 years from now.

All the way back in September, 2001, with the World Trade Center still smoldering, George Bush said basically the same thing:  "Now, this war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. . . . Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen."  Thus:  to justify new and unaccountable powers based on the fact that we are "at war" is, in essence, to change the American political system permanently, because the "war," and the accompanying powers that it justifies, are not going anywhere for many, many years to come.
With both political parties affirming over and over that we are going to be at "war" for years, indeed decades, it's unsurprising that so few people are interested in debating "war."

Way worse than the Exxon-Valdez spill

More here at the Boston Globe:

A young heron sits dying amidst oil splattering underneath mangrove on an island impacted by oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in Barataria Bay, along the the coast of Louisiana on Sunday, May 23, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

One speech, different takes: Obama @ West Point

A variation of the theme that beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

First, here is James Fallows, who leads it off with "I Like Ike" and names Eisenhower as the intellectual father of Obama's address:

The more significant point, to me, is how consistent Obama's argument was with one of the statements of U.S. interest and strategy that holds up best over time: Dwight Eisenhower's extraordinary "farewell address" to the nation nearly 50 years ago.

Next up, Will Inboden at FP who says this is not the candidate Obama of 2008:

President Obama's West Point speech on Saturday provides a great example of the structural continuities in American foreign policy. As president and commander-in-chief, Obama now embraces and owns policies that he previously eschewed. For example, after running his campaign denouncing the Iraq War and doubting the surge, he is now essentially declaring Iraq a victory ("this is what success looks like: an Iraq that provides no safe-haven to terrorists; a democratic Iraq that is sovereign, stable, and self-reliant.") After spending much of his first year in office downplaying if not ignoring democracy and human rights promotion, he is now making democracy and human rights promotion one of the four pillars of his national security strategy. After previously rhetorically distancing himself from American exceptionalism, he now says that a "fundamental part of our strategy is America's support for those universal rights that formed the creed of our founding."

Let us go for a third--to Peter Beinart, who calls it a clunker:

This weekend, for the second time in six months, President Obama flew to West Point to deliver a big foreign policy speech. And for the second time in six months, he delivered a clunker.

And then Beinart adds this:

Like Truman and the elder Bush, Obama is trying to limit America’s wartime goals, to define victory down rather than either going for broke or giving up. It may be a defensible strategy, but it’s not an inspiring one. And it’s not a strategy for which the American public is prepared to lose many lives. Perhaps the president should avoid West Point graduations for a while.

I tell you, life might be easier if I didn't read such competing arguments.  Ignorance has its advantages, I suppose.  But then, this is how we make mashed potatoes :)

More Mick Jagger: Ahem, you lie, "Sir" :)

Sir Mick has been in the news a lot recently because of the music from the "year in exile" ... no, he did not lie about the music, or the year in France ... well, this is what Sir Mick said:

"We were young, good-looking and stupid," he told the audience. "Now we're just stupid."

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards being "good-looking" then?  That is the lie .... muahahaha

He does sound quite existentialist here, eh:

"Everyone's life comes to an end. We'll all die, we all have the same fate, but I think you should just keep going while you can, doing what you like."

 Rock on, Sir Mick!

Redemption, religion, and Rrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

Ayaan Hirsi Ali's story is one that I find discussing in many different contexts with my students--it can be a discussion of migration, Somalia, Islam, female genital mutilation, radical Islamism, ....
In this Q/A, the final question/response is:

Are you in touch with your mother?
I talk to her on the phone. She says, Please go back to being a Muslim because that’s the only way that you’re going to have any kind of redemption in the hereafter.

Hmmm ....

I can't but wonder why quite a few people so preoccupied with the hereafter can't be "human" in the here and now :(  Oh well ...

Beverly Sills sings with the Muppets

Yes, live from the Muppetopolitan Opera, with Kermit serving as the emcee :)
So, it is past 1030 on Sunday night, and I deserved a break from grading.  The Classic Arts channel on cable had a clip of Beverly Sills singing Habanera.  I thought I would track down more from Sills on Youtube, and then came across this fantastically funny and clever (as always) Muppets piece.  Awesome!!!

And, BTW, here is Habanera according to the Muppets: be warned that this is way too hysterically funny :)

Bamboleo: video of the day

Takes me back to my graduate school days ...  The Gypsy Kings were on all kinds of music channels--pop, jazz, Spanish, ... Fast forward a few years and one day I get a call from my daughter, and I can barely hear her at all.  She then yelled "listen to this" and I could hear the Gypsy Kings--turned out that she was at their concert and remembered to call when they played "Bamboleo" ... :)

Mick Jagger talks economics

Sir Mick Jagger was an undergraduate student at the prestigious London School of Economics before, well, you know the music story.  So, it does not surprise me at all to read his observations on the dollars and cents of recording and the internet (ht):

Things have obviously changed a great deal since those sessions. What's your feeling on technology and music?

Technology and music have been together since the beginning of recording.

I'm talking about the internet.

But that's just one facet of the technology of music. Music has been aligned with technology for a long time. The model of records and record selling is a very complex subject and quite boring, to be honest.

But your view is valid because you have a huge catalogue, which is worth a lot of money, and you've been in the business a long time, so you have perspective.

Well, it's all changed in the last couple of years. We've gone through a period where everyone downloaded everything for nothing and we've gone into a grey period it's much easier to pay for things - assuming you've got any money.

Are you quite relaxed about it?

I am quite relaxed about it. But, you know, it is a massive change and it does alter the fact that people don't make as much money out of records.

But I have a take on that - people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn't make any money out of records because record companies wouldn't pay you! They didn't pay anyone!

Then, there was a small period from 1970 to 1997, where people did get paid, and they got paid very handsomely and everyone made money. But now that period has gone.

So if you look at the history of recorded music from 1900 to now, there was a 25 year period where artists did very well, but the rest of the time they didn't.

Throughout history, musicians and artists generally did not earn lots of money--same story with teachers, too. For a brief while, as Sir Mick points out, yes, there was real money for musicians--it was almost the same time period that was also the best of times for teaching.  Now, once again teaching is rapidly losing the little bit of economic prosperity that it enjoyed for a couple of generations.  Well, aren't such changes the kind of stuff that history is made of?  May we live in interesting times, indeed!