China's soft power ... in US universities?

China conducts in its own strange ways acts that are political, which makes me more and more uneasy about its rapidly growing economic and military strength.  If that is how I feel, when comfortably situated in the US, I can easily imagine the much larger scope of anxieties among the typical Filipino or Vietnamese or Japanese or ...

Forget the big-time news generating activities like the Chinese hacking into the US government data.  Set aside even how "China is quietly permitting and even encouraging companies to steal American agricultural secrets right out of the ground." Allow me to bring this much closer to where I live.

The University of Oregon has a Confucius Institute.

It was inaugurated in fall 2010. The institute is made possible with the support of our partners in China: The Chinese Language Council International (Hanban), and East China Normal University in Shanghai.

What's the big deal about it?  Consider the following:

Cantonese was widely taught at Canadian and American universities 30 years ago, says Ross King, head of UBC’s [University of British Columbia] Asian-studies programme. That is because most Chinese immigrants came from Hong Kong and southern China, where it is the main language. Cantonese still resounds in Chinatowns, such as those of Vancouver and San Francisco. But the economic rise of mainland China, whose official language is Mandarin Chinese (or putonghua), is pushing Cantonese off the streets and out of the academy.

Why should this matter?  There is pressure to ditch Cantonese and to teach Mandarin instead.

UBC is putting up a fight. The university has rejected four offers from the Confucius Institute, a cultural body financed by China’s government, to expand its teaching of Mandarin.

The Confucius Institute has a determined political agenda.  In the old days, such operations would have been located outside the academic walls.  But these days, universities are ready to take money from anybody who is willing to give them in plenty.  The Koch brothers buy out an economics department.  The Chinese government peddles its influence.  It is a bizarre academic world of prostituting for money!

It takes a lot to fight that kind of prostitution.  UBC is the latest to join a line--perhaps too short a line--of universities that have rejected funding from the Confucius Institute.  The most high profile one in the US happened a few months ago:

Critics of the program are uncomfortable that faculty is sent from China — an exception to the tradition that a university judges who is fit to teach its students — and say that classes avoid controversial subjects such as the Tiananmen Square massacre and Falun Gong, a religious sect outlawed in China. Some schools that host the programs have canceled visits from the Dalai Lama under pressure from Beijing.
The University of Chicago was one of the country's first elite schools to adopt the program, but it severed its relationship with the Confucius Institute in September.

Are you now beginning to get a tad uncomfortable as well?  Not yet?  How about I add this:

The American Association of University Professors and its Canadian counterpart have urged universities to end partnerships with the Confucius Institute unless academic control reverts to host universities. The Toronto School District and Pennsylvania State University both recently canceled plans for a Confucius Institute.
But the programs remain attractive to many schools.

It remains attractive because, hey, it is all about the money!  (I don't know if the Institute interferes with the academic affairs at the University of Oregon.)

China's money-based-war will continue and expand, especially under the current leadership, which sees a huge brand value in the name "Confucius":

Since he came to power in 2012, Mr Xi has sought to elevate Confucius—whom Mao vilified—as the grand progenitor of Chinese culture. ...
 he evidently sees Confucianism as a powerful ideological tool, with its stress on order, hierarchy, and duty to ruler and to family. Unlike the party’s imported, indigestible Marxist dogma, Confucianism has the advantage of being home-grown. It appeals to a yearning for ancient values among those unsettled by China’s blistering pace of change.

I way prefer the old ways, like the USIS and the British Council that I used to frequent back in Madras.  Ah, the good ol' days when the US and the UK left it to their own professionals to do the dirty work ;)

The University of Nike's Pigskin Palace. Knight is no Carnegie!

A couple of days ago, NPR aired a piece on the steel baron, Andrew Carnegie, who gave away a good chunk of his fortune to build public libraries throughout the United States.  Yes, public libraries. To be accessed for free.

In 1889 Carnegie wrote an article called "The Gospel of Wealth," in which he spelled out his views on philanthropy: "In bestowing charity the main consideration should be to help those who help themselves."
The rich should give, so the poor could improve their own lives — and thus the lives of the society. Giving was a code of honor. "The man who dies rich dies in disgrace," Carnegie said.
Nasaw says the steel master was in his 30s when he decided he was merely the shepherd of his wealth.
"It is his responsibility to give it back," Nasaw says, "to return it to the community because the community — all of those men and women who contribute to the making of Carnegie steel, the mothers who feed their children, the day laborers, the whole large community — is responsible for making this wealth and they're the ones who have to get it back."
So public libraries became instruments of change — not luxuries, but rather necessities, important institutions — as vital to the community as police and fire stations and public schools.

Yes, Carnegie was ruthless as a businessman, as a capitalist.  But, the legacy he left behind includes:

1,689 public libraries. Temples of learning, ambition, aspiration for towns and cities throughout the United States.

And then there was a contrasting story about the latest college football excess at the University of Oregon, thanks to Nike's Phil Knight:

The Football Performance Center at the University of Oregon features rugs woven by hand in Nepal, couches made in Italy and Brazilian hardwood underfoot in the weight room that is so dense that designers of this opulent palace believe it will not burn.
This is Oregon football. There is a barbershop with utensils from Milan. And a duck pond. And a locker room that can be accessed by biometric thumbprints. And chairs upholstered with the same material found in a Ferrari’s interior. 

The Oregonian's columnist aptly describes this as Pigskin Palace, and writes:

It's Phil Knight's money, of course, and there's a lot more where that came from. But the new structure does seem to send out a message to everything else on campus.
A University of Oklahoma president once told legislators that he wanted a university the football team could be proud of. Oregon might now hope for a university the football building could be proud of.

 We could have had by now a university that the state can be proud of if valuable and scarce resources are not invested in sporting facilities, right?

Carnegie left behind a rich legacy, despite his brutal business practices.  Vanderbilt too. The Ford Foundation contributed so much to the entire world.  Bill Gates and Warren Buffett seem to continue along in that old American tradition.

And then we have the awful ones like Knight who are all about self-aggrandizement.  It is even more awful that people love it all. Even more pathetic that the left-leaning faculty are always too keen on following football that is clearly at the expense of education. And students are always delirious with football success even when they are jobless after graduating from the university.  Oh the insanity!

“We are the University of Nike,” said Jeff Hawkins, the senior associate athletic director of football administration and operations. “We embrace it. We tell that to our recruits.”

I am ready to puke!

The insanity in (of) higher education--Oregon edition!

I so wish I had not picked up early in my life the bad habit of reading the newspaper every morning.  Life would have been so much easier.

Even though my eyes got to the headlines even as I picked up the paper from the porch, I had all the more the reasons to keep it for the last.  You would have done the same too when the headline blared:

UO begins a new era of bargaining
A sea change arrives as a union forms and oversight shifts

After reading through the comics pages (which were a dud!); the local pages (lots of dog-bites-man stories!); sports (Dodgers on top in the division!); opinions (nothing by me, so who cares!) I finally got to the front section and the main story:

It’s a cash problem.
“In most states, the legislators — along with the federal government — have reduced (support) and the proportion of their budget that goes to higher education,” Boris said.
That’s true in Oregon.
The state has steadily decreased its support for its universities over the past two decades until Oregon student tuition pays the lion’s share of the cost — 70 percent — while the state pays 30 percent, according to Oregon University System figures.
Scrambling for money became a way of life at the University of Oregon.

 So far, so good, right?  Finally, a recognition of the bottom-line that "it's a cash problem."

So, what are they gonna do about it?

Fasten your seat-belts. In case you feel queasy, look away from your computer and keyboard.

Ready?

Contributions from the university’s general fund to athletics has long been a bone of contention with UO faculty. The athletic department gets much of its revenue from sales of tickets and television broadcasting rights.
This past week, administrative bargainers handed the union documents confirming that the university — as opposed to the athletic department — pays about $2 million annually to provide special tutoring to student athletes exclusively at the John E. Jaqua Center for Student Athletes, the shimmering glass building at the campus entrance.
That amounts to roughly $4,000 per student athlete; the university spends a fraction of that for special tutoring of non-athlete students. In May, the university senate formally asked Gottfredson to require the athletic department to pay for the tutoring at the Jaqua Center.
At the bargaining table last week, the union’s professional negotiator, David Cecil, told the administration’s professional negotiator, Sharon Rudnick, he would evaluate the university spending on tutoring student athletes.
“We’ll let you know if we think it’s a wise investment,” he said.
Gleason said the union is entitled to an opinion, but the decision is management’s to make. 

You read that correctly.  Everybody recognizes that there is a cash problem. But, dammit, there is no way we are going to touch that expense item on athletics.  

Wait, there is more.  

That was the insanity from the management side that it was their decision to make, even if the investment in athletics is an unwise one.  Faculty can be insane too--after all, we faculty didn't pursue our doctorates for nothing, and typically the deans and presidents were once faculty!

 United Academics of the University of Oregon wants 16 percent increases in spending on faculty salaries over the two years for the 1,900 members in its bargaining unit. In the past week, the administration offered 10.5 percent. “That’s the one that’s the greatest challenge for all of us,” said Tim Gleason, dean of the School of Journalism and Communications and an administration bargaining team member.
The union’s proposal would cost the university $20 million more than the current two-year budget for faculty salaries. The administration’s proposal would be $14 million more — a $6 million difference, according to the administration’s figures.

16 percent. 10.5 percent. Oh well, we might as well give them a 20 percent raise. 

Oh, wait. Whatever happened to the bottom-line:

It’s a cash problem.

I suppose we can pay-it-forward!

Separate the leadership of different universities

(Op-ed published in the Statesman Journal, December 4th)

The firing of Richard Lariviere from his job as the president of the University of Oregon will be discussed for a long time.

As we engage in debates, there is one fundamental issue that we Oregonians have to resolve well before hiring a successor: Should UO, and perhaps Portland State and Oregon State too, be spun off the Oregon University System (OUS) with a separate governance system?

From the day I was hired to teach at Western Oregon University back in 2002, I have wondered at the logic (or lack thereof) in having an OUS that governs both UO and WOU. After all, WOU is what one would refer to as a "teaching university" while UO is a "research university" and the missions of these two institutions are very different.

It is not that UO faculty do not engage in teaching — they do. But, at research universities, the expectation is that faculty will devote significant effort into systematically creating new ways in which we understand the world.

The metaphorical earth-shattering scholarship in the sciences and the arts happen at research universities, and that is the yardstick with which we would then measure the "worth" of a research university like UO. Thus, it is no surprise that faculty who gain membership into prestigious bodies like the National Academy of Sciences are from research universities, and not from teaching universities.

In the American higher education system, the typical expectation is that teaching universities like WOU have a markedly different role. Pretty much all of our work is about teaching at the undergraduate level. Nobel Prize winners are, therefore, not to be found in teaching universities, even when they are phenomenal teachers, as many of them are.

When there is such a wide gulf between what is expected at UO versus WOU, I am always surprised that both these institutions are governed by the same board.

When I joined WOU, the OUS had a new chancellor in Richard Jarvis. He was a geographer and taught an introductory physical geography class for us — for free, as I recall. But even before his second-year anniversary on the job, Jarvis was fired rather abruptly because the then-governor, Ted Kulongoski, wanted to set a new direction for higher education.

Unfortunately, all I have witnessed in these 10 years is more hirings and firings and the creation of more and more committees, without any directional clarity whatsoever. This decade-long experience makes me conclude that the current crisis is not anything new that Lariviere created, but is the cumulative effect of dilly-dallying.

I can only hope that the termination of Lariviere's contract will compel the governor and the Legislature to settle the issues once and for all.

In working out a plan, they ought to recognize that WOU and its sister regional universities, Eastern Oregon and Southern Oregon universities, are alike in their missions, while UO, PSU and OSU have very different institutional missions. Forcing these institutions to coexist within the same OUS structure will merely prolong the agony, and is the worst possible deal for taxpayers and students.

Even students are getting a tad queasy about college football money :)

It is too bad that the term is coming to an end--just when students are brimming with so much opinions that they want to include me in the conversations.  Three of those conversations were all about college sports--football, to be specific.

A couple of days ago, "D" came to my office to talk about this paper. "BTW, Dr. Khé, you went to USC, right?"

"Yes" I replied.

"So, did you watch the USC-Ducks game?"

He was taken aback when I said I did not.

His reaction made me think that he was expecting me to gloat about USC killing UO's national championship aspirations with that upset victory.  I felt compelled to explain, which I did.

"As a graduate student, I used to follow football.  And later too.  But then the more I seriously started thinking about academics and students, all I could see in the football games was coaches earning millions of dollars.  So, I don't watch anymore."

It seemed like it took "D" by surprise.  When he asked me more on this topic, I asked him if he had seen the latest news about Bellotti and his retirement income.  He hadn't.  So, I pulled up my blog post on it, and it was neat to see the jaw-dropped expression on the Duck fan.

"He gets $41,000 a month in retirement?  But he also works for ESPN!"

I wonder if he will think about this when he watches the Ducks play UCLA for the Pac-12 title.  I hope he does.

Earlier today, I got an email from "S":

In case you did not see this (though I suspect you probably did), here is a news story that I had to read a second time to make sure the numbers were, in fact, monthly salaries.

Yes, she was also referring to the same Bellotti dollar figure news.

To cap it all, as I was walking towards the library, a voice yelling "Dr. Khé" forced me out of my thoughts.  It was "T," who is a football player too.  He, also, engaged me in a short conversation about the money in college sports.

I told "T" that I am all for students playing sports.  "It is the money that bugs me " I told him.  He agreed with me--at least, that is what he said :)

I wish I could bug all those three with this latest update:

At a time when college football programs are coming under fire for lionizing their coaches, Ohio State University hired Urban Meyer and agreed to pay him $4 million a year. That makes Meyer one of the highest paid college football coaches in the country.
Meyer will earn three times more than Ohio State President E. Gordan Gee, the nation’s highest paid university president. On most campuses, coaches top the payroll. And despite the economy, budget cuts and increasing tuition, coach salaries continue to climb.

So, the joke is on whom? Students? Faculty? Taxpayers? All of the above?

Oh, btw, this is the same OSU's president Gee who in a brutally frank manner hoped that the football coach would not fire him; remember that?

As my neighbor often comments, there are only two religions in America now: college football and NFL!

On the firing of Larivere. Let their people go!

The firing of Richard Larivere from his job as the president of the University of Oregon will be discussed for a long time.  As we engage in debates, there is one fundamental issue that we Oregonians have to resolve well before hiring a successor—should UO, and perhaps Portland State and Oregon State too, be spun off the Oregon University System (OUS,) with a separate governance system?

From the day I was hired to teach at Western Oregon University (WOU) back in 2002, I have wondered at the logic, or lack thereof, in having an OUS that governs both UO and WOU.  After all, WOU is what one would refer to as a “teaching university” while UO is a “research university” and the missions of these two institutions are very different. 

It is not that UO faculty do not engage in teaching—they do.  But, at research universities, the expectation is that faculty will devote significant effort into systematically creating new ways in which we understand the world.  The metaphorical earth-shattering scholarship in the sciences and the arts happen at research universities, and that is the yardstick with which we would then measure the “worth” of a research university like UO.  Thus, it is no surprise that faculty who gain membership into prestigious bodies like the National Academy of Sciences are from research universities—and not from teaching universities.

In the American higher education system, the typical expectation is that teaching universities like WOU have a markedly different role.  Pretty much all of our work is about teaching at the undergraduate level.  Nobel Prize winners are, therefore, not to be found in teaching universities, even when they are phenomenal teachers, as many of them are.

When there is such a wide gulf between what is expected at UO versus WOU, I am always surprised that both these institutions are governed by the same board. 

When I joined WOU, the OUS had a new chancellor in Richard Jarvis.  Jarvis was a geographer, and taught an introductory physical geography class for us--for free, as I recall.  But, even before his second year anniversary on the job, Jarvis was fired rather abruptly because the then governor, Ted Kulongoski, wanted to set a new direction for higher education. 

Unfortunately, all I have witnessed in these ten years is more hirings and firings, and the creation of more and more committees, without any directional clarity whatsoever.  This decade-long experience makes me conclude that the current crisis is not anything new that Larivere created, but is the cumulative effect of dilly-dallying.

I can only hope that the termination of Larivere’s contract will compel the governor and the legislature to settle the issues once and for all.  In working out a plan, they ought to recognize that WOU and its sister regional universities, EOU and SOU, are alike in their missions, while UO, PSU and OSU have very different institutional missions.  Forcing these institutions to coexist within the same OUS structure will merely prolong the agony, and is the worst possible deal for taxpayers and students.

We need to spend more on college football ... for retirement options!

$40,000 per month in retirement. WTF, eh!

I wonder if students ever think about how this misplaced priority is screwing them!

The consolation here: at least he wasn't a Paterno! 

Oh, BTW, Click here to get astounded by the gazillions that college coaches earn. 

An analysis by USA TODAY found that in 2006 the average pay for major-college coaches was $950,000. ...

The average compensation in 2011 is $1.47 million, a jump of nearly 55% in six seasons.

In the six conferences with automatic Bowl Championship Series bids, the average salary rose from $1.4 million in 2006 to $2.125 million in 2011. That's a jump of about 52% — meaning salaries at schools in the other five major conferences are going up at roughly the same rate as they are at higher-profile schools.

"The hell with gold," higher education lawyer Sheldon Steinbach says. "I want to buy futures in coaches' contracts."

Critics find it troubling that this rapid rise for coaches comes at a time when instructional spending at many schools has slowed or declined amid economic struggles and shrinking state education budgets.

Ha!  I am willing to sell you a Taj Mahal for about 20 mil :)

Admissions at Elite Universities

The undergraduate stratosphere gets further rarer with every passing year.

Take Stanford University's recent announcement about the class of 2014: The university reviewed 32,022 applications from "the largest number of candidates in its history," and sent offers to "just 7.2 percent" of applicants—an admission rate that "sets a university record."

Hmmm .... that means the number of students who received rejection letters from Stanford is .... aaaahhh, who cares!

I recall reading in Nicholas Lehman's article, back some time ago in the Atlantic, that the SAT score remains forever in the student's memory.  It is such a defining number of one's life at a critical fork in the road--where to after high school? I mean, think about the "Stanford rejects" given this piece of data from its class of 2013:

nearly 20 percent of the Class of 2013 posted perfect scores in the SAT Critical Reading and Math exams, and two-thirds of the class earned a GPA of 4.0 and above.

And this was the case when Stanford's admit rate was 7.9%, compared to this year's 7.2%.  Ouch!

Of course, Standford's 7.2% admit rate is bested, ahem, by that old school on the east coast: Harvard

For the first time in Harvard’s history, more than 30,000 students applied to the College, leading to an admission rate of 6.9 percent for the Class of 2014. Letters of admission (and e-mail notifications) were sent on April 1 to 2,110 of the 30,489 applicants....
... more than 3,000 applicants scored a perfect 800 on the SAT Critical Reading Test; 4,100 scored 800 on the SAT Math Test; and nearly 3,600 were ranked first in their high school classes.

93.1 percent of the applicants were rejected .... how many of them knew even beforehand that they didn't stand a chance, but applied anyway?  According to The Daily Beast, Stanford leads the way in being the most stressful environment for students :(

BTW, the average SAT scores at the "flagship" university of the system where I teach ...