The Funding Crisis in Higher Education

It is no secret that (public and non-profit) higher education across the country is facing a funding crisis right now. Ever since I became a student at UW we’ve been staring down double-digit tuition increases every year. Last year both programs I am enrolled in faced being merged into other schools, and the Information School responded by making the MLIS program self-sustaining, rather than state-funded, which resulted in substantial tuition increases for in-state students (though not for out-of-state). In the past week or so, I’ve come across a variety of pieces that touch on this funding crisis, and I thought I would pull them together for the Bookaneers. Many of us work or plan to work in academic settings, and though this is not strictly library-related, I think it is imperative for librarians to have a broader understanding of what is happening in higher education.

“Do college professors work hard enough?” Last Friday the Washington Post ran this editorial (watch out for that paywall), which, as the title suggests, argues that college professors are overpaid relative to the amount of work they do. David C. Levy (no relation to the iSchool’s esteemed professor), writes that

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.

Many people have rebutted Levy’s piece for being essentially a straw man argument based on anecdotal or inaccurate evidence, and I don’t find it necessary to address his points individually. At the very least, we can all see the flaw in the argument that 15 hours per week of time spent in the classroom is equivalent to 15 hours of work per week. The reason that I am highlighting Levy’s piece, though he completely misidentifies the root causes, is that he is striking at some very serious problems in higher education.

The funding crisis and rising tuition costs are partly based on reduced state and federal funding. The irony of publically subsidized education is that in and after recessions more people want to go back to school just as governments with fewer tax revenues are reducing funding for public services. This puts a substantial squeeze on higher education institutions, especially those like community colleges that view part of their mission as worker retraining.

This post at Confessions of a Community College Dean also identifies some structural elements to rising costs in higher education. He argues that institutions are becoming less productive because they are not adapting to technological and economic advances. As we adopt better and better technologies, and use them to radically change the way we do business and live our lives, higher education has not necessarily taken advantage of these tools. (I’m wildly paraphrasing, but I think that is his basic argument.) The writer recognizes that this is a long-term problem with a long-term solution, and in the short run it is very difficult to address.

Here are just a couple of the short-term (and short-sighted) attempts to address this problem recently:

The New York Times this morning is reporting on a plan at Santa Monica Community College in California to create a two-tiered tuition structure. In response to complaints that required courses are filling up too quickly, the college is planning to create additional sections of the courses, and charge a higher tuition for those sections. Currently, community college courses cost $36/credit hour; the additional sections will cost $180/credit hour. The Times does a good job of walking through the pros and the cons of this plan. Essentially, the higher price would cover the college’s cost of providing the additional sections (the lower price is state-subsidized), and it would enable more students to get the classes they need to complete their degrees or to transfer to a four-year college. However, the higher tuition would in effect prevent low-income students from enrolling in the additional sections, though they have no priority in the regularly priced classes. As access to education is one of the primary missions of community colleges, this raises some serious questions about equity and fairness.

The second example I have recently come across is in Canada. Tamara Shepherd, a professor at Concordia University, writes on the Culture, Digitally blog about a student strike in Quebec:

Students have been on what is so far a six-week strike against the Quebec Liberal government’s proposal to increase tuition fees by 75% as part of a widespread privatizing of post-secondary education. Over 200,000 Quebec students out of a total of around 300,000 have joined the “strike,” which has entailed not attending classes, and holding public demonstrations.

That whole paragraph is pretty mind-blowing, and I’m surprised that I haven’t heard about this before. Here is an excerpt from a statement by Concordia professors, who largely support the strike:

The government’s plan is an attempt to break Quebec’s hard won social contract on education. The proposed 75 percent increase in tuition fees will undermine the accessibility of higher education. This is not merely a question of lost earning power for those who cannot afford to attend university. Universities create social, entrepreneurial, artistic, political and scientific networks that contribute to the productivity of our society. When access to university is restricted, society as a whole loses because these productive networks are reduced in size and diversity. Further, since the tuition hike will disproportionately affect women, people of color, and other marginalized groups who consistently earn less, the hike will worsen the economic and social stratification that Quebec society opposes.

I don’t think that I can more eloquently or succinctly express why I think these kinds of drastic tuition hikes and changes in access to higher education are disturbing, counterproductive, and could have potentially long-term negative effects on society.

Community College Online Learning

Bookaneers,

It was splendid to see most (Wesley, I'm looking at you!) of you last night. Since teaching is so much on our minds at the moment, I thought I'd share this Chronicle article about the progress and pitfalls of online courses at the community college level.

According to Rob Jenkins, a professor of English at a Georgia community college, the demand for higher completion rates for state and nationally funded colleges, has led to a push for more online courses. Online courses mean more options for folks who are fitting in school between jobs, or who have a hard time getting to campus, which, the received wisdom suggests, should increase completion. Jenkins disputes this claim, though, with a fairly compelling argument:

... online enthusiasts point to a 2009 "meta-analysis" by the U.S. Department of Education that, they say, shows that online courses are not only cheaper and more convenient but also better. The report looked at 99 individual studies of online learning conducted since 1996 and concluded that "on average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction."

Nice try. But that study has serious flaws, especially as it pertains to community colleges. In the "Effectiveness of Fully Online Courses for College Students: Response to a Department of Education Meta-Analysis," Shanna Smith Jaggers and Thomas Bailey of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University point out that only 28 of the 99 studies examined in the Education Department report focused on courses that were fully online. Furthermore, only seven looked at semester-long courses, as opposed to short-term online programs on narrow topics, "such as how to use an Internet search engine."...

Even more alarming, for those of us on the front lines at community colleges, is the fact that all seven of those studies were conducted at midsize or large universities, five of which were rated as "selective" or "highly selective" by U.S. News & World Report. Those are not exactly the kinds of places that typically attract at-risk students—the ones least likely to complete their degrees. Community colleges do attract such students, and in large numbers.

Moreover, in six of the seven studies, withdrawal rates were not even mentioned, meaning that the research gauged only how well students performed after completing the course. The studies didn't tell us anything about those students who didn't complete the course.

Two other studies by researchers at Columbia's Community College Research Center do shed light on the role that online courses play in college completion—and the news isn't exactly good.

The more recent of the two, as reported by The Chronicle in July 2011, "followed the enrollment history of 51,000 community-college students in Washington state between 2004 and 2009 [and] found an eight percentage-point gap in completion rates between traditional and online courses." That comes on the heels of a 2010 study that reached similar conclusions about community-college students in Virginia: "Regardless of their initial level of preparation ... students were more likely to fail or withdraw from online courses than from face-to-face courses. In addition, students who took online coursework in early semesters were slightly less likely to return to school in subsequent semesters, and students who took a higher proportion of credits online were slightly less likely to attain an educational award or transfer to a four-year institution." [for the full article, please visit the Chronicle of Higher Education and look for the article "Online Classes and College Completion"

In any class, using as many different means of delivering ideas and content as possible increases your chances of reaching students with different needs, resources, and learning styles. As we consider how to incorporate technology into our classes--or our classes into technology--we should make sure that we're opening up ways for students to access ideas, and persist with their studies, rather than closing them down. I believe that there are useful ways of taking our teaching online--but I also believe that it requires a careful consideration of the possibilities and limitations of our present technology--and the strength of the human connection that can come from face-to-face instruction.

Teaching Tools Roundup

Ahoy Bookaneers!

As I'm finishing up my second quarter as a real librarian, and preparing for my upcoming quarter, I find my desk(top) covered with the new accoutrements of our profession. While many of these items bear the word "library" on them, they also bear words like "literacy," "pedagogy," "teaching," and "classroom." What has surprised me most these last two quarters is the sheer amount of teaching I have done--and the amount that I have to look forward to. This instruction takes many forms, and happens both in-person and virtually: class sessions with students I see only once or twice, one-on-one instruction while assisting a student at the reference desk, carefully detailed tips and advice in response to an email reference question, or virtual learning objects like research guides and video tutorials. This spring I'll teach a two-credit, full-quarter information literacy class as part of an I-BEST cohort, and the prospect of 20 hour-long class sessions has me both excited and just a little nervous.

I know that several of us have been experiencing the same steep learning curve as we recognize the gaps in our knowledge about teaching at the same time that we see the potential for its impact on our students. So, I thought I'd pull together some of the resources that I've found most useful in helping me grow as an educator, and I would love to hear what you all have been using, too.

• Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice by Geneva Gay has been invaluable in my process of thinking about classroom dynamics and communication styles at the very culturally diverse community colleges where I work. Gay, an instructor at our very own University of Washington, brings into focus the ethnocentricity of traditional American teaching styles, and how disenfranchising that classroom environment can be for our students. Most excitingly, Gay explores the multiplicity of communication styles represented in a multicultural classroom, and how much richer our educational experiences will be if we harness that diversity of styles in our teaching.
  

• The recent blog post "Reflective Teaching for Librarians" by Char Booth nicely summarizes the experiences I've had working with all you bright Bookaneers and the incredibly gifted educators at Seattle Central Community College, Shoreline Community College, and Highline Community College where I work and teach. Char suggests some practical approaches to collaboration, mentoring, and observation that operationalize all of the knowledge that we, almost unconsciously, absorb from our colleagues. With the brisk pace of the reference desk, its easy to forget some of the brilliant techniques that we witness daily, and it pays to be as disciplined in our record keeping as Booth suggests.

• Teaching Information Literacy: 50 Standards-Based Exercises for College Students by Joanna M. Burkhardt and Mary C. MacDonald with Andree J. Rathemacher comes as close as a book can be to the practical ideas that you get observing a colleague in the classroom. While the exercises are so concrete as to be a little limiting at times, I really appreciate the step-by-step instructions of how to plan different lessons around the various and interlocking elements of information literacy.

• While I don't necessarily agree with them all of the time, the ACRLInformation Literacy Competency Standards have been an important touchstone as I've planned classes; discussed the value of information literacy with administrators; and struggled to define, in my own mind, how the skills that I teach differ from the content of the class that I'm teaching to.

• A thousand thanks to Bookaneer Freeda Brook for sending along the brilliant In the Library with a Lead Pipe blog post on "Carleton: Forensic Librarians and Reflective Practices." Jastram, Leebaw, and Tompkins make a subtle but important distinction between teaching information literacy skills and fostering an information literate mindset, that has set my head spinning (along with Claire Murata's at Shoreline, with whom I can't stop talking about this) with ideas about how to shift my whole pedagogical paradigm.

• It's been over 10 years since I first encountered the classic Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and the inspiring Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks, and they have been foundational to my thinking of the classroom as a possible place of liberation. Freire's simple injunction to remember that the teacher is also a student and that students are also teachers has had an amazing impact on the level of trust and relationship building in the classes that I have worked with. I've found that nothing makes students take me seriously faster than taking them seriously first.

I had no idea that teaching would form such a fundamental part of my practice as a librarian, but I am grateful that it does. Nothing takes more of my time than preparing for a class, but nothing feels as good as seeing a student's life get easier and more interesting because of something they learned in a class with me. We have the opportunity to make a huge impact on the lives of students in our classrooms, and I look forward to a lifetime of working with you all at getting better at that task.

Back aboard

Few of us have managed to keep actively swashbuckling this year, but in true Bookaneers fashion I’m feeling a burgeoning in my desire to post something, and in my stock of discussion topics. I promise I’ll try to keep it vaguely focused and under control (in order to spare you, dear readers, I’ve relegated some of what I feel the need to say right now to comments on previous posts).

First off, though, let my fond hope be known: that this blog will prove a gathering place for bright minds and scintillating discussion (and perhaps even idling) as we—well, most of us—move on from library school to the rest of the wide world. Let our physical dispersal only reinforce our intentionality in posting!

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That said, I’d like to take a few minutes to reflect on my experiences with the group work aspect of library school. In a conversation with a professor last night I mentioned that it’s only in the past two years, through having to write papers cooperatively, that I really feel I’ve learned how to write. He expressed surprise and mentioned that this isn’t a perspective he often hears. And it got me thinking—do we not discuss the beneficial aspects of group work because they're few and far between, or because group projects are just one of those things we’re used to complaining about, perhaps using to commiserate?

When I say I learned to write, of course, I don’t mean how to string a sentence or some thoughts together, but how to approach writing—how to respect and give myself enough time to work through the process. I’m sure that part of this has to do with observing other work styles up close and seeing where they are more (or less) effective than my own; and that part of it is the inevitable result of continuing to write, get feedback, adjust, repeat. But I don’t think this shift would have happened as quickly or enjoyably were it not for a few specific projects during which I was finally able to experience the ideal goal of group work: dividing responsibility and feeling confident your colleagues will do their part; refining ideas together; and building upon one another’s insights to create something that none of you could have come up with on your own.

In reflecting on the power of these experiences in my own graduate school career--the affirming effect they’ve had on my feelings about my decision to enter this particular field, as well as shifting my perspective on the value and possibilities of group work in general--I’m struck by two things in particular.

The first is the centrality to this transformation of the specific people I’ve worked with; obviously this type of learning comes most easily when the group you’re paired with are effective writers, workers, and collaborators themselves, and you all have something to teach one another (and are willing to learn). The second is the contrast between the several very positive group work experiences I have had, and the (about as frequent) extremely negative and frustrating attempts at productivity in groups that did not work well together. I’m sure we’re all more than familiar with that particular story—the member who won’t pull their weight, doesn’t follow through on promises, and/or relies on the fact that someone in the group will care enough to take on more than their share if it becomes clear that’s the only way things are going to get done.

There seems to be a prevalence of group work in library masters' programs in particular, and I've often heard its use discussed with reference to the collaborative nature of the field. Given that I've been in plenty of group projects since early grades but never found this felicitous convergence of skills and personalities until now, I would love to hear what others think. Are we all just more mature and ready to work together? Or are my expectations now too idealistic, and did I just get lucky with my groupmates? (Or my cohort—there are a number of other people I could imagine being happy to work alongside). What’s been your experience with group projects? The ratio or range of bad-to-good? Are group projects a useful approach for library schools to employ? And, for those in the work world, did any of these experiences prove useful in preparing you for employment in the field?

Extra! Extra! Read all about libraries! Hot off the press!

Oh, print metaphors! You are getting so quaint.

Robots in the library!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESCxYchCaWI

A very nice post from Salon about the New York Public Library and the role of the library as public space and place:
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/05/11/nypl_centennial/index.html

Seth Godin makes a good effort in this post, though I don't agree with everything:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the-future-of-the-library.html

For interesting commentary on all of this:

http://www.metafilter.com/103550/Why-should-I-have-to-wait-for-a-damn-robot-to-get-me-my-book

The Meaning of Quiet, and the Value of Limits

I thought about responding to Ian's post in the comment field, but, let's be frank, those comments always get short shrift, and I want my thoughts to be front and center. That being said, let me step aside for a moment and laud Ian's post: what a great, thougthful, and nuanced discussion. I could see Ian's anxiety about seeming convoluted, and I think that's the danger of any true thought about today's socio-technical predicament (or opportunity). One can't talk about quiet in today's world without also talking about noise. One can't talk about noise, without talking about who is intruding upon our contemplation, and that means taking on capitalism. It may not seem like a clear, logical argument, but it is.

My work at Seattle Central Community College has really impressed upon me why quiet--and noise--matter in a library environment. Having come from a household where it was never difficult to find a totally silent room to read, write, or think, I always thought that the librarian's insistence on hushed voices was either a character flaw or a mad grasp at power. One can be quiet anywhere, I thought, but it's not everywhere that you can find like-minded thinkers in the same place, so why not let the people chat?

The first time a student came to the desk to beg me to supervise the silent zone, my thinking began to change. The library, for many of the students at SCCC is the only place where there's not a TV on, or a baby crying, or a hundred obligations jockeying for attention.

To be in a place where no one is intruding on your thoughts, what a relief in a world of talking billboards, pop-up advertisements, and ubiquitous product placements. How is a book like a library? We can choose (more easily) to give it limits that are difficult to maintain in many other areas of our lives. While a physical book may have references, allusions, and all sort of connections to other texts, peoples and histories, it is not hyperlinked. I cannot check my email on my paper copy of Jane Eyre (which of course I could if I were reading it on a Kindle). Likewise, a physical library has physical walls, within which certain standards are upheld: resepect for thought, freedom from coercion, help that is offered free of charge. We all need help setting limits for ourselves in a time when most of us complain of information overload and a lack of concentration.

Of course, I am already thinking of a number of counter arguments to my own points: hyperlinking is amazing, and has its roots in the paper book; communications is just as important as quiet contemplation, etc., etc. I still think it's important, though, to respect the impulse to set limits, to sometimes sequester ourselves from a world that constantly drives a hard bargain right in our faces, and, as Ian beautifully put it, to sometimes idle with our thoughts.

Provisional argument about the importance of the book in the library, or How I Haven't Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Kindle

*Note: After writing this, I realize that there are significant gaps in the argument and that these gaps will require leaps of faith on your part. I hope you will take those leaps with me at least in this first reading. Hopefully those gaps won't turn out to be fatal flaws in the argument; hopefully, the gaps will simply need a few bridges built in order to make it a more complete argument.

Studying technology, one quickly comes to understand that technology exhibits a twofold ontology; it is both an object and a set of practices. Scholars sometimes call these two aspects technics and technique, that is, the material and the social. Without dwelling on this too long, I want to highlight this from the beginning.

So, what about books in libraries, and what about the Kindle?

An example like this one, where Newport Beach Library is going to remain open, have reference services and free wifi for patrons, but is going to REMOVE ALL OF ITS BOOKS, presents a significant dilemma for me. To be a Luddite in this culture is ridiculous. Digital technologies are here to stay, and I think that is a good thing overall. So, I'm not a Luddite. Nevertheless, as a librarian (at least by training... my new job does not have librarian in the title), I have to wonder whether this is simply an evolution of the library or, as some suspect openly and unabashedly, that this is the end of libraries. This question will not be answered in this post, barring my invention of a time machine before I'm finished writing.

So, the question arises, do books matter? Or is it just the "information" in books, as many like to say, that people want. So, if you deliver it over a network connection to a computer screen it accomplishes the same task. Information here, of course, is a nebulous entity. Always poorly defined, especially by its most fervent advocates, "information" comes to mean anything meaningful. Really, that's it. For info-whores, the way they talk about it, information is anything meaningful, anything that informs. Here, they might find recourse, however incorrectly, to cognitive science to say that information changes cognitive schema about the world. Bullshit! (I suppose my response could be more nuanced, but I'm moving swiftly here.)

The problem I have with this argument is that I think it completely misses the point. First, the notion of information deployed in these arguments is ill-defined, because what they are trying to make real with words doesn't exist, except in their utopian minds. Second, the question of information in this argument is beside the point. Unfortunately, it seems to be the argument that we -- let's say librarians and anyone who cares about libraries -- are always having. We are focused on the "information" in the book and the "information" over the Internet. The key here is we are arguing with the terms of the info-whores.

If we shouldn't be talking about information, then what should we be talking about? As Althea has so eloquently articulated in an earlier post:

I see the library filling myriad roles in students’ lives that would not be filled in its absence. The library is bursting with students, but it is also a place of quiet study and contemplation. The library is a place with big tables and small study rooms where students can tutor each other or work together on projects. The reference desk is a first point of contact for students looking for help—help finding research, help finding the tutoring center, help using a computer or printing out a paper. It is a place, outside of the short minutes in the classroom, where students can think, work, see each other, and get assurance and guidance.

Althea is drawing on the "library as place" argument that has, thankfully, gained some traction in library circles. (Here, we should note that librarians and other "information professionals" are often as guilty as the general public in buying into these rhetorics of information, libraries and digital computing. "Library as place" is a positive direction for the library literature.) Though, I think Althea has taken it further than others do. I'm especially interested in this notion of the library as "a place of quiet study and contemplation."

The library as quiet study space may not seem especially groundbreaking. Indeed, for some it is the quintessential image of a library: a quiet space with hushing librarians maintaining the atmosphere. This image isn't what Althea was trying to evoke (at least that's not how I read it). Or, rather, she didn't mean that a library is only a quiet space. But, let's look closer at these issues of library space and quiet.

First, we have to move outside of the library and find other spaces, other public spaces. What is happening? As far as I can tell, the mall-ification of America continues. That is, commercialization threatens public space at every turn. The commons, not the abstract Creative Commons, but actual common space in parks, libraries, public buildings, etc. is dwindling. With commercialization comes many things: advertising, compulsion to buy, an inability to idle (note: all of these require that one be in the process of buying, or preparing to buy) and, most important for our purpose here, noise.

Noise is an interesting thing. We often think it is just a natural phenomenon that comes with our modern world. But some (I don't know this scholarship well enough) have come to understand that noise is not so politically inert, not so "natural." Noise operates as a political weapon, such that noise (media noise, mechanical noise, other kinds of noise?) drown out the unheard voices of the less powerful. But, it isn't just their voices, I think, that become washed away, but also their thoughts. Thinking requires quiet sometimes. And, depending on one's normal surroundings (home, school, church, etc.), a public library might be the only place for quiet reflection.

And it isn't just the absence of noise. It is also an ability to idle, to dream, to sit back and not participate in a commercial enterprise for a little while, whether buying or selling, to contemplate the whole commercial enterprise itself. All of this thinking and dreaming and not-buying is scary to those who benefit from this most. So, for me, following Althea, I want to say that the library building as a space for quiet and non-commercial behavior is essential. There would be much more to say here, but alas I'm not prepared to write a book in this post.

So, then what of books and Kindle?

Well, here's where I'm not as clear (I'm sure my writing doesn't seem clear to anyone... apologies for that). Returning to our thinking of technology, of technics and technique, I have to wonder whether the book isn't simply the pre-21st century "information container." I have to wonder whether there is something about the use protocols of the book, the techniques of reading a book, and the entire atmosphere that surrounds one's book reading that is a necessary complement to the library. I have to wonder whether books, libraries, quiet space and non-commercialism are not simply phenomena that we find incidentally together in the library, but whether we are finding them there necessarily together, that they are interwoven components to the phenomenology of the library.

I want to understand where the library is going in the "digital age." I think it is going to change drastically. Perhaps the example given above from the Newport Beach library in California is a harbinger of the future of libraries. I don't know.

But I think we need to remain vigilant in our thinking about libraries vis-a-vis the digital. All too often, the library gets swept into a whole discursive structure where information (always implicitly digital information) is boundless and ubiquitous, where the place of our "information access" (here again it is hard to even discuss the topic outside of these terms) is less and less important due to mobile computing. In this discursive structure, the library increasingly figures as a relic of the past, rather than a mainstay of the present and future. If we take these information truths to be self-evident, then we are shooting ourselves in the foot. And by "ourselves" I mean anyone who values public, non-commercial space, where the noise of capitalism and xenophobia that pervades our American soundscape doesn't intrude.

I think we have a role in shaping the future. The "information age" isn't a foregone conclusion in which we wait for our digital paradise to come down in the information rapture. All of this thinking, these terms of the debate, are shaped by the forces that benefit from our thinking that this situation is "natural," that the information age is a natural evolutionary process. Because, Amazon's Kindle and Google's Library are not owned by us, and yet suddenly they constitute our commons. And even if you think that you can sit quietly with your Kindle and read just like with a book, do you not here the murmur of the market if only faintly? You should, because you don't own the book you are reading (and nor does the public, in the case of a library); you are licensing it. You're relationship to that book is mediated by a huge licensing agreement that you've never read. If nothing else, you should here the murmur of that legalese, recounting in careful, convoluted detail, that you have no power.

This is all scrambled in my head, as I imagine it has become scrambled on the page. What I'm trying to get at is the intersection of the various forces that constitute the sociotechnical thing that we call the "library," and it's relationship to noise, commercialism, public commons (both space and ideas), and the making of an ethical society.