RE: What is Higher Education Worth?

Some recent events have gotten me back to thinking about the funding of higher education. I used to think about it a lot when I was at Vanderbilt, for it seemed to come up in every class. Most recently, we all saw the article in the O'Colly about OSU making a budget cut of 1.5 million dollars. I have a feeling that is just the first of more to come as the economy isn't about to recover anytime soon and the overall enrollment numbers for OSU are predicted to decrease due to a general population trend towards lower numbers of high school students in Oklahoma. At present, OSU gets most of its funding not from the state, but from student tuition and fees. Fewer students equals less funding for OSU.

My home state of Arkansas recently passed a state lottery to help fund higher education. That sounds good on the surface until you get to thinking about where most of that money will come from. Most of it will come from the non college educated poor and lower middle classes. If a state wants a good higher education system, why not just pay for it and invest in it with standard tax dollars. But instead, higher education is one area that state legislatures for some reason find easy to cut when it comes to decreasing funding. Some state universities with around just 10 percent state funding are state universities pretty much in name only.

I don't imagine any Arkansas or Oklahoma legislature member is reading this blog, but if they are, I want them to pay special attention to this paragraph. I work as an academic counselor here at Oklahoma State. In my four and nearly a half years here at OSU I have helped hundreds and hundreds of students leave here with a college degree. And that has been possible because the state of Arkansas gave me a scholarship to attend UALR and the federal government loaned me the money to attend Vanderbilt. I think society as a whole has gotten their initial investment in me back and then some. Something to think about when you decrease the next spending bill that comes up related to higher education.

An Idea for the Rest of Your Life

One of my favorite things to do on a Sunday is to go to the public library here in Stillwater. I think it is a fair library as libraries go. Honestly, I did rather expect something more when I moved here, knowing this is a college town. But I do have my OSU library priviledges, and library loan has helped me too. I have also benefited from the public library's semi-annual booksale. I've gotten good hardback copies for just a dollar. In turn, I've donated some books myself. But what I really want to throw out here right now is an idea that I had when I finished my MA in English from the University of Arkansas, nearly ten years ago. I told myself that I was going to keep up with my reading, keep up with my brain exercises! I remember what joy that first summer was, for I could read anything I wanted. I had no reading list to complete. I didn't have to rack my brain on how I could turn this or that reading experience into a twenty-five page paper. There were no reading quizzes!

So I went to town, so-to-speak, with my reading and have maintained about a book every two weeks pace. And something that I've done ever since then is keep a journal of what I read for each year. My mother, an influence on me being a reader myself, had already given me a reading journal for Christmas two years before. I started at first with just putting the name of the writer and the book title in the journal. But after doing that for a few years, I started writing a few sentences of commentary / review. Now that it has been nearly ten years since I started, I have a nice trail of where my intellectual interests have taken me. And whenever people ask me for a book recommendation, I can easily consult my journal and pick out something that they might like themselves.

The Stillwater library has provided me with a fair number of those books. And so has the OSU library. But the most important book I'll ever own will be the journal that I plan on keeping for the rest of my life. I encourage you to do the same thing. But start it earlier than I did. Start it now! You'll capture the essence of your college experience as a reader, and you'll be able to go back at some point and re-read these books of your youth. They will not have changed, but you will have, and it will be interesting for you to compare your reading experiences to one another.

Thoughts inside your professor's head

Students at OSU are getting a break from their professors today, fall break, and the professors, of course, are getting a break from the students. A good arrangement for all involved, I think. Professional advisors, we are still manning our posts! haha. My inside the classroom role finished this week as I wrapped up the teaching of A&S 1111 Freshman Orientation. The course is only for eight weeks, and those eight weeks seemed like they went by really fast. So fast that I feel like there are still much more that I would have like to have conveyed to them. And some things I would have liked to have repeated for emphasis. With that in mind, I thought I would dedicate this blog entry to the thoughts inside a professor's or instructor's head, a behind the scenes look based upon my experience and also talking with others who have stood in front of a class.

1.) By gosh, 50 minutes goes by so fast! Will we have time to do the next exercise that I had planned? Teachers have to be good managers of classroom time that can strike a balance. Plan too much and things don't get done or get done in only a scattered way. Plan too little and you risk cheating your students out of their classroom time, though they are likely to be grateful for the cheat and the early dismissal.

2.) Why can't I get anyone to talk / engage with me? This is too common of a problem across academia. The sound of crickets makes you feel very, very lonely up there. I have thought about how neat it would be to have a sign like what studio audiences have that would tell them "Ask a question," "Give a comment," and "Laugh, he is trying to make a joke." But no such signs exist, so you try to appear as non-threatening as you possibly can in order to get someone to take the brave step of speaking up in class. The trouble with this, however, is that you can become too supportive of everything that is said when some good putting the student on the spot, some good challenge statements, would be beneficial for the discussion. With a shy class, if you appear as someone who is going to shoot the next person down with a challenge statement, then nobody is ever going to say a word. Again, it is a delicate balance.

3.) Why don't students take my due dates as seriously as I took them when I was a student? The due date for me was not something I took lightly in college. And I am pretty sure that is true of most people who go on to teach in academia, for you need to be organized with your time to be able to succeed at getting graduate degrees. But given a large enough population of students, I suppose it is only human nature for some of them not to turn things in when they are due. Some people do have legit reasons why, but teachers do have a voice in their heads going "Am I being duped?" Nobody likes to be taken for being the fool. And do you really ask to see grandmother's obit. before you'll accept a late paper? Life does go on outside of your classroom, you realize that. But at the same time, you really wished everyone would fight the rising creek and battle hell to get the assignment turned in when it is due.

4.) Did any of this really sink in with them? I imagine this is a question that goes back to Plato and Aristotle. I've created this lesson plan; I've tried to be creative; I've done the readings as well; I've rehearsed in my head many times what I am going to say; and I have tried to make it better than the last time I presented this material. After the class, you are thinking, okay, now did they really get the message?


5.) Cell phones going off, students talking between themselves, students texting, students coming in late to the class, and students leaving early. Why do these annoy us? Because we take the classroom seriously and expect our students, who are here to benefit from this time, to take it just as seriously. If one side of the equation, professor or student, isn't taking this time to heart, then it isn't any good for both parties.

6.) Am I grading this too harshly? Too easily? Unless you are grading multiple choice or true and false, grading is no easy walk in the park. It is the underground work that students don't see and thus, I think, don't appreciate as much until a time possibly comes when they have to spend the time grading something themselves. The 50 minutes in the classroom is just the above water surface of the iceberg when it comes to what it takes to teach a course.

There's more. And I might take this up again. But I need to get a lunch into me, and I don't mean to make these posts too exceptionally long. Enjoy your break, professors and students. We professional advisors will keep the place in order until you get back. haha.

RE: A Different Look at Economics

Lately we have all become arm chair economists, what with the rise of gas prices, the fall of housing prices, and the collapse of Wall Street banking firms over the sub-prime mortgage mess. So I found it interesting to read here lately a different take on what equals a good economy. Bill Mckibben in Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future argues that we need to move beyond the idea of economic growth as the supreme goal of a nation and towards economic sustainability and the emergence of local economies. Basically, he says we should move away from the energy consuming global economy, for it is damaging the earth and won't be something we can sustain much longer with energy resources becoming tighter and tighter. Mega malls, SUV's, corporate farming, and the consumerist mindset are what we need to get beyond in McKibben's opinon. Taking a more humanistic look at economics, he also looks at how our currently structured economy and way of living have made us into isolated individuals who have a difficult time finding community. Hyper-individualism, he calls it, is something he would like to see less of in America, the land of the individual. I think McKibben would point to the news coming out of Wall Street as evidence of a society that has driven itself so far down the road of "me" that it now has to face the word "us" in the form of a government bailout of the financial system. A nation where the food is grown locally, goods are crafted (not manufactured) by people you know, and you know your neighbors and think about their welfare as well as your own, McKibben would say, is a much better society than the one that has produced the latest headlines from Wall Street.

I encourage you to hear McKibben out for yourself and make up your own mind about his visiion for an economy. His alternative vision to the go-go must grow the economy America that we live in today is not one you hear that often amongst the talking heads on television or our politicians or academic economists for that matter. But it should be heard. And if you like what you hear from McKibben, then I would also suggest that you look at the works of Wendell Berry and James Howard Kunstler to name but two from recent times. Henry David Thoreau had a similar message in the 19th century. Before that in the 18th century you had Jefferson vs. Hamilton, with McKibben leaning more towards the Jeffersonian world view of small towns and small farms. Wordsworth struck a similar note with the poem I leave you with.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. -Great God! I'd rather beA Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

RE: What can you do with a degree in psychology?

(Here's an email I sent to my psychology majors about what you can do with a BA or BS in psychology.)

We had a large turnout last night to hear a speaker from A&S Career Services talk to us about what you can possibly do with a BA or BS in psychology. I understand that not everyone was able to make it, and some of you who were there were not able to get any of the handouts due to there be a lack of them. So I've attached the handouts to this email, and I have included some main points below from the speaker and from myself about facing the world with a bachelor's degree in psychology in hand.

1. Our speaker made the good point that there are plenty of directions you can go with a degree in psychology, but very few jobs out there that only want to hear from psychology majors when they go looking for resumes. True, some limited counseling services are done by people with just a BA or BS, but most jobs outside of counseling aren't going to state "only psychology majors apply." In fact, my brother does after-school counseling with Day Springs and he has a BS in business. Just goes to show, that you are not necessarily what you majored in.

2. Our speaker said that you need to do plenty of self-evaluation before you go applying for jobs. What do you like to do? What are your skills? Where do you want to live? Would you want a job where you would have to travel a lot? Would you want to work for a major or small sized company? Would you want to work for government for lower pay, but more job security, or for business with possibly higher pay and less job security?

3. She also asked, "What do you value?" I made the suggestion that students think about what they care about, what they think needs improvement most. There are plenty of problems in America, the world, that you can choose from to dedicate a life towards in many different ways. Myself? I obviously think education, particularly higher education, is very important and that a functioning democracy needs as many college educated citizens as possible. Under that umbrella, I have been both a teacher and an advisor. Under the umbrellas of health care, child care, the enviroment, energy, poverty . . . . . there are a lot of different jobs you could work at to make this old world a better place.

4. But what if you just want a job and don't feel like there is any particular cause you want to work towards? Selling widgets is fine with you. I think that is fine as well. But you are still going to have to do a good self-evaluation about what your skills happen to be. Taking my father for example. He doesn't think he is saving the world or solving any particular problem beyond wiping yourself by keeping the toilet paper machines running at the mill he works at. But he does get to exercise the problem solving and mechanical skills that he has developed and loves to use, and he has fed and housed a family of four in doing so.

5. I made the suggestion that you start reading classified adds for jobs in a field you might be interested in. I also suggested that you visit career fairs and company websites to learn more about potential employers and what they are looking for. Be sure to also talk with friends and family about their jobs and what they like or dislike.

6. Our speaker and I pointed out that A&S Career Services can help you with resume building, cover-letter writing, and interview preparation. These are important areas to be good at, for there are a lot of people who have a college degree out there who will be applying for the same job you are applying for. Don't let a mistake on your resume, for example, get you tossed to the reject pile on the first read through. A&S Career Services 744-5658 is located in the Student Success Center in 213 LSE, and you can use the same appointment calendar http://ascalendar.okstate.edu that you use to make appointments with your advisor.

7. Outside of the classroom experiences, jobs, internships, volunteer work, study abroad, were all mentioned as being important additions you can add to your degree in psychology. The more outside of the classroom experience you can add to your resume before you go looking for that first professional job, the better! For your degree is like a hunting or fishing permit. It allows you to look for that first, professional job, but it in no way by itself guarantees you'll get the job you want.

Finally, I've included some skills that psychology majors are likely to graduate with in higher degrees of ability than students from other majors. Your job is to match these skills to the job that you think would best suit you. It might turn out that you are wrong about the first job you take. Well, in that case, look for another. As our speaker pointed out, your job/career is not necessarily etched in stone. You can go on and do something else that you find more fulfilling.

PSYCHOLOGY

Insights into the range of human behavior / can better answer why we do the things we do or don’t do
Has quantitative / stat. knowledge
Knowledge of qualitative research skills as well
Well versed in the scientific method of research
Can readily compare and contrast information
Empathy skills – the ability to see and understand where other people are coming from in their behavior
Deductive and inductive reasoning
Likely possess a greater intuitive sense
Possess a high degree of emotional intelligence
As a rule, superior listening skills, consequently good at reducing conflicts and finding compromises
Insights into leadership and group dynamics as well as personality
Possess good language skills along with math / data skills
Can formulate an opinion and defend it with well stated evidence and reasoning while understanding and addressing the counter-argument(s).

RE: Wear A Blue Collar On A College Campus

If someone tells you that you have a "blue collar work ethic," then you should take it as the compliment that it is. In my family, I have family members who lived out that compliment and continue to live it out. My grandfather worked hard and dangerous jobs clearing right-of-way for oil and gas pipelines through Louisiana swamps and over Wyoming mountains. It took a back injury to finally keep him from working. He said he never asked his men to do a job that he wouldn't do himself. My father works all kinds of shifts at a papermill and is always there when he is expected to be there. If that means after a short turn around, Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, well, the job has to be done, and he is at that job rain or shine. "A good worker" is a high compliment in my family. And though I didn't run a chainsaw or work on paper machines while at college, I did bring the family dedication to the task at hand and completed my degree in four years and graduated summa cum laude. If a paper was due on a certain day, I didn't start looking for excuses to turn it in late. I got the paper written and turned in. If I felt bad while I wrote, well, I felt bad, but I still wrote the paper. If the class started at 8:30, I was there not at 8:45, but when class started, just as my father is on time for his job no matter if it is days, evenings, or the graveyard shift. All this to say, that the sense of dedication, not easily giving up on a task, the sense of pride in one's work, the sense of responsibility to do the right and honest thing by your co-workers, that I associate with the blue collar work ethic are all good things to have in helping you get a college degree and entrance into the world of the white collar workplace. If you are interested in reading about that transition, from a blue collar world to a white collar world, I couldn't recommend a better book than Alfred Lubrano's "LIMBO: BLUE COLLAR ROOTS, WHITE COLLAR DREAMS." I know I felt less alone in having read it and gained a better understanding of myself.

RE: Does Lou Holtz have the secret to a good life?

I don't think most of us would consider ESPN's college football broadcasts as a resource for coming to better terms about what is indeed important in life. For most of us, myself included, college football telecasts are an escape from the realities and complexities of life itself. But the other night I did hear what I thought was some good advice coming from none other than Lou Holtz, former South Carolina coach, former Notre Dame coach, former Minnesota coach, former Arkansas coach. He has been around and has given his share of pep talks to college students. Here's what he said. He said we all need the following:

1. Something to do -

2. Someone to love - (and I would add someone to love you as well)

3. Something to hope for -

4. Something to believe in -

I am sure Maslow and a team of psychologists could give us a more complicated rendering, but I think old Lou is on to something here. If you think about your future outside of OSU in terms of how you will answer those four needs, I think that can help focus things for you as you plan ahead. And I hope all of you are indeed planning or thinking about your plans, for the falls slip by quickly and you soon find yourself with a degree in hand and facing the world before you know it. The better you know yourself before you graduate the better position you'll be able to put yourself in once you do head out into the working world. Socrates would agree with me. He originally said, "Know Thyself." Shakespeare said the same thing in "Hamlet." And I don't doubt that Lou Holtz is in agreement with them as well.