University-Life

Matt Yglesias sees the recent Washington Post article describing the fall in SAT scores after the most recent test changes and asks what’s the big deal. On the face of it, Matt makes some good points. Scores are only down 7 points (5 in reading and 2 in math) and for any given student, that really isn’t a big deal. The Washington Post article, while suggesting that there may be some underlying causes (e.g. the test changes or students not learning enough) also notes that it could be a one year blip. ...

Last week there was a minor uproar in the academic world when the government presented the list of majors that qualified for money under the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent (SMART) Grant program. The problem was that evolutionary biology was left off of the list. The feds claim that this was an oversight and on Friday added evolutionary biology back to the list of qualifying majors. So, even I am not so paranoid as to think that this was a conspiracy to keep students from studying evolution. But at the same time, I am not so dumb as to think this was accidental. The list of majors comes straight from the Classification of Instructional Programs codes. In the biology section, there are ten biology related programs. Of those ten, only one was missing – evolutionary biology. ...

The Dallas Morning News recently published an editorial by Thomas Hibbs entitled “ College Kids Get Brain, No Soul. In the editorial, Hibbs references the exceedingly disturbing article in Rolling Stone called “ Sex & Scandal at Duke. The Rolling Stone article discusses the social scene at Duke where “work hard, play hard has always been a motto. According to the article, in recent years, the “work hard portion has morphed into an obsessive desire to please faculty, working to produce high quality papers which will be accepted by professors in order to get good grades, graduate with honors and get a good job. The “play hard portion of the motto has turned into an obsession with alcohol and casual sex, bleeding back into “working hard to maintain the perfect body, social connections, etc. ...

In reference to my previous comments on the plagiarism scandal in the school of engineering at Ohio Universtity, yesterday the university announced a set of “ comprehensive strategies to address academic honesty. Among the steps being taken is to examine 55 theses for signs of plagiarism. From these, they have found 35 incidents that will require a hearing. Punishments handed out could include the revocation of the former student’s degree. Furthermore, the two professors whom have been implicated have been relieved of their advising duties. ...

There’s an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry, the link is behind the subscription firewall), about a mechanical engineering graduate student at Ohio University. After being invited to stay on after his masters and persue a Ph.D., he started having difficulty with his advisor. To help resolve his difficulties, he went to speak with the university ombudsman who advised him to examine disertations in the university library so that he might see where he was going wrong and what his advisor might want. ...