Randolph Duke
THE DUKE
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2012
- Messages
- 2,484
Those of us who bleed burnt orange get so involved in the happenings of the athletics department, the most public face of the university, that we often lose our connection with what is happening on campus. I know politics are a highly avoided topic on the board, but today's New York Times had an interesting article about the academic side of the university, I thought it should be shared. I also wanted to share some context to help people understand the struggle going on between Bill Powers and the regents.
In today's New York Times, there was an article written by Paul Tough (interesting name) titled "Who Gets to Graduate." The writer spent weeks on the University of Texas at Austin campus following Vanessa Brewer, a female, minority, first generation college student who was the child of a single parent household of below average financial means. She was also able to qualify for admissions to UT Austin, where she enrolled with the intent to study nursing. The article goes into great detail discussing her struggles as a first semester freshman and the initiatives being pursued at UT Austin to raise the school's graduation rate.
Like (ahem) many of us, Vanessa stumbled out of the gate. From the article:
"More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any other country except Hungary."
Also from the article:
"The school’s [uT Austin's] administrators are addressing head-on the problems faced by students like Vanessa. U.T.’s efforts are based on a novel and controversial premise: If you want to help low-income students succeed, it’s not enough to deal with their academic and financial obstacles. You also need to address their doubts and misconceptions and fears. To solve the problem of college completion, you first need to get inside the mind of a college student."
The article discussed the work of David Laude, newly appointed Senior Vice Provost for Enrollment and Graduation Management whose official mission is to improve UT’s four-year graduation rate (currently around 52 percent) to 70 percent, comparable to rates at Univ of Michigan and U.VA. by 2017.
Here is an example of the conflicting initiatives being pursued by the University and the regents. The initiatives set forth by the University president are, inter alia, to increase the graduation rate to match those of our state university peers (The reasons for the lower rate at UT are many, but the "10% Rule" [now the "7% Rule at UT] factor in). The initiative being pushed by the governor, in following with populist beliefs, is that every high school graduate in Texas should be entitled to earn a degree from a state university and with total tuition of $10,000 for all four years {tuition at UT Austin is currently about $9,000/yr. The cost of operating the university, excluding room and board, is just over $48,000 per student. The difference between operating costs and tuition is made up by federal and state monies as well as private donations}.
This is one example how populist politics favored by those with political ambitions can conflict with initiatives of those managing elite public universities. Again from the article:
"Beyond the economic opportunities for the students themselves, there is the broader cost of letting so many promising students drop out, of losing so much valuable human capital. For almost all of the 20th century, the United States did a better job of producing college graduates than any other country. But over the past 20 years, we have fallen from the top of those international lists; the United States now ranks 12th in the world in the percentage of young people who have earned a college degree. During the same period, a second trend emerged: American higher education became more stratified; most well-off students now do very well in college, and most middle- and low-income students struggle to complete a degree. These two trends are clearly intertwined. And it is hard to imagine that the nation can regain its global competitiveness, or improve its level of economic mobility, without reversing them.
But a big part of the solution lies at colleges like the University of Texas at Austin, selective but not superelite, that are able to perform, on a large scale, what used to be a central mission — arguably the central mission — of American universities: to take large numbers of highly motivated working-class teenagers and give them the tools they need to become successful professionals. The U.T. experiment reminds us that that process isn’t easy; it never has been. But it also reminds us that it is possible."
I do not mean to advance any one agenda over another in the fight between Bill Powers and the Perry backed regents. I thought this would be an interesting opportunity to let those of us who care about the university get a glimpse of that is happening on the academic side on the 40 acres and how the university is being discussed in the national media. I also wanted to show how Coach Strong's insistence that students show up, sit in the front two rows and participate has value far and above the agenda being advanced by at least one other state university (the one that is currently last overall in APR in their conference with no emphasis on changing that standing and where arrest incidents are ignored by university administrators to ensure the football team secures a coveted chicken sandwich bowl bid at the end of the upcoming season).
Link to the NYT article (also attached in pdf format): http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?hp&_r=0
Read, ignore, delete, or do whatever. I just thought this would be timely with the APR numbers released yesterday and with the dearth of reading material during the offseason.
Who Gets to Graduate.pdf
In today's New York Times, there was an article written by Paul Tough (interesting name) titled "Who Gets to Graduate." The writer spent weeks on the University of Texas at Austin campus following Vanessa Brewer, a female, minority, first generation college student who was the child of a single parent household of below average financial means. She was also able to qualify for admissions to UT Austin, where she enrolled with the intent to study nursing. The article goes into great detail discussing her struggles as a first semester freshman and the initiatives being pursued at UT Austin to raise the school's graduation rate.
Like (ahem) many of us, Vanessa stumbled out of the gate. From the article:
"More than 40 percent of American students who start at four-year colleges haven’t earned a degree after six years. If you include community-college students in the tabulation, the dropout rate is more than half, worse than any other country except Hungary."
Also from the article:
"The school’s [uT Austin's] administrators are addressing head-on the problems faced by students like Vanessa. U.T.’s efforts are based on a novel and controversial premise: If you want to help low-income students succeed, it’s not enough to deal with their academic and financial obstacles. You also need to address their doubts and misconceptions and fears. To solve the problem of college completion, you first need to get inside the mind of a college student."
The article discussed the work of David Laude, newly appointed Senior Vice Provost for Enrollment and Graduation Management whose official mission is to improve UT’s four-year graduation rate (currently around 52 percent) to 70 percent, comparable to rates at Univ of Michigan and U.VA. by 2017.
Here is an example of the conflicting initiatives being pursued by the University and the regents. The initiatives set forth by the University president are, inter alia, to increase the graduation rate to match those of our state university peers (The reasons for the lower rate at UT are many, but the "10% Rule" [now the "7% Rule at UT] factor in). The initiative being pushed by the governor, in following with populist beliefs, is that every high school graduate in Texas should be entitled to earn a degree from a state university and with total tuition of $10,000 for all four years {tuition at UT Austin is currently about $9,000/yr. The cost of operating the university, excluding room and board, is just over $48,000 per student. The difference between operating costs and tuition is made up by federal and state monies as well as private donations}.
This is one example how populist politics favored by those with political ambitions can conflict with initiatives of those managing elite public universities. Again from the article:
"Beyond the economic opportunities for the students themselves, there is the broader cost of letting so many promising students drop out, of losing so much valuable human capital. For almost all of the 20th century, the United States did a better job of producing college graduates than any other country. But over the past 20 years, we have fallen from the top of those international lists; the United States now ranks 12th in the world in the percentage of young people who have earned a college degree. During the same period, a second trend emerged: American higher education became more stratified; most well-off students now do very well in college, and most middle- and low-income students struggle to complete a degree. These two trends are clearly intertwined. And it is hard to imagine that the nation can regain its global competitiveness, or improve its level of economic mobility, without reversing them.
But a big part of the solution lies at colleges like the University of Texas at Austin, selective but not superelite, that are able to perform, on a large scale, what used to be a central mission — arguably the central mission — of American universities: to take large numbers of highly motivated working-class teenagers and give them the tools they need to become successful professionals. The U.T. experiment reminds us that that process isn’t easy; it never has been. But it also reminds us that it is possible."
I do not mean to advance any one agenda over another in the fight between Bill Powers and the Perry backed regents. I thought this would be an interesting opportunity to let those of us who care about the university get a glimpse of that is happening on the academic side on the 40 acres and how the university is being discussed in the national media. I also wanted to show how Coach Strong's insistence that students show up, sit in the front two rows and participate has value far and above the agenda being advanced by at least one other state university (the one that is currently last overall in APR in their conference with no emphasis on changing that standing and where arrest incidents are ignored by university administrators to ensure the football team secures a coveted chicken sandwich bowl bid at the end of the upcoming season).
Link to the NYT article (also attached in pdf format): http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html?hp&_r=0
Read, ignore, delete, or do whatever. I just thought this would be timely with the APR numbers released yesterday and with the dearth of reading material during the offseason.
Who Gets to Graduate.pdf
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