Part of the Gender Gap in Majors May Lie in Intro Courses (Sort Of)

The following describes an interesting morphing of memes on the web and something that might be especially relevant to me and my colleagues at Mills College in our role as advisors.

Harvard Economist Cladia Goldin posted a piece back when Janet Yellen was first nominated to head the Federal Reserve. She wondered whether this new "role model" might increase the number of women who major in economics. She wrote about some of her own research as well as that of others relevant to the question. In particular she discussed some work in which she discovered that

Women who thought they would major in economics often become discouraged when they don’t get sufficiently high grades in introductory courses. Men are far less likely to be discouraged by similar grades. In other words, the gradient of major choice with respect to grades in the “gateway” courses is steeper for women than for men.

In other other words, on average (assuming lots of things are equal) women may take a stronger "you can't do this" signal from not getting an A in intro courses than do men. Evidence shows it happens in economics and some STEM fields too.

This does NOT, of course, imply we should pursue gender equity through grade inflation, but it does suggest that those of use who teach and mentor young women might focus on this particular point of leverage. Not unrelated is research by Chambliss and Takacs on how important intro courses are for influencing college major and career decisions. We should, perhaps, stop focusing our energy on distribution requirements and instead focus on what goes on in intro courses and in the first year advising context that surrounds them. It's not unrelated to the message of a graduation speech I gave a few years back.

One can imagine that similar effects might exist in connection with other demographic differences.

The internet meme part is that the blog post was picked up the other day by a Washington Post writer, Catherine Rampell, and mixed in with some other research (finding that disciplines with lower grades had higher career payoffs) in a piece titled "Women should embrace the B’s in college to make more later." On Slate the headline read "Women May Be Underrepresented in STEM Because They're Too Concerned With Grades" but the article went in the direction of saying maybe it's not all about wanting to find a major where one can do well grade-wise but rather a rational assessment of the likelihood of career success in various fields.  I'm sure a little googling will turn up even more morphs.

Will more of our daughters grow up to be economists?

Likelihood of Continuing in Major by Intro Grade and Sex

Claudia Goldin: Bloomberg View
Published: October 17, 2013 - 07:13 PM

Cambridge, Mass.: The nomination of Janet Yellen to head the Federal Reserve is an important milestone. But will her appointment as the central bank’s first female chief draw more undergraduate women to the field of economics?

Yellen’s emphasis on the human toll of recessions, along with her humanity, brilliance and intellect, could spur a greater number of women to become economists. But if history is any guide, there still is a long slog ahead.

Economics is an extremely popular major — for men. Ten percent to 20 percent of all male undergraduates concentrate in the field at the top 100 universities and top 100 liberal arts colleges as ranked by U.S. News and World Report.

Nationwide, however, for every female undergraduate in the major, there are three males in the major, adjusted for relative numbers of bachelor’s degrees by sex. Among the top 100 liberal arts colleges, there are 2.6 males for every female economics major; there are 2.5 males for every female at the top 100 research universities.

Worse, these differences have widened over the last two decades.

Students often realize too late in their undergraduate studies that an understanding of economic concepts, modeling, statistics and econometrics is a helpful career and life tool. Many initially believe economics is only valuable for those who want to work in the financial and corporate sectors. (This year’s winners of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences are Eugene F. Fama, Robert J. Shiller and Lars Peter Hansen, men whose work focuses on financial markets.)

Many young women don’t seem to understand that economics is also for those who have broad intellectual interests and for those with research and policy interests in health, education, poverty, inequality, crime, obesity, the environment, terrorism or infectious disease. All students should be aware of the broad applications of economics when considering an undergraduate major.

Read the Rest at Bloomberg View

See Also

• Hess, Amanda.   "Women May Be Underrepresented in STEM Because They're Too Concerned With Grades" Slate 11 March 2014
• Rampell Catherine.  "Women should embrace the B’s in college to make more later." Washington Post 11 March 2014 

First Food Courts, Next Academic Content Franchises

My conservative prediction is that within five years we will see examples of not-for-profit private colleges turning into franchises for textbook publishers such as Pearson or Cengage.  The relationship will be similar to the one colleges now have with their food service vendors.

The academic content and platform industries (textbook publishing on the one side and products like BlackBoard and TaskStream) will soon converge.  They companies that brought us the mediocrity by turning text books into Time magazine look-alikes and the companies that turn teachers into data entry clerks know a gold mine when they see one.  Students are already accessing all manner of internet content as a part of their education - why not figure out how to package the lot of it and license it to colleges and universities who will market it to students for you? 

There are almost too many contemporary trends supporting this convergence to keep count.  

The play being made by textbook companies has long been facilitated by faculty members who over-rely on textbooks (either because they are over-worked teaching 5 courses a semester or because they'd rather do their research than teach or because they are burned out).

A lot of investment in educational technology is motivated by the dream of allowing administrators to manage education centrally. As often as not there is a direct tradeoff: centralized information and control equals more clerical work for faculty and increased attractiveness of out-of-a-box teaching.

Meanwhile, the push for competency-based education that "emphasizes assessment rather than instruction" further dupes us into believing in "full digital learning experiences" as the El Dorado of higher education.

One could continue with what accreditation agencies and state and federal education departments and major educational philanthropies are up to, but you get the picture. 

This from most recent issue of Chronicle of Higher Education:

   

Read more at Chronicle.com

The "Competency" Bandwagon: Check Out the Full Itinerary

One of this decade's fads in higher education is "competency-" or "proficiency-based" education. The discourse around it is littered with phrases and concepts that are seductive to the left-leaning progressive educator. Personalized, flexible, affordable alterna-tive, transcending hours in seats, students gain ownership of their degree, accountability, employable skills, real world, etc.  

This Inside Higher Ed piece raises one alternative take: does competency-based approach to curricula so fully buy into the student as consumer that it will eliminate the "off-rubric" experiences that might not be directly applicable to some skill but that might be the very stuff of growing up, seeing the world in a new way, and the transformation that education is really all about.

Another thing for those ready to jump on the competency bandwagon to think about is who is steering the train where. Ed reformers are skilled at generating strange-bedfellows in the audience for their ideas. I might like competencies as a way of motivating pedagogical innovation, but am I on-board with those who would design college curricula around the needs of corporate employers?

See Also

• "Missouri Budget Tiff Exposes Doubts About Competency Based Education" Chronicle of Higher Education 21 March 2014.

Who Owns What When Faculty Create Digital Teaching Materials

The rise (and fall?) of MOOCs over the last two years has intensified interest in who owns digital teaching materials.  If I develop digital tools for students to use in my courses, can the college deploy these in other courses?  If I leave the college could digital versions of my lectures still be made available in online courses the college?  Who "owns" the syllabus I produce for a course?  If the college generates revenue using materials I have developed, am I entitled to a share?  In the coarsest form, the question comes down to this: if I digitize my teaching materials, will my employer be able to replace me with recorded versions of my lectures?

It's complex question with lots of legal nuance, and still evolving practice.  The gist that's relevant for most college faculty members is whether their employer can claim ownership in teaching materials they commit to digital form.

At many institutions, there's no existing policy and this provides faculty an opportunity to put smart policies in place. It's also a risk for faculties who are asleep at the wheel to find themselves with an especially unfavorable policy in place.

A first step in developing the background knowledge necessary to think this through is to clarify the the difference between patents and copyrights.  Patents are for inventions that have functions, copyrights are for creative works with an author.  Patents last for 20 years and give the patent holder right to exclude others from making and selling something.  Copyrights provide authors with control over reproduction, derivative works, distribution and public performance.  Patents are the big concern among scientists and engineers.  Copyright is more the issue for the rest of us.

Owning or holding copyright in your teaching materials - lectures you write, lectures you deliver and someone records, worksheets, exams, syllabi, study-guides - is, for practical purposes, about whether or not someone else can use them, as is or in modified form, in a "commercial" endeavor. That could include another teacher using them without permission in her teaching, but mostly it means can a for-profit website, a for-profit educational institution use or adapt your materials and sell them to students.  Or it could mean can your own institution use the materials to offer credits to students you do not teach?  Or to continue to offer "your" course after you leave the institution?

My own solution for these things is to put everything I produce under what is called a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License:

Teaching Materials by Dan Ryan are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This means I grant anyone in the world permission to use and adapt my stuff for non-commercial purposes as long as they grant the same license on the material they produce.

But what happens if my employer wants more?  That's where the need for an institutional policy comes in.  To stimulate discussion, here's a first draft of a policy based on one found at Emerson College.  In the policy below, a "non-exclusive royalty-free license" means the college can use the materials without paying the creator and the creator can still license the work to others as she sees fit.  Note that the purpose of this policy is to encourage creativity.  The standard here is "what rights for creators will motivate production of more rather than less pedagogical material."

Faculty rights generally. “Faculty,” all members of the tenured and tenure track faculty and all employees who have a term contract for teaching at the college and all members of the library staff.*  Faculty retain ownership of copyright in all their scholarly and pedagogical works, with the following limitations:

1. Faculty rights in work created with significant College equipment or staff. If faculty create the work using College cameras, film editing software or hardware, audio editing software or hardware, focus group rooms, specialized staff assistance, multimedia development staff assistance, equipment in computer production labs and suites, television studios, or theaters and sound stages, then the faculty member owns the copyright in the work, but College retains a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use the work for the College’s educational, promotional, and public relations purposes.
1. The use of standard issue office computer and software or routine support by IT does not constitute "significant College equipment or staff."
2. This limitation does not apply to materials developed and used for classroom or other course work; that is, the College does not claim a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use faculty created syllabi, lecture notes, lesson plans, handouts, PowerPoint presentations and other digital materials, and the like created in fulfillment of one's teaching responsibilities.
3. This limitation does not automatically apply to all audio or video recordings of one's class presentations and lectures; that is, even if some college resources are used to produce a recording of lectures for the purposes of "flipped" classes, student review, etc. no license is granted to the college for the use of these materials outside courses taught by the faculty member.
2. Faculty rights in work created with significant College financial support. In general, if faculty create the work as part of an explicit assigned task, such as the development of a new course, and receive specialized financial support, such as a special assignment contract, then the faculty member owns the copyright in the work, and College retains a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use the work for the College’s educational, promotional, and public-relations purposes.
1. The receipt of course-development support does not in and of itself constitute "significant College financial support."
3. The College may on occasion provide faculty significant financial support on the condition that the College own the copyright in the work. The College must assert, in writing at the time the funds are first released, its ownership of the copyright in the work, and the College must grant the faculty member a non-exclusive royalty-free license to use the work for educational purposes.

* The rationale for this definition is to include all those persons who the college wants to be creating things related to education and instruction.  In other words, the purpose of this policy is to encourage creativity.

See Also

• AAUP. 2013. "INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY—draft report for comment" (AAUP summary, IHE Article)
• Butrymowicz, Sarah. 2014. "As online courses expand, so do questions about ownership." The Hechinger Report (3 March)
• Cate, et al. 2007. Creating Intellectual Property Policies and Current Issues in Administering Online Courses 
• Nelson, Cary. 2012. Whose Intellectual Property? Inside Higher Ed June 21, 2012
• Stanford Policy
• Yale University. "Yale Online Faculty Policies"

Is this Bandwagon a Handbasket?

One of the most reliable reflex actions in higher education is the urge to re-make general education every decade or so.  The effort described in this article is exemplary for its inclusion of just about every current buzzword and trendy reform.  Competencies. Portability. "Outside the classroom." Design thinking.  Learning Outcomes. Value of degree.  Measuring outcomes. Marketable skills. 

My prediction: schools will come up with cute names that offer a local brand for a program that is a hybrid of existing models dressed up with features that are buzz-wordable.  None of it will be based on known outcomes - methods and models will be attractive because school X tried it (and each of our institutions will fixate on a small number of role model institutions), not because of evidence that it works.  A small group of faculty will champion it and non-tenure stream faculty will be recruited to support it with implicit promises of employment.  The more entrepreneurial departments will help craft the program in a manner that generates enrollments and a share of the "new resources" that will be necessary to make the program a success.

The efforts will be marked by no real documentation of what the failings of the current system are and even if some are identified, the new program will not demonstrably address those failings. Political considerations will dominate so that even if the underlying trope is about basic skills, marketability, and preparation, the new program will have heavy doses of "values" education around race, class, gender, social justice, etc. and the content will be more political compromise than coherent.  No one will articulate criteria by which the success or failure of the new program can be evaluated.  And in ten years it will need to be replaced, primarily because "we never really implemented it as we planned."

Most of all, schools that are really concerned about enrollment and career placement will never seriously consider the fact that almost no one enrolls at a college because of its general education program and almost no employer hires a graduate on the basis of general education skills.  This is especially true when every school is jumping on the bandwagon - the illusion of uniqueness in general education is just that, an illusion.  And for four year schools, it's a funny strategy to put ooodles of energy into the one part of their curriculum that is the same as what students get in community or junior colleges.

And, not to put too fine a point on it, but by now we should have learned to be wary of things with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stamp on them.  Be sure to read the press release behind this story. There you will see that this effort is an extension of Gates' ongoing efforts to import ideas from K12 into higher education and it's tied very closely to the Lumina Foundation's Degree Qualifications Profile. Expect more rubrics, more mapping of curricula, and more efforts to turn faculty judgments of student work into grist for the big data mill.  

Read more at IHE

Smart Institutional Practices Around Interdisciplinary Hiring

Interesting misleading headline in this article from COHE.  Gist of the story is folks at North Carolina State University recognized that cross-disciplinary hiring challenges organizational status quo - especially department level control of resources - and that this manifests in, among other places, tenure and promotion.  Their response was to take the bull by the horns and create evaluation process and funding scheme to attenuate these effects.  No small part of the challenges emerge from departmental understanding that a primary component of their raison d'être is producing basic research.  As definitions of what that means shift change can be expected.  And over time we can expect that colleges that do not have primary research results as a fundamental output will catch on in the spirit of "if they can do it, maybe we can too."

Read more at COHE

Decreasing Teaching (Course) Load at Swarthmore College

Note: This makes for an interesting pairing with the previous post. It does not take too flexible a mind to think of expanding admin ranks as effectively reducing the work load in those precincts.  General pattern is clear: when duties expand, in some areas workforce expands, in others workload.

Several years ago faculty and administrators at Swarthmore College started talking about reducing faculty teaching load from 5 to 4 courses per year. The college is presently in the midst of a multi-year transition to a 4 course load. Some initial discussions are captured in their 2009 Middle States Reaccreditation Self-Study (which also mentions a "Teaching Load and Faculty Development at Peer Institutions" document) and in their 2011 Strategic Plan.

A 2012 article from Swarthmore student newspaper contains an excellent summary of the motivations behind as well as analysis of the implications such a switch. Among the phrases that might grab your attention:

"One of the consistent things we heard [in Strategic Planning sessions] was that people felt a need for time in order to do what they considered to be the professional minimum… Not only are people doing more work in order to deliver excellent instruction, but some of them are plausibly close to the line where they can’t do that. If we’re so close to the edge, then that’s something to take seriously." 

​"most of us are scrambling" ​"running on fumes​" "long-term sustainability of the teacher-scholar​" "creep of time commitments" ​"acceleration of change and an expansion of how we learn​""subtle, fundamental, and inevitable shift in professors’ job descriptions" "intensification of professor responsibilities"

Continue Reading at Daily Gazette

Students also penned articles suggesting the plan was not in their interest

Continue Reading at Daily Gazette

The plan was, apparently, eventually put into place, though not with immediate effect.  Here's a summary from another student newspaper:

Continue Reading at The Phoenix

Props to Siobhan Reilly for calling this to my attention.