Teacher Union Tries To Block Online Courses

itwbennett writes "Facing budget problems, University of California officials and state analysts say that expanding online courses could help them 'innovate out of the current crisis.' But the lecturers whose jobs are at stake see it differently. Now the UC chapter of the American Federation of Teachers is fighting to block online courses."

Comments

Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Nom du Keyboard]

Unions fighting to keep featherbedding in place and prices high. Just another reason that unions have far outlived their usefulness.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Cryacin]

It is interesting to think that education by vending machine is turning out to be so successful. I can understand how degrees by coursework can benefit from this. It will be interesting if universities with real brands will ever allow master or doctorates to be via online study. When I did my post grad degree, I saw my supervisor for an hour every week, and I know I was lucky at that. I had a friend who was doing his PhD which saw his supervisor for a grand total of 20 hours during his entire research project. He basically just was included as a name in the research papers, and copied in on any and all email correspondence. Even thought is becoming ever more automated these days.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Hatta]

The solution to people getting paid to do useless work is to pay them to do useful work.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Nom du Keyboard]

If you think featherbedding is the norm among academic faculty, you don't know enough about academia to have a meaningful opinion on the subject.

I never said that featherbedding in academic faculty was the norm. Perhaps it is only starting here. But that clearly doesn't stop you from completely misrepresenting my statement into a form so that you can attack it.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[ackthpt]

It is interesting to think that education by vending machine is turning out to be so successful. I can understand how degrees by coursework can benefit from this. It will be interesting if universities with real brands will ever allow master or doctorates to be via online study. When I did my post grad degree, I saw my supervisor for an hour every week, and I know I was lucky at that. I had a friend who was doing his PhD which saw his supervisor for a grand total of 20 hours during his entire research project. He basically just was included as a name in the research papers, and copied in on any and all email correspondence. Even thought is becoming ever more automated these days.

The argument does fall a bit on deaf ears when you are a student in the first two years at university, sitting in a lecture hall of 900 fellow students, while a teaching assistant goes through the material and can't answer any questions for your.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[RobinEggs]

Unions fighting to keep featherbedding [wikipedia.org] in place and prices high. Just another reason that unions have far outlived their usefulness.

I'll never forget when my hometown newspaper laid off some people and the union "accused them of firing workers to save money." I mean, how dare a corporation stop giving money to people it doesn't need?

I still think unions are a net positive; without them American workers might still be abused just the way those poor bastards in Foxconn factories are today. But some unions are certainly worthless, protectionist roadblocks on the road to progress. I have to admit that on the scale of stupid organizations, a bad union falls way down near the bottom.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[MightyYar]

I'm not going to jump to his defense, because the tone of his post (and his sig) represents exactly what I think is wrong with political discourse in this country. Treating politics like a team sport is not helping anyone except for the team ownership.

That said, what the hell is going on with the teacher unions in this country? I understand that they need to protect the interests of their members, but between this kind of blatant protectionist-at-the-expense-of-society and delusional expectation of being insulated from the health care costs that are hitting everyone else, it really isn't helping their image.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[dr. chuck bunsen]

Agreed. I went back to school after 4 years in the workforce and finished the last year of my 4 year degree entirely online. And to be perfectly honest, while lacking the true social element, I learned just as well, if not better in the online courses. Having said that, I don't think there is a university that will allow you to complete an entire degree online yet, aside from University of Phoenix and a few others I know nothing about, I referring to a traditional university. I was lucky to even do a year online, and it almost didn't work out. I am a firm believer that the right teachers, with the right tools can make an online school just as good as a traditional one.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[obarthelemy]

Not so much vending machines as mass-produced. Which says a lot about the state of hand-crafted education. Way back when mass-production started, it actually was a way to get goods of better specifications and quality, at a lower price. It seems it's now education's turn, partly because mass-production is more efficient, and partly because hand-crafted education is controlled by cartel that has nothing but its members' interest at heart. Not its customers'.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

They're trying to help students. I had dosage calculation online. It was horrible. It's a good thing I made the decision to drop and retake it -- I probably would have passed with enough of a grade to go on, but I did NOT feel confident with my knowledge of it. People could have DIED if I didn't decide that class was nonsense. Every single online course I tried was horrible. The best I could hope for was a hybrid class. Pure online is pure garbage for so many students. Cheating is so easy, too!

Besides, it is still a limited amount of students per class -- they're still paying teachers. You're not getting away with not paying them completely. Maybe you're ok with online courses, but when it comes to someone's life? Not worth it. No way.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[luis_a_espinal]

Agreed. I went back to school after 4 years in the workforce and finished the last year of my 4 year degree entirely online. And to be perfectly honest, while lacking the true social element, I learned just as well, if not better in the online courses. Having said that, I don't think there is a university that will allow you to complete an entire degree online yet, aside from University of Phoenix and a few others I know nothing about, I referring to a traditional university. I was lucky to even do a year online, and it almost didn't work out. I am a firm believer that the right teachers, with the right tools can make an online school just as good as a traditional one.

Purdue. WPI. Georgia Tech. University of Florida. Florida Atlantic University. Arizona State University. Just off the top of my head, and with respect to 100% online master degrees in a variety of engineering fields (mostly CE/ECE and Systems Engineering) and Computer Science.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[TheGratefulNet]

corporations have outlived their usefulness. they are now slave drivers like they were nearly 100 years ago.

we DESPARATELY need unions back again. how wrong you are young one (and I know you're young; only a kid would say this. a kid who does not know his history.)

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Jane Q. Public]

"I understand that they need to protect the interests of their members..."

Really, though, that begs the question: are they in fact helping their members?

Remember the teachers' union protests in Wisconsin? How getting rid of the teachers' union was going to make the teachers suffer and lose jobs and wages? Well, guess what?

As it turns out, the insurance company that supplied health insurance to all the teachers in the state was wholly owned by the teachers' union. The state paid the premiums... 90% in some cases, and 100% in others. Almost none came out of the teachers' paychecks. So they didn't even really know how much it cost. As a consequence, that insurance company was jacking rates up EVERY YEAR, and the teachers did not care because the taxpayer was paying for it... all of it in many cases. And to add insult to injury, where did all those excess insurance profits go? To the campaigns and political funds for the Democrat politicians who supported the Teachers' Union. Imagine that. And it's all documented.

Guess what else?

Now, it's true that some right-wing editorials exaggerated the positive results of "busting" the union... but in truth, there is little doubt that the teachers, and school districts themselves, are better off as a result. Even if the teachers are paying a bit more for health insurance now. Many teachers are even getting raises.

How's that for "suffering"?

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[garyebickford]

IANAPhD, but I nearly was. Quote from a professor: "Getting a PhD is not mostly about learning although that is important, it's about getting things done. If you are a PhD student we in the department will essentially do whatever we can to prevent you from finishing your thesis. If you manage to finish _despite_ us, then you will get the PhD. You will have joined the club of 'people who get things done'. Thereafter schools and other institutions who are looking for people who get things done, and your PhD will tell them that you do."

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[PopeRatzo]

Just another reason that unions have far outlived their usefulness.

Judging from the ever-increasing level of unemployment and underemployment in the developed world, there are a whole lot of people who have "outlived their usefulness" too.

There was a time when people actually believed that automation, the Internet and increased productivity would lead to human beings living a higher standard of living, not having to work so hard, not having to work into their old age, having better health, etc. It does not seem to have worked out that way. Instead, we have developed countries, even those with stable or declining population levels, deciding that it's time for people to work longer, harder, and for less pay. Deciding that the retirement age is not high enough.

Despite an enormous increase in worker productivity and unprecedented increases in corporate profits, we learn that workers - that people - have got it too damn good. Old people have it too damn good. My favorite one that I hear a lot lately is that poor people have it too damn good. If someone suggests that a hedge fund manager (who by the way has NOT been doing all that well) who makes eight figures (all to the right of the decimal point) has it too good, we are told that is "class warfare" however.

Well, now we are learning that students have it too damn good. That they don't need all that 4 year college stuff and graduate school. That the University of Phoenix is plenty good so why should we have them come to classrooms? After all, if they're just going to come out of school and be "underemployed" (I love that expression), then youtube classes are plenty good enough for them. Because we're wasting too damn much time and money on educating students, and anyway, those professors are just going to expect pay raises and pensions and health care and then they're just going to be liberals anyway. Plus, when those students see professors with nice standards of living, then they're going to want a nice standard of living too. Like those pesky unions we had to get rid of were just making other workers think they deserved pensions and health care and weekends, universities just end up making students who are going to want it too damn good.

You guys really don't get it. You think your little service jobs are safe. That you're just in a temporary rut and that the 10% annual raises are coming back real soon now. That your job as a Java programmer is going to just make you impervious to the race to the bottom. That you don't need to aggregate your bargaining power with other workers because the world is always going to need network administrators and will always pay them more and more. That a brighter, healthier, more prosperous future is right around the corner because of computers and the Internet and you're all going to be entrepreneurs and corporate entities and be in the top 1%.

For a bunch of people who value science and logic and math highly, you sure don't seem able to add two plus two.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[wierd_w]

Unions are a mixed bag.

On the one hand, unions keep management from forcing unhealthy and unsafe working conditions on their labor pool to save money. (Chained to sewing machines, latex gloves instead of neoprine while using mek, etc.)

On the other, unions are a potentially unchecked power that can quickly overwhelm an employer. (Demands for 6 figure incomes for installing rivets, pension plans to rival those of politicians, increased difficulties in termination of unproductive or poor quality workers, etc.)

Unions are a necessary evil, barring very strict government involvement in private enterprise. (Arguably, having the government mandate work conditions is the single scariest thing a worker can hear...) however, when unions themselves become too large and too powerful, they can have a seriously negative effect on not only the industries they work in, but also for everyone else.

For instance, the intractible 26 page proceedure to fire a union teacher in a public school enables a shocking amount of unsavory and unacceptable behavior to go on in those institutions. A policy enacted to help protect teachers from vindictive parents ends up being a mighty shield behind which people with no businss being educators hide to do deplorable things.

(An example would be the events that transpired a few years ago in a nearby public school, concerning a computer science teacher touching female students inappropriately. Since physical evidence could be collected to prove the allegations, his teaching career didn't even miss a beat... until a few years later when he stopped just touching, and got a student pregnant. Even then, I understand it was still difficult to fire him.)

Unions are a good thing when they are kept on the smaller side. When they grow up, they become dangerous, self-serving monstrocities in their own right.

The GP appears to be referring to this latter stage of development in the maturation of unions, not the younger, where they serve an important and essential function.

Much like medication, a little is good for the patient, but more isn't always better, and at a certain threshold more becomes downright deadly. The same is true of unions.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[jc42]

Well, I'd suggest that "featherbedding" doesn't really require a union or any other such organization.

My high school didn't have a teachers' union. But I ran into a problem when, in my sophomore year, I decided to learn some math. By around Xmas, I'd gone through all the math texts that were available from the math teachers. Then, when I asked them for advice and help in getting more, I was told that I "wasn't ready for such advanced texts" as basic calculus. In talking to them, it was pretty clear that they were unhappy with me, and I got a real feeling that it was because I'd just made all their "advanced" classes useless (to me).

But I had some friends at a nearby college, so I arranged for them to find more math books that I could borrow. Some came from their profs, some from the math department's library. I also verified that there are other US high schools that teach calculus classes; this didn't endear me to my teachers, either.

Actually, the organizational problems didn't end there. A couple of years later, I found myself at a nearby college, where the math dept offered me "advanced placement" into 2nd-year calculus. It rapidly became obvious that I knew the material better than the prof did. Trying to convince the department to let me transfer to a class where I would learn something was pointless, so I wasted my time getting past that and a few other "pre-req" classes that I had to take despite already knowing the material.

It's easy to interpret all of this as a case of teachers blocking a bright kid's advancement, because the kid is making the teachers look unnecessary. And I had any number of discussions of the topic with other kids with an "attitude problem" similar to mine.

I also eventually ran across a clever explanation: The classroom lecture is the best method developed so far to teach students who can't read. That does describe a large fraction of the US college student population, of course, so the lecturers are still needed for them. But for the rest of us, regardless of the presence of unions, we're still likely to run into blockades that force us to sit still while the instructors work for their pay.

Since then, I have occasionally wondered whether my getting involved in Internet software development will eventually have any effect on this general problem. If so, don't make the mistake of thinking it was accidental. The topic at hand has been discussed behind the scenes, at least by a few of us. Online "classes" are just one of the attempts to alleviate such problems. There are many students in the world who don't have local access to good teachers, but who do know how to read. I'm one net.developer who isn't very sympathetic with teachers who try to block students' access to information.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[mikael]

"The Peter Principle" has a great explanation.

There's a story where a new teacher is assigned the "problem students" class in a bottom year who are kept a grade or two below the other classes in their year. With persistence and individual attention, she gets everyone to the same level as average students two years ahead of them. Now there's a problem - parental expectations all round have been raised, and the students are now out of sync with what the teaching board expects of them, creating problems for the teachers for the next two years. She is promptly fired by the school for not following the prescribed syllabus.

It's bizarre that the teachers should have this attitude. How do they handle the fact that there are online forums for maths help, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, arts news sites and blogs, university books and research papers available for free download, as well as available cheap second hand books. What about parents who have university degrees, neighbors kids or older siblings who are at college? Not forgetting the dozens of art and programming guide magazines available in magazine racks at supermarkets? Are they aware that the exam boards usually sell the exam syllabus booklets for a few dollars each to anyone who wishes to buy them?

For me, getting through high school during the teachers strike, was achieved by purchasing "Lett's study guides" to each subject. These were A-level/SYS textbooks available for about $3 each in every subject from languages to sciences and technical drawing.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Belial6]

Your post says more about you than it does about people being able to analyze jobs they do not do.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[slashgrim]

Purdue. WPI. Georgia Tech. University of Florida. Florida Atlantic University. Arizona State University. Just off the top of my head, and with respect to 100% online master degrees in a variety of engineering fields (mostly CE/ECE and Systems Engineering) and Computer Science.

Add USC to that list: http://mapp.usc.edu/distanceeducation/index.html

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Rhodri Mawr]

Consider how many Slashdotters taught ourselves how to work with computers with only the internet as a major resource.

Consider how many Slashdotters taught ourselves how to work with computers long before the internet was a major resource.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[mordenkhai]

My community college does not have mandatory remedial classes for anyone. When you sign up you take aptitude tests and the results of those tests determines your starting levels in math and English. Don't all colleges employ a similar system?

I personally prefer a teacher because in the time it takes me to read and practice a new concept in programming a teacher can show me two and I'll have learned them both. Now once you factor in the other students who ask about how they personally write code and how the teacher will score them on the tests, it is no longer as efficient, but still preferable for me to have someone on hand who knows the material so well and can automatically steer me away from certain common pitfalls.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Rakishi]

I also eventually ran across a clever explanation: The classroom lecture is the best method developed so far to teach students who can't read. That does describe a large fraction of the US college student population, of course, so the lecturers are still needed for them.

Your full explanation is of course nothing more than an attempt to ease your own ego. After all, in your own mind you must be better than those other people. So the explanation must involve them being inferior to you and the whole system not catering to you obviously superior mind.

Someone who doesn't need to prop up their own inferiority complex on the other hand may simply explain it as being the fact that different people learn differently. Many people can read a book but they'll simply learn better in a lecture setting.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[dadioflex]

But universities have discovered that PhD students are cheap, highly motivated and disposable labour.

I find the subject of higher education in the US perplexing. We can all agree that more and more people are being encouraged into higher education, but as more students have entered college the costs, rather than coming down as you would expect, have risen dramatically, far out-pacing inflation or increases in income(remember when that was a thing?). In these sort of anomalous situations I usually figure the explanation can be found by following the money, so can anybody point me at an article that does this? My theory would be that corporations must ultimately benefit from the research being done by the professors who would otherwise have to teach - that job having been taken over for the most part by their PhD students.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

Great post. Unfortunately too few people are able to realize the perverted nature of the economy and of those in power. We are being conditioned to make due with less and less, while they dangle false promises in front of us. Living standards for the masses are declining, so those few at the top can further increase theirs.

They managed to turn us against each other. Most people are more likely to attack teachers or blue collar workers, rather than the crooked politician or unethical banker who ruin lives by the tens of thousands.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Omestes]

also eventually ran across a clever explanation: The classroom lecture is the best method developed so far to teach students who can't read.

This may or not be true, but it ignores the fact that people learn in different ways, and different forms of teaching benefit different subjects and different skills classes differently. I loved a well structured lecture, as long as it didn't focus on the slowest students, and was allowed to lapse into Socratic methodology or discussion from time to time. I could never stand group learning, but I'm sure it benefits others (who aren't inferior to me). As such, I HATE online classes, since they inevitably turn into pointless group work, and idiotic pro forma discussions. But then again I know people who excel at them.

But then again I went to school for a subject that thrived on discussion, and dialogue.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[xero314]

There is any easier explanation for the rise in education costs, Supply and Demand. The supply of accredited schools has not rise at the same rate as the demand for degrees. Employers demand a degree to get past basic screening, and accreditation organizations artificially restrict the supply. When demand goes up higher than supply then prices go up.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[m50d]

Looks like a whole lot of doubt to me. The one concrete, verifiable change I see in that article is that teachers are paying more for their health insurance than they were before - which, guess what, is a) bad for the teachers b) exactly as we could have predicted.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[serviscope_minor]

(Arguably, having the government mandate work conditions is the single scariest thing a worker can hear...)

What the fuck? Perhaps I've misunderstood your point. Government regulation of working conditions has done an immense amount of good. Just look at the conditions of 19th century mills for comparison, for instance. A lot of the improvement was driven by unions, but it became law to protect everyone.

(An example would be the events that transpired a few years ago...

Plural of anecote is not data, etc. Specifically, there are enough kids who are little shits and will accuse teachers of all sorts of things to get even or frankly just for the hell of it. It is an incredibly difficult balancing act and no system will ever be perfect. If you made it much easier to fire a teacher on an allegation, then you would have an awful lot of innocent teachers fired and noone to teach the kids.

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[Aquitaine]

Why is paying a portion of your health care costs bad for you, when it's what everybody else has to do already?

As a small business owner, I have to pay 100% of my healthcare costs, and because I don't get a group policy, what I do pay for sucks because it's on the individual market. This is my choice (after all, I could quit my business and get a 9-5 job) but you don't see me in the streets bitching about it.

I don't blame unions for advocating to get everything they can get. That's their job, in the same way that management's job is to get the most out of their workers. This system only works when authority is distributed between both sides. When management is the government and directly answerable to the union as a large voting bloc, there isn't even any pretense that this is a fair give-and-take scenario unless government is willing to completely alienate a tremendous bloc of voters with a lot of controversy - like Walker in Wisconsin. How much easier would his job have been if he'd shrugged his shoulders and said 'this isn't worth it'?

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[jc42]

also eventually ran across a clever explanation: The classroom lecture is the best method developed so far to teach students who can't read.

This may or not be true, but it ignores the fact that people learn in different ways, and different forms of teaching benefit different subjects and different skills classes differently.

Hmm ... I'm a bit puzzled by two people saying that. It seems to me that "The classroom lecture is the best method developed so far to teach students who can't read" is a clear (if humorous ;-) acknowledgement that there are at least two styles of learning (listening and reading), and that some people are better with one approach than the other. Why would you say that "it ignores" this, when it so clearly states it as true?

Of course, it does gloss over the well-known fact that there are also more than two learning styles. But the quip clearly wasn't intended as a summary of all knowledge of learning styles; it was just a cute way of stating that the number of styles is greater than one.

I found it interesting that one reply was from someone who prefers classroom lectures and finds them faster than reading. I can sorta see this, at least with a poorly-written textbook. But my experience is that I can read much faster than anyone can comfortably talk, and can easily get through the typical transcript of an hour lecture in 10 to 15 minutes. I usually get better understanding from the transcript, because I can easily pause to think about something or look up a definition or whatever, and I can skip quickly over the parts that I already know.

But I'd acknowledge that this might not be the best approach for everyone. I spent some time learning to "skim", and I can understand why someone who hasn't invested time learning this skill might find reading slower than listening to a voice. But even then, unless the student can easily interrupt the speaker to ask questions, a recorded lecture can be easier than a live lecture. Many people are unwilling to hold back a whole room full of listeners to ask their dumb questions, but a recording can easily be paused while you look up definitions or whatever.

Anyway, I wasn't saying that my way is the only way. I was saying pretty much the opposite: One teacher's way isn't the only way that's best for every student. Sitting in a classroom seat listening to a lecture on something I already knew well wasn't the best for me. A good educational system would acknowledge the differences in learning styles, and not hold a student back by forcing them all to use an approach that's suboptimal for many of the students. This is something that our current school system isn't good at, and it's one of the things that online education can help with (if done right).

Re:Union Featherbedding, Meh

[gestalt_n_pepper]

Oh, they can add two and two just fine. They just can't be bothered to read history. Just two generations back, we had working conditions in the USA that would have made any Chinese sweatshop owner proud. 16 hour days. Child labor. People literally chained to their workbenches. It can slip back to that in a single generation if we let it. In the USA, the way out was unionization and standing up to the unelected, unaccountable political power of concentrated wealth.

This was not simple. Union members died when the bullets of the factory goons started flying - when your grandfather was alive, most likely.

In the early 1900s, Americans stood up. The wealthy were forced to back down. The communist revolution scared them then. The Arab spring and OccupyWallStreet movement are scaring them now. Communism may have failed, but class warfare is alive and well.

its not 'unions'.

[unity100]

its not a left issue. its a right issue - its capitalism : in this case the corporation is lecturers' union. in the case of music, it is the music corporations. in case of movies, its hollywood corporations.

its capitalism - if something may prevent your easy profits, prevent it even if it costs a major innovation for civilization.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[fferreres]

Not capitalism. Capitalism is about accumulation of capital and reinvestment. This is more politics, and a monopoly of these segments. Actually, teachers Unions across countries are one of the most powerful entities slowing down civilization, in the name of too many good things taken ransom by this group.

My solution is to give each student a voucher, and to employ free market regarding education. Not public schools, only public funding of education.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[bigsexyjoe]

Likewise, the university is trying to save money. So both sides are motivated by money.

So the question is who is offering the students more value? I'd say the actual teachers. I mean you can go to Khan Academy and listen to lectures for free. I have trouble seeing why you should pay so much for an online course.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[Chibi Merrow]

How is a teacher preventing me from getting access to course materials from 1200 miles away providing me more value exactly?

Re:its not 'unions'.

[flaming error]

I think your definition of "capitalism" is a little off. Capitalism is, according to google,

An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

It's hard to see how you could consider university lecturers "private owners."

Re:its not 'unions'.

[flaming error]

Capitalism has nothing to do with "laissez faire." What you're thinking of is called the "free market". Capitalism is about the Owners controlling trade, which they do by having the government enforce their policies.

In a laissez faire free market, the market has no designated controller. Anybody that can produce can participate, and the marketplace takes on a life of its own.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[sarhjinian]

Until such time as powerful, established participants in the market tip the scales in their favour and become a de facto government. Which would, you know, totally never happen, and you know that, like, real laissez faire would work, it just hasn't been tried.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[MightyYar]

My solution is to give each student a voucher, and to employ free market regarding education. Not public schools, only public funding of education.

I definitely like the idea of vouchers, but it is not a universal solution. It really only works in areas with dense populations. Everywhere else, issues start to crop up.

For instance, transportation becomes a huge problem... my district "solves" it by busing all of the charter kids to the central high school and then busing to the charters from the central high school, but it really racks up the total trip time and makes the main buses very dependent on a late feeder bus. Our district spends more on the special ed, charter, and private school busing than on the main public schools, despite fewer children.

Another problem is class size. Some areas have such a low population that they can barely justify even a single public high school. Below a certain size, it becomes impractical to support many programs.

So I think there still is a place for government-run schools.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[flaming error]

Probably true - no pure philosophy has ever survived human contact.

What's your point?

Re:its not 'unions'.

[bonch]

What a bizarre way of trying to twist this around and turn it into a critique of capitalism, and you even got modded up for it. The union is trying to protect its monopoly in the face of online courses. They're like the RIAA trying to defend CD sales in the era of internet downloads.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[sarhjinian]

Nothing, just being sarcastic. It's the same line that's used by erstwhile-communists who claim the reason communism failed is that it wasn't really tried.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[RobinEggs]

Yeah, prepare to mod me down, but I'm one of those people who thinks communism hasn't really been tried.

I understand that every social theory gets about 500% more complicated once you take it out of your mental laboratory, but saying that communism is a failure based on the attempts of brain-damaged megalomaniacs like Stalin and Kim Jong Ill is kind of ridiculous. Very few systems have ever been communist even in name, and none have been even remotely close in practice. Not all communist thinkers advocate blind, mooney-eyed collectivism or some socialist plutocracy masquerading as communism; Marx himself never suggested anything of the sort, either.

Human nature probably makes communism the most difficult government to implement, but "most difficult" isn't a synonym for "impossible" and I still think a communist system could be the most rewarding.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[hedwards]

Do you have any evidence at all to support that claim, or are you just full of it?

The free market is precisely what is ruining the educational system in the US. Generally, you don't need to be an expert to identify people that are well educated, however being well educated in the end tells you absolutely nothing about how that came to be.

Vouchers are probably one of the most damaging things to come along in the educational world in a good long time. At some point the poor achievement needs to be addressed, and if you keep closing schools that aren't achieving at some point you run into a problem. Education is more of an art ultimately than a science, and having the time to develop and improve the curriculum is invaluable. I realize that it might come as a shock to somebody with no training in education, but you can't just ship students from one school to another hoping that the next school will get it right. By that time the student is probably in high school and completely screwed. It might help the next set of students, but I doubt it, because those students are likely to be dealing with the same constantly changing set of schools as well.

If you read up a bit on pedagogy, particularly the history over the last 100 years or so, you'll see what I mean, education is changing constantly, and a lot of it is garbage.

Ultimately, capitalism is about providing things as cheaply as possible. It's one of the reasons why the US has some of the lowest standards for teachers of foreign languages in the developed world. It's cheaper to just hire random native speakers from other countries than it is to ensure that they've been trained in the relevant techniques necessary to be productive. Teaching a language isn't the same as teaching a content area, and the training necessary isn't the same. There's some commonality, but there's a lot of linguistic gotchas that aren't necessarily obvious.

Re:its not 'unions'.

[BlueStrat]

its not a left issue. its a right issue - its capitalism : in this case the corporation is lecturers' union. in the case of music, it is the music corporations. in case of movies, its hollywood corporations.

its capitalism - if something may prevent your easy profits, prevent it even if it costs a major innovation for civilization.

Capitalism is the worst system ever invented. Except for every other system ever invented. The problem is that the current system the US is operating under isn't really capitalism, it's crony-capitalism, and people opposed to capitalism point to the crony-capitalists and claim capitalism is to blame, when it's actually the corrupt politicians who have caused the problems and allowed and covered for the crony-capitalists to continue their corrupt ways.

Capitalism is the only system ever created where wealth is a renewable resource for everyone as long as they are willing to work and/or come up with an idea, skill, or invention thatâ(TM)s useful to someone else.

Capitalism has raised more people from poverty than any other system ever created.

Capitalism has allowed more people to live in freedom than any other system ever invented.

Capitalism has allowed the US to provide more humanitarian assistance to those in need around the world than any other system or country in history.

For these reasons and many, many more, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, Islamic Caliphate, and the so-called âoeNew World Orderâ are doomed to failure and to taking their rightful places on the junk heap of other failed ideologies and social/economic systems which are based upon hate, greed, fear, and lust for power.

Strat

Re:its not 'unions'.

[hrvatska]

Teachers' unions can often be a problem, but there's no evidence that non-union charter schools are doing any better in producing well prepared students. The biggest impediment to student achievement in the US is a population that is increasingly intellectually lazy and generation of students that is being taught to pass standardized tests rather than master a subject. Bring back the slide rule to schools and get off my lawn.

Unions College educated people

[John.P.Jones]

I will never understand the need for college educated knowledge workers to need union protections. This isn't a coal mine or dangerous factory job. I also don't see the need for unions for any government employee even dangerous jobs like Fire & Police. When you combine the two, high-education government employees it is insane.

Disclaimer my wife is a Ph.D. working part-time lecturing community college Chemistry courses and fully supports online courses when she sees a whole class of students whose combined course fees don't cover half of her own salary, much less all the other expenses involved in running a college. This just isn't sustainable.

Those lousy teachers

[bigsexyjoe]

In spite of all the efforts of our saint-like Wall Street speculators, bankers, and corporate executives; teachers are out to destroy everything! I don't know why people have so much trouble recognizing the scourge of people that actually want to engage the youth!

And college professors are people who could have easily gotten MBA's but instead choose a life of intellectual exploration. These people are clearly insane!

And everyone knows that everyone in a labor union is a lazy freeloader! At least unemployed people have the decency to not sabotage our economy by involving themselves in the affairs of the wealthy!

Re:Those lousy teachers

[cheekyjohnson]

Techie simpletons think that everything should be done by machines.

If one thing is more efficient than another thing (assuming, of course, that it actually is more efficient), I'd rather use the thing that is more efficient. I don't believe that halting technological progress just so that some people can keep their jobs is intelligent. I think that society needs to adapt.

NEW tried this and failed

[ross.w]

TAFE NSW tried this to cut back their high school equivalent course. Once it became clear that the much touted "on line course" consisted of a website that had no more than the contents of the textbook it was dumped, but only after the students protested. Ever tried to learn calculus from a textbook?

Re:NEW tried this and failed

[blind monkey 3]

In my opinion, TAFE NSW Tried to save money by cutting corners - governments have bled it dry and burdened it as a means of fixing unemployment numbers. I have done some TAFE courses and learnt a lot, had fun as well and not have any issues with any of the courses but there are lots of courses that I'm sure are there to "get kids off streets" for six months (no longer long term unemployed).
Online courses, if designed as online courses instead of dumping text onto a site, can be quite good. The course will need to be designed for online consumption - tutorials, audio visual aids, help desk accessible teaching staff and students. . Face-to-face teaching given the right teacher would always be a better option though.
IMO.

Been here before...

[D-OveRMinD]

The recording industry tried to sue everyone out of existence when they were too high. pushing out crap after crap, and online retailers with better access and better pricing threatened their models. Here we go again...

The link is a tiny little blog post.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Here is some actual coverage.

Anyway. There's no doubt that a lot of courses can be taught effectively online. There's also no doubt, for anyone who's ever done any real teaching, that once the subject matter gets the least bit advanced, there's a sharp limit to how much you can learn in an online course. Introductory "101" courses, which are mostly taught in giant lecture halls anyway, can probably go online with no ill effect on the students. Once you get beyond that level, most people need face-to-face interaction to really understand the subject.

Stanford disagrees

[SuperKendall]

Once you get beyond that level, most people need face-to-face interaction to really understand the subject.

Standford's AI course, currently ongoing, says otherwise.

So does the Standford iPhone programming course which a LOT of people have used to learn iPhone development.

None of this is 101 stuff (well perhaps the first few iPhone courses but not beyond that).

Re:Stanford disagrees

[ackthpt]

Once you get beyond that level, most people need face-to-face interaction to really understand the subject.

Standford's[sic] AI course, currently ongoing, says otherwise.

So does the Standford[sic] iPhone programming course which a LOT of people have used to learn iPhone development.

None of this is 101 stuff (well perhaps the first few iPhone courses but not beyond that).

It isn't so much the teacher, it's the student. Some are good a learning online, without having a professor to interact with, while others need the interaction.

Professors, not high school teachers

[msobkow]

Professors with tenure at universities are pretty much the last bastion of job security in North America. They've remained silent while everyone else's job was automated and offshored, only now that their own jobs are threatened are they speaking up.

Unfortunately, half of my professors in University were not good educators. They'd slap up overheads for you to copy down while they read from the overheads, which could be done by any machine.

The profs who actually discussed their topics with the class and explained things when people had questions were another story, but such professors only constituted maybe half of the ones I had.

I'm all for well-paid educators, but I have no use for the dead weight whose focus is their research and paper-writing. If you want to do pure research, find a lab some where, don't drain the university and college systems. With the many thousands of dollars students pay for their education, they deserve better.

If the colleges and universities switch to online courses, what's the benefit of paying them so many thousands of dollars for an education that you can get for free from something like the Khan Academy videos? People need and want an education, not a video lecture series.

Re:Professors, not high school teachers

[Qzukk]

find a lab some where, don't drain the university and college systems. With the many thousands of dollars students pay for their education, they deserve better

Which would basically be the end of graduate work.

At least this way we'll fend off the "Ph.D Required for Entry Level Janitor" job ads (now that Master's degree is on the verge of becoming the new BS in several fields).

Re:Professors, not high school teachers

[schwnj]

I'm all for well-paid educators, but I have no use for the dead weight whose focus is their research and paper-writing. If you want to do pure research, find a lab some where, don't drain the university and college systems. With the many thousands of dollars students pay for their education, they deserve better.

I think you're overlooking the fact that 1) teaching oriented schools usually focus on professors who can teach and who do very little research 2) research oriented schools are necessary for graduate education, which involves levels of complexity and skill beyond the realm of simply being a "good teacher." Some people have proposed separating graduate professors/researchers from undergraduate professors. That is something that could work, but at the same time, I would hope that undergrads would want to learn from accomplished researchers, even if the material is dry. That being said, there are still deadwood types who are bad at both teaching and research, who should have never been tenured in the first place.

Re:Professors, not high school teachers

[savi]

Actually, that's not true that they haven't spoken up. Professors regularly speak out on these issues. It's one of the reasons why the right-wing loathes and hates professors so much and demonizes them at every opportunity.

There are plenty of cases of lousy researchers who are excellent teachers and excellent researchers who are lousy teachers. However, if you think dividing research and teaching will result in long term benefit, you don't understand academia.

What we're actually seeing here is an "education bubble." Poor people have been told that if spend lots of money and get a degree, they will have access to good jobs. It isn't true.

Re:Professors, not high school teachers

[msobkow]

Oh, yes, every state and provincial college or university has staff as highly qualified as MIT, Harvard, etc.

None of them have to take the second-rate profs that the big schools didn't want.

Or the third-rate profs that the middle-tier schools didn't want.

But even at the bottom of the pile of schools, the student still deserves to get the education they're paying for. Otherwise the school is a fraud and not delivering on their obligations to what someone callously referred to as their "customers".

Re:Professors, not high school teachers

[thatskinnyguy]

Amen. And this from a college prof.

In my department there are profs that, in a meritocracy, wouldn't stand a chance of being employed another semester. How can you possibly teach a CS class and never once log into a class computer?

Online classes are good for the disciplined students and those that have some prior knowledge of the course material and I'm glad my department is exploring offering more online. It frees the students' time to do other things other than spend gas money and time to warm a seat to learn stuff they already know. But it's really not for everyone. It is kind-of like the higher education equivalent of home schooling. It requires discipline and a routine in order to stay on top of assignments and do well. Some students just need that face-to-face verbal kick in the ass to get anything done. Like I say to my students "It's your time and your money. I don't care what you do with it, but I would rather give an A instead of an F"

Re:Upon reflection

[Seraphim_72]

I think you need to actually read a history book. And not an on-line one.

Libertarian Alarmists

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love the massive web of the Libertarian propaganda machine that has managed to infect slashdot with not only garbage propaganda but a flood of dunderhead commentators.

If you manage to dig your way through a google search and make it past all the Libertarian alarms warning of the teachers union led commie pinko take over of the world you might stumble upon the actual UC-AFT web site where they specifically state "we will use our collective bargaining power to make sure that this move to distance education is done in a fair and just way for our members".

Thats right, the union is not blocking online courses, but they do intend to do their job as a group representing the employees and try to retain jobs, pay and benefits as the online transition occurs.

Or you might stumble upon the OP ED in the LA Times where an instructor who will be affected by the changes gives a balanced and skeptical view on the subject at hand. The instructor admits that "I have lectured by live videoconference when an unavoidable business trip left me the choice between teaching by videoconference or not at all. Each time I do this I am struck by the near miracle of reaching across time zones and miles to see and hear my students in a sunlit classroom in California. I speak and write on the board; they take notes and ask questions. Business as usual."

Oh well, let the Libertarian dunderheads flail their arms and scream their factually incorrect headlines from the roofs.

Re:Libertarian Alarmists

[superwiz]

You are an idiot. Libertarians are probably your best friends on this one. Being able to negotiate a contract for one's performance is a staple of a free society. If the unions simply negotiated residual payments for lectures per-view, libertarians would be on the union's side.

there's a reason for that

[damn_registrars]

I'm all for well-paid educators, but I have no use for the dead weight whose focus is their research and paper-writing. If you want to do pure research, find a lab some where, don't drain the university and college systems. With the many thousands of dollars students pay for their education, they deserve better.

The faculty involved in research are not even close to being the "dead weight" you claim. They bring money in to the university, as well as prestige.

However you are also missing the value of being taught by a researcher. Sure you could take some of your courses from someone who hasn't acquired any new knowledge on the topic in the past decade, but you'll finish those courses with that level of knowledge yourself. It is important to have educators who are well versed in the topic and aware of where that topic is going. That is a big part of why faculty who teach also do research.

Re:there's a reason for that

[Ed Bugg]

However you are also missing the value of being taught by a researcher. Sure you could take some of your courses from someone who hasn't acquired any new knowledge on the topic in the past decade, but you'll finish those courses with that level of knowledge yourself. It is important to have educators who are well versed in the topic and aware of where that topic is going..

I think you missed the point of the poster. His complaint was that with some of his instructors there was no discussion happening at all. I can only assume he was alluding to people that felt that their research was their primary purpose and the teaching was a necessary evil, never putting any effort into it.

I can stand on the same ground as him. I've had some instructors that couldn't seem to get done with class fast enough. I think that the only reason they even held the class for a full period was because of the amount of information they had to convey by the end of the semester. While quite of few others, were exactly has you described. They knew their stuff, would frequently describe new methods being used. If someone asks for more information about a topic, they could speak volumes. I just wish all my instructors were like that. Maybe I wouldn't of had to spend so much time trying learn thermodynamics on my own from the text book. Oh wait, that was the semester I discovered DikuMUD, never mind that last statement.

Re:Unions College educated people

[schwnj]

Community colleges are subsidized by property taxes, which is why the course fees don't add up. The idea of community colleges is that the bulk of the education is subsidized with only a nominal fee/tuition attached so as to encourage people to gain job skills.

Re:Unions College educated people

[blahplusplus]

"This isn't a coal mine or dangerous factory job. "

You should really get informed.

http://www.ivorytowerblues.com/

Right now corporations are trying to privatize education to limit political views so they can turn the world into a right wing aristocracy. Universities in Canada and around the world have become more and more dependent on corporate donors and this means freedom of inquiry will be stifled big time. Do you really think rich conservative right wingers want any criticism of capitalism or protection for the poor? There was a big thing at U of T about naming something after Tommy douglas (tommy was father of 'socialist healthcare' in canada which pisses off the corps and right wingers and they still hate him for it) and the administration said 'no' because they were worried about offending the ideals of their donors and the donors denying them future funds. This means universities will become hotbeds of corporatist and unchecked capitalist propaganda and damn the scientific evidence. No thanks.

That's not an article... And second...

[eepok]

First: That's not an article... that's a re-posting of comments.

Second: It's not just "educator unions". It's everyone who actually has experience in education. I'm in no union of any sort and I think it's a stupid idea. Opponents are not simply trying to block it for blocking sake. They're preventing the massive investment required to build a UC-wide online class-delivery system when we already have a shortage of funds to hire lecturers. They're preventing a shift in education from content and quality to ease and profitability.

Classes are overcrowded and fees are going higher-- this is no time for a financial gamble.

And while the typical subsection of Slashdot may proclaim "I was too smart for school, my teachers held me back!" -- understand that people like you are such a small percentage of the human population that you're not worth directly catering to. Really. We're working to educate THE MASSES here. And the masses need human interaction to reinforce their education... or else they won't bother learning.

Hyperbolic blog posting

[fiannaFailMan]

Follow the links to a more balanced story.

Re:Hyperbolic blog posting

[Colonel Korn]

Follow the links to a more balanced story.

A lot of people like to complain about changes to Slashdot's interface or Slashdot's long lead time before posting breaking news and point to them as the end of the site. They're wrong, and while the interface may sometimes go through phases where only a few web browsers work well with it, these aren't even serious threats to the quality of the site.

However, I think that the trend of posting stories based on tiny, screwy blog posts when there's a comprehensive primary source just a click away really does detract from the quality here. I know this isn't new, but I think it really is getting worse. Some story submitters very consistently point to a small set of terrible blogs that benefit from the traffic but offer terrible accounts of the real story.

I think that we need more editing done between story submission and publishing to the front page and a commitment to at least have a single editor spend 5 minutes looking at TFA and when appropriate adding a direct link to a real source.

Re:lying sacks of excrement

[jjohnson]

You're right, we only want teachers who do it for the love of the job, the children, the teaching. And, pace Kant, the only way to be sure of that is to not pay them. After all, if you don't love teaching enough to work a second job at night to pay the bills, you obviously don't love children.

Seriously, why the fuck shouldn't they care about job security?

My wife is a high school teacher involved in a job action right now, and the sticking point of negotiations isn't money, it's class sizes. They're contractually capped at 30 students per classroom, but somehow she always has 35, and the government is looking to increase that actual cap. Remind me again how useless and self-interested unions are when your kid is sitting with 34 peers, wondering why the teacher never has time to answer his questions.

Re:Ummm

[savi]

Oh look, you spouted a trite cliché. Try thinking for yourself. (Maybe a better college education would help you on that front).

In the humanities, there is no alternative to academia. Take a professional historian of modern France who writes books and teaches. What exactly would they be doing if they had more "intellectual horsepower?" That's the peak of the field. There's nowhere up from there. Of course, I'm sure you think the humanities are useless, so most likely my point will fly right by you.

So...

[jjohnson]

The government wants to replace humans with video tapes, and when the teachers protest, this is somehow viewed as self-interested whining? Why aren't parents up in arms about their kids being supervised by a DVD?

Re:Unions College educated people

[Attila Dimedici]

Do you really think rich conservative right wingers want any criticism of capitalism or protection for the poor?

No more than rich "liberal" left wingers want people to learn to think for themselves and no longer accept the word of the "authorities".

Starving minds in Africa and India...

[joshamania]

Starving minds in Africa and India aren't going to give two whits about an educators union in California. Services such as MITs Open Courseware and Khan Academy will evolve and dominate the realm of higher education solely because it is not possible for a few thousand people to teach a marketplace that now measures in billions.

Re:Unions College educated people

[TheGratefulNet]

as an abused tech sector employee, I can EASILY see the value of unions. in software, we have none. none. and we suffer for it. no, we are not physically wipped and the doors are not locked to keep us in; but there are ways of being a slave beyond the obvious.

at this point, we are slaves and going down, down, down, like the former middle class. we're all going on a race to the bottom and the corp masters laugh all the way. the 1%. you know; the ones that suppress the bad press about them, etc .

we need unions more now than ever. the separation of classes is one reason and the laughter of that 1% is the other obvious one.

woody guthrie's ghost is ashamed of the de-evolution we've had in the last 50 or so years. the corps have had laws built for themselves and the consumer/worker based laws are ignored or over-ridden.

anyone against unions is basically a corp THUG, these days.

or an spoiled child.

or a republican.

(but then, I repeat myself)

Re:Unions College educated people

[cfulmer]

And exactly HOW are you enslaved? By being allowed to go to work in leans and being given health plans and 401(k)s? If your job is so bad that you think you're actually a "slave," then find a different job. Even in this economy, there's good work for geeks who've kept themselves up-to-date. Heck, MOVE if you have to.

WTF!?!?!

[sirwired]

Runaway inflation? What planet are you on? Inflation has been quite low for YEARS now. The only significant price increases have been in fuel and food, both of which are commodities with little labor input. And the size of the unionized workforce in the US is at historic lows.

"A L33T bunch of buttheads demanding regular increases in pay"... I don't think raises in line with increases in labor productivity per dollar of labor input are exactly unreasonable. Certainly their CEO bosses have no problem giving themselves raises for the same thing.

"deserving no more than nice people like you or I." What, are you mad because increased bargaining power enables them to make more money? In exactly the same way that companies negotiate the prices of anything else they buy (or sell) in quantity? And I like regular raises too...

"the cost of their highjacking [sic] industry gets passed on to you or I." I'm not sure how collective bargaining qualifies as "hijacking." Just like employers threaten to close plants if labor costs are too high, why can a union not do the same?

"we pay for the extra poor workmanship of UNION BABIES to get wealthy while we languish under inflation." Yeah, tell that to, say NYC-based ironworkers... unionized, and famous the world over for an incredible work ethic and craftsmanship, all under conditions that would make most people crap in their pants. They earn a lot of money, and deserve every dollar. Tell that to US coal miners, the most productive and safest in the world.

Yes, unions are not perfect. Some of them are unreasonable and produce an environment that drives their employers into bankruptcy, a situation in which nobody wins. Some unions are corrupt, just any collection of entities have some that are not as good as others. But to say that the very idea of workers banding together to put themselves on an equal negotiating plane with their bosses is the root of all evil is going a bit far.

Re:lying sacks of excrement

[shutdown -p now]

Most of them, I'd imagine, since they mostly rent, and the owner of the dwelling (who is not an illegal immigrant) then pays his property tax from the money he gets renting it out to illegals.

GIGO

[RingDev]

College, especially online courses, has its value determined almost exclusively by the effort that the student puts into it.

We've see living proof that you can go to an ivy league school and leave a moron, and I'm sure we've all met folks who had limited community college experience and we brilliant.

I had some online classes in my BS, and I'm likely going to go for my masters entirely online (looking at Western Goveners University at the moment). And in my experience, you could put in virtually no effort, and pass. But you would finish the class a couple grand in debt and no smarter than you started. Alternatively, you could throw yourself into the class and really challenge yourself (because the teachers/profs sure as hell aren't going to) and you'll come out with knowledge of far more value than the debt.

-Rick