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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."
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.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
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.
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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
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).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
How is a teacher preventing me from getting access to course materials from 1200 miles away providing me more value exactly?
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
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.
"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.
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.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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.
--srj/mmv
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.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
"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"?
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.
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."
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
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.
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.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
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.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey