Well, AC, wait until you're in the "real" world. It's so much more efficient and so much less full of BS than the situation you describe. And your positive attitude will no doubt help you rise to the top very swiftly.
Someone should mod this up. It's so true. The tablet ends up being just one more expense, especially as it's unlikely that significant numbers of faculty will adopt the ebooks.
Many institutions now require faculty to put the cost of textbooks on the order sheets. Why? Well, believe it or not, the book reps and publishers take some pains to obscure, obfuscate, mislead, lie, etc about the cost of texts. I teach English, but I can readily understand why some faculty in math and the sciences would welcome the "churn" of frequent new editions. Changed problem sets really help cut down on cheating, which is rampant at universities these days. Online tools have made it very easy. It is time consuming to generate problem sets, and it's more time consuming to track down and "prosecute" cheaters. Note: I'm not saying anything about what's right or fair. But, given the fact that faculty are made responsible for more and more work, we tend to do what we can to keep our work load reasonable. That means that cost/effort will be pushed on to students. And since it's very difficult to get more effort, it tends to shift toward cost. It's one of those situations in which "externalities" impact the bottom end and in which the bad actors/game defectors force costs onto the community. As for the idea that delisting a professor's courses will encourage better behavior.... Oh boy, that's so wrong. Do you really think that letting a slacker slack will motivate better behavior? Any prof who gives a damn is already trying to figure out what to do about the situation. And those who don't give a damn will welcome low enrollments or delisting of courses. If anything, the convention is to threaten poor performers with more teaching. Instead, we should offer incentives for doing the right thing, like granting publication credit for stuff like generating open course texts or teaching packets. And to do that, schools would have to pay for an editorial board (with course releases) that gives the process oversight and credibility. I dunno. This whole discussion generally lacks on key idea: the professors are consumers as much as the students. But they are subsidized consumers......
The production runs on textbooks are not that small. In fact, I'd describe them as large. But what those words mean can vary from person to person. Yeah, a textbook probably doesn't have a print run like a best seller, but few books do. The problem I have with iPads is twofold: one, it is an expensive device, and not all professors will adopt ebooks; and, two, many students will use the device to play Angry Birds or check Facebook instead of paying attention in class. If we are to adopt ebooks, I'd much prefer something that can also work on a laptop or PC, so that students are not forced to purchase two devices. I'm very troubled by what is happening in the textbook market, the increased lock-in. I'm working with some other faculty members at my institution for (English) classes without textbooks, or with reduced textbooks, by using more online or library content. But a major problem is that the salespeople for textbook companies are pretty effective, making promises about saving money and online features. Then a lot of faculty are technophobic or barely tech-competent, so the traditional textbook gets the nod because it's familiar.
YES. I was just this weekend sitting on my back porch wishing I had something like an old Tandy so that I could type out some ideas. It would be great if a low-cost, reliable device were available. And I don't mean those Dayna things. I was really hoping the OLPC would provide something. Then that ugly thing showed up. And then the netbooks feature-crept out of my price range. Oh well. Problem is that the single-use device is nice, but even I won't buy it, especially with a cart full of poop monkeys need diapers.
I'm an English professor. For what it's worth, I'll offer a comparison. (Mostly for people who were as ignorant as I was before entering the job market.) Doing the math, I see that the $27/hr is about $4320/month gross, without overtime. That's just over what I make as a professor with five years experience (I have a high salary for my field). After taxes, retirement, and health insurance, the take-home for that amount of pay is going to be right at $3,000 a month. It's not enough to keep my family out of the red some months, since there are four of us, and my wife can't get a job with her IT degree (from a major research school!). So this is not exactly a bill that would be soaking the rich. It's hitting middle-income earners. Next point of comparison: in my field, there's no such thing as overtime for a salaried person. I never knew such a thing existed. If it did, most academics would be on a gravy train, as it's easy to hit 50-60 hours a week during the academic year, with summer workloads dropping back down to 30-40 (if you're doing your research, which you'd better if you want tenure or promotion). I thought the whole point of salary was locking you into one amount of pay so that the employer could work you as hard as they want without paying more. (I guess I'm still ignorant.)
Research done at Duke and in Romania shows that computers or access to broadband can lower study scores. It's not so shocking, really, that games and media can supplant study, reading, and thinking. So I think the question shouldn't be how much (quantity) but of what sort and how (quality). The Duke study was done by . Vigdor and Ladd; there's a gloss of it in a New York Times article called "Computers at Home, Hope vs. Reality." I can attest to the fact that students on college campuses today read books, newspapers, and magazines far less than did students in the 80s. Instead they're generally using social media, texting, or listening to a portable music player. You almost never see students carry around battered paperbacks anymore; in the past the ratty old Stephen King or some similar lite reading was a common time burner between classes. Though it does seem that devices like Nooks and Kindles are becoming a little more common on campus.
If you read the article..... You'll see that he points to LOL and such as having staying power whereas the argot from the MOOs and MUDs and MUSHs has fallen by the wayside. Frankly, not too surprising. Those were frequented by quite a small minority of (very vocal) computer users. I'm a bit surprised tho that this guy doesn't mention that the way constructions like yr and sd and l8r were prevalent in Modernist and early postmodernist poetry. Creeley for example.
United States public university professor, specifically a [state name] State University (2nd tier; first-tier research schools are University of [state name]). And whether or not public universities charge a fortune is a matter of perspective. Tuition at public universities has skyrocketed since the late 80s when the federal government began to reduce contributions. Then add the costs associated with computer technology needs and increased enrollment. Then add the diminished buying power of the dollar.... Tuition has increased every year. And, frankly, the quality of education has rapidly diminished as schools have been forced to teach a greater number of students with a greater range in ability/preparation. I just moved from an R1 school to this one; the budgets are bad at both, and at both most of the money was going into buildings, administrator salaries, and "development" (fundraising) staff and campaigns, while funding for the labs, libraries, faculty, and staff is slowly taken away.
Yep. I'm a public university professor, and I regularly have to make copies on the back of once-used paper because we run out of money for paper. I've also been told I need to buy my own printer if I want access to a printer. I'm also being asked to pay for my own inter-library loan articles. Some of our faculty offices have holes in the wall large enough to stick your hand outside and check the weather. (I can't believe I'm not making that one up. But, yep, just looked out window to verify: Prof. Z's office has a fist-sized hole all the way thru the wall; the boards have just rotted away.) Money is getting tight. Unless it's for a new football stadium, which I can see from my window is coming along nicely. (Note to parents: DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN GET A GRADUATE DEGREE IN HISTORY, ENGLISH, GEOGRAPHY, OR ANY OF THE HUMANITIES!)
Yeah, I was going to say this too. I'd go, though, for a Suzuki GS500 (40-60mpg). That's a great beginner bike, with plenty of power and pretty easy handling. I'd say any bike of around 500cc is a good started. The 250s just don't have the oomph that's handy for brief periods on the interstate or on busy highways. Yet a 500 is generally still light enough to maneuver into tight parking, etc. Scooters aren't the best investment for two-wheeled transport; they're underpowered and over-priced. That said, the fairing and floorboard do make it easier to wear nice pants and shoes. I've been commuting by motorcycle or bicycle since the 80s, and those can both be pretty hard on khakis. If you really want a scooter, those SYM Symbas look damn good. I used to have a Honda passport or express or whatever it was called. That thing would really scoot for its displacement, and it had larger wheels, which makes a LOT of difference when you hit that pothole you didn't see. And the rake on the front is a little better at high speed than what you get on something like a Stella or old Vespa. And if you want to spend $5G on a scooter, I'd go for an Aprilia. Those are fast, have bigger wheels, and don't have a lot of heavy batteries to drag around.
The Palestinians started a war? What about the violence and intimidation tactics--including forcible evacuation--of the Jewish forces in 1948? Many Palestinians fled because of that.... Yes, there were at the times for accommodation of Palestinians in Israel, of a mixed culture. But there were also powerful right-wing planners who wanted the Palestinians cleared out. That may sound bad now, but as a recent article in Slate points out--based on Gershom Gorenberg's new book on Israel--that was common practice in the day, moving around large groups of people based on race/ethnicity/nationality (however you want to slice it). And whatever of that people choose to believe or ignore, it's very clear that the more conservative nationalist types have been doing pretty well in Israel government. None of this is to deny that there's Palestinian violence. But it takes two sides to get to the place where Ireland and England are today, and the UK Parliament had to be encourage and be ready for Sinn Fein's overtures when they came.
MAYBE. Or maybe we could train our teachers differently. There are some real problems there. That said, where are people getting salary numbers for teachers? In the southeast, $31,500-32,000 are pretty standard starting salaries. It wouldn't hurt to pay more. Let me advance another issue: maybe the problem is the dramatic change in our students' lives and not the teachers as much. When I was in college, many, many students between classes hauled out a copy of The Hobbit or some Stephen King or something like that. They went home to the dorm or the frat house, and their distractions were beer, the opposite sex, music, and maybe some weed. Now, students are constantly on their phones; they have internet access, they have cable—basically many, many more distractions. They're not reading with the same intensity or absorbedness. This applies at all levels of education, but in university, we have another major game-changer: increased access. We have many more students from poor backgrounds, from racial minorities, many of whom are first-generation scholars. That makes a big difference too.
Oh good lord. I wish the parent could make his post go away. No doubt this argument will soon justify more deanlets at universities. Which is most certainly not what we need. I'm going to advance some management-culture heresy: maybe the cure is worse than the disease. That is, maybe the slackers and droolers among the faculty do less harm, waste less potential, than do the various managers and management tools? I say this as someone who has to submit grades four different ways for each set of grades, is required to record attendance three different ways, and can't send out an e-mail to his colleagues about a lecture without approval from the PR & Marketing people (a process taking a minimum of two weeks). Please, please don't leave justifications for management just lying around unattended! Someone might use them!
I'm in the position of waiting until tenure to undertake some much-needed initiatives that are being resisted by very old faculty at my university. I was told quite plainly that I would lose my job if I pushed the issue. So, that's my perspective. Why should I get the protection of tenure when others don't? My first answer is hthat maybe others should receive similar protections once they've passed similar hurdles. My second answer is a little more complicated. I spent years of hard work getting my degree, and I spent a great deal of money doing it. And the pay is relatively low. Tenure provides some job security, and it also provides some incentive to seek this sort of work, despite the obstacles of the degree and low pay, because I value the independence and authority that tenure provides. I doubt these answers will satisfy those opposed to tenure. There are certainly some downsides, like living with year after year of deadwood. But my experience so far is that the majority of senior faculty continue to be quite productive.
So, the question is, how do we fit into a system a freakishly divergent statistical outlier? I don't think there's a good answer to that. I doubt "mainstreaming" will work any better for the tremendously gifted than it would for a student with dramatic developmental difficulties. And then there's the problem that we're all individuals and respond somewhat differently to challenges (and lack of challenge is a challenge); we'll never have a large enough data set to make good decision. I'll offer my anecdote. I am a National Merit Scholar, scoring in my HS junior year in the top 0.5% in the US, and I won scholarships left and right. I'm no super genius, just moderately gifted. My advice is this: if you have a smart kid, don't live in a rural environment if you can avoid it. There's simply not enough there. I loved nature, fishing, hunting, walking, and all that. I just loved it. But the schools sucked, the culture was backward, and there was nothing to do other than school and TV. Maybe it's different with the internet now. I think I would have loved the opportunity available in a more urban setting, like bigger libraries, for one thing.
Do some reading in behavioral psychology. Kazdin's Parenting the Defiant Child is a good start. Up until the early 20s or late teens, most people respond much better to positive reinforcement rather than to punishment. (And that about the change in early adulthood is disputed and certainly not universal. Many people never respond as well to punishment as to positive reinforcement.) And before you get all GTFOML with me, it's _science_.
That was pretty much my thought, except worded as "students suck." It's hard to search for content or have reliable filtering when you get random gibberish or nothing explaining that file attachment. And user names are useless when they're crap like jabarjamshard_2000 or sexyprince411. So I have hot keys to throw things into a teaching folder, which I can then scroll through by date. Yes, it blows. But it's the way it has to be. I don't know where the "getting things done" types work that they can delete e-mail after dealing with it. At my job, I have to have all sorts of crap lingering around, to prove a case (about absences, plagiarism, lack of preparedness, etc), or to go look up something unimportant that suddenly became important because Dean Whackadoo has a bee in his bottom that morning.
If you think Schliemann was bad, you should check out what Evans did to Knossos. He didn't just dig right through all the previous layers with wild abandon, he plastered over and repainted what he found until it was a sort of Disney recreation.
Okay, "Phoenix," I'll say this: I had a former colleague who taught at U of Phoenix. She moonlighted on top of another full-time teaching job, and was also moonlighting at a local junior college. She was always pushing me to get a job there, because I often complained about not being able to afford diapers. She told me that it was common for people working of U. Phoenix to be like her: full-time instructors padding their income with a little extra work. It was clear that the U of Phoenix job was at best her third priority. And now I'll crank it up a little. I've seen what it takes to get an ME. Maybe you hit an exceptional program. But in general, an education program means 1-3 textbooks for a course, making a few posters, maybe a seminar paper or two in the course of the degree, perhaps a methodologically unsound half-ass thesis based on something pooped out of surveymonkey. I wouldn't go around crowing about how much work an ME takes. I'm being nasty, but I taught a couple of semester in an education department's building, and what I saw made me sick. And my wife got her MS partially in education, and she was in constant shock at how little students had to do and just how dumb and lazy some of her fellow grad students were. I say we should burn those buildings down, let the faculty go, and start over. (And I'm a big old flaming liberal.)
Oh, and by "really rich," I'm thinking in Tennessee terms, so families earning $150,000+. That goes a long way in Tennessee. (Though, when I taught there, I often had students from families earning in that range who would label themselves as poor or, more commonly, "middle class." And that would be in a metropolitan area with a median household income of $32,000. But, anyway, many might not think that's "really rich," so I wanted to offer that caveat. (Granted some people have pity parties for only having $400,000 a year to invest.)
Slashdot Mirror
Someone at my IP address has been downloading porn! This indexing of that must stop!
Well, AC, wait until you're in the "real" world. It's so much more efficient and so much less full of BS than the situation you describe. And your positive attitude will no doubt help you rise to the top very swiftly.
Someone should mod this up. It's so true. The tablet ends up being just one more expense, especially as it's unlikely that significant numbers of faculty will adopt the ebooks.
Many institutions now require faculty to put the cost of textbooks on the order sheets. Why? Well, believe it or not, the book reps and publishers take some pains to obscure, obfuscate, mislead, lie, etc about the cost of texts. I teach English, but I can readily understand why some faculty in math and the sciences would welcome the "churn" of frequent new editions. Changed problem sets really help cut down on cheating, which is rampant at universities these days. Online tools have made it very easy. It is time consuming to generate problem sets, and it's more time consuming to track down and "prosecute" cheaters. Note: I'm not saying anything about what's right or fair. But, given the fact that faculty are made responsible for more and more work, we tend to do what we can to keep our work load reasonable. That means that cost/effort will be pushed on to students. And since it's very difficult to get more effort, it tends to shift toward cost. It's one of those situations in which "externalities" impact the bottom end and in which the bad actors/game defectors force costs onto the community. As for the idea that delisting a professor's courses will encourage better behavior.... Oh boy, that's so wrong. Do you really think that letting a slacker slack will motivate better behavior? Any prof who gives a damn is already trying to figure out what to do about the situation. And those who don't give a damn will welcome low enrollments or delisting of courses. If anything, the convention is to threaten poor performers with more teaching. Instead, we should offer incentives for doing the right thing, like granting publication credit for stuff like generating open course texts or teaching packets. And to do that, schools would have to pay for an editorial board (with course releases) that gives the process oversight and credibility. I dunno. This whole discussion generally lacks on key idea: the professors are consumers as much as the students. But they are subsidized consumers......
The production runs on textbooks are not that small. In fact, I'd describe them as large. But what those words mean can vary from person to person. Yeah, a textbook probably doesn't have a print run like a best seller, but few books do. The problem I have with iPads is twofold: one, it is an expensive device, and not all professors will adopt ebooks; and, two, many students will use the device to play Angry Birds or check Facebook instead of paying attention in class. If we are to adopt ebooks, I'd much prefer something that can also work on a laptop or PC, so that students are not forced to purchase two devices. I'm very troubled by what is happening in the textbook market, the increased lock-in. I'm working with some other faculty members at my institution for (English) classes without textbooks, or with reduced textbooks, by using more online or library content. But a major problem is that the salespeople for textbook companies are pretty effective, making promises about saving money and online features. Then a lot of faculty are technophobic or barely tech-competent, so the traditional textbook gets the nod because it's familiar.
YES. I was just this weekend sitting on my back porch wishing I had something like an old Tandy so that I could type out some ideas. It would be great if a low-cost, reliable device were available. And I don't mean those Dayna things. I was really hoping the OLPC would provide something. Then that ugly thing showed up. And then the netbooks feature-crept out of my price range. Oh well. Problem is that the single-use device is nice, but even I won't buy it, especially with a cart full of poop monkeys need diapers.
I'm an English professor. For what it's worth, I'll offer a comparison. (Mostly for people who were as ignorant as I was before entering the job market.) Doing the math, I see that the $27/hr is about $4320/month gross, without overtime. That's just over what I make as a professor with five years experience (I have a high salary for my field). After taxes, retirement, and health insurance, the take-home for that amount of pay is going to be right at $3,000 a month. It's not enough to keep my family out of the red some months, since there are four of us, and my wife can't get a job with her IT degree (from a major research school!). So this is not exactly a bill that would be soaking the rich. It's hitting middle-income earners. Next point of comparison: in my field, there's no such thing as overtime for a salaried person. I never knew such a thing existed. If it did, most academics would be on a gravy train, as it's easy to hit 50-60 hours a week during the academic year, with summer workloads dropping back down to 30-40 (if you're doing your research, which you'd better if you want tenure or promotion). I thought the whole point of salary was locking you into one amount of pay so that the employer could work you as hard as they want without paying more. (I guess I'm still ignorant.)
Research done at Duke and in Romania shows that computers or access to broadband can lower study scores. It's not so shocking, really, that games and media can supplant study, reading, and thinking. So I think the question shouldn't be how much (quantity) but of what sort and how (quality). The Duke study was done by . Vigdor and Ladd; there's a gloss of it in a New York Times article called "Computers at Home, Hope vs. Reality." I can attest to the fact that students on college campuses today read books, newspapers, and magazines far less than did students in the 80s. Instead they're generally using social media, texting, or listening to a portable music player. You almost never see students carry around battered paperbacks anymore; in the past the ratty old Stephen King or some similar lite reading was a common time burner between classes. Though it does seem that devices like Nooks and Kindles are becoming a little more common on campus.
If you read the article..... You'll see that he points to LOL and such as having staying power whereas the argot from the MOOs and MUDs and MUSHs has fallen by the wayside. Frankly, not too surprising. Those were frequented by quite a small minority of (very vocal) computer users. I'm a bit surprised tho that this guy doesn't mention that the way constructions like yr and sd and l8r were prevalent in Modernist and early postmodernist poetry. Creeley for example.
United States public university professor, specifically a [state name] State University (2nd tier; first-tier research schools are University of [state name]). And whether or not public universities charge a fortune is a matter of perspective. Tuition at public universities has skyrocketed since the late 80s when the federal government began to reduce contributions. Then add the costs associated with computer technology needs and increased enrollment. Then add the diminished buying power of the dollar.... Tuition has increased every year. And, frankly, the quality of education has rapidly diminished as schools have been forced to teach a greater number of students with a greater range in ability/preparation. I just moved from an R1 school to this one; the budgets are bad at both, and at both most of the money was going into buildings, administrator salaries, and "development" (fundraising) staff and campaigns, while funding for the labs, libraries, faculty, and staff is slowly taken away.
Yep. I'm a public university professor, and I regularly have to make copies on the back of once-used paper because we run out of money for paper. I've also been told I need to buy my own printer if I want access to a printer. I'm also being asked to pay for my own inter-library loan articles. Some of our faculty offices have holes in the wall large enough to stick your hand outside and check the weather. (I can't believe I'm not making that one up. But, yep, just looked out window to verify: Prof. Z's office has a fist-sized hole all the way thru the wall; the boards have just rotted away.) Money is getting tight. Unless it's for a new football stadium, which I can see from my window is coming along nicely. (Note to parents: DO NOT LET YOUR CHILDREN GET A GRADUATE DEGREE IN HISTORY, ENGLISH, GEOGRAPHY, OR ANY OF THE HUMANITIES!)
"intimidating bookstore clerk"? Holy cow. The guys at the comic book shop must give you night sweats!
Yeah, I was going to say this too. I'd go, though, for a Suzuki GS500 (40-60mpg). That's a great beginner bike, with plenty of power and pretty easy handling. I'd say any bike of around 500cc is a good started. The 250s just don't have the oomph that's handy for brief periods on the interstate or on busy highways. Yet a 500 is generally still light enough to maneuver into tight parking, etc. Scooters aren't the best investment for two-wheeled transport; they're underpowered and over-priced. That said, the fairing and floorboard do make it easier to wear nice pants and shoes. I've been commuting by motorcycle or bicycle since the 80s, and those can both be pretty hard on khakis. If you really want a scooter, those SYM Symbas look damn good. I used to have a Honda passport or express or whatever it was called. That thing would really scoot for its displacement, and it had larger wheels, which makes a LOT of difference when you hit that pothole you didn't see. And the rake on the front is a little better at high speed than what you get on something like a Stella or old Vespa. And if you want to spend $5G on a scooter, I'd go for an Aprilia. Those are fast, have bigger wheels, and don't have a lot of heavy batteries to drag around.
An insurance policy that covers theft and vandalism is your better bet, especially on a college campus.
The Palestinians started a war? What about the violence and intimidation tactics--including forcible evacuation--of the Jewish forces in 1948? Many Palestinians fled because of that.... Yes, there were at the times for accommodation of Palestinians in Israel, of a mixed culture. But there were also powerful right-wing planners who wanted the Palestinians cleared out. That may sound bad now, but as a recent article in Slate points out--based on Gershom Gorenberg's new book on Israel--that was common practice in the day, moving around large groups of people based on race/ethnicity/nationality (however you want to slice it). And whatever of that people choose to believe or ignore, it's very clear that the more conservative nationalist types have been doing pretty well in Israel government. None of this is to deny that there's Palestinian violence. But it takes two sides to get to the place where Ireland and England are today, and the UK Parliament had to be encourage and be ready for Sinn Fein's overtures when they came.
MAYBE. Or maybe we could train our teachers differently. There are some real problems there. That said, where are people getting salary numbers for teachers? In the southeast, $31,500-32,000 are pretty standard starting salaries. It wouldn't hurt to pay more. Let me advance another issue: maybe the problem is the dramatic change in our students' lives and not the teachers as much. When I was in college, many, many students between classes hauled out a copy of The Hobbit or some Stephen King or something like that. They went home to the dorm or the frat house, and their distractions were beer, the opposite sex, music, and maybe some weed. Now, students are constantly on their phones; they have internet access, they have cable—basically many, many more distractions. They're not reading with the same intensity or absorbedness. This applies at all levels of education, but in university, we have another major game-changer: increased access. We have many more students from poor backgrounds, from racial minorities, many of whom are first-generation scholars. That makes a big difference too.
Oh good lord. I wish the parent could make his post go away. No doubt this argument will soon justify more deanlets at universities. Which is most certainly not what we need. I'm going to advance some management-culture heresy: maybe the cure is worse than the disease. That is, maybe the slackers and droolers among the faculty do less harm, waste less potential, than do the various managers and management tools? I say this as someone who has to submit grades four different ways for each set of grades, is required to record attendance three different ways, and can't send out an e-mail to his colleagues about a lecture without approval from the PR & Marketing people (a process taking a minimum of two weeks). Please, please don't leave justifications for management just lying around unattended! Someone might use them!
I'm in the position of waiting until tenure to undertake some much-needed initiatives that are being resisted by very old faculty at my university. I was told quite plainly that I would lose my job if I pushed the issue. So, that's my perspective. Why should I get the protection of tenure when others don't? My first answer is hthat maybe others should receive similar protections once they've passed similar hurdles. My second answer is a little more complicated. I spent years of hard work getting my degree, and I spent a great deal of money doing it. And the pay is relatively low. Tenure provides some job security, and it also provides some incentive to seek this sort of work, despite the obstacles of the degree and low pay, because I value the independence and authority that tenure provides. I doubt these answers will satisfy those opposed to tenure. There are certainly some downsides, like living with year after year of deadwood. But my experience so far is that the majority of senior faculty continue to be quite productive.
So, the question is, how do we fit into a system a freakishly divergent statistical outlier? I don't think there's a good answer to that. I doubt "mainstreaming" will work any better for the tremendously gifted than it would for a student with dramatic developmental difficulties. And then there's the problem that we're all individuals and respond somewhat differently to challenges (and lack of challenge is a challenge); we'll never have a large enough data set to make good decision. I'll offer my anecdote. I am a National Merit Scholar, scoring in my HS junior year in the top 0.5% in the US, and I won scholarships left and right. I'm no super genius, just moderately gifted. My advice is this: if you have a smart kid, don't live in a rural environment if you can avoid it. There's simply not enough there. I loved nature, fishing, hunting, walking, and all that. I just loved it. But the schools sucked, the culture was backward, and there was nothing to do other than school and TV. Maybe it's different with the internet now. I think I would have loved the opportunity available in a more urban setting, like bigger libraries, for one thing.
Do some reading in behavioral psychology. Kazdin's Parenting the Defiant Child is a good start. Up until the early 20s or late teens, most people respond much better to positive reinforcement rather than to punishment. (And that about the change in early adulthood is disputed and certainly not universal. Many people never respond as well to punishment as to positive reinforcement.) And before you get all GTFOML with me, it's _science_.
That was pretty much my thought, except worded as "students suck." It's hard to search for content or have reliable filtering when you get random gibberish or nothing explaining that file attachment. And user names are useless when they're crap like jabarjamshard_2000 or sexyprince411. So I have hot keys to throw things into a teaching folder, which I can then scroll through by date. Yes, it blows. But it's the way it has to be. I don't know where the "getting things done" types work that they can delete e-mail after dealing with it. At my job, I have to have all sorts of crap lingering around, to prove a case (about absences, plagiarism, lack of preparedness, etc), or to go look up something unimportant that suddenly became important because Dean Whackadoo has a bee in his bottom that morning.
I hear they have some marbles they won't let you have back either.
If you think Schliemann was bad, you should check out what Evans did to Knossos. He didn't just dig right through all the previous layers with wild abandon, he plastered over and repainted what he found until it was a sort of Disney recreation.
Okay, "Phoenix," I'll say this: I had a former colleague who taught at U of Phoenix. She moonlighted on top of another full-time teaching job, and was also moonlighting at a local junior college. She was always pushing me to get a job there, because I often complained about not being able to afford diapers. She told me that it was common for people working of U. Phoenix to be like her: full-time instructors padding their income with a little extra work. It was clear that the U of Phoenix job was at best her third priority. And now I'll crank it up a little. I've seen what it takes to get an ME. Maybe you hit an exceptional program. But in general, an education program means 1-3 textbooks for a course, making a few posters, maybe a seminar paper or two in the course of the degree, perhaps a methodologically unsound half-ass thesis based on something pooped out of surveymonkey. I wouldn't go around crowing about how much work an ME takes. I'm being nasty, but I taught a couple of semester in an education department's building, and what I saw made me sick. And my wife got her MS partially in education, and she was in constant shock at how little students had to do and just how dumb and lazy some of her fellow grad students were. I say we should burn those buildings down, let the faculty go, and start over. (And I'm a big old flaming liberal.)
Oh, and by "really rich," I'm thinking in Tennessee terms, so families earning $150,000+. That goes a long way in Tennessee. (Though, when I taught there, I often had students from families earning in that range who would label themselves as poor or, more commonly, "middle class." And that would be in a metropolitan area with a median household income of $32,000. But, anyway, many might not think that's "really rich," so I wanted to offer that caveat. (Granted some people have pity parties for only having $400,000 a year to invest.)