Whiskey Fire

I Think There's a Lot of Shysters in Florida

Every idea born in the Florida state legislature is of course beautiful and precious. But cruel soul that I am, this one ought to be fed to the Everglades pythons.

Florida lawmakers advanced a bill this week intended to upend the American college accreditation system.

The measure would allow Florida officials to accredit individual courses on their own -- including classes offered by unaccredited for-profit providers. 

“We’re saying the monopoly of the accrediting system is not designed for the world of MOOCs or other individual courses,” said Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, the bill’s sponsor.

This proposal is... audacious.

I guess it might be kind of hard to explain to anyone outside of higher ed just how awful this is--though fortunately we can move forward a bit in this article and find something that sums it up...

Brandes made clear his bill is intended to shake up the way things are done in higher ed. He said the current accrediting model, which looks at a whole institution, fails to look at the rigor of individual courses. He said this means a college might be good over all, but a course wouldn’t be.

Under his plan, the head of the state’s public school system and the chancellor of the university system would together certify which courses among those not offered by accredited institutions deserve to be “Florida-accredited.” (Currently, all public higher ed institutions in Florida are accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.)

Auxter called that plan dangerous and prone to political influence.

“It takes away decision making on the curriculum from faculties, universities and colleges and it gives it to officials in Tallahassee,” Auxter said. “Then all lobbyists have to do is argue with two officials, who are both political appointees, that their vendor contract to produce a high-quality – so-called – online course should be adopted."

Though of course it would be very silly to think that a political appointee in Florida would ever turn out to be a comical laughingstock hack...

Oh wait.

The vagueness of the language worries faculty unions and other state lawmakers, including a Republican senator who warned during the committee meeting Tuesday that Florida was inviting "scam artists."

If you think you're going to get more academic "rigor" as regards decisions about specific courses made by two totally unaccountable political appointees than you would from a multi-state accrediting body, well, you're probably dumb enough, or enough of an asshole, to have voted for Rick Scott, in which case, I hope you get eaten by a python.

Pictured: D. Dunn, Florida Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes (R) press secretary

It's a Million Miles Away, And In the Backyard: The Big School

I should hope that no doubt exists as to this blog's position as regards Imaginative Literature: we dislike it and wish it abolished. "Fiction" of any sort is a chimera and a snare, and the men who write it, I suppose, are wretched fellows who write these things for a drink.

We were thus disappointed to learn that the wildly popular Common Core standards sweeping the nation don't actually require English teachers to stop inflicting Shakespear and Milton upon innocent 14-Year-Olds. But we are heartened to discover that school administrators across the nation are confused and bloody-minded and rotten enough to tell Scout to piss off.

The problem with Literature is that it is all lies. A person named Ravitch disagrees.

if you add up all the reading that students encounter across science, mathematics, history, and other subjects, English teachers could teach no informational text at all, and the student would still get at least 70% informational text. (Heaven forbid that a history class should read The Grapes of Wrath to learn about the Depression!). In short, there is no reason, NO REASON, for any English teacher to stop teaching literature.

Except funding.

We hear a lot about how teaching "literature" is a means of enhancing understanding of language, history, psychology, and criminology.

My balls! English teachers can easily be replaced by robots.

Thank Christ. It's about time.

In Utterly Local News Regarding My Alma Mater

Build the goddamn US1 pedestrian overpass, and put student-friendly businesses at the other side. NOW! I COMMAND IT!

Honestly, this is a simple project that would benefit the public in all sorts of ways and pay for itself in a decade or so. Thus, we can't have it. Phooey.

The Judges and the Saints and the Textbook Committee

Here's a nifty little parable about the goofball, yet linchpin, anxieties that animate Movement Conservatism.

Apparently during the SOTU Jonah Goldberg got a bit snotty on the Twitter machine regarding Jill Biden being referred to as "Dr," when she is not a medical doctor and has professionally worked at the (gasp) community college level. Oh here, let Jonah explain what he was "thinking."

Last night on Twitter I commented that I think that the rote insistence that Jill Biden be referred to “Doctor Jill Biden” is kind of silly (that’s how President Obama referred to her). This elicited a remarkable amount of anger. I then made things worse by explaining that Jill Biden isn’t a “real” doctor. She holds a doctorate in education. That invited even more bile.

Gosh. I wonder why.

Do, go on.

I find it all so odd. For starters, I never claimed she wasn’t entitled to the honorific. If anything, it’s out of respect that I think people should drop the habit. Washington is teeming with people with Ph.D.s (never mind law degrees!). Among my friends alone, I can count at least a dozen people who are technically entitled to be called “Doctor.” But if I caught, say, Shannen Coffin insisting that people call him “Doctor Coffin” (a great name for an evil scientist by the way), I would mock him mercilessly.

In my experience inside the Beltway, insisting on being called “Doctor” when not being addressed by students is a sign of vanity or some other insecurity (I’m of course talking about non-medical doctors). And people who insist on calling other people “Doctor” do so for similar reasons — out of an over-compensating need to show respect.

Hang on to that phrase "in my experience inside the Beltway" a bit. But let's fast-forward to this emanation from Mona Charen. It is delicious.

Mark, Jonah, your discussion of the honorific “doctor” reminds me of my education on the subject. When I got to college, I noticed that even the full professors — 100 percent of whom had doctorates — styled themselves “Mr. Swensen” or “Ms. Elliott” on their office doors and on their handouts. I asked a teaching assistant about it. “The only people who insist upon the title ‘Dr’ in higher education,” he said, “teach at community colleges.”

And then the teaching assistant stepped on the ball.

Right.

There are two reasons why community college professors are more likely to want the Dr.

First, the personal: as in the case of Jill Biden, the "honorific" means a hell of a lot to the members of  families who come up from the working classes.

My own mom was NYC working class Irish; she hard-scrabbled herself two advanced degrees, an MA in Spanish from Middlebury and, much later, an MSW from Fordham. (The first she partly financed by working at the White Castle which is still there at Bell and Northern in Bayside.)

She was pretty goddamn proud of those degrees. As well she should have been. A working class woman in the mid to late 20th century doing that...? Moving on up!

When I got my own PhD fom the University of Miami -- English literature, Irish Studies focus -- she was proud to bursting.

It was at the time a bit awkward, since I can be a bit of a clod about certain things, and also I am not, er, a person who takes formalities of any sort seriously. But my mom spent almost a grand of her own money on my regalia -- and she was there when I got hooded, and it was one of the chief goddamn moments of her life.

If you get a PhD and can afford to be blase about it, you are extremely privileged, and it would behoove you to not be an asshole about anything regarding the usage of the title, which is as it happens not an "honorific".

Which leads us to...

Why do community college professors care about being called "Dr."?

Because it means a lot to our students!

It does, and there's yer answer.

But now for the punchline. Here.

Mr. Goldberg is currently a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.

Please, Jonah, speak some more about pompous bullshit academic-y sounding honorifics.

Smutty Limericks and Socialism: Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

Breaking News: Erik Loomis continues to not be fired. This has been reported by one "Oliver Darcy," pictured.

But of course there are even greater threats than Loomis out there. For reals. Believe it. There is, for instance, Alessandro Porco of UNC-Wilmington, who has published poetry. Or even worse: poetry verse.

The University of North Carolina-Wilmington has hired an English literature professor whose pornographic poetry verse include fantasies of sexual relations with freshmen female students, an education watchdog reported this week.

In Prof. Alessandro Porco’s poem “Hot Girl-Girl Action University” the fictional university president Jill Kelly offers a welcome to the freshman class.

“Who would say No to a gang-bang?
Who would say No to Prof. Poon-Tang?
Who would say No to my scholarly toungin’?
Thank you fathers for your daughters.”

That poem is part The Jill Kelly Poems, ranked 3,963,932 on Amazon, which chronicles the life of a porn star through poetry.

In an interview on PopMatters.com, Porco describes it as “my book-length ode to the adult-film star affectionately referred to as ‘the anal queen.”

Another of Porco's sexually explicit pieces included in The Jill Kelly Poems is “Ars Poetica.”

“Breakfast in bed & down on all fours;
You’re eggs-over-easy, muchin’ for more.
Vegans protest & brand it obscene;
But there’s no starving my anal queen.”

In another collection, Augustine in Carthage, Porco included what he describes as the “21 of the filthiest limericks I could think to write.”

Jay Shalin, of the watchdog group the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy pointed out the controversial hiring in an opinion piece earlier this week and argued that parents should be wary of placing their young adults in the classroom with Porco.

Indizzle. Likewise,

J. Joyce rakes hell, and the sewers, for dirt to throw at the fair face of life, and for poison to make beauty shrivel and die.... and Dr. Yeats undertakes that no citizen of Dublin shall fail to know his name. In season or out of season he has proclaimed him a genius... But there have been geniuses who have wallowed in the mire before, though any quite equally foul-minded, who shall say?

1. I have never heard of Porco until these idiots trying to get him fired brought him up. Now I'll buy one of his books. If it's good, I have read good poems. If it sucks, I have pissed off a dink. I win.

2. I don't know if Porco is as good as Joyce or Yeats; probably not, but who knows? Saying "you can't go there" and actually making it stick has not as of yet worked as far as discovering genius goes. Quite the opposite.

3. The "taxpayer" argument is ridiculous. I pay my taxes and consider dropping bombs on foreigners for obscure and probably counterproductive purposes "obscene." You have your priorities, I have mine. Yay America!

4. Also, Yeats got Joyce a modest payment from the Civil List; in the long run, totting it all up, that worked out to a tidy long-term public profit that is still paying dividends and is likely to do so for centuries to come.

5. It is inane and offensive for anyone to say that Porco is unfit to teach because of what he writes. He freely and openly produces poetry. Lots of folks, in the public and private sectors, consume pornography. And what he does isn't even pornographic -- you'd have to go to court there to prove strictly prurient intent, and good luck with that. (St. Augustine? Even in this decadent age... people masturbate to poetry among all available options? Really? Really?)

6. My "impressionable offspring" will, when they are of the age to encounter Mr. Porco, be old enough to handle college. If they aren't, I won't send them there, and I will likely also deny them the use of forks without corks affixed to the tines.

7. That said, I personally deplore foulmouthed limericks.

Shorter Andrew Klavan

The Long Game

Three areas the Right should address, financially and intellectually

"As the brainwashed American public & the evil Hollywood producers who wash their brains have no interest in any of my art (For I am an artist.) please give me & my fellow conservative artists money, preferably in the form of a tax-free grant or award (For infrastructure!) so we'll be able to reverse liberal influence in the culture & restore the free market by making movies about what swell dudes businessmen are."

     — Mr. Klavan, in the Hudson Institute's City Journal.

As first transcribed here by M.B.

Sunset Over Westwood

Folk (or volk) wisdom: Democracies are doomed to failure once the masses realize they can vote themselves all the free gummint cheese they can stuff down their gaping maws.

Maybe not:

It was the greatest education system the world had ever seen. They built it into the eucalyptus-dotted Berkeley hills and under the bright lights of Los Angeles, down in the valley in Fresno and in the shadows of the San Bernardino Mountains. Hundreds of college campuses, large and small, two-year and four-year, stretching from California's emerald forests in the north to the heat-scorched Inland Empire in the south. Each had its own DNA, but common to all was this: they promised a “public” education, accessible and affordable, to those with means and those without, a door with a welcome mat into the ivory tower, an invitation to a better life.

Then California bled that system dry. Over three decades, voters starved their state -- and so their colleges and universities -- of cash. Politicians siphoned away what money remained and spent it more on imprisoning people, not educating them. College administrators grappled with shriveling state support by jacking up tuitions, tacking on new fees, and so asking more each year from increasingly pinched students and families. Today, many of those students stagger under a heap of debt as they linger on waiting lists to get into the over-subscribed classes they need to graduate.

"Our democracy" will be destroyed by people cutting their taxes so they'll have a few bucks w/ which to Botox their faces. Smooth move, cheapskates!

— Sad Californian M. Bouffant

Women Academics Face Sexism! Who Knew!

A long time ago, I invented the phrase Malibu Barbiearianism. That deserves to be remembered, almost as much as does the fact that higher education is in too many ways even now too fucking sexist.

MAS. This anecdote from the past is absolutely true:

A woman I know quite well, ahem, was once told as a bit of well-intended advice that it would be a good idea not to be seen on campus so often with her children, as this might be held against her if she ever were to apply for a full time job in the department where she was adjuncting. The amazing bit about this advice was that her husband was at the time a full-time professor at that very college -- and since this couple's kids went to daycare on campus, and he was the one who ended up taking them to and from that daycare, he could be seen almost daily dragging some red-cheeked squalling brat around with him. And you know what? He was routinely praised for his obvious joy at being a family man and a good Daddy and so good with his adorable little progeny.

Go figure...

Good times.

Failed "Musician" Seeks to Bolster Failing Vice-Presidential Candidate

Years ago, when I was working in radio, we were doing a remote at a bar full of frat boys and their unlikely conquests. Todd Akin wasn't around then, as I'm sure he could have offered up a few strategies. Any-hoo, the grand prize that night was two tickets and a limo ride to see Kid Rock in Nashville, a few hours away. People participated, but no one's heart was really in it, including the radio station employees. Toward the end, we reached toward the "vault" and found other things for which people could compete. On the list were two front row tickets for 311 in our own town. 

A southern sorority girl, whose name I am quite sure was Baylee, Haylee or Kaylee, jumped up, and in all her drunken glory, screamed, "Kid Rock is a faggot! But I'll go in for this!"*

My point being. Uh, nobody who ever actually was any part of any zeitgeist ever gave a flying fuck about Kid Rock. Not even Baylees at Southern colleges majoring in god knows what, and not even their male counterparts who, really, honestly, were much more concerned about going to see Widespread Panic for the 98th time. Which is why this is so pathetic:

PONTIAC, Mich. – Kid Rock, who will play at the GOP convention in Tampa and is the artist behind Mitt Romney's campaign song "Born Free," made an appearance at Paul Ryan's fundraiser here in Michigan Friday.

According to a pool report, Kid Rock – whose real name is Robert Ritchie – introduced Ryan at the fundraiser, held at the Oakland Hills Country Club.

“I was going to be a little weisenheimer and say, ‘Which one is running for vice president?'" Kid Rock told attendees. “Then they would introduce Paul and I would walk out and say hello.''

That didn't happen.  Upon taking the stage, Ryan remarked, “So one of us is running for vice president, but only one of us was listening to ‘Bawitdaba’  in the motorcade on the way over here.”

Uh.

(That’s a reference to one of Kid Rock’s biggest hits.)

Thank you for clarifying, because I didn't know what the fuck, and I'm only 32, so it's not like I'm completely out of the loop.

I'm also fascinated to know that Kid Rock's "jokesies" line involved the word "weisenheimer." Did he also say "kids these days" and "fiddlesticks!?" I totally get that they're working solely for the Hoveround vote, but goodness.

Keep up with the "trying to be cool" thing, though GOP. You've got Kid Rock! We've got...well, all real artists. Yeah.

*Oh, and don't get all bitchy about the sorority person using the word "faggot." If I, a faggot, do not care, you should not. 

"Inadequate Numbers"

In a not particularly surprising development, Ashford University has been denied accreditation, mostly because "Ashford University" is 1% college, 99% scam.

The Western Association of Schools and Colleges dealt a stinging blow to Bridgepoint Education Inc. on Monday by rejecting the for-profit’s accreditation bid for its Ashford University. The decision could mean regional accreditors will take a more assertive role in the debate over for-profit higher education.

Ashford fell short in several broad areas, according to the association, including its lack of a “sufficient core” of full-time faculty members, large numbers of students who drop out and questionable academic rigor in some areas.

There really is an Ashford college, in the traditional sense, namely, it has buildings and you can find it in a certain place, in this case, Iowa. And that part of Ashford is fine!

WASC was not critical, however, of Ashford’s residential campus in Iowa....

But here is the rub:

That campus, which enrolled 973 students last fall, is a former religious college that Bridgepoint purchased in 2005. As part of the deal, the company got the college’s regional accreditation, through the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Ashford was a small religious college that didn't make any money and was going under. But it was a real educational institution, and had accreditation. (It taught students.)

It got snapped up by Bridgepoint, a for-profit company that says on its website that it wants to harness "creativity and the latest technology to re-engineer the modern student experience." And holy shit does it ever want to do that. (It extracts money from suckers.)

To be fair, buying accreditation is pretty fucking creative. I know my actual college didn't think of it. Though perhaps one happy day this will be thought of for us.

Here are some of Bridgepoint's further re-engineerings:

Ashford fell short in several broad areas, according to the association, including its lack of a “sufficient core” of full-time faculty members, large numbers of students who drop out and questionable academic rigor in some areas.

A tidbit, a smidgen....

The biggest problem identified by the accreditor and its review team was the university’s rapid growth, which has made the publicly traded Bridgepoint a high flyer among investors. Ashford enrolls more than 90,000 students, up from 10,000 just five years ago....

the report by a (comparatively star-studded) team that reviewed Ashford’s bid found that 128,000 students withdrew from the university over the last five years, a time during which Ashford enrolled 241,000 new students, meaning that more than 50 percent dropped out....

That is goddamn hilarious, or it would be, if it didn't mean that 128,000 "students" hadn't been hustled out of a lot of money they didn't have. And because Ashford was "accredited," that means all of them qualified for federal student aid, which probably means loans they can't get rid of even in bankruptcy, but taxpayers are on the hook for anyway.

The joke gets even less funny:

Ashford employed only 56 full-time faculty members in 2011, with 2,458 part-time faculty members and 875 instructional staff, the report said. (Since then, the university reported hiring 43 new full-time faculty members.) As for student support services, Ashford has 14 writing specialists and 38 instructional specialists on staff, both inadequate numbers according to the accreditor. In contrast, the university employed 2,305 staff members in enrollment services.

Nobody ever seriously meant to "teach" anyone anything.

And yet this is the future. Tell me in about ten years this won't be a cautionary tale about the cruel overreach of anaccountable unelected accreditors interfering in the glorious free market, go on, tell me. (Has more whiskey.)