Gov. Quinn: Dear Taxpayers …
Here’s the link to the story at the Springfield State Journal-Register.
Our Universities: Agility
June 24, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Tradition and business-as-usual are flywheels that dampen irregularity and reduce “vibration” in decision-making and organizational action. However, too much of a good thing can smother innovation, risk taking, responsiveness, and agility.
“Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.”
Robert Kennedy
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By Walter Wendler
Fracking is the law of the land in Illinois. I am not going to offer any opinion on the cost or benefits of this means of mining. The officials whom we elect and pay to create and assess the propriety of policies have acted.
A headline in the regional newspaper, The Southern Illinoisan, that reads “SIC, RLC to Offer Fracking Training: Community Colleges Able to Train Job Ready Workforce,” is of special interest. Southeastern Illinois College (SIC) and Rend Lake College (RLC) are community colleges in Harrisburg and Rend Lake, two Illinois service districts. The action implied in the headline highlights something of significance for all post-secondary educational institutions.
According to reporter Becky Malkovich, “ Following the legislature’s signing, Southeastern Illinois College and Rend Lake College announced a cooperative agreement to provide training opportunities for those interested in the oil and natural gas industry.” Within hours!
For most post-secondary institutions, this occurred at the speed of light. The two colleges anticipated the legislation and its importance. Economic development and job creation are critical to southern Illinois. Leadership developed a win-win partnership in the carbon rich region of Illinois.
The institutions demonstrated agility and alertness, consistent with the workforce education aspect of their missions.
While this may appear unremarkable to those outside of the post-secondary educational world, it is a bright light in a dark tunnel. Putting aside individualized institutional needs, bean counting, and administrative machination is a form of dexterity. For tax-supported institutions high expectations that benefit the public are right-minded.
And agility provides opportunity.
Environmental and safety complexities assuredly accompany any means of oil and gas extraction, including fracking. An educated workforce, appropriately trained in this evolving technology, is essential. Economic benefits and secure environmental and operating constraints and safety demand knowledgeable, trained individuals.
Lethargy and complacency are enemies of agility. Public higher education has a responsibility to recognize and respond to changing individual, social, technical, economic and environmental forces.
For example, universities have shown reluctance to work with nontraditional students — those who have not graduated high school in the last year or two, or who have a job and kids. They are inadvertently stymied in accessing educational opportunity. Where’s the public benefit? Where’s the agility?
World War II veterans and even early baby boomers will recall Saturday classes on most university campuses. For many reasons, universities have moved away from weekend offerings to a work-like five day week. When demand for university courses outstripped the university’s ability to serve students, this was OK. But no more. And agility is transformed into apathy.
A few universities and some community colleges offer study opportunities through “weekends-only” programs. People with other life commitments are afforded a chance to participate. This is agility.
In order to attain agility many things might be sacrificed. The majority of classes on almost all campuses are offered between 10 AM and 2 PM. This may serve university staff but is neither agile nor responsive to the needs of many learners.
Responsive agile universities could operate 12 months a year, 6 days a week, 16 hours a day for the opportunity and material efficiencies provided.
Agility must never sacrifice academic quality however. The price is too high.
At good universities and community colleges, engaged faculty set standards to ensure excellence for learners. This is the essence of the academic experience. Faculty engagement is paramount because faculty knows what needs to be taught and the limitations and possibilities of successful learning. They must be central in the equation.
The agility represented by SIC and RLC to meet legitimate training and educational needs should be a beacon. Finding ways to respond to changing needs without sacrificing quality and effectiveness in the educational experience is possible, but it takes work, insight, foresight and creativity…the foundation of all agility.
Our Universities: Degree Production
June 19, 2013 By Leave a Comment
The number and value of college degrees produced in the U.S. will be a bone of contention for a long time and the marrow of that bone is that the cost of the degree is no longer borne solely by an individual but, increasingly, by taxpayers.
“A $50,000 degree in art history from Podunk State University is probably a lousy investment. A $50,000 degree in computer science from UC Berkeley is probably a sensible investment. If taxpayers are funding the degrees, they have every right to be concerned about whether those degrees are worth something. The litmus test is what employers are willing to pay.”
Erik Kengaard, Huffington Post web commenter
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By Walter Wendler
The June 12 headline in the New York Times sounds like a marketing pronouncement for higher education: “Data Reveal A Rise In College Degrees Among Americans,” opens a story posted by Catherine Rampell. This is not to suggest that the goal of President Obama, and the U.S. university infrastructure, to increase the number of students who hold bachelor’s degrees is a bad idea. It may be a great idea. Rampell points out that 33.5% of the Americans between 25 and 29 had a bachelor’s degree. The National Center for Education Statistics reports it was 24.7% in 1995.
The lack of answers to queries regarding the numbers offer less optimism than the headline implies.
For example, what were the unemployment levels of college graduates in the years of comparison? If people wave college degrees heavenward on the way to the unemployment office, what benefit is accrued?
If universities accept students who are less prepared and willing to pay any price for studying anything on taxpayer’s trough, of course, degree production, along with heavy borrowing increases. Simple degree production disconnected from national need is meaningless and has little to do with the end justifying the economic means.
Will college degrees fix a broken economy? This is the goal that drives the target and the answer is not obvious.
Are college degrees a means to equitably redistribute wealth in a free society? Does this really trumpet a desired condition where a created equality — everyone has a college degree — promotes a more egalitarian society or simply propagates unemployable hoards of degree holders with mountains of debt, owed to a nation hobbled by red-ink?
It is easy to kick the can down the road by heralding increases in college degree production. Many elected leaders, appointed university officials, and university boards will be long gone when the markers are called in on university degrees purchased with U.S. tax dollars with no cogent determination of economic or academic value.
A striking similarity exists between degree production and decades of perfunctory pension promises proffered by statehouses across the nation. College degrees won’t fix that. As a sad matter-of-fact, most of the people who have installed fly-by-night, fundamentally worthless, pension systems are/were “well educated.”
Is it possible that degree production is rising because universities around the nation are pushing people through, accepting students unprepared for college work and inflating grades so graduation becomes a reality while learning is the “shadow on the wall”?
In the Times piece, Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the George Washington University graduate school of education, is quoted, “Think about jobs 15 years ago that didn’t need any college education.” It is a good point, but doesn’t nullify the fact that people with PhDs are driving cabs in New York and people with bachelor’s degrees are serving hamburgers. These are dignified occupations but do they require a university degree?
I wonder: How many people with bachelor’s degrees earned within the last five years now reside at home with their parents as compared to 1995?
What difference does any of this make if a person chooses to study something that has value, economic or academic, only to them if no subsidies exist? Following a twist on Mr. Kengaard’s line of thought, is a $50,000 degree in art history from UC Berkeley a good investment with tax dollars? How about a $50,000 degree in computer science from Podunk State University with Grandpa’s cash?
Does the source of funds color the problem differently?
No answers today, only questions.
Franklin County Farm Bureau News
June 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
By J. Larry Miller
Last week I reported that heavy rain was possible late last week and it certainly became a reality with as much as 5 inches falling in some areas of the county. Some of the readers of this article who are not farmers are wondering what this means and some of us farmers are wondering also.
Larry Miller, executive director Franklin County Farm Bureau
Generally, this is not a major setback but there are a few problems with this much rain at one time. Some fields that were plant previous to the rain, such as a day or two before the rain, could have some problems with emergence due to crusting of the soil surface. There is some water standing in fields and that situation will deplete the number of plants, reducing yield of the total field. An increased number of areas of water could reduce yield to the point of possible replanting in some parts of the field. This is what farmers hate to do – spotting in areas of a field. They would rather replant an entire field than replant portions of a field. It is one of those dreaded jobs like doing repair jobs in the house for the most important person in your life.
Some fields in low lying areas were completely submerged and will need to be replanted but this type of land has greater yield potential even if planted later. Most of the corn is planted and a large portion of soybeans but planting any more will have to wait until next week before any field work can be done. If your yard is wet – so is a farmer’s field!
Wheat fields have suffered from the heavy rain and caused some fields to have a lot of wheat to fall, the result of this will be reduced yields. Where this has happened and the amount of reduction of total yield will be in proportion to how much has fallen. Generally, the fallen wheat is a result of higher nitrogen rate which increases yield. It is a delicate balance. Yet, I believe that wheat yields will be better than normal if the rain stops and weather is good until harvest which is about 2 weeks away.
There is good news from Springfield, the General Assembly has adjourned! They passed concealed carry but it is not law as the Governor must sign the bill and I predict he will not. No new pension reform was passed as I expected and the budget crisis continues. The legislators continue to receive their paychecks as if they’re doing their jobs. Business as usual!
Remember we are farmers working together. If we can help let us know.
Our Universities: Hybridization
June 11, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Universities will change to meet changing student needs. Some within the higher education establishment fear looming changes. Change should be embraced by them for the opportunity offered to diverse students.
Many of the most powerful forces driving change in higher education come from the marketplace, driven by new societal needs, the limited availability of resources, rapidly evolving technology, and the emergence of new competitors such as for-profit ventures. Clearly in such a rapidly changing environment, agility and adaptability become important attributes of successful institutions.
James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus, University of Michigan
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By Walter Wendler
Mitch Daniels, former governor of Indiana and now president of Purdue University, nearly got it right June 6, in Orlando, while addressing a group of for-profit educational leaders. He’s interested in “results in higher education,” not a particular mode of delivery for a degree. He suggested that, for some, online education is the way to go.
What he leaves out of the equation is the power of tailored hybrid programs that meet the needs the 21st century college student. The new demographic defies categorization and cannot be put neatly in any box.
It is formal education one-at-a-time.
Students will increasingly secure educational opportunities from multiple sources: for profits, online, community colleges, four-year institutions, and a growing multitude of free sources. For two decades the tin-foil-hatted prognosticators predicted traditional universities would be dinosaurs. They were and are wrong.
Guttenberg’s gadget probably spawned the same fear: After all, why would you need a lecture hall when books where readily available at low cost? The dinosaur is not the campus, but the idea that a student will attain education from a single source.
Daniels misses the point when he suggests that the competition is between different universities offering different delivery methods for knowledge insight and communication.
Burger King got it right when it proclaimed “Have it your way!” The student is climbing in the driver’s seat deciding what works best for him or her. This view demands more from faculty and leadership at all institutions of every stripe: a sincere effort to recognize the strengths, weaknesses, costs, compromises and opportunities of various delivery methods and an honest appraisal of those in meeting the individual needs of students. Likewise the accrediting infrastructure must have a more open mind about what works and how it serves in a quality experience. Academic standards should not get thrown under the bus but must be viewed differently.
This thinking is the antithesis of one size fits all.
Imagine a student in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree completing 54 credits at a local community college. She then transfers into the Bachelor of Science program at a brick and mortar establishment…with 40 of her credits. She begins studies and, after a semester, transfers 6 credits back to the community college to attain her associate’s degree. (This is called “reverse transfer” and the associates’ degree becomes a no-cost “mile marker.” It seems like a good idea.) She then takes a 6-credit study abroad program with the University of Southern California, doing so carefully so the courses transfer into the undergraduate degree at SIU. Along the way she picks up a 4-credit physics course from MITx online: free. She needs to pay for competency testing so the credits will transfer, but it’s the best in the world. Free. And it goes on and on.
“She” is a married mother with two children who started at a community college when 36 years old. Fifteen years later, she finished her undergraduate journey, as her children started theirs.
Nobody sets out to attain a degree in this fashion: could not plan it if you tried. But agile universities, serving motivated students with intelligent faculty and leadership, create degree plans one-at-a-time, from diverse sources, to meet the needs of individual learners.
Now put this ever-changing sequence of opportunity tuned to cost and need in a bag, shake it up, and roll it out.
That’s a picture of what universities are going to look like. Inside the ivy covered box thinking won’t work.
Agility, thoughtfulness, and determination of those who offer educational experiences, and those who accept them, will be the glue that holds the enterprise together: Hybridization, not tradition.
Scared Straight – ‘The Great Sesser Homecoming Ticket Heist’
June 10, 2013 By Leave a Comment
(NOTE: The Sesser Homecoming Rend Lake Days will kick off this week and of course as the ‘Carnies’ rolled into town Sunday night that brought back memories of “The Great Sesser Homecoming Ticket Heist.” Here’s a column I wrote a few years back detailing my brief and ill-fated life of crime. I hope you enjoy!)
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Certainly, there is a great history of the Sesser Homecoming Rend Lake Days that has continued for nearly 60 years in the small Franklin County community. This offering – which I will refer to as “The Great Sesser Homecoming Ticket Heist” will not be found in that illustrious history.
Let me explain.
As a kid growing up in Sesser the annual homecoming, held annually in the third week of June, was always the highlight of the summer. My main goal through the months of April and May was to save as much money as I could mowing yards so I’d have a pocket full of cash when the James Jackson Shows and Rides rolled into town.
Actually, back then a ‘pocket full of cash’ might have amounted to $15 or $20 bucks but in those days it was a windfall. And knowing my enthusiasm my mom would always hand me three or four Eagle Stamp books a few days before the Homecoming – books that she now doubt had been saving for weeks. I would happily go redeem them – I think they were worth $1.50 apiece – and add the proceeds to my stash.
Also, every year when the ‘carnies’ rolled into town I would head to the Sesser City Park on my trusty bicycle where I was joined by an assortment of other knuckleheads. There, we would spend the entire day watching the workers assemble the assortment of rides while counting the minutes until the homecoming became alive with excitement.
One year, when I was 11 years old, we were at the park and we were all straddling our bicycles very near one of the small booths where ride tickets are sold. Noticing that no one was around one of my friends reached into the booth and grabbed an entire roll of carnival ride tickets. Looking back, there must have been 5,000 tickets on that roll.
As he headed out of the park with the stash shoved up under his shirt, for a reason to this day that I don’t understand, I tagged right along behind him. Much like the cowboys in the movies who rob a bank and then head to a safe house to divide the loot, we decided to ride our bikes to Sesser Lake, located a couple of miles southeast of town, to divvy up the cache of yellow ride tickets. To say that I had visions of endless Ferris wheel and tilt-a-whirl rides on my mind would have been an understatement. As a carnival junkie I had just hit the mother lode.
We realized quickly that we had far more tickets than we could use so we played like Robin Hood – steal from the rich and give to the poor — and began dispersing yellow ride tickets all over town. Soon the word spread in the kid community throughout Sesser and we had guys looking for us hoping to ‘score’ some of the hot (in more ways than one) tickets.
Everything was going along without a hitch until the day that the homecoming was scheduled to start. I headed to town that morning and was soon met by my accomplice who was frantic and talking a mile a minute. During times in the conversation when he was coherent he related that he overheard his parents talking about some ‘stolen ride tickets.’ He said the police had been notified and that the color of ride tickets had been changed to blue. According to his story, anybody with a yellow ticket would be arrested.
As I listened to him talk, and my 11-year-old mind surmised the situation, I realized that was my last day of freedom on earth. I was certain that I would be sent to prison and celled up with a guy with tattoos, body odor and no teeth. It goes without saying that his name would be Bubba. Life as I knew it and enjoyed it would be over.
Actually, the thought of being arrested, sent to prison and branded as a thief paled in comparison to what I knew would happen if my dad found out. The thought of the police and sharing a cell with Bubba was one thing, but the thought of Bill Muir planting a boot in the seat of my pants was something else. For those of you who consider that child abuse, my dad would quickly tell you it was the most successful way he found to deal with a heathen child.
After a few minutes of remorse followed quickly by panic we decided that we still had time to try and round up the stolen tickets. We must have ridden our bikes 50 miles that day trying to recover those blasted yellow tickets and were successful finding everybody but one person. Only minutes before the rides were scheduled to start we found out that the one person we were looking for was already at the homecoming, so we made a frantic run for the park. We found him happily standing in line at the Ferris wheel with a yellow ticket clinched in his hand. We managed to get to him before he got to the ticket-taker, and in the process spared ourselves a lengthy prison sentence.
I’ve attended the Sesser Homecoming virtually every year since that fateful summer in 1964, always enjoying one of those delicious barbeques and some roasted corn. While I have many wonderful memories from the Homecoming I still vividly recall that harrowing June day nearly 50 years ago when “The Great Sesser Homecoming Ticket Heist” scared me straight and quickly ended my life of crime.
Our Universities: A Fearful Future?
June 5, 2013 By Leave a Comment
The forces that appear to threaten universities provide the perfect opportunity for institutions to be able to do their job in a changing social milieu. What appears to contradict or undermine purpose is, in reality, a recovery of strength.
“Evil [a baseless challenge to what is right, my addition] has no substance of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or corruption of that which has substance.”
John Henry Cardinal Newman
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By Walter Wendler
Sometimes I’m an alarmist. I see changes in higher education that give me pause.
Alarmingly, student preparedness compared to a few generations ago is slipping. Students arrive on campus with low math, science and reading skills: a challenge perceived by many educators during most of the last half of the 20th century. To be sure, public expectations have increased as more families see universities as a means to economic security, regardless of student aptitude or demonstrated ability.
Another alarm rings: Students unsure of what to study but led to believe by pop culture, parents, and press that studying anything at a university has value. This was probably true 100 years ago when a smaller portion of the population attended college and there were fewer “junk” degree options. It is increasingly less true and many more graduates in traditional disciplines from anthropology to zoology, studied without passion or purpose, yield low value educational experiences.
A third alarm resonates: Brick and mortar universities will become dinosaurs as they are replaced by online and Massively Open Online Courses ( MOOC’s), for cheapness, accessibility, opportunities for self-paced learning, and omnipresent availability in a virtual classroom at a virtual university.
The clanging fourth alarm: A university should be a means of providing employment. This is not to demean the value of a job at graduation. Effective education should create a desire for life-long learning in students because learning creates ability and ability creates employment opportunity. Certificates don’t do that. Enlightened capability does and it is the pinnacle of education.
These four alarms should not lessen the value universities bring to individual and society, but make us examine how contemporary universities may best serve and support a free and forward-looking society.
Rather than decry the implications of poor preparation of students, universities must find ways to create an enriched learning environment that challenges students in response to changing attitudes, aptitudes and aspirations.
Well directed focus on career choice creates interest and motivation. How many times have we heard college graduates say, “The first two years of school were not much fun for me, but in the core of my career interests in the last two, my attention and performance increased.” This is not mindless careerism, but interest driven achievement.
Online learning, when correctly exploited, creates the means for students to improve exposure and ability.
With this mindset, it is possible to confront the three alarms of preparation, focus, and access, through the fourth alarm: the muscle and liberation of the demonstrated love of learning.
Threats squarely addressed become energizing agents. Threat “has no substance of its own,” except what we give it.
Good universities function by focusing on the relationship between teacher and student, each committed to learning. No placebo works. These four alarms should create a faculty guided renaissance in how our universities serve students and society. Enlightened leadership and impassioned faculty seize imagined threats as empowering refreshments.
Guarantees of success for prepared students, assurances of lifetime employment, the replacement of the campus with internet addresses, and the myth that when the degree is complete so is learning are evaporating one by one.
Perspective, purpose and persistence fuel excellence. Fear leads to turf protection, the antithesis of education.
Our Universities: Debt and Learning: Cause and Effect
May 28, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Students make decisions about studying for careers with some facts, but far too few when the costs are so high. Ask anybody with a collection agency in tow and a degree and no job. When education was 80 percent state subsidized it was not a problem. It is now.
If a decision-making process is flawed and dysfunctional, decisions will go awry.
Carly Fiorina
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By Walter Wendler
Whenever someone would walk in my office for a meeting I didn’t schedule, I would ask, “How much do you need?” The first response was always, “This is not about money it’s about academic excellence,” or “This is about a better working environment for faculty and staff,” or “This is about propelling the University forward.” About 3 minutes into the conversation “the ask” was made and I would say, “See, I told you so.”
I would then go into my standard pitch which included this epithet, “This challenge is not ours alone, but the people at Harvard — who have more money than God — are sitting around a desk like this one at this very moment decrying the lack of resources.” It’s the nature of chasing excellence.
As states reduced funding, universities infrequently modified mission and allocated scarce resources to the highest priorities. Debt deferring students are paying the freight with increased tuition and fees as the salve for scarcity’s wound. Lately they are not too happy about it.
There are ways to increase resources for the highest priorities… the same way it happens in a household… tough decision making. If libraries are seen as the foundation of success for a university, invest in libraries — stadiums, students, faculty, and staff — same deal.
If leadership cannot assign priorities and continues increasing tuition and fees there is a high price to pay in dollars and public confidence. Debt burdens grow, students seek lower-cost alternatives, faculty move and, as always, the marketplace relentlessly rules. Students and families pick the cost/quality/utility equation that works for them.
A devastating statistic from a Wells Fargo study reported by Halah Touryalai in Forbes last week is captured in the title, “Student Loan Problems: One Third Of Millennial’s Regret Going To College.”
Increasing costs and the perceived need to serve more and more students with less and less money is backbreaking work for the bean counters and leaves students holding the bag in bewilderment. The debt and learning time-bomb continues to tick.
Last week Louisiana announced a plan to fund projects on community college campuses to train plumbers, welders, nurses, and others for high demand occupations. The protestations of Louisiana’s university leadership followed closely, with wailing and gnashing of teeth: Too much for the two year schools.
Populism, politics, and old-fashioned persuasion create community college charm. Legislators perceive, rightly or wrongly, that investment for a skilled workforce have high public value. The investment in some university education tends to be less easily justified: that is the political reality.
Unfortunately too many institutions say “yes” to students not ready to study: They crave the loan dollars students are willing to sign up for. There is institutional responsibility in this debt burden. There is also political responsibility as government insured loan money is available regardless of ability to pay-back. Responsible behavior must prevail: Otherwise, the public trust, and the lives of individual student borrowers are compromised.
Thirty-three percent say, “This was a mistake?” Something’s kaput.
According to the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys in a study published last February graduating college seniors debt loads are growing at 5% per year. More troubling: The 35 to 49-year-old age group debt burdens grew by nearly 50%. Parent’s loans for the education of their offspring have increased 75% since 2005, and the average $34,000 borrowed by mom and dad exceeds $50,000 over a 10 year repayment plan. Meanwhile, default rates on government loans are near 20%.
The National Association of Home Builders says student indebtedness is having a negative impact on home buying. The education bubble popping the recovering housing bubble: Same song, different tune.
It must stop but it requires the political will of elected officials to demand accountability from universities and students have some proof of performance in their portfolio before borrowing. Especially as the cost of education increases: A wider gate at lower-cost community colleges, more scrutiny at the more expensive state flagships.
Or, on the other hand, we can tolerate or condone what Sussette Sheree Timmons pulled off according to a Dallas Morning News story last week. Ms. Timmons enrolled in and dropped out of 13 colleges since 2009, being granted financial aid and not attending or participating: A racket in this exaggerated and thankfully rare case. We hope.
She faces fraud charges. We hope.
Thirteen institutions ignorant? We hope.
Open Letter to High School Graduates
May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
This was originally published on May 14, 2012. It may be worth a second read.
Walter V. Wendler
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Dear Graduating Senior,
I am begging your pardon for a somber reflection amidst the joy of accomplishment: not to be a wet rag on the festivities of graduation, but a bright light on the realities of post-secondary education.
If you are going on to a state university, your GPA is a 3.5 or better, your ACT or SAT score is at the 70th percentile – placing you in the top 30% of current test takers – and you enter the University this year, about 56% of students with similar qualifications will graduate in 6 years. What’s surprising about this number is that it’s not higher, closer to 85 or 90%. But college is tough. That is what you pay for.
On the other hand, if you’re going to a university with a more typical 2.8 GPA and are at the 45th percentile on the ACT or SAT, the likelihood of finishing in 6 years drops to well below 50%. These are not great odds. Not like the odds that you carried to high school when graduation was nearly guaranteed. Show up and win.
It wouldn’t surprise you that if you are well-prepared for college study – a good GPA, ACT/SAT score, and class rank in the top 50% – you are more likely to succeed, whether on borrowed funds or your dime. But access does not equal success.
Nearly 2 out of 3 students on the way to a baccalaureate degree borrow money. This is troubling. While the high school experience appears to be free, unless of course you pay taxes, the university experience is not. Additionally, the drop-out rate for those who take loans is nearly 23%. Imagine taking out a car note and never being able to drive it, or buying a house that you can never eat or sleep in.
If you haven’t posted a good academic performance in high school, don’t believe a university, its leadership, advertisements, or admissions officers who co-sign your promissory note with no responsibility for its payment obligation.
They need paying students.
Stoking a deceitful dream on life support – an under-appreciated, over-financed, media-hyped charade – is the real deception, and the weight falls on your back, not theirs.
A shameful, elaborate sham, when 1 out of 2 college graduates this year are unemployable in their chosen field.
Look carefully at the costs and benefits of university education. University officials may not tell you the truth: enrollments could drop. Bankers will not tell you the truth: interest income will fall off. Elected officials will not tell you the truth: elections will be lost. Talk to family, friends, and educators for counsel. And listen to those really concerned for you carefully.
If you choose to attend a “second best” university, you may be lulled into thinking that your chances for graduation will improve significantly. Not true. You will find, at good mid-major institutions and many teachers colleges, that high-quality faculty demand energy, interest, intellectual acuity and classroom performance; and if you haven’t exhibited that in high school, the likelihood that you will spontaneously develop them amid the distractions of university is near nil. There are very few curve breakers.
Maybe you can find a low stress major and get through on little work. You probably won’t find a job – remember half don’t. Econ 101 tells it like it is -YGWYPF- but in reality if you are borrowing, you didn’t pay for it. Yet.
A low-employability, near minimum wage major and $50,000 in debt – national averages are a bit over $25,000 – is less valuable than a good high school diploma with four years of experience.
Unenlightened? Call me a caveman. Cruel? I think of it as honest.
Here is the substance of my advice as you graduate.
One: If you have to borrow money to enter a university straight away, don’t. Go to a community college. Pick rigorous courses that you know will transfer and get them at an 80% discount off the cost of state university prices.
Don’t borrow a dime.
If you need a boost to finish after demonstrating ability at a community college, borrow sparingly in the last two years, but never in the first two.
Never.
Two: If your life circumstance requires you to work and study simultaneously, do it. There is no law of the universe that says a college education must take four years. If it takes more, and you can do it for cash, do it. Don’t borrow money.
Three: Consider carefully with your family, and counselors you trust, the dollar value of your career path choice. Find a way to graduate from college in a chosen career option with little or no debt.
Four: If you walk to class on C-note Nikes, or checking a Diesel watch to see if you’re late, you are acting foolishly. Sorry for insensitive straightforwardness. When every friend you’ve got heads to Acapulco on spring break, don’t go. Go do something noble to create capital. Work. Or Study. But, don’t spend or export borrowed capital.
Five: Lastly, if you think you worked hard in high school, know that any university worth its salt will have you working at levels 4 to 5 times more challenging for a good GPA.
Study hard, work diligently, and challenge yourself intellectually. Show this to someone you respect and ask them if I sound crazy. I dare you.
All the best in your future.
Sincerely,
WVW
Franklin County Farm Bureau
May 16, 2013 By Leave a Comment
By J. Larry Miller
It’s hard to believe but we have had 5-6 days of dry weather. Activity on farms is at a fever pitch with the planting of corn, spraying of fields, fungicide applications on wheat, fertilizer spreading and tillage. Other than that most farmers have nothing to do except mow their yards, work in the garden, bale hay or just spend a few minutes enjoying this beautiful weather.
Larry Miller, executive director Franklin County Farm Bureau
I talked with a farmer on Monday who said this is the worst day of the year because this is when we get serious and everything happens at once. Today farmers are checking wheat fields looking for a window to spray fungicides.
During the last few days wheat development has rapidly increased and literally heads of wheat are showing in fields overnight. This will allow for a very narrow window of opportunity for aerial application of fungicides. Once the head of wheat is visible flowering begins and there is a 36 hour window of opportunity for effective use of fungicide. Fungicides have become a very important part of wheat management because diseases will now be the most dangerous to the wheat crop. Farmers have seen economic benefits from this added investment.
With all of the activity occurring in the county equipment will be moving up and down roads and we certainly ask for your patients when traffic is not moving as quickly as you would like because of the farmers moving from field to field. Please remember that we need to be able to see you in your vehicle so that we are aware of where you are. Stay far enough back that we can see you.
I have had the opportunity in the last few days to attend Honors Awards Presentations at Sesser, Benton and West Frankfort. Your Farm Bureau dues have made it possible for us to grant a total of $2,500 in scholarships to three individuals – Fallon Dublo from Sesser, Brooke Jones from Benton and Hannah Ice from West Frankfort. We wish all three of these girls the best of luck in their college agriculture careers.
This past weekend we had a successful Antique Tractor Drive and Touch-A-Tractor event. We had 36 Antique Tractors involved in the Tractor Drive. It was an almost perfect day for a young or old farmer to enjoy her/her “old” tractor. We had participants from as far away as Indiana and Kentucky. We appreciate the Young Leaders Committee and the Junior Young Leaders Committee all of their efforts in making this a success.
There was a lot of activity on both the state and national legislative fronts this week but, at the end of the day, very little was actually accomplished. Yes, I know you are shocked. The action that did occur though has certainly set up some interesting debate and discussion as they move forward in both the state and national arenas. The next couple of weeks will be very significant ones for many of our issues.
In Springfield, action on pensions turned to the Senate. Earlier this week, it was announced that the We Are One Coalition, representing employee unions, had put an offer on the table for a pension reform plan that they would support. The plan would offer options for pension reform to both current and active employees. This approach of offering pension reform options to employees for them to choose has been supported by Senate leadership as a way to make pension reforms constitutional. It was reported that this pension reform proposal does not provide the same amount of pension savings as SB 1, the pension reform proposal that passed the House last week.
The pension reform proposal supported by the We Are One Coalition, SB 2404, passed the Senate on Thursday with 40 yes votes and 16 no votes. It has now been sent to the House. It is not yet clear if the House will take up this proposal for a vote or continue to encourage the passage of SB 1.
Related to the development on pension reforms, the House held a public meeting this week regarding the transfer of downstate teacher pension costs to local school districts. No proposal on this transference has yet surfaced, so stay tuned.
Finally, some movement on hydraulic fracturing also took place this week. Negotiations on the final remaining issues on the hydraulic fracturing legislation occurred with the hope of reaching a final agreement on the legislation very soon.
Remember we are farmers working together if we can help let us know.
