Higher Education

Heartbreak of psoriasis

23 July 2009

Yesterday WSAZ-TV reported on Kinetic Park in Huntington. As originally envisioned, Kinetic Park was to be a technology park closely connected to Marshall University. Today only a dermatologist’s office and an accounting firm reside on the upper level of the site. Surrounding them is the West Virginia equivalent of sagebrush.

The strangest part of the WSAZ story concerned site infrastructure. Dr. Susan Touma, the on-site dermatologist (an anchor tenant for nerdy technology types?), told the reporter: “We had phone lines put in and a lot of different other things that weren’t in place.” WSAZ went on to report that contractors were just laying cable for TV and high speed internet access yesterday. How on earth can you claim to have a technology park when you don’t even have high speed internet access available on your site? I had always assumed that Kinetic Park had not succeeded because of the lack of needed entrepreneurial talent in Huntington. Now I learn it may have been the lack of internet?

Before anyone in Morgantown laughs about the plight of Huntington’s Kinetic Park, please take a tour of the West Virginia University Research Park on Route 705 in what otherwise is a booming area of Morgantown. According to a November 2002 WVU press release about the Research Park, then Vice President for Research John Weete said: “It is fully expected that the WVU Research Park will become a self-sufficient, cost-effective, world-class center of research, technology development, commercialization and business activity resulting from strong links between the park occupants and the intellectual capital of WVU” … in “multi-tenant buildings totaling approximately 650,000 square feet of space.” This quote is not intended to be a clue to help you locate the site. All I can say is: Look for the West Virginia equivalent of sagebrush. If any place has the sagebrush market cornered, it’s West Virginia University’s Research Park.

As someone will surely tell me, the heartbreak of psoriasis is no laughing matter. We need to figure out why Kinetic Park, WVU’s Research Park and the Dow Technology Center in South Charleston are in their present conditions and what, if anything, we might be able to do to change it.

The game of charades

21 July 2009

As anyone remotely familiar with higher education job searches knows, searches for top positions often are rigged. Generally, this is done by stacking a search committee with people who will support a particular candidate and/or railroading a candidate through a divided search committee because the rigger knows he or she has the votes.

Knowing how searches usually are rigged, I must admit to utter and complete bafflement concerning the process used to hire Mike Hamrick as Marshall University’s new athletic director. My hunch is that the search was not rigged, but I have no explanation for the unusual chain of events.

President Stephen Kopp made a big splash a few months ago by announcing a top-notch search committee consisting of board members, faculty and community leaders. Then he apparently decided to ignore them. According to Huntington Herald-Dispatch reporter Chuck Landon, President Kopp and two unnamed search committee members traveled to Texas and interviewed the finalists and decided to hire Mike Hamrick without consulting with the full search committee.

Four observations:

If you are trying to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar, use the average guess of a large group of people rather than relying on your own guess and you’re more likely to win. The same rule applies to hiring.
It’s a big mistake to pretend that someone’s opinion matters when it doesn’t. Nothing demoralizes people more. And Marshall University doesn’t need any more demoralized people.
Every person I’ve ever seen hired through a flawed search process has struggled in his or her job. This does not bode well for Mr. Hamrick or Marshall University athletics.
If Mr. Hamrick does struggle, there won’t be a search committee to blame for a bad hire.

22 July 2009. Further reading: Las Vegas Sun article on Hamrick’s departure.

Recording For the Blind and Dyslexic

19 July 2009

Having had the pleasure of working around several people with disabilities over the years, I have gained an appreciation for the difficulties they face … whether it be trying to maneuver around the halls of the West Virginia State Capitol in a wheelchair or reading textbooks if blind.

Two weeks ago Inside Higher Ed reported on a lawsuit brought by the National Federation for the Blind and the American Council of the Blind against Arizona State University for implementing a pilot program that will use Amazon’s new Kindle e-reader to distribute books to students. Why the lawsuit? While the Kindle can translate digital books into audio, “users can access the feature only through on-screen menus that are not accessible to the blind.” (Emphasis in original.)

The article intrigued me because West Virginia has a chapter of a little-known organization, Recording For the Blind and Dyslexic (RFB&D), which takes textbooks and converts them into audio form with the help of volunteer readers. The audio texts are then made available to blind and dyslexic individuals.

I encourage each of you to learn more about RFB&D and consider attending the local chapter’s Black, White and Read All Over Ball at Huntington’s Big Sandy Superstore Arena on 25 September 2009.

World conference on higher education: It’s a woman’s world after all

18 July 2009

Yet another topic highlighted at the World Conference on Higher Education last week was the increase in the number of women in higher education. Internationally, women now outnumber men for the first time, and that trend is expected to increase. In the United States and West Virginia, women in higher education began to outnumber men quite a few years ago. Today, for example, more than 55% of West Virginia’s public institution students are women.

Last month, Foreign Policy wrote about the results of these trends. The subtitle and first sentence say it all: “Manly men have been running the world forever. But the Great Recession is changing all that, and it will alter the course of history. The era of male dominance is coming to an end.” In addition to noting that women soon will account for 60% of higher education students in the United States, the article points out that 80% of the job losses experienced since November have been experienced by men. Foreign Policy goes on to discuss the probable consequences of this shift.

I had been bothered by the ARRA’s heavy emphasis on “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects and other activities which benefit men disproportionately. No more. Men need all the help they can get.

In the larger scheme of world history, the trend from a man’s world to a woman’s world, which was not a central focus of the World Conference on Higher Education, may be the most significant.

World conference on higher education: Bearing the cost

17 July 2009

Yet another topic addressed by World Conference on Higher Education attendees was the trend of decreasing government contributions to higher education as a percentage of the overall cost of higher education. This trend is especially pronounced in Europe, which has a tradition of providing free public higher education. But the trend also is pronounced in West Virginia. At the beginning of the millennium, the State paid about 60% of a four-year student’s cost of education (not cost of attendance, which includes room and board, etc. and is another matter); nine years later students are being assessed almost 60% of the cost. A dramatic shift. Having said that, please realize that this analysis ignores student financial aid, which increased dramatically over that same period at the state level, so West Virginia higher education – especially baccalaureate institutions, which benefitted disproportionately from the PROMISE scholarship – is not quite as poor as some claim.

Despite what you might hear in the hallowed halls of academe, there is a reasonably good argument for having students pay for their own higher education, even if they have to take out student loans to do so. In 2006 the average male with a high school diploma earned $37,030, while the average male with a bachelor’s degree earned $60,910. A rather substantial loan payment could be made with that $23,880 in extra income. If the average college graduate is going to see that kind of benefit, why shouldn’t he or she pay for it? Furthermore, why should that high school graduate earning $23,880 less than the college graduate subsidize the college graduate’s education with his or her taxes?

There are two reasonably good responses to these points. The first relates to fairness and equity. Research tells us that students from poorer families, particularly with no history of college attendance, too often make the wrong decision from a purely economic perspective not to attend college. Do we really want the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer? The second relates to the larger public benefits that accrue to an educated society – stronger economic development, greater civic engagement, etc. The rising tide of education lifts all boats.

Heartbreak of psoriasis

The game of charades

Recording For the Blind and Dyslexic

World conference on higher education: It’s a woman’s world after all

World conference on higher education: Bearing the cost

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