Quick Takes: How Attitudes Derail Math, College Funds Found to Have Been Misused, Mergers in Georgia, Why a Provost Left After 7 Weeks, Threats Shut Middle Tennessee, Turkey Turmoil at Harvard B-School

Turkey at Harvard Biz School

I’m surprised that Harvard didn’t offer the turkey a professorship on the tenured track. Or if it’s degree credentials were a bit hazy, a full scholarship in the name of cultural diversity.

rosanne soifer, adjunct—Music Business and Lifeskills at Touro College-NYC, at 8:40 am EDT on October 10, 2008

Turkey

You call this news? There have been turkeys on college campuses for years.

Cranberry Sauce, at 8:40 am EDT on October 10, 2008

Derailed Math

In southern Illinois in 1967, I was the only girl at my huge consolidated high school EVER to have taken physics. When I walked into the physics lab, the teacher told me I was in the wrong place, and sent me back to the office to check. An administrator had to accompany me to the classroom and order the teacher to admit me.

The teacher retaliated by seating me far back in the lab, with six empty rows between me and the male students. Of course, I did poorly in the course. I could barely see the board or hear the instructor’s voice!

I recall, in the late 1980’s, reading an article in the New York Times detailing physical differences between male and female brains as the cause of the supposedly natural differences between males and females in mathematical and mechanical ability.

Then I came to teach in the Middle East, where I was astonished to discover that, in both secondary and postsecondary school, girls take exactly the same mathematics and physical science courses as boys do, and do better, on the average, than boys do in these subjects.

There are physical differences between male and female brains, but to assume that these differences are the cause of American women’s underachievement in mathematics is like saying that children who don’t have the opportunity to go to school can’t read because they are less intelligent that those who do.

Anne Osman, at 9:51 am EDT on October 10, 2008

Derailed Math

Let’s see — first, the calculator industry told us that the earlier one uses a calculator in life, the mind would become “free” to teach itself.

Math Ed majors learn a lot less math, and from fewer actual mathematicians, than do professional math majors.

Many elementary and middle school teachers did not have to take much math. In fact, many cannot teach math, much less without a calculator.

Even the president of my college informs incoming students that algebra was “to hard” for him to understand.

What do we expect? When we don’t raise the bar, students will rarely achieve the appropriate goal on their own.

Things will get much worse before they ever get better. I hope to live long enough to teach a math class whose collective knowledge of math equals the entire collective knowledge of my classmates in high school.

Mathematician, at 2:50 pm EDT on October 10, 2008

Mergers in Georgia Just a Start

The merger in Georgia is likely just the first wave in response to the economic depression hitting the world. It is also very likely that the HED for the next year will have a longer than usual of college closings too. And not just for-profit career colleges either. There are many small privates and even not-for-profits that are teetering on the edge. The pool of potential students will shrink as jobs are lost. College tuition loans will tighten making the pool even shallower. Public support and donations will dry up.

Yet, we will not learn. Likely raise tuition and cut out more students. We will still focus on admissions when retention is going to be the key. And we probably will not change with the reality of our economic and social situation which will lose us more support. (http://academicmaps.blogspot.com/...s-lose-billions-of-dollars-and.html)

We should change ourselves before others change us! Georgia, I fear is just the start.Neal R www.academicmaps.blogspot.com

Neal Raisman, President at Academicmaps, at 6:00 pm EDT on October 10, 2008

“I have seen nothing about encouragement"?

Give me a break. There is nothing but encouragement for girls now.

DFS, at 6:00 pm EDT on October 10, 2008

Turkey

Has anyone examined the pedigree of the turkey? Is there a possibility that the turkey is simply a “lost” President?

Linda Bourgeois, Ph.D., Director, Campus Diversity at MVSU, at 12:30 pm EDT on October 12, 2008