{"id":81141,"date":"2022-06-10T09:56:46","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T13:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/?p=81141"},"modified":"2022-06-10T13:41:09","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T17:41:09","slug":"we-should-be-careful-not-to-conveniently-use-covid-19-as-the-scapegoat-for-all-thats-wrong-within-higher-education-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/2022\/06\/10\/we-should-be-careful-not-to-conveniently-use-covid-19-as-the-scapegoat-for-all-thats-wrong-within-higher-education-christian\/","title":{"rendered":"We should be careful not to conveniently use COVID-19 as the scapegoat for all that\u2019s wrong within higher education. [Christian]"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

From DSC:<\/span><\/em>
\nThe following items made me reflect upon the place of COVID-19 in causing the current ills within higher education — but also thinking about the ills that were present long before <\/em>Covid hit us. <\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Key point:<\/span><\/em>
\nWe should be careful not to conveniently use COVID-19 as the scapegoat for all that’s wrong within higher education.<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

On the faculty\/staff side of the house<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
\n

The Season of Our Professorial Discontent<\/strong> <\/a>— from chronicle.com by Paul Musgrave
\nThe pandemic irrevocably changed the student-teacher relationship \u2014 and not for the better.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpts:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n
\n
As pandemic slides into endemic, it\u2019s worth asking: Did the pandemic break something fundamental about academe? Was the spring of 2022 the end of pandemic disruptions, or the start of a new normal?
\n…
\n<\/span><\/strong>This time, as I delivered the lines to an audience of 30 in a course with 200 students enrolled, I was wondering whether I wanted to give a lecture ever again.<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

From DSC:<\/span><\/em>
\nRegarding the first quote…several things were broken within academe long before COID-19. Re: the second quote, what should that tell us if only 30 students showed up in a class with 200 students in it?<\/span><\/p>\n

Faculty autonomy and faculty satisfaction are being whittled away.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From DSC:<\/span><\/em>
\nFrom what I can tell, that’s been happening for years within the K-12 learning ecosystem. It seems like this trend is now occurring within the higher ed learning ecosystem. (I could go off on a tangent about why we didn’t help our fellow educators within K-12 — whose “product” directly impacts those working within higher ed — but I better not. This posting is already packed with reflections.)<\/span><\/p>\n

Below are some relevant quotes from Kevin McClure’s 5\/27\/22 article out at The Chronicle of Higher Education (emphasis DSC). <\/em>I agree with much of what Kevin is saying here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Blame the Pandemic for Worker Discontent<\/strong><\/a>
\nIt hasn\u2019t just been a tough two years. It\u2019s been a tough two decades.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Excerpt:<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The pandemic alone didn\u2019t cause the low morale and turnover you might be seeing among your faculty and staff members just as the lack of personal protective equipment didn\u2019t solely give rise to the Amazon Labor Union. Yes, today\u2019s workers are re-evaluating their workplaces, seeking reassignment within their institutions, and in some cases resigning from jobs altogether. But they are doing so for many of the same reasons they did 20 years ago \u2014 poor working conditions.
\n…<\/span>
\nSo burnout isn\u2019t just about people struggling to cope with stress; it\u2019s about people struggling in workplaces where stress never subsides.<\/span>
\n…<\/span>
\nIn my own interviews on morale, higher-education workers have talked about leaders who aren\u2019t listening, low compensation, and understaffing.
\n<\/span>…<\/span>
\nWe see our workplaces differently, and our tolerance of poor working conditions has evaporated.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

On the student side of the house<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n
\n

“It hasn\u2019t just been a tough two years. It\u2019s been a tough two decades.” <\/span><\/em>The same — and likely more — could be said for the student side of the house, especially in regards to the price of education and how relevant\/up-to-date the content has been. <\/span><\/strong>As the prices of obtaining a degree have skyrocketed over the last several decades, students and parents now HAVE to ask, “What’s the Return On Investment (ROI) here? Am I gaining the skills in college that will get me hired after college?”<\/span><\/p>\n

Again, the point I’m trying to make here is that we should be careful not to conveniently use COVID-19 as the scapegoat for all that’s wrong within higher education.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Along these lines, the following two quotes seem relevant to me from Beth McMurtrie’s (6\/2\/22) Teaching<\/em> e-newsletter (also from The Chronicle<\/em>):<\/span><\/p>\n

I asked Walton to tell me more about the setup at his university. He said classes were fully in person but instructors were encouraged to record lectures and be highly flexible with due dates. The result: Most days he had less than 50-percent attendance,<\/strong> and he received a lot of last-minute emails from students who said they woke up that morning with a headache or otherwise not feeling well. A few filed documented absence requests, but not many, suggesting that these were not serious illnesses, like Covid.
\n…<\/span>
\nI\u2019ve never had more incompletes for courses than in the last two years, <\/strong>so signaling to students that their distribution courses are flexible and accommodating has only let them de-emphasize them even more.<\/span><\/p>\n

There’s likely a variety of causes\/possibilities here — and I’m sure that Covid-related reasons are among them. But it makes me really wonder if students don\u2019t think that the content is all that valuable or relevant to begin with these days. Is college even worth it anymore? Why am I here in the first place? Where is the motivation coming from? Is it extrinsic or intrinsic motivation?<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps it’s time to change the curriculum\/content as well as the price.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

\"Daniel<\/p>\n

A graphic I created back in 2009, with Yohan Na’s assistance.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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From DSC: The following items made me reflect upon the place of COVID-19 in causing the current ills within higher education — but also thinking about the ills that were present long before Covid hit us. Key point: We should be careful not to conveniently use COVID-19 as the scapegoat for all that’s wrong within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,322,61,86,115,302,260,112,823,159,72,36,35,178,3,74,7,228,79,406,560,279,436,855,480,66,212,321,214,299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-21st-century","category-adjunct-faculty","category-business-side-of-he","category-change","category-colleges","category-community-colleges","category-content-development-aggregation-repositories","category-corporate-business-world","category-credentialing","category-dangers-of-the-status-quo","category-daniel-s-christian","category-future-of-higher-education","category-game-changing-environment","category-generational-differences","category-higher-education","category-leadership","category-learning-ecosystem","category-learning-preferences","category-liberal-arts","category-motivation","category-parents-guardians","category-participation","category-reinvent","category-skills","category-society","category-student-related","category-surviving","category-united-states","category-universities","category-workplace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81141"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81202,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81141\/revisions\/81202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danielschristian.com\/learning-ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}