Tag Archives: university

Endangering education – Great, brief commentary on academic inbreeding

Living things that pursue completeness prefer crossbreeding. Even primordial cells knew this. Instead of blocking germs that threatened to infiltrate them, the cells sought co-existence and co-prosperity with them. Today, the mitochondria in our somatic cells provides evidence of this phenomena. Even if we humans do not consciously choose crossbreeding, our instinct for it is certainly in our DNA.

The same principle applies to education, where academic inbreeding decreases competitiveness for both students and schools. Educational institutions that succumb to this problem fail to keep up with current trends, which is why Ivy League universities in the United States often hire from outside their ranks.

via joongangdaily.joins.com

While academic in-breeding goes well beyond simply being at the same school, this is a significant problem.

These professors primarily graduate from a SKY university and then do their graduate studies abroad. This certainly lessens the damage of in-breeding. However, this also ignores the cadres of qualified, talented applicants who happened to either bloom later or thrive in other environments. It is a terribly short-sighted.

A long struggle for part-time lecturers

A long struggle for part-time lecturers


Kim Young-kon, left, and his wife Kim Dong-ay pose with a foreign supporter from Hong Kong in front of their tent pitched on a sidewalk near the National Assembly in Seoul, in March. / Courtesy of Kim Young-kon

Couple lives in tent for 1,000 days in protest

By Park Si-soo
Staff reporter

For 1,000 days, a couple in their 60s has lived in a worn-out, small tent pitched on a sidewalk leading toward the National Assembly in Yeouido, Seoul, demanding the passage of bills to improve part-time lecturers’ employment status and working conditions.

via koreatimes.co.kr

Another article on part-time lecturers’ struggles in Korea. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, DON’T BECOME A PROFESSOR!!

This is a great job if you can get it. It is becoming more and more unlikely that you will, though. Go make your way in the content fields and then come to teaching once you have made your mark (and some money) in your content area.

Why Do Korean Universities Lag Behind Hong Kong’s? – And then some of my reasons

Why Do Korean Universities Lag Behind Hong Kong’s?

The University of Hong Kong was named the best university in Asia for the second straight year in a study by the Chosun Ilbo and Quacquarelli Symonds of 448 universities in 11 Asian countries. Hong Kong University of Science and Technology came second and Chinese University of Hong Kong fourth.

But in Korea, Seoul National University was the only one to make it into the top 10, ranking in sixth place. Hong Kong has a population of 7 million, a mere seventh of Korea’s, but when it comes to the competitiveness of universities, Hong Kong does far better than Korea.

The government of Hong Kong provides financial support to eight universities through a funding committee affiliated with the education ministry. The size of the support depends strictly on performance, which prompts universities to compete to attract the best faculty and students and to improve the quality of their education and research. At the University of Hong Kong, 56 percent of faculty and 31 percent of students are foreigners from 80 countries. Using English as the preferred language of education, the university manages to draw the best academics in each field. At its engineering faculty, 96 percent rank among the top one percentile group in the ISI (Information Sciences Institute) ranking of most cited research papers.

via english.chosun.com

First, I have to question how these universities are ranked. I’ve yet to see anything about data collection and analysis, but I’m weary of any of these rankings.

This is a good, surface-level analysis, but it ignores some of the reasons why Hong Kong universities can attract these high-performing faculty.

1. HK Uni’s pay for these folks. Real salaries (with benefits) are around double of those in Korea.

2. HK is simply more foreigner-friendly (primarily European/North American) than Korea. Heck, it was a British protectorate for a 100 years and this is obvious when visiting the city.

3. HK Uni’s offer research release time. Translation, not as much teaching leaves time for more research.

4. Lastly, HK Uni’s attract mid-/end-of-career professors who are looking for new opportunities (travel, research, weather, etc.) and the high salaries mentioned in #1 make this an easier transition. Can you imagine one of these professors coming to Seoul with a middle/high school aged kid and a spouse for $80,000/yr (humanities)? Before you say, that’s not too bad, think about the high cost of housing, of shopping (clothes and food), and..oh yeah… $25,000/yr for international school tuition and fees. Forget about it. Not going to happen.

There are also some things that I’m not sure about. They may be different and they may not be.

1. Korean universities, while ruled from above (hierarchical), are run like fiefdoms. There is very little central planning focused on standardizing student/faculty experiences: classroom equipment, technology infrastructure, and faculty/staff training (for a few examples). This not only effects student experiences (and thus evaluations), but also faculty productivity. This lack of standardization results in extra planning time and loss of opportunities to streamline their teaching and class management. This also tends to result in over-lapping documentation requirements due to the fractured nature of the organizations.

2. Heavier teaching loads result in less time for good quality research. This leads to more publications in lower-ranked journals. It’s easier and faster to write 2 mediocre articles and publish in non-SSCI journals than it is to write 1 high-quality article and publish in an SSCI journal. This is a general problem throughout academia, but it seems particularly problematic here, especially considering most schools have tenure systems that actually take 10 years. That means that pre-tenure professors are struggling to publish about 2-4 articles/yr (depending on school) for nearly 10 years. Talk about burn out. Unless they can be assured of meeting their minimums, they have a hard time shooting for SSCI pubs that can take 2 years to actually get published. By then, they are looking for a new job 🙁

I’m not really down on Korean universities, particularly the top-tier ones. They are doing quite well in the science and technology areas. They do seem to be  able to both staff from within and recruit from abroad. As with most large organizations, universities must continuously strive to both take care of their existing customers (students) and innovate to attract new customers and employees. If they ignore one group, it will hurt both the satisfaction of existing and the recruitment of new faculty and students.  This is what, in the long run, will help universities improve and even do well in these stupid popularity contests.

The coming melt-down in higher education – I think he underestimates the culture of prestige

The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer)

For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing.

I’m afraid that’s about to crash and burn. Here’s how I’m looking at it.

1. Most colleges are organized to give an average education to average students.

Pick up any college brochure or catalog. Delete the brand names and the map. Can you tell which school it is? While there are outliers (like St. Johns, Deep Springs or Full Sail) most schools aren’t really outliers. They are mass marketers.

2. College has gotten expensive far faster than wages have gone up.

As a result, there are millions of people in very serious debt, debt so big it might take decades to repay. Word gets around. Won’t get fooled again…

3. The definition of ‘best’ is under siege.

4. The correlation between a typical college degree and success is suspect.

5. Accreditation isn’t the solution, it’s the problem.

A lot of these ills are the result of uniform accreditation programs that have pushed high-cost, low-reward policies on institutions and rewarded schools that churn out young wanna-be professors instead of experiences that turn out leaders and problem-solvers.

via sethgodin.typepad.com

I’m one of the first to say that the next 20 years won’t look like the last 20 years in higher education when asked about the future of education. I even share many of the same sentiments as Godin. I differ in my estimate of the direct of this change.

Prestige will always skew the market and many of these universities sell prestige. Not just the Ivy League schools, but most of the large state schools do this as well. Prestige has both local and global effects. That big State U. generally has a lot of prestige in the local/regional context, whereas the Ivy League schools (not to mention the other more well-known schools) have it on a more global scale. This prestige factor isn’t going to disappear quickly. There is too much invested in it.

Prestige doesn’t just benefit the student and job-seeker. Prestige benefits the alumni all the way to the board room (and into the community). Their educational background is the foundation for this prestige in many cases. It makes them part of a larger, loose network. Prestige is by it’s very nature an illusion propped up by the schools, applicants, alumni, and their interactions with society at large. Change in this dynamic runs deep and the holders of power in this dynamic will struggle to maintain power.

With that said, I agree with Godin when it comes to the fate of those schools lacking the prestige factor (or even those at the lower rungs). They are the ones who will either change or perish. These schools have to offer more for less. The growing education markets both within the country and abroad are beginning to eat their lunch.

Univ. Entrance Drops for 1st Time since ’90 in Korea

Univ. Entrance Drops for 1st Time since ’90 Write 2010-03-07 13:10:38   Update 2010-03-07 15:20:18

The ratio of high school graduates entering university has fallen for the first time since 1990.

Statistics Korea said in its social indices report for last year that 82 percent of high school graduates went on to college last year, down from 83.8 percent in 2008.

The female university entrance rate was 82.4 percent, besting that of males at 81.6 percent for the first time.

Experts say they are unsure whether the fall is temporary or if the entrance rate has peaked and is falling.

via world.kbs.co.kr

I’m very interested in this. Is this just an anomaly or is it a trend in the de-emphasis of university education? Is there an increase in attending non-Korean institutions?

Document Management / Knowledge Management in Small Departments with Limited Funds

I have been so focused on document sharing (including: text, audio, video, etc) over the last 5 or so years, I’ve forgotten how difficult enterprise-type document management can be.

There are no lack of resources for document sharing (even the text kind). Scribd is one of the best. However, when it comes to a product that stores (all sorts of files), organizes (both keywords and indexed search), keep version histories, and provides a closed, shared workspace for group collaboration is a tough find. Oh yeah, did I mention that I can’t afford enterprise licensing for a small English language education department? The options are truly limited and frustrating in this case.

I don’t see that the larger, opensource Content Management Systems (CMSs) do this. Drupal, Joomla, and the like are focused on structured organization of content, but not large scale document repositories. If I’m wrong, please comment below. I’d appreciate the help.

Then I started looking toward knowledge management (KM) systems. There are essentially two kinds: (1) is post-centric and (2) document-centric. I’m looking for the latter and it wasn’t easy. Post-centric could really be done in any CMS, but document-centric views are hard to come by. In this area, I’m going to try KnowledgeTree. It’s paired-down community build is free and looks pretty good. Of course, the coolest features are enterprise and expensive 🙂 It looks like it has everything that I need as well as much that I don’t (document routing, check-in/check-out, etc).

Another service, Alfresco Share (http://www.alfresco.com), is an opensource project (with commercial supported version) that does a pretty good job with documents. It is not necessarily a KM application, but rather a online collaborative workspace. Unfortunately, I think that it’s overly difficult, which may be it’s kiss of death. IU isn’t very good; therefore, it times a long time to learn and a longer time to internalize the functionalities. It took me forever to find a document in a folder of less than 30 files. All I wanted to do was to find the most recent and there was no easy way to do it (fail). However, I’ve since learned to search for them, which makes it much easier.

Really, and I’ll be struck dead for this by Microsoft-haters, MS SharePoint is the best I’ve seen for this. It is really document-centric, which is exactly what I need for this project. It’s free, too (if enterprise is already using Server 2003 or beyond). Problem is that few people know how to administer it and I don’t think that anybody in my current organization will do take on that chore. The drawbacks? It’s Microsoft and all that entails. It can be overly difficult to accomplish tasks, user management is difficult (and somewhat locked down), and it can be really slow. Oh, yeah. And it requires Internet Explorer for full functionality. Again, I’d love to hear other opinions on SharePoint. My experience with it was over 4 years ago and things tend to change quickly.

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