News, Views and Careers for All of Higher Education
March 9, 2007
— Scott Jaschik and Doug Lederman
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Why in the world does an academic library waste money on Sports Illustrated. Cancel your institutional subscriptions, folks.
E J Mask, Prof, at 10:50 am EST on March 9, 2007
Exxon’s massive bounty damages students because it focuses attention on them without confronting the obstacles that they must face. By ignoring the context of student learning, and the embeddedness of student achievement, Exxon betrays students instead of helping them.
Bounties and bribes to students divert attention and resources from where these are needed. Motivating students in this way should never be used to compensate for poor student preparation (in earlier grades), poor teacher quality, and whimsical teaching assignments (out-of-field teachers) by school principals.
More and more colleges are only accepting grades of 4 and 5 on AP exams for transfer credit, forcing incoming students with 3s to retake courses that they may not have fully benefited from. Exxon’s proposal will only worsen this quality control problem.
Worse yet, initiatives like these only serve to demolish the distinction between secondary and postsecondary education. Without this separation – which took more than a century of hard effort to put in place – high schools are being transformed into colleges, but without any of the quality control mechanisms of the latter. Florida, for example, is only now beginning to grapple with this difficult problem. (See: http://home.earthlink.net/~fheapblog )
The only winners in this publicity stunt are the corporation, the school system (free publicity), and the test manufacturer.
Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 10:55 am EST on March 9, 2007
What I think is most interesting that My Rich Uncle has always stated that Preferred Lenders reduce competition and increases cost to students. Yet now they have sought out and established themselves as preferred lenders. So I guess the preferred lender concept no longer reduces competition and increase costs?
Dave, FA Administrator, at 11:55 am EST on March 9, 2007
“Why in the world does an academic library waste money on Sports Illustrated. Cancel your institutional subscriptions, folks.”
Sports Illustrated can provide just as much valid information as any other magazine. Ever heard of holistic learning? Educating the whole student? I support those that take offense at a magazine deciding which issues to deliver. If the institution paid for it, they should receive it.
Paul, at 10:52 am EDT on March 14, 2007
Another comment about Sports Illustrated: Even if you don’t read SI for its truth, there are scholars that study SI for the way it communicates with people. Indeed, even people that might detest the swimsuit issue would probably want to study it to figure out why other people like it.
Larry, at 1:51 pm EDT on March 14, 2007
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“The magazine asserts that some librarians in the past complained about the issue, but librarians — who are expressing their displeasure on electronic discussion boards — are having none of it, noting that their institutions paid for their subscriptions and that the magazine shouldn’t decide which issues aren’t appropriate for them.”
They should stop complaining then. Case closed. Get back to work now.
JBM, at 7:25 am EST on March 9, 2007