Kudos to Messrs. Diamond and Allshouse

As a member of the Silent Generation, I commend the authors for their insights and, most of all, the solutions they are offering to the community of what is popularly called “Higher Education” As of late, I must confess, I really don’t understand that concept. Anyway, I am glad to see that someone is offering an alternative to “warehousing” ours and succeeding generations.

In the words of Churchill (that’s Winston and not Ward), “The further back you look, the further ahead you can see!” and this is what Diamond and Allshouse are offering.

A couple of questions: Who else can make the leap from University 1.0 to University 3.0 (Derek Keats and J. Phillip Schmidt in the First Monday online journal)or U3A described herein? Who else can make the leap from the slide rule to the ipod? ...or from analogs to digital natives? Starting as part-time faculty both online and F2F, these transformational leaders and critical thinkers have a world-changing potential in their hands.

Having just completed a F2F course in Strategic Planning and now starting an online course in World Religions, both at major for-profit universities, is certainly my answer to mind-numbing, depression-creating aging warehouses that the current generation seems to want to place us. Just wait until Gen x’ers and y’ers face the replacements for hip-hop and the guitar...Hmmmm!

Edward Winslow, a “tired” Retired Business Professor, at 8:36 am EDT on April 6, 2007

more kudos for your stimulating article! I can only speak for myself but I am sure that I am not alone. Frankly, there are times now at the age of 74 that I feel intellectually and sometimes “physically lonely” after a long career in academia and elsewhere. I know that I have alot to give to others. I would love to have the opportunity to share my experiences (both intellectual and “life") with students. I have had face to face experience with several major figures in the behavioral and social sciences. I have had extensive experience as a clinician and as a researcher and could mentor students in the behavioral sciences. I would prefer to do this first in a “conversational hour” format where the institution would promote the fact that I (we) would be in a specific place (they need to provide this) at a specific time. This would have to be publicized by the university and or departments within the university. Does this remind anyone of the “idealization” of classical Athens? Would anyone join me in lobbying for a programbased upon beginning with “conversational hours’ in the Washington-Baltimore area?

kenneth d feigenbaum, at 2:55 pm EDT on April 6, 2007

No thank you

I love Diamond, but this article is ridiculous. Here is a generation of retirees whose only motivation is satisfying their own egos through their job by focusing on what their title is, how big their office is, and how many secretaries they have.

To make matters worse, they feel they are the “experts,” based solely on experience, and thus have no desire to mentor or help newer employees learn for fear they might compromise their lofty positions. This “experience,” by the way, is usually modeled on outdated ideas about how organizations are structured (a hierarchical model based on lines of reporting borrowed from manufacturing) and how people relate to each other (the boss is expert; he/she does not need your advice or input).

And on top of it all, these are the idiots who will leave us with massive national debt, a broken health care system, a questionable environment, and got all of the advantages of society paying for their education and development. But ask them to pay taxes to pay for this generation of kids, and they balk, preferring to subsidize Halliburton with their tax dollars instead of their own grandchildren.

And we, of the Gen-X generation, are supposed to ask them back? We can’t wait until they get out of the way so we can start to make real progress and repair the damage they left behind. Please, do not feel a need to come back. Volunteer at the library or roll around the park in your wheelchair. We’ll be just fine on our own, thank you.

PS, at 5:10 pm EDT on April 6, 2007

Arrogance and the reading of motivation

The last comment smacks of arrogance beyond the pale. It promotes the sterotype of the the rigid,time warped “old person".The writer seems unaware of the many professors who fought for the past fify years or so against the hierarchal organization of universities; for a democratic decision making apparatus; for a student-centered curriculum; for transdiscplinary and intradisciplinary education; for crediting adult students for work experience: I can go on and on. Are these ideas outmoded? The writer attributes no positive motivation or contribution to those who are retired and wish to play a constructive role for students. Any program which encourages the use of retired faculty of course should not be a “scab” operation. This is a given.

kenneth d feigenbaum, Adjunct Professor at University of Maryland-University College, at 4:05 pm EDT on April 7, 2007

Contra PS and RWH

With all due respect to colleagues like PS and RWH, with whom I have worked over the past forty years, let us take a look at the kinds of people they are describing as weird or whose experience is characterized as irrelevant. Please think twice before you assign them to your wheelchair brigade or feel good jobs in the library.

Over the last decade I have worked personally with ASPEC members like John Hope Franklin and Ambassadors Jamsheed Marker and Maurice Williams. The membership also includes notable scientists in high energy physics, officers in federal research agencies, and authors like Jim Michener and Burton Hersh. We have also had many scholars who had their scares from the Holocaust, the civil rights movement and paid their dues in the revolutions of the 60s and mid 70s. I’m sure PS has read about these times, and RWH had colleagues who were not just standing on the side lines or locked in library cubicles. All of these persons, and many more, enriched the lives of undergraduates and their own by their associations in ASPEC and organizations like it.

There is a bigger and more interesting world out there than many traditional academics may have experienced during their formal years in academe. There is nothing to fear in making the transitions Bob Diamond and I have described. So please, PS and RWH, let us know who you are.

Merle F. Allshouse, Fellow at University of South Florida, at 8:35 pm EDT on April 7, 2007

No thank you, part 2

I stumbled upon this article again while browsing the internet and saw the author’s response. Merle asks us to identify who we are. While RWH may be able to do that, I am an untenured college administrator and will not take that risk publicly. Sorry.

I do have a few responses:

1) Let’s face the reality that there are good and bad people. The worst part is that, because baby-boomers can only operate in the hierarchical mindset, the good ones will not hold the bad ones accountable. Harrassing your employees? Well, she is the boss. Not listening to anyone else’s ideas? Well, he has the “director” title and worked in this area for 33 years, so he *must* be the expert. I have heard from many, many fellow Gen-Xers about how frustrating it is to work at a places where the only valuable ideas (and the only ones actually implemented) come from the elder, more experienced employees. Baby-boomers tend to focus on creating organizations that serve their needs, not the needs of the colleges they work for. After all, how many faculty have gone on strike over student learning, as opposed to health care or retirement benefits? How many heated discussions have occurred over how much students are learning, as opposed to parking and office space? How many faculty actually like assessment?

We do not need ego-maniacs, who can only respond to things in terms of how it affects them, running our colleges. (Note the authors recommend giving the retirees titles....first, who cares!?! and second, only ego-maniacs care about titles; it is the value you create in your job that matters, not your title). The authors are way off base in asserting that the entire baby-boom generation cannot be described in this manner, but look at how an entire generation is leaving the world for their grandchildren and doing very little about it. This isn’t a few outliers...it is millions.

2) I do challenge Diamond’s assertion that experience has value in the contemporary world. This may have been true about 30 years ago, but times have changed. There is so much information available and we are much more sophisticated about knowing about how people learn, that experience just isn’t as relevant as it once was. You don’t have to work 20 years to be bright, skilled, knowledgable, and possess the ability to find, synthesize and evaluate information about our world. In today’s world, experience is an over-rated construct. The market has already realized this. Look at the age of Ford’s and Google’s administrators. Why isn’t experience helping Ford in their time of crisis? Sure, an elder person has just as much potential to be brilliant, witty, innovative, and have great ideas as a younger person, but put experience on the bottom shelf where it rightfully belongs.

3) Where are the authors’ comments about holding elder colleagues accountable? (will never happen; don’t want to look like a sell-out). Where are their comments about, instead of putting the retirees in powerful and high-ranking advisory or think-tank roles, asking they engage in dialog with younger college employees? (don’t bother; retirees have nothing to learn from them anyway).

If the authors really want to open up the value of retirees, they would advocate the following:

*Don’t waste time focusing on titles, ceremonial committees and advisory groups. Focus on creating value for the college, not for the people who will be asked to participate.

*Get the good retirees to hold the college accountable. If a small group on campus is grumbling about a much need change, and 50% of the campus is afraid to speak up lest they offend the 10% who are angry, bring in a well-respected retiree to advocate the change.

*And maybe most importantly, create structures where elder and younger college employees can learn from each other by engaging in dialog. I have learned so much more from my mentors and older colleagues by just asking them for advice and listening, rather than taking direct orders or mulling over recommendations from a task force.

But the biggest rush I get, and what gives me hope, is when they say they learned something new, too.

PS, at 7:00 am EDT on April 8, 2007

My Apologies

Forgive me for being truly bent out of shape about this discussion, but I have a few ad-ons.

First, I grew up in Western North Carolina and taught for several years at UNC-Asheville. The authors wrote, “The outreach and variety of programs [UNC-A’s Center for Creative Retirement] offers has become a major force in drawing early retirees to this region of the country.” Frankly, anyone who believes that is a prime candidate for purchase of the I-26 bridge across the Green River Gorge. Retirees began flooding into Western North Carolina long before UNC-A ever dreamed of their Center, and there was hardly anything UNC-A could have done one way or the other to alter that deluge.

Second, just after I graduated from college I participated in demonstrations in support of the civil rights’ sit-in demonstrators in Richmond (I did not actually sit in). In the late 60s I participated in demonstrations against our war against the people of Vietnam. Even before “Day One” I argued that it was very unlikely (in a probability sense) that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and I have been an outspoken critic – and have participated in demonstrations – of our war against the people of Iraq. These were actions I took based on decisions I made as an individual, and I cannot possibly imagine being “used” by anyone as the “old guy who has been there” and can shed some light on the situation. Frankly, I wouldn’t even consider it. I hadn’t thought of it before I read the comment by PS, but I think if I did that, it would be not be unfair to accuse me of simply massaging my ego.

Third, I am intrigued by Allshouse’s remark, “There is a bigger and more interesting world out there than many traditional academics may have experienced during their formal years in academe. There is nothing to fear in making the transitions Bob Diamond and I have described.” No one – and I do mean NO one – would ever accuse me of being a traditional academic, but if Allshouse and Diamond think their program is a revolutionary idea that will challenge the status quo and improve the educations of our students, they are deluding themselves. If they really want to do something important, let them focus their attention on the quite awful deliberations and initiatives of the Spellings Commission, take the EDUCATION and TRAINING of American student back to square one, and restructure it in a way that will be beneficial to our students (and maybe to our nation as well).

Finally, I am looking for a job ... in mathematics, statistics, or management science. Some schools with posted position vacancies get my credential – which are pretty damned good – look at the dates on my undergraduate transcript (which everyone requests these days), makes a few calculations, and concludes I’m at least 67 (and they’ve only missed by a few years). I do not want to pull punches when participating in discussions like IHE’s, so I don’t want my chances – minuscule as they are – further diminished when these invariably conservative, imbedded-in-the-status quo folks get on line and type in my name. So for the time being, like PS, I’ll remain anonymous.

RWH, at 1:55 pm EDT on April 8, 2007

Professional “half lives” and the ball back in RWH’s court

Professional half lives, “the time required for the quantity to decay to half of its initial value” various in academe from one discipline to another. We don’t like to talk about it. But clearly in many of the sciences and related fields it hits about the age of 35 or sooner; if one has not made a major contribution to the field and achieved tenure by then, the future is not bright. It is different in most of the humanities. There experience and maturity of years normally deepens and broadens the perspective. Alfred North Whitehead, following a career in the sciences, did not embark upon philosophy and write his opus, “Process and Reality,” until he was 65, commencing a whole new future. These differences in professional transitional challenges is something that programs such as those Bob and I have described must consider seriously.

Finally, I’m glad you mentioned the Spellings Commission Report as a project we should undertake; we did. If you, or any of the readers, would like to see the critique we (a group of faculty and senior administrators from two and four year, public and private institutions across the country) completed, just send me your e-mail address and I will share it with you.Allshouse@ureach.com

Merle F. Allshouse, Fellow at The University of South Florida, at 4:51 pm EDT on April 8, 2007

It isn’t clear to me why special vehicles are needed for participation of older people in academia. If someone is professionally viable, they can continue their activities. If they are not, then why should they be included? Last year, I invited an alumni to participate in “Professor for a Day” activities at my campus. This person turned out to be an elderly man who ignored the topic of the class and his purported talk in order to expound on a paranoid obsession of his own that had no relevance to the class. It was embarrassing to all concerned because the class was essentially hijacked for this person’s “cause.” My students pay for their education and they should not be subjected to misplaced charity in order to give old people something to do with their time. There are many elderly academics who go on contributing to their fields as long as they are interested and fit — why should there be affirmative action for those who have become unfit?

Lucy, at 9:46 am EDT on April 9, 2007