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January 20, 2021 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Two Simple Questions for the New Year

I am looking at two questions concerning our New Year’s Day, January 1. This image is courtesy of Presenter Meia.

For my third post of the year 2021, I will be looking at two teasingly simple questions. With so much going on in the world this month, I will be the first to admit that my questions are not earth-shaking inquiries. 

You may ask, “Why, at this time, am I concerned with such a seemingly trivial matter?” The world is staggering under the burden of a deadly pandemic. The United States is embroiled in social unrest over many issues. The country is reeling from one crisis after another. People are continually expressing their discontent through words and actions. Almost everyone is constantly murmuring in disgust about the political dissension and hypocrisy, evidenced at all government levels.  

Enough of the endless chatter, unrestrained finger-pointing, and futile arguments. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

However, almost three weeks into a year for which we had such great hopes, we find ourselves struggling with many of the same disappointments of this past year, along with a huge, new portion of disillusionment. I am already tired of the endless chatter, unrestrained finger-pointing, and futile arguments. I am stepping away from the podium and microphone. I am ready for a break.  

My two questions are

  • Why do we celebrate January 1 as the start of a new year?
  • Who decided this for us?
Why January 1? Looking at the calendar, one can easily find many other dates with a legitimate claim to the designation of the start of a new year. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

As I thought about the perfect time to start a New Year, I found many good possibilities. In fact, many organizations and activities use different dates for the start of their years. These dates are based on the cycles we encounter in our daily lives.

Since I live near the 40° latitude North and 77° longitude West, I will use dates and events associated with that part of the world and my interests.

This photograph is a picture of the Daytona 500 Prerace Ceremonies in 2008. It has been released into the public domain by the photographer, Tequilamike. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

Before the pandemic, February 1 was generally considered the start of the automotive racing season and the opening of spring training for baseball. In my geographic part of the world, cold weather is a staple of February. Snow is a distinct possibility. Since neither of these weather-related events is conducive to enjoying or playing these two sports, teams head south or west to begin their year. 

March 1 is the meteorological start of the spring season. It is also the beginning of a new cycle of life for many plants. March 21 is the spring or vernal equinox. This is one of two dates in a year when the hours of daylight and nighttime are equal.

Easter commemorates the crucifixion and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Church tradition places it on the first Sunday, after the first full moon after the Spring equinox. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

Depending upon the lunar calendar, Easter occurs in March and April. Easter is the celebration of resurrection and a new life. According to church tradition, Easter is observed on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

April 1 used to be the unofficial start of the baseball season. Before 2000, Major League Baseball had to extend their season into March to get the required number of games before winter weather threatened the World Series. High schools and colleges started their outdoor spring sports season on April 1 to finish before the school year ended.

Growing up, I remember April 1, not as April Fool’s Day. It was the day we could take our studded snow tires off our cars and use regular tires. Peace and quiet returned to the roads.

April was the time to bring out the lawnmower and tune it up for the next growing season. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

By April 1, we always had our garden plans in place. We would plant the vegetable seeds in the indoor growing beds. April was the month to bring our lawn tools out of hibernation and tune them up for the upcoming work. It was also the time to prepare the soil in our garden for another growing season.

The last killing frost of the winter season typically occurred in early April. We always had to rush to get our pea seedlings planted as soon as possible after that last frost. Other seedlings could wait until the end of April or the beginning of May. For plants started from seeds, those seeds had to be planted before the end of April. 

The third Saturday in April is the opening day of the open trout fishing season in Pennsylvania. For many fishing enthusiasts, this is a Red Letter Day on their calendars. 

May is commencement time. It is a time of new beginnings. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

May 1 is generally the start of the blooming season for many fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Tulip festivals are held in many locations in early May.

May is also graduation and commencement month for educational institutions and their students. Commencement is a time of new beginnings for graduates. Beginning a new phase in life seems like a good time to start a new year.

June 1 is the start of summer and the usual vacation season. Growing up, our school year was always done by June 1. June 21 is the summer solstice or longest day of the year.

July 4th is Independence Day. It celebrates the start of a new country, a fitting way to start a new year. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

In many organizations, July 1 is the start of many fiscal and budgetary years. July 4 is American Independence Day and the Birthday of the United States of America.

I looked extensively to find something special about August. I came up empty-handed. It just sits there and does nothing. It has the well-deserved nickname “dog-days of summer.”

September 1 is the unofficial start of the harvest season and most fall sports. It is the start of the meteorological fall season and the end of summer. In the United States, the first Monday of September is Labor Day, celebrating the industrious American worker. 

September has been the traditional start of the new school year. It is also the start of many ecclesiastical calendars. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

The month of September is also the start of many scholastic and ecclesiastic years. Schools, churches, businesses, and families “return” to a “normal” schedule.

September 22 is the autumnal equinox, the moment when the sun is exactly over the equator. It is the second time in each year when days and nights are of equal lengths. This is the official start of fall.

October is another month like August. Although several events regularly occur in October, there are not many openings or firsts. October is known for fall harvesting of plants like corn, pumpkins, soybeans, or wheat. In our part of the country, it is also known for small game hunting. For children, October is also the home of Halloween and Trick or Treat. At the end of the month, the church celebrates All Saints’ Day.

November is the start of the deer rifle season. Besides national holidays, for how many other days do schools close? This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

November is generally the time for elections in the United States. It is also the month reserved for Thanksgiving and many harvest festivals. In Pennsylvania, for many years, the first Monday after Thanksgiving was the start of rifle deer season. This year the State Game Commission moved the start of rifle deer season to the first Saturday after Thanksgiving. The first Monday of deer season is still a school holiday in much of Pennsylvania. Many years ago, this tradition was established so that teachers and students could harvest deers as food for the long winter ahead.

December is the advent season, the coming of God to earth. This seems an excellent time to start a new year. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

December is the month of Christmas and Advent, the coming of God to earth. It is not just December 25. It is a whole month of joyous celebration of Emmanuel, “God is with us.”

December 21 is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year. It is a day when the earth gets to enjoy its time of rest. If we were to follow the Jewish tradition of beginning a new day at sunset, this becomes a prime candidate as the official start of a new year.

Other geographic places and religious traditions have their own special dates. Many of them celebrate a date other than January 1 as the start of their New Year.  Thus there are scores of choices for celebrating a New Year.

I was somewhat surprised to discover that the answer to my two questions pointed to two apparently disparate individuals.

These two individuals lived more than 15 centuries apart. One led a political world empire. He was declared a god and worshiped by his subjects. The other led an ecclesiastical empire. He viewed himself as a servant of the one true God. The members of his church saw him as God’s messenger.

We can thank Julius Caesar (46 B.C.) and Pope Gregory XIII (1582 A.D.) for enshrining January 1 as New Year’s Day. Each of these powerful leaders ordered the world they controlled to use a single calendar that they chose. Due to the percentages of the world under their jurisdiction, they dominated most of the world of their times.

A photographic image of the 1888 oil painting of the assassination of Julius Caesar by Williams Holmes Sullivan. As a faithful reproduction of a work of art in the public domain, this image is in the public domain.

Julius Caesar was the dictator of the Roman Empire from 49BC to 44BC. In March 44BC, he was assassinated by Roman Senators led by his supposed friend and ally Brutus. Because of problems in the first years of his dictatorship, Ceasar wanted the world to use a single calendar. He saw the usefulness of a single calendar for political, fiscal, and military reasons. The Roman Empire was 3000 miles from end to end. It spread across most of southern Europe, coastal Asia Minor, and Northern Africa.

Coordinating events across such an expanse required precision. Caesar wanted taxes collected and censuses taken simultaneously in all corners of the empire. This way, people couldn’t escape the government’s strong-arm by fleeing to other parts of the empire. He also wanted military attacks synchronized so that enemies in other parts of the empire would not be alerted to upcoming hostile actions. All of these desires could only be satisfied if the whole Roman world was using one calendar. 

A photograph of the 1550 woodcut of Janus by Sebastian Munster. As a faithful reproduction of a work of art in the public domain, this image is in the public domain.

As noted in my previous post My Thoughts One Week into 2021, Caesar honored the Roman God Janus by officially “naming” January as the year’s opening month. 

This designation by Caesar gave a formal stamp of approval to a tradition that was at least one century old by 46BC. Janus was the Roman god of transitions. His presence and blessings were sought at every ceremony of opening or transition.

Janus is a form of the Latin word ianua, which means door or gate. Janus was the janitor. He was the doorkeeper or guard of the gate.

A 16th portrait of Pope Gregory XIII by an unknown artist. As a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art, this photograph is in a public domain work.

The Julian calendar ruled supreme for more than 1600 years. However, the Julian calendar had a problem. It was too long. By the late 16th century, the ecclesiastical calendar and feast were more than a week out of sync with the solar solstices and equinoxes. 

To fix this problem, Pope Gregory XIII issued his papal bull Inter Gravissimas in 1582, announcing calendar reforms for all of Catholic Christendom.

To make the holy days line up with the solar dates, Gregory ordered the Christian world to “eliminate” 10 days. In October 1582, the Gregorian calendar skipped the dates of the 5th through the 14th. Thursday, October 4, 1582, was followed by Friday, October 15, 1582. Most of the world didn’t understand what was going on. People thought that they had lost 10 days.

The new calendar for October 1582, developed by Pope Gregory XIII that panicked much of the world. This image was constructed by the author using LibreOffice Calc Spreadsheet.

England had already rejected the Catholic Church’s claim over their religious lives and formed the Church of England. So they rejected Gregory’s calendar as a grand overreach into their civil and religious sovereignty.  However, by 1750 England and the American colonies saw the need for a revised calendar. In the 1750s, most of the English speaking world accepted a variation of the Gregorian calendar. By 1750, they had to eliminate 11 days to make the calendar agree with the solar dates.

By the time we get to the year 5,000, we will need to drop a day from the calendar to sync it with the solar calendar. What day should we drop? This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

The newly revised Gregorian calendar is still too long. It is 26 seconds longer than the solar year. Thus, by the year 5,000, we will need to drop a day from the calendar again. Although I am curious about how the calendar will be adjusted, I am confident that I won’t be here to worry about it.

In my next post, I will turn my attention to another topic. On Sunday, January 17, I was the guest speaker at a church service. During the preceding week, our senior pastor, who had been scheduled to speak on Sunday, came down with the flu (not covid). Our assistant pastor was in the hospital recuperating from open-heart surgery to repair four blockages. Our youth pastor had been out of town all week at a youth camp. So I got a call on Thursday asking if I could fill in. Since it had been more than a decade since I last did any pulpit supply work, I was excited and apprehensive at the same time. I said, “Yes!” Since the message is too long for one post, I now have several posts that I will be publishing over the next couple of weeks. The title of the lesson is Four Chairs. It looks at where we sit in relationship to the cross.  

Filed Under: Athletics, Business and Economics, Education, Faith and Religion, Higher Education, Personal, Politics Tagged With: Calendar

April 23, 2020 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

The Similarities Between American Healthcare and Higher Education

One of the most dangerous viruses to hit humanity in centuries has stopped the world in its tracks with a deadly pandemic. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

A tiny microbe has turned the world upside down. As of April 22, the Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center (JHU-CRC) reports that 210 countries or territories have confirmed the presence of COVID-19 cases. The JHU-CRC confirms 2,636,414 cases and 184,204 deaths worldwide.

How did we get here? On December 31, 2019, reports began to circulate of a large number of cases of pneumonia-like illnesses among people associated with a seafood market in Central China. On January 7, 2020, Chinese health officials confirmed these reports, when they announced the discovery of a new strain of a coronavirus. This new virus was named n-2019CoV, or COVID-19. 

On January 11, Chinese media reported the death of the first victim of COVID-19 in China. This report came days before the Chinese New Year, which is the biggest holiday of the year. During the week-long celebration, people usually travel hundreds of miles to be with family and friends. By January 20, Chinese media reported more than 700 cases and at least a dozen deaths in Wuhan.

China instituted a travel ban for the city of Wuhan to protect the world from the spread of the dangerous COVID-19 virus. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

On January 23, the Chinese government shut down the whole city of Wuhan and ordered its population of 11 million people to shelter in place. This action was an attempt to wall the virus off from the rest of the world. But the spread had already begun.

By January 20, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand reported cases. On January 21, the United States reported its first case. It was a man in Washington state, who had recently returned from a trip to Wuhan.

In February, Wuhan was the epicenter of a worldwide pandemic. In March, the epicenter switched to Europe. Italy, Spain, and France reported thousands of cases and hundreds of deaths. Today, the United States is the epicenter of the pandemic.

Face masks are a common sight today in the USA as people try to protect themselves and others from the spread of the coronavirus. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media

As of April 20, there are 817,187 confirmed cases of COVID-19. A total of 45,229 deaths in the United States have been attributed to this coronavirus. Since early April, all 50 states in the United States have put some type of lock-down or shelter-in-place restrictions in place. Social distancing guidelines are also in effect.

Large gatherings are banned. This includes schools, church services, concerts, political rallies, and sporting events. Non-essential businesses are closed. Restaurants and bars can only offer take-out or delivery services. Individuals are ordered to only leave their homes for groceries and other essential goods, medicines, or medical appointments. If you do venture out, masks that covered your mouth and nose are required. 

Empty classrooms were replaced by hastily thrown together distance learning plans. Classrooms sat empty. They were replaced by instructors and students communicating through computer servers. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

American primary, secondary, and higher education institutions were all forced to turn on a dime. Schools were shuttered. College students on spring break were ordered not to return to campus. Those students on campus were told to leave and return home. All face-to-face classes were suspended. Teachers and students were forced to finish the remainder of the spring terms remotely. As the lockdown continued, dissatisfaction among the ranks of faculty, students, and parents grew. 

Changing traditions is not the same as flipping a light switch. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

Commencements and other celebrations which, for as long as the current higher education crowds can remember, have always closed out the school year were canceled. Most traditional summer schools have been abandoned. Events for new students have been indefinitely put on hold. Even now in mid-April, the fall semester is still a big question mark. These pivots were all huge changes. They could not be as easily accomplished as flipping a light switch.

How many changes are coming to American higher education? What will the new normal look like? The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

Are more changes in American higher education inevitable? Will schools be allowed to hold face-to-face classes in the fall? Will students pay F2F rates for online classes? Will students reenroll in their schools in the fall or will they transfer to another college or drop out of school completely? Will new students enroll at the rates colleges have come to expect? Will faculty accept the changes to their routines? How will state and federal governments and the general public support the changes in higher education? What will the new norm for American higher education look like?

Hospitals and medical professionals were forced into war-zone like activity. Everyone’s attention was turned to the diagnosis and treatment of COVID-19. Entire hospitals were devoted to just COVID-19 patients. Large facilities like sports and conference arenas, hotels, and cathedrals were converted into temporary hospitals. Emergency hospitals were constructed in days, instead of years, to meet the surging needs.

We don’t know how many people have been hospitalized because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March, Vice President, Mike Pense, sent a letter to the administrators of the nation’s 6,000 hospitals asking them to inform the Center for Disease Control and Prevention(CDC) each day of the number of patients that they were currently treating for the virus. 

It is not clear how many hospitals have complied with VP Pense’s request. The CDC has not released any reports on these data. When asked, CDC officials only say that it is under review and will be released shortly. Various states and cities have released hospitalization reports. However, these jurisdictions have used their own definitions and the data may not be consistent. 

A decade ago, who knew that toilet paper in the year 2020, would be so valuable a commodity? The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

It doesn’t seem possible that almost a decade ago I wrote two posts that compared the American higher education enterprise to the four disparate industries.  In the first post, I asked the provocative question What can American higher education learn from the watch industry, the chocolate industry, and toilet paper manufacturers? 

Did I cross the line and say too much? How could I compare higher education to an industry? How could I dare suggest that such a disruption could upset higher education’s apple cart? The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

In the second post, Comparison of American Higher Education with the Automotive Industry For many educational purists, I did the unthinkable of comparing American higher education to the struggling automotive industry.

In those posts, I suggested that higher education could face great disruptions similar to the disruptions that those other industries have endured. In this post, I will be brave and take my comparison one step further.

The coronavirus pandemic has spotlighted a number of similarities between health care higher education. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

The coronavirus has shined a spotlight on both the health care profession and the higher education enterprise. With both industries under siege from this common enemy, I see a number of striking similarities.

The first similarity is that both have a strict dichotomy between the professionals and the clients, those served by the professionals. It is a great divide between the experts and the untrained. In both fields, the experts provide the untrained with specific services. In medicine, untrained patients are treated by expert medical professionals. In education, the untrained students are taught by the expert faculty.

Medicine and higher education have their own ladders of prestige and stature. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

The second similarity relates to the hierarchical structure among the professionals in both fields. In higher education, faculty members strive to climb the professorial ladder to the top position of a tenured, full professor. Beneath those individuals who made it to the top rung are the associate and assistant professors, the instructors, the adjunct and contingent faculty members, and the lowly graduate assistants. In medicine, the specialists are at the top of the ladder. Under them stand the general practitioners or primary care physicians, the physician assistants, and nurse practitioners. Near the bottom are the registered nurses. On the bottom rung are the practical nurses and medical technicians.

Bandaging a wound by a nurse or physician assistant is an up-close and personal operation. The image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

The higher rungs translate into more prestige. The higher rungs on the disciplinary ladders also carry with them increased monetary rewards. In addition, the higher rungs mean increased responsibility. Unfortunately, more often than not, the individuals on the lower rungs get loaded with more of the direct contact work with the patients and students.

A cartoon version of a photo of a lecture hall at Baruch College. The photo was taken and modified by Xbxg32000, holder of the copyright. Its use is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. The image is courtesy of Xbxg32000 and Wikimedia Commons.

The third similarity shared by both fields is the primary, preferred mode of the delivery of services. For many centuries, this primary mode of delivery of service has been face-to-face. I almost said “up-close and personal.” This is definitely true in medicine. However, higher education started to move away from tutorials and small classes in the lower-level courses to large classes in the twentieth century. Only a few elitist, high-priced institutions held on to the small classes and seminar format for all courses. Even in graduate schools, one-on-one work between a student and a professor is reserved for theses or dissertations. 

Since the middle of the 20th Century, many social commentators have addressed the fourth similarity I see between healthcare and higher education. The current pandemic brings the same critical deficiency in both fields to the forefront of the public interest.

For some, they can ride the escalator to the top. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

The problem is that there is a huge gap in the quality of service within higher education and healthcare available to individuals across racial and ethnic groups, as well as social and economic strata. Certain groups and individuals are privileged. Individuals with economic means have available the best healthcare and education that money can buy. They have access to the best colleges, doctors, and hospitals.

Certain individuals can’t get to the door of opportunity because of a gap, not of their making. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

Other groups and individuals are greatly disadvantaged. As a group, minorities and poor individuals tend to “get the left-overs.” There are exceptions, but a much larger percentage of those adversely affected by the coronavirus are the minorities and the poor.

As an example, in a small city near my home, the coronavirus disproportionately affected the minority communities. The total population of the city is 40% White (non-Hispanic), 25% African-American, 30% Hispanic/Latino, and 5% Other. However, in the early coronavirus counts, 70% of confirmed cases and deaths were in the Hispanic/Latino community, and 20% in the African-American community.         

The fourth similarity reminded me of my high school Latin. If you studied Latin, you will remember “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres”. [All Gaul is divided into three parts.] This is the opening line of The Gallic Wars by Julius Caesar. Everyone who studied high school Latin in the mid-twentieth century was required to translate Caesar’s classic journal. What has this to do with medicine and higher education? 

All hospitals and colleges are owned or controlled by one of three groups. The image is the author’s creation using ClickCharts Software.

The ownership or control of all medical and higher education institutions falls into three segments. These three groups are:

  1. Public: These institutions are controlled or owned by a government entity such as the country, a city, county, state, or an agency of one of the above. The two primary sources of funding are government support or fees for service.
  2. Private, non-profit: These institutions are owned by a private, non-profit foundation or corporation. They are controlled by a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees. The two primary sources of funding are fees for services or the Board through charitable fundraising efforts.
  3. Proprietary: Another name for these institutions is Private, for-profit. They are owned by individuals or for-profit corporations. They are controlled by the owners or a Board of Trustees elected or appointed by the owners. The primary source of funding is through fees for services. The expectation is that these institutions will make a profit for their owners.

The tripartite segmentation of control/ownership in healthcare and higher education has both advantages and challenges. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

Since higher education and healthcare are both divided into three segments of control and ownership, they face the same set of challenges and advantages. For decades, the two fields have claimed that the challenges far outnumbered the advantages. Since I am running out of time and space in this post, I will leave the discussion of the challenges and advantages to another post.

At this time, I plan to publish that post on Friday, May 1. On Monday, April 27, I will be publishing a special announcement. I am changing the format of By’s Musings again.

During the week of April 27, I will be previewing a monthly newsletter, which will highlight what I am reading and listening to in the field of higher education. It will point readers to upcoming webinars (mostly free) and significant higher education articles that have appeared in the previous month. It will discuss the trends and challenges facing higher education. Special features of future issues will include book reviews, interviews of higher education leaders, and invited articles from experts in the fields of higher education, leadership, and organizational development. 

After this first issue in my blog, I will be asking readers to subscribe to the newsletter. It will begin as a free offer. However, in the interest of full disclosure, I will be looking for ways to monetize this effort. I do promise that I will keep the subscription cost-free as long as I can.

Use social media wisely to maintain safe contacts with family, friends, and colleagues during this crisis. This image is courtesy of Presenter Media.

With the addition of this newsletter, I will reserve By’s Musings for my reflections on life in general, as well as my faith and health journeys.

In the meantime, stay safe and healthy. Remain vigilant. Eat healthily. Maintain the practice of your spiritual disciplines. Practice social distancing, but remain in close social contact with family, friends, and colleagues. 

    

Filed Under: Business and Economics, Education, Health, Higher Education, Politics Tagged With: College, COVID-19, Health Care

September 4, 2019 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

A Short Break from Business as Usual

Hitting a moving target is difficult, but sometimes necessary. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

It’s happened again! I start a series of posts here on By’s Musings and partway through the series I pull the plug. Usually, I’ve satisfied myself that I have a good reason to change directions. This time I am fully persuaded that I have a good reason. Nevertheless, I know that trying to hit a moving target is very difficult, for both author and reader. 

 

Hooray! The deal is done, but I still have work to do. I must deliver a rough draft of the manuscript to the editor by October 1, 2019. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

This past week, I signed a contract to deliver a rough draft of a book to my editor by Tuesday, October 1, 2019. Thus, for the next month, I must concentrate completely on finishing the rough draft of the book which I had tentatively titled A Field Guide to American Higher Education.

 

This is a very important date to keep. It could make a big difference in sales. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

This means that I will be totally engaged in working on my book through the proposed launch date of Monday, December 2, 2019. This date is specifically selected to take advantage of a number of market factors. It will hit the market of prospective college students and their families just before the prime college hunting season of the spring and summer prior to their junior or senior year of high school. It will also be available for the Christmas shopping bonanza. I think it would make a very useful Christmas present for that adolescent child or grandchild approaching high school graduation.

 

I need to launch the book in time for the Christmas gift-giving season. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

If I miss the December 2 launch date, the next best launch dates are probably February 3, or September 1, 2020. If I miss a December launch, I miss the big Christmas gift possibilities. Adolescents aren’t interested in much of anything related to education in January. Most parents of prospective students have already made their summer plans prior to the official opening of summer. Thus, it is very important that I hit the target of December 2, 2019.

 

A Field Guide is a resource to help users identify tools, select the most appropriate tool for a specific task, and provide instructions on how to use that tool most effectively. The selection of a college should be a family decision. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Why am I writing  A Field Guide to American Higher Education? The typical field guide with which I grew up was a resource which provided important information to help users identify tools, select the most appropriate tool for a specific task, and provide instructions on how to use that tool most effectively. I firmly believe that American higher education is a tool. It is a tool that provides students with the means to better themselves and benefit society. It is a tool that is often misunderstood and misused. I saw this guide as a means to hopefully reduce the misunderstandings and lessen the misuses.

 

Celebrating my 73rd birthday was very special. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Unfortunately, I’ve found that the term Field Guide has lost its cache in today’s world. When I field-tested the term Field Guide with members of younger generations, many had no clue of what one was. Most had never seen or used one. I can use the term “younger generations” since I am only 18 months away from my semisesquicentennial birthday. For the non-Latin scholars among my readers: “My 75th birthday is just 18 months away.”

 

Good bait will attract a large number of fishes. For a book, the title and the cover comprise the bait that an author must use to hook readers. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

If the title Field Guide to American Higher Education is meaningless to a large part of my intended audience and doesn’t provide a suitable bait to lure them into looking at the book, I think I need a new title. How would you describe a resource which is designed to help individuals understand and find their way through the maze of the career and college choice process? I am open to any suggestions. Please leave them in the comment section below. 

 

A photographic image of a competitor in the 2004 US national yo-yo competition in Chico, CA. This photograph was taken by Pretzelpaws and licensed for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Pretzelpaws and Wikimedia Commons.

Working with an excellent coach from Chandler Bolt’s Self-Publishing School, I’ve come to the conclusion that on one hand I need to narrow the focus of my book, and on the other hand I need to broaden its scope. Using the terminology and processes from Ryan Levesque’s “ASK” methodology, I had to refine its niche. The book I first planned to write was scratching an itch that I felt. Unfortunately, few other people were feeling the same itch. My coach helped me see that I had more than enough material to satisfy the needs and answer the questions that thousands of adolescents and their families were facing as they traversed the bumps in the road during the difficult time of transition from child to adult. Many adolescents believe they have the world on a string. Although they have the string around their finger, they feel as if they are the yoyo spinning around.

 

I needed to return to the three questions that I used as a basis for all the courses I developed and textbooks I wrote earlier in my academic career. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Instead of focusing the book primarily on the complexities of American higher education, I needed to focus the book on what adolescents and their families should think about and do during those formative years of ages 17 to 25. How do adolescents find and define their calling? How can adolescents refine their calling into an intended vocation? How should they prepare for careers that fit in well with their calling and vocation? I needed to return to a process that I developed in the early 1970s, at the beginning of my academic career. I used three questions to guide the preparation of all course material I used when I taught. I employed the same three questions as the basis for the courses I designed and the textbooks that I wrote. 

 

The three-question path to success. Who am I? Who do I want to be? How do I get from where I am to where I want to be? Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

Recently, I discovered that my three questions are very similar to questions used in the KWL Reading Strategy Design, which was released in 1986. The KWL questions are “What do I know? What do I want to know? and “What did I learn?” My variation took the form of “What do I know?” “What do I need to know?” and “How can I get from what I know to what I need to know?”

 

Another variation of the questions is “Where am I?” “Where do I want to go?” and “What route can I take to go from where I am to my intended destination? For my upcoming book, the questions will take the form: “Who am I?” “Who do I want to be?” “How do I get from my current state of being to my desired position?”

How are prospective students and their families supposed to make the right choice of a college? Get the right resources and discuss them. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

With so many choices, how is a student to choose an appropriate path? The first section of my book is meant to assist adolescents and their families first deal with the complexities of career selection. How does an adolescent pick an appropriate career field?

What keeps you up at night? What wakes you up in the morning? What keeps you dancing? Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

As a Christian, I believe that God has a two-fold calling on an individual. The first call is an invitation to a personal relationship with Himself. The second call is a summons into a mission that God assigns that individual. For all individuals, I believe that we have an innate calling to a life’s mission. What are we meant to do with our lives? The first section of the book will help individuals find their calling. What keeps them up at night? What wakes them up each morning? What are they driven to accomplish? What keeps them dancing? 

Life preparation can seem like a complicated and perplexing maze. Help in solving the maze is available. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

The second section of the book is a resource which helps readers find their way through the complicated and perplexing maze of finding themselves. It will help identify and differentiate the many different options in their preparation for their life calling. For some individuals, it will involve college. For others, it could involve career training or apprenticeships, or the military. In this section, I will help students identify and use the most appropriate preparation avenues for their future direction.

Are you or an adolescent close to you is weighted down with troubling questions about career and college choices? I can help you answer many of those questions. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

There’s another way in which you can help me. If you or an adolescent close to you wrestled with particularly troubling questions about career or college choices, I would love to hear from you. I have hundreds of stories about such struggles, but I can always use more real-life examples. If you would be willing to share your story with me, please leave a short description of it in the comment section below. Please, also include contact information so that I can communicate with you. I promise that your name, story, and contact information will never be divulged. If I use your story, all names and locations will be changed to guarantee anonymity. 

If you have some important, please call me. Leave a message, and I will respond when I can. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

My tasks for the next several months are well-defined. I will be writing, working with an editor, publishing and marketing my new book. These endeavors will leave little time for non-essential things. Thus, I will be taking a self-imposed hiatus from Facebook and Twitter to concentrate on the book. Please don’t feel slighted if I don’t respond to a Facebook or Twitter message. I’m not ignoring you! If something is important and you really need to reach me, please call me, leave a message, and I will respond when I can.   

Filed Under: Education, Higher Education, Personal, Surviving, Thriving, Writing

July 5, 2019 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

Archimedes: A Great Mathematician, But Very Eccentric

An 1810 pencil and paper sketch of Archimedes by an unknown artist. The original is located in the Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro. As a photographic image of a two-dimensional work of art in the public domain, it is also in the public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro.

Some might claim that the two phrases that I used to describe Archimedes in the title of this post say the same thing. Even though mathematicians have the reputation of being strange, I am honored, but humbled to claim the mantle of a mathematician. The roles and duties of a mathematician are to identify and solve problems, to quantify and count those things that can be enumerated, to unfold and qualify those things which can’t be enumerated, and to discover and disseminate the beauty of patterns within this world.

I know my work as a mathematician is overshadowed by many great mathematicians like Archimedes. It is still my calling. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

It is a big job. However, I was called to this vocation and I love it. I know that my mathematical accomplishments will hold a candle to those of Archimedes. Nevertheless, I count it a privilege to work in the shadow of Archimedes, Pythagoras, and so many others.

According to the many legends about Archimedes, the opening sketch shows him in what would have been a typical pose for him: deep in thought pondering a mathematical, geometric, or engineering problem, tinkering with some toy, piece of equipment, or prototype. Archimedes was the archetypical professor, preoccupied in his thoughts to the exclusion of everything else.

Map of Sicily c 431 B.C., showing the city of Syracuse of its Eastern coast. Abu America, copyright holder has licensed its use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Abu America and Wikimedia Commons.

It is believed that Archimedes was born sometime in the year 287 BC, in the city of Syracuse on the island of Sicily.  His father, Phidias, was a well-known astronomer and mathematician, and a relative of the King of Syracuse. As a young child, Archimedes was tutored by the best teachers in Italy. In his teen years, he reportedly traveled to Egypt and studied under their greatest teachers, mathematicians, scientists, and engineers. In his early twenties, he returned to Syracuse where he lived the remainder of his life, solving problems and corresponding with his Egyptian colleagues. 

Engraving of Archimedes moving the world with his lever from Mechanic’s Magazine (cover of bound Volume II, Knight & Lacey, London, 1824). It is in the public domain because it was published prior to 1924. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and the Annenberg Rare Book & Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

I first became acquainted with Archimedes as a fourth-grader, when our teacher introduced the topic of levers during a science lesson on simple tools. The teacher began his demonstration by using an exaggerated statement he attributed to Archimedes: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough, I can move the world.”

In the mid-1950s, at least five years prior to human space travel, we all knew that this was a physical impossibility. But it actually made some sense, as we constructed our own levers to move objects.

Archimedes’ screw has been used for centuries as a means of transferring water from a low-lying body to a higher level. This example is a sketch of a working screw from the University of Mysore, Karnataka, India, which has licensed the image under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and University of Mysore

By the time our teacher introduced the Archimedes screw in a subsequent lesson as an example of another simple tool, I was hooked. I was an Archimedes fan.

This guy rocked. One year earlier, I had “helped” my father build an automatic stoker for the coal furnace in our house using an auger that he bought from a farmer that no longer needed it to carry feed to the milking herd that he had sold. That auger was an exact replica of Archimedes’ screw. My father used it to move coal horizontally rather than moving water vertically.

Diagram of Archimedes Method for Solving Problems. Chart created by blog’s author using Click Charts software.

As our teacher told us more about Archimedes, I found that he would take both seemingly simple and complex, real-world problems and use the principles of engineering, physics, and mathematics to solve them. As our teacher systematically detailed the six steps in Archimedes’ method for solving problems, they were indelibly fixed in my mind.

Although I may have demonstrated some of the engineering brilliance of Archimedes, I haven’t yet talked about any of his mathematical work or any of his eccentricities. What were some of the mathematical problems that Archimedes attacked and solved?

It was well known by the time of Archimedes that there was a constant relationship between the radius of a circle and both its circumference and area. We now know this constant as pi or π. Although the use of the Greek letter π was not adopted for general use until the 18th century AD, for the sake of brevity and clarity I will use it for the remainder of this blog. Since Archimedes was generally considered the first to document an attempt to approximate this constant as closely as possible, it is sometimes called Archimedes’ constant.

By 1900 BC, Babylonians had estimated that π was approximately 25/8. In the same time period, Egyptians began using a value of 256/81. The decimal representation of fractions can be traced back to China by the 4th century BC, before slowly spreading through Asia, to the Middle East, and then to Europe. Europeans didn’t fully adopt this approach to expressing non-integral values until they had embraced the base-ten, positional Hindu-Arabic number system that we use today. Thus, we can say that the Babylonians estimated that π was approximately 3.125, while the Egyptians estimated that π was approximately 3.1605.   

This image of Solomon’s Temple shows the great basin in the left foreground. As a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional work of art in the public domain, it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

A millennium later we find the ancient Israelites using “3” as an estimate of π in a Biblical reference related to the design of Solomon’s temple.  

And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about. (I Kings 7:23, KJV)

The molten sea was actually a large bronze basin filled with water meant to symbolize the chaos of the world during creation when God’s spirit moved upon the waters.

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:2, KJV)

his derivation of the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci depicts nine historical units of measurement: the Yard, the Span, the Cubit, the Flemish Ell, the English Ell, the French Ell, the Fathom, the Hand , and the Foot. Da Vinci drew the Vitruvian man to scale, so the units depicted here are displayed with their proper historical ratios. The creator of the work and the copyright holder, Unitfreak, has released the work into the public domain. Image courtesy of Unitfreak and Wikimedia Commons.

Simple mathematics would tell us that if the diameter of the basin was 10 cubits and its circumference was 30 cubits, the ratio of circumference to diameter was “3.” This is “short” of our current value of π. However, there is a “fudge” factor built into the biblical account. A cubit was never a precise measurement. A cubit was generally considered the length of the forearm of a typical man which is the distance from the elbow to the tip of a man’s middle finger. It was generally about 18 inches or 44 centimeters. However, it could vary with each person making the measurement.

This imprecision didn’t sit well with mathematicians or builders. Although a few mathematicians worked on this problem, it took almost another millennium for Archimedes to come up with a different approach to the problem. 

The starting point of Archimedes’ calculation of π is a circle of diameter 1, with inscribed and circumscribed hexagons. This image was uploaded to Hebrew Wikipedia by דוד שי who licensed its use under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of דוד שי and Wikimedia Commons.

Archimedes tackled the problem of calculating the circumference of a circle using an iterative approach and an over-and-under perspective. He inscribed and circumscribed hexagons inside and outside a circle with a diameter of 1. He was able to calculate the circumferences of the two hexagons, using only the following two results:

1. Pythagorean Theorem: The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

( a2 + b2 = c2 )

2. Proposition 3 of Book IV of Euclid’s Elements: If an angle of a triangle be bisected and the straight line cutting the angle cut the base also, the segments of the base will have the same ratio as the remaining sides of the triangle; and, if the segments of the base have the same ratio as the remaining sides of the triangle, the straight line joined from the vertex to the point of section will bisect the angle of the triangle.

Using these two results Archimedes converted the geometric problem to strictly an algebraic problem, howbeit a complicated one. He then iterated the process by successively doubling the number of polygons which inscribed and circumscribed the circle with a diameter of 1. By the time he was using 96 polygons, he had narrowed down the upper and lower limits of π to 3.1408 and 3.1428. This approximation is accurate to two decimal places, which is accurate within 0.4%.

Archimedes’ sphere and circumscribing cylinder. This image was created by André Karwath. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license. Image courtesy of André Karwath and Wikimedia Commons.

The mathematical problem that Archimedes claimed to be proudest of solving was finding the volume and surface area of a sphere. Archimedes showed that the volume of the sphere has 2/3 the volume and surface of the circumscribing cylinder. Thus, the surface area and volume of a sphere with radius r are given by the equations:

A = 4 πr2

    and

V = (4/3)πr3.

Cicero discovering the tomb of Archimedes in an 1897 painting by Benjamin West. As a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional work of art in the public domain, it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Bridgeman Art Library and Wikimedia Commons.

Archimedes was so proud of this mathematical accomplishment that he requested that a cylinder encasing a sphere adorn his tomb when he died. This is how the tomb of Archimedes was eventually identified.

In 75 BC, 137 years after Archimedes’ death, the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations Book V, Sections 64 – 66, wrote the following:

When I was questor in Sicily I managed to track down his grave. The Syracusians knew nothing about it, and indeed denied that any such thing existed. But there it was, completely surrounded and hidden by bushes of brambles and thorns. I remembered having heard of some simple lines of verse which had been inscribed on his tomb, referring to a sphere and cylinder modelled in stone on top of the grave. And so I took a good look round all the numerous tombs that stand beside the Agrigentine Gate. Finally I noted a little column just visible above the scrub: it was surmounted by a sphere and a cylinder.

Probably the most famous incident that illustrated Archimedes’ single-mindedness and his eccentricities involved a royal crown and a bath. Archimedes was the go-to-guy in ancient Syracuse to solve problems. Thus, when the Hiero II, King of Syracuse was faced with the suspicion that he had been cheated by a dishonest artisan, he asked for Archimedes’ help.

Heiro II commissioned the creation of a solid gold crown to adorn statues of the gods and goddesses of Syracuse. Since the crown was to be part of a worship activity, Heiro didn’t want to offend the divines. He had to be sure that it was really solid gold, but he couldn’t melt down the crown to find its makeup. So he asked Archimedes to determine a way to test the crown without disturbing or disfiguring it.

Woodcut print from the book “Historical and critical information about the life, inventions and writings of Archimedes of Syracuse” by Count Giammaria Mazzuchelli (1707-1765), published in Brescia, Italy in 1737. As a faithful reproduction of a public domain work, it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In the most famous legend associated with this storying Archimedes was thinking about how to solve this problem while he was taking a bath in one of the public baths of the day. According to the legend, as Archimedes began to submerge himself, he realized that his body mass was displacing an equal mass of water. Here was the solution. Archimedes suddenly screamed “Eureka!” and jumped up and ran home to test his solution. In his haste, he forgot his clothes, so supposedly he was running through the streets of Syracuse naked, yelling “Eureka!” which means “I found it!“

As gold mass equal in weight to the crown are submerged, if the crown rises toward the surface, it has less gold in it.

Although there are many versions of this story, I tend to believe the following one is the most plausible. This version is attributed to Vitruvius, a Roman architect of the first century BC. The Archimedes buoyancy principle may have been used to determine whether the golden crown was less dense than gold. Given that both the crown (left) and the reference weight (right) are of identical volume, the less dense reference weight object will experience a larger upward buoyant force, causing it to weigh less in the water and float closer to the surface.

This depiction of the Claw of Archimedes from a 17th-century wall painting by Giulio Parigi expresses visually uses the literal translation of the Italian word for claw as a giant iron hand. As the faithful reproduction of a two-dimension work of art in the public domain, it is in the public domain. The original is in Room 17 of The Stanzino delle Matematiche of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. Image courtesy of Uffizi Gallery and Wikimedia Commons.

When Syracuse was attacked by Roman naval forces, King Heiro II also commissioned Archimedes to invent weapons to defend the city. According to the legends, Archimedes responded with two monstrous creations. The first was known as the Claw of Archimedes.

It was a giant crane with a long line with a hook that caught the bow of any ship that ventured too close to the seawalls defending Syracuse. By raising and lowering the crane arm, it was able to swamp and/or overturn the boat caught by the hook. It only took one or two encounters with this weapon for the Romans to learn to stay far enough away from the seawall.

Conceptual drawing of Archimedes Death Ray using polished mirrors to concentrate enough sunrays to set Roman ships afire. The drawing is by Finnrind and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Finnrind and Wikimedia Commons.

With the Roman boats now staying a bowshot away from the shore, Archimedes was challenged to come up with another weapon to defeat this persistent enemy. This led to the legend of Archimedes’ Death Ray. Most every small child knows that using a magnifying glass or a parabolic mirror, one can start a fire from the sun’s rays. According to the stories, Archimedes used this principle to set the Roman ships afire.

Over the intervening centuries, many experiments have been done to try to recreate the incendiary events. In all cases, more mirrors than shown would be needed, and the usual results may have been temporary blindness and confusion among the sailors rather than fire.

Since there are Roman accounts of ships burning and sinking, something probably happened. The mirrors may have consisted of polished metal and had peep-holes drilled in the middle for use in aiming. Whether they set the Roman ship afire, or just created enough confusion so that small crafts from the defenders of Syracuse could get close enough to fling burning vats of “Greece fire,” i.e., burning oil, will never be known.

The Roman commander Marcellus knew through the tales of spies and traitors that the machines that Archimedes had invented caused the problems for his troops. He laid siege to the city and after a protracted period of time, finally wore them down due to the lack of supplies. He ordered his troops to destroy everything and everyone with one exception. Under no circumstances was Archimedes to be harmed.  He was to be taken alive. Marcellus wanted this genius working for him.

A print from the biography of Archimedes written by Giammaria Mazzucchelli from 1737. This is a faithful reproduction of a two-dimensional public domain work of art contained in the Vatican Library. Thus, it is in the public domain. Image courtesy of the Vatican Library and Wikimedia Commons.

Here is where the single-mindedness of Archimedes got the eccentric in trouble again. A soldier found Archimedes working on a mathematics problem drawing circles in the sand. The soldier ordered Archimedes to come with him. Archimedes told the soldier he couldn’t because he was in the middle of solving an important problem. The soldier started scratching out the sand circles. Archimedes yelled at the soldier “Nōlī turbāre circulōs meōs!” a Latin phrase, meaning “Do not disturb my circles!”

The soldier got angrier with Archimedes and killed him. When this was reported to Marcellus, he ordered the soldier killed, and Archimedes to be given a burial befitting royalty. Hence the fancy tomb that we had noted that was discovered by Cicero. Archimedes was indeed an eccentric, as well as a mathematical and engineering genius. 

In my next post, I will return to considering some of the crisis facing modern American higher education. The next crisis on the agenda is the crisis centered on and created by the Faculty Reward Systems and Faculty Priorities. I hope to post it next week.

 

 

      

 

 

 

Filed Under: Education, Personal Tagged With: Archimedes, Eccentric, Mathematician, Problem Solving

May 19, 2019 By B. Baylis 2 Comments

The First Age of Disruption in American Higher Education

Image of the radar echos of “training thunderstorms” battering the east coast of the United States in February 2009. The image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), taken or made as part of an employee’s official duties. Image courtesy of NOAA and Wikimedia Commons.

In the last quarter of the 20th century, American higher education was battered unrelentingly by storm after storm. In weather terminology, meteorologists call this phenomenon “training”. This name is derived from how a train and its cars travel along a single path, the railroad track, without the track moving. With repeated precipitation hitting the same geographic area, this weather pattern often produces heavy damage caused by flooding. American higher education has been heavily damaged by a constant barrage of storms.

There is little debate concerning the results of the numerous storm trains which assailed American higher education. It left AHE in shambles. To many observers, health-wise AHE was in critical condition. The blue light was lit and the warning alarm sounded. The critical response team was called into action. The condition of American higher education had definitely reached the crisis stage.  Danger lurked around every curve on every track. Educators and politicians held their breath because another potential train wreck could happen at any moment.

Photograph of the results of the December 18, 2017 Amtrak train derailment near DuPont, Washington. This image is a work of a National Transportation Safety Board employee, taken or made as part of an employee’s official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, all NTSB images are in the public domain in the United States. Image courtesy of the NTSB and Wikimedia Commons.

When one car derails in a train wreck, it usually takes many, if not all of the cars behind it off the rails. Since the cars are all connected, sometimes the sudden stop of a car in the middle of the train will even cause the cars in front of it to crash also. Trailing cars will pile up on the initial crashed car, scattering debris in every direction and causing much collateral damage.

With “training storms” the accumulation of the falling precipitation can eventually cause flooding. This flooding will be greatly exacerbated by the following storms, multiplying the damage. With multiple storms dumping rain on one spot, the flooding deepens at that location. It will eventually spread, affecting adjacent locations. The crisis has become a full-blown disaster.

As flood waters began to engulf American higher education, many commentators and most politicians started calling for disaster aid. They wanted some entity to act as the educational equivalent of FEMA, They were clamoring for someone to step in and rescue what they saw as a failing system. This vocal group will have to wait a long time because there is no educational equivalent of FEMA. In addition, many within higher education believe and strongly avow that the system is not failing. It is the public, along with the federal and state governments that are failing higher education.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. American Higher Education was considered the gold standard to be emulated by everyone else. When gazing over a fence, you don’t always see the crabgrass in your neighbor’s lawn. Image courtesy of Presenter Media

What ended the Golden Age of American Higher Education and seriously damaged a system that was the envy of the whole world? In many accident investigations, it is difficult to identify a single event or factor that caused the mishap. Much of the time, there is a series of events or determinants that contribute to the incident. What was the series of events that caused the train wreck which derailed American higher education?

My self-identified list of the causes of rail accidents included the following items:

  • Human error
  • Environmental conditions
  • Mechanical failure
  • Infrastructure deterioration and collapse
  • Speed
  • Design flaws
  • Unintended obstructions
  • Sabotage
  • Combination of problems

As I have analyzed the difficulties that American higher education has faced in the last quarter of the 20th century, I believe that most, if not all of them, can be attributed to one or more items in the above list. I will use the remainder of this post to list specific events that contributed to some of the more serious disruptions during this tumultuous period in the history of American higher education. Speculation concerning the assignment of blame for those disruptions, and possibly others, will have to wait for future posts.

The first two events that led to the End of the Golden Age of American Higher Education were the end of the Vietnam and Cold Wars. These are the primary counterexamples of the axiom which states that the end of an American war produced a boom in education in the United States. What were the differences between the Vietnam war and the Cold War and other American wars?

This is a photograph of Sterling Hall taken after the 1970 explosion targeting the Army Mathematics Research Center (AMRC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The bombing by four student radicals was in protest of the Vietnam War. The image is part of the UW Digital Collections and released to the public domain under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Image courtesy of UW Digital Collections and Wikimedia Commons.

The Vietnam War might arguably be the most unpopular war in the history of the United States. People didn’t know or didn’t believe the reasons given by politicians and military leadership as to why young American soldiers were being sent to Southeast Asia to fight and die at the hands of an unknown enemy. With a military draft in effect between 1964 and 1973, many young men used academic deferments as a means to avoid military service. The term “draft dodger” became a common insult that was hurled at these individuals.

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, young men avoiding military service swelled the enrollment ranks at many colleges and universities. They became a vocal part of the social activism that was growing up on American campuses during these turbulent years. College campuses became the hotbed of dissent not only for an antiwar movement but also for all forms of militant protests for social justice, civil rights, and alternative lifestyles.

One of the most violent protests occurred on the University of Wisconsin – Madison campus in the early morning hours of August 24, 1970. Four students detonated a bomb in a stolen truck that was parked next to Sterling Hall which housed portions of the UW-Madison Mathematics and Physics Departments, including the Army Mathematics Research Center, which was the primary target of the bomb. There were only four people in the building at the time of the explosion. A physics post-doc doing an experiment on the ground floor was killed and three others on higher floors were injured.

During Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign, he promised to eliminate the draft. However, after assuming office, this proposal was met with great opposition to the idea of an all-volunteer army from both Congress and the Department of Defense. Instead of acting immediately on his promise, Nixon appointed a commission, chaired by Thomas Gates, former Eisenhower Secretary of Defense.

President Ford announcing amnesty for draft evaders from the White House. This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division
under the digital ID ppmsca.08536. This work is from the U.S. News & World Report collection at the Library of Congress. It is part of a collection donated to the Library of Congress. Per the deed of gift, U.S. News & World Report dedicated to the public all rights it held for the photographs in this collection upon its donation to the Library. Image courtesy of U.S. News and World Report, the Library of Congress, and Wikimedia Commons.

The Gates Commission studied the idea for a year, issuing a report in February 1970, suggesting that an adequate military force could be maintained without conscription. When the existing draft law expired in June 1971, the Department of Defense successfully argued that it needed more time to institute all of the Gates Commission’s recommendations. Congress agreed and extended the draft until June 1973. Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal and his subsequent resignation on August 9, 1974, prevented him from seeing the Gates Commission recommendation put into place.

In anticipation of the end of active ground participation in Vietnam, the last draft was held in December 1972, of men born in 1952. The end of the draft contributed to a noticeable decrease in men applying to college in the mid-1970s. The last impediment for the anti-war objectors having to choose between fleeing to Canada for sanctuary or attending college for an education, in order to stay out the army, was removed on September 16, 1974. On that date, President Gerald Ford announced from the White House a complete and total amnesty for draft evaders.

A photograph of the troops on the Normandy beachhead being resupplied. Most likely taken in 1944, between June 9 and June 11. The image is in the domain since it is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person’s official duties. Image courtesy of U.S. Navy and Wikimedia Commons.

In conventional wars, soldiers participated in armed conflicts and thus were unable to engage in collegiate studies. One million soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy between June 6 and July 30, 1944. Each day, these soldiers were fully engaged in a life and death struggle, and could not have devoted any time to academic pursuits. When the armed conflicts ended, soldiers were freed to advance themselves through college studies. After WWII and subsequent wars, the various GI bills allowed veterans to enter college or career preparation programs. After WWII, almost half of the 16 million eligible veterans enrolled in some type of educational program. After the Koren War, 43% of eligible veterans used educational benefits. After the Vietnam War, an enormous 73% of eligible veterans used educational benefits. However, there were only 2.7 million eligible veterans after the Vietnam War. Thus the 73% benefit usage percentage produced just under 2 million students, compared to the almost 7.8 million after WWII and 2.1 million after the Korean War. This smaller number of actual students didn’t produce the enrollment bumps that occurred after the earlier wars.

The Cold War was a completely different kind of war. It was a  battle for scientific superiority. The battlefields were the college classrooms and laboratories. The Cold War itself was a huge incentive for students to enroll in colleges and further their education. By doing so they were not only furthering the cause of their country, they were increasing their opportunities for social and financial upward mobility. The actual effect of the Cold War enrollment bump is hard to determine because it came at the same time as the last of the Baby Boomers and the first of the Gen Xers came of college age. The Gen Xers had the greatest college enrollment in American history. College enrollment of this generation of students compared to previous generations exploded.

This is a photograph of U.S. President Ronald Reagan giving a speech at the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, the Federal Republic of Germany on June 12, 1987. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States. This media is available in the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 198505. Image courtesy of Reagan White House Photographs, National Archives and Records Administration, and Wikimedia Commons.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire were emblematic of the end of the perceived Soviet threat to the American way of life. Without that driving force, the massive universities and college systems that grew up in the 50s and 60s found themselves as superfluous. The generous public support that had been so ubiquitous during the Cold War suddenly disappeared. In 1980, with the election of Ronald Reagan as President, the amount of public funding in cost-of-living adjusted dollars allocated to education started to decline for the first time in American history.

Without the immediate threat of an external enemy, the American public turned its attention to internal needs and desires. Suddenly, there were other public services competing with education for the limited available public resources. These other services included transportation and infrastructural needs, emergency services, judicial and penal services, public utilities, social and welfare services, services for an aging population, and affordable medical care. In the 1980s, with the U.S. population becoming much more concentrated in urban and suburban centers, the other services began to win more of those funds.

A comparison of the cumulative percentage increases in college costs versus the general consumer price index, 1975 to 2000. College costs extracted by the author from the Digest of Education Statistics. General CPI data extracted by the author from HIstorical Consumer Price Index Data on InflationData.com.

To appease their ravenous appetite for more of everything, without government funding, the colleges and universities turned to the next most available source of funding — their students. The total cost of college, including tuition, fees, room, and board, rose almost 400% from 1975 to 2000, while the General Cost of Living Index only rose a little over 200%. During this period college costs were rising almost twice as fast as the general cost of living.

As a bone tossed to the vulnerable students and their families, colleges increased access to financial aid. However, the overwhelming majority of these increases in financial aids were in the form of loans instead of grants and scholarships. This meant that those increased costs would have to be paid by the students sometime in the future.

With the increased availability of student loans, another problem surfaced. After students left college, whether or not they graduated, those loans came due for repayment. Another storm was brewing and another train car in danger of derailing. By the mid-1980s, students and parents had incurred nearly $10 billion in federal student loans. In 1986, more than one-quarter of all student borrowers had outstanding student loans of more than $10,000.

In 1990, the typical college student graduated with a median debt of just over $12,000. That graduate going out into the workplace could look forward to a median starting income of slightly over $43,000. This is a debt to salary ration of 28.6%. By the year 2000, the median college graduate left school with a median debt that had almost doubled to $22,500. However, the median starting salaries of college graduates had decreased by 1% to just over $40,000. This means that the debt to salary ratio had almost doubled to just over 56%. If these numbers were not shocking enough, tougher times were just around the bend.

In my next post, I will look at the continuing turmoil and disruption of American higher education that carried over into the first two decades of the 21st century. We will consider how the student debt bubble, exploding tuition costs, several recessions, proprietary institutions, and technology challenged the status quo and balance of the higher education arena.

 

 

Filed Under: Business and Economics, Education, Higher Education, Surviving, Thriving Tagged With: Cold War, College, Crisis, Disruption, Economics, Student Debt Bubble, Train Wreck

May 10, 2019 By B. Baylis Leave a Comment

The Golden Age of American Higher Education

From 1945 to 1975, American higher education had the Midas Touch. Image courtesy of Presenter Media.

After each major war in the history of the United States, significant growth occurred in the American higher education enterprise. All of these increases combined did not equal the growth in the three decades following WWII. The period between 1945 and 1975 could easily be labeled the Golden Age of American Higher Education.

During this time span, American higher education had the Midas touch. Everything was going well. American colleges and universities had overflowing enrollments. They couldn’t build facilities fast enough to satisfy the undergraduate student demand. Graduate schools couldn’t produce a sufficient number of PhDs to fill the faculty positions needed to teach the surfeit of undergraduate students. Public and private supporters tripped over each other as they rushed to provide the enormous increase in financial support needed to finance the vast expansion occurring. Nationally and internationally the reputation and prestige of American higher education were soaring to new heights.

During these three decades, the face of American higher education (AHE) was completely altered. AHE changed its focus. No longer was it predominantly an exclusive club for the sons of the wealthy elite, providing them with a liberal arts veneer to establish and ground them so that they could assume their “rightful place” of leadership in business, governmental, ecclesiastical, and social circles.

President Roosevelt in the Oval Office signing the GI Bill into law. The original photograph was taken by an unknown government employee as part of that person’s official duties. Thus, the photograph is in the public domain in the United States. Image courtesy of the FDR Library and Wikimedia Commons.

As WWII wound down and the nation transitioned into a post-war phase, two presidential actions had an enormous effect on American higher education. The first occurred two weeks after the Allied landing on the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day, which began the most important battle of the war. On June 22, 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the G.I. Bill, into law.  This bill provided a very wide range of benefits for returning World War II veterans, including educational assistance for veterans and their families.

This law expired in 1956 and was subsequently replaced by adjustments for veterans of the Korean Conflict and Vietnam War. Of the nearly 16 million World War II veterans, more than 2.2 million used benefits to enroll in a college or university and another 5.6 million participated in various career-oriented training programs. In the peak year of 1947, veterans accounted for 49 percent of all U.S. college admissions. Between 1956 and 1975, another 6 million individuals were aided by educational assistance programs for veterans and their families through extensions to the original GI Bill.

President Truman in 1945. This is an official presidential photograph taken by Edmonston Studio, which did not renew its copyright when the initial copyright expired. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons.

In light of the economic, demographic and educational changes occurring in the United States, by proclamation on July 13, 1946, President Harry S. Truman instituted a Commission on Higher Education, and named George F. Zook, then president of the American Council on Education, as its Chair. Truman charged the Commission

“…to concern itself with the ways and means of expanding educational opportunities for all able young people; the adequacy of curricula, particularly in the fields of international affairs and social understanding; the desirability of establishing a series of intermediate technical institutes; and the financial structure of higher education with particular reference to the requirements for the expansion of physical facilities.”

In the Commission’s 1947 Report, Higher Education for Democracy, it was noted that

“Education is by far the biggest and the most hopeful of the Nation’s enterprises. Long ago our people recognized that education for all is not only democracy’s obligation but its necessity. Education is the foundation of democratic liberties. Without an education citizenry alert to preserve and extend freedom, it would not long endure.”

The last phrase echoes the words of President Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Gettysburg Civil War Battlefield Cemetery.

In reflecting on President Truman’s charge to the Commission, the report stated that

“…the President’s Commission on Higher Education has attempted to select, from among the principal goals for higher education, those which should come first in our time. They are to bring all the people of the Nation:

  • Education for a fuller realization of democracy in every phase of living.

  • Education directly and explicitly for international understanding and cooperation.

  • Education for the application of creative imagination and trained intelligence to the solution of social problems and to the administration of public affairs.”

In spite of the new frontiers in to which American Higher Education was being pushed by the perceived new national needs and the plethora of government commissions, reports, and programs, along with the burgeoning population growth engendered by the Baby Boom and subsequent diversification of the potential higher education clientele, AHE still proclaimed itself as the legitimate heir and guardian of the liberal arts tradition. The only concession that AHE seemed willing to make was the introduction of the new model of a liberal education to replace the declining model of the ancient liberal arts.

An illustration of the seven liberal arts from the 12th-century book Hortus Delicarum of Herrad of Landsberg. This image is in the public domain because it is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art. Image courtesy of Dnalor 01 and Wikimedia Commons.

The seven traditional liberal arts of Medieval times were divided into two parts. The first part was called the trivium, which consisted of three literary disciplines. The second part was called the quadrivium, which consisted of four quantitative disciplines.

The three literary disciplines were:

  • Grammar. This deals with the correct usage of language, both in speaking and writing.
  • Dialectic (or logic). This is correct thinking, helping an individual arrive at the truth.
  • Rhetoric. This concerns the expression of ideas, particularly through persuasion. It deals with ways of organizing thoughts in a speech or document so that people can understand your ideas and believe them.

The four quantitative or mathematical disciplines were:

  • Arithmetic. This deals with numbers and the simple operations involving numbers.
  • Geometry. This concerns spaces, spatial calculations, and spatial relationships.
  • Astronomy. This is the study of the stars. It is used for timekeeping, navigation, and developing a sense of place.
  • Music. This is the study of ratio, proportion, and sound as it is related to melody and song.

Prior to the 20th-century, with a few exceptions for professional and practical arts programs, American higher education followed the medieval liberal arts paradigm. In the 20th-century, American society transitioned from a rural and agricultural society to an urban and manufacturing culture. In response to these changes, AHE evolved along with them.

This chart is the blog author’s graphic interpretation of the 2002 definition of Liberal Education offered by the AAC&U. The chart was created using ClickChart software.

The 20th-century American higher education version of the liberal arts added several other components. These were usually framed in the sense of the answer to the question: “What foundation of general knowledge did a well-educated individual need?” These additions began with a solid grounding in the humanities and sciences, including history, philosophy, the social sciences, and the natural sciences. AHE invented the term liberal education in an attempt to describe this “slightly altered” form. To describe this new form of education, the term liberal designated the knowledge and values which freed up or liberated an individual to be more human or humane. The American Association of Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) took it upon itself to define more fully what the new liberal education should look like and involve.

American higher education became bifurcated and unapologetically splintered. While one side of campuses persisted as the solid, unyielding fortresses of the liberal arts and liberal education, the other side of campuses rapidly developed into the training ground of choice for a quickly and constantly changing workforce which needed professional, technical, and career knowledge and skills. Students flocked to American colleges and universities to study the practical arts and sciences (such as the agricultural sciences of horticulture and animal husbandry), engineering, technology, educational studies (such as pedagogy and curriculum), and career and professional studies (such as accounting, business administration, and management).

In each of the two camps of the liberal arts and the practical and professional studies, more fissures appeared. Both camps separated themselves into undergraduate and graduate schools. The undergraduate schools concentrated on providing students with basic post-secondary education, helping them acquire the skills and knowledge necessary for further study or to obtain the first position in their field. The graduate schools concentrated on assisting qualified students to do more in-depth study within their field and prepare themselves to add to the world’s knowledge base.

President John F. Kennedy speaking at Rice University on September 12, 1962. This image was originally posted to Flickr by NASA on The Commons at https://flickr.com/photos/44494372@N05/29533458786. It was reviewed on 15 September 2016 by FlickreviewR and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the No known copyright restrictions. Image courtesy of Flickr, NASA, and Wikimedia Commons.

American higher education had expanded its reach after the Civil War into the service arena with the Land Grant Act. University faculty were also drawn into national service through research projects directed toward the national defense in the lead up to WWII. After WWII these areas exploded. Rising revenues from government and industry sources transformed faculty research from an afterthought into a booming business.

President Kennedy was the superb politician and master of the one-liner. He spurred the nation into a service frenzy, with his “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” The peace corp, an outgrowth of Kennedy’s inaugural speech, became the embodiment of the ideals toward which the Morrill Act of a century earlier had pointed a growing nation.

Kennedy then jump-started the space race in his famous Rice University speech with the line:  “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard…” This challenge set the tone for a decade of exploits not only in space travel but many other areas of scientific and medical research in which American research universities led the way.

Picture of the University of Chicago as it may have appeared in 1900. The image by an unknown photographer. It is the public domain because it was published prior to 1916. Image courtesy of the University of Chicago and Wikimedia Commons.

The American research university came into being in the late 19th century as a few American institutions took the German Humboldt University model and put a new world twist on it. In February 1900, the presidents of five American universities (Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of California) invited the presidents of nine other universities (Catholic University of American, Clark, Cornell, Princeton, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Pennsylvania, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Yale) to meet at the University of Chicago to discuss plans to solidify the place and reputation of American universities in the research and higher education world. As a result of these discussions, the fourteen schools formed the Association of American Universities (AAU).

The initial agenda of the AAU included three items:

  1. to bring about “a greater uniformity of the conditions under which students may become candidates for higher degrees in different American universities, thereby solving the problem of migration,”
  2. to “raise the opinion entertained abroad of our own Doctor’s degree,” and
  3. to “raise the standard of our own weaker institutions.”

Throughout the first half of the 20th century, as the American research university matured, the unofficial agenda of the AAU became the following four points:

  • inspire research institutions to emphasize a distinction between preparatory studies and higher learning;
  • encourage research institutions to make the idea of advancing knowledge through specialized, original research a central tenant of their mission statements;
  • embolden research institutions to assure the independence of faculty and students in the area of intellectual inquiry (i.e., guarantee “academic freedom” in their studies)
  • exhort research institutions to provide the necessary institutional structure to fully support the “research ideal.”

Radar image of Tropical Storm Humberto approaching the United States along the Texas coastline in September 2007.  This image is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, taken or made as part of an employee’s official duties. Image courtesy of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Wikimedia Commons

After WWII, the AAU redoubled its efforts to push a “specialized research” and an “America first agenda.” Although world rankings of universities didn’t exist until several years into the 21st century, the 60 United States members of the AAU were recognized around the world as top-flight educational institutions. By 1975 these schools and many other American colleges were attracting students and faculty from every corner of the world.

To many inside and outside the American higher education community, the horizon for American higher education could not have looked brighter. However, to the critics and some commentators of AHE, warning signs abounded. There was a storm brewing that was just showing up on radar screens across American campuses. Just like the radar screenshot of Tropical Storm Humberto shown at the left, only small showers had landed prior to the approach of the massive body of the storm, which was getting ready to unload its full fury a short time later. Was the golden age of American higher education about to end? Spoiler alert: my next post in this series will focus on the disruptive forces which played havoc with American higher education from 1975 to the present.

Filed Under: Business and Economics, Education, Higher Education, Thriving Tagged With: Baby Boomers, College, Liberal Arts, Liberal Education, Research University

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