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We’re Back in Business, Part II

As promised Higher Ed By Baylis LLC (HEBB) is officially back in business. This post is a continuation of Today is April 11! This is no April Fools’ joke. We’re Back in Business. So I begin this post with the third and fourth announcements which I had planned to make.

The above picture of a store front with a Grand Reopening  sign is only symbolic. HEBB doesn’t yet have a physical building. However, we are in the process of building a new viable, and vital business entity. I have placed emphasis on several words and concepts in the preceding sentence.The emphasis is on the word we.  From January 2013, the official beginning of Higher Ed By Baylis LLC, By Baylis was the only investor and only operating  consultant. My loving, loyal and responsible wife of 47 years, had access to all records of the HEBB, including the finances. I took this prudent step in case something happened to me, since twice in 2009, I entered a hospital as a member of the ABB (All But Bagged) Club. What does “All But Bagged” mean? The best description I can give probably came from the doctor that greeted Elaine when she got to the hospital when I first experienced the exploding artery, imploding tumor, and what looked liked a stroke. The doctor truly thought that I would leave the hospital in a body bag. When Elaine was introduced to the attending doctor, the doctor told her to call the family together. Elaine asked for an explanation. The doctor said, “If he survives the operation, he’ll never be the same.”

The first significant change is that HEBB will very soon officially be a “we” It will no longer be just By Baylis. Over the past several years, as I talked with potential clients about their needs, it became obvious that the needs and the potential solution to these clients’ problems were well beyond the capabilities of one individual. To remedy this deficiency, quoting the Lennon and McCartney song title, I have called for “a little help from my friends“. I have been in discussion with a number of former colleagues and the friends that I have built up over my 40 years of experience in the world of higher education. Out of those discussions, I am pleased to announce that almost a dozen highly qualified, experienced consultants and coaches, have agreed to work with me. There are several possibilities concerning the final cooperative arrangements. In some cases, the individuals may actually join HEBB and become principals. In other situations, HEBB and some consulting/coaching practices may form an alliance and work together cooperatively.

The above discussions are ongoing because they involve intricate legal negotiations. As soon as individual arrangements are finalized, we will make those announcements. I know I am pleased with the caliber of my current, potential partners. I am very confident that potential clients will find the collection of experts that emerges from these discussions to be a powerful force, which can easily and economically help them identify their watershed decisions and find practical and feasible answers to those organizational, world-changing questions.

It is not yet clear what form the final entity will take when it emerges from the above mentioned discussions. I guarantee that the final entity will share the dream that lead to the founding of Higher Ed By Baylis LLC. It was a dream of resilient, welcoming, wise, listening, flexible, entrepreneurial organizations that had a strong sense of integrity, honesty, confidence, determination, and quality. For Christian colleges, this meant they had to have a central anchor of Christ. Emanating from the proposition and relational truth expressed in Christ, were cultures of learning, scholarship, engagement, hospitality, evidence, excellence and worship. A culture is a group of people who have a foundational set of values, beliefs and principles. These people generally or habitually behave in a manner consistent with their values and have developed a collective knowledge base that has grown out of their beliefs and actions. A culture is who the people are, what they know, and how they  typically behave. I expressed my dream of  21st Century Christian University in the following diagram that appeared in the 2006 Winter edition of the Cornerstone magazine:

 

courtesy of By Baylis and Cornerstone University

Returning to a discussion of the words emphasized in opening paragraph of this fourth announcement,  some of you may be asking the question, “Don’t the terms viable and vital mean the same thing?” In one sense, they both carry the connotation of being alive. However, in another sense, they mean something very different. I am using the term  viable in the sense of being capable of success or continuing effectiveness. I see HEBB as having a good probability of being successful. It can easily be very effective. I am using the term vital  in its sense of having remarkable energy, liveliness, or force of personality. I foresee HEBB as a force with which to be reckoned in the coaching and consulting world. The team which we are assembling will be second to none. They will all be recognized as experts in their fields and masters of their trades. It is very important to note the plural designation on the words field and trade. HEBB will be a one-stop shop for organizations seeking help. In the educational arena, we are assembling a team that can cover the waterfront of accreditation, accountability, admissions and recruiting, advancement and fund raising, alumni relations, athletics, curriculum development and management, educational law, facility planning and management, finance, information technology, human resources and professional development, leadership development and succession, planning (including strategic, operational, tactical  and master planning), regulatory compliance, and student development.  HEBB will be able to work with and help any institution, whether public or private, at any educational level including primary, secondary, or higher education. Do you get the feeling of why I am excited to be back in business? Although the emphasis to this point has been with educational entitities, I foresee in the near future extending the vision of HEBB to service Christian and non-profit public service ministries, since there are many similarities in mission and operations with educational institutions. 

If you are an individual who would be interested in joining HEBB as a principal or you represent a  coaching/consulting practice that would be interested in collaborating in an alliance with HEBB, I would be very interested in talking with you. Please leave a comment in the reply box with your name, area(s) of expertise, an email address, a  phone number, and the best time to contact you. Since I have the protocols set so that I must approve any comments before they appear, your contact information will not be shared with anyone.

from Presenter Media
from Presenter Media

The fourth and final announcement in these two blog posts relates to the HEBB website which you can find by clicking here: HEBB. For almost 18 months the website has been effectively shut down. With the reopening of Higher Ed By Baylis LLC, that’s about to change. The website is going to experience extensive remodeling to reflect the changes in HEBB.

The first change you will see is a new welcome page which will introduce people to Higher Ed By Baylis LLC, its mission, vision and core values. There will be a staff page that will introduce people to the HEBB team, a brief bio and their areas of focus. There will be a blog page with links to the blogs written by our people. There will be page of introduction to HEBB services for institutional clients. There will also be a  page of introduction to services for individual and family clients. There will be a page of resources available to the general public. There will be a page of the cost of various HEBB services. These changes should be in place by the end of April.

 

 

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The Value of the Liberal Arts to the University

I have invited a friend and former colleague, Erik Benson,  to offer the first guest post on By’s Musings.  I first met Erik when I hired him at Cornerstone University in 2005. I was immediately impressed with this history instructor who brought history to life in the classroom and in the field. Less than one year later when I started CELT, the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Cornerstone University,  he was an obvious choice to be part of the faculty leadership group.  He has continued to impress students and colleagues at CU, where in 2013, he was voted “Professor of the Year.” He is currently Associate Professor of History, at CU, and Principal of ipsative, a company focusing on educational consulting and faculty development. If you would like to find out more about ipsative, please visit their website at ipsative.

This post grew out of a challenge that I set before Erik. Since I have been working on a project attempting to represent the many cultures that come together to form a university, I asked him to describe the ideal culture of history within the university setting. He eagerly took the challenge and expanded it to set history within the broader category of humanities and the liberal arts. This is the Erik that I knew at Cornerstone University. At least once a month, he would come by my office near the close of the day, stand in the open doorway, and ask, “Do you have a minute?” I almost always said, “Yes”, even though I know that the minute would end up more like an hour. Erik always had challenging questions about higher education in general and our university in particular. Together, we were working toward solutions for the tough, intractable problems facing higher education and our students. Some of those discussions are among my most memorable memories of my days at CU.

Without further ado, here is Erik’s post.

For what it’s worth: the value of the liberal arts to the university.

The last year has seen a seemingly endless stream of controversies in higher education. Among these were proposals to channel more government aid to students studying in “STEM” (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields, at the expense of those studying in the liberal arts. In Kentucky, the governor recently suggested that students studying “French literature” should not receive any state financial aid.

Debt, jobs, and basements…
The arguments are pretty straightforward. STEM fields are more promising in terms of jobs for graduates, and there is an unmet demand in the US for people trained in these fields. Amidst public concerns about escalating college costs and the resulting student debt, governments ought to insure that they fund fields best suited to meet the needs of both employers and graduates.
There is a certain logic to this. The public concern about tuition and student debt is undeniable. Furthermore, evidence abounds that there is indeed a demand for workers in STEM fields that promise large salaries upon graduation. (In fact, there is high demand for workers in skilled trades that do not require a college degree at all. A Michigan factory owner recently told me recently that he cannot hire enough skilled tradespeople, even though he actively recruits throughout the US and abroad.) In turn, the numbers are less promising for those graduating with liberal arts degrees. The anecdote of the humanities graduate moving back into the parents’ basement has become popular lore. In sum, the desire to channel students toward STEM majors seems a perfectly reasonable response.

Not so fast…
Yet in fact this response is ill-considered. For one thing, it is based on the premise that US colleges are churning out a slew of (unemployed) liberal arts majors. As Fareed Zakaria notes in his book, In Defense of a Liberal Education, between 1971 and 2012, the number of graduates with degrees in English fell from 7.6 to 3.0 percent; the number of business graduates rose from 13.7 to 20.5 percent. Only one-third of all degrees were in fields that could be classified as “liberal arts,” and this number was matched by business and health majors alone. In short, the stories of hordes of unemployed liberal arts graduates living in their parents’ basements are exaggerated.
Beyond this dubious premise, the fact is that the liberal arts approach in American higher education has served students well. Zakaria contrasts it with European higher education systems, in which students are channeled into specific vocations well before they reach college age; those that go to college are few, and they receive a rather narrowly focused training in a field. In the US, college education has historically been more “general” in focus due to being in a dynamic, changing economy and society. In short, the liberal arts have prepared American graduates to be more responsive and flexible in a changing world.
Zakaria points to a real strength of the American liberal arts education, as both anecdotal and statistical evidence attests. Numerous studies reveal that graduates with liberal arts degrees actually have fiscally rewarding careers. One such study, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014, found that while liberal arts graduates initially lagged behind professional and pre-professional peers in salaries, over time they caught up and passed them. The study noted that this was due in no small part to graduate degrees earned by liberal arts majors, which enhanced their earning ability. (Interestingly, even in pre-professional and professional fields, a comparable percentage had a graduate degree, suggesting they too received an earnings boost from this.) Still, only the most short-sighted of people would argue a degree outside the liberal arts is a better financial bet; in fact, considering the investment a college education entails, one ought to be considering long-term earnings forecasts rather than merely the entry-level job, which seems to be the focus of the moment.

On second thought…
Why liberal arts degrees offer such long-term earning possibilities is an interesting question. The answer seems to lie in what Zakaria points out—they better prepare one for a changing environment. Vocationally focused educations prepare one for a specific job or career track that can be lucrative at the entry level, but may limit one’s advancement possibilities over time. (Put simply, one might be trained to press certain buttons, but that likely will not lead to workplace advancement.) Worse, as technological and business advances change the workplace, jobs and entire career tracks can come and go. As Thomas Friedman points out in The Earth is Flat, many programming jobs in the US have easily been outsourced to Asia, and won’t be coming back any time soon in light of the cost differentials. This is why many who train in narrowly tailored fields have found it necessary to return to college later in life—their education did not prepare them for the change. Lest we think we can anticipate much of this change, consider how many jobs and fields exist today that educators and politicians could not even fathom 20 years ago. As a senior vice president at the Association of American Colleges and Universities admitted, “We are not good at predicting what jobs are going to be required in five years and 10 years down the road.” It is simply not a reasonable expectation.
My wife’s career experience attests to many of the above points. A graduate of a liberal arts college with a major in history and international studies, she went on to earn an M.A. in Mass Communication. She since has worked in both higher education and marketing, and currently has a thriving business in content strategy and writing. Her mass communication degree offered her hands-on experience in the then-emerging field of web design and development, which cued her into the new forms of media. That said, a significant portion of the technical knowledge she gained is now outdated because of the rapid advances in the last decade. She actually points to her B.A. as being more valuable and foundational for her career. Her studies in history and global culture ingrained in her a broader, more strategic perspective. She also credits them for making her a good writer, which is her “bread and butter” today. Finally, they made her more self-aware and confident, all of which led her to easily transition between jobs and career tracks without need of returning to school. In short, she epitomizes what Zakaria says about the liberals arts—it made her responsive and adaptable in a changing world.

Making the case…
While studies exist of the earning power of the liberal arts, and many faculty can cite numerous anecdotes of successful graduates, there has been a general failure to “sell” this to politicians and the public. Many in “liberal arts” fields lack an interest in informing potential students, their parents, and the public at large the career possibilities (or even proudly resist the idea). Too often, the “case” consists of rather ethereal assertions about the value of the liberal arts, the “life of the mind,” and avoiding vocational obsession, none of which are wrong, but which are not applicable for many considering college, with its expense and commitment. In short, we need to do a better job making the case.
In my case, I have occasion to meet with prospective students and parents who visit our campus. I emphasize that the study of history offers them much in terms of “life of the mind,” but also in terms of career preparation. In addition to citing studies on earnings (which many do not know), I explain specifically what history offers to them—highly transferable skills in research, critical thinking, and communication which will be proven useful over time in a constantly changing job market. I point out that these not only work for someone who might pursue a traditional career in the field (e.g. academia), but also someone working in marketing or government. I encourage them to think of how they might pair the study of history with a major or minor in another field, such as business. I even encourage students in other majors (such as business) to meet credit requirements with an applicable history course; I’ve had a number of graduates tell me this turned out to be one of the most useful things they did in college. In short, I can show them the practical benefits of their study—and they usually come to see the value.
Ultimately, in considering the issue of financing higher education and the liberal arts, the real consideration ought not be mere cost, but value. People will pay more for something they believe is worth it; they are bothered when they feel they have paid for something that is not worth it. We in academics need to make a better case for the value of the liberal arts to students.

References:
Patricia Cohen, “A Rising Call to Promote STEM Education and Cut Liberal Arts Funding,” New York Times (22 February 2016), B1.

Thomas Friedman, The Earth is Flat (Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2006).

Beckie Supiano, “How Liberal-Arts Majors Fare over the Long Haul,” The Chronicle of Higher Education (22 January 2014). http://chronicle.com/article/How-Liberal-Arts-Majors-Fare/144133 (Accessed 1 March 2016).

Fareed Zakaria, In Defense of a Liberal Education (W.W. Norton and Co., 2015).

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Today is April 11! This is no April Fools’ Joke. We’re Back in Business

 

from Presenter Media

Can you believe it?  Today is Monday, April 11, 2016. Winter and the month of March are officially over.  We are ten days past the traditional April Fools’ Day of April 1. So this post and the four announcements contained in it are no April Fools’ Joke. You can trust them. They are for real!  Some of the announcements are not as positive as I would have liked. However, they definitely represent a positive movement that was much in doubt through most of the past year. So without further ado, let’s get right to the announcements.

from Presenter Media
from Presenter Media

This first announcement concerns my health. It is a positive announcement since we made it past March and I didn’t have any new health setbacks. In previous posts I have explained that in each March since March 2009, I have spent at least one week in a hospital with some major medical problem.

However, since last Thanksgiving, I don’t think that I have fully explained to my blog audience my current experiences. In the week before Thanksgiving, I started feeling sets of two or three, very quick 120-volt, low-amperage electric shocks in many different areas of my body. After the shocks stopped, I would then feel a burning sensation at the location of the shocks which would last from a few seconds to almost a minute. The burning sensation would then take off, traveling a nerve path to another spot in my body. The burning sensation would settle in that spot and then morph into a normal type of pain for that location. For example, I would get three shocks, followed by a burning sensation in my left shoulder blade. After a short period of time, the burning sensation would travel up through my shoulder, down my arm, past my wrist and the back of my hand, before settling in the large knuckle of my left index finger. At this point, the burning sensation would change into an arthritic pain, which would last until I could work it out by massaging my knuckle.

The electric shocks are not a new experience for me. In January 2013, I began feeling electric shocks and burning sensations like this is my left pectoral muscle. They started slowly with one or two daily. However, by mid-March, the shocks increased in frequency and intensity to such an extent that my doctors were afraid I was having a heart attack. I was rushed to the hospital. After extensive testing, it was determined that I wasn’t having heart problems. I was having a gall bladder attack. My gall bladder was completely blocked with stones and so full of infection that it was playing havoc with other parts of my body. They laparoscopically removed my gall bladder and the electric shocks immediately stopped. My neurologists suggested that the electric shocks I experienced were what is called referred pain. This suggests the pain is originating in one location, but exhibits itself elsewhere. With that history in mind, my doctors began looking for any type of problem that they could find elsewhere in my body. After many tests, they couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with me.

The pattern of six or more shocking episodes continued daily for two weeks. Then one day during the first week of December, I woke up to a new experience. After the first episode of electric shocks and the associated burning sensation traveled a nerve path to settle into its final resting place, I started feeling severe paresthesia (the sensation of numbness or pins and needles) in that limb or area of my body. When I called my GP, he asked what my blood pressure was. When I told him it was unusually high, he told me to get to the ER. Of course, it had snowed the previous evening and our car was snowed in. Thus, my wife called the local ambulance service. When the EMTs arrived my blood pressure was 210/140 with a pulse of 110, and my A-fib was making my heart do flip-flops that weren’t being controlled by my pacemaker. My whole side was also numb and tingling like pins and needles. The EMTs wrapped me and immediately loaded me into the ambulance for a ride to the ER.

from Presenter Media

I spent the next seven hours in the ER undergoing extensive testing. I had EEGs, EKGs, CAT-scans and x-rays. The ER doctor wanted to do an MRI. Although I have an MRI-compatible pacemaker, it can take days to arrange to have everyone necessary in the MRI imaging lab to conduct the MRI on me. You know you could be in trouble when the ER doctor says “You’re the most complicated and interesting patient, I have ever seen in ER.”   When the ER finally got my BP and heart palpitations under control with medications, but couldn’t control the electric shocks with additional pain and seizure medications, they sent me home with strict instructions to schedule an appointment with my neurologist and cardiologist as soon as possible. When I did see them, they increased my heart, pain and seizure medication dosages slightly again. When those changes produced only marginal results, the doctors began practicing medicine. They ordered more tests. Since two one-hour EEGs provided no useful information, my neurologist ordered a 48-hr EEG. The results of that test definitely suggested that I had brain activity when the electric shocks and burning sensations hit. The problem was that the activity was not located where the neurologists expected it be. This could have been due to the injuries my brain suffered during the several traumatic brain incidents that I have had, or to the plasticity of my brain in attempting to rewire itself to answer the demands that I keep placing on it.

My neurologist also ordered a two-test combination consisting of an NVC (Nerve Conduction Velocity) test and an EMG (Electromyogram), which provide information about abnormal conditions in one’s nervous system. In the NVC test nerves are stimulated with small impulses at one electrode while other electrodes detect the electrical impulses “down-stream” from the first electrode. If the impulses do not travel at the expected speed, then there is nerve damage in that area. In the EMG, needles are inserted in muscles in specific locations. By stimulating the muscles via these needles and measuring the response, any nerve damage can be spotted. Both tests were completely “normal.” This is good news and bad news. The good news is that I have no small or large nerve damage. The bad news is that this means my problems are most likely in my head.

from Presenter Media

As we progressed through February and March into April, I noticed one large improvement in my condition. I began having more extended periods of lucidity, when I could think and write. The shocks, burning sensations and pain have not gone away. However, I am becoming accustomed to them. After banging your head against a wall for so long, eventually you don’t feel it any more.

Thus, I am in a position to attack the large backlog of blog posts that I have accumulated, as well as the multitude of book-length manuscripts that I have outlined waiting for an opportunity to work on them. To readers of this blog, I covet your prayers and thoughts for continued long periods of clear thinking and a bountiful stream of meaningful words. 

 

from Presenter Media
from Presenter Media

Announcement No. 2 concerns the future of this blog By’s Musings.  This is the first posting for five months. At that time, I indicated that I intended to publish posts regularly. However, I wasn’t counting on the difficulties that I outlined in Announcement #1 above.  This time when I say I intend to publish posts regularly, I have taken additional steps to make sure that occurs. One of those steps is to invite a number of my friends and former colleagues to share guest posts. Later this week, the first guest post will be published. It has been written by Professor Erik Benson, from Cornerstone University. When I hired Erik in 2005, he immediately impressed me as a teacher who brought history to life in the classroom. You didn’t want to go to sleep in his classes because you never knew what you might miss. To Erik, history was not restricted to the classroom. He brought the field into the classroom and took history and the students out into the field. Over the intervening years, he has also impressed students, who voted him “Professor of the Year” in 2013. In addition, he has also impressed his colleagues as an integral part of the leadership team for the CU CELT, the Cornerstone University Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, since 2006.

The title of Erik’s guest post is “The Value of the Liberal Arts to the University.” It is already in the queue, ready to published at 5:30 am on Wednesday, April 13, while I am, hopefully, sound asleep. During my periods of lucidity noted above, I have completed the first draft of post that I have titled, “Education: A Public Good or a Private Good?”  I believe the answer to this seemingly innocuous question has deep ramifications that impact the control and cost of education in America. This refers not only to higher education, but to elementary and secondary education. I hope it will engender much discussion. It is in the queue to be published next Monday, April 18, at 5:30 am. This is an appropriate day for this posting since April 18 this year is TAX DAY!  (This is a public service announcement to remind all my readers of the source of funds for public education.)

from Presenter Media

To keep the blog publication ball rolling, I have two draft posts, entitled “My Life in an Amusement Park: Living on a Carousel and the Unit Circle Parts I and II”,  in the queue, scheduled to be published respectively on Monday, April 25 and May 2, at 5:30 am. The formula, x2 + y2 = 1, for the unit circle is the basis for much of mathematics. Surprisingly, it is also the basis for many aspects associated with a majority of amusement park rides. Who else but a mathematician would see the similarities between amusement park rides and the mathematics of the unit circle, and find them fascinating? In Part I of this post, I will explore many of the connections between the rides and the mathematics. In Part II, I will discuss why they are important in my life. Stay tuned to find out what carousels, roller coasters, tunnels of love, Tea Cup rides and the swing rides have in common, and why they are built on mutations and perturbations to the familiar formula for the unit circle.

 OOPS, I am so sorry readers, but we’ve gone far beyond the maximum number of words blogger gurus suggest for posts. For the remainder of the announcements, you will have to stay turned for the post, “We’re Back in Business, Part II.” which is in the queue to published on Friday, April 15, at 5:30 am. In that post I will cover Announcement No. 3, which concerns my coaching/consulting practice, Higher Ed By Baylis LLC, and Announcement No. 4, which deals with my website Higher Ed By Baylis. Thanks for staying with me and please come back for more.

 

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Visual Story Board for Manuscript Title, Part V – Student Version

Image from GraphicStock. Used with permission

This post is the last in a series on the development of the title of the manuscript, An Explorer’s Guide to Biblical Life Planning: Student Version, on which I am currently working. By working, I mean interacting with my computer. This process is not as straight forward as it was prior to 2009. I am still generating ideas in my head. After my most serious bout with seizures in December, 2009, the ideas have almost always been in the form of visual images. Since I am not an artist, the coins in the realm of communications are words, I must translate the pictures I see into words.

from Presenter Media

This translation is a multi-step process. I first do a very rough draft in my head. I then mull over that draft several times before sitting down at my keyboard and inputting a more refined rough draft into the memory banks of my computer. I print out a copy of my work so that I can review it away from that machine that beckons me to investigate all the wonderful new reports on education, sports, world events, food and cars that it has to offer.

 

from Presenter Media

I usually leave my office, taking the hard copy of my document to review later. I have found if I try to edit the material immediately, I do not find problems or alternative ways of expressing my ideas. I am too invested in what I have just committed to my computer. I must wait minutes, hours or even days before I can truly edit my own work.

Why do I need the printed paper copy of a document to edit? There are several reasons. The first reason is that I  am not a digital native. I will admit that, although I consider myself fairly fluent in digitalese, I am still a digital immigrant. In addition, the aging process has taken away some of my reaction time. Even spoken or hand written communications take much longer now than just 7 years ago.

Aging and other health concerns have also caused changes in how I do things. My middle range vision, i.e., computer screens, is deteriorating. If I enlarge the screen type font large enough to easily read it, some documents will not fit on the screen. In addition, the lines of type do not always run straight across the page for me. I get mixed  up as to which line I am reading. With my changing vision, I have had to go to two pairs of glasses. One pair for distance vision and up-close “book” reading, and one pair for middle range (computer screen) and reading distance. I tried trifocals, but I couldn’t use them. They gave me severe headaches. Exchanging glasses has quickly become a pain, especially when I forget where I put the other pair of glasses.

This post concentrates on the phrase Student Version. With this phrase I am attempting to identify the target audience of the book. It is intended for mid-to late-adolescents. This phrase actually comes directly in verbal form from my pre-Traumatic Brain Incident days. As far back as 1990, colleges were looking for ways of addressing those traditional “college-age” individuals whom they were trying to attract to come to their institutions. Colleges had to walk something of a tightrope in addressing these individuals. Officially, in the eyes of the law, most of these individuals were not adults. They were still children in the eyes of many of their parents. Many parents were financially responsible for these individuals. Parents also wanted to protect “their children” from the harsh realities of the real world for as long as they could. The “children” were getting ready to leave the nest. They wanted to be on their own as much as possible. So as not to offend the parents or the young people, colleges started using the term “student.”  This gave the young folks a sense of freedom, while still not completely off-putting the parents. In the ’90s at college recruitment or orientation days, we talked to parents about “their students.”  When we addressed the prospective students, we used the term “students” to give them a sense of maturation. The term may not have completely satisfied everyone in either group. However, it didn’t disgust them either.

As these prospective students engaged in the college selection and preparation processes, there was one question that kept surfacing:

from Presenter Media

That’s the primary reason for writing this book. I wanted to help prospective students and their parents answer the questions that arise naturally in the processes of selecting, applying to and preparing for college or careers. This book is addressed to the students. I am also working on a second volume, addressed to the parents. I am intending to call it An Explorer’s Guide to Biblical Life Planning: PG Version. The abbreviation PG stands for Parental Guidance. This is not the parental guidance that the movies rating system suggests. The book is intended to provide guidance to parents as their students navigate their paths to college or a career. The PG Verision will contain all the material in the Student Version, but it will contain additional information. The added bonus material is meant to help guide the parents as they work with their students. I will encourage families to work through the common parts of the books together.

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The consulting and counseling practice of Higher Ed By Baylis LLC is suspending operations indefinitely

This blog posting is first a very important announcement concerning the future of my dream to run an educational consulting and counseling practice in my forced retirement. It is secondly an admission that I have failed to live up to the desires that I expressed in my July 31, 2014 post entitled, An important announcement concerning Higher Ed By Baylis LLC and By’s Musings. In that post I noted that I was temporarily suspending HEBB LLC operations and curtailing posts on By’s Musings until at least the beginning of 2015. We are now well over half way through 2015, and I am coming back and announcing the indefinite suspension of the counseling and consulting practice of Higher Ed By Baylis LLC. I am closing up this portion of my dream, in order for me to accomplish at least something from the long list of things that I have wanted to do. After much prodding from my neurologist, I have finally agreed to concentrate only on my writing. Thus for the foreseeable future, I will spend my waking time writing books and posts for By’s Musings. I know that I have enough material to keep me busy because I have accumulated ideas for more than 40 books and more than 400 posts.

However, don’t worry! I may have been a slow learner, but I have learned this lesson well. I will not overwhelm you with these treatises all at once. I will dole them out, one at a time. I do not take this step lightly. I have had so many things that I wanted to do, and things that I believed the Lord had given me to do. However, the Lord has been teaching me daily that we are basically weak, and only He is strong. We can only accomplish what he allows us and enables us to do. Many of us believe that it is better to burn out for the Lord, rather than rust out. However, I have somewhat reluctantly come to the conclusion that neither option is what the Lord intends for us.

For the past six years, I have been suffering from severe fatigue. A plaque on my desk has turned very prophetic. It reads,

“When I works, I works hard.
When I plays, I plays hard.
When I sits, I sleep.”

For 45 years as a student, faculty member or administrator in higher education I lived the first two lines of that plaque. Early every morning, I was the first one in the office, with my ever present cup of coffee. I was also usually the last one to leave the office in the late afternoons or early evenings. I almost always took work home with me. However, given that schedule, I still managed to average ten hours a week in the gym playing basketball. One of the nicknames I picked up over the years was “ Old Iron Legs,” because I could play longer than the other players, most of whom were much younger than I. The gray hair and beard in the picture taken more than a dozen years ago may have fooled new opponents for the first two minutes on the basketball court. However, after just a few quick trips up and down the court, they realized that I came to play, and it wasn’t going to be easy to take advantage of this old geezer.

For the past six years, battling severe fatigue and other medical infirmities have restricted me to the world of the last line of the plaque. Six years seem like a long time. As a result of my neurological difficulties, one of the sensory dysfunctions that I am experiencing is not being able to hear string instruments. Instead of “hearing” such instruments playing music, I feel vibrations in various places in my body, or I see images of the sinusoidal waves of the sounds produced by the string instruments. I hear voices and other types of instruments perfectly well. You may ask, “How do you know what music is playing?” If the music is familiar, my brain translates the stimulus that the auditory receptors in my ears pick up into the vibrations or visual images that I perceive. Then my brain goes into the library of my memory banks and finds the particular music piece that is being played.

Although, I don’t sing aloud very often, so that others can’t hear my off-key singing, I have found comfort in singing silently the old gospel hymn, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. With a sovereign God in control, I don’t believe in coincidence. So it was a God moment, this past week, when at the funeral service for a friend we discovered that this hymn was part of the congregational singing. The presiding pastor explained that this hymn was the closing hymn of the last church service that my deceased friend attended the morning of the day he died. His wife asked that it be included as part of his service. I close this post with the words to that hymn:

I am weak, but Thou art strong,
Jesus, keep me from all wrong,
I’ll be satisfied as long
As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.

Refrain:

Just a closer walk with Thee,
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea,
Daily walking close to Thee,
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.

Through this world of toil and snares,
If I falter, Lord, who cares?
Who with me my burden shares?
None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.

Refrain

When my feeble life is o’er,
Time for me will be no more,
Guide me gently, safely o’er
To Thy kingdom’s shore, to Thy shore.

Refrain

“Road Closed” image provided by PresenterMedia. Gray beard picture provided by Indiana Wesleyan University.

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What Makes a Better Neighbor: a Prison or a University?

In February 1980, one of the most horrific prison riots in US history occurred at the Maximum Security State Prison in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Several years later, at an academic gathering in the beautiful conference setting of quaint Santa Fe, the dinner discussion turned to the question of why the main branch of the state university was located in Albuquerque, while the maximum security state prison was located in Santa Fe. An administrator from a college in New Mexico, replied, “As State Capital, Santa Fe had first choice.” When I first heard this comment about 30 years ago, I thought it was a joke. However, I immediately recognized that this one-liner could come in handy in future discussions. Thus, I filed it away in my memory to pull out at an appropriate time.

I will admit that over the intervening years, in addition to employing it myself, I have heard others use the “first choice” quip on more than one occasion in discussions of seemingly anomalous situations. My next post, “Which Would You Find More Acceptable in Your Back Yard, a Toxic Waste Dump or a Murder of Crows?” represents such an occurrence. 

When I started this series of posts on the NIMBY syndrome, I figured it was time to pull out this old story and look at it more closely. I thought of three general questions that I should answer. Firstly, are there other state capitals which may have chosen prisons over universities? Secondly, what are positives and negatives for a community having a prison within its environs? Thirdly, what are the benefits and detriments that an institution of higher learning imparts to the community in which it resides?

I quickly discovered that arriving at the answer to the first question was much more time consuming than I expected it to be. I first ascertained that all 50 state capitals had jails, prisons, and/or detention centers of some stripe within their metropolitan boundaries.

Surprisingly, trying to determine how many state capitals hosted state-supported universities also proved a little trickier than I thought. I began by settling on a definition of state-supported university. For my purposes, I looked at institutions of higher education that: 1) called themselves public colleges or universities; 2) offered four-year baccalaureate degrees as the core of their undergraduate academic programming; 3) offered primarily full-time, traditional, residential programs; 4) offered campus housing to students; and 5) garnered a significant slice of their general operating budget from direct state appropriations. In my search I found 41 states that had institutions that met all five of my conditions. Besides New Mexico, the other eight that did not were Iowa, Maryland, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.

The higher education options in the capitals of these nine states present an interesting mix. All nine of the state capitals have for-profit institutions offering non-traditional degree programs for adult students. Four of the state capitals do not have any private colleges or universities that offer traditional four-year baccalaureate programs.  These are Des Moines, Iowa, Pierre, South Dakota, Montpelier, Vermont, and Cheyenne Wyoming. Only two of the state capitals, Annapolis, Maryland and Pierre, South Dakota, do not have public two-year community colleges.

Although Annapolis, Maryland does not have any state supported four-year school, it is the home of the United States Naval Academy. As a national military academy, it is not the typical college. First students do not pay tuition. They “pay” for their education by a military service requirement after graduation or separation from the academy. The admissions process is also quite complicated, with the student completing a normal academic application and a nomination application to those individuals or groups that are authorized to nominate students to the national military academies.

Thus, Pierre, South Dakota seems to fall completely outside the normal pattern of educational opportunities in state capitals. There are no traditional college options, either public or private, in Pierre. Students just graduating from high school must leave Pierre and go elsewhere to attend any college.

Therefore, the data suggest that most state capitals have not picked prisons instead of colleges or universities. While 96% of state capitals had state supported, two-year technical or community college, a hefty 82% were also home to state supported universities. Thus, most state provided their state capitals with both prisons and state supported higher education.

Although most economic impact studies give the edge to universities over prisons in providing economic benefits to the surrounding community, there are a few negative blips on the radar screen. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the two unrelated trends of an economic downturn in rural America and the epidemic-like increase in U.S. prison population caused some rural communities to turn to prisons as a basis for economic development. While most economic and employment impact studies look at the increased revenue produced by the universities and prisons, they do not take into account the added costs of increased services required and social disruption.

With all the economic, cultural and educational advantages that colleges and universities provide communities, why would any community embrace a prison before a college or university? There are some economic reasons, but many of the reasons seem to be social. Whereas a college or university is likely to drastically change the culture of a community, a prison is very unlikely to cause any such changes. Colleges may attract a diverse student body that is very different from the community. This can cause tensions among the students and the local residents. Faculty and students are also by nature activists and push for change, while the local residents may be very content to remain in their status quo. College students are also generally free to move about.  I once read a newspaper account concerning a community resident complaining about a wild party which spilled over from a college into the surrounding community. It described the scene by saying, “The inmates were running wild.” With prisons, the inmates almost never run wild in the local community. Prisoners are locked up and have little or no contact with the surrounding community.

Once a prison is built, there are few extra demands on public safety services or transportation infrastructure. Once a college is built there are multiple extra public safety or infrastructure concerns. Colleges and universities have numerous, large events with a concomitant influx of visitors, which must pass through the community to get to the campus. Communities are left with the big question of who is going to pay. Since all public and most private colleges are tax-exempt organizations, they do not pay state and local taxes to cover the cost of the common public services that communities must provide like public safety, transportation infrastructure like roads and bridges, and utility infrastructure concerns like water and sewer. To get around the tax questions, some communities have asked college and universities and other tax-exempted organizations to pay user fees to cover what might be considered their fair share of the cost of providing community services.

One other concern with a number of college communities is the disruption that the expansion of a college causes the local neighborhoods. From personal experience, I have seen neighbors very upset with the way colleges have bought up properties and changed the nature of the neighborhood. With public institutions, the use of eminent domain can further alienate the locals.

 Why are prisons sometimes considered better neighbors than college and universities? Colleges and universities change the nature of their neighborhood. They are a disruptive force, costing more than they are worth in the opinions of some neighbors. Once prisons are built, they usually just sit there and have no interaction with the neighborhood.