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Increased university costs and admin
One of the common themes you'll see when people complain about rising university costs is the increased cost of administrative staff. This is usually portrayed as simply greed, or laziness on the part of universities, for instance this Wall Street Journal article reports a 37% increase in admin staff from 2001 to 2012. The Center for College Affordability and Productivity has little doubt about the lack of value admin staff add, stating: "You can have a university without administrators, but not without students or faculty. The minimization of administrative costs and bureaucracy should be sought in any university reform. A few decades ago, few universities had more than a small centralized public…
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Dickens & open scholarship
You know when you're doing two completely unrelated things and your brain forces connections that aren't really there? You think it's genius, everyone else thinks it's painfully laboured? This is one of those posts. So, I've been away for a week in the middle of Bodmin moor writing some chapters for my Battle for Open book. I came away with just my dog and a week's supply of beer. It's amazing what you get done when there is nothing else to distract you. I have written three chapters this week on MOOCs, the silicon valley narrative and open scholarship. I'm not saying they're good, but they are written. Anyhow, when…
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The dangerous appeal of the Silicon Valley narrative
For my book I've been writing about why it was that MOOCs came to such prominence in the popular press in a way that OERs didn't. One key aspect is that they fit the Silicon Valley narrative. The model of Silicon Valley provides such a powerful narrative that it has come to dominate thinking far beyond that of computing. For instance Staton declares that the degree is doomed because Silicon Valley avoids hiring people with computer science degrees, and prefers those with good community presence on software developer sites. From this he concludes this model is applicable across all domains and vocations. It hardly needs adding that Staton is the…
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The morality of scale
<broadcast tower http://www.flickr.com/photos/7715592@N03/2177026879/> When I was an undergraduate a friend and I had one of those (no doubt drink fuelled) discussions that we felt were very important. It was based around the idea of what would it be like if everyone lived to be 1000 years old? We decided that it would be unlikely that anyone would stay with the same partner for that length of time. Not because you didn't love them, but because in order to stay sane you would need to change yourself. Otherwise you'd just go mad being the same person all the time – the 670 year old you is likely to be different from the…
