The Future of Higher Education? Radical Changes Possible

I think it is time for a change too. So many industries have been completely transformed by technology, why not teaching?

Science Chic wrote: This recent editorial in Science made me sit up and go "Yeah, I could get behind this!" There's nothing speculated below that I disagree with as a direction to take, although I do myself still prefer the in-person classroom experience for the introduction to a subject and bonding with fellow suffering students (but love the idea of learning from the best in the world, not just the few faculty hired at the university I choose to attend). I'm definitely for abandoning tenure, I think it's more harmful to universities, professors, and especially science as a discipline, than it is beneficial.

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Speaking of tenure:


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/broo ... S2h13LfSkI

"Salvatore Sparacino, 46, a gym teacher at It Takes a Village Academy HS in East Flatbush, vented his fury at a colleague when she spurned his romantic advances, according to testimony.

“I’ll show you, you f--king bitch. You’ll pay for this,” he yelled.

Despite finding that Sparacino had terrorized the woman both in and out of school, Joshua Javits, a hearing officer who decides cases against tenured teachers, barred the city Department of Education from firing him."

:thumbsup: Now that you can learn just about anything you want to know, will we have to change from degrees and certifications back to hiring the best person for the job? That would be change I could get behind!

Science Chic wrote: There's a high school that offers tenure??? WTH? Massive Fail on that school's part.

Get out much?

"Reassignment centers are holding facilities for New York City Department of Education, where more than 600 teachers accused of misconduct were paid to work full time doing nothing for months or years at a time while awaiting resolution of their cases.[1] Among teachers they are referred to as rubber rooms.[2] The city has 13 reassignment centers.[3]

They also claim that the city's teacher union, the United Federation of Teachers, neglects to provide proper representation to teachers assigned to reassignment centers.[4] Exonerated teachers often become absent teacher reserve teachers.

The Department of Education blamed union rules that made it difficult to fire teachers. Some teachers assert that they have been sent to reassignment centers because they are whistleblowers against administrators for falsifying student test results or publicly challenging former Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.[1]uft.org/news/teacher/top/axed/Whistle-blower axed — again Three Department of Education employees speaking to the UFT's "New York Teacher," confirmed teachers' allegations that Fordham High School for the Arts principal Iris Blige filed allegations against the school's UFT chapter leader, to place her in a reassignment center, in order to intimidate her and to set an example to the school's staff.[5][dead link] Further, many teachers accused of misconduct are not terminated when serious flaws which occurred during the investigation are brought to light, and/or when the witnesses against them are shown not to have been truthful during their testimony.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reassignment_centers



It's been called the holy grail of the teaching profession — academic freedom plus job security all rolled nicely into a union contract. But to Michelle Rhee, superintendent of Washington D.C. schools, tenure just means trouble.

Roughly 2.3 million public school teachers in the U.S. have tenure — a perk reserved for the noblest of professions (professors and judges also enjoy such rights). The problem with tenure, Rhee and other critics say, is that it inadvertently protects incompetent teachers from being fired.



Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article ... z2LrBTaKWz "