The past two days I have
needed to come to UCF’s main campus in the middle of the day. I’ve moved my main
campus office hours from Friday afternoon to Tuesday midday in an attempt to
consolidate my days outside the house. Having an obligation away from home
really wrecks any kind of work that requires consistent, undistracted thought (like
grading or wrestling with course websites) so being out one day midweek rather than
two with Fridays accounted for is a better use of my time.
I also found that the new
time makes me available to more students. Given that I teach strictly online I
am not required to hold office hours in person. But I learned from the nuclear
meltdown that I endured last Spring term with students angry over being
required to critically consider the course in Christianity they had taken that being present
in person for students to ask questions, to vent and attempt to negotiate
grades goes a long way toward preventing unpleasant interactions as the end of
the term nears.
Moreover, as extraverted as
I am (and in all honesty, I’m fairly close to the middle of the spectrum these
days), it’s still good for me to see real live human beings each week and not
just deal with a name on a computer screen. I actually enjoy meeting most of my
students and always love catching up with students from classes gone by. Indeed, I sometimes find
myself getting a little depressed in the summer when I toil away at online
classes as a solo long distance runner.
He Descended Into Hell…..
My Tuesdays now begin with
two hours out on main campus after which I get back into my car and drive the 32
miles south to the Osceola Campus, hold my office hours for regional campus students,
then teach the Ethics and Critical Thinking class I adjunct there until 9. It’s
another 24 miles and a half hour home from there. By the end of each Tuesday I’ll
have travelled 70 miles round trip and contributed $7.00 to the expressway agencies
that extort money out of motorists just to be able to get across the metro area
in a timely fashion. I’m pretty beat by the end of the day but fortunately, my
Valencia course is almost always inspiring and I find myself coming home on a
high, a very happy teacher.
But those very long days begin
on a sour note on main campus just finding parking. Because I am no longer
assigned to the main campus and on campus at most two days a week, I decided
not to allow the university to once again extort the $200/year from my already
meager salary for the privilege of hunting for a space to park at my workplace.
(In contrast, the regional campus at Valencia not only provides everyone with
free parking, our parking permits last for two years.)
The last two days trying to
find parking on main campus have been absolutely hellacious. Tuesday I got to
campus early hoping to finish grading a set of papers before my office hours
began. Because I have to buy a day pass for $5.00 a pop, I am relegated to only
the D lots and garages with the students. Of course, that presumes there is a
space to actually claim. Tuesday and Wednesday that was simply not the case.
I spent 30 minutes looking
for a space to park Tuesday. Same thing Wednesday making me 15 minutes late for
my meeting there. I circumnavigated three lots and three parking garages.
Everywhere the lots were full and the lanes between parked cars filled with
frantic students seeking a slot. Students leaving campus are stalked by
students in cars praying to be the first on site to claim that newly opened
spot. In the poorly lit garages that more resemble medieval dungeons than modern
parking facilities, impatient drivers whirl around corners without lights and
race up and down narrow lanes in an ongoing game of chicken seeking that
elusive slot.
This is an absolute
nightmare.
Into the Sausage Grinder
If I had ever doubted that
this institution that touts itself as a soon-to-be world class university is
actually an overcrowded credentials factory, sitting at the bottom of the down
ramp in the parking garage watching car after car with single occupants talking
on cell phones pouring out of the structure removed any doubts. The image that
came to mind immediately was the scene from Pink Floyd’s The Wall with
the faceless children marching obediently down the assembly line into the sausage
grinder.
As I alternatively slammed
my brakes to keep from being hit and cursed under my breath at being forced to
endure this purgatorial nightmare, it suddenly occurred to me that the students
who came to campus in the middle of the day for afternoon classes, often after
working full or half day shifts, faced this endurance test every day. I thought back to students who often came to
class late and missed the opening film review or roll passed around the class
and lost a point for lateness. I thought about the students who arrived in foul
moods for no apparent reason. Suddenly I knew why they were in foul moods. I now
know what they had been enduring .
Perhaps I should have had
this experience earlier. I probably could have been a little more understanding
in dealing with these latecomers. It’s easy to pass judgment on a hardship you
haven’t actually experienced.
Even so, it’s hard to fully
benefit from a class for which you’ve only been present for a fraction of it. The
fact that students cannot anticipate coming to campus, parking their cars and
walking across campus within a reasonable amount of time to make it to class on
time points toward much larger problems than mere individual time management. It
points toward a failure in vision.
Field of Dreams Unrealized
Ironically, the reason that
parking lots were overflowing yesterday was that a good chunk of parking spaces
had been cordoned off to accommodate the guests of the university president
giving his State of the University speech. G-d forbid the speech might have
been held at night when the campus population is decreased with fewer classes to
interrupt. Like everything from the visits of Sesame Street Live to ice skating
rinks to weeknight football games which require cancelling of classes and removal
of all permitted parking from east campus to accommodate the townies arriving
to get drunk before the game, the university sends very clear signals to everyone
about where its priorities lie. And one thing that is consistently clear is
that its classes are not a priority.
In the State of the
University, the president laid out a grand vision of expansion to a downtown site
and more building on campus and at the medical center. The president also noted
that with money from a state legislature and governor on the eve of an election the
university planned to add 197 teaching lines, less than half of which are
tenure track. It all sounds quite exciting.
However, even with the
additional state funding, the money UCF currently receives from the state is
less than it was in 2007. Yet, cuts in funding have not deterred the university
from admitting even more students. The president reported in his address that
the university had broken the 60,000 enrollment barrier this fall, just behind
its closest competition at Arizona State.
Charge on, Knights!
Of course, this is also an increase of more than 2000 students from the 2007 enrollments when funding was higher than it is today. Apparently the UCF version of the Field of Dreams mantra - “If you admit them, the money will come” - has proven to be erroneous.
Charge on, Knights!
Of course, this is also an increase of more than 2000 students from the 2007 enrollments when funding was higher than it is today. Apparently the UCF version of the Field of Dreams mantra - “If you admit them, the money will come” - has proven to be erroneous.
Bigger is Better, Right?
A Google search for “obsession
with size” turns up a number of very interesting sites. Not surprisingly, many
are related to penis size or female bustlines. The sites speak of inferiority
complexes, hypercompetitiveness and how self-concepts are affected by how one
fared in the genetic lottery. But what
is striking about these sites is that virtually all of them see an obsession
with size as the sign of superficiality at best and a pathologically uncritical
lack of depth at worst.
“Bigger is better” is the familiar
mantra of consumer marketing. It points toward production, assessing its own
value in quantity while scrupulously avoiding concerns for quality. In turn, “Bigger
is better” becomes a mantra for those who are willing to define themselves in a
thoughtless consumerist manner.
At a public university, this
mantra plays out in some seriously pathological ways. It begins with the rat race
for parking described above needed to even get onto campus. It manifests itself
in overcrowded classes whose students begin their discussions with their
professors during office hours with “I’m X and I’m in your Y class,” a
necessary introduction because the faculty member has no clue who this member
of a cast of thousands in his or her auditorium presentation actually is. It then
spills over into online sections of classes designed to sop up the overflowing
student population which can no longer be housed in actual classrooms, insuring
that at key times during the day the online site will slow to a crawl.
Of course, the truth is that
bigger is not necessarily better, only better is better. A
study recently published by Gallup Polling and Purdue University found that
the most important aspect of higher education and its impact on students has little to do with the size of a college’s enrollment,
its athletic prowess and the accompanying season-long bragging rights, the
quality of its housing or the speed within which its enrolled can access a
degree. Rather, whether a graduate was able to thrive after college turns almost exclusively on what kind of experience
they had during college. To wit:
The study found that the type of schools these college
graduates attended -- public or private, small or large, very selective or less
selective -- hardly matters at all to their workplace engagement and current
well-being. Just as many graduates of public colleges as graduates of
not-for-profit private colleges are engaged at work -- meaning they are deeply
involved in, enthusiastic about, and committed to their work. And just as many
graduates of public as not-for-profit private institutions are thriving --
which Gallup defines as strong, consistent, and progressing -- in all areas of
their well-being.
Instead, the study found that support and experiences in
college had more of a relationship to long-term outcomes for these college
graduates. For example, if graduates recalled having a professor who cared about
them as a person, made them excited about learning, and encouraged them to
pursue their dreams, their odds of being engaged at work more than doubled, as
did their odds of thriving in all aspects of their well-being. And if graduates
had an internship or job in college where they were able to apply what they
were learning in the classroom, were actively involved in extracurricular
activities and organizations, and worked on projects that took a semester or
more to complete, their odds of being engaged at work doubled as well.
In short, quality of
experience is what counts. A factory approach which shuttles students through a
maze of auditorium presentations and bogged down online courses is simply not
likely to produce graduates inclined to thrive in their careers or their well being generally. The reason?
Because they have been processed like commodities, not engaged as human beings.
Of course, as the president’s
speech noted, insuring there is sufficient instructional staff to actually
teach the never ending tidal wave of students the university seems intent upon
admitting (unlike the University of Florida which long ago capped enrollments
in the name of quality) also requires having the money to pay them. This, in
turn, affects class size and forum. And in turn, that greatly impacts the
ability of faculty to know and engage their students as actual teachers and mentors.
But Do We Really Care?
As always this brings us
back to the question that underlies all discussions of education at any level: Do we
really care?
Do we care enough to provide sufficient parking to allow
students access to the campus to attend classes on time? Do we care enough to provide
enough teachers and small enough classes that students actually get to know
their classmates and their professors and have the potential to form productive
relationships with them? Do we care enough to ensure that enrollments are small
enough to allow faculty to offer useful feedback on writing and content in
classes which demand the same? In short, do we care enough to see the human
beings coming to our campuses to work and study as worthy in themselves to foster
and develop to the limits of their potential and not simply units of production
on conveyor belts in degree assembly lines?
If the answer to those questions
is yes – and I do not labor under the misapprehension that they will be – then
the next questions become even more important:
Are we willing to pay for the quality we demand? How much do we really
want to produce quality educated graduates able to engage the world outside the
university? Are we willing to simply accept the mediocrity that mass production
of degrees represents and are we then willing to live with the consequences of that
decision for our lives together?
Do we really care?
I wonder.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Rev. Harry
Scott Coverston, J.D., M.Div. Ph.D.
Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)
Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)
Asst. Lecturer: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law
Osceola Campus, University of Central Florida, Kissimmee
If the unexamined
life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious
or political, is not worth holding.
Most things of
value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
