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I think that this sentiment has been made by my peers, but I am really hoping for a push toward more emphasis and respect for teaching positions and fields in the humanities and social sciences. Whether intentionally or not, often when we talk about the most highly respected or highly sought after positions, we assume that it’s the STEM fields. That assumption ignores not only the importance of the humanities and social sciences but also individual differences and preferences. Even though STEM fields might have a higher base salary, etc. not everyone prefers those fields, and if we don’t continue to encourage engagement in the humanities and social scientists, we’ll just have a lot of highly distinguished scholars with specialized research skills but no soft skills, which would honestly be terrible.

I would also like a shift toward recognizing the importance of teaching responsibilities, even at research-based institutions. If we focus too heavily on research and not on fostering education and passion within the next generations, there won’t be new cohorts of researchers to continue the work being done now.

Nowadays, it looks like that people are paying more attention on the way higher education is handled than just a few years ago. Why is that? To me the main reasons are the continuing decrease in students’ performances and the lack of enthusiasm of some educators (no more dedication as seen in earlier times). These are some of the complaints that we often times hear from parents but mostly from old instructors. There is also the reliability on new technologies which drag much more attention for learners. I think these reasons in addition to many others have brought people such as scientists, philosophers, and psychiatrists to come up with too many theories in order to reform higher education. Therefore, there are many theories out there; it is almost like everybody is expert in higher education. Books and articles are being published every day, seminars, conferences and workshops are being held like never before.

I like the way teaching is being done in the US. It is different compared to the way it is most of the time (because not always) being handled in some African countries. For example, I feel in the United States, teaching and learning processes are more student-centered; there are more interactions between students and educators which is different from what students are experiencing in certain African places. And one can see that these student-centered learning processes are gaining more and more power and more ground as the younger instructors are the ones more interested in this way of teaching and they are integrating academia every day.

But is all this really helpful?

To me, I think not completely, because of the student underperformance that is being pointed out as I have mentioned earlier. Another reason, instructors can only use the material or education theories which they are aware of, or which is most accessible to them. It can be helpful or not. Some educators might even want to innovate but end up confusing their students. Finally, regarding the students, they might be used to certain activities or problem solving strategies and once they face other circumstances they become less efficient or less productive.

Wouldn`t it be better if the different actors of higher education come up with some standard that would make things work differently?

One thing that I believe should change in higher education is the huge amount of education theories that are used in this field. They may not always give good results. I think it would be great if everybody could follow the same procedure everywhere as food scientists do it in food processing. Some organizations, such as the United State Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Codex Alimentarius have set standards that all food producers have to follow. For instance, you have the Good Manufacturing Practice regulations that are promulgated by the FDA, you can find HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) and many others.

In some African countries, I think the shift would be to try to incorporate more student-centered activities because such practices even though having some limits seem to be a better way of getting students more ready for future careers such teaching, working as engineers, lawyers, etc. I am saying this because I think, readiness for teaching in universities for example is more needed in underdeveloped countries where ineffective educational systems are the main factor that undermines economic development. Likewise, greater efficiency of engineers in place is needed because it can help limit the reliance on international expertise. Integrating graduate seminars and workshops where people interact in their program would reinforce such approaches as these are places where students gain skills and knowledge that would not be acquired in the normal lectures of their specific field of study.

Last time, for the purpose of our Graduate Teaching Scholar program, we covered the book Culturally Responsive Teaching and Reflection in Higher Education: Promising Practices from the Cultural Literacy Curriculum Institute. While reading the chapter Embracing My Social Class Transition a Journey to More Effective Teaching, I learned about the story of one woman who now has a position in higher education. The chapter covers parts such as: If I belong here, will I lose my roots? If I belong here, am I a traitor to my upbringing? If I belong here, am I rejecting all that I hold dear?

The author explains some the hurdles she experienced before becoming a faculty member. From many of my previous readings and what I have learned from debate and shows in the news media, almost all hurdles were color related issues.  Then after reading this text, I realized that not only people of color experience some difficulties while transitioning, even though being member of a privileged group may have advantages.  There are different scenarios: while some struggle because of race related issues, others struggle because of socio-economic issues, such as first generation to go to college, social class related issues (working classes versus non-working classes), but also student debt resulting from loans, etc. And in all cases, how people manage to overcome hurdles is strongly connected to personal values, as can be seen in many reports where people explain how they dealt with such problems.  I found values to be a broad term as while thinking about it many things came to my mind. I did look at google and I was very satisfied with the first definition I found as it kind of synthetizes the ideas I have in a more professional manner which is “Important and lasting beliefs or ideals shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Values have major influence on a person’s behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations. Some common business values are fairness, innovation and community involvement”. http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/values.html.

I find this exact and that is why I was little shocked when at one moment in the same chapter of the book, the author mentioned this sentence in the text “The message is that you have to “give up” where you have been and “take on” the values of the higher social class” that she considers as her take on what Zandy has said in the book, Liberating Memory: Our Work and Our Working Class Consciousness. I did not read Zandy`s book, but would love to (just for more details on what led to such considerations), because I do not agree with this way of thinking. To my opinion, they find the perfect term to describe this approach: “class amnesia”. By just imagining somebody doing so is disgusting. I cannot believe that somebody will be okay by doing so while integrating other places. I think that would be destroying for me; I would not feel my existence anymore. And to the quote: “I have come to believe that my personal history as well as circumstances at the time influenced my choices and had the potential to either limit or amplify the effectiveness of my teaching.”, I agree with the author even though I am more convinced about the amplifying effect of conserving our roots than their limiting aspect. I truly believe that being authentic, staying deeply rooted in our values constitute the best way that can to help overcome challenges and lead to more success in whatever we do in life.

Like many other graduate or even undergraduate students, I am very excited whenever I think about finishing school. And often times when we think just about our future plans, we only focus on the positive aspects, such not having to deal with stressful assignment anymore but most importantly, about getting a job that can allow us to fulfil dreams, helping others in need, etc. It was just after reading some books while taking ethic and leadership related courses, that I have realized that work places are not “paradise”, as future employees often think of them, but real social spaces. Spaces with bosses and coworkers with different backgrounds and cultures that affect (positively or negatively) the way the organization functions, but also the individuals’ daily life and society in general. Since then, I sometimes think about these sentences from Talula Cartwright in her book Managing conflict with Peers:

“When professional peers work as independent contributors, or together as teams in an organization, conflicts are bound to occur”.

“Inevitable, though, no matter how harmonious the group or how structured the organization, conflicts are bound to occur”.

These are facts but at the same time, they may scare young people who have never experienced such situations. Of course, people survive problems at work places. Furthermore, there are many theories regarding conflict management like the ones described in one of the chapters of the book I have mentioned above, but still the fear reminds. It reminds because of many unknown factors. Where will I be hired? Who will I have to deal with? Will they care about my values? Are they aware of conflict management approaches that might help avoid issues that can lead to a hostile environment? These are some of the questions that many students keep asking themselves. And unfortunately, taking ethics courses or reading thousands of stories regarding this matter cannot guarantee what the future will be. Being aware of what work places would look like (in theory) helps, even though it is still a little scaring, but at least you are aware of what might happen, and this awareness can lessen the shock once you face such problems. Somebody who is aware of none of these things might react differently either in good or bad way. That is why by just thinking about the way fresh employees will behave when facing worrying situation for the first time, I have chilling feelings. I sincerely wish that all students could take these courses before graduating. This is a big concern, and has brought me to be giving and recommending to friends who did not attend the kinds of courses I attended some books like the Young Professional Survivor Guide, etc. These are helpful tools that can guide young professionals; to me, the most important gift in life is the one that can provide someone with knowledge that can help forever.

“Predicting Sales from the Language of Product Descriptions”
by Reid Pryzant, Young-joo Chung, and Dan Jurafsky

“Do Online Reviews Affect Product Sales? The Role of Reviewer Characteristics and Temporal Effects”
by Nan Hu, Ling Liu, and Jie Jennifer Zhang

Both papers here are focused on how corporations are increasingly using social science to better connect with customers and conduct business. This trend has been gaining a large amount of traction recently, but is now undergoing controversy since the privacy questions aimed at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. These topics should be scrutinized closely in order to verify positive societal growth while avoiding manipulation and malfeasance against the public.

Pryzant et al are trying to estimate buying behavior based off of the textual features present in product descriptions. But was there any preliminary analysis to determine if this complex and novel RNN+GF model was necessary? Could a simpler model be just as effective and have less computational cost? It would still have novelty just by approaching the textual analysis of product descriptions rather than the basic summary statistics that were in the previous studies.

Pryzant’s research focuses on just chocolate and health categories. In particular, ‘health’ must have been an incredibly broad range of products, from fitness tools, weight loss foods, vitamins, books, and medicine. I feel that sticking to just these two categories would bias the results of both categories researched towards phrases such as ‘healthy’ or ‘low-fat’.

I don’t see much information on what Pryzant et al did to verify their training data. Some items listed may have been severely misrepresented in the description. I also believe that the presence of pictures on product sites are a large impact on buying behavior. They immediately convey much information that may not be covered in the descriptions. There is surely a reason so many company marketing agendas focus on graphics and visuals

Does Pryzant’s research translate well to other cultures? Politeness in Japanese culture is fairly well known as a very prominent characteristics of the majority of people there’. The research here gives Politeness status as an influential word group that increases buying behavior in this Japanese market. Could the same work be applied to the USA or other cultures that may not place the same importance socially on politeness?

I am glad Hu et al preferred the simple yes/no recommendation review system. The popular 5-star review system is more subjective and can be unhelpful. In a 5-star review system, a 4-star review is sometimes considered harmful to a product or service. This is partially due to the subjectivity of those who are doing the rating, who can become biased or manipulated quite easily. So a review system that is built to give a finer degree of resolution on their reviews, can actually lead to more bias and noise in the dataset. Perhaps it would be best that most review systems adopt a simple recommend / do not recommend system of review, as there is almost no question as to where the author stands in this straightforward setup.

I am not sure about the Hu’s conclusion that the impact online reviews on sales diminish over time. Another explanation would be that interest in a product naturally decays over time, and leads to lower sales. It would be difficult to effectively measure this effect and also compare it how the impact of online reviews also decline over time.

Diversity, equity and inclusion in recruitment, hiring and academic career can be referred to the affirmative action which happens to be a policy that some developed countries adapted to allow equity in employment for both the minority and the majority. The initial goal was to bridge inequalities in employment and to promote diversity, also to redress apparent past wrongs, harms and hindrances. However, there is still gap between the recruitment of the minority and the majority in academic career. The caps and quotas limit some population(minority) over the other population (majority).

In academia the minority are sometimes stigmatised and treated differently by peer and professors who may believe that the success of the minority group in higher education institutions is unearned. Also the minority women often face pay discrimination which can be damaging for the future generation to come. There is need for conscious effort towards diversity, inclusion and equity in recruiting, hiring and academic career. This is important in academia because it reveals that the institutions practice what they preach about. Recruitment of diverse group of students and staff helps to foster inclusion and equity and this is what makes pedagogy interesting and complex. Cultivating a learning environment where students are treated equally shows that the institutions are deliberate about inclusion.

 

My home country Nigeria is quite different, in terms of having diversity in appearance, religion, and culture but not in race. Nigeria has diversity and inclusion in various sector but there is no hundred percent adoption of equity in some parts of the country. There are biases in recruitment and hiring in academic career. For instance, some institutions prefer to recruit student from the school’s geographical zone before recruiting other student and this also affects the academic staff when being recruited. 

My impressions of the films are that the landscape of higher ed has shifted over the years. In fact, higher ed will continue to evolve as the economy and society changes. The quality of education seems to be a revolving theme in terms of time dedication from students and quality of teaching. I think one of the […]

The main thing that I think should chance in higher education is the process of getting tenure. In addition to causes stress on the faculty, I believe that tenure-track has the ability to make students feel uncomfortable in their own classrooms. As somebody who has taken classes from both tenured and non-tenured faculty, I’ve noticed that most of my professors who are currently tenure-track are so focused on their own research projects that my projects and classroom experience seem to come second. This can also lead to ethical issues of crass faculty who feel protected by tenure. I don’t believe that anybody should ever feel like they are untouchable in a department, as that can turn into a teacher acting inappropriately. Likewise, I believe that sometimes tenure-track lends itself to sexism.  I know of a Virginia Tech professor who is currently being paid less than another tenure-track professor who started at the exact same time, with the same credentials.

Another issue lies in the decision making process- who decides who gets tenure? I feel like there is the underlying issue of various power plays, in which professors feel the need to pander to whomever is deciding which professionals get tenure. If you are only publishing a quantitative paper because you know the decision committee likes quantitative research, I think it’s missing the point of research itself. I believe that if professors were less focused on pumping out publications and conference papers, they could shift the focus from research to actually teaching their students. I have been discouraged by the push to value research over teaching- why become a professor if you aren’t going to value teaching and developing relationships with your students? One of the readings for the last week, focused on this very topic, was one that I agreed with a lot. They emphasized the importance of finding a balance between being well-researched in your field of study and having the skills to properly teach these concepts to students.

This is not to say that I don’t believe in tenure at all. As a whole, I think it’s a really important process that can provide job security to hard-working academics who have a passion for their field; I am just suggesting that the process to get tenure should focus less on simply cranking out publication after publication, and should further take into consideration how the professor is with students. After all, professors are there to teach students, not just be the best in their field. There needs to be a balance, and I just don’t think we are there yet.

I must admit, I don’t know an extreme amount of information when it comes to higher education- I’m not super familiar with all of the in’s and out’s and the hidden nuances that occur behind the scenes (or even on the main stage). I don’t tend to overthink or question how things operate or why things are the way that they are, I usually just go with the flow and do what I believe is necessary for me to succeed. With that in mind, this final blog post made it a bit tough for me to decide what I believe should change in higher education.

However, after a discussion in one of my other graduate courses last week, I think I might have a pretty good idea of one thing that may need changing. In said class, we discussed how a lot of the information we are being presented in class is very theory based and lacks practical application. I feel as though a lot of attention is paid to how said information can be used in later PhD environments, however not everyone is on the PhD track. With that being said, I want to learn how I can apply what I am being taught to the real world and how and why these theories matter in the grand scheme of things.

Now, this is not to say that other programs and departments don’t focus on application, this is just something I have felt personally. I oftentimes leave class more confused than when I entered, as I never really get a good grasp of how it is used in real life settings. While I am totally aware of why theory based discussions are important, so too are expanding those discussions to apply to other areas of student interest and potential future careers. If I am sitting through a two hour and forty five minute discussion, I believe I should leave knowing how I can take what I have learned and use it not only in my career, but also in life situations.

As noted, I may be the only one experiencing this, but I would still love to hear feedback regardless. I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts not only on this post, but in your own posts about the future of higher ed!

The American Planning Association (APA), the APA’s professional institute – the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP), and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) are the main professional bodies that governs the planning discipline, promotes education, and research in planning in the United States. In Planning, most practitioners are guided by the AICP […]