Furedi on cheating

Follow-up to Plagiarism: are things really this bad? from Prole Art Threat

In the Guardian the other day there was a piece by Frank Furedi on cheating:

see: link

Sadly universities tend to accommodate rather than challenge the culture of cheating. Cheating is now so rife on campuses that it is covertly accepted as part of the daily routine of British university life. When a case occurs, the response is to try to avoid taking potentially time-consuming action. Authorities preoccupied with increasing student numbers are reluctant to get involved in the messy business of appeals and litigation. While officially condemning cheating, universities tend to be hesitant about taking a robust stand in specific cases. Is it any surprise that for many students cheating ceases to have any serious moral significance?

Furedi’s line seems to be that university staff are, effectively, complicit in a culture of cheating because it’s all a bit difficult and too much effort to tackle it. I just find it difficult to accept that this is genuinely the case.

Another e–learning wash–out

Writing about web page http://education.guardian.co.uk/elearning/story/0,,1735137,00.html

Report in today’s Guardian on another woeful e-learning venture gone pear-shaped:

An e-learning venture by Oxford University, with Yale and Stanford in the US, has folded after failing to attract enough students. A joint announcement was slipped out quietly by the three universities, which face an embarrassing blow to their prestige. The failure follows the collapse of a series of American university ventures and the £62m debacle of the UK’s e-University. Oxford today declined to disclose how much money it lost on the AllLearn project, launched in the heady days of the dotcom boom in 2001. By June 2005, AllLearn had incurred a deficit of $783,410, with a revenue of $2.5m and expenses totalling $3.28m, according to the London-based Observatory on Borderless Higher Education, which monitors international developments in distance learning. In a statement on the AllLearn website, S Kristin Kim, president of the company, said it had offered 110 online courses from Oxford, Stanford, and Yale universities to more than 10,000 participants from 70 countries during the past five years. “As we looked to the future, the cost of offering top-quality enrichment courses at affordable prices was not sustainable over time.”

“Affordable prices” certainly captures it. It looks like the average cost was $250 per participant.

Sounds like a bit of a weakness in the business plan. But how could these three institutions get it quite so wrong?

Plagiarism: are things really this bad?

Writing about web page http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2028616

It is a small survey but even if anywhere near accurate, it is frightening:

One in six students admits to copying from friends and one in ten confesses to looking for essays online, the most extensive poll ever conducted on student cheating in universities has revealed.

Is it really this common? Or should we be pleased that only 1 in 10 is looking for online essays?

Sampling problems?

Follow-up to Choosing a university: thankfully, students aren’t this shallow from Prole Art Threat

There are many other thinks contained in this exciting survey but, even though the sample has been carefully selected and normalised for the population, the findings summarised in this article:

link

just don’t feel quite right.

Buy the book

Anyone finding it difficult to source a copy of this much sought after text, can now find it (along with many other delightful Warwick themed products) in the Warwick gifts catalogue (scroll down to the third or fourth on the list).

Blokes with beards

Follow-up to “Administrator” appointed New Chief Exec of HEFCE from Prole Art Threat

Looking at the HEFCE mugshots there are also at least three of his new colleagues who could double for him at a pinch:

link

“Administrator” appointed New Chief Exec of HEFCE

Writing about web page http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2006/ce/

So, David Eastwood is to replace Howard Newby.

Although he has a very credible academic record, I suspect he does not habitually describe himself as the Minister sees him:

Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell said: ‘I welcome Professor Eastwood to his new post. He has a distinguished record both as an academic and as a university administrator.

Spoon fed students?

Writing about web page http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2027753

From latest Times Higher:

Undergraduates are entering university less numerate, literate and knowledgeable than ever before, according to the most comprehensive study undertaken of how university admissions staff view the latest intakes of students. Admissions tutors bemoaned new students’ lack of independent thought, “fear of numbers” and expectations to be “told the answers” in a survey of staff from 16 Oxbridge, Russell Group and post-1992 institutions.

It’s a leaked report and it’s possible that THES has taken this out of context (not that they ever do that) but I wonder how widespread this perception is.

iTunes U ??

Writing about web page http://www.apple.com/education/solutions/itunes_u/

Naturally I know diddly squat about what might be required behind all this to make it work or indeed whether it’s worth it, what it would cost and whether we’d end up down an alley from which there is no return. But it doesn’t stop me being pretty excited by it.

Or is it just naive over-enthusiasm on my part?

If nowt else wouldn’t it be fun to be the first in the UK? Or has someone else got there before us?

Degrees by Kwik Save?

Writing about web page http://www.hefce.ac.uk/news/hefce/2006/grant/letter.pdf

The Secretary of State’s grant letter is remarkable for several reasons:

First, she appears to have manually amended the date – how can such an error make it all the way to her desk?!

Second, there is the specific proposal, almost completely out of the blue, for growth in ‘employer-led provision’. This is articulated here as courses which are:

wholly designed, funded or provided by employers

So, what ideas might progressive employers such as, say, Kwik Save have for innovative degree programmes that are not currently offered?

Whilst there has been far too much easy sniping at overtly vocational or narrow degree courses, there seems to me to be a world of difference between universities responding to the demands of the market by offering Not only would they not know where to start, why would they want to bother when HE produces plenty of graduates for them for free as it is?

For too long successive governments have had a touching faith in the unproven link between graduate level skills and economic advancement – it just isn’t that simple and handing over degree course design to Ikea really isn’t going to make things any better.