博碩士突破百萬人的警訊
◎ 范綱植
行政院主計處公布台灣國內具博、碩士學歷者即將超過百萬人。而諷刺的是，這個高學歷族群失業率也高達三．三二％，顯示過去政府只顧著「量產」高階勞動力，卻未能同時有效的創造就業環境，形同國家教育資源與人力資源的嚴重浪費。
以 筆者所服務的高等教育機構而言，碩士班畢業的學生有相當大一部分皆選擇投入國家考試。前陣子落幕的高普考，總報名人數創下十五年來新高，並且已經超過了大 學指考的人數，彷彿成為全民運動。其中少數擠進窄門的幸運兒，以高學歷低就原本僅需高中、大學畢業即可勝任的工作內容，更匪夷所思的是，這些菁英透過考試 進入公務體系後，多數卻從事不具實質經濟生產力的初階文書工作。
至於博士班畢業的學生，如同中研院胡勝正院 士所觀察到的現象一致，由於產業界研發人員的需求與新陳代謝出現了嚴重的問題，所以博士畢業生只能往教職的窄門擠。然而在少子化的衝擊之下，教職也擠破 頭，釋出一個職缺可能吸引數十位國外或是國內頂尖大學博士前來應徵，若是國科會沒有以博士後研究的方式補助這些博士畢業生，高階勞動市場的失業率，恐怕會 是現在的數倍。
更令人感到害怕的是，目前政府似乎沒有正視這個問題，只有感受到粉飾失業率，以及用口號而非行動就想提升台灣競爭力。
（作者現任國立大學行政人員，台北市民）
ABOUT K-12
CAN SCHOOL PERFORMANCE BE MEASURED FAIRLY?
More than half the states have now been excused from important conditions of the No Child Left Behind education law. They’ve been allowed to create new measures of how much students have improved and how well they are prepared for college or careers, and to assess teacher performance on that basis. Teachers will be evaluated in part on how well their students perform on standardized tests. One study, though, found that some state plans could weaken accountability. How can we measure achievement of students, teachers and schools in a way that is fair and accurate, and doesn’t provide incentives for obsessive testing, and cheating? The New York Times convened experts to weigh in on the topic.
IS ALGEBRA NECESSARY?
Emeritus professor of political science at Queens College, City University of New York and author Andrew Hacker writes in Sunday’s New York Times: A typical American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t.
AFT PRESIDENT PROPOSES ‘SOLUTION-DRIVEN UNIONISM’
In a wide-ranging speech, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she deplored attacks on unions, while also acknowledging that the overall decline in union membership demands a new approach to her affiliates' work. "As we have seen, fighting in traditional ways alone isn't always enough. Getting 1 million signatures to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker without winning 5 million hearts and minds, I'm sad to say, wasn't enough," Weingarten said. "More than ever, we need to act in innovative, creative, and new ways—simultaneously refuting our critics, advancing our values, connecting with community, and proposing solutions." To an extent, this idea of "solution-driven unionism" appears to be a further gloss on the idea of labor-management collaboration. The post is from Education Week’s Teacher Beat blog.
MISSOURI EDUCATION OFFICIALS ISSUE ‘MODEL CURRICULUM’
As Missouri joins other states in implementing the Common Core Standards, the education department released its first model curriculum for math and English language arts. The department reports its model represent the first phase of the curriculum project, with the ultimate goal of developing a curriculum in all content areas that align with state and national standards. The article is in the Jefferson City News Tribune.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE RESULTS ARE IN
A U.S. Senate committee released an unflattering report on the for-profit college sector on Sunday, concluding a two-year investigation led by Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. While the report is ambitious in scope, and scathingly critical on many points, it appears unlikely to lead to a substantial legislative crackdown on the industry -- at least not during this election year. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
WHAT COLLEGE SHOULD BE
Democracy, as we know it, is in danger. In recent decades we have seen many great discoveries, but we have also seen the steady demise of one of America's most important democratic institutions: the college. A new book by Andrew Delbanco, matter-of-factly titled "College: What It Was, Is and Should Be" (Princeton University Press) delivers a story that is part nuanced history, part "State of the University" address, and part swan song. College, he says, is close to extinction. He ends his story with a plea for the future of the college: "Democracy depends on it." The article is in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
ABOUT K-12
CAN SCHOOL PERFORMANCE BE MEASURED FAIRLY?
More than half the states have now been excused from important conditions of the No Child Left Behind education law. They’ve been allowed to create new measures of how much students have improved and how well they are prepared for college or careers, and to assess teacher performance on that basis. Teachers will be evaluated in part on how well their students perform on standardized tests. One study, though, found that some state plans could weaken accountability. How can we measure achievement of students, teachers and schools in a way that is fair and accurate, and doesn’t provide incentives for obsessive testing, and cheating? The New York Times convened experts to weigh in on the topic.
IS ALGEBRA NECESSARY?
Emeritus professor of political science at Queens College, City University of New York and author Andrew Hacker writes in Sunday’s New York Times: A typical American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t.
AFT PRESIDENT PROPOSES ‘SOLUTION-DRIVEN UNIONISM’
In a wide-ranging speech, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said she deplored attacks on unions, while also acknowledging that the overall decline in union membership demands a new approach to her affiliates' work. "As we have seen, fighting in traditional ways alone isn't always enough. Getting 1 million signatures to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker without winning 5 million hearts and minds, I'm sad to say, wasn't enough," Weingarten said. "More than ever, we need to act in innovative, creative, and new ways—simultaneously refuting our critics, advancing our values, connecting with community, and proposing solutions." To an extent, this idea of "solution-driven unionism" appears to be a further gloss on the idea of labor-management collaboration. The post is from Education Week’s Teacher Beat blog.
MISSOURI EDUCATION OFFICIALS ISSUE ‘MODEL CURRICULUM’
As Missouri joins other states in implementing the Common Core Standards, the education department released its first model curriculum for math and English language arts. The department reports its model represent the first phase of the curriculum project, with the ultimate goal of developing a curriculum in all content areas that align with state and national standards. The article is in the Jefferson City News Tribune.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
THE RESULTS ARE IN
A U.S. Senate committee released an unflattering report on the for-profit college sector on Sunday, concluding a two-year investigation led by Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat. While the report is ambitious in scope, and scathingly critical on many points, it appears unlikely to lead to a substantial legislative crackdown on the industry -- at least not during this election year. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
WHAT COLLEGE SHOULD BE
Democracy, as we know it, is in danger. In recent decades we have seen many great discoveries, but we have also seen the steady demise of one of America's most important democratic institutions: the college. A new book by Andrew Delbanco, matter-of-factly titled "College: What It Was, Is and Should Be" (Princeton University Press) delivers a story that is part nuanced history, part "State of the University" address, and part swan song. College, he says, is close to extinction. He ends his story with a plea for the future of the college: "Democracy depends on it." The article is in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.
ABOUT K-12
HOW WELL DOES KHAN ACADEMY TEACH?
Christopher Danielson and Michael Paul Goldenberg write in The Washington Post’s The Answer Sheet blog: Nearly everyone believes that K-12 mathematics education in the United States is in desperate need of improvement. One person whom many feel has built a definitively better math teaching mousetrap is Salman Khan, whose free on-line library of short instructional videos has had millions of hits (170,000,000 as of this writing) and drawn heaps of praise and capital from such luminaries as Bill Gates. Gates has called Khan, "the best teacher I've ever seen." But we contend that, rather than revolutionizing mathematics teaching and learning, Khan’s work adds a technological patina to a moribund notion of teaching and learning mathematics. What is more, his videos reveal an ignorance of how we know students learn mathematics.
HOW TO BUILD A BETTER TEACHER
The conversation about how to improve American education has taken on an increasingly confrontational tone. The caricature often presented in the press depicts hard-driving, data-obsessed reformers—who believe the solution is getting rid of low-performing teachers—standing off against unions—who don’t trust any teaching metric and care more about their jobs than the children they’re supposed to be educating. But in some ways the focus on jobs misses the point. As New York State School Chancellor John King has pointed out, with the exception of urban hubs like New York and L.A., few school districts have the luxury of firing low-performing teachers with the knowledge that new recruits will line up to take their places. If we take firing off the table, what else can be done to resolve America’s education crisis? The findings of several recent studies by psychologists, economists, and educators show that—despite many reformers’ claims to the contrary—it may be possible to make low-performing teachers better, instead of firing them. If these studies can be replicated throughout entire school systems and across the country, we may be at the beginning of a revolution that will build a better educational system for America. The article is in Slate.
3 ESSENTIAL PIECES FOR STRONG K-12 ACCOUNTABILITY
California schools live and breathe by a single number: their Academic Performance Index, or API, score. The number, based on a complex math formula that considers students’ proficiency levels on state tests, determines whether the school receives praise (or sanctions) and parents’ admiration (or indifference). But what it doesn’t identify is student achievement growth from year to year, where exactly students excel and falter, and how educators should target their improvement efforts. The API, established more than a decade ago, is outdated and a bit useless. It’s a solitary number that doesn’t give school leaders the practical information they need to identify their weaknesses and reshape their programming or educational offerings to fix them. And it doesn’t help educators adapt their approach or instruction to improve overall achievement. But a stronger, more thoughtful accountability system could. The post is in Education Sector’s The Quick and the Ed blog.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
COLLEGE ‘SHOPPING SHEET’ DESIGNED TO HELP STUDENTS COMPARE FINANCIAL AID, OVERALL COSTS
Aiming to make the cost of college a little more clear—and easily comparable—the Obama Administration released a new guide on Tuesday to help students understand how much they will have to pay, how much debt they may have to take on, and how likely it is that they will be able to repay the debt. The guide, called a “Shopping Sheet,” is a one-page form created by the Department of Education and the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that will detail the estimated price of attending a university (tuition, housing, books, etc.), the grants and scholarships that reduce the expenditure, and the resulting net cost, or what students will actually be responsible for. The guide will show students some options for how they might be able to pay for college, including work study, loans and expected family contribution. The article is in Time.
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LAUSD MUST INCLUDE TEST SCORES IN TEACHER EVALUATIONS
L.A. Unified must comply with a judge's ruling to include student test scores in teacher evaluations by Dec. 4, a bevy of attorneys representing the district, its unions, and parents agreed in court yesterday. The post is from KPCC's blog.
HOUSE COMMITTEE EXAMINES ALTERNATIVE CERTIFICATION
There's been a lot of chatter in Washington lately on whether Congress will decide to extend language allowing teachers in alternative-certification programs to be considered "highly qualified" for an additional two years. The question of how—and whether—the federal government should encourage alternative-certification programs is likely to be an area of debate whenever Congress actually gets around to reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. They're not there yet, not even close, and won't be for awhile. The post is from Education Week’s Politics K-12 blog.
U.S. STUDENTS LAG BEHIND FOREIGN PEERS
A recent report by Harvard University found that students in Latvia, Chile, and Brazil are making gains in academics three times faster than American students, while those in several other countries are improving at twice the rate. Although the U.S. is not one of the nine countries that lost academic ground between 1995 and 2009, more countries were improving at a significantly faster rate. The article is in The Huffington Post.
ABOUT HIGHER ED
STANFORD’S NEXT LESSON: FREE ONLINE COURSES FOR CREDIT AND DEGREES
As Stanford, Harvard and other top American universities digitize more courses for free public consumption, will students one day be able to get an actual degree online from these institutions without having to pay for it? John Hennessy, president of Stanford University, says his school "can see moving in that direction." The piece was on NPR’s All Things Considered.
BERKELEY TO JOIN EdX
In the scramble to stake out a leadership role in the world of online education, the University of California, Berkeley, announced that it is joining EdX, the free nonprofit online learning venture founded by Harvard and MIT. The article is in The New York Times.
THE ONLINE STUDENT
The average student pursuing a postsecondary credential completely online is a white, 33-year-old woman with a full-time job that pays around $65,000 per year, according to a new survey sponsored by two companies involved in online consulting. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
HIGHER EDUCATION NEEDS A FINANCING OVERHAUL
Gary Shilling writes in Bloomberg News: Tuition costs continue to skyrocket. At top schools, tuition and fees need to increase sharply to match supply and demand. That is partly because colleges and universities don’t charge everyone the same amount. Scholarship aid is used to redistribute some money from those more able to pay to those less able, so the actual charges range from full tuition and fees to zero for students on full scholarships. This price discrimination, as economists call it, works for two reasons. First, it largely isolates the students of poorer families from higher tuition because a big part of the price increase is used to increase scholarship aid. So, regardless of high tuitions, colleges get the student-body mix they want.
FORKS IN THE ROAD
Large numbers of students at four-year institutions are transferring to community colleges, according to a new study from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Most of them don’t come back, but that isn’t always a bad thing. Roughly 14 percent of first-time students who enrolled at a four-year institution in the fall of 2005 had transferred to a community college by 2011, the study found -- excluding students who merely took summer classes at a community college. The article is in Inside Higher Ed.
COLLEGES PAY STUDENTS TO GRADUATE FASTER
As the federal government and states look for ways to control rising tuition and student debt, they’re focusing increasingly on schools’ “degree productivity,” or how often and how quickly they move students to graduation. States are experimenting with how to help more students matriculate, and a few are trying something new—using the power of the purse to motivate them to get their bachelor’s degrees in four years. The article is in The Fiscal Times.
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NEWS CORP. ED DIVISION MOVES INTO K-12 EDUCATION
Global media conglomerate News Corporation jump-started its fledgling—and mostly quiet—education division, unveiling Amplify, a new brand for its education business that will include education software products and, in a surprising move, curriculum development. Larry Berger, co-founder and executive chairman of Wireless Generation (and a Carnegie Board member), said in an interview that News Corp.'s investment in curriculum is among the largest he's seen during his 20-year career. The post is from Education Week’s Marketplace K-12 blog.
GATES FOUNDATION WANTS TO COMBINE VIDEO GAMES AND EDUCATION
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has long been at the forefront of education-related philanthropy and Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, and his wife Melinda have sought to harness technology and turn its potential towards improving academic outcomes of kids around the world. That is how the Foundation has come to earmark $20 million towards developing teacher tools based on social media platforms and video games to change the way instructors deliver lessons to students. The article is in EducationNews.org.
