Trying to Understand the Math

I heard something about the budget cuts to the colleges being distributed by a 30%, 70% formula based on enrollment declines and credit hour generation to reach a goal of about $1.1 million in cuts -- with colleges with increasing enrollment getting budget increases. Unless the 2012 enrollment numbers I've seen are wildly wrong or other numbers listed in the last Fact book have changed drastically, I cannot figure out why there are enormous cuts planned for CASA and 5-digit increases planned for COB. If anyone has access to better data or formulas, please share. Sorry COEHS and COLA, but your cuts are explainable.

	2011 undergrad	2012 undergrad	change	% change	2010 credit hours generated	30/70 cut	70/30 cut
ag	917	901	-16	-0.0174	9807	-$45,024	-$41,207
casa	2464	2384	-80	-0.0325	25075	-$143,223	-$170,936
bus	1203	1157	-46	-0.0382	15091	-$84,653	-$99,274
edhs	2682	2459	-223	-0.0831	40237	-$297,857	-$433,037
engr	1092	1124	32	0.0293	12856	-$20,935	$34,850
cola	2929	2694	-235	-0.0802	81843	-$448,694	-$514,115
mcma	839	795	-44	-0.0524	7879	-$58,564	-$85,354
sci	1392	1545	153	0.1099	32490	-$1,051	$209,073
premajor	1482	1062	-420	-0.2834	2640
total	15000	14121	-879	-0.0586	227918	-$1,100,000	-$1,100,000
total without premajor	13518	13059	-459		225278
multiplier: 30% enrollment change, 70% credit hours			718.9542		-3.418
multiplier: 70% enrollment change, 30% credit hours			1677.56		-1.46486

Assumed formula:
Multiplier = (1100000 / total credit hours or change in number of students w/out premajors) * .3 or .7 as appropriate
Cut = (enrollment change * multiplier) + (credit hours generated * multiplier)

Where's all that money going?

The Delta Project on Postsecondary Education has an interesting study on why higher education prices keep going up.

The short answer is that public colleges and universities are raising the prices because state governments are cutting the funds to them. Privates are raising prices to improve services but not necessarily instruction.

Now I want to see the analyses that go into detail about when a college degree does and does not pay for itself. Conventional wisdom is that a degree is always a good thing -- no matter what the cost. Conventional wisdom also used be that owning a house was always a good thing.

What can SIU learn from MIT?

It has been a while since the New York Times article about physics classes at M.I.T came out, but I’m still trying to figure out what I can learn from it.

A few observations and questions:

Attendance
“He won M.I.T.’s top teaching award and rave reviews from students. And yet, as each semester progressed, attendance in his introductory physics courses fell to 50 percent, as it did, he said, for nearly all of his colleagues.” If M.I.T. students are this bad about coming to class, SIUC students don’t seem any worse. Granted, M.I.T. students have an extra reason not to go to lecture because they can watch lectures on the Web. Are SIUC students unmotivated compared to students at other schools when students at one of the best schools in the country aren’t going to class? M.I.T. increased attendance by tying grades to it. This method is effective in getting students to come to class, but I suspect it damages student motivation. Every time students roll out of bed early for class, they can think to themselves that they will lose points if they don’t go to class rather than that they won’t learn the material if they don’t go to class.

Class size and Money
M.I.T. was able to drop the class size down from as high as 300 to around 80 students, thanks to a $10 million donation. The money also paid for undergraduate teaching assistants. These smaller classes and the extra help probably made it easier to institute homework three times a week. It’s hard to see how this change can be replicated without a similar infusion of money. Similarly, the extra class sessions in math classes for the College of Engineering at SIUC may not be sustainable after the grant money runs out.

Universities are in a bind here. They have built undergraduate education on large lectures because that was cheap, but with online courses, it’s hard to sell the advantage of in-person education based on large classes. Taking a class adds value over learning out of a book or a video in as much as the professor can offer things that a book can’t – structure for learning such as the deadlines provided by homework and tests; regular feedback including feedback in class and on homework; and personalization. Messages like, “This is hard, but I’m sure that you can do it if you work at it,” sound cliché in a book or on a video, but they can be encouraging if the person giving the message has seen what the student has done in the past and actually believes the message. In a large lecture, there are too many students to have a class-wide discussion or to deal with too much homework, and the most outgoing students are usually the only ones that the professor knows beyond a name, where they usually sit, and how much they seem to pay attention.

Clickers
Are the clickers a gimmick or a breakthrough? Their presence encourages faculty to ask questions during class and to plan those questions in advance, which both seem like good things. The clickers also force more of the students to answer, especially when participation is tied to a grade. I’ve seen plenty of classes where the student in the front row answers all the questions while everyone else looks at their feet. Getting everyone to participate should get students more involved and should give professors better feedback about whether the class understands. Could these good things be accomplished in a way that is less expensive?