enterprise education innovation

So my daughter has to take this physics class. She has to buy a two hundred dollar textbook. She can't share, or use a second-hand book, because the class also requires a thirty-dollar clicker ( a thing that you use to answer quizzes in class and to participate in various class exercises), which cannot be registered without the book. And in order to have the homework count, she has to pay another thirty dollars or so to register at the publisher's website.

This is an introductory physics class. It's a crucial class for, I think, most of the science majors.

Her textbooks, all told, come to over six hundred dollars. Did I ever tell you that at UCSC students take only three academic classes a quarter, because the quarters are so short, and the classes theoretically therefore so intense?

The kid has financial aid that covers all this, mainly because she lives at home.

Now imagine you are a young person whose family does not reside in town. Imagine that you are a good student but not the very best and not the cleverest at getting financial aid -- maybe the higher ed tradition is not so strong in your family and you're piecing this together with some financial aid and some low-wage kid jobs and you're living in a room somewhere -- maybe two or three students to a room in a house on the bus line, or maybe in a dorm or the "University Inn." Imagine what it means to you to be told that you have to spend over two hundred and fifty dollars on a single book and a bit of technological gimcrack that probably costs three dollars to assemble?

What do we think the physics department was thinking when they adopted a two-hundred dollar textbook for a class in Newtonian physics? ("ooh, shiny," most likely)

They sure weren't thinking about the much-talked about mandate to recruit and retain more science students from underrepresented groups, like, for example, students from working-class backgrounds.

you can always tell a town's character by the sports page in their paper

I was going to talk about this a few days ago but I forgot.

The other day I was gathering up the paper for recycling and I noticed a striking thing about the sports section. There were five stories on the front page of the section. Across the top, a story about surfing (regular surfing, not big-wave surfing). Down the side, a story about the baseball hall of fame induction and a story about collegiate men's volleyball (UCSC doesn't have any big-money sports, just things like volleyball, lacrosse, and so on. Slugs rock). In the middle, with a large color picture across the fold, a story about high school women's soccer. At the bottom of the page, something about professional football -- the Forty-niners, I think, maybe about the manager. I don't actually read the sports pages. But I was just struck by what that said about our town's priorities. The surfing story was not a huge one, but it was on top where everyone could see it. The baseball and volleyball ones were over to the side where they were moderately visible (I think the baseball hall of fame one was above the UCSC one, but I'm not sure about that, and if it was, I think the second headline was right below the fold). The high school girls were plastered all over the middle of the page, and not because they were looking cute, either: they were muddy and fierce in that photo. And, even though we're coming up to Superbowl (yes, I do live in the same universe as the rest of the US, I know what Superbowl is), the football story was tucked away on the bottom where only real sports fans would bother to look for it.

When the New York Times covers the upcoming Mavericks contest they stick it in to a weirdo category they call "other sports">.

Other sports. As if there are any other sports besides surfing, really.

I am beginning to form an opinion of big-wave surfing, by the way, and I don't think I approve, overall. It's not really such a great idea, I think, to haul surfers around in jet skis and helicopters. It's sort of antithetical to what surfers are traditionally about. I don't like the idea of all that fuel being burnt and spilled out there, and I don't like the idea of hundreds of people driving around on a narrow stretch of road and clomping around on friable cliffs, stomping on a fragile and endangered shore habitat, with all the garbage that implies. I guess that makes me a spoilsport -- but no, I can't spoilt the sport by my simple disapproval.

Meanwhile, remember that thing about how Huntington Beach got a law passed that says they're the true and only "surf city" and then went about suing small shops in Santa Cruz who sold "surf city" tshirts and hats and things?

You can now get tourist crap that proclaims that Santa Cruz is too the real surf city, lawsuit notwithstanding.