Consuming Post-Socialist Nostalgia in Budapest

Ok this post isn't strictly about I.T. in the university but as Andrew Sullivan writes in "Why I Blog" a successful blog doesn't necessarily need to have the focus or formality or authority of essay writing. It's free to be a little more eclectic and experimental. So I'm trying a bit of that in this post.

I recently came back from a bike trip from Passau in eastern Germany to Budapest in Hungary. While in Hungary I went and visited Memento Park where I happened across an old Trabant. My pose in the above picture is intended to be ironic. My thoughts while standing there were of classmates who had proudly posed in our high school year book in front of their own (or perhaps their dad's) prized vehicles. I've attached one of these images although I count many more like it in my yearbook. I'm not sure exactly what underlies the irony; certainly I'm trying to signal that I wasn't the type to pose this way (although my own year book picture was equally if not more ridiculous). But I'm hoping that something more is evoked as well. In an essay my Dad shared with me (titled "Go Trabi Go!") Daphne Berdahl argues that going about in a Trabi in post 1989 Europe could symbolize your own poverty and lack of ability to afford something nicer but that later it took on a more nostalgic and ironic character. As Berdahl argues:

"The revitalized Trabi is....symptomatic of what I have called "ostalgie for the present", that is practices that both contest and affirm the new order of a market economy by expressing politicized identities in terms of product choices and mass merchandising....consumers of Ostalgie and drivers of Trabis may escape the dominant order without leaving it."

I was only semi-conscious of this "ironic awareness" when I posed hurriedly in front of the camera. But perhaps similar motivations were at work. It's too bad the Trabi wasn't around when I graduated from high school; maybe then I too could have a graduation picture that I'd be less embarrassed about.

Dartmouth College

Hanover, NH
July 24, 2010

After my second trip to Dartmouth and a good deal of research, one would think I would have a decisive opinion on this small research university located in Hanover, New Hampshire. A two hour bus ride brought me from Harvard through progressively more rural and beautiful landscape, until we arrived in Hanover. The small town located on one side of DartmouthҀs campus really meshes with the college, providing loads of accessible eateries and coffee shops in addition to a CVS, Gap, and a movie theater. The campus itself has an amazing New England feel with stately, uniform brick buildings and a huge Ӏcampus greenԀ that provides a central open space for ultimate frisbee and other student activities throughout the year right in the heart of campus.

DartmouthҀs main draw is the amazing academic experience it is able to offer as a small liberal arts university. DartmouthҀs campus holds only around 4,200 undergraduates and  an 1,800 graduate students in medicine, engineering, and business, but that doesnҀt stop it from accomplishing great research. Dartmouth is often regarded as providing the experience of a small liberal arts college, simply on a larger scale. The college prides itself on all of its courses being taught by full professors (matched only by Brown among Ivy League competitors) and having no teaching assistants, thus providing students with arguably the most intimate teaching environment of any Ivy League school (along with Brown). In fact, the teaching at Dartmouth is so good that the college was ranked number 1 among national universities for ӀBest Undergraduate TeachingԀ by U.S. News & World Report.

The idea of such an ӀintimateԀ academic environment stems mostly from the absence of graduate students in most departments. The idea is (like at most small liberal arts colleges) that without grad students around, thereҀs nothing to detract from the undergrad experience, and professors can both invest more time and effort into teaching undergrads and call only upon undergraduates to help them with research, since there are no graduate students to hog research positions. It could thus be said that DartmouthҀs defining attribute is the availability of opportunities for students of all ages (no upperclassmen advantage) and intensities (no preference for majors over non-majors).

Dartmouth also maintains a unique academic calendar colloquially known as the D-plan. The college runs on the quarter system, meaning that thereҀs a fall, winter, spring, and summer quarter as opposed to the a typical fall and spring semester. In order to graduate, students must take only three out of the four quarters each academic year, that ushers in a lot of flexibility that students have come to love. During the Freshman and Senior years, students are required to be in residence the whole academic year, so as to secure a proper introduction and conclusion to their academic experience. During Sophomore and Junior years, however, students may spend any term on campus, on leave, on a FSP (foreign study program), or on an LSA (language study abroad). This sort of freedom allows students to customize their academic experience and get great placement into internships in say the winter, when their competition (other university students) is tied up in the semester schedule. Another great example of availability is the required Ӏsophomore summerԀ on campus, where sophomores rule the school with most upperclassmen gone and get top academic priority among professors and also get to try out leadership roles in campus organizations that would be taken up by upperclassmen.

Here's the broad outline for scheduling. Any term marked "R" means in-Residence on campus. As you can see, Sophomore and Junior years are where the real freedom lies:

Here's a sample schedule for a typical student:

All of this furthers the idea that the school is all about facilitating any experience for each and every student as best they can. This ultimately means awesome resume building, many would argue, at the expense of a truly academic experience as offered at most other semester schools that spend more time in depth on academics and have higher academic expectations during the regular year with fewer distractions. Personally, I think the D-plan specifically speaks to the type of people who want an Ӏin and outԀ experience in college that doesnҀt offer the attachment and typical college environment that most students grow to love.

One Dartmouth student seriously critiques the D-plan in the Dartmouth newspaper article ӀD-plan Dilemma,Ԁ citing that the alleged D-plan perks of more available internships and study abroad programs first of all arenҀt all theyҀre cracked up to be since most such programs arenҀt flexible enough to accommodate the D-plan. Secondly, the D-plan destroys clubs and relationships, since friends and couples can go a whole academic year without seeing each-other due to a frenzy of FSP and LSA programs, coupled with the risk that many students donҀt get their first choice program and have to settle with whatҀs available. Student organizations can also go consecutive quarters without having the whole group together to make important decisions or to run events. The author also comments that though this jumble increases diversity of activities and opens up leadership roles to more students, the ultimate effect is to stifle group capability, especially for demanding groups like student publications, sports teams, or arts and music groups. Maybe the semester system doesnҀt sound so bad after all!

Everything IҀve mentioned so far had a pretty neutral effect on me, but what really turned me off from the school was the overwhelming presence of Greek life on campus, a system in which over 60% of students participate. Dartmouth was, after all the inspiration for the movie ӀAnimal HouseԀ which notoriously depicted the ravages college students and alcohol are capable of causing. Greek houses are everywhere, though it should be noted that they are all non-residential Greek houses, so they donҀt carry the exclusivity often associated with such groups. Because the houses are small, they are merely social spaces for students to gather and eat, not to sleep, so all students still live in common university housing. My tour group was hazed repeatedly by shirtless frat guys and loud music blaring from frat houses, even right across from the schoolҀs amazing library. To me, the Greek scene was just too dominant to be an appropriate part of social life, and it appeared to strongly detract from the academic experience rather than enriching campus culture overall.

Ultimately, this beautiful college in Hanover, New Hampshire provides an amazing undergraduate education with a very unique D-plan academic calendar and awesome student-professor interaction. However, itҀs social scene and general student demographic may not appeal to everyone, and this school should be thought of as occupying a very particular niche among the nationҀs top colleges.

Helicoptering, Continued

See my new post on Wordpress here.

Migration to Wordpress

I am migrating my blog to Wordpress, which you can get to by clicking on the title above or here. It has a cleaner layout and more options. If you've been following my entries here, I hope you'll visit me there.

Australian Scholarship Opportunities

Anne Wexler Scholarship for Australian-American Public Policy Studies

Prestigious new Masters Scholarship for 2011 for up to Aus$140,000 for up to two years for research or study in Australia towards a Masters degree.

The aim of the Anne Wexler Scholarships is to grow Australian-American educational linkages by building the network of public policy experts and to encourage ongoing policy exchange between both countries. U.S. postgraduate students with strong academic credentials and leadership potential can apply to undertake a Master's degree in Australia in an area that supports the late Mrs Wexler's bi-national interests in the fields of public policy. These may include key areas such as health, sustainability, energy, climate change, regional security, political science, history or governmental relations. Consideration will be given to those undertaking one year of study to complete a Master's degree.

This is not a Fulbright scholarship but it is administered by the Australian-American Fulbright Commission. Applications close 30 Sept 2010.

See: http://www.fulbright.com.au/scholarships/AnneWexlerScholarships.html

Fulbright ANU College of Business and Economics Postgraduate Scholarship

Applications are invited from graduates in the field of business or economics for 8-12 months research or study at this leading College at the Australian National University. The scholarship is valued at up to Aus$40,000. Applicants will be assessed on their academic and professional merit; clearly defined and achievable proposal; and the potential for their research or study project to add value and build collaborations between Australia and the U.S.

See: http://www.fulbright.com.au/scholarships/FulbrightANUCollegeofBusinessandEconomicsScholarship.html

Fulbright CSIRO Postgraduate Scholarship

Valued at up to Aus$35,000 this scholarship supports an American citizen to undertake 8-12 months postgraduate research in Australia, related to their American PhD, at one of the ten CSIRO Flagship Research Centres. The CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) is the Australian Government's leading and largest science research organization with over 6,000 staff working on outcome focused scientific research to benefit industries, communities and the environment.

See: http://www.fulbright.com.au/scholarships/CSIROscholarship.html

College Night at the Field Museum

Last Wednesday was the date of an extraordinary college fair: Nearly sixty colleges displayed their wares and made connections with over 200 charter school counselors and administrators as part of the National Charter School Conference held here in Chicago. The fair itself was organized by the Illinois Network of Charter Schools and was held in the great hall of the Field Museum.


As far as I know, it's the first major event specifically bringing together college admission officers and charter school personnel. INCS and I put together a small "Meet the Charters" event at a local public library last year, which was very successful, but this year was way beyond that. The Field's hall was elegant (with Sue the T. Rex looming over the participants), and there was great food and wine served by waiters and chefs--a far cry from the usual gym or cafeteria college fair.
I'm pleased that the program I brought to INCS three years ago, College for All, has given rise to greater connections between charters and higher education institutions. Because they're small and idiosyncratic, charters can sometimes get lost in the shuffle, so enabling schools to meet them increases the opportunities for their students.


So far, feedback has been great on both sides. I'm not sure how or whether we'll top this event though. The charter conference is in Atlanta next year, so we'll see!

Out of Control Parenting

The "helicopter parenting" phenomenon seems to be getting nuttier by the minute and it's easy to harrumph over the latest anecdote about a mother calling the academic dean of a college to ask why her child got a bad grade. As a college counselor at an "elite" private high school I often had to deal with mommies (seems like it's more often mommies than daddies) who wanted to know how their child could get an A instead of an A- so he or she could get into Brown. Or who basically ran the college process while the children lazed about in blissful torpor. These stories tend to validate our feeling that the current generation of college-aged students has become way too pampered for its own good.

Unfortunately for us, Margaret K. Nelson has written an interesting and level-headed book on the topic called Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times. Rather than gleefully narrating the various misbehaviors of these over-involved parents, she approaches the topic from a sociological perspective. (Nelson is a professor of sociology at Middlebury College in Vermont.) Using class divisions and technological innovation as prisms, she looks at why parents might behave the way they do and provides some clear, if incomplete, insights about why parents these days do the things they do.

Nelson bases her conclusions on a relatively small sampling of individuals she divides into "working class," middle class," and "professional middle class" parents. As a result, her brush paints a rather broad picture of child-rearing practices in each group. She writes that WC and MC parents "are...less interested in intimacy and engagement [with their children] than they are in clear rules of authority within the family." In contrast, the PMC parents she describes have "a lengthy perspective on children's dependency without a clear launching point for a grown child," and "put child rearing front and center: even in the midst of extremely busy lives, they highlight the significance and meaning they find in this activity, and they avoid shortcuts (such as playpens) that could make the job easier."

But more interesting is how Nelson contrasts the WC/MC and PMC views of their children as individuals in a way that puts most of the helicoptering onus on the PMC parents. Less privileged parents, according to Nelson, "insist that by the end of a comparatively short educational career a child should be ready to pick a career, find a job, and begin the next stage of life as a fully formed adult." They "want to encourage their children to grow...But their role involves acceptance of the particularities of their children and does not rest on a view of unlimited potential, of children who can become 'the best.'" Especially in relation to college, WC/MC parents want their children to do something productive, not play around for four years.

In contrast, PMC parents see their children as ongoing projects with unlimited potential. As a result, there's no end to the work of seeing them develop, which is why they insist on being "present" so constantly. For them, college isn't a "vocational training ground," it is a place for personal self-development: "...in lieu of job preparation, elite parents talk about the important opportunities colleges might provide for self-discovery and for gaining self-confidence. Rather than viewing college as a launching pad to independent adulthood, parents see it as a time for their children to acquire the necessary cultural and social capital to be able to seize any opportunities for status that may arise." No wonder my students' parents wanted them to go to Brown and not Tufts!

If you perceive your children as "out the door" when they turn 18, there's no need to keep a continual eye on them. As a parent, you've done your job and what results is what you've got. PMC parents have created a never-ending process that needs continual tweaking and adjusting. They see their children as extensions of themselves and their parenting, and so must always be involved. College is a place to refine their projects in the never-ending drive toward "perfection," whatever form that may take.

Nelson makes the case that technological devices such as baby monitors, security bracelets, and cell phones have changed the ways parents connect with their children, often making them more fearful, not less, and promoting a sense of needing to be continually in touch with their offspring. She notes, however, that PMC parents are less likely to rely on technology to monitor and control their children than are MC/WC parents because of their commitment to molding their children's "potential" and being intimately involved with every detail of their lives. PMC parents make calls, write emails, and so on as a natural extension of their involvement with their children; MC/WC parents are less likely to do so because they see their children as already on their way to independence.

Parenting Out of Control does a good job of delineating some of the possible sources of helicopter parenting even while it remains frustratingly shallow. It relies too heavily on Nelson's small sample and seems to lean too much on stereotypes of privileged versus non-privileged parenting and family life without offering real three-dimensional analysis. However, using class as a way to talk about families' expectations for their children and college is a fresh way to talk about the subject, and readers attuned to the relationship of college attainment to status consciousness will find Parenting a good source for further discussion and observation.

Glimpse Correspondents Program: Only 9 Days Left to Apply

Glimpse, a worldwide program that seeks to connect travelers and give them a creative outlet to speak of their experiences, is seeking applicants for its Correspondents Program. Supported in part by National Geographic Society, The Correspondents Program is for especially talented students specializing in writing or photography. Correspondents receive a $600 stipend, a professional editor, career training in writing and photography, guaranteed publication on Glimpse.org, and potential publication in National Geographic platforms. For more information, visit: http://glimpse.org/correspondents.

Harvard University: why has everyone heard of it?

Sunday, July 4th
Harvard University campus

A Happy fourth of July from Harvard University! During my term at Harvard so far, I have had the opportunity to dine three times a day in the magnificent building pictured below. What appears to be a giant cathedral is actually home to Annenberg Hall, Harvard's main dining facility. What most universities would consider a most prized architectural feat has been transformed by Harvard from a "spare parts" civil war memorial building into one of the most heavily used buildings on campus. If they're using this outstanding facility as a cafeteria, just imagine what else this place holds in store!

Let me first give you a snapshot of Harvard from my stay here so far. Harvard commands an indescribable sense of awe and prestige all around campus. Through the oversized buildings and perfect, New England style campus, pretense runs thick in the air. The volume of tourists running through Harvard Yard averages 8,000 per day, while the Yard itself holds only a few academic buildings and Harvard CollegeҀs 1650 first year students. Tour groups of up 50 persons pass through the yard every half hour, and even in the summer, when there are only 6,700 students enrolled in summer school out of the school yearҀs 20,000, Harvard is a crowded place.

Being enrolled in summer school there now has revealed to me how eager high school students across the world are to enroll in by far the wealthiest, most prestigious university in the world. Out of the 1,200 or so high school students enrolled in summer term through the Secondary School Program, over one in three was drawn to Harvard from a foreign country, and almost every fellow student IҀve talked to here has set Harvard as their first choice college (not me). I hate to disappoint them, but their chances of admission are astoundingly low overall, and even lower for international students, the group for whom admission seems most in demand. For the class of 2014, Harvard College received 30,489 for an entering class of 1667 freshmen, setting HarvardҀs admit rate at a record low of 6.9%.

So what exactly draws all this attention?

To begin with, Harvard claims a lot of impressive feats: it was the first institute of higher education in the United States; it has the most alumni U.S. presidents, supreme court justices, and senators of any university; and is additionally ranked number 1  by the following widely cited rankings: Academic Ranking of World Universities, U.S. News & World Report America's Best Colleges, and the Times Higher Education review. In terms of resources, Harvard has the largest endowment of any university in the world at $25.6 billion, and the largest university library collection in the United States with over 80 libraries containing over $15 million volumes.

Understandably, the undergraduate experience these 30,000 yearly applicants are seeking is one emphasizing the university's opportunities and resources, not to mention the immeasurable value of a Harvard stamp on one's degree after it's 400 year prestigious legacy. Despite the college's top notch academic resources, these survey findings published in the Harvard Crimson denote my general impression of the undergraduate experience at Harvard:

Prevalent stereotypes about how Harvard undergraduates have less fun than their peers found empirical confirmation Tuesday, when the Boston Globe reported that Harvard students gave lower ratings to their college experience than students at other elite schools in a 2002 survey. 

An internal Harvard memo analyzing data from the survey found that Harvard students rated their overall satisfaction at 3.95 on a five-point scale, compared to an average of 4.16 at the 30 other schools surveyed, the Globe reported on Tuesday. Harvard students gave lower ratings than peers to the level of interaction with faculty members and the quality of social life. 

This satisfaction rating placed Harvard fifth from the bottom in the survey of the 31 colleges comprising the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE). The COFHE includes all eight Ivy League schools, other top research universities like MIT and Stanford University, and leading small liberal arts colleges like Amherst College and Williams College.

 Ultimately, Harvard is not necessarily the most enjoyable place to spend one's undergraduate years, but I would argue that it offers the most opportunities, exposure to top faculty, graduate level coursework, and decidedly the most talented, luminary, and ambitious entering class of any undergraduate program in the world. Harvard's academic intensity and general academic program are, of course, a given. In fact, I won't even go into the specifics of student demographics and teaching style, as I have in nearly every other review, because Harvard is one of the few schools that I truly believe has everything one could want in an undergraduate education. For example, I recently acquired a book called "Find the Perfect College for You: 82 Exceptional Schools That Fit Your Personality and Learning Style," which matches students with colleges that match their Myers-Briggs personality type; in this book, Harvard is one of three schools compatible with each and every personality type (the others are Yale and Princeton). However, what really distinguishes Harvard from other top colleges is its true international focus. Close your eyes and imagine a place where the smartest and most ambitious young adults from all over the world literally come together into one confined area to learn and share and challenge each other. Now open your eyes - I'm speaking of Harvard.

This is very arguable, but my personal academic philosophy (and that of many top colleges) is the emphasis placed on the caliber of people around you in the college or university setting, in the sense that most students learn more during their undergraduate experience from their peers than from their coursework. This is why, for example, I take college rankings and entering class statistics as a serious indication of the quality of a college; diversity of opinion and intellectual prowess tend to come hand in hand with competitive admissions (holistically, not just based on test scores and GPA). With this in mind, Harvard is likely able to be the number one producer of Rhodes and Marshall Scholars and U.S. Presidents not because their is something magical in the water of Cambridge, MA, but because the sheer age and wealth of the institution has attracted the best and brightest minds from across the world, and that collaboration is what really produces extraordinary results.