College as a value-added experience

This is a incredibly interesting post at the Chronicle of Higher Ed. regarding the usefulness and value of college. I won't say much about it, go read it! I will just add I agree 100%.

Update:

Must be behind a subscription firewall. Here's some of the big points.

So, no surprise, in the latest annual national survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, 44.6 percent said they were not satisfied with the quality of instruction they received. Imagine if that many people were dissatisfied with a brand of car: It would quickly go off the market. Colleges should be held to a much higher standard, as a higher education costs so much more, requires years of time, and has so much potential impact on your life. Meanwhile, 43.5 percent of freshmen also reported "frequently" feeling bored in class, the survey found.

College students may be dissatisfied with instruction, but, despite that, do they learn? A 2006 study supported by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that 50 percent of college seniors scored below "proficient" levels on a test that required them to do such basic tasks as understand the arguments of newspaper editorials or compare credit-card offers. Almost 20 percent of seniors had only basic quantitative skills. The students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the gas station.

Unbelievably, according to the Spellings Report, which was released in 2006 by a federal commission that examined the future of American higher education, things are getting even worse: "Over the past decade, literacy among college graduates has actually declined. … According to the most recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, for instance, the percentage of college graduates deemed proficient in prose literacy has actually declined from 40 to 31 percent in the past decade. … Employers report repeatedly that many new graduates they hire are not prepared to work, lacking the critical thinking, writing and problem-solving skills needed in today's workplaces."

How Saddam was really captured

Story here

Book here

Real interesting stuff. It was done by one guy (in his words), interrogated many low level flunkies, finally caught the head of the insurgency, who lead them straight to Saddam. I guess the rats couldn't wait to finger their boss so they would get executed.

Got the house

We did in fact close on the house, a day late but still fine. There were last minute heroic efforts of many (mostly jen and the mortgage guy) to get required docs in order. This certainly would not have happened w/o jen. Whereas the previous home i bought before i knew jen, my income didn't even count on this home because I'm a postdoc and my income isn't stable enough apparently. So yeah, they are really tightening up alot. We had to jump through alot of hoops to ensure that we'd be around forever and to pay off the loan no matter what. Alot of b.s. even with almost perfect credit.

Tonight (maybe) start moving in!

Ticketmaster surcharge now up to $10 each

This is the main reason I don't go to concerts much, the prices are ridiculous. We're going to see TSO. No biggie, they come every year on tour, around this time of year. For two tickets, the cheap seats, it's $100 total. Same thing for other acts. If you were to go to a concert a week, that would be $400 a month in just concert fees. So, anyway, this is my yearly purchase of a concert from ticketmaster.

Jobs

Been thinking about alot of things, especially a change in job field. Science is not easy and it's an up or out system, and I am rapidly approaching the make or break time, which I anticipate will not make the break, only 5% of us do. Anyway one thought was to work in the Obama adminstration, i already submitted a resume. A second though was to do a postdoc as a cancer prevention fellow, to do more statistical work and hopefully interact with M.D.s and patients more.

I think one issue is that there is so little visible job results which ties in directly to job satisfaction. I reached a milestone in one of my projects today, it took two months to clone a gene and to produce recombinant protein. It sounds challenging and it can be, but it's usually quite routine, just takes a long time often. If I was able to interact with actual real people I think I would be happier.

Dell Mini 9

Going to be on sale for BF for about 50 bucks off. Ad here.

Moving moving

So actually we did find a house in the last batch of 5, we made an offer and they accepted, and it passed inspection, with the option period expiring today. So we have a new house! Its a very nice one with 3 stories and about 2500 s.f. in this area (south Durham).

We close on the 17th of November. Meanwhile I spent all week packing up the lab and cleaning up, we are moving on Monday. So, lots of moving and packing to do.

Update: Here is the MLS data.