On the flip side, the pros will find a kid if he's good even though he doesn't go to a "football factory".
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On the flip side, the pros will find a kid if he's good even though he doesn't go to a "football factory".
While sometimes true, at the same time, we have seen a number of NU athletes that are just bypassed in the draft (or drafted lower than warranted) but still turn out to be good enough to make NFL rosters or better. For example last year only one player drafted (and he was almost Mr Irrelevant) off a team that had 10 wins in two out of three years even though he had 4 straight 1000 yd seasons, was top ten all time as a RB and top three all time in BIG and he was deemed worthy of no more than a late 7th round pick?. I have to think at least a couple of our guys are going to stick meaning miss evaluated.
That's because he's undersized and slow for NFL standards not because he went to NU
I have posted some of these thoughts before, but they seem once again relevant. I agree with Tim that establishing hierarchies of undergraduate institutions is a fool's errand. A good school for one student may not be good for another. Many factors enter into the equation: finances, maturity, distances, friendships, culture, lifetime goals, etc. It is silly to assume that any one school is truly "better" than another for any or all students. As a long-term professor, I can also say that undergraduate education is not what it used to be - ANYWHERE - and the changes are not for the good.
All that said, schools are different. They offer different academic opportunities, have different cultures, and produce different possibilities for students after graduation. As a professor, the biggest factor in teaching is the quality of the students. We teach to the 70th percentile (roughly), hoping to challenge most students without overwhelming too many. Tim is correct in saying the top 5% of the students are the same everywhere - surprising but true. The issue is the extent to which the next 95% vary from the top. At a school like NU, or Stanford, or Harvard, the student body is pretty much compacted - the students are all very capable and the 70th percentile looks a lot like the 1st or the 99th. Teaching is fun and easy. This is not true at a school like Western Illinois or UCC. Teaching to the 70th percentile there means losing many at the bottom while boring a few at the top. The caliber of students one teaches influences the books chosen, the vocabulary used in class, the sophistication of the arguments, themes, and discussions, the nature of tests and assignments. This is the major factor in contrasting NU to Minny or ISU - and it is neither subjective nor deniable.
The other big consideration is the friends and contacts one meets at college who will be there throughout one's life. NU graduates stars in business, law, medicine, music, theater, and academia. All schools do - just not as high a percentage of each year's freshman class.
I don't know that the education has declined, but I have observed that there seem to be more marginal students on campuses now. Part of that, I think, is that a higher percentage of young people are trying to attend colleges as many of the top job opportunities now are dependent on college degrees. There is also more of an effort to retain students now than there would have been years ago. When I went to student orientation at my small Pa. state school in the '60s, us incoming freshmen sat in the auditorium and the first words from the guy up on state were, "Look to the left of you and look to the right of you. One of those people won't be here in four years." And, for the most part, that actually proved to be the case.
These days in Pennsylvania we have an aging state and are fighting for a declining number of high school graduates, especially in the western part of the state. I'm currently on my school's alumni association board of directors, and one of the big topics is student retention as we all battle for the declining number of high school seniors. Admissions staffers tell us they've literally battled other state schools to get one honors student. Once you get the kids in school, you don't want to lose them as aid from the state is declining and you take a big hit every time a kid leaves. Years ago when there were all the students a school could handle, you probably would have just let them flunk out or drop out. Lose too many these days and you have to hike tuitions even more, which at a state school detracts from one of your primary missions, providing a lower-cost alternative to the private schools. So you hire staffers whose main job is to establish retention programs. I think this is also one of the things contributing to grade inflation, which has been a continuing and much-commented-upon trend since the early '70s.
This is a very complex question with tremendous social and political ramifications. I can only give my opinion on this, and other posters from the academic community, such as Gladescat, may have different perspectives. My best answers are these:
(1) Lack of preparedness among incoming students. (a) Teaching at the grammar school and HS levels is not what it used to be. Much of this decline in preparatory education is attributable to the fact that college-educated women in the 30s,40s,50s, and even the 60s had few opportunities outside of nursing, teaching, and secretarial work. Very bright, dedicated, and competent young women became school teachers. Those women today are doctors, lawyers, and business people. Today's teachers, quite frankly, are not of the same caliber. The loss of professional pride and community respect (unionization), loss of control over curriculum and classroom discipline, and the need to teach to standardized tests have all further eroded the attractiveness of teaching. (b) Less focus on thinking, reasoning, and writing and more emphasis on learning facts and memorization in HS. This is partly due to the lower competencies of teachers and partly due to teaching to tests and standards. It is also combined with a new emphasis on judgment and emotion over sophisticated thinking. Today's frosh can tell you something is good or bad or that they like it or do not like it, but are stumped to present good arguments in support of their positions. (c) SAT scores have declined nearly every year since 1975. The tests have been recalibrated (at least twice, maybe 3 times) so that the decline in the scores is hidden. One reason for the decline is that more students are taking the tests. College is now seen as offering a necessary degree and is generally accessible to all. (2) Students today see college primarily as a trade school, offering training necessary for a job. This was never the intent of college. For example, Kinsey started his groundbreaking study on sexual behavior by asking his students about their sex lives. Students and faculty composed two sets of adults sharing academic inquiries. Few college students have such a mindset today. (3) Maturity - emotional and intellectual. Helicopter parenting and other social trends have tended to infantilize young adults aged 18-25. (4) Thirty and forty years ago, profs could assign a book a week, offer no discussion of the books in class, and have questions about the books on exams. That does not happen today. Students simply refuse to take classes with "heavy" reading requirements (3 books per semester is about the limit today) and expect to discuss all of the books in class. They generally cannot discern thesis statements or themes without aid from professors. Sad but true. (5) Lectures have largely given way to discussions. Students "need" to participate and have little ability to concentrate for an hour-long lecture. The stories about lower attention spans are all true. Sadder yet. (6) Grade inflation and a\institutional desires for tuition basically ensure even the worst students of graduating with a B- average. (7) Because the majority of college students are incapable of writing essays, multiple choice exams are much more common than essay exams and papers. Many professors from all over the country have told me that they have simply given up trying to teach students how to write. The students resent a focus on writing and administrators fail to support the professors when enrollments in "hard" classes decline.(8) Political correctness has hindered classroom discussions, shaped curricula, and rendered students more sensitive to hurt feelings than interested in debating tough subjects. Seriously, I could go on, but I think you see my point.
Union membership among teachers is actually down over the last several decades. https://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?cid=25920011&item=http://api.edweek.org/v1/blogs/62/?uuid=74022 As you believe Union membership among teachers results in students who are poorly prepared shouldn’t that mean that today’s students are better prepared? Sound like someone’s been walking all over your lawn.
Aging Booster, terrific insight and appreciated the read. I was not an educator. My one limited comment is that, in general, writing skills of young people in the working world are typically dismal. Grammatically a disaster with structure and clarity abysmal. Having said that, both my children who had liberal arts education - public school high school then upper end college - have good writing skills. Not bragging, just an observation that a good education is available, although perhaps not so common.
The biggest problem I see these days is lack of respect for education and a misunderstanding of what comprises a good education. People say they want good schools, but don't usually want the academic rigor that comes with them. As in the old Garrison Keillor joke, all our kids are "above average," so they all need to get good grades. Getting a C has become a disgrace, when it used to be what the average kid got.
I see the biggest problem as parents because they help create the expectations their kids have. When I was in school, administrators were tough and parents backed the teachers. Now parents often attack the teachers for ruining their little darlings and cowed administrators won't back their staffs. School districts are rated by nebulous academic progress standards, so if you get a bad class in your high school (and everyone who has ever been in a high school knows some classes have more bright kids than others. It's just random distribution.), and start giving lower grades, your district is all of a sudden "failing." Add that to tests and curricula mandated by legislatures who don't have a clue about what is going on in schools (when was the last time your legislator visited a school except for a speech or photo op) and you have some problems.
Schools generally still do a good job teaching the top-end kids, who'll find a way regardless, and the special-ed kids. It's the large lump of kids in the middle that we often fail. Good vocational programs are lacking in this country. Plants in my area have been screaming for welders for the past couple of years. Couldn't find them, and finally some firm from Europe came here and set up a shop to train them. Germany, for one example, has great vocational programs. Get kids who are interested in a trade rather than higher education out of college and start training them. One guy in my high school class who barely got through school became a successful electrician, started his own company, and could probably buy and sell any of the rest of us in the class.
For all that, don't underestimate today's kids. I'm on a college campus quite often now. It ain't an Ivy League campus, but there are a lot of impressive young people out there. And don't overestimate the older generation, either. Ask a lot of 60- and 70-year-olds basic questions about our country and observe some of the answers you get. The abundance of factory jobs this country had in the past often masked the reality that a lot of people out there were more street smart than book smart.
If you think schools in your area are not performing up to par, get to some board meetings, make your opinion heard and vote in board elections. Pressure your state legislatures to cut back on rewarding themselves with higher pensions and demand they contribute to education. My state is terrible in this regard, and the teachers' salaries I see in some states are a joke. You're not going to get great teaching when the social studies teacher is driving Uber at night to support his family. Americans have always been great at sniping from the sidelines while a few people actually try to solve the problems, and social media have only accentuated this tendency. Don't even get me started on what's going on in Washington at the moment.
Wow, thanks for the thorough answer, but this could be the manifesto for “get off my lawn”.
@pawildcat I remember the feeling after one of my first midterms, Psych A10 or something. “Class average was a 71, but you’re all good students, so that’ll be a B+.” That’s all there is? Cool.
I definitely got a C in a class where I ‘earned’ the second-lowest score on both the midterm and the final, each time less than 60%.
This was 20 years ago. I imagine it’s worse today. My parents never called a professor, though, with curves like that, I guess they never had to.
I definitely got a C in a class where I ‘earned’ the second-lowest score on both the midterm and the final, each time less than 60%.
This was 20 years ago. I imagine it’s worse today. My parents never called a professor, though, with curves like that, I guess they never had to.
Grades definitely have inflated. This is beyond dispute, because there have been numerous studies on the subject, and the data is there for anyone who cares to look. Even at my small and relatively uncelebrated state college, it was not an easy thing to get an "A" in the '60s. I was in the top 5 percent of my class with an average of slightly more than 3.4, which is basically a B+ average. I failed to make the Dean's List in five of my 12 terms, including all three my junior year when I discovered I was no whiz at foreign languages. I can't imagine where my average would place me today, when apparently the entire football squad is averaging about a 3.2.
And yet my 3.4 at that time, along with a great letter of recommendation from one of my professors, was enough to get me into grad school at Medill. I partially thank Ben Baldwin, a Medill prof at the time, for that opportunity. He grew up in East St. Louis and always had a soft spot for kids who weren't from famous places. That doesn't mean he was easy, and at times he went on some epic rants about the quality of our work. On my first day at Medill we were given an almost impossible research assignment to complete that afternoon and I, along with probably more than half the other members of our class that day, was introduced to the famous Northwestern "F." That certainly got my attention. I went on and secured the M.S.J., but those were certainly different days.
THe grade inflation in college started long ago. 50 years ago it had not gotten to Engineering yet where C was still that average grade ( a 2.9 was about top 10%) but it was definitely starting to creep in in other schools at NU where they seemed to figure that since NU was so selective, it was unfair to penalize the students because of the higher level of competition. I don't know if it was already occurring at other schools. U of I for example had a number of flunk out classes designed to cull the herd as their mandate was they had to take anyone from IL with a B or C average but they did not have to keep them. I recall no such classes at NU.
Sorry but I have to disagree with the idea that most teachers are underpaid. Some may be for sure but It is an 8-9 month job where everyone else is working 12. And pay is not everything they get. Can anyone else get health benefits all year for working 8 months? Can they get the pension school teachers get? So overall, have to say they are not underpaid. Especially when you hear that their output is not that great as many of the students are not prepared so college is the new HS.
When I went back to my home town for class reunion, I toured the HS. It is bigger with a lot more classrooms than when I went. But there are significantly fewer students. When I went there were about 1600 and it got as high as 2100-2200 but now there are 1000. 75 teachers so student teacher ratio of about 13.5. When I asked about class size it was definitely under 20. (our average class size was 25-30) And this is a small town that has declined in population because their industrial base has eroded. While they put out some good students, overall the quality has likely decreased
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I am not suggesting he was a 1st round pick but it does seem that a number of NU FB players have been downgraded over the years
I completely disagree. NFL organizations don’t care if you went to NU, OSU or College of DuPage, if you can potentially help their team win they’ll give you a shot. IE: that dude from Germany the Vikings drafted who never played football in the states
Agreed. But sometimes it’s easier to get noticed/hyped at certain schools who have better connections or reputations. Also, coaches play a huge role...they can bury a kid that has pro potential by hardly playing him, or using him incorrectly. If Dan Marino has attended NU (that was during the darkest of the dark ages for us) instead of Pitt, between a porus OL and far less talented WRs and RBs than the competition, I don’t think things would have worked out well for him.
If you're a good teacher, it's not a nine-month job as summer is a time for study, taking courses to keep certificationj and preparing for the upcoming year. I don't know where you live, but teacher-student ratios are not falling in my area. Anyway, as far as having 30-35 kids in a class, give me the kids of the '50s and '60s, and I'll do it. It's not the same ballgame today.
As far as being underpaid, depends on the area. They definitely are underpaid in Oklahoma. And if teaching is such an easy gig and you're getting paid a good salary for not doing much work, why aren't people flocking to teaching? Instead we have teacher shortages in many areas that are getting worse. Starting salaries in teaching don't compare to those of most private professions. I believe it's second lowest of the schools at Northwestern, with print journalism (what I got myself into) below it as this point. I don't know all there is to know about everything, but I do know a little something about teaching as I've done some of it. Being a good teacher is a damn hard job, and we don't put enough emphasis on the importance of good teaching in this country, to our present and future detriment.
There will always be exceptions, and Siemiem was a solid college QB. He was also pretty fortunate to find himself on a team where the starting QB retired and the backup signed elsewhere. That kind of situation doesn’t happen often.
All I’m saying is a college choice can make a difference sometimes.
You summed up my profession quite well. I certainly don’t do it for the pitiful salary, but there are other rewards.
And they used a 7th round pick on him so there was a lot of people that overlooked him. Think he would have been a 7th rd pick if he had been at a top program or something higher?
8-9 months is what the taxpayers get for their money. And if they get additional education and certification, their pay gets increased. As far as why people have not recently flocked to it, there was a time just a few years ago where there was so much oversupply that many did not get jobs. They would have hundreds of applicants for jobs. They also might require more and more certifications. Also I have seen a lot of situations where prospective teachers could not get a job as a teacher so they take jobs as teachers aids (something else we did not have back in the day) so they can eventually get a job as a teacher.
As for Oklahoma, the state just signed off on an $6100 pay increase which takes them to an average of about $49kso with the increase, not sure you can say they are still underpaid.
Maybe he wants to go to a school where his earned credits will be accepted elsewhere. From my experience, that wouldn't be NU. It just wouldn't.
I should have received a credit in Chinese after my NU cell biology class.
I'm sorry guys, but I have to laugh when I read this "NU is better academically than Kansas" after my credits from NU didn't transfer. Kansas has a much better entomology department as well. Even has its own bug journal.
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You're dancing around the fact that are are still shortages of teachers in many areas and in many disciplines, especially math and the sciences (and there were shortages in those areas even when there was a relatively good supply of teachers). As you said, the oversupply was some years ago. They don't have an excess of applications now. Try getting a substitute in any school district now. Your chances of getting a sub in the right curriculum area are probably about 1 in 10, assuming any subs are available at all. Some states have authorized using uncertified substitutes in certain instances or are resorting to shortcut certification
I'm heavily involved right now with a university that started out as a state normal school training teachers. Teaching program enrollment has been stagnant or worse for a long time, and the school is expanding in business, liberal arts and engineering programs to remain viable. Please quit the 8-9 months stuff. I've never known of a public school district, back in the old days and now, that is closed four months out of the year. In Pa., our kids got out the end of May this year and are resuming school on Aug. 20.
The average income for a college graduate with a bachelor's degree or higher is more than $60,000, so I would argue that, yes, the Oklahoma teachers are still underpaid relative to other professions. Also, that would be the average salary. In many areas it can take 10 years or more of teaching to reach even the average starting salary of other professions. For that you get to teach in an atmosphere far different from that of years gone by, one that treats you with an increasing amount of disrespect and offers little support from either weak administrators or parents. A friend of mine recently taught in a Japanese school where students at the end of class would actually thank him for teaching them that day. Hard to imagine that happening in most U.S. schools.
I can always be wrong, but I doubt you'll have to worry about an oversupply of teachers for a long, long time.
I think another program (any program really) wouldn't have played him behind a WR for two years.
Many classes run at 40+ students.
And how many countless stories are there about teachers buying classroom supplies out of their own fat paycheck? I personally know a number of educators who have to do this as a matter of necessity. Teachers are not over paid.
Now if you want to talk about school boards, then I'm with ya.
I used to have to go in once a week to clean the bathroom in my wife's kindergarten class. We also had to supply paper towels and kleenex. The parents donated some Kleenex but not enough. It was a rural white community where 60% of the students lived below the poverty line. Tons of 2nd and third generation welfare manipulating; very typical of small town America.
Sorry but that average grad with a bachelors getting 60K is bogus. In certain professions such as Engineering it might be but in many, you are asking if you would like fries with that. A number of majors require at least a Masters to get a job in the field. .
http://time.com/money/4777074/college-grad-pay-2017-average-salary/
The article states that for 2017 grads it was a little less than $50K and that was a record. Take out the STEM grads and that number drops significantly.
And as far as suggesting it is not an 8 month job, you are forgetting the extended time off for Christmas and Spring Break as well as other teacher days off. The most you can claim is 8.5 months and even there you are likely stretching. With that in mind, a teacher making $35K coming out of school is making the equivalent of $49.4-52.5K based on what others make having to work 12 months. And you know what you get for working those extra hours that get you a $60K salary? A lot higher taxes. Marginal rate (state tax, federal tax and SS) will be something like 40% under old tax rates and a few % less now. Add in automatic pay raises for additional education and certifications, tenure and couple that with benefits teachers receive that others can not touch and I am not running any benefits for most of them.
As far as shortage of substitutes, In the Chicago area for example they have added requirements for certain certifications in order to substitute that did not exist a few years back and that might help cause the shortage. And their pay is way below what the average teacher gets and with no benefits so substitute teachers are a different matter.
If it’s such a cakewalk, you should get into the business, hdhntr! I’ve been teaching 20+ years and still make under 50k.
Did you just argue that making $50k is preferable to making $60k?
Better read a little more carefully. Those are the average STARTING salaries for 2017 graduates. That is not the same as average salaries for all college graduates with a bachelor's degree. You have to buy food and housing for 12 months whatever hours you're working, so your contention that a $35,000 salary is somehow the equivalent of a $52,000 is bogus. If you really think teachers are underworked, you need to talk to more teachers.
You don't want to make 60K because you're paying higher taxes? You've got to be kidding. You think your hypothetical teacher would refuse a bump from $35,000 to $60,000 because he might have to pay more tax? C'mon, now.
As far as substitute teachers, most have generally been people who want to get into teaching or people who have retired from teaching. Even when I was doing some substitute teaching about 30 years ago and there were a lot more candidates out there, there was a severe shortage of subs in some disciplines. It's not a "different matter" if your kid gets a sub who isn't trained in the appropriate subject matter.
As I've said before, why aren't people just falling all over themselves to get into this profession where apparently you get good money and don't have to work much? I suggest it's because it isn't as simple as that. But you get what you pay for, and it's becoming more and more apparent that for a growing number of college graduates the pay is not enough.
