Posts by Lucy Stewart
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to Sacha,
There’s a strange presumption that a good teacher needs to be the same person as a good researcher. Way different skills. Continuous transfer of knowledge between those strengths is not that hard to arrange these days.
There are also two different types of teaching in universities, which is worth remembering - or maybe three. There are big survey-style courses, mostly first-year or in degrees that have big through-put (commerce, law.) There are smaller, more focused courses that involve a lot of face-time in small groups (10 or less) discussing readings or doing specific lab projects. Then there's thesis-level work (honours, master's, an PhD) where students work directly with one supervisor on a project.
Getting a PhD will basically teach you how to do the latter two, which is crucial for teaching the next lot of PhDs and higher-level courses at bachelor's level.
But it leaves you a bit bereft on the big survey-style course thing. You can pick it up, but you have to work at it. Our department recently hired a new lecturer, and the top candidates gave seminars and had lunch with the graduate students, where we interrogated them about their experience, goals, teaching style, and so forth. I asked all of them what their teaching experience and style and mentoring style was. People said things like "oh, I don't know, I haven't thought about it" or "I'll pick it up as I go along, teaching isn't that hard." It was a bit face-palm worthy.
But I really do think it's a problem better solved by decoupling the survey-course teaching responsibilities and major research responsibilities, rather than separating the institutions. (Better yet, reward people who have actual teaching qualifications, make it a requirement for first-year course teaching. Make them real, important jobs. DON'T do the American thing and overwork and underpay part-time lecturers.)
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Muse: Indecision '11: Outrageous!, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Personally I would prefer a decent public broadcaster.
That shouldn't be an either/or. Just because it's not programmes you like doesn't mean it's entirely worthless. It's not like the people running it are mugging TVNZ7 for cash and then running away, laughing about how they're going to spend it all on episodes of Game of Thrones.
Better still, go one-up, subscribe to a VPN service and open a Netflix/Hulu account. Sky won’t see a cent of my money on principle.
I'm really, really hoping that by the time I'm back in NZ things like Netflix and Amazon service that isn't crap have made their way there. Otherwise there are going to be an awful lot of work-arounds going on.
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OnPoint: Fiscal Responsibility is the…, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Apparently he wasn’t that pleased about national standards, and I’m pretty sure he didn’t approve of the way they were hammered into schools.
Why does National always manage to get people who are experienced and knowledgeable in a sector and then keep them strictly away from actual policy decisions about it?
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to BenWilson,
But upper class arrogance has been alive and well since class was invented (probably pre-historic).
First Cro-Magnon to second Cro-Magnon: It's not that my tribe live in the valley with a steadier water supply and easy access to the migration paths, it's that I'm just faster and better at hunting. If you worked at it, you could catch just as many deer as we do. You just need to knapp flints faster, maybe take some time off gathering to get your second-level qualification - it's not like you need to eat that many berries, anyway, and besides, if you didn't have all those children you'd be more mobile, wouldn't you? You need to think about your choices.
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to BenWilson,
There wasn’t any way I could have had kids, even if I’d wanted to. But yes, you’re in your 20s, right? I expect you’re right that it cost your folks more than it cost mine. I seem to remember that the subsidized percentage was higher in the first year(s?) of the scheme.
Yeah, that's what I meant - no children for university students involved.
That’s how you get the old ones. The young ones, as I was once, are more of a mystery.
Nah, same thing. You'd be surprised at how early the "I have this scholarship/job/opportunity because I am naturally talented and hard-working" attitude can kick in. Sometimes it happens before they've even left high school.
(I spent a looooot of time at college in debating tournaments largely populated by kids from private or upper-decile schools. Mostly boys' schools. I know whereof I speak.)
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to BenWilson,
I think “good on him”, but I have no time for his right wing politics, which fails totally to acknowledge the many socialist sources of his fortune
And that’s how you get ACT voters, basically; people who are so unable to see how the playing field was slanted their way by luck or birth that they assume that everyone else must have just not tried hard enough.
It’s a totally understandable bias, because no-one wants to think that they didn’t earn what they have – our society puts a premium on being seen to have earned your wealth and/or position. And mostly you do have to work hard to succeed, luck and starting position only get you so far. So it’s easy to focus on that and ignore the rest of it. It’s why Key plays it up – “worked my way up” is just so much more attractive than “was pretty likely to succeed anyway and got particularly lucky with my career choice”. But it betrays a terribly blinkered view of how the world works.
Funny. That’s what my parents and many of their generation did. And they considered themselves poor. On some measures they were right.
I imagine it cost my parents a lot more to mostly support me through uni than it did yours, though. I was thinking by today's standards. A generation ago - I'm honestly not sure what I'd call wealthy then, I don't have a good enough handle on the income spread.
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to BenWilson,
We’d probably need to be specific about what is meant by wealthy for me to know if that is our disagreement.
Good question. I would peg wealthy as people who can afford to support or mostly support children through a bachelor's degree. (Which is actually a pretty high margin). Then there's the too-rich-for-student-allowance-too-poor-to-help gap in the middle, a bit of an uptick for people who qualify for the full student allowance but whose parents can spare a few extra dollars (my partner was actually financially better off than me for a few years of uni, due to this paradox), and the very poor, who have no hope unless a lot of things go right (e.g. you can pay for a hall of residence with student allowance + work, or could five years ago, but try finding the several thousand dollar deposit you need to kick off the year...)
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to Sacha,
One example – John Key’s mother came from a family of wealthy traders in Europe. So despite being on the bones of her arse for many years in Christchurch, expectations about enterprise are bound to have been part of his childhood compared with many of his peers.
Yeah, I have kind of strong feelings about how much John Key plays up his poverty-stricken childhood when by so many metrics he was very middle-class. Maybe not in terms of strict economics, but there are so many other things that go into the socio-economic ladder that no-one talks about. It's one of the other things I've seen trip people up when they move up it: there are rituals and expectations they're just not aware of. Like business dress; when you've never had to wear it or seen people wearing it regularly, the whys and wherefores and no-nos are really, really confusing.
Humans are just so damn good at finding ways to establish ingroups and outgroups, basically.
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to BenWilson,
I doubt these people have the resources at all to study. Hell, I don't have those resources right now. I couldn't conceive of starting a new career with a three year stint at university - how would I pay the mortgage and feed my family? It would have to have some seriously high chances of a massive payout starting bang on graduation to even consider it.
I guess I'm thinking more about people leaving high school, rather than later re-training (which *is* currently a massive financial risk and impractical for most people.) There's a bit of a hole in terms of finances with uni currently, where someone who's poor enough to get the full allowance can do better financially than someone with middle-class parents who can't afford to help them very much; part time work + the student allowance makes university just about doable without massive stress. Adding in living costs (which are significantly lower than the allowance - double penalty!) increases your loan a lot and makes your life harder as you go.
Part of what I'm driving at here is that I think tertiary study should be not only free, but should have generous allowances. Otherwise it doesn't stack up economically, and becomes an economically irrational choice for anyone except the already wealthy.
I don't think it becomes economically irrational for everyone except the wealthy (and I think that's basically our difference of opinion right there) but I certainly agree it increases the number of people for whom this is so. You can be poor, go to uni, and do very well, but a lot of things have to go right.
I have a perception bias in that I know a number of people for whom this has been the case, but - and I think this is a big factor - all of them met, at uni, middle or upper-middle class partners or social groups who encouraged and/or expected them to continue with study. I think there's a big factor there: if you come from a background where uni study isn't a thing, whether you have the motivation to continue does often seem to depend on whether you form connections with people who take it for granted, sort of a meme in action. And that's a totally random thing, of course, you can't tell people "go to uni and make the right contacts". But I think the social factor does play a role in patterns of success against the statistical norm.
a big risk taken by people who have no real information to make such a huge decision with.
Unquestionably, people deciding where to go after high school aren't operating with enough information - "none" isn't quite fair, but it's really hard to know what decisions are going to lead to what outcomes, even in within the reasonable bounds of probability. And it's hard, eighteen-year-old brains aren't designed for picking long-term outcomes. You do what all your mates are doing, or what your family wants you to do, or what makes you happy right now. None of those are necessarily bad things but they're not necessarily good, either.
In some ways I can kind of see the point of countries with (non-military) national service: gives people some job experience and a chance to think about what they want to do, and grow up a little. The two years or so are a wash compared to the length of your working life.
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OnPoint: 3 News Exclusive Investigation…, in reply to BenWilson,
I'd go along with describing it as "just scraping by" if I hadn't personally experienced going from being a student to that and back again, every year. I know which one was "scraping by", and it sure wasn't the one with the regular paycheck. The holidays actually felt like holidays, despite the fact I was working full time.
Working minimum-wage as a student (which is my only direct experience, too, to be fair) is, as far as I can tell, a totally different ballgame to doing it full-time for a long time. As a student, you know it's not permanent; you're living cheaply, either with your parents or flatting; you often have extensive support networks; it's a break from study. I remember that feeling - it was great, to turn your brain off for a couple of months, just do the 40 hours a week and come home.
But when you're there full-time all year - often working public holidays - it's not a break and it's not secure or fun. You don't have parents to help you. You get to choose between flatting - which does lose its charm for most after a couple of years, god knows it did for me - or having a large chunk of your income taken up renting. A broken-down car or a visit to the after-hours is a significant financial hit. Things like a new computer, or a holiday somewhere interesting, or children - they're probably all out of reach. If you have kids, it's a struggle. I remember the bit where $25000 before tax seemed like more money than I could possibly want - and when you're used to living on a student income, sure, it is. But living on a student income sucks, frankly, you do it because you have to, not because it's fun. Talk to someone who's been in a supermarket or a retail store,without rising to management, for the better part of their careers. Most of them aren't going to be thrilled about it.
I absolutely do not advocate that going to uni means you'll walk into a really high-paying job and all will be well. But - even with student loans - you have a much, much higher chance of getting a better job.
That still doesn't mean going to uni is for everyone - I think too many people try it and end up with debt and no benefits now. But there is a body of people for whom it's a sensible financial decision. Not going is a sensible decision if you have an alternative path of training, but we need to make those paths more obvious. It really heartens me to hear there are apprenticeship opportunities not in the trades; more people should know about those.
(It also means that we need to raise the minimum wage, because it shouldn't be the case that minimum wage jobs are absolutely shit to live on long-term. But that's another argument altogether.)