The American Association of Univeristy Professors has published a public opinion survey on American people’s attitudes towards higher education, academic freedom, and tenure. There are several notable findings, but in general, the results indicate that people support tenure and academic freedom, but with certain limits:

In terms of age, people appear to lose confidence in academe as they age -- more than half of Americans aged 18-34 have “a lot of confidence” in higher education, but only 26.8 percent of those 65 and over feel that way. Politically, liberals (50.5 percent) are more likely to have a strong confidence level in higher education than are moderates (42.2 percent) or conservatives (30.5 percent). . . .

When Americans were asked to identify the top problem facing higher education today, college costs was a runaway winner, at 42.8 percent. It was followed by binge drinking (17 percent), low educational standards (10.2 percent), political bias (8.2 percent) and crime on campus (6.5 percent).

Other findings that I found interesting: 63% of respondents strongly or somewhat agreed that “public universities should be able to dismiss professors who join radical political organizations like the Communist Party,” which clearly violates a core principle of tenure. On the other hand, 79.4% strongly or somewhat disagree that “the government should control what gets taught in the college classroom.”

In other words and probably not that surprising, the American public has rather contradictory ideas about tenure and acacemic freedom -- they generally support them, but not when it comes to professors who express views and engage in activities that may be considered “un-American.”

I suppose that within the context of Americans having contradictory attitudes towards different issues, the results of this particular survey are not that surprising.

I just finished up recording students’ grades for the two classes I taught in the spring 2006 semester. As usual, I and my TAs received our fair share of pleas from students to give them a few more points to bring them up to the next highest grade. This regular ritual prompted me to read about accusations of “grade deflation” at Boston University:

A study in the university’s College of Arts of Sciences found that from 1972-73 to 2003-4, the percentage of A’s and B’s went up by a few percentage points (to 79 from 75) and the percentage of C’s went down slightly (to 18 from 21). Meanwhile, Boston University has managed to attract a student body with far higher grades, class rank and SAT scores than it did a generation ago.

All this has occurred against a backdrop of rampant grade inflation, some of it just across the Charles River. By the early 2000’s, 9 of every 10 Harvard graduates received honors at commencement and nearly half of all undergraduate grades were A or A-minus. . . .

A skeptic could contend that Harvard students are so gifted that the stratospheric grades reflect the collective brain-power, except that in state universities that are far less selective, the same phenomenon holds. At the University of Minnesota’s main campus, 40 percent of undergraduate grades are A’s. The percentage of A’s at the University of Delaware went up by half, to 35 percent, from 1987 to 2002.

The article notes that many students seem to feel that for the $40,000 or so they’re spending at elite colleges, they should be entitled to inflated grades, especially when many count on those grades to give them a competitive advantage when it comes to applying for graduate or professional schools once they graduate.

My take is that no student is “entitled” to any grade -- s/he earns what s/he deserves. The current generation of students are apparently used to and expect immediate gratification in whatever they do. For them, it may come as somewhat of a shock to learn that the academic world and professor’s lives do not revolve around their needs.

Instead, in order to do well and earn a good grade, they need to put in the time, do the work, and be judged by objective standards. After all, that’s what getting a college education should be about.

As further evidence that the present administration has utterly failed in its attempts to make the world safer and more hospitable to Americans, the latest Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Report points out that in most cases, the U.S.’s image has sunk even lower among most citizens around the world:

Favorable views of the United States dropped sharply over the past year in Spain, where only 23 percent said they had a positive opinion, down from 41 percent last year, according to the survey. . . . Other countries where positive views dropped significantly include India (56 percent, down from 71 percent); Russia (43 percent, down from 52 percent); and Indonesia (30 percent, down from 38 percent). In Turkey, only 12 percent said they held a favorable opinion, down from 23 percent last year.

Declines were less steep in France, Germany and Jordan, while people in China and Pakistan had a slightly more favorable image of the United States this year than last. In Britain, Washington’s closest ally in the Iraq war, positive views of America have remained in the mid-50-percent range in the past two years, down sharply from 75 percent in 2002, before the war.

Support for the fight against terrorism led by the United States is also down, Pew found. Although strong majorities in several countries expressed worries about Iran’s nuclear intentions, in 13 of 15 countries polled, most people said the war in Iraq posed more of a danger to world peace. Russians held that view by a 2-to-1 margin.

“Obviously, when you get many more people saying that the U.S. presence in Iraq is a threat to world peace as say that about Iran, it’s a measure of how much Iraq is sapping good will to the United States,” said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.

Congratulations, President Bush and your Republican administration on a job well done. You’ve managed to squander the goodwill that almost all nations had for us after the 9/11 attacks, ignored negative evidence in order to invade a country that had nothing to do with the attacks, spent billions of dollars that otherwise could have been reinvested in American institutions such as social security and education, engaged in illegal torture and cold-blooded murder while in Iraq, and cost the lives of close to 2,500 American men and women -- and counting.

Mission accomplished? No, more like Nothing Accomplished.

Even now in the 21st century, more than 40 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act that prohibited discrimination against Blacks and others based on their race/skin color, we still sadly see plenty of examples in which Blacks still experience rampant and systematic discrimination, in this case when it comes to housing and criminal court juries:

In 2003, Loges and study co-author Adrian G. Carpusor sent 1,115 identically worded e-mails to Los Angeles-area landlords asking about advertised vacancies. They were divided equally among names signed Patrick McDougall, Tyrell Jackson and Said Al-Rahman.

McDougall received positive or encouraging responses from 89 percent of landlords, while Al-Rahman was encouraged by 66 percent. But only 56 percent of the responses for Jackson were positive. . . . Tyrell Jackson was the only name to receive responses reiterating the amount of rent, perhaps questioning his ability to pay it. . . . .

All white juries are far more likely to convict a black or Latino defendant than racially mixed juries reports Greg Mathis for the Black America Web. A study by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that white jurors tend to make up their mind about the guilt of a minority defendant even before the start of a trial.

Keep in mind that these studies only document some of the discrimination that Blacks still encounter -- most likely, the vast majority of racism and discrimination still goes undetected or unreported. I also find it ironic that these latest examples are in the context of the country becoming increasing conservative and hostile to claims of continuing racism against Blacks.

Unfortunately, this situation just goes to show how the cultural perception gap between Whites and non-Whites (particularly Blacks) can still be quite huge at times, as if these two groups live in almost two completely separate societies.

Back in 2003, the well-respected Guardian Observer newspaper in England has come out with its list of the Top 100 Novels of All Time, as ranked by Robert McCrum. The top 10 are:

1. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes. The story of the gentle knight and his servant Sancho Panza has entranced readers for centuries.

2. Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. The one with the Slough of Despond and Vanity Fair.

3. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. The first English novel.

4. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. A wonderful satire that still works for all ages, despite the savagery of Swift’s vision.

5. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. The adventures of a high-spirited orphan boy: an unbeatable plot and a lot of sex ending in a blissful marriage.

6. Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. One of the longest novels in the English language, but unputdownable.

7. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne. One of the first bestsellers, dismissed by Dr Johnson as too fashionable for its own good.

8. Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos. An epistolary novel and a handbook for seducers: foppish, French, and ferocious.

9. Emma by Jane Austen. Near impossible choice between this and Pride and Prejudice. But Emma never fails to fascinate and annoy.

10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Inspired by spending too much time with Shelley and Byron.

I’m not sure whether I should admit it, but I have never actually read any of these novels in the top 10. For that matter, I’ve never even heard of five of the top ten. I guess I’m just not a literary connoisseur. Come to think of it, I can’t even recall the last time that I read a book just for pleasure.

I wonder, is that typical of an academic -- or is it just me?

A new study by the National Center for Education Statistics show that women are increasingly achieving equality with men in terms of their proportions in professional and graduate programs and in traditionally male-dominated undergraduate majors, in addition to already being overrepresented in getting Bachelor’s degrees:

Women earn the majority of bachelor’s degrees in business, biological sciences, social sciences and history. The same is true for traditional strongholds such as education and psychology. In undergraduate and graduate disciplines where women trail men, they are gaining ground, earning larger numbers of degrees in math, physical sciences and agriculture. . . .

Women now account for about half the enrollment in professional programs such as law, medicine and optometry. That is up from 22 percent a generation ago. . . . In business, by far the most popular degree field among undergraduates, women earn slightly more than half of all bachelor degrees; it was one-third in 1980. . . .

[However,] women who work full time earn about 76 percent as much as men, according to the Institute of Women’s Policy Research. Women are underrepresented in full-time faculty jobs, particularly in fields such as physical sciences, engineering and math.

So clearly, much progress has been made in terms of equalizing educational outcomes between men and women. At the same time, in order to achieve true equality, the final step is equal representation across all academic disciplines and occupations (i.e., tenure-track and tenured faculty), with an eye toward as many economic industries as possible, ultimately.

On the other hand, should we be worried about males and their educational outcomes? Yes -- educational opportunities and outcomes should be equal across all sectors of our society, whether they pertain to gender, race/ethnicity, social class, or whatever.

According to a new study that that ranks states in terms of reproductive and same-sex rights, Massachusetts is only the sixth most liberal state, despite being the only state in which same sex marriages are legal:

New Mexico and New York shared the top spot on the liberal end of the rankings, followed by New Jersey, Washington and California. Ohio and South Dakota were tied for the most conservative policies. . . .

The state lost points on the liberal scale for a law that requires mandatory parental involvement in minors’ abortions and a provision that prohibits state-funded insurance coverage of abortion. The state scored an obvious home run for its gay marriage law.

New Mexico turned out to be somewhat of a liberal darkhorse in the rankings, seizing a tie for the top spot because of expansive laws prohibiting discrimination against gay and transgender people. South Dakota came in last because of the state legislature’s approval of an abortion ban earlier this year.

I suppose that laws are one thing, but if the study would have incorporated the prevailing political opinions of each state’s citizens, something tells me that MA would be ranked higher (more liberal) while CA would be ranked lower (slightly less liberal). Anyway, just food for thought.

The Digital Journalist website has a feature on 100 Photographs That Changed the World. Several of them are quite familiar, while others I might have seen before but have forgotten or just plain overlooked how poignant and profound they actually are. Definitely worth a look.