Thoughts on Higher Education.

People often ask questions such as "why does college cost so much?" and "What's the ROI on a college education?' along with statements such as "I don't want someone to go to school, they should learn a trade". All of these questions/statements concern me. Let me elaborate from the perspective of one 42-year "veteran" of higher education administration. To the first question, there is a curt, only partially true answer that is, "because it can". The untrue part of that snarky statement is that as any economist can tell you, price and cost are different. Costs go up as all goods and services do in any marketplace. Costs are affected by many different factors including inflation, but price is more fluid. Price and cost cannot be equal or any entity operating in that fashion will quickly close. There have to be "net revenues" to continue operation and re-investment in the enterprise. Note I did not use "profit" as profit is paid out to owners and shareholders. Unless a college is proprietary, it does not generate "profits" but net revenues that go toward new programs, facilities and other projects and programs intended to advance the institution. There is a dirty underside (in my estimation) to costs, but I'll address that later. The price of education obviously is tied to costs, but can also reflect a "buyers" willingness to pay a differential for what may be a similar experience. While I hate using the automotive model it seems to work well here. Two cars have similar options, features, and records, however, one is a luxury German brand and the other an American brand. we can argue the merits of the comparison but the fact remains that both drive, both have safety features, and both use fuel, tires, and other parts. The willingness to pay the much higher price for the luxury brand has more to do with the perception than the reality of the vehicle. This has worked its way into higher education as the phenomenon the "Chivas Regal Effect". the perception that because something is priced higher (note: cost is not in the equation here) it is better. Chivas, in a post-war funk, raised its prices to move the needle on perceived quality. Once acquired by Canadian beverage giant Seagrams, Chivas was marketed aggressively as "top shelf" liquor. Throughout it all, the product itself had not changed. (side note: I am an occasional scotch drinker, not a Connoisseur, but I have had Johnny Walker Blue at $185-235 bottle and other scotches in the Johnny Walker line. Blue is NOT worth $235/bottle.) Colleges have used this strategy to compell families to believe if a college "costs" more, it must be better than the less expensive options. This strategy has been used to move an institution into a new peer group of institutions, based primarily on price. The quality has not necessarily changed appreciably, although faculty generally enjoy being paired with a better peer group. The only substantive change is in the net revenue generated, which, as promised, I will expand on further, albeit by going back to real "costs". My major concern has to do with what I refer to as the "arms race" among colleges and universities in adding "attractions" rather than content. Lazy rivers, climbing walls, multiple dining options, private rooms, individual showers, and massive athletics expenses do not contribute to the university mission of teaching and learning. There, I said it. In the current highly competitive market for traditional aged students colleges have expanded the "fun park" aspects of the institution, often at the expense of adequate investment in its academic core. While I find some of Robert Maynard Hutchins' elitism offensive, it is hard to argue about whether the man who took the University of Chicago out of the Big Ten was serious about academics or not. He found football to be a distraction from the serious business of the university. That brings me to my next sensitive spot; ROI. I find the ROI (Return on Investment) question especially offensive. In an education, value added requires participation and effort on part of the student. Again, Hutchins said that the meaning of an education was not filling minds with facts but teaching them to LEARN. Graduates of truly liberal arts education have the critical thinking skill and the information seeking skills to move them forward through life. I say this tempered with disabusing myself of the myth of meritocracy. If America were truly meritocratic, we would be a very different place. The best and the brightest are not found only among elite institutions. Many of our best and brightest minds are developed at a broad array of colleges and universities. With the fall of affirmative action there should be a concurrent discontinuance of legacy admissions. No one can convince me that all of the Kennedy family are so brilliant as to be all Ivy league educated, all of the Bush family? Donald Trump admitted to Penn on merit?! ROI in these cases is more "return on influence". Asking a college to "get my kid a job" or "get her into medical school", is placing all of the effort on one end. Yes, we in colleges and universities have our responsibilty to work with and encourage/guide the students in our care, but the effort has to be two way. To simply ask "what is my ROI?' has ignored the quality of what has been invested. Silk purse out of sow's ear comes to mind. As one who (is, and) has worked with many first generation students the return depends on your own personal investement, not on the price paid. Perhaps this rant has run too long but I must address the trade school training versus the college education. There is no question that tradespeople are critical. They cannot be outsourced. A carpenter or electrician, a stonemason or plumber, cannot work from overseas making these critical jobs very important to our very infrastructure. But keep in mind costs vs. prices. Is a $5/hour carpenter as good as a $15/20 per hour carpenter? we likely all have had experience with poor workmanship, but are we willing to pay the price, which includes the costs, of the more skilled laborer? Union-busting and Trickle Down economics of the 1980s resulted in wealth for very few and decimatedd the American middle class. Once the $15-20 workers ask for more, what will become of them? Many skilled labor jobs are not unlike athletes, there is a limited time span for a career. My own father left his position as a carpenter when he became the "young guy" in his forties. Climbing and building scaffolds requires physical abilities that wane over time. What will our well trained skilled laborers do if they cannot think critically and look for opportunities that require other developable skills? I raise more questions than I answer, and I have neglected an entire section on declining state support for higher education along with predatory student loan practices. Perhaps another time.

The Downside of the Football Business

I am not about to be an apologist for Skip Bayless or any of the other pundits using the tragic Damar Hamlin situation to fill their time on TV, the web, twitter, instagram, and on and on...However, the remarks about "taking five minutes to resume the game" or "when wil this be rescheduled? It's such an important game" reflect the ugly reality of football as a business. While I have no doubt that there are many NFL officers who recognize the tragedy of a horrible injury in fromt of an audience of millions, somewhere a bean counter is estimating the lost revenue from, an incomplete game, ramifications for the playoffs, and lost revenues across the board. I'm not insensitive, I'm being real. The game is about money, plain and simple. Players are simply meat to be thrown before coliseum audiences. I don't believe for a second that the Bills do not care about Damar or his condition, but womder if his condition were to occur later in life and attributable to having played? My sister would see former Steeler Mike Webster from time to time, and withouty knowing who he was, felt sorry for the shambling wreck of a man he had become. Better protocols on head injuries may prevent some of today's players from suffering the same decline and demise, but players are still interchangeable pieces of a larger whole. The game is a business, and game receipts and licensing deals and endorsements of the "official popsicle of the NFL" will go on, despite the horrible trauma we witnessed. If you have read this far, thank you. I am not advocating changes to the game ON THE FIELD I am much more concerned with the game OFF the field. The game where young men chasing dreams are often seen as expendable. Where the very idea of continuing a game in which such a tragic emergency occured crosses the minds of announcers and pundits alike, that is the real tragedy. I hope with every fiber of my being that Damar Hamlin recovers. I respect and admire the demonstration of love and support shown by the Buffalo and Cincinnati communities, I am moved by the other teams demonstrating their support, but I am not at all surprised by the callousness of some members of the media. I am old enough to (vaguely) remember the weekend in 1963 when Pete Rozelle thought that continuing to play the games immediately after the Kennedy Assasination was the right thing to do. Kennedy dies on 11/22 and the games on 11/24 went on. There was no broadcast of games, and perhaps there was an effort to bring normalcy to an anything but normal time. Again, I'm granting the benefit of the doubt, but I am concerned that the business of football caneat away at the humanity of sports. To his credit, Rozelle admitted that it was a very bad decision, but you cannot unring a bell

Thoughts sparked by reading broadly...

All too often these missives, this emptying of pockets, begin with "it has been a while" and this is no different. Again my thinking turns to reading and self-reflection. In rereading Robertson Davies' "Deptford Trilogy" I recognized that in many ways, although the books are quite dissimilar, (my favorite book being "A Confederacy of Dunces") the aspect that has drawn me in to these texts might be the "six degrees of separation" that I perceive to appear in both texts. I have often experienced the phenomenon and I am sure many of us have has well, whether we realize it as such or not. Both books involve characters who seem to find their lives intertwined in strange and seemingly unpredictable ways. In a recent discussion with some friends I shared a story about a close friend, Ted, who invited me to go along on a trip to see his then girlfriend, now wife, at the Y camp where she worked for the Summer. He had been there before and had shared with some staffers that I seemed to "know everybody" and always made connections. One staffer scoffed at this and when I met him he, rather insolently, said "Ted tells me that you know everybody". As I recall my response was "I know a lot of people and I find that we usually have people in common", or something to that effect. He, again, somewhat snottily, said "yeah right". I then asked him, "where do you go to school?" they were all college students at the time. He responded, the University of Southern Maine, to which I replied, "do you know John Z and Terry Y" and he said, "oh yeah, they were RAs..oh my god you did it!". The aforementioned pair were fellow grad students in my program, and I knew they had both come from USM. The point of this is not self-aggrandisement or to point out some sort of personal parlor trick, but to indicate that my affinity for these texts lies largely in my own experience. I can only attribute my experience to a self-diagnosis of thinking in "set theory". The Boulean Logic in my head allows me to think of others in common experiences or common communities. the two books are very much place based one in rural Ontario, the other in New Orleans, but the active characters have networks beyond their geographic or social circles. Again, my point in sharing this. I wrote once before that a very dear friend had once called me "the least judgemental person I know", and that touched me deeply. I'd like to believe that focussing on the individual, not their status, position, or station, alloes for a kind of intimacy that, while possibly making myself vulnerable, shows a willingness to "know" them. Truly know them. No one needs to be confessional about it, but if you and I have both come from blue-collar industrial backgrounds in Western PA or Eastern OH, we have a common bond somewhere. If we both have gone to colleges in New England, we may have places and possibly people, in common. Having worked my entire life in Higher Education I have been fortunate to meet many people in various capacities. Knowing who thay are is not name-dropping as much as it is "common experience finding". My takeaway from this is; if we all spent more time seeking what we have in common rather than what divides us, makes us different, we would live in a more civil, more understanding society. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

emptying pockets is sometimes hard to do...

 

 

I try not to be maudlin in these occasional  meanderings of my mind (really, I do), but Terri and I just returned from Charleston SC after a week of touring and getting some much needed sunshine. We left in a snow squall in Buffalo and the weather was a welcome respite. Charleston is, as many old southern cities a beautiful place with an abundance of history. Not too long ago we had made a similar trip to Savannah, a town with the same pedigree and prominence in the antebellum South.

What caused me to consider my mixed emotions about both trips is that in the midst of beautiful and historical buildings, old churches, and fine dining is the dark history of human bondage. The Old Slave Mart Museum above is a very rich cultural center that actually moved me to tears. The excellent and well documented history on the first floor gives an accurate and compelling story of the inhumanity of the slave trade. The second floor has more artifacts, history, and a wonderful docent named Christine who told the story of the slave mart in a well organized and well researched presentation. The story of "man's inhumanity to man" is incredible and filled with paradox. While "the enslaved people" were considered as chattel and less than full human beings, their bodies were sold to medical schools of the time and dissected as instruction for physicians of the time. They were not human enough to be treated as such, but they were human enough to be desecrated and carved up in the interest of medicine. Terri purchased the book, "The Price for a pound of their flesh" which documents this atrocity.

 

We saw lists of slaves for sale including details of their work skills and possible uses. This included some notes such as "imbecile" or "dropsy" as though used cars were being sold with "some defects detected." That and the history of splitting families and the separation of native speakers of certain African languages kept people in a constant state of dislocation and despair.

I felt as though I was imposing my "enlightened Northern values" on the history only to find that many Northern banks profited from the slave trade by making "mortgages" of a sort when owners lacked sufficient funds to purchase their human chattel. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia banks, located in non-slave states benefited from the institution through finance.

I had to step outside to compose myself, so taken was I with emotion. I don't offer this as a self congratulatory note on my perspective, but feel compelled to share it as an indication that all that is beautiful is not without its own dark history. Beautiful homes, ornate and massive churches, intricate ironwork so much a part of Charleston and Savannah history and culture was built on the backs of enslaved people.

 

It may be the current state of the world and the dehumanization taking place in Ukraine that has heightened my awareness of just how evil, we can be, but I was moved nonetheless. Even Fort Sumter, the site of the beginning of the Civil War was built with over a million slave made bricks, many if not all from Boone Hall plantation which we also visited. It actually hurt my heart to see this. As I said, I had to step outside to compose myself.

Will we ever evolve enough to see the barbarity and brutality of which we are capable?

 

A Series of Unusual Events

 

In many previous posts I have noted my "un-churched" status. While I have never claimed to be atheistic, I am probably a-religious if there is such a classification. That said I AM open-minded and able to consider differing points of view.

(The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. F. Scott Fitzgerald)

I have recently been reading the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text heavily steeped in yoga and morality. What has been a surprise to me, fallen catholic that I am, is the similarities between this ancient text, the moral teachings of the bible I was taught, and what I think of as indigenous faiths/beliefs with which I am familiar. (ed. I have finished the Bhagavad Gita)

For some time now I have regarded god as within me. I an loathe to pray to an external power as though I have no self-control, no ability to change, no free will. The Bhagavad Gita has opened my eyes to a different perspective on beliefs. The focus is on the self, and becoming truly self-actualized. I am sure this is not news to friends who have studied Buddhism, but it was a new perspective for me.

One common denominator I find among all these versions of faith, including what I know of indigenous Native Americans, is a sense of a "lord above" making worship of gods in the sky somewhat universal. While considering these thoughts on faith, I have experienced a number of what a friend would call "god winks", explanations for seemingly random events. While reading about the Bhagavad, I also came across references to reality that have led me to read about quantum theory again, and the very nature of reality. Schrodinger's cat comes to mind as our observation of phenomena affects the phenomenon itself.

I suppose the focus of these random ramblings is to say that the link between my thoughts and the surprising coincidences seems to be based in Physics. If energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred, and if we are capable of being reincarnated based on our karma/dharma, does it not make sense that the energy that leaves our bodies at the time of death returns to the cosmos and can come back or remain as pure energy in the universe from which all things have come? My reading of the Bhagavad, admittedly an uninformed reading, suggests that everything that is always has been, everything that will be exists now. Hence my (again uninformed) reading of quantum reality. 

If I have ever actually emptied my pockets of mental lint, this is it. Sorry for the logical and philosophical leaps, but I am trying to organize my thoughts in some meaningful way.

If this has meant anything to you (or if you can help me make some sense of it) please comment below or on Facebook where this will appear...

Thanks for reading.

Grief, heartbreak, and their many manifestations

 Grief has many manifestations. We mourn loss in different ways and for different types of loss. I know that we usually associate our grief with death, but death too has many ways of presenting itself.

 

If you have read any of what I write, you'd know that I love Mary Oliver's works and have found meaning and comfort in many of them. Much earlier when blogging I wrote about how March has always been a difficult month for me. The greyness, the bare trees waiting for Spring, and the remembrance of the loss of both my parents. Both in March albeit 4 years apart. But grief has no fixed time frame, and I'll not go into a Elizabeth Kubler-Ross reflection.

Covid-19 has given us all cause for grief. Some loss of loved ones, some loss of connection with valued friends and colleagues, and some with loss of work or faced with economic uncertainty due to the pandemic. Not to diminish the very real pain of lost loved ones, we have all experienced some level of loss. A dear friend lost his mother quite a while ago, but was unable to gather with family and friends until this year. Terri knew of his love and devotion to his mother as a colleague of hers commented on what a loving support he was for someone who he knew would never come home, never again be the mother he cherished. He expressed his grief and love in a very moving and meaningful service that was appropriate to her "joie de vivre" and love for friends and family. He is still grieving but has taken some solace in the support of friends and family.

While being a supportive friend I came back in contact with another friend, or maybe more appropriately an acquaintance who was dealing with his own difficult situation.He had already lost a sister to cancer and was facing the same situation with another, close sibling. His father was now admitted to the hospital and the  prognosis was not good. He was not well, but aware enough to know that he would soon lose another child. After her death, he too passed away.

I do not intend to be morbid, but his health was not good, and I have to believe that his health was also affected by a broken heart.

I've written often of my father and his life and times. One thing I neglected to note in my last post was that the first time I saw my Dad cry was at the death of our Aunt Anne. The woman who had raised him and his five brothers. My father was not often an emotional man, but I saw, even at six years old, the impact and broken heartedness he experienced. It would be some time before I saw him in that light again.

My Dad seldom called. the calls were always initiated by my Mom who would put him on the phone, so when he called one evening years ago, I knew something was amiss. He asked me "are you alone? Can you talk right now?" It as so unlike him I knew something very bad had happened. He wanted to talk to me somewhere away from my children so I took the phone in another room. He was audibly shaken and could only say "something terrible, something terrible". He had called to tell me that one of my cousins had tragically taken his own life. Having lost my Uncle Bill in WWII I knew that the worst family tragedy we could experience was losing a child. As I noted in an earlier post about my mentor, I understood how difficult it is to receive that call. He was devastated. 

Dad was not much of a traveler. He used to joke that he didn't fly because they wouldn't give him "frequent flyer" miles. But, he and my two Aliquippa uncles made the trip to the funeral in support of my uncle.

Why all of this background? Not long after this my aunt fell into poor health. Some time after she passed a "cousin-in-law" a physician, told me that if anyone ever died of a broken heart, she had.

I have come to realize that grief is not isolated to loss of a loved one, although that seems to be the hardest to bear. There is no "coming back". But hopefully there is closure and we can move on.

Another friend has experienced one of the most devastating losses I can imagine. "Ghosted" by a lover. No closure, no answers, no explanation. This is both heartbreaking and cruel. How can we leave a loved one without notice, without any opportunity to understand. I am deeply hurt for my friend. I cannot grasp how someone you love can treat you so callously. I know my friend is still mourning. I hope my friend can heal, can trust and love again.

I too have experienced loss, but no where as deep or devastating as what I have described. I was hurt, disappointed, and affected on a deep level that threatened my self worth, my self esteem. As I have processed this loss I have come to the mantra I have described here before. I focus on Patience, Kindness, Forgiveness, and Gratitude. The hardest of all has been forgiveness. In mourning it is coming to grips with the loss and forgiving the other so we can forgive ourselves. Outside of loss due to death, forgiveness is often transactional. I can be grateful for all the good that has happened for me, and I realize that the root of gratitude is grace. I can be graceful in my sadness and forgive the transgressions I experienced. Hence, the Mary Oliver quote at the start. I was given a box of darkness, but I have found a way to appreciate it as a gift.

as always, thank you.

About Honor and Family

The dictionary yields several definitions for honor. It is both a noun and a verb, and it is used in many different settings; military, academic, athletic, and in discussions about virtues.

This may seem saccharine, but I would like to address this in a personal way and write about two of the most honorable people I have ever known, my Uncle and Godfather, John William Nairn, and my great aunt, Anne Byrne.

My Uncle John and my Dad were very close and for a long time I had assumed that their close bond was a result of circumstance, they were the two youngest of the six Nairn brothers raised in the "Bricks" of Aliquippa by my great-aunt, Anne Byrne. Aunt Anne came to Aliquippa from Maryland, where my branch of the Nairns originated, to care for her sister, my grandmother, Mary Elizabeth Byrne Nairn, when she gave birth to my father, Thomas, in 1932. Shortly after my father's birth, my grandmother passed away, leaving my grandfather with six boys to raise. Aunt Anne gave up her life in Maryland, about which I know very little, to stay and raise "her" boys. She is the only mother my father ever knew. Aunt Anne loved her nephews with a ferocity that was legendary in the Bricks back in the 30s. No one messed with the Nairn boys without incurring her wrath, also legendary. I find her to be an inspiration in her decision to "do the right thing" in caring for six often unruly boys that were not her own, but were unquestionably "hers". Honor was not in short supply when speaking of Aunt Anne. She lived with us briefly when I was quite young, both at King Street where I was a toddler, and later in Hopewell where my father bought his first, and only home. In the early 60s, my Uncle John built a new home in Center Township with a space for Aunt Anne to live. 

Honor was, again, not in short supply. John and my Dad made sure that Aunt Anne was always taken care of, and they did so unquestioningly. Her example has always served as a model of self-sacrifice for her loved ones, and her memory is honored to this day, even after the passing of all six Nairn brothers.

It took me a long time to appreciate and understand the bond between my Dad and my Uncle John. I was an adult before the reason became apparent, and it all had to do with honor. Of the six Nairn boys, only my Dad and Uncle John had not served in World War II. Alphonsus (Phonse, named for my grandfather) and William served in the Army, Phonse in the Aleutians, and Bill, who died off the coast of Italy in 1942,  Jacob (Jay) and  James served in the Marines in the Pacific, Jay on Guadalcanal, and Jim on Iwo Jima. Aunt Anne could never reconcile herself to Bill's death and always believed he would someday come home. Bill seems to have been my father's protector and role model. His loss was deeply felt by all, and to this day the name William has special significance for my family. John, born in 1930, and my Dad, born in 1932, were too young to have served, but worked to care for my Aunt and grandfather as they dealt with the grief only those who have lost a loved one in a war, and never came to closure can know. (Bill's body was never recovered). Post-war, Phonse stayed on the west coast settling down in California. Jay and Jim came home, Jay to WVU then Maryland and Jim to Aliquippa.  They both started families and set about creating the new lives that "greatest generation" needed so badly.

Somewhere, post-war, Uncle John joined the Army leaving my (still in high school) Dad with their father and Aunt Anne. In 1948, my grandfather died, leaving my Dad and Aunt Anne alone. 

Growing up I knew that my Dad was somewhat ambivalent about Phonse, but at that young age, I had no context for that undercurrent of tension. It seemed as though each time he visited from California I had a new "aunt", and Dad had little time for him. My memory of Phonse is him with a glass of Scotch and milk. He'd say, " the milk is for my ulcer, the scotch is for me". He'd visit a while and head back to California. My Dad never traveled to see him.

When Phonse passed away, my remaining uncles went west for the funeral, my Dad did not. He was unusually taciturn about his reason why, but I could sense there was some reason he would not share. As an adult, I came to understand why. It has to do with being honorable.

After the funeral, Phonse returned to California. My father was 16, and Aunt Anne was not a young woman, I'm not sure exactly how old she was. My Uncle John, then in the Army, applied for, and received, a hardship discharge so he could return to take care of Aunt Anne, and my Dad. He went to work in the steel mill, as my Uncle Jim did and later my Dad would follow, but he sacrificed his own needs, his own direction to care for others. Once my Dad could work in the mill, John returned to the service, this time the Marines, and served in Korea where he was wounded. After my grandfathers death my Dad had no expectation that Jay or Jim would leave their families and come back, we Nairns don't do that, but Phonse had no obligations in California and still went back, leaving Dad and Aunt Anne to fend for themselves. 

My uncle John did the most honorable thing I can imagine, putting his own life on hold to care for his family. I then understood the closeness between my Dad and Uncle John. Honor. Integrity. Respect. Responsibility.

When my Uncle John passed away a few years ago, the last of his generation of Nairns, my cousins and I gathered at his home, the place where he had provided for Aunt Anne in her last years, and as befits our Irish Catholic (despite the Scots name) tradition, we raised a glass of Jameson to his memory. Asked to make a toast, I offered that "we now walk in the footsteps of giants, big men who lived big lives, and made big sacrifices, may we honor their memory by always doing the right thing".

Thank you for reading.