Free Public Higher Ed or the Regents� Way

My book Why Public Higher Education Should be Freeis now available, and its central claims address many of the issues brought up at the last UC regents meeting.  My main argument is that if we just used current state and federal funding for higher ed in a more rational way, we could get rid of the need for tuition, student aid, and student loans.  I also argue that anything short of this holistic solution will fail to solve any of the basic issues.  Of course, we now live in a time of diminished political expectations, and so it is hard for most people to even imagine any large new governmental solution.  In short, after forty years of anti-government government, even our leaders can only think about short-term solutions and half-measures.

President Yudof�s farewell speech at the regents meeting was a great example of leaderless leadership.  Form his perspective, all that we can do is manage each crisis and try to find a way to maintain the status quo.  While he still holds out some hope that online education will be a real game-changer for higher ed, he is now even doubting the effectiveness of this possible solution.  In fact, during the regents� discussion  (minute 28) of the new new UC online program, Yudof brought up the recent problems with Udacity and San Jose State University.  He even stated that distance education might not work, and we need to ask the students and faculty on the campuses if they even want online courses.

Yudof�s doubts were ignored by a series of regents who pontificated about the need to do this online thing faster and to use the money provided by the governor to ramp up the provision of online courses for UC students.  Of course, the governor never really provided additional funds for online education; instead he simply earmarked $10 million from money that was already going to the UC.  Next, the governor vetoed his own earmark, but the regents have seemed to have forgotten this fact.  Worst off all, Lt. Governor Newsome continued his promotion of all things digital by urging the UC to stop moving at a glacial pace.  In other words, he wants the UC faculty to give up its shared governance in order to quickly move to a system of education that is unproven and could result in both significant cost increases and reduced quality.

As I argue in my book, all of the problems in higher ed start with the failure to make high-quality education and research the major priority of these institutions.  My central point is that if you do not dedicate most of the funding to these core missions, you end up spending most of the money on expensive side projects like athletics, sponsored research, administration, and amenities.  Moreover, this lack of attention to the core mission results in non-educators running the show, and in the UC case, this can be witnessed by the regents�, the new president�s, and the state politicians� lack of higher education experience and knowledge. 

Without a focus on improving the state of actual education, we end up with huge classes, reductive multiple-choice exams, and disengaged students and faculty.  In turn, this poor instructional quality opens the door for massive online courses and the call to move more students through the system in a faster and cheaper way.  Yet, on a positive side, the whole debate over MOOCs is helping to create a public conversation about how we define quality teaching and learning, and so it is possible that we may be able to rededicate our institutions of higher education to high-quality instruction and research.

While some will interpret my book as another attack on useless academic research, I try to make it clear that I also want to defend the importance of academic research, but I want to distinguish between corrupted sponsored research and the academic pursuit of knowledge and truth.   Just as our political system has been corrupted by the way we fund campaigns, our academic system has been distorted by the way we fund research.Study after study has shown that many research experiments in the sciences cannot be replicated, and one reason for the failure of science to be scientific is that researchers are beholden to the people paying for their research.  In order to correct this system, we need a commitment by the states and the federal government to provide funding for pure research; we also have to stop the hidden process of subsidizing expensive research programs by siphoning money out of undergraduate instruction.

None of these problems will be fixed if we continue to be led by leaders with no commitment to basic research and instruction.       

Read More

Brown Fat: It's a Big Deal

Non-shivering thermogenesis is the process by which the body generates extra heat without shivering. Shivering is a way for the body to use muscular contractions to generate heat, but non-shivering thermogenesis uses a completely different mechanism to accomplish the same goal: a specialized fat-burning tissue called brown fat. Brown fat is brown rather than white because it's packed with mitochondria, the power plants of the cell. Under cold conditions, these mitochondria are activated, using a specialized molecular mechanism called uncoupling* to generate heat.

The mechanism of brown fat activation has been worked out fairly well in rodents, which rely heavily on non-shivering thermogenesis due to their small body size. Specialized areas of the hypothalamus in the brain sense body temperature (through sensors in the brain and body), body energy status (by measuring leptin and satiety signals), stress level, and probably other factors, and integrate this information to set brown fat activity. The hypothalamus does this by acting through the sympathetic nervous system, which heavily innervates brown fat. As an aside, this process works basically the same in humans, as far as we currently know. Those who claim that rodent models are irrelevant to humans are completely full of hot air**, as the high degree of conservation of the hypothalamus over 75 million years of evolution demonstrates.

Two new studies concurrently published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation last week demonstrate what I've suspected for a long time: brown fat can be 'trained' by cold exposure to be more active, and its activation by cold can reduce body fatness.

Read more �

Read More

Zucchini: The Home Gardener's Worst Friend? With bonus garden-related rambling.

One of my main gardening goals has been to harvest more of something than I can eat, despite my limited gardening space here in the Emerald City. I want the feeling of abundance that comes with having to preserve and give away food because I can't eat it all.

Enter zucchini. My grandfather used to say that in New Jersey in summertime, you'd have to keep your car doors locked, otherwise the car would be full of zucchini the next time you got in! In mid-May, I planted two starts from my local grocery store labeled "green zucchini", with no further information. I put them in a bed that used to be a pile of composted horse manure, and that I had also cover cropped, mulched, fertilized, and loosened deeply with my broadfork. They look pleased.

Read more �

Read More

The Genetics of Obesity, Part III

Genetics Loads the Gun, Environment Pulls the Trigger

Thanks to a WHS reader* for reminding me of the above quote by Dr. Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health**. This is a concept that helps reconcile the following two seemingly contradictory observations:

1. Roughly 70 percent of obesity risk is genetically inherited, leaving only 30 percent of risk to environmental factors such as diet and lifestyle.
2. Diet and lifestyle have a large impact on obesity risk. The prevalence of obesity has tripled in the last 30 years, and the prevalence of extreme obesity has increased by almost 10-fold. This is presumably not enough time for genetic changes to account for it.

Read more �

Read More

Return to the Source Parkour Camp

For those who are interested in natural movement training, this summer my friend Rafe Kelley will be hosting an interesting three-day event near Bellingham, WA called "Return to the Source".  Rafe is skilled in a variety of movement disciplines and is the co-founder of the Seattle parkour gym Parkour Visions.  Parkour is a very fun sport that hones our natural ability to skillfully navigate physical obstacles, but it's usually done in an urban context.

The camp will take place from August 23-25.  Here's a description from the Parkour Visions site:

"This summer, return to the source of human movement with Parkour Visions as we explore the natural environment in and around Bellingham, WA. Rafe Kelley will introduce you to the benefits of training and playing in nature. You will learn how to adapt your technique and movement to moving effectively through woods, over rocks, and in trees during this unique, 3-day experience."

Watch this video if you want to see what you're in for.

Knowing Rafe, it will be fun and productive.  You can sign up through this page.

Read More

The Neoliberal Attack on CCSF

In one of the most dramatic and devastating developments in higher education this year, San Francisco City College has been warned that it will be stripped of its accreditation an forced to close next summer if does not convince its accreditors that it has made certain required changes.  The California Federation Teachers, which represents over 1,000 faculty at this college is protesting this potential disaster, which could throw close to 90,000 students out of higher education in the Bay area.    

Reading through the accreditation report, I was struck by the lack of discussion of recent state budget cuts to higher education in California.  In a now classic neoliberal two-step move, the state first reduces the funding of a public institution, and then later, someone applies some arbitrary assessment measures to declare that the institution is failing its public mission. 

In another neoliberal gesture, the report bemoans the relatively low level of upper administration and the high level of shared governance and faculty involvement.  Not only does the report believe that too much of the school�s money is being spent on faculty and staff, but the accreditors believe that only a top-down management style can deal with the college�s fiscal and academic shortcomings.      

If CCSF is forced to close, you can be sure that the students will be pushed towards for-profit schools that live off of governmental funding, student debt, and empty promises of future employment.  For more info, click here. 

Read More

Privatizing UC

Several recent moves of privatization in the UC system should push us to ask what is behind this movement and what is wrong with it.  While the privatization of part of the UCLA Anderson business school has received some attention, very few people have examined the new private entity UCLA has established to help cash in on innovations. Moreover, it looks like Senator Steinberg�s attempt to push public institutions to use private online providers is still alive.  All of these changes rely on the same transformation of a public good into the hands of a private or private-public management. 

In the case of UCLA Anderson Business School, the main change is that the program, in consultation with the president of the UC system, will be able to set tuition levels and keep all of its revenue except for 15%, which will  go to central administration. Some of the problems with this move are indicative of issues facing the privatization movement in general: 1) there is a loss of being part of a shared public institution; 2) after years of state support, high tuition costs may force out state students; 3) this process is being driven by upper-management and goes against the explicit recommendations of the system-wide faculty senate; and 4) it is unclear if the self-sustaining entity will actually be self-sustaining.  Even though the school will have to pay 15% of its tuition revenue to the university, we do not know if this is enough to cover the cost of financing the debt for building construction, the use of administrative services, or other day-to-day expenses. 

In the case of the new UCLA innovation center, the East Bay Express has a long article on how this push for privatization may place the fruits of university research in the hands of private individuals. At the last regents meeting, a vote was taken to create Newco as a private entity lodged within the university to help monetize university-sponsored research.  Like the privatization of the UCLA business school, this move could change the priorities and structure of a previously public entity.  For example, a new body of outside corporate administrators may not only privatize the profits from this public university, but they could also prevent new discoveries and innovations from reaching the broader public.  There is also the fear that outside corporations will profit as the university takes on the most expensive and risky parts of the research and design process. 

In the neoliberal tradition of privatizing profits and socializing losses, we see how contemporary capitalism is focused on privatizing previously public institutions.  For instance, the recent push for online education is motivated in part by the idea that large amounts of money can be made if public resources go to private companies.  Although Senator Steinberg has claimed that SB 520 prevents public funds from going to private online providers, it is clear that these private companies are not getting into the education business to simply provide a public service.  

The underlying threat in all of these privatizing moves is that the university loses its meaning and purpose.  Instead of being a public institution that stands outside of private interests, the university can no longer offer an alternative to market-based values and thinking.  Ultimately, in the quest to generate more non-public revenue, the university loses sight of the common good. 

Read More

The Genetics of Obesity, Part II

Rodents Lead the Way

The study of obesity genetics dates back more than half a century. In 1949, researchers at the Jackson Laboratories identified a remarkably fat mouse, which they determined carried a spontaneous mutation in an unidentified gene. They named this the "obese" (ob/ob) mouse. Over the next few decades, researchers identified several other genetically obese mice with spontaneous mutations, including diabetic (db/db) mice, "agouti" (Avy) mice, and "Zucker" (fa/fa) rats.

At the time of discovery, no one knew where the mutations resided in the genome. All they knew is that the mutations were in single genes, and they resulted in extreme obesity. Researchers recognized this as a huge opportunity to learn something important about the regulation of body fatness in an unbiased way. Unbiased because these mutations could be identified with no prior knowledge about their function, therefore the investigators' pre-existing beliefs about the mechanisms of body fat regulation could have no impact on what they learned. Many different research groups tried to pin down the underlying source of dysfunction: some thought it was elevated insulin and changes in adipose tissue metabolism, others thought it was elevated cortisol, and a variety of other hypotheses.

Read more �

Read More