Weissman’s College Talk — Episode 28 Prof. Andrea Gabor
Read the accompanying article for this podcast:
Read the accompanying article for this podcast:
Aldemaro Romero Jr. College Talk
In these days when Watergate is being discussed anew, some journalism professors remember that time as an inspiration for their profession. “I grew up on stories about journalism and civil rights and became fascinated. That was also the Watergate era, which influenced many journalists of my generation, so I was very interested in journalism, although my family, like many families, tried to discourage me. But that’s where the roots of my interest really took hold.”
That is how Professor Andrea Gabor explains how she became interested in journalism. This Chicago native went on to obtain a master’s in journalism from Columbia University and is today a Bloomberg Professor in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions in the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, CUNY.
Gabor soon became interested in business journalism and went to work for Businessweek, where she covered corporate strategy and technology. One of the first stories she wrote was about General Motors’ CEO, who wanted to replace auto workers with robots. “Around that time, gradually there was the realization that pesky auto workers weren’t really the problem. The problem in Detroit and in the auto industry was American management. So, having backed into business journalism, I ended up covering the workplace and management,” she says.
Gabor decided to dig deeper into issues of management and wrote a book about W. Edwards Deming, one of the most important management thinkers of the 20th Century. He was a scientist who married a scientific approach with a humanistic approach to management. “One of his great insights was that the only way to really improve organizations is by getting knowledge from the grassroots, from the people closest to the process. Management’s job is to make that knowledge actionable. In other words, to find how you train employees to identify problems in the system and then to improve the system.”
Something that we all experience is bombardment with surveys by the corporations we do business with. And Gabor says those surveys that are supposed to improve their companies are misleading.
“What are those survey questions about? They’re never about the system, they’re never about the process, they’re never about the fact that Verizon doesn’t have DSL lines throughout New York City, that they’re not maintaining their copper cable, that they have terrible service. Those surveys are always about the poor people on the other end of the phone who’re trying their best to meet your needs, but they’re not in charge of the system. The companies aren’t interested in how you really feel about the system as a whole; it’s always about the worker. ‘Let’s rate the worker, let’s beat up on the worker’—that’s all they really care about.”
Gabor has also explored surprising subjects for a business journalist. She wrote a book entitled Einstein’s Wife about Albert Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Marić.
“There was a big news story that there had been these passionate love letters between Einstein and his first wife, Mileva. Suddenly people asked, ‘Who was this Mileva?’ She was sort of this forgotten wife, who had been a physicist, a fellow student of Einstein’s. There’s some evidence that she was more than just an intelligent sounding board, but she did not write the theory of relativity. That got me thinking about women in the 20th Century. This was the first generation of women who had the opportunity to have a professional life. At the time, I was newly-married, I had just had my first child. What was that balance like for that first generation of women?”
Gabor is now working on a book that has to do with education reform. “We have escalated the nuclear testing arms race to such an extent in schools that civics is completely neglected, and so we go into the classroom and students very often don’t read the newspaper. They are overwhelmed with what they are hearing on television. They don’t have a clear sense of civics and the role of the First Amendment or even the founding of this country.”
For her, public education is under assault in this country. “What we’ve had is a very business-minded regime arguing that teachers are terrible, public schools are terrible, and imposing these testing regimes. There’s a great deal of pressure to teach to the test, so we are getting bright kids, very often bright young students out of high schools, who haven’t been taught civics, haven’t been encouraged to read the newspaper, haven’t been encouraged to engage in freewheeling conversation, debate about the issues of the day, let alone how they relate to our history,” says Gabor.
The question for her is how to teach at the college level. “One of the things that I argue in journalism classes—and this is a little bit unorthodox for a journalist—is that there really is no such thing as “objective news,” because every journalist filters it through his or her own experience. The job of a journalist is to be fair and to try to get to the truth,” she says.
“What I tell my writing students,” Gabor continues, “is if you approach a story from here at the beginning and you don’t end up over here at the end, you haven’t done your job, because what you learn through really rigorous reporting will inevitably change your view of the story. I think that’s true of academics as well. You have to teach students how to think about this great and rich world of information and literature and history and philosophy out there.”
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Gabor Practices, Teaches Reporting the Truth
This video blog is about how one of Baruch College students, Ma Su Su Aung, receives an important research award for work done on how cells die and its implication for the study of cancer and aging under the supervision of Dr. Pablo Peixoto of the Department of Natural Sciences.
Baruch student receives Salk Award in the biomedical sciences from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
This is the video version of the interview for the radio show “College Talk” with Dr. Mitchell Cohen of the Department of Political Science at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences about his newest book “The Politics of Opera.”
The politics of Opera from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
During the last few years, media have inundated us with bad news about higher education. Whether it is student debt, sexual assaults, or decreased enrollments, colleges and universities seem to be under siege. Add to that the bad press from op-ed writers about political correctness, uselessness of certain degrees, and the fascination with technological fads such as MOOCs, and one can see how controversial higher education has become.
Apparently, someone forgot to ask students what they think.
Now a new national study seems to take care of that. According to a survey conducted with Gallup and Strada Educational Network that drew nearly 90,000 respondents, the quality of the education former students received is not a major concern for most American college goers. This survey shows that four of five respondents who completed a credential or degree program said they received a high-quality education, ranging from 81 percent of vocational or technical credential holders, as well as associate degree holders, to 95 percent among graduate degree holders. Not only that, but 70 percent of respondents who attended college but did not complete said they received a high-quality education.During the last few years, media have inundated us with bad news about higher education. Whether it is student debt, sexual assaults, or decreased enrollments, colleges and universities seem to be under siege. Add to that the bad press from op-ed writers about political correctness, uselessness of certain degrees, and the fascination with technological fads such as MOOCs, and one can see how controversial higher education has become. Apparently, someone forgot to ask students what they think. Now a new national study seems to take care of that. According to a survey conducted with Gallup and Strada Educational Network that drew nearly 90,000 respondents, the quality of the education former students received is not a major concern for most American college goers. This survey shows that four of five respondents who completed a credential or degree program said they received a high-quality education, ranging from 81 percent of vocational or technical credential holders, as well as associate degree holders, to 95 percent among graduate degree holders. Not only that, but 70 percent of respondents who attended college but did not complete said they received a high-quality education.
This is important for several reasons. To begin with, this is the first time that the most fundamental question – student satisfaction – has been asked at the national level for all disciplines, including people who, for whatever reason, did not graduate. Interestingly, this is a question never scientifically explored by the plethora of rankings that are published every year and whose meanings are doubtful at best.
The other important aspect is that although the general level of satisfaction is high, there is obviously room for improvement. So, we need to look at what can be done to achieve higher levels of satisfaction, and that is up to colleges and universities to do through better analysis of exit interviews of their graduates.
There are other aspects of this Gallup-Strada Educational Network survey that need to be looked into. For example, more than half of respondents said that they would have changed at least one of these three decisions if they could do it all over again: their major, college attended or credential pursued. The most common regret was their choice of major, with 36 percent saying they wish they would have chosen differently. Twenty-eight percent of respondents said they would have chosen a different institution, while 12 percent said they would pursue a different degree.
Regarding their choice of major, 40 percent who pursued or completed a bachelor’s degree would pick a different field of study compared to 31 percent of those who hold a technical or vocational certificate. These results suggest that people pursuing a higher education degree made the decisions about a major, institution or level of degree without appropriate information that included, but was not limited to, “an understanding of employment opportunities, earning potential or the implications of long-term student debt,” according to the report. Also, it seems that many had a faulty understanding of what the major they chose was really all about or what skills they really learned while mastering those subjects.
Not surprisingly, respondents who attended graduate or vocational programs were the least regretful, since both are narrower in scope and students are more clear about what they want.
Thus, we need to make sure that we provide as ample and accurate information to incoming students as possible. To that end, we need to go beyond posting facts and figures on a website to a more personalized approach. Many institutions will hesitate to do that because of the cost.
In any case, although there is room for improvement, we should not fool ourselves about trying to achieve perfection. Most students make institutional choices based on location and cost, so for many the choices are limited. Another factor that we should not forget is that, according to this survey, respondents who attended college but did not receive a degree were the most likely to say they would change at least one of the three educational decisions mentioned earlier. After all, according to federal statistics, students who take out loans for college but never graduate are three times more likely to default. Not surprisingly, respondents with more student loan debt said they would make different decisions.
However, there was very little variation by debt level among respondents on whether they would pursue a different major, with an overall 3 percentage point range across all five quintiles of debt level. But large debt holders were more likely to say they would attend a different institution or pursue a different type of degree.
This is also an incentive for academic departments to come up with better marketing approaches in order to make sure that they attract the students that are more likely to succeed in their disciplines. This approach would serve to increase retention and graduation rates, which have become a benchmark for funding of public institutions.
This survey is expected to be carried out on an annual basis from now on, so it will provide a timeline perspective of how things are (or are not) changing through time. Gallup and Strada have said that the report would be the first of many from a three-year survey, dubbed as the “Education Consumer Pulse.” The survey will be conducted daily, with a goal of asking 360,000 current, past and prospective college students about their experiences in higher education.
This “Education Consumer Pulse” should certainly help to provide a much better picture of what we need to improve higher education nationwide, certainly a more useful tool than meaningless rankings. The current survey can be read in full here.
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Quality of General Education Generally Satisfactory
Aldemaro Romero Jr. College Talk
“I think I started because I love to dance, and I really started moving into the area of communication when I started dancing. I danced, I acted, I sang.” That’s how Professor Denise Patrick explains how she became a college faculty member in the area of communication studies.
A native New Yorker, Patrick received a bachelor’s degree in corporate communication from Baruch College and a master’s in Rhetoric and Communication from Temple University in Philadelphia. She would later return home to become a lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences in Baruch College, CUNY.
When she was young, Patrick wanted to communicate with her body, but someone told her that was not possible, and she thought, “What’s interesting to me is how people kind of deal with each other, how they negotiate, how we listen to each other, how we sort of send messages, and I really just got more and more interested in that whole process.”
There is an old saying that goes, “All of the problems in the world are communication problems,” and Patrick thinks there is some truth in that. “When we think of an issue that we have in the world, when we think of the issues that we have one-on-one with people, it’s usually because we haven’t heard them properly, or we haven’t sent a message in the way we’ve intended or sent it properly so that the other person understands it. But there’s a little more to it than that. There’s also the context around a situation.”
One wonders to what extent mobile devices are changing the way we humans communicate. “Our electronic devices are tools, and I think that when they first came out, we used them more as tools to extend our conversations. Now, I find that people, particularly our students and their generation, they’re using them as their main form of communication. So you really miss the subtle nuances that we have when we’re face to face,” she says.
But do we know that electronic communication is not working in the world of emails and text messages? “My absolute rule is, when you get to the third email, stop, pick up the phone, or go see the person. Because it’s too much,” says Patrick.
The other problem is that people receive a lot of information, and they don’t look at it with critical eyes, and part of the blame falls on the way we educate today. “Regardless of the industry that our students go into, the people who will be employing them are looking for key things. Whether it’s students or not, they’re looking for new hires who have very strong communication skills. They’re also looking for people who are creative, they’re looking for people who can collaborate, they’re looking for leaders, and finally they’re looking for critical thinkers. If we in higher education don’t insist that our students think critically about every message they receive, we’re really doing them a disservice.
Patrick teaches students that employers today hire people because they have a particular skillset, but they also want people who can think outside the box, who can discern when something is false, discern when something is real, develop their own opinions about something and articulate them.
She also knows that not everybody is a natural communicator. “Some people do just have that natural gift. But all people can learn how to communicate better. It’s really understanding your style. The more that we can understand our own style—which means understand our strengths and understand our trouble spots—the better we can become at it,” she says.
As a preacher herself, Patrick knows that you have to understand your audience, which is very different from what you say or do in a business. She uses as an example one of the best communicators in history. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s practice in preaching really helped him develop and hone the skills of knowing how to say what he needed to say, how to pick a specific audience, how to get everyone on board with what his message was, and that’s a gift.”
She also reminds us that body language plays a big role in communication. “Our body language, our tone makes up 93 percent of our communication; the words are only 7 percent. Really what we’re getting meaning from is what we’re seeing and what we’re hearing.”
But that’s not all. Patrick says that actions also speak volumes about what you are trying to communicate and also about the importance of getting everybody on the same page. “Your actions speak. People tend to look at your actions. It may have been a mistake for that particular individual to be absent at the beginning, but the person may have had a very legitimate reason for being absent. And that’s why everybody has to be on the same page.”
She also knows that people have biases when it comes to listening to others. “I think when I was younger I would sit and say, ‘Oh my goodness, because it’s a woman people aren’t going to take her seriously . . .’ I think we all have that. I think we have tried to become a little bit savvier and not necessarily say, ‘Okay, I’m gonna have this implicit bias about this particular person.’ I myself really try to see what the person is. What is your character? That’s what’s important to me. I hope we can get closer and closer to that.”
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Patrick Teaches Communication with a Critical Edge
Aldemaro Romero Jr. Letters from Academia
One of the most contentious issues in politics in general – and in higher education in particular – is political correctness.
Usually defined as the avoidance of language or actions that are seen as excluding, marginalizing, or insulting groups of people that have been discriminated against because of their gender, race, or other identifying factors.
The term is now oftentimes used in a pejorative sense, particularly in conservative circles.
Higher education, more than any other setting, has been pointed out as the main generator of political correctness. Yet, academia continues to be one of the major offenders when it comes to real actions towards equality.
According to the American Association of University Professors, despite the fact that 60 percent of all doctoral students in the U.S. are women, only 46 percent of assistant professors, 38 percent of associate professors, and 23 percent of full professors are female.
In Europe, the numbers are similar. On top of that, women faculty members at colleges and universities in the United States earn on average 10 percent less than their male counterparts. A
nd women higher education administrators earn, on average, 20 percent less than their male counterparts, about the same difference as in corporate America.
When it comes to ethnicity, the statistics are no better.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, nearly 35 percent of assistant professors are minorities, but only 18 percent of them reach the top level of the academic echelon, full professorship.
To remedy this situation of inequality, many colleges and universities try to include (or increase) the number of women and minorities on search and promotion committees. One of the unintended consequences of this policy is that in institutions with a low percentage of minorities and women, they can get overworked by disproportionate participation in those committees with the expectations that any bias by white males will be excluded.
Now new research is providing data showing that such efforts can be counterproductive. In a study published just a few weeks ago in the journal “American Economic Review,” the authors found that a larger number of women in evaluation committees does not increase either the quantity or the quality of female candidates. Further, the researchers found that female evaluators are not significantly more favorable toward female candidates, and that, at the same time, male evaluators become less favorable toward female candidates as soon as a female evaluator joins the committee.
These results seem counterintuitive. Yet, the methodology behind this research is robust. They analyzed how a larger presence of female evaluators affects committee decision-making using information on 100,000 applications to associate and full professorships in Italy and Spain and these applications were assessed by 8,000 randomly selected evaluators. So, there is no question that they used large enough sample sizes to generate their outcomes.
But how can we explain these results? For years there has been the belief that once women entered the lower ranks of the academic career, it was only a matter of time that they would move their way through the pipeline to reach high-level jobs. This is known as the “pipeline theory.” Yet, after decades of making sure that women are included in search and promotion committees, the share of women among faculty members remains low. That is particularly true in disciplines such as philosophy, mathematics, and physics.
Another explanation that has been advanced is that due to biological (pregnancy, maternal care) and social constraints (lack of sensible maternity leave policies, expectations for gendered roles at the household level, lack of female role models), women are less productive in the number of publications they write, the main measure used to evaluate scholarly performance. Further, several studies have shown that there is a bias against females who coauthor publications with males in the belief that the males were the ones who really did the work.
Other explanations have been advanced. One is that because of social pressures some women may dedicate more time to “socially desirable” tasks. Another is that women are less likely to apply for promotions because they feel they will be discriminated against anyway.
These results remind me of a study by Robert Putnam, a Harvard professor, that was published 10 years ago that showed that in ethnically diverse neighborhoods trust (even of one’ own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.
What this means is that we humans have an issue with diversity. When we make groups (in this case committees) more diverse, what happens is that people respond negatively to such mixes. That is why many colleges and universities have been implementing in the last few years surveys that help to identify our own biases. We in academia don’t like to think that we are racists or misogynists, but the reality is quite different.
A colleague of mine, psychologist Kristin Sommer of Baruch College, pointed out that there is research that shows that training people with counter-stereotypical exemplars causes a decrease in implicit measures of racism, with results lasting at least 24 hours.
The same can be said regarding gender. What these studies imply is that if we want to “re-program” or condition ourselves to think less stereotypically, we need to be more attentive to counter-stereotypical exemplars in everyday life.
Therefore, although the idea of making search and promotion committees more diverse seems to be the right thing to do to advance the cause of social justice, in the final analysis we have to look to ourselves and make sure we do not carry the biases that seem to be part of human nature.
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For Social Justice, We Need to Look in the Mirror
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This video blog is about end-of-the-year artistic performances by students at Baruch College-CUNY
End of the Year Concert at Engelman from Aldemaro Romero Jr. on Vimeo.