Education

America’s top universities may be teaching a dangerous lesson about tanning.

Twelve percent of the nation’s top colleges and universities have tanning beds on campus, and nearly half have them either on campus or in off-campus housing, according to a report published online Wednesday in JAMA Dermatology.

Marty Nemko is a career coach, writer, speaker and public radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and education reform.

Professors, the campus and even the university as an institution need to be replaced

Despite a college degree’s enormous cost, almost half of college freshmen (43%) don’t graduate even if given six years. If they graduate, a 2011 national study found, 36% of the 1,600 students tested “did not demonstrate any significant improvement in learning” in four years. And in the just-published follow-up, which tracked those students since their graduation in 2009, one-quarter were living at home two years after graduation and more than half said their lives lacked direction. Twenty percent were earning less than $30,000 a year, half of those less than $20,000.

Hidebound higher education

College hasn’t changed much in centuries. For the most part, there’s still a research-oriented Ph.D. sage on the stage lecturing on the liberal arts to a student body too often ill-prepared and uninterested in that. That occurs on a plush campus with a porcine administration, which results in a four-year sticker price at a brand-name private college of more than $200,000. (And those are 2012 figures. They’re higher now. Plus, those figures exclude tens of thousands of dollars in books, travel, living expenses and miscellany.)

Time, not for reform, but for reinvention

The meteoric rise in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), which see an average enrollment of 43,000 students per course, is an early sign that the public wants change. But MOOCs aren’t the answer. Sure, they’re free and available to all, but because they’re still taught largely by those professor types to often unprepared students, the completion and learning rates are low. MOOCs have a completion rate of only 10%.

Undergraduate courses should not be taught mainly by Ph.D.s. The gap between their and their students’ intellectual capabilities and interests is too great. The instructors should be mainly bachelor’s-level graduates who themselves had to work hard to get an A. Just as you’d probably learn computer basics better if taught by someone who had to work to acquire mastery rather than by a born computer whiz, the same is true of most undergraduate courses. To be licensed to teach, prospective instructors should have to complete a pedagogy boot camp, a one-weekend to one-semester intensive, which ironically, in most colleges, is required of teaching assistants but not of professors.

Most courses would be taught via online interactive video, which would both save much money—no campus required—and allow a dream team of the world’s most transformational instructors to teach. That way, everyone—from the poorest, weakest student to the most brilliant—would have access to the best in interactive instruction. In addition, the online format allows for individualized pacing and exciting simulations impossible to provide in a nation’s worth of live classes.

Extracurriculars would occur at local gyms, swimming pools, theaters and athletic fields. Where those were insufficient, facilities on existing campuses would be used, but much of campuses could be sold off.

Importantly, courses would not be attached to any institution. Anyone could submit his or her course for approval to the U.S. Department of Education. Screening would be done only for quality and rigor, not for censorship of content. If approved, the instructor, when posting availability of the course on one of the existing MOOC sites (Coursera, edX or Udemy), could include a badge saying the course is U.S. government–approved for X units of undergraduate credit. When a student has completed the specified number and type of courses to comprise a bachelor’s degree, the student would submit proof of completion to the Department of Education, plus the results of a proctored exam that would assess if the student had acquired bachelor’s-level skills in reading, writing, critical thinking and mathematical reasoning. If so, they would be granted a U.S. bachelor’s degree.

The result would be a far better college education at far lower cost.

A high-quality pathway for academically weak students

Today, we push nearly everyone to college, even those who did poorly in high school, for whom college is unlikely to be the best way to spend their years and money. America needs a major apprenticeship initiative like those in Germany and England: a partnership between schools and employers that creates a high-quality experience for high schoolers whose track record indicates they’re more likely to succeed in a practical curriculum than by deriving geometric theorems, deciphering the intricacies of Milton or applying quantum mechanics.

In the meantime, what to do?

Higher education’s glacial pace of change, despite years of withering criticism, does not portend major improvement in the offing. So what’s the current crop of would-be college attendees to do?

Attending college should not be a fait accompli. If you did poorly in high school or are burned out on academics, you’re likely to join the almost half of college freshmen who don’t graduate even if given six years. So you might want to consider a noncollege path. For example, while not ideal, America does have a system of apprenticeships. Or try to work at the elbow of a successful, ethical business owner or nonprofit executive. Or consider the military: It offers training in a wide range of career fields. Or take just a gap semester or year to refresh and edify yourself in the real world before starting college. Try some focused traveling—for example, visit elementary schools in different areas and keep a blog. Or start a simple business. Even if it fails, you will have learned much about entrepreneurship, organization, people and life.

A College Report Card

If you are planning to attend college, you’ll make a wiser choice if you ask each prospective school’s admissions office for the following information, which collectively make up what I call the College Report Card:

• Results of the most recent student-satisfaction survey.
• The most recent report by a visiting accreditation team (for a college to retain accreditation, a team of experts periodically visits for a few days and writes a report listing the identified strengths, weaknesses and recommendations).
• The four-year graduation rate.
• The average four-year student’s growth in writing, analytic reasoning and mathematical reasoning (many institutions use a standardized exam like the Collegiate Learning Assessment).
• The percentage of students who graduate with their intended major who are professionally employed or in graduate school within six months of graduation.

It would be a consumer boon if the government mandated that all colleges post the College Report Card on their home page.

We claim that American higher education is the world’s best. Like many claims, it deserves closer examination.

Marty Nemko is an award-winning career coach, writer, speaker and public radio host specializing in career/workplace issues and education reform. His writings and radio programs are archived on www.martynemko.com.

The environment at Penn does not seem to have changed so radically that it would reach the Playboy pinnacle

I have no idea why I am so devoted to the University of Pennsylvania. What I do know is that I was a much better person when I graduated in 1972 than when I entered four years earlier. Which is why I am currently serving my third year as president of my class, as a longtime alumni interviewer of high school applicants for admission, and a mentor to different on-campus groups.

Like alumni of colleges around the country, I check out the US News and World Report rankings of universities and colleges and have been gratified when Penn rises in the poll and somewhat dismayed when we fall. Last month, one publication selected Penn as the top research university in the world; another proclaimed that more Penn graduates are billionaires than those of any other college. Neither of these two titles came as a surprise to me.

However, Playboy’s selection of my alma mater as the top party college in the nation came as a total shock to this undergraduate from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although over 50 percent of my class joined either fraternities or sororities, the popularity of the Greek system at Penn diminished significantly during my four years there as the peace movement and feminism gained traction. At that time, the legal drinking age in Pennsylvania was 21, and fake IDs were relatively hard to obtain. Unless you were friends with the hockey players who served as bouncers at the legendary campus bar, Smokey Joe’s, an underage male student had no chance of entering. And as recreational drugs got more popular on campus, the taste of the cheesesteaks improved, but the parties did not.

I went to memorable parties in my time at Penn—including one that ended with my dining room table broken in half and two women waking up in my bed—but they were few and far between. I spent most of my nights either working until deadline in the newspaper offices or writing papers due the next day.

The environment at Penn does not seem to have changed so radically that it would reach the Playboy pinnacle. In conjunction with my alumni activities, I visit the campus a minimum of five times per year. At nearby bars, I’m just as likely to see students from Drexel as Penn. As I stroll down Locust Walk through the center of campus after a football or basketball game, the fraternities that line the east side of the walk seem more subdued than they were 40 years ago. The students are better dressed and better-looking, but it always seems like the undergrads are in a rush—to the library, to the gym, to a music organization, or to a part-time job. With these types of pressures, it is difficult for me to understand when Penn students have time to party enough to draw Playboy’s attention.

The student body seemed as surprised as I was by this latest distinction. In an online survey conducted by the campus newspaper, 76 percent of respondents said that Penn does not deserve the Playboy ranking. One of the students I mentor, Cha Cha, wholeheartedly agrees. As she explained to me in an e-mail, “I don’t think anyone was not surprised by this ranking. … If you aren’t into parties, you definitely won’t really come in touch with any—which is probably more unavoidable at an actual party school.”

Cha Cha—who is going to graduate with degrees from both the Wharton School and the College of Arts and Sciences—chose Penn because she believed it would give her the tools she needed to become a force in the medical industry. While she might be an atypical student, even for Penn (she studies on big party weekends like Homecoming), she is closer to the norm on campus than a regular binge drinker is.

As a high school senior when I applied to Penn, I had no ambitions to be a force in the medical industry, or any other industry. I was thinking every weekend there would be an alcohol-induced orgy. I was infrequently right. Cha Cha clearly has a better grip on the value of a Penn education than I did—or that Playboy does, for that matter.

Jeffrey M. Rothbard is a partner in the law firm of Rothbard, Rothbard, Kohn & Kellar in Newark, New Jersey. He wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.

Many students were uncertain about what qualified as sexual violence -- even the ones who experienced assault

A new survey of student experiences with sexual assault at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is an encouraging step for schools working to put an end to the shamefully widespread problem of campus rape.

That the prestigious school released the study publicly is helpful in erasing the stigma surrounding sexual assault. And the numbers show that even an institution far better known for Fields Medals than frat parties has an incidence of campus rape comparable to other colleges. Roughly 35% of MIT’s 11,000 graduates and undergraduates took the anonymous survey. Of the undergrads, about 17% of women and 5% of men reported experiencing sexual assault while at the Massachusetts school.

But a deeper look at the numbers points to a more troubling statistic. Even though 17% of female undergraduates reported an experience that fits the survey’s definition of sexual assault (“unwanted sexual behaviors … involving use of force, physical threat, or incapacitation”), only 11% of female undergraduates checked “yes” when asked directly if they had been “raped” or “sexually assaulted.” Despite a concerted effort by the Obama Administration, state officials and campus leaders, MIT students were uncertain about what qualified as sexual violence — even when reporting that they had experienced assault.

Sadly, that’s not exactly surprising. Experts say there are numerous reasons students struggle to understand the definition of sexual assault, including denial about the experience and and the hesitation to apply the label to attackers or those who experience it. “There is still such a stigma to be a ‘rape victim’ or a ‘rapist,'” says Jane Stapleton, a University of New Hampshire researcher and expert in sexual assault prevention.

The MIT survey also indicated a tendency among undergraduates to blame victims, including themselves, for assaults that had taken place. Fifteen percent of female undergraduate respondents and 25% of male undergraduates said that a drunk person who is assaulted is “at least somewhat responsible” for what happened, while 31% of female undergraduate respondents and 35% of males said they believed that sexual assault and rape “happen because men can get carried away in sexual situations once they’ve started.”

Of students who said they had been assaulted, many blamed themselves, which may explain why so few of them decided to report the incident. Of the assault victims, 72% said they didn’t think it was “serious enough to officially report” and 44% said they “felt they were at least partly at fault or it wasn’t totally the other person’s fault.”

These attitudes are somewhat incongruous with the fact that assault victims also reported having felt a great deal of trauma because of the assault–35% reported being unable to complete assignment and 30% reported being unable to eat. Only about 5% of respondents to MIT’s survey reported the experience to someone in an official capacity.

MIT Chancellor Cynthia Barnhart says part of the challenge in reducing assault is educating students about all the forms it takes. “We can’t prevent what is not agreed upon by everyone,” she says.

Barnhart says that MIT has had an increase in reported sexual misconduct since the survey was advertised last spring, a sign that awareness is growing.

Still, as Stapleton says, “it’s going to take time to change the culture.”

The founder of the Partnership for Educational Justice responds to Time’s “Rotten Apples” cover.

This is one part of a series of readers’ responses to this week’s cover.

The label and imagery of “Rotten Apples” at the front of the magazine has driven much of the debate about the article. That is a shame, because it has overshadowed the substantive reality explored in the piece.

We know the vast majority of teachers are committed, caring and conscientious. They are not rotten; they are the core of our success stories in public schools.

The real issue is covered in the body of the story itself, and in the victorious Vergara case on which the Time piece is based: tenure, dismissal and seniority laws that work to keep grossly ineffective teachers in class. The most telling anecdote came from the superintendent whose singular request to improve his schools was not more public money or supplies but “control over my workforce.”

Why? Because states with flawed teacher laws are doing the unfathomable. They are working against their own stated mission of teaching all children well. In New York, the courts have found that access to at least a sound, basic education is guaranteed by the state constitution – and yet state laws actually undermine that.

It happens because tenure is granted to teachers long before school leaders have a reasonable chance to determine if those teachers are effective. It happens because dismissal laws make it nearly impossible for schools to fire teachers deemed grossly ineffective or even dangerous. It happens because teachers are laid off based solely on their level of seniority, without regard to their quality.

That fact that it happens in a minority of cases still amounts to hundreds or thousands of children in a large district. And if it happens at all and we know about it, is that not a problem we should fix? Otherwise, what is the message sent to students who are taught by teachers who brazenly fail to lead or control their class, let alone inspire their students? Sorry kids, better luck next year?

Parents are turning to the courts as a last resort, as a matter of inspiration out of desperation. Years of legislative inaction and inertia inside school systems have offered no other choice. If elected leaders will not lead, parents are justified to question whether these laws causing such problems are even constitutional.

The Time article mentions the New York case supported by my organization, but unfortunately describes the litigation in shorthand, calling it my lawsuit. It is not. I use my platform as a former TV journalist to draw attention to the cause. But the case belongs to the families who serve as plaintiffs, and they do not do it casually. It is not easy to take on the state government and the teachers’ unions.

These parents are fighting because they want more good teachers in our schools. Turns out that, they, too, are trying to fix this. And they deserve our support.

In search of more perspectives on TIME’s cover?

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, responds here.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), Senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, responds here.

Christopher Ciampa, a teacher from Los Angeles, responds here.

Lily Eskelsen García, President of the National Education Association, responds here.

Courtney Brousseau, a high school senior from Thousand Oaks, Calif., responds here.

Billy Easton, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education, responds here.

Gary Bloom, former Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent, responds here.

Educators from the Badass Teachers Association respond here.

Stuart Chaifetz, a New Jersey parent, responds here.

The words of L.A.'s Tongva Indians live on

As Los Angeles fourth graders know (because their curriculum includes the study of California Indians), the original language of Los Angeles is Tongva. This American Indian language (also called Gabrielino) used to be spoken in villages all over the L.A. Basin.

These villages have given their names to places all over Los Angeles, including Tujunga (from Tongva Tuhuunga “place of the old woman”) and Cahuenga (from Kawee’nga “place of the fox”). But despite these ever-present reminders, the language has not been spoken for over 50 years.

I first encountered Tongva shortly after I began teaching at UCLA 40 years ago, when my mentor, the late Professor William Bright, introduced me to the field notes of J. P. Harrington, an ethnographer and linguist who worked with Tongva speakers during the early 20th century.

It’s hard to find information on Tongva. There are no audio recordings of people speaking the language, just a few scratchy wax cylinder recordings of Tongva songs. There are additional word lists from scholars, explorers, and others dating from 1838 to 1903, but Harrington’s notes are the best source of information on the language. These records are often inconsistent and maddeningly incomplete, however—it takes a lot of analysis to synthesize them into a clear picture of the language.

Over the years I compiled a Tongva dictionary of over a thousand words and felt I knew quite a bit about the language’s grammar. Based on Harrington’s work, I developed a consistent orthography or writing system, using ordinary letters, without special characters not found on a standard keyboard (you can type Tongva on your phone!) Of course, English speakers can’t understand this system without learning its rules—just as non-Spanish speakers have to learn that the ll in Pollo Loco is pronounced like y. The English pronunciation of a word like Tujunga uses a “hard g,” as in finger, for example, but the Tongva ng represents the sound at the end of bang or in the middle of singer, without a separate g sound.

My confidence in this purely academic approach to Tongva was shaken in 2004. I was asked to serve as a linguistic mentor to several Tongva people who wanted to learn about their language at the Breath of Life Workshop, a biennial event in Berkeley where members of California Indian tribes whose languages are no longer spoken can learn how to access technical materials on those languages. Armed with my dictionary, grammar notes, and typeable spelling system, I felt well prepared to contribute. When I met with my group of three ethnic Tongva learners, however, I realized that people who want to learn their ancestral language don’t want or need the same things as academic linguists.

The first thing they want, they often say, is to be able to pray in their language. To be most useful to these participants, a dictionary should go from English to the target language, so they can find the words they want to say. (Linguists, on the other hand, are more likely to arrange such a list from the target language to English, to aid in finding words similar to words in related languages.) I got almost no sleep that first night at the workshop, because I was manually creating an English-Tongva index to my Tongva-English vocabulary to share with the group the next day.

Ever since then, I have met each month in San Pedro with an ever-changing group of learners whose core members include two of the Breath of Life participants from 2004. Most of the people who come to these classes are Tongva descendants, but a few are interested community members.

In addition to lessons on word structure and sentence creation, we sing songs, play games, learn useful phrases for conversation, and discuss words to be added to the dictionary. Songs are particularly helpful to learning. We now have Tongva versions of Christmas carols, traditional folksongs, kids’ songs—everything from the theme song from Maleficent to a version of “This Land is Your Land” that includes lines like Topaa’ve Tuhuung’aro “from Topanga to Tujunga.”

Our Gabrielino-Tongva Language Committee has put together a phrasebook (including everything from Chongaa’aa kukuume’a! “Wash the dishes!” to ‘Wiishmenokre “I love you”) and a little book about animals. We’ve had to figure out a lot of things using creativity, common sense, and comparison with other local languages. Now we have a Coyote story (a moral tale like those in Aesop’s Fables), the Christmas story, and a version of the Aquarium of the Pacific’s blue whale story.

Would the Tongva speakers of a hundred years ago understand these? I’m sure they would. Would they laugh at the mistakes we make? Probably—but I hope they would also be forgiving.

Pamela Munro is a distinguished professor at UCLA who has studied many indigenous languages of the United States and Latin America. She wrote this for Zocalo Public Square.

Read next: 7 Famous People Who Surprised Us by Speaking Chinese

Stuart Chaifetz, the New Jersey father of a student with special needs, responds to TIME's "Rotten Apples" cover.

This is one part of a series of posts of readers’ responses to TIME’s “Rotten Apples” cover.

When I saw TIME’s cover saying it was nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher, I whispered “thank you.”

This is a very personal issue for me. My son, Akian, who has Autism, was verbally tormented by his teaching staff. I know this because I placed an audio recorder in his pocket after seeing him suffer emotional pain when he was in school. When I heard what had been done to him, my life shattered.

I released a video telling Akian’s story which has been seen nearly 5,000,000 times. I received thousands of emails from victims of teacher bullying and desperate parents seeking help because their children were suffering in school just as Akian had. I realized then how pervasive this plague of teacher bullying was and the vast array of people who have been severely damaged by it. In the end, tenure protected the teacher and she got to keep her job.

Tenure has become a weapon that is used to protect bad teachers and hurt innocent children and families. For Akian, for all those who have been abused, for all those yet to be abused, we must fight against tenure that protects cruel teachers and we must win.

In search of more discussion about TIME’s cover?

Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers, responds here.

Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), Senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, responds here.

Christopher Ciampa, a teacher from Los Angeles, responds here.

Lily Eskelsen García, President of the National Education Association, responds here.

Courtney Brousseau, a high school senior from Thousand Oaks, Calif., responds here.

Billy Easton, the Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education, responds here.

Gary Bloom, former Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent, responds here.

Educators from the Badass Teachers Association respond here.