"College is Not a Commodity. Stop Treating it Like One."

Former Cornell University president Hunter Rawlings has written a brilliant essay called "College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one." about what the role of universities (and professors) and, especially, students play in getting the most out of the experience of going to university --- about what it really means to get an education. I can't make the points any better then he did, so I'll simply express my heartfelt agreement and encourage you to read the short essay.

As an additional brief note, it is my role as a professor (and College tutor) to try to put my students in what I think is the best position for them to succeed. This need not be --- and reasonably often is not --- the same as what they think is the best position for them to succeed.

(Tip of the cap to Aaron Clauset.)

Lookin' Out My Back Door

This is the current view from my back door (rotated by 90 degrees).

I am absolutely sick of such shit being put in front of my door and invading the sanctity of my home. I have tried to be patient, but I am now out of patience. Formal complaints to the city will follow shortly if this is not removed soon and if anything takes its place. If a war is what they desire, then a war they shall have.

Here are some more pictures.

As for who "they" is, that is not entirely clear. My College (Somerville) has asked for prior things to be moved when I have brought this up before with them, and I have been assured that things won't be put back. (I believe it has usually been the contract workers they've hired who have actually put this stuff here.) That's all well and good---but this needs to start being enforced in practice, and it needs to happen now. So I'm not even sure who to file a complaint against and I will need to figure that out. But this has got to stop.

Oh, and cue the Creedence.

Update (12/11/11): I forgot to mention this, but notice all of the warning and danger signs on this 'skip' (to use the UK term). I especially like the sign about the in-progress asbestos removal. Because that's what they're doing: they are in the process of removing asbestos from College buildings (for safety reasons!) and storing it 3--4 feet from my house while work is in progress! Bastards.

Idea for new television series

With the occasionally interminable discussions of minutiae and various other important matters that occur in Governing Body meetings (and similar venues), it occurs to me that a "dramedy" about Oxford life called "High Table" would make a potentially extremely amusing television series. Of course, it would have to be cast correctly. For example, the head/principal of the College would have to be played by Judi Dench. And Keanu Reaves would clearly have to be one of the prominent tutors. I'm not sure who else I'll cast in my new tv show, but I'm sure I can come up with some good ideas.

And, yes, I consider this idea to be both "awesome" and awesome. :)

Like Caltech's House system, but on crack...

I've been meaning to write a little bit more about the College system at Oxford.

I still don't really know too much as far as specific details go, so I'll give some of my impressions and maybe add in some details on a future occasion.

Oxford has 39 official Colleges and 7 Permanent Private Halls. Much like Caltech's House system, they provide an instant network of people that one can meet. For the undergrads, this seems to be especially true for people who are both in the same year and major, as they are tutored by people like me [this is where I laugh evilly] in very small groups. (Of course, only the people in Somerville College have to put up with me. Well, my OCIAM colleagues and others of that ilk have to put up with me too, but that's a different one of my socio-professional circles.) I am tutoring 3 pairs of 2 people this term. Things like parties, athletics, and so on are also organized by College. The students live and eat together and so on.

The people don't seem as tightly knit as, say, the residents of the Houses at Caltech (and for non-Techers reading this, Caltech's House system took the Oxbridge system as its primary inspiration). But that's easily explained by the numbers: Somerville has about 500 people and, for example, Lloyd House has about 120 people (with 80 living in the confines of the House and the entire Caltech campus being extremely tiny). Of course, given that there are 45 other comparable units, the College system serves to provide a much smaller, more personal social center amidst a much larger whole. Caltech's "larger whole" isn't really all that large, so it's really great to be able to provide this kind of atmosphere at a big school.

The thing that struck me about the being associated with a College (and, in my case, I am also in residence) is that it makes meeting people so much easier. This is the same boon that I experienced as a frosh at Caltech because of the House system and it's been wonderful to have it again---especially given that I am in a new place in which I started out basically not knowing anybody. In this case, I've also met interesting, nice people with academic interests that are so different from mine that I would not have had the chance to meet them elsewhere. And being able to talk to them regularly has really been great. The younger faculty and postdocs have been sticking together as well. (I still don't know anybody really well from either Somerville or OCIAM, but tomorrow is the three-week anniversary of my arrival, so this is obviously very much expected.) I bought my copy of the British Isles edition of Apples to Apples and should soon get my stuff from oversease, so I'm hoping to haost a game night soon. (I checked on wikipedia and the second expansion of the Apples to Apples party box for the U.S. edition is the one that consists of cards that are orthogonal to mine, so please remind me when I'm back in the U.S. that that is the one I should buy for that set.)

Like with the Houses at Tech, the students here seem to identify themselves by College (and I had heard before I got here that that was the case). When I asked my perturbation theory students to write down their e-mail addresses, they instead wrote down their Colleges (which uniquely specifies one of their given Oxford e-mail addresses). The reason I mention that the College system is like the House system but on crack is that not only are the undergrads affiliated, but so are the graduate students, the postdocs, and the faculty. So many of us identify at least a little bit with our College. I have been asked what College I'm in a couple of times, although it doesn't seem to have the ubiquity of "What House are you in?" I'm waiting to find someone who was (or is, in the case of exchange students) a Caltech undergrad so I can ask them what House they were in. :) Having both students and faculty affiliated with the College is a great way to get them to interact with each other much more than they otherwise might.

The students often eat together, but Somerville doesn't have the daily waited dinners that Caltech does. A couple of times a week, there are some fancier dinners that more people attend (including more faculty, postdocs, and staff) that are waited, but other dinners are just like eating lunch in a dorm. There isn't any floating, roll-tossing, table takeovers, or anything like that, so dinners don't seem to bring people together the way they can at Tech. Of course, it's worth noting again that we're talking about 500 students in a College rather than 120.

Another thing that's interesting is that some aspect of my interactions with my students reminds me of my days TAing at Tech while still an undergrad. For one thing, tutoring sessions bear some resemblance to office hours. For another, the "classes" I teach that go with my perturbation theory lectures are pretty much the same thing as the recitation sections from the U.S. (However, attendance for lectures, classes, and [of course!] tutoring sessions is much better here! More of the students are serious about such things here. The quality of the students seems very high --- no surprise there! --- though I've been at Caltech, so you know what I think about the students there... I did see familiar mistakes and conceptual difficulties on the calculus stuff. Some things are universal. :) ) Also, I see several of my students (especially the ones I tutor) around Somerville when I'm doing stuff. It's kind of like running into my SURF students on campus, but there's a bit of the old flavor too in that at least one of them lives in the same building I do and I've occasionally seen them eating in the dining hall. (Of course, I think there will be a duplication of my junior year at Tech. People turned in their assignments to my room --- that actually might happen a bit because the door to the room with my pidgeonhole gets locked --- and one person who was living across the hall from me and in my recitation section could literally turn in his assignments without leaving his room, so he did that on a regular basis just because he could. This won't surprise anybody who knows me, but I very much like being able to have close interactions with my students. That's one of the great perks of this job, which is veritably cushy in many respects. (I have to work my ass off, but I'd do that anyway no matter what faculty job I got. I get as much free food as I want, I don't pay for my apartment, I can get free espresso drinks and pastries [though I still go and pay for proper iced lattes in the morning because I prefer my coffee cold], and Somerville even bought a suit for me that I will be using as an Examiner and at dinner functions like the one with Baroness Jay.)

Thankfully, there is nothing here like Rotation. However, students apply directly to Colleges and people like me interview them and decide who is going to get in. (I don't know exactly how this works yet, but I'll be helping to decide who Somerville's future mathematicians will be. So I'm thinking that the prospective students ought to brush up on their Super Smash Brothers Melee skills before they come here for the interview in order to have any chance of getting in. That could supplement some of the mathematical questions we give them, and it's testing a more important set of skills anyway. :P Well, I'll be taking an online training course and finding out what types of questions actually are given soon enough, but once my stuff arrives from overseas, I plan on digging around my old notes and homework to find the sailboat problem... I'll try to find some framework around here where it fits, and the mathematics curriculum here does include some mechanics.)

I'll add more about the College system when I actually know more about it. (And people who know more about how things work here should definitely correct anything I messed up.) I just wanted to make some comments about some similarities and differences that I see here versus at Caltech. There are, naturally, differences across Colleges. I believe that some of them have waited dinners much more often, for instance. To give another example, some of them are more formal than others. Some of the Colleges have rivalries with each other, although I doubt any of them are as heated as Page-Fleming sometimes gets. (I was asked a couple of weeks ago who Somerville's rival College was. I don't even know if we have one.)

Ah well, this entry is long enough.