Sorbonne Confidential

Highest paid professors: the list - Economix Blog - NYTimes.com

The average salary of a full-time faculty member rose 1.2 percent over the last year. That is the smallest increase professors have received in at least 50 years, according to the latest annual study from the American Association of University Professors.

As culled earlier today by Inside Higher Ed, here are some lists of the universities with the highest average pay for full-time full professors. Harvard takes the top slot.

via economix.blogs.nytimes.com

Top 10 Universities in Salaries for Full-Time Full Professors

University	Average Salary
1. Harvard University	$191,200
2. Columbia University	$188,600
3. University of Chicago	$184,100
4. Stanford University	$181,400
5. Princeton University	$181,000
6. Yale University	$174,100
7. California Institute of Technology	$171,900
8. New York University	$171,700
9. Yeshiva University	$170,700
10. University of Pennsylvania	$170,100

Top 10 Public Universities in Salaries for Full-Time Full Professors

University	Average Salary
1. New Jersey Institute of Technology	$151,500
2. University of California at Los Angeles	$148,000
3. University of California at Berkeley	$145,800
4. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor	$144,000
5. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill	$143,000
6. Rutgers University at Newark	$142,900
7. University of Maryland at Baltimore	$141,100
8. Rutgers University at New Brunswick	$140,100
9. Georgia Institute of Technology	$139,400
10. Rutgers University at Camden	$137,400

Top 10 Liberal Arts Colleges in Salaries for Full-Time Full Professors

College	Average Salary
1. Wellesley College	$142,900
2. Amherst College	$135,300
3. Claremont McKenna College	$135,100
4. Pomona College	$134,700
5. Barnard College	$134,100
6. Harvey Mudd College	$130,700
7. Williams College	$130,500
8. Wesleyan University	$129,400
9. Smith College	$128,400
10. Bowdoin College	$127,800

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Teacher Education in Finland

via www.oaj.fi

Finland's education success : lessons for France? BBC News

When it comes to international results, Finland's schools score consistently at the top.

However, pupils study the fewest number of class hours in the developed world.

World News America travels to Helsinki to find out the secret of the Finns' education success

via news.bbc.co.uk

Not in France! : US States Strive to Overhaul Teacher Tenure

Over the past year, a handful of states have begun to overhaul their tenure-granting processes by increasing the number of years it takes teachers to win due process rights, and by trying to improve the evaluations that are supposed to guide determinations of whether a teacher qualifies for the benchmark.

The recent efforts differ in several ways from prior waves of reform. With the lone exception of Florida, the states seek to change the tenure-granting process, rather than abolish it. The revisions are also being coupled with movements to tie tenure to student academic achievement, reflecting an increased emphasis in national policy circles on the importance of gauging teachers’ impact on student learning.

via www.edweek.org

Francophone associations launch war on English !

 At a press conference in front of 250 spectators at the Salon du Livre in Paris, Claude Hagège, member of the elite Collège de France, called for war against the English language.

"C'est la guerre!" Professor Hagège concluded to thunderous applause.

Sixteen Francophone associations from France, Belgium, Flanders, and Quebec joined forces at the Salon du Livre to launch their counter-attack against the "mutation towards linguistic vassalization" under the yoke of the English language.

The 16 associations issued a call for the French government to organize "Etats généraux de la langue française et de la Francophonie".  

(Traditionally, "états généraux" were general assemblies organized by the King of France to deal with a political crisis, usually war.)

The Francophone associations want to "clarify urgently the place of French, foreign and regional languages in the Francophone Community".

They list 13 issues  (see link here) including the objectionable dominance of English as a foreign language in schools, use of English in companies, on TV, in European institutions and the lack of a vigorous policy for spreading French language and culture.

US Colleges Make Courses Available Free Online - NYTimes.com

PARIS — A computer in Logan, Utah, holds syllabus details, lecture notes, problem sets and exams from more than 80 Utah State University courses: but this is no secret cheat-sheet site put together by rogue hackers and pirates. Anyone, anywhere, with an Internet connection — from Bill Gates down — can log on and download these materials without cost. The site, Utah State OpenCourseWare, http://ocw.usu.edu, is part of the OpenCourseWare network, itself part of an educational resources movement dedicated to opening and reshaping global access to higher education.

Since 2000, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology established the first OpenCourseWare site, schools — including top names like Harvard and Stanford in the United States and Oxford and Cambridge in Britain — have been releasing educational materials to the public through platforms that include iTunes U, youtube.com/edu and their own sites, like Open Yale Courses.

The OpenCourseWare Consortium, which grew out of the M.I.T. project, now includes over 200 institutions worldwide and offers materials from more than 13,000 courses. OpenCourseWare makes it possible to profit from some of the content that comes with $50,000 annual tuition at an Ivy League school, without paying that hefty price tag.

via www.nytimes.com

Jamie Oliver's school dinners more effective than literacy hour but US kids like chicken nuggets

Eating Jamie Oliver’s school dinners improves children’s performance in tests, according to researchers who claim that the celebrity chef’s campaign to improve school food has had more impact than government literacy programmes.

via www.timesonline.co.uk

However, persuading kids to abandon chicken nuggets for something healthier is not so easy.  Jamie Oliver shows kids just how horrible the ingredients of a chicken nugget are and asks them whether they STILL want to eat it. Watch Mr. Oliver's face at their response.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Thought for Food - Corn Diapers, Fatty Foods & Jamie Oliver
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

Can't happen in France: LA Unified, teachers and administrators agree to shorten school year to balance budget - Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles school district and union officials announced Saturday that they have agreed to cut a dozen instructional days over the next two years to balance the budget.

If approved by members of both the teachers and administrators unions, the move would save the district about $140 million, according to Los Angeles Unified School District officials. The district is facing a $640-million deficit.

District officials had been urging unions to make concessions to help with the budget crisis, and several have already agreed to furloughs.

via latimesblogs.latimes.com

Books on Modern French Civilization : Sorbonne Confidential Reading Guide

 In Sorbonne Confidential, an American trying to pass an exam for  English teachers discovers France's passionate struggle with integration, identity and language...

• Sorbonne Confidential is at times a very funny book. How does the author use humor to point out absurdities in the system? Do you think this approach works? Is the book a satire, a memoir, an expose or all three?

• For the exam, Alice Wunderland studies literary classics  like Confessions of an English Opium Eater, Richard II, Robert Burns. How does the author try to leverage these works to explore the themes of Sorbonne Confidential? Is this effort successful?

• According to French government statistics, 90% of candidates sitting the agrégation exam for English teachers fail. Why do you think so many people try?  From Alice’s experiences, does the exam seem like a good way to select English teachers?  Why do you think France still uses this 200 year old system?

• Who was your favorite character in the book? Why? Who was your least favorite character?

• Which character was the most interesting? What surprised you the most? Could you relate to the dynamics between Rebecca and Alice? The attitudes of the professors?

• Some of the character do manage to get a “job-for-life”. Are they happy? Is it worth it? Would you like a “job-for-life” of this type?

• Alice succeeds in some ways and fails in others. Discuss.

• After reading Sorbonne Confidential, what advice would you give to a foreign English teacher who hope to work in France? 

• In the last part of Sorbonne Confidential, the tone changes as Alice reacts to the abstract way Sophie’s Choice is studied at the Sorbonne. These chapters feature less humor and engage more directly with the serious themes of historical memory and denial. Are these themes appropriate here? Do they fit with the other themes of the book? Did they add or detract from your enjoyment and appreciation?

• The book ends with the explosion of rioting in French ghettos in 2005. Alice remembers her fury at encountering obstacles. What, if any, could be the link between her experience in an exam for elites and that of the children of Arab and African immigrants?

• Based on your own experiences, do you think the book accurate? 

Do Teachers Need Education Degrees? - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com

In a Room for Debate forum in June on the value of liberal arts master’s degrees, one group of readers — teachers and education administrators — generally agreed a higher degree was well worth the investment. They pointed out that pay and promotion in public schools were tied to the accumulation of such credentials and credits, specifically from colleges of education.

But current teacher training has a large chorus of critics, including prominent professors in education schools themselves. For example, the director of teacher education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Katherine Merseth, told a conference in March that of the nation’s 1,300 graduate teacher training programs, only about 100 were doing a competent job and “the others could be shut down tomorrow.” And Obama administration officials support a shift away from using master’s degrees for pay raises, and a shift toward compensating teachers based on children’s performance.

Should the public schools reduce the weight they give to education school credentials in pay and promotion decisions? Is this happening already, and, if so, what is replacing the traditional system for compensating teachers?

via roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com