Science Education & Policy

Many a parent has been driven to the point of madness by successive "why?" questions from preschoolers, but it's a good sign that they ask and they do better if they get a detailed explanation than if you just answer 'because.'

Recently I was interviewed by Pouria Nazemi, Science Editor of the Jam-e-Jam Daily Newspaper.  Jam-e-Jam is the principal Iranian newspaper and is controlled by the government.  In the wake of Iran shutting down its leading business newspaper last week and three pro-reform newspapers in October I thought this would be interesting to readers, since it appeared between these two events.

Let me describe two very different academic careers.

While more than half the academic life science researchers responding to a 2007 survey indicated having some relationship with private industry, the prevalence of such relationships – particularly direct funding for research studies – appears to be dropping.

The Results of a survey, appearing in the November/December 2009 issue of Health Affairs,
also suggest that interest in commercial applications of research appears to be growing, even among investigators without industry funding. The new study is a follow-up to 1985 and 1995 surveys by members of the same team.

From a news story in today's issue of Science:

A new study finds little evidence for leaks in the U.S. pipeline for producing native-born scientists except for a steep drop in the percentage of the highest performing students taking science and engineering jobs. The findings suggest that the United States risks losing its economic competitiveness not because of a work force inadequately trained in science, as conventional wisdom holds, but because of a lack of social and economic incentives to pursue careers in science and technology.

Harvard Magazine excerpts Louis Menand on "Professionalization in the academy. If you're thinking of going to graduate school, you need to read this.

This is the premise behind academic scholarship:

Suppose you were a politician in charge of shaping your country's science policy. Let's also suppose you are actually interested in promoting the welfare of the nation and humanity at large (hopefully not all politicians are driven by sociopathic greed, and after all, we are talking about you here). Let's also suppose that you are not entirely stupid. What kind of science policy would you make?

The performative and improvisatory aspects of music compares favorably with the temporal, polyphonic aspects of scholarly research,  says University of Illinois professor of education Liora Bresler.

Understanding that could improve both research and education, she says.   Bresler, who studied musicology and was a pianist before becoming an education professor, said that knowing there was an audience to perform for "really intensifies the relationship between the music and the performer." This, she said, is analogous to how a teacher should think of a lecture or a researcher a presentation at a conference.

Education quality is a moving target these days.   With college education a right since the early 1990s and student loans unlimited to pay for it, costs and claims have expanded, as hot air must, to fill the available money space.

Because everyone with good grades can afford to go to Stanford with enough loans or rich parents, lower ranked schools have no reason to charge less because the pool of high-ranked schools can accept is limited - they just have to wait.   

The guys over at Deep-Sea News have organized an "Ocean Bloggers Challenge" to fund ocean-related education for classrooms in need. It's through a really nifty website called Donors Choose, which lets you see exactly where your money is going. The projects they've chosen for the challenge include sending students on an overnight sea voyage and setting up a classroom saltwater aquarium, among others.