Project 2: Blog Post

In Ethics in Higher Education, three articles that stood out to me the most include.. “Higher Education: Not What it Used to Be” Published by the Economist, “9 Unbelievable Student Loan Horror Stories” By Mandi Woodruff, and “Taming the For-Profit College Monster” by David Halperin. For Project 2, I am interested in the issues with the economic cost of higher education.

Specifically, I am intrigued by not only the current cost of higher education institutions, but furthermore the lowering of the tuition. I would like to address and solve this issue because I am currently a student attending an institution that demands an outrageous and unreasonable amount of money for out-of-state residents. This might not be an issue to privileged individuals whose families pay for their education, but unfortunately my family cannot afford to do so. Therefore, when I graduate from CSU I will be hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt.

First off, a solution to this pertinent issue would be for the “for-profit” institutions, to lower their tuition. Charging students hundreds of thousands of dollars to leave them with unpayable debt and a piece of paper (your degree), is not setting them up for success. They claim that they want to build the best path for you, but instead, it is setting them up for failure, a life of stress, financial instability, and most importantly, debt. The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” truly speaks for the image below:

http://www.burntorangereport.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/debt.jpg

This image shows the reality of what comes along with receiving a degree nowadays...and to think that there is discussion about raising the tuition is unfathomable.

The stakeholder that I would like to target for my P2 proposal, would be students attending Colorado State University (in-state and out-of-state), who also have monstrous tuition bills. This issue is exigent for CSU students because they are the ones that have to figure out how to pay back the unacceptable cost of their education, one way or another. This specific stakeholder is logical and has the power to implement my solution with me through a lot of hard work, dedication and research on how to lower the tuition costs of “for-profit” institutions, such as Colorado State University.

Blog 2

    The issue from the EHE I found myself most interested in writing a stakeholder proposal for was the prevalence of plagiarism and cheating in higher education. In order to help me learn more about this topic, as well as to give me ideas for P2, I read the articles "Cheating in College" by Scott Jaschik and "Studies Shed Light on How Cheating Impedes Learning" by Sarah D. Sparks.
    Reading these articles made it clear that though many different efforts have been made by various institutions over the years, none have been successful in eradicating cheating entirely. Methods such as harsher punishments for those caught cheating or school honor codes have been shown to positively impact the number of reported cases of cheating and/or plagiarism, but the effectiveness of these attempts vary and some percentage of cheaters always stubbornly remain.

    It was with these facts in mind that I decided what my proposal would be. According to the articles from our book, all of the methods tried have been either neutral (honor codes) or punitive (expulsion, automatic zero on assignment, etc.) in nature. This is to say all attempts made thus far have relied on the stick, not the carrot. My proposal would involve a relatively minor system of strictly classroom based rewards such as small extra credit opportunities as well as more overarching university wide rewards such as being given small priority in internship programs, signing up for courses, etc. if the student has a spotless record of cheating or plagiarism. This would be in addition to (not instead of) the more typical honor code and punitive measures against cheating, because while these methods have not been shown to solve the problem outright, they would still be effective. On top of this, I would also propose a more concentrated effort by CSU faculty to uncover instances of cheating or plagiarism. With both the likelihood of being caught and the incentive to not cheat so much greater I believe it would be possible to eradicate cheating in college entirely, with the exception of a few outlier cases. This would not happen overnight, indeed it could take years before the general attitude of the student body shifts toward greater academic integrity, however I believe combining the carrot and stick in this way would be greatly beneficial in the long run.
     I would target this proposal to the  CSU TILT center because of their involvement in the University's policy regarding cheating and plagiarism. This would be far more beneficial than writing to a professor or other faculty member at CSU, as my proposal would be most effective if implemented across the entire University, rather than a single classroom. Due to their unique position and influence, the TILT center would be far more capable of doing this than a single or even multiple professors. Considering that dealing with college students cheating and plagiarizing is already such a large part of the work they do there, I believe that I would have no issues convincing them of the problem's exigency.

Blog post #2

 i have read the  article "UC student investment proposal" which is student attempting to solve the problem of high tuition of the University of California. After i read the article from "ethics in the higher education" i was thinking , who has the most highest tuition fee in a university? And i consider international students have higher education fee than other native students, therefore, i start to interested in a issue about" foreign students in abroad", this stakeholders for this issue will be all the students who study in a different country with various language and culture.  As an international student in CSU, i have some personal experiences to study abroad and  problems that i have to get used to and deal with. For instance, how to be an actual student in your class, how to make foreign friends like you did in your country, how to be comfortable in a foreign country with different cultures and how to live better in abroad. I believe most of international students have the same issue as me, thus i would like to solve it and provide some solutions for it. In my opinion, the best solution that international students need to do is don't be afraid to talk to people. Why i say afraid? because i believe most of international students they have a same mental state like i do which is we do not want to embarrass ourself and others, when we come abroad to study, we do learn the language that they speak, but we can't speak that well as good as native speakers. I still remember, when i first time talked to an american, we were discussing the country where i come from and the differences between USA and my country, so i tried my best to say what i can do, but no matter what i explained to him, he just looked at me and keep saying "Ok" "OK" .... to me, i could still tell his face was full of confusion and in the end he just left me with a word" sorry", i really fell embarrassed at that time. I think this issue has happened to lots of international students and consider this as one of the reasons that they afraid to talk to native people. Finally, the reasons that i consider international students have the power to implement my solution is when we still going to live or study in a foreign country, we will have the passion to be a better version of ourselves, for this reason, we encourage ourselves to talk to people and learn from them.

Blog Post 2

In EHE, the main article I read is “The Shame of College Sports,” by Taylor Branch. It is a 19-page article about the amount of money college sports racks in, and the problem that colleges don’t pay their athletes. This article somewhat hits home, due to the fact that I am in college, and used to be an athlete myself, so I can somewhat appreciate the hard work and dedication that is put into sports to be successful. For P2, I want to focus on the issue of college athletes not being paid for immense amounts of money they make for the school. Of the problems arising in college athletics, I would like to focus on the athletes not being paid. These men and women spent endless hours in the gym, on the field, in the weight room, and in the film room to be successful at what they do, and make their respective university millions of dollars. As you can see below, the major universities in the country, like Alabama, Iowa, and Texas, make tens of millions of dollars of profit from games, championships, product sales, and everything else that makes these schools money.

The problem I would like to solve is the NCAA forbidding athletes from being paid in any sense. This includes from the school, sponsorships, and even from outside sources. I believe that these athletes put enough blood, sweat, and tears into their sport that they deserve some compensation. From my own experience, high school sports is a major step down, and being successful in high school sports takes an immense amount of time on the field, and in the weight room and film room, so I can only imagine how much work a college sport would be. Plus, they have to handle the workload of college, which from experience I know can be immensely stressful at times on its own. These men and women manage a massive amount of responsibility, and sometimes can’t even buy clothes for themselves. This is why I want to compensate these men and women, so they can actually somewhat enjoy college without also having to balance a financial struggle.

            A solution to this problem could be simply paying the students minimum wage. This way they have spending money, because the majority of these athletes are here on scholarship, and have room and tuition paid for. Where there could be a problem here is the athletes that don’t live in dorms, or they don’t have theirs paid for. The minimum wage wouldn’t pay for room and board, let alone tuition and all the other college expenses. Another solution would be to pay these college athletes based on their fair market value. The fair market value of these athletes is based on their performance, and how much money they are bringing into the University. As you can see below, this method could become pricy very quickly. For the average college football player at Texas, you would be paying $604,000. This also doesn’t account for the all-stars of the team, which would be being paid more, due to their increased popularity. This also doesn’t account for the other college sports, like basketball, baseball, and women’s sports.

My solution would be to give every sport a budget based on how much they make the school, and from that budget they pay their athletes. For example, the college football budget would be higher than the women’s field hockey budget, purely based on the fact that college football brings in the college more money. The budget within the sport would then be split up by which athletes actually play and bring forth revenue for the school. So for example, all the starters, offense and defense, would be paid the same, but more than say the second and third string players. I would also like there to be sponsorships, would could also take the blunt of paying athletes off of the college, and place it on certain companies.

            The stakeholder I would like to target for P2 would be the NCAA first. They are the governing body that outlaws paying athletes in general. If I was able to change their mind on the topic of paying athletes, then the universities would most likely also be willing if it could fit into their school budget. This issue is exigent for the NCAA because the student athletes bring in the revenue for the NCAA, and without them they wouldn’t be pulling the type of revenue that they do now. Without keeping these men and women happy, they wouldn’t have any money. The NCAA is a logical audience for my proposal because they are the governing body of all college sports, and if they were on board we could make a major change within college athletics.

Blog post P2 David Kimmey

David Kimmey

Blog Post 2

I chose to discuss the issue of plagiarism, specifically amongst college students.  I read several articles in the EHE to help me become more informed on the issue.  While not all of the information from each article agreed with each other, there were some general conclusions that can be drawn from the text.  Cheating is still a prevalent issue amongst college students.  The causes of the issue seem to be a mix between the morality of students and certain situations that students find themselves in.  The solution therefore must lie in influencing the morality of students who find it acceptable to cheat as well as creating situations for students that do not encourage cheating.  I chose to view this problem from the student’s point of view making them the main stakeholder.

One of the articles in the EHE called “Rise in Student Plagiarism Cases Attributed to Blurred Lines of Digital World” talks about how technology is changing plagiarism.  There is a common conception that plagiarism is on the rise.  However Simpson points out that most studies have shown incidents of plagiarism to fluctuate by only 3-4 percentage (Simpson 251).  Instead what has changed is the ability for educators to catch cheaters with new advancements in plagiarism checking software and tools (Simpson 251).   These new tools allow instructors to find plagiarism easier.  With the risk on being caught cheating higher, the amount of students who decide to cheat may decrease.

One of the biggest issues surrounding plagiarism is the use of “common knowledge”.  This grey area is one that I would like to address in my P2.    Simpson gives the example that students often have confusion when using ideas from resources such as Wikipedia (Simpson 251).  Wikipedia is communally written and meant for anyone to use, but not all of what is found on Wikipedia may be common knowledge (Simpson 251).   I propose that what constitutes common knowledge is not taught well at any level of education.  The term is very vague and ambiguous.   To illustrate my point here is a link that describes what MIT believes to be common knowledge: https://integrity.mit.edu/handbook/citing-your-sources/what-common-knowledge.  I found this definition to be particularly interesting because the last line of the definition includes the following statement: “However, what may be common knowledge in one culture, nation, academic discipline or peer group may not be common knowledge in another” (Academic).  This is vitally important to remember, especially at a diverse college such as CSU.   An international student from China will have a very different idea of what constitutes common knowledge than the student from a small town in Iowa.  A student that grew up in a very religious environment may believe certain versus from the bible to be common knowledge while other students would assume that quoting the bible would need citation.  Common knowledge changes with each culture and each generation.  My proposal to end some of the ambiguity surrounding common knowledge is to have CSU create certain rules that can be used by students to help them determine if something is common knowledge.  Since comp 150 is a required class for the vast majority of students it would be fairly easy to replace one of the projects with a course on what constitutes common knowledge.  CSU can also build a data base on their website of facts that constitute common knowledge.  Students will be able to send in facts that they believe is common knowledge and someone can verify if it is common knowledge or not.   The data base would have the ability to grow quickly and soon students will be able to search their “fact” they are trying to use and they will be able to see if it is in the CSU data base of common knowledge.

Since I am arguing from a students point of view with the students as the main stakeholder I believe this argument will appeal to students because it will help them become more aware of plagiarism while minimally increasing what they have to do to stop plagiarism.  Incorporating a database of “CSU approved common knowledge” into the CSU website would be a fairly easy technological feat.   This argument also takes much of the blame off the student by giving them the benefit of the doubt that their plagiarism was accidental.  This lack of blame is likely to allow them to read my paper without being defensive.

Simpson, Kevin. "Rise in Student Plagiarism Cases Attributed to Blurred Lines of Digital World." 2002. Ethics in Higher Education. 1st ed. Ed. Nancy Henke, Lisa Langstraat, Adam Mackie, and Emily Morgan. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead, 2013. 249-254. Print.

"Academic Integrity at MIT." What Is Common Knowledge? Massachusetts Institute of Technology, n.d. Web. 30 Sept. 2016.

Blog #2

For P2, I wanted to focus on a rising epidemic that has affected many lives in recent American which is Campus safety. To further my knowledge of this exigent issue, and create a synthesis I read both Higher Education: Don't Rape and Spring Safety on Campus.

Unfortunately, student sexual violence has been a huge problem many college campuses face. vulnerable individuals are being taken advantage of for whatever reason. According to the image below, sexual violence is alive, active, and not being taken care of. Safety is an ever growing concern for college campuses. Administration is in charge of ensuring protection of their students. They address this issue to the best of their ability. I want to focus directly on how safety on campus could be improved. With time, things are constantly changing whether they are for the better, or for the worse. Something like protection of students must always be improving until rape rates decline to zero.

My proposed action or solution to this issue is to develop a mandatory informational sessions, or rather a class. Within this class a variety of strategies would be introduced to provide students, faculty, and staff with opportunities to acquire information on sexual assault and develop behavioral skills that will enable them to enhance their own safety as well as others on campus. These sessions will be carried out throughout the school year which is more ideal then having only one session at the beginning of the school year.  They will be beneficial because they will keep campus members attentive to their actions at all times.

With these sessions in operation many people may be opposed to contributing, as they feel it's a waste of time. I would propose these subjects as my proposed stakeholders. This group may feel as if the issue is not important enough, or they would be able to handle themselves in that type of situation. I believe that these people are an ideal target because these are the people who are most ignorant towards the possibilities. The classes would steer them in the right direction and adhere their attention to this case. If the college's goal is to empower students to make them the next world leaders, how could that occur if their campus isn't cultivated as inclusivity and safety? (Kehal, Ledesma Nadler 2). This issue is exigent because of this very reason. If universities want their students to better the world, it takes more than just basic math and writing skills. The students must meet higher demands that are attentive to their actions in which contribute to a social world; thus making the world a better place.

Blog #2

Colin Sugg

            For my P2 essay the topic that has interested me the most is the issue of increasing tuition for college universities, as found in the Ethnics in Higher Education article UC Student Investment Proposal. This article involves the issue of growing tuition costs in college universities due to less state funding and college not able to pay for their expenses and faculty. The problem that I would like to get involved in the most is the issue of increasing college tuition in college universities. It has been increasing all across the country and should be looked at more in depth. I chose this issue to solve because it has not only affects the lives of many college students, but also their parents or any other family members involved in helping their child pay for college. Some students don’t get the financial help they need to go to college and with the increase in tuition costs they need it more than ever. For this issue there are multiple stakeholders are involved. For example, this includes students and parents since they are the ones who are paying the University of their education, and in some cases other family members depending on who has raised the student. These stakeholders are important because it is not just a particular group of people, it’s an affects students and families across the country. Also being a college student I have direct experience in this matter, and my audience is most likely other college students that are facing the same issues as I am. For this issue a logical solution might be the ability for students to gain more aid through loans, financial aid, grants, etc. Because while Universities can’t help raise their tuitions due to their decreased state funding or budget cuts. The increase of finical support from government companies will help students in their increased college expenses. Now the issue with this is that the government will be giving a lot more money to students and it might not be able to support everyone. Adding on to the increased of government funds to students I also think it should only be given to kids that are going to a selected college that is having finial troubles. What this means is Universities with finical troubles should report this to government funding options so they know who to help with their increased tuition costs. The reason I choose this audience for my proposal was because this is a nationwide issue that effected thousands of students around the country. Some kids like me their parents are right on the edge of finial support and their parents also make too much money to receive finical aid, but still have a tough time paying for college. These students will most likely end up paying for college in student loans. Although this is a very common answer to this problem the only thing it is doing is bring in more debt for the students. This issue is very prevalent in today’s society and I believe I have a good solution for it.

Blog Post #2-Proposal (P2)

      In the EHE, I read a number of articles that are categorized under "Campus Safety." All of the articles I read were related to sexual assault on college campuses or just sexual assault in general. The articles that I read include "97 of Every 100 Rapists Receive No Punishment, RAINN Analysis Shows," "Sexual Assault on College Campuses," "Don't Rape," and A Lack of Consequences for Sexual Assault." before reading these excerpts, I knew that I wanted to focus on sexual assault for my issue; however, after reading these excerpts I figured out that I wanted to focus on the slightly more specific/specialized issue of sexual assault on college campuses. Sexual assault has become a very large problem on college campuses, especially recently. For example, everybody knows about the Brock Turner case and NOBODY wants to see anyone go through what the victim did. The overarching reason as to why I'm focusing on this issue is because these incidents must stop, and we must do all that we can to make them stop.

      Though there are numerous problems that arise from sexual assaults on campus including minimal punishment for perpetrators of the crime, I would like to focus on the problem of women's safety. Women are constantly told to be watching their surroundings if they're walking alone at night on campus. We're also told not to walk or travel in more underpopulated areas on campus. If we are simply told what not to do, that will not save us from the possibility of a sexual assault. A person who is willing to commit a crime will do almost everything in their power to be able to carry out that crime. We need to do more to increase the safety of women on CSU's campus. After hearing so many stories of women who were put in situations that could have gone very wrong, very fast, it is clear to me that something has to be done to increase the amount of safety for our female students.

      A solution to this growing problem could be to provide more resources to keep women safe. These resources can include free self defense classes offered by the university, free transportation for women who must travel alone, free/mandatory classes to educate both men and women of the magnitude of how much destruction sexual assault causes, creating a "buddy system" for women who usually have to walk alone (this buddy system could take another female who has the same destination at about the same time), etc. These are all important resources that could make women feel more safe, and ultimately, they could all save at least one person from being a victim of sexual assault. 

      The stakeholder I will be targeting for my P2 proposal is Dr. Tony Frank. This issue is exigent for him, because often times, he is the ultimate voice of the university. Dr. Tony Frank has an ethical responsibility to keep his students safe and cares about the safety of his students. He also has the power to implement the above solution, being the President of our university. For example, at Dr. Frank's Fall Address, he talked about his deep feelings about how sexual assault must stop and that it is caused completely by males. This tells me that he already has a feeling of urgency to help solve this problem. Tony Frank is the logical audience for this proposal, because he's basically already on my side of the issue. I just have to provide logical reasons in order to persuade him to implement the resources for women discussed above. Furthermore, since he's the president of the university, he absolutely has the power to implement these resources. 

Blog #2

Elissa Forsyth

Blog #2

In the Ethics in Higher Education book, I read about issues with greek life. I read “The Effects of Fraternity/Sorority Membership on College Experiences and Outcomes: A Portrait of Complexity” and “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy: Inside Dartmouth’s Hazing Abuses”. Reading these articles created my concern for problems relating to sororities and frats, and I came to the conclusion that I wanted to solve the problem of hazing occurring in the greek system. I would like to solve this issue because of its exigency.

The inability to speak about problems that characterizes fraternities has led to a dangerous culture. In the “Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy…”, its general point was that students do bad things to others because they know they won’t be held accountable for their actions. Action needs to be taken to control the dangerous behavior within frats. The stakeholders in this issue include the students in frats or wanting to join them and the college that hosts the greek life systems. The students would lose or have reduced ability to carry out hazing. Since it is the college’s duty to keep their students safe and pleased with their college environment, the college would gain future student’s favor to continue to join frats, giving their students the soundness of mind that they will not be in danger and the college would be saving student’s lives in the future by discouraging fatal behaviors. In my proposal, my audience and stakeholder I want to address is the Dartmouth College. This is a logical audience because Dartmouth supports frats as it is tradition and hasn’t taken extreme action against frats like other colleges have, but has the power to do so because they host the greek systems for their campus. My reasoning in choosing Dartmouth is that if you can get Dartmouth to change their thoughts and actions to solve frat hazings, other colleges will likely follow. Check out this link showing problems with frats through time and what the colleges did: http://www.newsweek.com/inside-colleges-killed-frats-good-231346 .

By addressing Dartmouth, my purpose would be to convince them that it is exigent that we address the alarming activities in frats, to use my step-by-step plan, and understand why my plan would be to their best interest by synthesizing data from many different sources to build ethos. I would also be including logos in my claim by giving them more of an insight into how hazing has been occurring because they may not be aware of the situation considering they haven’t taken intrusive action. I would also include pathos by understanding where the head of Dartmouth is coming from considering they are all college educated, quality education-minded, middle aged and middle or upper-class people listening to my proposal.

My solution is a multistep process. This begins with disbanding all frats off the campus for a single semester. This would break apart existing members in each frat, particularly the more senior members trying to carry out the “brotherly” traditions of hazings, ending the passing of the negative actions to new members. After frats are allowed back onto the campus, they would be closely monitored for another semester by security. This would allow the frats to regrow with members that would not be wanting to carry out hazings or able to carry them out either. The rebuilding in a safe environment would create strong pillars for the future of the frat. Maintaining the hazings at a minimum after the monitoring would be carried out by random checks on the frats especially during times of introducing new members. I know I will be able to make an effective claim to Dartmouth with my plan.