Volume 10 Issue 3

Page 1

A DECADE LATER: Remembering the impact of 9/11

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The student newspaper at Florida Gulf Coast University

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DleZ_`\j kXb\ Y`^^\i dfe\p Y`k\ 9p D\^Xe ?ffc`_Xe E\nj \[`kfi At the beginning of the fall semester, some students attempting to buy a bag of chips or a candy bar between classes at one of FGCU’s many vending machines found themselves coming up a few cents short. While many of the popular items in the vending machines were available for $1 last semester, a recent price increase for these items have students digging for extra change. “A few of the snacks in the vending machines have increased in price by up to 15 cents, effective Aug. 1 — but the price for vending machine beverages has not increased since July 2010,� said Susan Evans, spokeswoman for the university. Prices in the vending machines can be adjusted when there are supplier

cost increases, Evans said. This is what happened to the few snacks that increased in price this semester. “This adjustment that’s based on supplier cost increases is like what you find at the grocery store or restaurant when customer prices increase because actual costs have gone up for the store or restaurant,� Evans said. While the increase may not seem substantial, s o m e students feel that t h e

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high when compared to prices for some of the same items at nearby locations off campus. The Target in Gulf Coast Town Center, for example, sells some of the same snack items offered in the FGCU machines for lower prices in the same or larger quantities. A 1.75-ounce bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos sells for $1.15 in an on-campus vending machine, while a 2.875 oz. bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos sells for $1 at Target.

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9p D\^Xe ?ffc`_Xe E\nj \[`kfi According to The New York Times, almost two out of every 25 people older than 25 have a master’s degree. In 1960, the same proportion of people had a bachelor’s degree or higher. The master’s is the most rapidly growing degree in the country with the number of such degrees awarded more than doubling since the 1980s: 657,000 as of 2009, according to the most recent statistics available. The trend suggests the increasingly competitive job market is not able to

accommodate the number of graduated students sent out by colleges each year armed with only their bachelor’s degrees. Hence, the bachelor’s degree becomes increasingly less valuable in the job market. But is the master’s degree really the new bachelor’s, as the Times suggests? Bradley Hobbs, a professor of finance and economics, believes the value of a bachelor’s degree has diminished. “I think it has changed a lot over the last 20 or 30 years. This is what economists call signaling problems,� Hobbs said. Hobbs describes “signaling� as one of the social values of education. Educational degrees sift people who are more prepared and able to perform certain jobs from those who are not, and degrees serve to signal that distinction. “Someone who earned a degree can do certain things. The high school degree doesn’t signal very much, as those are more social engineering institutions than focused on education. The same thing is happening to bachelor’s degrees,� Hobbs said. Hobbs claims that there is an increasingly wide variation of signals coming out of universities as the focus shifts away from education, thus resulting in a false signal coming from a bachelor’s degree. Klie kf gX^\ * kf i\X[ X jkfip XYflk k_\ jkXklj f] =>:L ^iX[lXk\ X[d`jj`fej

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=XZlckp `jeĂ‹k Ă”o\[ fe e\\[ kf ^\k k\eli\ 9p 9iXe[fe ?\eip JkX]] ni`k\i Tenure. It is a concept most of us have heard at least once during our academic career. Maybe it was by eavesdropping on your teacher’s conversation at lunch during the sixth grade. Or maybe it was last week’s lecture in your government class. But what is it exactly? In a nutshell, tenure is a protection earned by professors once they have proven their skills and abilities in teaching. Once a professor is granted tenure, it protects them from being fired for unjust reasons, such as their personal opinions, or grudges held by the administration. It also grants professors freedom in their lessons and research, allowing them to teach what otherwise might be unpopular and controversial. Most colleges and universities throughout the United States offer tenure to their faculty. FGCU, however, does not. One might say we are a grand experiment. A university, especially a public university as large as FGCU, that doesn’t offer tenure is almost unheard of. But why would we eliminate tenure? Tenure is a controversial concept in the world of politics. Critics say that granting tenure undermines education, by allowing tenured teachers to “slack offâ€? due to their guaranteed job security. Tenure is also said to make eliminating underperforming teachers a difficult and tedious process. So, instead of tenure, FGCU adopted a different approach: three-year continuing contracts. Under this system, a professor’s employment is upheld given that he or she successfully meets goals that are reviewed annually. If not, the professor is placed on one-year probation in order to improve. So how do professors feel about tenure’s absence here at FGCU? Apparently, many are not all that concerned. According to Dr. Terry Busson, tenure and the lack thereof has made little difference here due to FGCU’s leadership. “We have always had a president and provost who were academics and respected the need for open discourse even if they didn’t always agree with what was being said,â€? Busson said. He also goes on to credit the faculty’s union for being instrumental in protecting the staff from being attacked for their beliefs or outspokenness.

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