The last time I heard a Tyler Hilton song was in 2004, and the track was “Kiss On Me;” the 20-year old singer-songwriter was, meanwhile, guest-starring on the hit TV series One Tree Hill. Now, a good eight years later, Hilton has grown up. Forget The Storm is only his third full-length studio album—his last release was 2004’s The Tracks Of—but this long hiatus seemed to be just what he needed.
Forget The Storm kicks off with the sultry “Kicking My Heels;” a Gavin DeGraw-like pop-soul track. The song has a solid hook, giving an early 2000s feel. As the album progresses, Hilton tries to channel more of a rock sound with “Loaded Gun,” a catchy pop-rock tune. “Jenny,” meanwhile, is a heartfelt love song, reminiscent of Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl.” Hilton brings the rock again with “Ain’t No Fooling Me,” but the track loses its steam before it can finish its course.
“Leave Him,” is perhaps the most compelling track, where Hilton begs his girl to do just that. The song fits nicely with the other acoustic ballads on the album, such as “Hey Jesus.”
It’s difficult to know what to expect when picking up an actor’s musical foray, but Tyler Hilton leaves listeners with a pleasant surprise, worth a spot on any fall playlist.
This was how I neatly summed up the city, when writing home about my first impressions of my student-exchange destination. And it would seem that the world-renowned Italian photographer Mimmo Jodice agrees, putting Montreal in league with an impressive list of the worlds’ metropolises featured in his photo exhibition Sublime Cities, at the McCord Museum.
I was lucky enough to attend the exhibition’s vernissage, and in my eagerness, arrived too early. The woman who welcomed me looked slightly stressed as she checked her watch and twisted her bracelet, before deciding to pull back the no-entry rope at the exhibit’s entrance, telling me to take a quick tour of it before everyone else arrived. She then hurried off, leaving me to embark on a solitary tour of the world through Jodice’s lens.
A journey from the history-filled cities of ancient Europe to the (by comparison) modernized capitals of America and Asia, Sublime Cities places Montreal in a unique position at the meeting point of two different worlds: the antique Europe of Naples, Venice, Rome, and Paris, where Jodice’s aesthetic inspiration was born, and the flashy skylines of steel and glass in the skyscraper-dominated urban centres of New York, Tokyo, and Sao Paolo. Montreal, as a city which is still developing and asserting its rich European heritage in a strongly North American-influenced geographic setting, lies at the very heart of this clash of cultures.
The exhibition could have focused on this fairly obvious juxtaposition of the old and the new; however, Mimmo Jodice is not merely documenting the specific features of the different cities he visits, contrasting the antique and the modern. He also seeks something beyond the visual. His dozen black and white photos of Montreal portray some of the city’s most significant landmarks, yet the manner in which they are taken adds new dimensions of mystery to scenes normally taken for granted. Through Mimmo Jodice’s lens, Montreal emerges as an ethereal metropolis, taking on the very definition of sublime.
When I returned to the museum foyer, the floor was packed with what I presumed to be art and photography connoisseurs, all well-dressed and drifting about while elegantly sipping their wine. Three glasses of wine, numerous canapés, and 45 minutes of excellent people-watching later, the few hundred guests were finally allowed to view the exhibition. As people slowly started jostling their way into the exhibition rooms, elbowing each other in order to actually see the photographs, I snuck out and made my way home, feeling strongly inspired to fire off a few more e-mails about my study-abroad experiences, this time concluding them all with the words: “Montreal is sublime.”
Mimmo Jodice—Sublime Cities runs from Oct. 11 2012 to Mar. 3 2013 at the McCord Museum. General admission $14, student admission $8.
Christie Rowe is an earthquake hunter. The Wares Faculty Scholar and assistant professor of earth and planetary science at McGill travels the world studying fossilized earthquakes— earthquakes that occur deep in the earth’s crust, but eventually leave a visible record in rock that has risen to the surface because of uplift and erosion.
Last April, Rowe was part of a team of 28 researchers investigating the fault that caused the massive Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of March 2011. The project, called the Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project, brought together scientists from ten countries to drill cores of the fault.
Earthquake glass from the Sierra Nevada range in California. (Christie Rowe)
The Tribune sat down with Rowe to discuss her work studying earthquakes from Africa to Japan, and how to ride out tremours like the 4.5 magnitude quake that shook Montreal last week.
McGill Tribune: What was the deal with the earthquake last week—what happened?
Christie Rowe: Honestly, the western Quebec seismic zone is not very well understood. The theories are that we have very old fault structures in the crust that date back to the Cretaceous, but when we have earthquakes like this, we can’t really be sure that those structures are responsible.
MT: So, should we be worried?
CR: No. Most earthquakes are not dangerous, but [historically] large earthquakes have happened, that are damaging.* An earthquake like the size four that we had is absolutely the fun size of earthquake. Everybody gets to really experience it, and know that it’s happening. It’s not dangerous—not scary.
One thing that’s working in our favour is that the crust in this region is very strong because it’s old. That means that when the seismic waves move through the crust, they move quickly and you get less ground shaking [as opposed to] somewhere on the west coast, where the crust is younger and more damaged because of the seismic history. [There], the shaking lasts longer.
*Rowe is refering to the 1732 Montreal earthquake that measured 5.8 on the Richter scale.
MT: Were you awake during the earthquake?
CR: Yeah. Well, I heard the earthquake before I felt it, and that’s because the P-waves—the primary waves, the fastest travelling waves—they don’t necessarily create the type of ground motions you would feel, but they’re very effective at vibrating windows.
You hear the rumbling and you hear the shaking and that’s the P-waves. Then, the next wave arrival that comes through—that’s the S-waves [secondary waves]—and that’s the one that’s going to give you a jolt probably, a vertical acceleration … followed by the surface waves that have a rolling and lateral shaking motion.
Ben Melosh, a graduate student working with Rowe, walks along the Pofadder Shear Zone in southern Namibia home to 1.1 billion-year-old afossilized earthquakes. (Louis Smit)
MT: Tell us about what you do.
CR: I am a fault geologist, so I’m interested in earthquake processes, but instead of studying earthquakes that happen now, I go to where earthquake source areas have been uplifted and the rocks have been eroded so they’re exposed. These are rocks that have been uplifted 10, 20, [or] 30 kilometres, and the real guts of the earthquake system are now on the surface. I collect those and put them in my office.
… As you walk along [a fault] surface you’ll see areas that have melted rock, areas that have broken rock—there’re lots of ways that energy is used in rock destruction.
MT: How do you date earthquakes?
CR: When the rock is melted during the earthquake. Only some earthquakes produce frictional melt, but when it does happen, the glass that forms traps potassium, [which] decays over time to argon. So if you have a potassium-trapping event, and the formation of earthquake glass, then you can measure the argon isotope ratios and it gives you a little clock.
MT: Tell us about the Japan Trench Fast Drilling Project.
CR: The Japanese government, about ten years ago, built the world’s largest science ship. It’s called Chikyu, which means ‘earth,’ and it’s 600 feet long. It was basically built for this event; it can drill in deeper water, and drill deeper in deeper water than any other ship.
We went out to the very limit of what Chikyu can do, the deepest part of the Japan Trench, and drilled a few holes 850 meters deep in the sea floor, and found a lot of mud—but really weird mud, mud unlike anything I’ve ever seen … it’s made of the purest clay … it’s shiny and black because there are titanium oxides and iron oxides that are deposited on the sea floor because of black smoker activity at mid-ocean ridges.
MT: What did the expedition discover about the Tohoku earthquake?
CR: What this earthquake did was completely run away. It started at depth as a pretty big earthquake, and as it got shallower toward the trench it got bigger, and this is something that we have not really seen before—this is a really unusual event.
One thing that might have happened is that friction heated up the water in the [mud] and effectively pressurized the fault zone, opening it like an air hockey table. There was no frictional contact, and no strength in the fault—that helped it run away.
Think of [the runaway earthquake] like a propagating crack: as the crack opens, it puts more stress on the crack tip, which causes it to open more.
MT: Is there any way to know if earthquakes like this have occurred before?
CR: Japan has the longest historical [earthquake] records. For a thousand years—at least—they have had instruments that quantify things like ground shaking—intensity and magnitude, and other things like tide gauges that show long-term changes in sea level that are actually caused by the motion of Japan, not by the sea level. We have those records going back 1,200 [or] 1,500 years almost, which is fantastic. That is about the length of time between large earthquakes, so now we have two recorded events—it’s not enough to establish a trend.
Mud core from the Japan Trench
MT: Does measuring a small event help us understand a large one?
CR: The short answer is [that] we don’t know enough about large events yet to even know if there’s some kind of predictive power in a small event … I think one of the big open questions in earthquake science right now is [this]: is a large earthquake just a bigger version of a smaller earthquake, or is it a fundamentally different thing?
MT: What should everybody know about earthquakes?
CR: Don’t be afraid—ride it out, enjoy it … I know a seismologist, who, when an earthquake occurs, will just drop to the floor and lie spread-eagle on the ground and try to determine which way the waves are coming from—I didn’t react fast enough to do that the other night.
This planet is very much alive. It’s such a cool moment when the human experience intersects with the geologic time scale, and we get to experience an earthquake.
Big companies have always been pressured by customers, governments, and charities to take an active role in social responsibility. Technology is now bridging this gap.
CampusAuction, an online, Vancouver-based company that launched this August, connects students, businesses, and charitable organizations for the benefit of all. Open to any user, the site targets students by holding online auctions for products like laptops, gift cards, furniture, and more. For instance, a Toshiba tablet on the site went for $72.00 with an hour and 51 minutes left in the auction.
Unlike most companies, CampusAuction donates a large amount of their profits (either 50 per cent of net profits or 10 per cent of gross revenue—whichever is greatest) directly to charity organizations that bidders select by vote. Users can also choose to donate the difference between their bid price and the item’s sticker price to charity.
“Our president … did a lot of work at the University of British Columbia, and he kept seeing … companies coming onto campus and attempting to get in touch with students,” Alex Hobbs, managing director of CampusAuction, said. “But it’s a very difficult thing … and you’re just at the mercy of luck. You have to find the right student … with enough time to come and sit with you, and find out about your product.”
The site allows companies that hope to build brand loyalty to overcome this barrier, and facilitates student support for charities, even if they don’t directly donate.
The site also highlights corporations’ philanthropic work. Toshiba continues to be CampusAuction’s biggest contributor, promoting one of their favourite charities by supplying the online company with laptops and electronics. Starbucks, EA Games, Cineplex, and Staples are amongst the other companies that have partnered with the site. Charitable partners include Apathy is Boring, F-Cancer, and U:end Poverty.
CampusAuction raised $78,000 in charity funding during their nine-week trial in 2011. The site hopes to build traffic to increase awareness of both the charities and companies. They have already received more than 1.7 million web page views, more traffic than an advertising booth on campus could expect, and exposure that would be expensive for charities to buy.
CampusAuction, if nothing else, demonstrates the role technology can play in giving consumers an easy way to donate to charity and meet the needs of what Hobbs calls “not only the next generation of purchasers, but also the next generation of philanthropists.”
Most people don’t give the seasonal flu a second thought. It seems pedestrian compared to the famous 1918 Spanish flu, which claimed more than 50 million lives worldwide. Outbreaks of other influenza viruses occuring nearly every decade since have killed over a million people. Avian flu—currently only highly transmissible between birds, not between humans—is still a dangerous infection that kills approximately 50 per cent of those infected.
Seasonal influenza is far from benign. This virus kills nearly 40,000 people each year in the US alone, and over 500,000 globally. A majority of these deaths occur in young infants and elderly individuals, who are most susceptible to the virus.
The World Health Organization estimates that seasonal influenza costs around 100 billion USD annually. Nearly five to 10 per cent of the population will be infected with influenza at least once every year. Given its annual prevalence, the overall mortality and economic impact of the seasonal flu exceeds even that of the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.
Given its impact, seasonal influenza vaccinations are surprisingly uncommon. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that vaccination rates of adults are around 40 per cent; for children, around 50 per cent. One of the most common arguments for this behaviour is that healthy people don’t need the vaccination. This is far from true. While healthy people may be able to fight off the virus after being infected, this protracted process may take up to a week. Furthermore, hospitalization is common for severe influenza or secondary bacterial infections (a result of weakened immunity), even in previously healthy individuals. The virus can also trigger underlying asthmatic episodes.
Another advantage of universal influenza vaccination is the concept of herd immunity. If the herd—nearly all the people in a group—are vaccinated, then the small number of people who did not get the vaccine would be safe from influenza infection. Unfortunately, only around 65-70 per cent of health care workers in Canada are vaccinated, which means they risk catching the virus at work or passing it on to already weak patients.
Concerns about the lack of vaccine safety are unfounded, incorrect, and in some cases, dangerous. There seems to be an increase in the anti-vaccine rhetoric in Quebec, and a recent outbreak of whooping cough has been linked to parents refusing to vaccinate their children.
Anti-vaccine proponents argue that the seasonal influenza vaccine contains mercury and formaldehyde, both of which are highly toxic. Thiomersal, a preservative containing mercury is only present in multi-use doses of the vaccine, and is in fact not present in a number of current single-dose vaccine. Regardless, there has been no evidence of toxic effects from Thiomersal. Formaldehyde, which is used to inactivate the virus, is a known carcinogen, but the levels present in the final vaccine are lower than what our body is capable of producing and breaking down by itself.
A number of myths surround the seasonal influenza vaccination. These myths have no scientific validity, and may increase the risk of severe influenza infection. The flu vaccine is a harmless jab that, at worst, results in slight discomfort for up to 24 hours. The alternative is an infection that can bring you down for up to a week. Considering what’s at stake, everyone should be getting a flu vaccine this year.
Flu vaccines are available at the Student Health Clinic and the McGill University Health Centre.
Last Wednesday, Dean of Arts Christopher Manfredi released his long-awaited Report of the Open Forum on Free Expression and Peaceful Assembly. Following a series of open forums, the report sought to solicit community input on the meaning and scope of peaceful assembly on campus.
The initiative was commissioned by Principal and Vice-Chancellor Heather Munroe-Blum in February 2012, following Dean of Law Daniel Jutras’s recommendation in his report on the riot police presence on campus last Nov. 10.
We are pleased to hear that Munroe-Blum has accepted all three of Manfredi’s recommendations. Among other things, Manfredi called for a clarification of the word “disruption” in the Code of Student Conduct, a revision to the provisional protocol enacted following the second James Administration occupation last February, and a change to McGill Security Services’ training program.
[pullquote]Students have a right to a Student Code of Conduct that outlines what is acceptable behaviour on campus…[/pullquote]
All too often, however, real action in a university setting is unnecessarily prolonged by discussion upon discussion, and recommendation upon recommendation. Compared to codes of conduct at other universities, the provisional protocol is far less tolerant in its acceptance of what constitutes a legal demonstration on campus, and severely limits free expression. The provision should be removed immediately, and the university’s policy on demonstrations should temporarily be reverted to the policies outlined in the Code of Student Conduct (as it was prior to February). At the same time, the administration should strike a working group—composed of varied community members, from students to faculty to members of non-academic associations—without delay, to further refine the Code of Student Conduct. As attendees of Manfredi’s forum have pointed out, it is important to reconcile diverse community viewpoints on the boundaries of free speech. The provisional protocol in question was devised without any consultation, and that mistake should not be repeated.
Manfredi’s report rightly states that it is difficult to balance one person’s freedom of assembly with another person’s right to peaceful study or access to university resources. That said, students have a right to a Student Code of Conduct that outlines what is acceptable behaviour on campus, and that is applied fairly to all alleged transgressions. The provisional protocol does not meet this criteria.
As the third recommendation acknowledges, the role of security agents on campus needs to be clarified for the McGill community as a whole. McGill Security Services’ primary mandate needs to be the protection of students—security agents are responsible first and foremost for our safety. They are not law enforcement, but are there to support university activities. Manfredi’s report is correct in asking that all agents understand how to apply the Code of Student Conduct and understand how the disciplinary process works. However, there also needs to be more widespread communication and understanding of their role as university employees who students can trust to call on for help.
The mission of the modern university extends beyond formal teaching and learning; it is a place where expression of differing viewpoints is not only permitted, but encouraged. In its willingness to commission—and accept the recommendations of—Manfredi’s report, the administration has shown that it sees the value in making place for peaceful protest and dissent. The time for discussion and debate draws to a close. Now we need action.
The best thing about first year is that everyone is your friend—that guy in your history class, the girl in the cafeteria, your next-door neighbour, and the security guard you high-five everyday before going to class. Being a newbie in an unfamiliar place can be scary, but it is also an excuse to approach anyone and strike up a conversation, knowing that they are just as clueless and nervous as you are. It’s a complete free-for-all: no cliques, no gossip girls, no bullies, and no crazies. Every person you see is potential friendship material.
However, not everyone can be friends with the world like Mr. Rogers or Oprah. As the year progresses, you might realize that your next-door neighbour and the cafeteria girl aren’t quite your cup of tea. As your friend count slowly dwindles after Frosh, finding the right roommates for the next few years becomes an issue. If you just met the person, how can you know you can trust them enough to share a bathroom? After first year, you are expected to move out of dorms and into real-world apartments. By April, every freshman has to trade in their meal plans for grocery shopping lists. Next thing you know, you’re cooking yourself Kraft dinners and paying bills.
If you think picking roommates is a precarious process, what if the final living situation doesn’t work out? Who moves out and who moves in? I can tell you from recent experience that replacing roommates is as awkward as it gets. One of my roommates decided to transfer out of McGill at the end of last year, so my remaining roommate and I asked around and raided both Craigslist and Montreal Kijiji in the hopes of finding the perfect third in our trio. This sticky dilemma can definitely put a strain on friendships, so here is my guide to making the situation as smooth as possible.
Before committing yourself to your new roommates on paper, it’s always a good idea to lay down some ground rules in case of potential breakups. When signing a lease, you don’t think about the probability of one of your roommates bailing out before your apartment contract ends. In my case, this led to arguments about who would pay the remaining part of the rent each month. Make sure to settle on some agreement that all of you will pay rent until your contract ends. That way, if someone moves out, responsibility for that person’s rent won’t be yours.
If a stranger from Craigslist is not your thing, and you would prefer to move into a different apartment altogether, don’t rush into selling your place too fast in order to avoid next month’s rent. Remember, apartment hunting is a dog-eat-dog world and it’s every person for themself. I cannot stress enough the number of times an apartment was snatched out from under us last minute. Avoid the possibility of ending up homeless, like we almost did twice. Plan in advance if you want to move out, and make sure to find people to transfer your old lease to before signing another one.
If another friend replaces your old roommate, keep in mind that this is a tricky and touchy transition. I am just getting used to the new vibe in our house. There are positive sides to this situation. A new roommate brings great new furniture for the apartment and some extra silverware you so desperately need. A new fresh face is always exciting, and in my case, we’ve inherited a great cook, which means no more ten-minute meals for me.
It’s probably best if you don’t make your new roomie feel like a fallback plan and your old one feel like they never existed. The switch is probably harder for your just-departed roommate than it is for you. A good balance of mixed emotions is the way to go when approaching this fragile situation.
Last, but not least, you’ll probably have to adapt to your new roommate’s quirks. So maybe you can’t walk around unclothed anymore because your roommate’s boyfriend is sleeping over, or maybe you’ll have to deal with your roommate’s obsession with French cheese stinking up the place. But isn’t that just part of the experience of having a roommate? Sharing your private space can get tricky and awkward at times, but as roommates come and go, the friendships you gain from the experience grow even stronger.
The Manfredi Report, made public on Oct. 10, 2012, was a direct response to the Jutras Report’s recommendation calling for a campus-wide discussion on the meaning of “free expression and peaceful assembly on campus.” It roughly outlines the escalation of our campus politics since the events of Nov. 10, and further includes his recommendations for action in this period of relative calm.
“Recommendations” have become a familiar theme at the administrative level; the Jutras Report, issued in February, made sweeping recommendations as well. It is all too easy to brush these recommendations off by arguing they don’t provide direction towards tangible progress. Important lessons go unlearnt without ascribing some value to them. In her email on the report, Heather Munroe-Blum accepted Christopher Manfredi’s recommendations, and this project has taken on a much-extended timeline; a smart move from the McGill administration, as a means to sustain this period of calm.
[pullquote]… protestors on Nov. 10 were obviously upset with McGill’s concept of ‘protection’.[/pullquote]
In the interest of sustaining calm on campus, what is truly needed for the community right now is a chance to restore a certain level of faith in the administration. To do so, it would also be good to be reminded of the values that McGill stands for. This is why the Manfredi Report is, to a certain extent, a welcome addition to discussion of campus politics—its first two recommendations implicitly do just this. The first, which calls for clarification of terms like ‘disruption’ in the Code of Student Conduct, aims to provide a framework for how to continue living peacefully in school. By setting clear boundaries in the student code of conduct, mutual respect, understanding, and dialogue can be ensured within the context of a society that prioritizes “education, service, and social, cultural and personal opportunities” (SSMU’s Mission as stated on its website). The second, which calls for a revision to security procedures and access to the James Administration Building, demonstrates McGill’s ability to identify a source of tension in our society, and as a result, facilitate letting people feel less isolated from the senior administration.
However, there is a need to look at the third recommendation more closely. It pertains to McGill Security and the need for “reviewing our current training program for both permanents and temporary personnel” on campus. In the report, Manfredi says that McGill Security is important because “they are usually at the forefront during protest and demonstration situations, charged with protecting individual members of the community (including protestors and demonstrators) and University assets. They are often the first to witness behavior that potentially violates University regulations.”
On one hand, Manfredi wants to ensure uniformity in Security’s reactions, and to ensure that any action against disruption they take is legitimate and based on the Code of Conduct. On the other hand, however, this is clearly a point of contention; protestors on Nov. 10 were obviously upset with McGill’s concept of ‘protection.’
Can McGill students and the McGill administration agree on a concept of protection for our community as a whole? Manfredi seems to have left this out of his report’s recommendations. Sure, McGill Security’s reactions to the student occupation in February were much more passive, suggesting a step in the right direction, but perhaps, in the interest of student politics, there is another discussion that needs to take place.
In Nassim Taleb’s book, The Black Swan, the author confidently assures his readers that, to learn anything, one must “minimize time spent reading newspapers,” and “ignore the blogs.” He argues that these outlets always try to apply narratives to what simply may be disparate facts, usually report the same sets of facts, are prone to hyperbole, and seldom correct mistakes that they make with alarming regularity.
Similarly, Nate Silver’s new book, The Signal and the Noise, warns us against relying on experts, whose predictions come about with the same regularity as if foreseen by laypeople—and are often less accurate.
[pullquote]The media also fails spectacularly in its chief goal of … reporting news.[/pullquote]
It is not difficult to see that Taleb and Silver are correct. The news media pretends to know things that are essentially unknowable. We will never know Mitt Romney and Barack Obama on a personal level, no matter how many articles are written about them. Likewise, we cannot accurately predict how the polls will turn in the upcoming weeks. We do not know for sure if Justin Trudeau will eventually ascend to the head of the Liberal Party, and if he does so, how successful he will be. We must deal with the fact that our thoughts on these issues are hardly based in anything substantive, and are often nothing more than conjectures.
The media also fails spectacularly in its chief goal of actually reporting news: remember when Osama Bin Laden was reported killed in a firefight, or the Innocence of Muslims was reliably reported as the sole cause of the deaths in the American Embassy in Libya? When swine flu was posited as capable of decimating huge swaths of the population? When new sources reported that Candidate X committed (insert gaffe), only to state hours later that the gaffe was unreasonably exaggerated?
These news organizations can argue that they are doing the best with the information they have at the time. However, this limited defense is undercut by the fact that the media presupposes there is virtue in pretending to be authoritative with limited facts. In actuality, it is doing little service to the public with its presentation of wildly misleading views.
So how do we avoid falling into the trap of listening to news that is most likely wrong, and predictions that are apt to fail? Taleb suggests reading books and media that have stood the test of time, increasing the likelihood that the information we are consuming is largely accurate.
One should also be aware of the cognitive failings to which humans are prone, such as applying narratives to nearly every aspect of our lives. Silver suggests that we act on the basis of probabilistic hypotheses, and then revise them after the truth or falsity of our actions slowly become known.
We can also start to react to the news in a more measured manner, taking everything that commentators say with a grain of salt, knowing that what they say is probably not complete and may need to be amended later. None of these things in themselves are sufficient in providing us with clarity of knowledge. Ultimately though, these small steps—relying on established forms of media, expecting future revision of all facts, and seeking out bias in narrative—are the best tools we may ever have to separate hasty conclusions from prediction based in fact.
Over the past few years, there has been an intensifying debate over the role of university education—whether universities are institutions of pure learning, or simply a place to acquire a credential after completing a certain amount of coursework. Though the topic has generated a fair amount of discussion about what universities should do to motivate learning, most of the talk about it actually misses the point. Because higher education allows—and requires—more individual choice than primary or secondary education, what really matters to this debate over learning and motivation is the individual student.
In his 2002 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled “The Dangerous Myth of Grade Inflation,” Alfie Kohn argues that the entire debate over the issue of grade inflation reveals an inherent problem with grading systems at universities. These grading scales make students focus more on the number they receive at the end of the term than the material they were supposed to be absorbing in class. Kohn proposes completely eliminating grades, allowing students to focus on the actual course material.
This “no grades” philosophy prompts the inevitable question: how, then, can we determine whether students are learning? How much was understood at the end of class compared to the beginning? Even if we assume that these concerns are valid, there remains a major tension in the “do away with grades” argument in the realm of higher education.
This is an age of easily-accessible knowledge, with full and free courses offered online by institutions like MIT and Harvard. Now that world-class institutions are making their educational material freely available online, those who want to take time off and learn without the pressure to compete for a number can do so. The movement to bring this philosophy of grade-free education to large universities, then, reflects an implicit acceptance of the importance of the degree as a “credential” certifying learning.
Some economists suggest that university completion—with a satisfactory transcript—is actually a signaling mechanism. The actual gain in hard, quantifiable “skills” (e.g. critical and analytical thinking), among university graduates is generally small. Rather, students attend university to “signal” to an employer that they were already competent in these skills—the GPA signaling their degree of competence. As economist Bryan Caplan asks, “Which would do more for your career: A Princeton education, but no diploma, or a Princeton diploma, but no education?” Signaling theorists would say the latter.
Several prominent universities, such as Hampshire College, have switched to a “narrative” method of evaluation. Instead of a numerical GPA, instructors write an evaluation of what the course was supposed to accomplish, how well the individual accomplished those tasks, and perhaps whether the student improved over the semester. Other universities supplement their GPAs with a similar evaluation. Upon considering both of these views, what becomes apparent is that the major factor in this equation is not the university, or employers, or even the post-secondary education system, but rather the individual.
Though a cliché, one gets out of anything what one puts into it, and this happens to be especially true in the case of higher education. Many university students choose to focus simply on their attractiveness to employers, while the choice to go to an institution focused on tests, or one with narrative evaluations, is a personal one. So is the choice of one’s classes. Debating what universities should do with grading systems misses the point, because education at university is driven by the choices of the individual. Therefore, to wring one’s hands about unmotivated students at major universities would point to a problem with their mindset, not with the grading system.
