{"id":121,"date":"2005-01-27T08:55:38","date_gmt":"2005-01-27T13:55:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/?p=121"},"modified":"2005-01-27T08:55:38","modified_gmt":"2005-01-27T13:55:38","slug":"tuition-dollars-at-work-in-new-orleans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/tuition-dollars-at-work-in-new-orleans\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuition Dollars at Work in New Orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reader left an interesting comment on my “I Can’t Help It If I’m Lucky”<\/a> entry below. I was going to reply in a comment, but I think the comment deserves a full blog entry to itself, because I imagine the writer speaks for many concerned parents and taxpayers, and because it gives me the opportunity to clarify some things that I obviously got muddled in my original entry. Here’s the comment:<\/p>\n

\nInteresting\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6the financial state of public education is, at best, abysmal, yet there seems to be an abundance of money available for blog registrations, conference fees, suites, etc.. I am glad to see that the tuition I pay for my son to attend UMW is going to better HIS learning.<\/p>\n

Comment by TGAMM \u00e2\u20ac\u201d 1\/25\/2005 @ 9:49 am\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First, thanks for reading the blog and commenting.<\/p>\n

I certainly understand TGAMM’s concerns and I’d like to reply to them briefly, hoping that he or she will return to see this. It would be even easier to have a dialogue with a name and email address, but perhaps this comment will suffice. I hope the information will be helpful and perhaps address some of TGAMM’s criticisms.<\/p>\n

I pay for this blog out of my own pocket. Even if I didn’t, the cost is minimal: about 100.00 a year for a domain and space on a web server. This particular blog is part of a entire suite of applications I also use to support my teaching. Last semester, 80 students used a discussion forum on this website, and it generated 2700 posts–pretty good investment for a lot of student engagement. This semester, I’ve got 35 students blogging elsewhere on this site and 15 in a discussion forum on this site. Eventually, I’d like this capability to be part of a suite of online services we offer all faculty, staff, and students at the University, as some institutions already do (see the University of Minnesota’s “U-Think” blog site<\/a> for an interesting example). And many blogs are free: those on Blogger or Blogspot, for example, though these are harder to administer for classroom use.<\/p>\n

The conference fees are included in UMW’s membership in the National Learning Infrastructure Initiative. By taking five faculty and one Instructional Technology Specialist to this conference, UMW provides crucial faculty and infrastructure development in a very cost-effective manner, and exposes some of our best teachers and staff to the very latest, most cost-effective means of providing high-quality education to all our students. For a school with minimal resources such as ours, the 5000.00 per year we pay to belong to the NLII, which includes five free registrations for this annual meeting and three free registrations for each of the three annual focus sessions, is a great way to maximize the few dollars we have and spend them where their benefit is greatest.<\/p>\n

The suite was an accident, as I tried (and obviously failed) to make clear in the blog entry. The upgrade was in accommodation, not in price. I paid the same rate I would have paid had I been in a standard room. In fact, that suite cost about 60.00\/day less than standard rooms in the official conference hotel. I felt the entire situation was faintly ridiculous, and that feeling inspired the blog, but tax- and tuition-payers should be assured that there was no extra charge involved.<\/p>\n

And yes, the tuition you pay for your son is, in part, going to better my learning. As my expertise increases, the value of your tuition dollars goes farther, and the education your son receives is, at least potentially, better: better because I’m up-to-date on vital developments in the profession of higher education, better because I’ll be more informed about information technologies and thus help prepare your son to be a vital contributor in an increasingly technology- and information-driven world, better because I meet talented professionals from all over the world whom I will invite to interact with my classes (as I already have), and better because any time I learn something, I’m going to share that with my students, and we’ll both benefit. I’m happy that part of my hospital fees go to educating doctors and surgeons, and that part of my lawyers’ fees go to educating lawyers, because their benefit directly translates into my benefit. I’m paying for their expertise, and expertise needs constant development because knowledge is increasing and changing. When my wife and I send our children to college, I hope their professors’ ongoing education is a high priority for the institution. Otherwise, our children won’t be prepared for the world and the lives that await them after graduation.<\/p>\n

Thanks again for the comment, TGAMM. I welcome further dialogue on this topic!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reader left an interesting comment on my “I Can’t Help It If I’m Lucky” entry below. I was going to reply in a comment, but I think the comment deserves a full blog entry to itself, because I imagine … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4bHwM-1X","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardnercampbell.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}