Arms Odds and Ends (June 3, 2016)

Canada

Sometimes Canada gets good press, and sometimes bad.  The decision of the liberal government to continue a sale of armored vehicles to Saudia Arabia is turning into quite a political scandal. (LINK) Arms sales are fascinating precisely because of the highly political nature of these sales and the very real economic and security issues (domestically) that play into arms export decisions.

Nigeria

Nigeria has lost over $15 billion dollars due to arms acquisition corruption (LINK).  I wrote about Russia's own fraud problem a few years ago with some nice graphs.  Check it out (LINK)!

Russia

A good analysis of the effect of the economic crisis on Russia's military modernization process (LINK).

Another article examines problems within the Russian arms industry.  Some of this stems from corruption, some from incompetence.  (LINK)

On an unrelated (but not completely) note: more evidence that Russia is very concerned about the perceived legitimacy of its annexation of Crimea domestically (LINK). The political effects of the sanctions would be much worse if there wasn't a rally effect based on a widely-shared belief that Russia's actions were righteous and justified.

Education Odds and Ends

On this blog I have not written a lot about education.  My focus and the source of the title for the blog is the grim yard of security issues that I research for a living and for fun.  However, many life choices have brought me to a point where I have to think of education a lot more.  I work at Nazarbayev University - a western-style university established 6 years ago in Astana, Kazakhstan.  I began working here after one year of being Dr. Willardson and after a very enjoyable, but very temporary experience as a Visiting Assistant Professor at UNLV.

The university is growing. Most of my colleagues are young, early-career academics.  However, the fact that I was only 1 year post-PhD did not reflect the fact that I had a bit of life experience under my belt. My administrative abilities and my willingness to do a bit of extra work resulted in my appointment as the acting chair of the department of political science and international relations.

It all started my first fall when I showed up and we were scheduling classes for spring. The process was quite chaotic.  The stated degree requirements that we had given to students were impossible to meet with the number and composition of our faculty.  Especially since we began an MA program along with our BA program the same year I started.  I spent the year working to update our program requirements to make them match what we could do while maintaining a program that was similar to programs in the US.  Along the way, I was elected to the Faculty Senate and was assigned to work on the University Quality Control committee.

Now much of my non-research time is spent trying to comply with increasingly intrusive demands from all sides about what our curriculum "must" do. Our university employs academics from all over the world and many of our administrators are British.  That model is very different from the one that I am familiar with, and much different than our school (which is partnered with University of Wisconsin, Madison) is modeled after.

This article (LINK) that showed up in my news reader feed struck a chord with me:

This story began in the 1990s, when reformers thought they could improve teaching and learning in college if they insisted that colleges declare their specific “learning goals,” with instructors defining “the knowledge, intellectual skills, competencies and attitudes that each student is expected to gain.” The reformers’ theory was that these faculty-enumerated learning objectives would serve as the hooks that would then be used by administrators to initiate reviews of actual student work, the key to improving teaching. 

That was the idea. But it hasn’t worked out that way. Not even close. Here is one example of how the mindless implementation of this idea distracts rather than contributes to the goal of improved student learning. When a team from the western accreditor, the WASC Senior College and University Commission, visited San Diego State University in 2005, it raised concerns that the school had shut down its review process of college majors, which was supposed to involve outside experts and the review of student work. Now, 10 years have passed and the most recent review by WASC (the team visit is scheduled for this month) finds there are still major gaps, with “much work to be done to ensure that all programs are fully participating in the assessment process.”

We are in the process of making our "LOs".  In some ways it is useful.  We are codifying expectations and standards that we can use to hold each other (as faculty) accountable.  However, each new round of reforms calls for increasing reports and monitoring and standardization of courses to the point that professors are viewed by many as simply "content delivery" devices.  The paradox of red tape and the need for administrators to quantify and monitor things that are out of their control and out of their competence is one that is at the heart of the modern university. It is often quite depressing.

Ammunition

A study on the negative effect of electronic devices in the classroom offers me some ammunition in my personal quest to kill Whatsapp, instagram, and all the other media use that distracts students.  (LINK)