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Is Biden’s student debt cancellation a moral hazard?
Rick Seltzer, Higher Ed Dive, 2022/08/29

As is well known, the Biden administration in the United States cancelled $10K worth of debt for lower-income students with loans in that country. The 'moral hazard' in this case, as posited by the American Enterprise Institute's Beth Akers, "we have basically sent a message to borrowers now that you won't necessarily be on the hook to repay all the money that you borrowed to pay for school." It's hard to find the moral hazard here, especially when similar loan forgiveness is a routine practice for corporate borrowers. Where Akers and Biden find common ground is in the idea of tying loan repayments to income (something that would have helped me a lot when I was just getting started). They may also, I think, find agreement on the spotlight this places on rapidly rising tuition fees in general, and the shrinking proportion of the higher education budget that is actually supported by government at any level (at least, in the English-speaking world). But on the core issue - whether government should support individuals to the degree it supports corporations - I feel there will be no consensus.

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Please stop fetishizing the campus...
Apostolos Koutropoulos, Multilitteratus Incognitus, 2022/08/29

Apostolos Koutropoulos writes, "the fetishization of campus culture, exhibited both in this article and elsewhere in the world of academia, is what's preventing us from truly integrating new, smart, and healthy procedures that bring different together people, from many different locations, to accomplish goals." I agree, and his responses to various pro-campus arguments resonate with me (and, I would add, they apply to the office as well). Much of the distinct 'culture' created by in-person working and unscheduled run-ins is nothing more than fiction, and the rest is (as I've commented before) based on privilege. We could be offering the opportunity to anyone who wants it to access a quality education, but instead we've mythologized some sort of special kind of learning that can only take place in person and this is what justifies limiting access to only a few people.

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Heading for the gunfight at the AU Corral
Tony Bates, Online learning and distance education resources, 2022/08/29

Throughout August there has been an ongoing dispute over whether management and staff of Alberta's distance education university, Athabasca University, ought to be required to work in person in an office located in the town of Athabasca, 150 km north of Edmonton. I won't try to summarize the whole debate, though Tony Bates previously pointed to the absurdity of it, while Jon Dron commented on the difficulties it would cause. I think there's a point to be made about living in the community you serve - though the question here is whether the university serves the 3,000 residents of Athabasca or the 40,000 students connected through telephone wires and internet services. Athabasca University's board - and its recently appointed chair, a Calgary lawyer - is slated to make the decision August 31.

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Two kinds of knowledge: 'representation' or 'relationship'?
Rupert Wegerif, 2022/08/29

Education professor Rupert Wegerif takes a different route - one based in classics and literature - to approach questions that have framed discussion in these pages over the years: "Is it really such a good thing that the education system puts so much focus on knowledge as representation and so little on knowledge as relationship?" he asks. "We know that finding out about a job from books is no substitute for actually doing that job. Doing a job means becoming a different person and experiencing what it means to do that job from the inside." Related: Carlotta Pavese, The Epistemology of Skills.

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Cognitive Variation: The Philosophical Landscape
Zina B. Ward, Philosophy Compass, 2022/08/29

I intend this article especially for learning styles sceptics, as they have not (in my opinion) adequately addressed the fact that "we do not all make choices, reason, interpret our experience, or respond to our environment in the same way." Indeed, "far from being the exception, cognitive variation appears to be the rule." This article addresses the methodological questions around the phenomenon: "There is much work to be done refining strategies for navigating the uniformity/uniqueness dilemma and distinguishing between different types of cognitive variation." Individual differences impact how we observe, reason and learn, and these need to be taken into account by educators. Moreover, such differences raise questions "about whether human cognition is subject to systematic irrationalities," a.k.a. 'cognitive bias'. I've linked to the preprint; the published version is paywalled. Image: Fajar Kurniasih, Cognitive Variation in Language Learning.

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"I'm afraid": critics of anti-cheating technology for students hit by lawsuits
Zoë Corbyn, The Guardian, 2022/08/29

This is coverage of Ian Linkletter's ongoing lawsuit over Proctorio's student surveillance software and the wider effect the company's tactics have had on commentators. "Multiple critics of the technology declined to speak to the Guardian citing an aura of litigiousness. There is 'censorship through the fear of a lawsuit'." It also covers the case of Erik Johnson, a computer engineering student who eventually reached a settlement, as well as that involving the anti-surveillance advocacy group Fight for the Future, which ran a website that satirizes Proctorio CEO, Mike Olsen. It also mentions lass-action lawsuits that have been filed against Proctorio along with two other companies – Examity and Honorlock. In related news, a federal judge in the U.S. ruled just a few days ago that scanning students' rooms during remote tests is unconstitutional (see also).

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Is the empirical research we have the research we can trust? A review of distance education journal publications in 2021
Yiwei Peng, Junhong Xiao, Asian Journal of Distance Education, 2022/08/29

I was greeted on my return with news of Junhong Xiao's resignation from the board of Distance Education based on that journal's pre-emptive desk rejection of this paper questioning research methodology in the field. The authors address an issue that has been on my mind for a number of years now (readers from 2003 will remember my response to Charles Ungerleider's take on the same issue) and while I would not endorse alignment with the Campbell Collaboration I certainly think research in the field of education needs a rethink, especially in light of things like the replication crisis in the social sciences, which was discussed here as recently as 2020. Disclosure: I have collaborated with Junhong Xiao on numerous articles published in Distance Education in China. Related: John Danaher, Why do academic publications lack rigour? Taylor on the problem of woozles.

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