Yugen Grand: “Walt & El Grupo”@ MICA

I have been playing with yugen for months now.  I’ve looked at the troubled youth of Zeami Motokiyo and the bleak anime of Natsume Ono.  I’ve explored the surface beneficence of Arab moguls and the latest direction of religious studies.  Yugen is a notion both ancient and unstable.  Sometimes sublime, it can become a darkly disturbing force.  Here is one of its purest manifestations.

Terms

yugen:  an undercurrent of yearning, the aesthetic expression of the profundity of loss.

grand:  magnificent, of the highest rank

“Walt & El Grupo” (2008):  a documentary of the ten-week trip taken by Walt Disney and a group of Disney studio artists and filmmakers to five South American nations, under the auspices of the US Department of State in 1941.  Written and directed by Theodore Thomas; produced by Kuniko Okubo.

MICA:  founded in 1826, The Maryland Institute College of Art is the nation’s oldest continually functioning college of art, with a current enrollment of more than 1500 undergraduates and 200 graduate students.  Programs of study include animation and film arts.

Event

A screening of the documentary, with commentary by the filmmakers

Thursday, 23 September 2010, 7:00 p.m.

Falvey Hall, Brown Center

MICA, Baltimore, Maryland

free and open to the public

Context

Congratulating ourselves for finding on-street parking, husband Kit and I arrived early at the architectural showpiece that is the Brown Center on the campus of Maryland Institute College of Art.  A few meters from bustling West Mt. Royal Avenue, in the Cohen Plaza, members of the MICA community sat at outdoor tables, sipping beverages and talking with the intensity of artists everywhere.  A toddler and a dog provided comic relief.  The toddler fed the dog; the dog gobbled the food.  Adults intervened fitfully and futilely or stepped around the smaller beings, busy with their own performance magic.

We wandered into the Fox Building, which adjoins the Brown Center in a feat of conceptual construction.  The Decker Gallery to our left was showing a faculty exhibit.  I glanced at my watch.  Seven minutes.  Kit would take in most of the gallery; I could view one work of art.  I allowed myself to be pulled across the room and around a corner.  There it was:  “Wim Wenders,” a brooding electro-cinemagraph by Christopher Saah (MFA, 2006), Adjunct Professor of Photography.  I could spend a lifetime inhabiting that odd landscape.

Six minutes later, Kit pulled me through the Doris Cafe, where shaggy undergraduates served vegetarian specials and chilled bottles of Snapple.  On we went, through the door connecting Fox with Brown, and down the main staircase to Falvey Hall.  Descending the staircase in Brown is a lot like entering the Louvre through the glass pyramid:  overhead is all light and air, but below lies concrete possibility.

Text

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Commentary

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Meta-commentary

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Yugen Shock: Inklings of Uncertainty and Seven Implications for Your Child’s Higher Education

After a glance at yugen in mid-century America, this post explores the profound and often undisclosed consequences of economic decline on American colleges and universities today.  If you are the parent of a college-bound teen, please read carefully.  For more on yugen, scroll to the previous post.

yugen:  profound, mysterious, subtle (Romanized E.J./J.E. Dictionary, Taiseido:  1953).

Yugen entered American popular culture–as distinct from American higher education–through the efforts of the Beat Generation.  Pulitzer prize winning poet Gary Snyder and the late Zen master Philip Whalen have been key figures in popularizing Japanese aesthetics in the West.  In the hands of Whalen, Snyder and other Western pioneers of Zen, yugen lost its Muromachi decadence.  Especially as channeled through Snyder, the concept has been invigorated by a rugged, American individualism.  And, in his “deep ecology” one can hear faint echoes of xuan, the primal Chinese antecedent of yugen.

I first associated yugen with the state of contemporary colleges and universities after reading a series of headlines in The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 2, 2010).  Headlines share something of the compact intensity of poetry.  Hence, I have chosen to string these headlines together in free verse and then to take the seven stanzas as topics of discussion–with apologies to Snyder and his art.

the headline poem

Germany pursues

excellence

over

egalitarianism,

field of discord

at public colleges,

farming groups sow

i n f l u e n c e,

black colleges

see a need to improve

their      i m a g e,

we can end

t h r e a t s

to international students,

colleges

a t o p

gas-rich          shale

weigh offers

from

d

r

i

ll

ers,

American

higher education

may need            an u p g r a d e

to go global,

wrestling

with one             G O D

or another.

Looking for Yugen:  A-College Visiting You Go!

Summertime is a fine time to visit college campuses with your teenager.  My website provides metrics to aid in making a good match, along with suggestions for stuff that your son or daughter may want to count.  Any bookstore will carry volumes for planning a campus visit.  If your family vehicle lacks a GPS device, you can find directions on the college website, with links for avoiding congested interstates.  Armed with this abundance of information and encouragement, what could be lacking?

Lacking is the awareness of yugen, in its sense as an undercurrent of dissolution or decline.  Three years ago, parents of prospective students did not need an appreciation of the deep restructuring and retrenchment on most campuses. Today, it’s foolhardy not to watch for fault lines of financial stress behind the smiles of gracious admission officers.

The Great Recession, as some have called it, is not hurting institutions of higher education equally.  Colleges and universities are not marshaling identical strategies to offset shrinking endowments and cutbacks in government funding.  Although trends are beginning to appear, each board of regents (for public institutions) or trustees (for private schools) is making different hard choices.  The soundness of their decisions will influence the quality of your child’s undergraduate education.

We can let the stanzas of the headline poem serve as markers for the changes in American higher education.  I encourage parents to heed these markers.  As always, I encourage parents to take notes and photos during a campus tour and to ask more questions of admission officers than make your teen comfortable. If your teen is like most, s/he will prefer that you ask no questions and take no notes or photos.

The first stanza:  Germany pursues excellence over egalitarianism

As British philosopher Isaiah Berlin noted forty years ago, the Germans gave the world the modern research university.  To believe that German universities have consistently pursued an end other than excellence is to be a child playing in a sunlit garden:  it’s sweet and naive.  Sweetness and naivete are not desirable traits for a parent visiting a college.  Appropriate behavior for a parent during a college visit is congenial and pragmatic, but in this social role, allow pragmatism to trump congeniality.

Our first headline is remarkable only in treating the ordinary as the newsworthy.  For fans of cartoonist Wiley Miller (I am one), the novelty of the German pursuit of academic excellence is a case for the paunchy, bespectacled superhero, Obviousman.  I have seen many cases for Obviousman on campus tours.  The painstaking identification of a dining hall, a science lab, a fitness center and, yes, a bench in a sunny garden all deserve limning in Non Sequitur.  Equally obvious are the needs for a wired campus, for interlibrary loan, for an evening safety patrol and for student health services.

In your role as congenially pragmatic parent, probe the extent of touted campus features and services.  Ask about dead zones in the wi-fi coverage.  Basements in residence halls are often out of range, and they are also recreation spaces and laundry facilities.  Inquire into the screening of students who volunteer for the evening safety patrol.

When looking for yugen, ask an admission officer about hiring freezes and staff cuts in priority student services. Is there a hiring freeze at the student health center?  Have the hours of physicians or the number of psychologists been cut?  Alternately, has the size of the incoming class been increased, while services remain unchanged?  Don’t forget to explore transport and time to hospital emergency rooms–I’ve known more than one freshman to fall out of a tree and break an arm.

The second stanza:  field of discord:  farming groups sow influence

In a time of budget cuts, expect competing academic interests to vie for diminishing resources.  Most colleges and universities house centers for research (e.g., The Cousteau Center for Marine Sciences) and for interdisciplinary programs (e.g., The Tubman Center for African-American Studies).  Bringing students and faculty from multiple disciplines together with a common purpose, academic centers generate tremendous intellectual activity.  Sadly, across the land, they are becoming an endangered species, as regents and trustees push for retrenchment into traditional areas of inquiry.

Explore the status of a college’s academic centers during the Q/A at the end of the admission information session. Have academic centers recently been consolidated?  Are any academic centers scheduled for closure?  As an analogy that will not appear on the SAT, an academic center is to a college community as the canary is to the coal mine.  When one dies, everybody is in trouble.

You may also want to ask about new academic centers.  As this headline suggests, sustainability is more than a buzz word on many campuses.  However, is the “new” sustainability center really just the old barn down by the duck pond out beyond the tennis courts with a fresh coat of non-VOC paint and a sign of salvaged lumber? What is the center’s mission?  What events has the center sponsored in the past semester as partial fulfillment of its mission to the campus community?

The third stanza:  Black colleges see a need to improve their image

The historically Black colleges and universities facing financial difficulties are not alone in their struggle to attract strong students to their campuses.  Competition for the most qualified students has never been more fierce, and marketing is a hefty tool for student recruitment.  (Of course, if you were the University of Chicago, inundated with applicants after unsolicited publicity by the American President, you could gleefully scratch the marketing budget.)

That said, the calibre of the image management for a college or university need not correlate with the quality of its educational offerings. There are first-rate liberal arts colleges which have chosen not to spend a fortune on marketing (think:  Reed College, undergraduate alma mater of Snyder and Whalen).  Disturbingly, there are also the fourth-rate degree mills that spend the lion’s share of their tuition dollars on marketing.

Do not be won over by glossy viewbooks short on substance.  Viewbooks never contain the content of course catalogs, but inside their slick or thick or nubby covers, you can expect to find the institutional mission and a synopsis of the academic programs.  When in doubt about the general curriculum or the degree requirements of a major, ask for a copy of the catalog. (As once happened to me at Cooper Union, an admission officer may brusquely note that the catalog is available online.  I recommend asserting your interest in a print copy, to facilitate later comparisons across schools.)

Call me finicky, but I prefer that a student tour guide not be paid for trotting me around the campus (think, with kudos:  Dickinson College).  In this economic climate, paying tour guides wastes hours of professional staff time on the mechanics of compensating student employees. (The guides, themselves, earn a pittance.)  Admission officers should recruit and train volunteers to show visitors the highlights and hallmarks of their institution.

Voluntary tour guides usually make their status known, as a point of pride.  If you are fortunate to meet one, I suggest commending the guide’s ethic of service.  The smile on this young person’s face will make your tour memorable.

The fourth stanza:  we can end threats to international students

This could be another case for Obviousman.  Serious threats directed to international students as international students are hate crimes.  These offenses differ from, say, stealing the laptop of someone who happens to be an international student.  Stealing a laptop is a garden variety felony.

The FBI and campus security offices are required by law to collect and publish statistics on misdemeanors and felonies.  The same agencies are further required by law to collect and publish a separate category of hate crimes.  For off-campus crime statistics, contact the local police department or the FBI.  It is your right and responsibility as the parent of a prospective student to request statistics for misdemeanors, felonies and hate crimes on the campus.

Ask any admission officer for the latest campus crime statistics and for a description of crime prevention programs and practices at the college or university.

Among possible prevention responses, expect to find an emergency blue light program, an evening safety patrol, a rape awareness program, an alcohol reduction program, a qualified campus security force, and key cards for entering residence halls.  If the surrounding community has a high crime rate (think MIT, NYU), look for additional measures such as security guards and bag checks at entry points to college buildings.

Given the yugen sensibility on many campuses, it is wise to look into prevention program cutbacks and hiring freezes for security officers.  How much better it is to rely on volunteer tour guides than to cut positions in campus safety! (Not that any institution is publicly acknowledging this trade-off.)

The fifth stanza:  colleges atop oil-rich shale weigh offers from drillers

The Chron article bearing this headline focussed on a handful of colleges and one public university (Binghamton, the flagship of the SUNY schools), built above natural gas deposits.  New technologies now make possible the profitable exploitation of these natural resources.  Will geologically favored schools accept the lucre being offered in exchange for drilling leases?

In the narrow sense, it makes no immediate difference to your child’s education if a natural gas rig goes up on a college which s/he is not attending.  In the broader sense, pragmatic parents will recognize that the university is not an isolated ivory tower, as was once believed.  The drilling dilemma is symptomatic of the deeper issue of outside influences upon American higher education.

The ties of higher education to the federal government and to big business have grown strong in the last decade, especially in areas of national defense and intelligence.  These interests shape research and teaching in engineering and computer science, physics and biochemistry, communications and information science, foreign languages, criminology and forensics.  All three branches of the liberal arts–the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences, and the biological and natural sciences–are building active partnerships with national defense organizations.

[A Becker Aside:  To learn which universities received defense contracts in 2009, go to the website, www.governmentcontractswon.com/search.  Select the type of contract and input a name.  The defense contract page helpfully notes, “ TIP: partial names can be entered; for example, searching on the word tech will return a list of all contractor names containing the word tech.”

Following the tip, I typed “university,” clicked the link and generated 147 pages of names.  Among the five pages of universities that begin with the letter “A,” Auburn University in Alabama was the big winner last year.  Auburn netted 111 defense contracts totaling more than $32 million dollars.  Arizona State University in Tempe, where I once took a Chinese language course, garnered 88 contracts for eleven million dollars. I didn’t extend the exercise to colleges, but the comparison could be interesting.]

Defense and intelligence is not the only sector funding academic research.  Agribusiness, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, entertainment and media, and alcohol and tobacco routinely make grant monies available to faculty members.  In turn, faculty grant recipients create opportunities for their top undergraduate students, often in the form of summer research stipends, to collaborate in these studies.

To name an American college or university, public or private, that is more fiscally sound today than it was three years ago would be a Herculean undertaking.  From the cozy college next door to the state university that dwarfs a small town, endowments have shrunk–some by upwards of forty percent.  Pipelines to external funding have also contracted, but expect to see their salience increase relative to other income streams.

For an expose on “the corporate corruption of higher educations,” read Jennifer Washburn’s book, University, Inc, which has the quote as its subtitle (2005).  The abuses documented by Washburn are clear, but equally undeniable are the positive relationships between external funders and academic departments, which generate unbiased, valuable findings.  Collusion between funders and researchers is no different from corporate corruption or government fraud:  it exists; it is never the whole story, and responsible adults recognize the need to watch for it.

As the pragamtic parent of a college-bound child, keep in mind that many departments have money from the government and the private sector.  Be aware also that pipelines sometimes flow two directions:  as research money floods into the campus, well-trained graduates are funneled into jobs with the funding organizations.

Unless aiming for medicine, the law or academe itself, your son or daughter has a good chance of subsequently working for an organization that is on the recruiting list and/or the funding list of the school where s/he matriculates.  Undergraduates employed on externally funded research projects have an increased likelihood of working for the funding organization.  If those employment prospects disturb you, then encourage your son or daughter to continue the college search.  Not all institutions of higher education play the pipeline game in equal measure.  In general, major research universities are more serious pipeline players than the liberal arts colleges.

During a quiet moment, ask an admission officer to provide you with the names of the corporations and the government agencies that have:  1) recruited on campus in the past year, and 2) funded faculty research in the past three years.

Remember to take the business card of this individual and be prepared to leave an email address. The admission officer may need to contact the career center and the development office to obtain this information.  Follow-up with an email after one week of your campus visit, if you haven’t been contacted.

The sixth stanza:  American higher education may need an upgrade to go global

In yet another case for Obviousman, it should go without saying that American education is vastly more international today than at any point in the history of this nation.  More American citizens study abroad.  More foreign students enroll at American institutions–and at every level from the certificate programs of community colleges to the doctoral programs of premier research universities.  More faculty conduct research with colleagues abroad, and most fields of study now have international professional associations.  (For example, I am an occasional member of a rarified group called The International Visual Sociology Association.) With the deep disturbance of yugen, the latest trend in the globalization of American education is the international branch campus.

Global efforts are not fiscally equal.  There are international ventures that cost an institution money, as when a college converts “soft” scholarships into hard currency to support undergraduate study abroad (think, with smiles:  Drew University).  Other global connections are institutionally neutral.   Faculty sabbaticals overseas funded, for example, by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts fall in this group.  Again from an institutional perspective, there are two global money-makers:  international students and international branch campuses.  Neither source of the overseas money now flowing into US institutions of higher education is stable.

First are the wealthy international parents eager at this moment for their children to have an American education.  Two years from now, for still non-existent reasons, those parents may be unwilling to send their children back to America to study.  Domestic pressures may reduce the emigration of students, or another destination may become more attractive.  (Australia is becoming more attractive to East Asian families.)  Meanwhile, international students are a lucrative proposition for American schools.

Non-resident aliens are seldom eligible for financial aid.  A private university like NYU can earn 200 million dollars per annum from the tuition of its non-resident alien undergraduates and graduate students.  In a tough economy, it’s easy for a college or university to become dependent on the money that international students pay in full tuition.

As a pragmatic parent, you can determine the international tuition dollars at any accredited college or university.  (Other income, such as housing for internationals, is trickier to measure.)  The College Board provides the total number of students and the percent of non-resident aliens attending an institution, free of charge.  Multiply the percent non-resident by the total number to determine the number of international students.  Find the cost of tuition–also on the College Board site.  Multiply number of international students by cost of tuition, and, voila, you obtain my estimate for NYU or the school of your choice.

Second, there are the branch campuses sprouting across the globe.  Today, a student in Qatar can enroll at local campuses of Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown or Weill Medical College of Cornell.  (The Cornell connection saddens me, as this is my doctoral alma mater.)  Northwestern University is in Abu Dhabi, and NYU will be there this year.  In Dubai, students can chose between Rochester Institute of Technology and Michigan State, my husband’s undergraduate institution.  Globe-trotting Georgia Tech has outposts in China, France, Italy, Singapore and South Africa, with a campus in India opening soon.  This account is far from exhaustive, and the list of international branch campuses will continue to grow as long as the money continues to flow.

It is a safe bet that international branch campuses are operating in the black.  Material costs are subsidized, and operating costs are low.  Without regional accrediting bodies or guidelines from The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), overseas branches function in an unregulated environment.  Settings like Dubai Knowledge Village are, literally, educational free trade zones.  The preponderance of temporary and part-time appointments suppresses faculty salaries and benefits.  Student services are minimal; professional staff are few.

As long as costs are kept low and while tuition and enrollment at its international branch campus are high, the main US institution of higher education will benefit from the windfalls. Should the international branch fail–for reasons of geopolitics, mismanagement or another normal accident–the institution will stand to lose the unsecured portion of its investment.  Obviously, the inflow of overseas money to the main institution will dry up.

A university will identify international branches, if any, in its publicity.  The viewbook is a good place to begin.  However, you cannot glean sufficient data to calculate the profitability of a branch, and a private institution will not share proprietary information.  My guess is that the margins vary, being higher, for example, in the UAE than France.  Last time I checked, there were no educational free trade zones in Western Europe.

Finally, or rather, initially, there may be substantial inducements for American universities to open outposts in far-flung locations.  In one well-publicized case, the government of Abu Dhabi donated 50 million dollars to NYU before negotiating its branch campus.  In the financial short term, Auburn University, with those 111 defense contracts, could do better approaching Omar Saif Ghobash, the billionaire who brokered the NYU deal and who is the current UAE ambassador to Russia.  In his new post, Ghobash is backing Russian mega-corporation Gazprom in its bid to grab ‘distressed’ oil assets.  Meanwhile, NYU President John Sexton anticipates the flow of students and faculty between New York and Abu Dhabi.

International “earnest money,” especially Arab earnest money, is the latest source of external funding for American colleges and universities. Like tuition from non-resident aliens and windfalls from branches abroad, international donations are inherently unstable.  As more yugen, those one-time inducements entangle top administrators like John Sexton in webs of reciprocity that will be opaque, in the beginning, to almost everyone outside the funding culture.  (When can we expect to see a Ghobash Center for Arabic Studies in Washington Square?)

Pragmatic parents can review donations to the prospective colleges and universities of their children.  In a quiet moment or by phone, ask either an admission officer or a development officer for a copy of this year’s list of donors. The list usually appears in small print, organized by dollar amount, at the back of an annual alumni publication.  If you approach the admission officer, expect to wait a few days for the information to filter down.  Follow up with a phone call, if needed.

Once you have the list, check for contributions from foreign governments and overseas foundations–or, for that matter, any donor of concern to you.  Monies passed through US foundations and anonymous donations cannot be tracked.  The good news is that deep sleuthing should not be necessary.  The UAE donation to NYU was a transparent transaction, covered in The New York Times.

The seventh stanza:  wrestling with one God or another

Stephen Prothero, the author of the article bearing this title and of the book God is Not One (2010), is an interesting person.  This is not to say that I like or agree with him.  Not knowing the man personally, I don’t like or dislike him.  Not being a scholar of religion, I won’t take a public stand for or against his arguments.  However, as a woman concerned with excellence in higher education, I find Prothero interesting, and, as any faculty member will tell you, interesting is an educational asset.

In a time of budget cuts, program closings, hiring freezes, hate crimes, influence peddling and dubious overseas ventures, Americans need to return to what is urgent and profound in higher education:  to the yugen of learning. And, used here,  I mean yugen in its early Chinese and later American connotations, as that which is profound.  Prothero challenges us and our undergraduates to ponder the big mysteries:  the scope of the universe, the origins of life, the nature of justice, the reality of God.  For Prothero, as for Snyder and Whalen, it is only in wrestling with the big mysteries that we grow into our full humanity.

He observes, “Of course we are born human beings, but only in the most trivial sense.  Often our humanity lies ahead of us–an achievement rather than an inheritance, and a far-from-trivial achievement at that.”

Could there be a more sublime purpose for higher education than the achievement of full humanity?  On your next campus visit–between watching out for symptoms of economic decline–look also for signs of intellectual vitality.  Only a vital academic community will encourage your son or daughter to emerge into mindful adulthood.  Even in this time of retrenchment, havens of profound learning await the parent and the child who make the effort to reach them.

cheers to good college visiting,

dkb

Yugen Normal: Sarai-ya Goyou Ends Today!

Occasionally, unrelated incidents collide in novel insight.  One such moment of clarity occurred recently to me.  Late one Monday night, I got caught up watching a Japanese cartoon.  Early the next morning, the weekly edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education (July 2, 2010) arrived in the mailbox.  (Yes, I am so old-fashioned that I prefer my news in print.) I studied the headlines on the front page and in the international supplement.  My insight took shape around the word, yugen.

I separate my thoughts on yugen into two, linked posts.  Here, in “Yugen Normal,” I trace the development of the concept and consider its presence in my Monday night cartoon.  This post is for readers like myself:  adults conversant with J-pop, who have an interest in East Asian history and contemporary Japanese cultural imperialism.

The second post, “Yugen Shock,” transplants the concept into the unlikely ground of American higher education.  A hint of aesthetic play persists, but the tone grows suggestive and dark, like yugen itself.  “Y-Shock” is a primer for parents of high school students, who are embarking on campus visits this summer.  In its seven stanzas, I offer recommendations for identifying collegiate economic decline.

Whence Cometh the Darkness?

Yugen belongs to the realm of East Asian aesthetics.  Its translation is a precariously aerial undertaking:  the soaring, dipping, darting meanings are tied to historic and discursive contexts much like a wind-tossed kite is tethered to the hand that holds the string. The origins of yugen–like the origins of paper kites–lie in ancient China.

A distinctly Japanese word, yugen is composed of two kanji (idiographic characters), borrowed–as are all kanji–from Chinese writing.  In Chinese, these characters are yu (deep, occult) and xuan (profound); they are not combined in common usage.  However, the second word, xuan, shows up in intriguing phrases.  For example, set before the character for “learning” (Chinese:  xue; Japanese:  gaku/manabu), xuan means “metaphysics.”

In conjunction with the character for “gate” (Chinese: men; Japanese: mon/kado), xuan represents the occult practice that began in the third century BCE and which we in the West call Taosim. (Tao is a different character, meaning “path, way,” and pronounced do or michi in Japanese.) I have a hunch that xuan entered the language during the Xia Period (2100 – 1800 BCE), when tribal shaman-kings rode dragons in the spirit world, gleaning the wisdom to guide their people.  Even by Chinese standards, this is an ancient word, with undertones of primal power.

Let us fast-forward three millennia from mythical Chinese dragon lords to the historic Japanese period known as the Muromachi (1336 – 1573 CE).  On the opposite side of the Eurasian continent, the Avignon Papacy was dividing Roman Catholic loyalties.  In the Japanese archipelago, two rival imperial courts, the Northern and the Southern, vied for titular headship.  One could argue that the Northern Court prevailed, because the present emperor, Akihito, descends from this line.

In their elegant capital of Kyoto, the Northern emperors depended upon the support of the Ashikaga shogun (military rulers).  Unlike the Kamakura before them or the Tokugawa who followed, the Ashikaga never wielded complete civil and military control.  Even within the Northern empire, provincial feudal lords (daimyo) exercised relative autonomy over their domains, their peasants and their samurai warriors.

Military commanders in a period of  great unrest, the Ashikaga shogun preferred the pleasurable pursuit of the performing arts, and of young male performers.  The latter practice was known euphemistically as “the way of adolescent boys,” or wakashudo.  (The last Japanese syllable is the Chinese tao.)

In the year 1374 CE, the third Ashikaga shogun, Yoshimitsu, accepted the son of a theatrical family as a gift from his father.  Two decades later, he pacified the Southern troops and reunited the Court.  History remembers Yoshimitsu for his martial skills, not his pederasty.  The boy in question was Zeami Motokiyo (c.1363 – c.1443), and he grew up to become the founder of Noh, the most refined of Japanese performing arts.

No record reveals how repeated sexual abuse by a dissolute and powerful man at the young age of a contemporary middle school student warped Zeami.  We know that as an adult playwright and actor, he placed yugen–the dark, the unnamed–at the heart of his aesthetic.  Noh audiences appreciate that the face of the principal actor (shite) is hidden always behind a mask.

By bringing yugen into a central position in his stagecraft, Zeami was doing more than playing with nature metaphors of loss.  He did play with nature metaphors–the bleaker, the better.  As any source on this subject will relay, the sun setting behind a mountain or a boat passing behind an island revealed to Zeami the transitoriness of existence.  (Of course, the transitoriness of existence was a familiar Buddhist theme of the period, but in the writings of Zeami, it acquires a distinctive quality, the exploration of which is beyond the scope of this post.)

This yugen of the masked performer and the sere metaphor is far removed from the xuan of the archaic shaman.  Theatrical props and literary tropes operate as purely aesthetic devices.  In contrast, and embedded in their cultural contexts, mystery rites preserve the commonweal.  One sublimates the pain of living; the other restores harmony and balance to the world.  Sadly, Zeami’s really was a social milieu beyond restoration or reconciliation.  The boy who was given as a sexual plaything to an overlord became the grand master of a sublime escapism.

By the end of the Muromachi, Zeami’s legacy of yugen had penetrated the traditional arts of the tea ceremony, flower arranging, calligraphy and brush painting.  And today, the shadow of yugen has not vanished from Japan, despite the massive social and economic transformations of five centuries.  Beneath the surface optimism of a culture madly in love with Hello Kitty, the darkness pulses.  To glimpse its popular manifestation, do as I did on a recent Monday night.  Log onto www.animeboy.org and, if you are over the age of eighteen years, check out Sarai-ya Goyou (House of Five Leaves).

Sayonara, “Sarai-ya Goyou”

Like other anime, Sarai-ya Goyou (House of Five Leaves) began as a graphic novel (manga), serialized, in this case, in the magazine, Ikki.  Written and illustrated by 33 year-old Ono Natsume, the serial began in 2006.  It will conclude in the September issue of the magazine, which is scheduled for Japanese release today, July 24, 2010 CE.

The ending of Goyou should not to be taken as a sign of declining audience interest, as is the cancellation of an English-language, American television series.  Manga and anime are often developed with a complete story arc.  In this regard and in their reliance upon tired narrative conventions, these J-pop products resemble the Latin American soap operas called las telenovelas.

The print episodes of Goyou have been collected into seven volumes, available in English through San Francisco-based VIZ Media, LLC. This firm is the American subsidiary of a huge Japanese publishing conglomerate.  Manglobe, another major player in the arena of J-pop production, provides the animated version. Big business is backing Ono, and Goyou is neither underground graphic novel nor indie anime.

Ono sets her story in the last years of the Tokugawa Period (1603 – 1868 CE), a time of social and economic dislocation greater even than the early years of the Muromachi.  Two and a half centuries of peace, taxation and costly ritual obligations to the shogun have impoverished the warrior caste. To keep their floundering households afloat, daimyo have resorted to releasing samurai retainers from service.

That step–the release of warrior retainers–was, and is without parallel.  For a samurai to be expelled from service should not be compared, for example, to an emerging manga artist losing a contract in today’s global economy.  The Tokugawa had cut off social mobility and shut down international contact more ruthlessly than any regime in world history. The son of a late Tokugawa warrior household did not ponder his occupational choices.  The boy knew that he would grow up to serve his lord, who, in turn, would provide for him.

When abruptly dispossessed of their feudal rank and privileges, many ronin (masterless warriors) wandered the countryside, aimless and mentally unhinged.  Some found work as bodyguards (yojimbo) for the merchant houses that burgeoned at this time.  Others swallowed their pride, hung up their swords and tried their hands at manual labor.  But, a man trained from birth in the martial arts lacks the brute strength of a construction worker.  Many ronin failed as farmers and day laborers.

Ono’s protagonist, Akitsu Masanosuke, is a clumsy, bumbling ronin with a hang-dog expression: a grown-up Charlie Brown with a long nose.  Masa has made his way to Edo (the current Tokyo), where he wanders the poorer neighborhoods in search of food, shelter, work and the meaning of life.  It is not long before the hapless fellow falls in with Yaichi, a mysterious, pale figure who is a bit like Robin Hood and a lot like Hannibal Lecter.  In an uncharacteristic moment of disclosure, the cold-blooded Ichi finds Masa to be “not boring.”

Lonely and friendless in the big city, Masa becomes ever more entangled with Ichi and his little band of thieves, the Five Leaves of the title.  To be precise, the Five Leaves are not thieves.  They are kidnappers, and their victims are often unsuspecting boys, who are held, drugged and bound, until their parents pay the ransom.

The tension of psychological ambivalence draws the viewer into the underworld of the storyline.  Will Masa muster the will to flee his new comrades?  Will he succumb to Ichi’s machinations?  What is Ichi’s real interest in Masa?  Will either man escape the malaise of his existence?  Is death–of a child victim, of Masa, of Ichi–the inevitable outcome?  Stay tuned to find out.

Goyou fits into the seinen subgenre of manga and anime, targeted at young adult men. (Common wisdom holds that Japanese women do not enjoy such degraded subject matter, although at least one composes it without apparent damage.) The period setting links the work to chanbara, the samurai films which peaked in popularity during the Seventies.

However, with an ambience as brooding as a Forties film noir, Ono’s opus oozes yugen.  The kidnapping plots are disturbing; the settings of brothels and cheap dives are depressing.  The interiors are dim; the staircases are narrow.  The howling of unseen dogs echoes through alleys.  The back stories are fraught with tragedy.

Line work on the character animation is rough and sketchy, appearing rougher and sketchier against blurred backgrounds.  The faces are unattractive:  haggard, jaded, morose, and a dozen other cheerless adjectives.  Every episode seems to contain images of clouds covering the moon, of dead leaves drifting down, of distorted reflections in a river.

There is the occasional ray of light, if not hope. For example, when another gang is hired by a barren woman to murder the illegitimate son of her husband, the leader feigns the child’s death rather than kill an innocent.  But, the child cannot return home, and his best option is to take up with his kidnappers and descend into a life of crime.  There is the rare touch of kawaii (cuteness), as in the scenes with a tabby cat sitting in a sunlit doorway, half listening to Masa’s self-pitying soliloquies.

However, the light and the cute do not begin to balance the dark and the dreary.  Sarai-ya Goyou is a study in the inevitability of economic collapse, social deterioration and moral decay.  A work of historical fiction, it is an eerie reflection of contemporary Japan as described by Tomiko Yoda, “an imploding economic system, a disintegrating social order, and the virtual absence of ethical or competent leadership” (in Napier, 2005:  xvi).  Finally, The House of Five Leaves is intended–by author/illustrator Ono, by the editors at Ikki, by the animation firm of Manglobe, and by American distributor VIZ Media–to be fun.  Only in a culture of yugen is this cartoon fun.

not cheering,

dkb

College Deadlines: Two Days and Counting

Today is the 28th day of April.  Your daughter or son must select one, and only one college in two days.  If s/he hasn’t yet made a choice, then this may be a sickeningly tense time in your home.  Here are five tips from Becker Academic, LLC, to help your child make a sensible decision in the next forty-eight hours.

Step One/Right Now:  Narrow the Field

Teens, parents:  Take a moment to breathe and focus your attention.  Inhale, exhale.  This is an important decision, but it is not a multiple choice test.  There may be–and very likely is–more than one right answer.

Look over the candidate colleges that are still in the running.  Should your child find more than three, encourage her/him to toss out the forth-, fifth-, sixth-place possibilities. There are not six number-one favorite colleges.  Three is a manageable number from which to make a choice.  Encourage selection of those three options.  Now.

Step Two/Five minutes from now:  Predict Student Indebtedness

Review the financial aid packages for the top three options.  Which ones include student loans?  What are the different dollar amounts of the loans?  If you multiply by four and add ten percent for escalating costs, what debt load will your child be carrying at the end of four years?  Discuss the implications of graduating with a debt, for which payments will begin nine months after your child is no longer a full-time student.

We at Becker Academic, LLC, recommend that an undergraduate not acquire more debt than the price that s/he would reasonably pay for a car in the first year after graduation.  The key word is ‘reasonably.’  For a teen who plans to major in electrical engineering, that debt could match the sticker price for a Lexus ISC-10 3.5-Liter V-6 convertible.  If your child wants to become a freelance journalist based in Paris, s/he should keep the student loan debt in the range of the Smart Fortwo Pure coupe.  (There are plenty of Smart cars in the alleys of the Marais.)  Should your child have no career plans at this stage, keep the level of indebtedness on the lower end of the automotive scale.

Step Three/Tonight or Tomorrow Night:  Assess Departmental Balance

To do this exercise, you will need access to the Internet.  Most public libraries have personal computers (PCs) for use at no charge, along with staff to assist you in the basics of PC operation.

For teens who have a prospective major, do the exercise for the respective academic departments of the two or three schools.  Otherwise, have your child select her/his preferred division within the liberal arts:

the Humanities (e.g., English, history, modern languages and literatures, mathematics, philosophy)

the Social Sciences (e.g., anthropology, criminology, economics, political science, psychology, sociology)

the Life and Natural Sciences (e.g., astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, physics)

For those students without a prospective major, use the department of English for Humanities preferences, economics for social science preferences, and biology for life and natural science preferences.  English, economics, and biology tend to be the largest departments within their divisions, and if these departments are lacking in faculty balance, then the smaller departments are unlikely to be better.

Divide a spreadsheet or a sheet of paper into five columns, with the headings:  College Name, Full Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor and Other.  “Other” includes adjunct faculty, visiting faculty, instructors and faculty emeritii (retired).  These are the four categories of faculty rank that you will be considering.

Create a table with as many rows as there are colleges to consider, either two or three.

For each college, locate the official institutional website. (Hint:  the last four characters will be “.edu”.)  From the college homepage, click “academics” (usually in small print on the tool bar), then click “departments.”  Once you have found the list of departments, select the one that you will use for the exercise.  Within the department link, select “faculty.”

At this point, you should see a list of the current faculty in the department.  Sometimes there will be thumbnail photographs.  There may also be links to the webpages of the individual faculty members.

You want to identify the rank of each member of the department.  If you are fortunate, the ranks will be listed under or beside the names of the faculty.  If the college is less obliging, you may have to click on the individual webpages.  A rare few institutions do not rank faculty, in which case, you are welcome to call us and we’ll talk you through another option.

Place a “tick” mark in the cell of the table that corresponds to the rank of each member of the faculty for the first college.  Tally the marks:  e.g., 3 full professors, 4 associate professors, 2 assistant professors, 1 other.

Repeat the exercise for the other candidate colleges.

Compare your results.  You are looking for balance, rather than size.  A balanced department will have similar numbers of faculty in the three main categories and fewer numbers in the “other” category.  Ideally, the numbers will peak in the middle, at the associate level, because this is often the most productive stage of a faculty member’s career.

Departmental balance contributes to the mentoring of undergraduate students.  Mentoring includes providing opportunities to participate in research, to pursue internships, and to conduct independent study.  It extends to assisting the undergraduate with presentations at professional conferences and with courses approved for the major in study abroad programs.

Step Four/Tomorrow:  Consider Current Student Satisfaction

For the fourth step, your child needs to take the leading role.  S/he should telephone the admission offices of each candidate institution, identify herself/himself and ask to be put in contact with several current students.  If s/he has a proposed major, then students in that major are optimal contacts.

By cell phone, text, tweet or archaic email, your child can reach out to current students to explore key academic  issues, along with the social, athletic and extracurricular concerns that s/he may have.

Discuss the results of these exchanges with your child.

Here are a few sample questions, which are, alas, too long to tweet:

How often in a typical semester do you meet with your faculty advisor?

What topics do you discuss with your advisor in these meetings?

Are you or any of your friends doing research with faculty? What’s it like?

Can you describe the research project done by you or a friend who has received a summer stipend?

How have you handled difficulties enrolling in courses of your choice?

Step Five/For the Duration:  Resist Institutional Outreach

Every year, selective colleges and universities make stronger efforts to attract the high school students whom they have admitted.  The headline on the latest issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (April 30) reads, “The Sweet and Subtle Science of Wooing the Admitted.”  Among your remaining parental responsibilities before your child’s high school graduation is encouraging a realistic appraisal of these institutional efforts at outreach.

If not exactly science, enrollment management is certainly big business.  In tough economic times, all colleges and universities–and their nicely compensated enrollment managers–are striving to increase their yields.  The “yield” is the proportion of admitted students who elect to attend the institution.

There is an arsenal of tactics to increase yield.  They range from receiving a friendly phone call from your child’s regional admission counselor to having your daughter discover the red rose left by local alumnae on the hood of her car. (I did not make up that example, and the recipient of the rose was a young woman.)

Encourage your child not to be swayed by these tactics–although s/he is certainly welcome to keep the rose. Focus decision-making on the cost and the value of the options for higher education.  Help your child grasp that her/his undergraduate years will center upon strong, positive relationships with the women and men of the faculty, not with the smiling faces in The Office of Admission.

. . . . .

As a last bit of advice for a stressful week, remember to breathe deeply.  And, don’t forget to celebrate together this weekend as a family!

cheering good choices,

dkb

Money Matters: Tax Returns, College Costs, and the EFC

Okay.  Exhale.  April 15th was last week.  This Monday marks a new beginning, with 361 rich days to enjoy before the next hazing ritual of tax returns. There are few experiences that I detest more, despite the ease of online filing and electronic transfers.  Couldn’t I replace the tax nightmare for just one year with a nice trip to the endodontist?

If you are a parent with a child entering college next fall, the month of April can be worse than a double root canal.  Along with the tax mess, there comes the final selection of a college.  By May first, your teen needs to make a decision that will shape her life choices and life chances.  Before that date, you must decide if you can support her choice by fulfilling your Expected Family Contribution (EFC) to her dream school.  The two decisions are linked, and now that the offers of admission have been made, financial aid often become paramount.

At Becker Academic, LLC, we are not financial advisors.  However, our eight years of experience as educational sociologists have given us solid insights into the realm of EFCs and their appropriate role in college selection.  Here’s our quick take on seven aspects of the subject.  If you have other questions, send us an email and we’ll do our best to provide an answer or a suitable referral.

1.  What is the EFC?

The Expected Family Contribution is the dollar amount that parents/guardians are asked to make toward the annual cost of the child attending an institution of higher education.  The EFC will vary from year to year, depending:  1) on fluctuations in household income, 2) on the number of children currently attending college–but not including graduate school, and 3) on changes in the mathematical formula that the college or university uses to calculate the EFC.

2.  How is the EFC calculated?

Colleges and universities may use one of two options for assessing the EFC.  The first relies on a federal methodology and uses information that you provided on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).  The second inputs data provided by you to CSS Profile into parameters established by the individual institutions of higher education.  This second approach is sometimes called ‘the institutional methodology.”  Because the parameters for institutional methodologies differ, the dollar amounts of the EFCs for a student to attend different colleges seldom match.

3.  Why is there a huge range in the EFCs?

The EFCs of different schools can vary dramatically for a single family.  We often see variations that exceed ten thousand dollars.  When the difference in the EFC of two schools is relatively large, factors other than the institutional parameters are probably coming into play.  In these cases, check the college websites to determine whether the institutions are “need blind” and then see if their financial packages include merit aid.

4. What’s the significance of “need blind” admissions?

“Need blind” colleges and universities purport to make their admission decisions fully independent of the financial need of applicants.  Most schools making this claim abide by it.  However, if admission decisions and financial aid decisions are made in a single office at the college, full independence cannot be guaranteed, regardless of the claim.

Institutions that are not need blind may offer the disclaimer that they “do not meet full demonstrated need.”  A college or university that does not meet the full demonstrated need of all applicants, as determined by its institutional parameters, is free to entice select students with greater financial incentives.

5.  Should I be concerned if a non-need blind college offers my child a great package?

Yes.  You should be concerned that this marvelous offer may be a one-time deal.  When the college is meeting full demonstrated need for all, its EFC will not change much from one year to the next, so long as your family situation remains the same.  Any institution that does not guarantee to meet the full demonstrated need of all students can use financial aid as an inducement to attract newcomers and then lower the aid substantially once the students have acculturated to the institution.

6.  What about merit aid?

Merit aid is awarded for accomplishments or contributions that your child has made and/or can reasonably be expected to make to the college community.  Scholarships are the common form of merit aid, and they may be awarded by the institution or another organization.  Most scholarships are institutional, and the great majority are for academic merit.  You can also find scholarships for leadership, service and artistic pursuits.  (Athletic scholarships are a special category of merit aid, which relies upon direct student recruitment.)

Be sure to determine whether the merit aid will continue throughout the undergraduate career, assuming the student meets stated conditions (e.g., maintaining a specified grade point average).

6.  The EFC at my child’s dream school is totally unreasonable. What can I do?

First, determine whether the institution meets full demonstrated need for all students.  If it does, then you have the sole option of trying to negotiate an increase in merit aid.  Some admission officers have a small discretionary fund in the less familiar merit categories of leadership and service.  Review your child’s resume for possibly overlooked accomplishments in these areas.  Explore these possibilities in a conversation with the director of admissions–not with the admissions counselor for your region.

If the institution is not need-blind, then you have additional options when opening a dialogue with the director of admissions.  You can, for example, point to the more attractive offers that your child has received from competing colleges and ask whether the target school will meet the best offer.  Several outstanding institutions state plainly that they will match any offer from a college or university of comparable calibre.  Many schools are willing to consider the matter, although they do not make a public pronouncement to this effect.  In short, try bargaining! (But, remember the warning about continued funding.)

7.  The EFC at my child’s dream school is still totally unreasonable.  Now what do I do?

You have several options remaining.  You can ask the director of financial aid at the target institution to review your EFC.  (Processing errors do occur.)  You can meet with your financial advisor for suggestions about bridging the gap between the EFC and reality.  You can conduct a family discussion to explain the financial shortfall and to explore making good choices under constrained circumstances.  If you and your child have conducted a comprehensive college search, then other schools on her list will have made acceptable offers.  If there are no acceptable offers, consider the colleges with rolling admission deadlines, because these schools may still have openings and funds for the fall of 2010.

Read my next post for hints to help your child understand that our dreams come true in different ways and in different places.

Cheers to solvency,

dkb

America Ferrera and The Art Students: Now-ism v. Career Planning

The Ending of Ugly Betty

I read the celebrity gossip in the Baltimore Sun while eating lunch today.  Celebrity gossip not a guilty pleasure with me.  I never know when facts about Johnny Depp (he still likes working with Tim Burton) or Jessica Simpson (she’ll be eating fried cockroaches on her new television show) will be useful in my work with the student-clients here at Becker Academic.   Today’s headline from the world of the rich and famous is the cancellation of ABC’s Ugly Betty.

I’ll miss the show, although my viewing loyalty has lapsed.  I continue to admire America Ferrera, and I have liked knowing that she was there to amuse me on a dreary Thursday night or, in this fourth season, on a dull Friday night.  However, after ABC bumped Betty to Wednesdays, I stopped watching.  That’s Ghost Hunters night, and nothing short of a major crisis interferes with my seeing Jason, Grant and the gang.

On the subject of coming to terms with her show’s cancellation, Ferrera reportedly told somebody at Parade, “I haven’t really started going there yet because I still have four episodes to shoot.”  I read the sentence a couple times.  To understand it, I shoved aside the grilled cheese sandwich.  It hadn’t been tasting very good anyhow, since I learned about Jessica and the cockroaches.

Ferrera strikes me as a practical actor, who has chosen roles which allow her considerable talent to shine.  As the character of Carmen Lowell, she was the dramatic heavy-hitter of the 2005 Warner Brothers film, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  For her performance in Betty, she won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a SAG award, all in the year of 2007.  The US House of Representatives has honored Ferrera for being a role model to Hispanic youth.  In my opinion, she’s a role model for teens of all ethnicities and races.

Should I be surprised that an ambitious, accomplished young woman isn’t trying to grasp the dramatic changes that will soon confront her?  I’d like to answer in the affirmative–I think that highly of Ferrera, but honestly, I am not surprised.  Despite her intelligence and experience, Ferrera is not immune to the social pressures that are contracting the temporal horizons of all Americans.  These pressures dominate contemporary life, but nowhere are their effects felt more keenly than among youth and emerging adults.  I refer to the collective and systemic social pressures to orient oneself in the immediacy of the moment as nowism.

Ferrera can afford a momentary indulgence in nowism better than most emerging adults.  I don’t know her net worth, but it’s no secret that for her services as spokesmodel of Aquafresh White Trays, Lloyd’s of London has insured her smile for ten million dollars.  (For a celeb comparison, consider that the derriere of Jennifer Lopez is insured for 27 million dollars.)  Ferrera can be out of work awhile before she’ll need to apply for food stamps.

Commencing Life after Art School

I am less sanguine about the futures of the graduating seniors who served on a student panel last Sunday at one of our nation’s premier art institutes.  The event for prospective students had the usual opportunities to hear firsthand about the institution from its admissions officers, faculty and current undegraduates.  There were the typical tours, the information tables, the tasteful buffet (sans fried cockroaches).

Fifteen minutes after the appointed hour, four young people crossed the auditorium stage and glanced nervously at one another before sitting on the bare boards.  Two young men and the lone young woman dangled their legs off the side of the stage; the last student wrapped his arms around bent knees.  No one had bothered to provide chairs for the panelists.  Below her school t-shirt and boyfriend sweater, the woman wore a black mini-skirt and leggings.  Sitting on the stage boards in front of an audience made her uncomfortable.

“We don’t have chairs,” she said softly to the admissions counselor who joined them late.

Responding with silence, this particular admissions counselor–the third such youthful, stylish woman to appear during the open house–dragged a stool from the podium to center stage.  She wriggled her white pencil skirt onto the stool and smiled down at the students.  Shaking shoulder-length copper hair in a self-consciously sexy way, she stared out at a vacant seat in the dark auditorium and identified herself and her position. She then asked the student panelists to state their names, years in the program and major fields of study.  They obliged; I will preserve their anonymity.

Unbeknownst to them, the three seniors and one sophomore on the panel may have been chosen for demographic traits instead of artistic accomplishments.  Along with her gender, the young woman represented the Asian-American student population.  Dressed in black, the man sitting cross-legged on the stage boards was a Chicano from Los Angeles.  He, too, was doing double demographic duty:  for ethnicity and regional diversity.  Obligingly wearing college t-shirts like the co-ed, the other two men were non-Hispanic Caucasians.  The older had the inflections and mannerisms stereotypical of young gays.  His presentation of self lent an institutional air of alliance with GLBT individuals.  The sophomore panelist was the token “majority” student:  white, male, presumably heterosexual.  He reminded me of a young Jack Black–talented, funny, and far more inclined to take on the world than to worry about his appearance.

After the formalities, the admissions officer brushed a handful of henna hair over her right shoulder and returned her gaze to the same vacant seat.  In her last official gesture of day, she posed a question to the room.

“Now that you know who they are, what do you want to ask them?”

This was not what I had been expecting from a student panel, but it was a grand opportunity to ask the three seniors about their plans after graduation.  Because the month was (and is) February, I did not expect job offers to have been made and accepted.  I was looking for a sense of practical direction to the students’ lives after art school.  I was hoping that these promising young artists were managing to beat the odds of succumbing to nowism.  Given the power of the present moment upon the youth of this nation, the panelists would need considerable guidance.

The seniors spoke with confidence about their futures.  The first, the fine artist in the trio, planned to work in a major museum until succeeding as a painter.  This student had not yet submitted resumes to non-profit art organizations.  The second, an illustrator, planned to relocate to New York, pick up freelance work and eventually attend a graduate program.  The middle student had made no professional contacts in the world’s most competitive commercial art market.  The third, a video documentarian, planned to continue working on the senior project after graduation, sustained by grant monies for travel, production costs and living expenses.  The last student had not begun to investigate granting sources.

Commencement at the art institute was three months away, longer than Ferrera has until her show winds down, but not time to initiate a launch into independent living.  If they’re fortunate, the parents of the artist, the illustrator and the videographer will allow them to move back into their childhood bedrooms, rent free.  If not, well…I suppose there are still a few job openings for restaurant servers and taxi drivers even in a bad economy.

I was not the only mature adult in the audience to be disturbed by the pronouncements of plans that ranged from unlikely to unrealistic.  A middle-aged man followed up with a question about career counseling services at the art institute.  His question went straight to the heart of the matter of student preparedness for life after college.  I turned in my seat identify the interlocutor.

Indeed, the art institute offered career counseling.  The aspiring curator cum famous artist described the friendliness of a career counselor.  Whether there was more than one such staffer remained unclear.  This career counselor–no doubt attractive and fashion-forward like her colleagues in admissions–knew the senior artist by name.  The two often greeted one another with small talk and smiles in the hallway.  The illustrator and the videographer concurred on the pleasantness of this career counselor.

The man who posed the question raised his eyebrows and met my glance across a row of empty seats.  We understood the thoughts of each other.  An Aquafresh white smile and a sunny disposition were not crucial factors in career planning.  For our money, competent job performance trumped social niceties.  There was, however, nothing to be gained from telling the articulate seniors that their undergraduate institution was failing them.

Here’s my tip for the week.  Unless your monetary assets match those of America Ferrera,  scrutinize the resources at the career counseling office of each college on your list of candidate institutions.  You’ll need more than competence in your area of undergraduate study and a ten million dollar smile to prepare for emerging adulthood.

And, as my last advice of the day, skip the fried cockroaches,

dkb

Prognostications: Groundhog Day and the College Class of 2013

It’s a heady week at my house.  Two events of annual importance are upon us.  First, and better known, is Groundhog Day, February 2, which is tomorrow.  Second but worthy of no less weighty consideration is the appearance in The Chronicle of Higher Education (January 29 issue) of the latest poll of first-year American college students, conducted annually by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), UCLA.

Groundhog Day

I’m sad to say that I’m missing the events surrounding Punxsutawney Phil’s annual predication of continuing wintery weather.  The Official Website of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club lists a bevy of rollicking, rodent-related activities. There are horse-drawn carriage rides around the eponymous Pennsylvania hamlet and opportunities to paint a souvenir ceramic groundhog in the community center.  Tonight, there’s a town banquet, featuring Stephen Tobolowsky, the actor who played uber-nerd Ned Ryerson in the 1993 movie, Groundhog Day.

For those of us who won’t be joining Stephen/Ned and the crowd gathering around 4:00 a.m. at Gobblers Knob, Phil’s prediction is available as a text to our mobile devices.  We stay-at-homers are also welcome to watch the live webcast of Phil and his Inner Circle handlers in their top hats.  If you oversleep until 8:00 a.m., you can catch the fun on YouTube.

It wasn’t always this way.  North American winter weather prognostication has roots in the Celtic celebration of Imbolc, the midway point between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox.  In old Europe, badgers or snakes were the weather seers of choice.  Maybe the Pennsylvanians turned to groundhogs after they hunted badgers to the point of extirpation.  Anyhow, it’s been groundhogs up there in Pennsylvania Dutch country for the last one hundred and fourteen years.

Here in suburban Baltimore, twenty miles below the Mason-Dixon line, I’m tired of shoveling the white stuff.  I hope the pudgy fellow fails to see his shadow.  I want him to waddle right out the wooden door of his tree stump (it looks like the house of the Keebler elves), sniff the air and take a fine, early morning stroll around the green.  However, if he’s a smart marmot, he’ll stay snug in his stump.  He’ll ignore the booming fireworks, the flashing cameras and the tens of thousands of humans stomping their frozen feet on the snow-covered lawn at Gobbler’s Knob.  Why don’t they give the little guy a bit of peace and quiet to do his prognosticating?

I sought an estimate of the US population of groundhogs (Marmota monax) to no avail.  Apparently, nobody’s counting, but common wisdom holds that their numbers are up since Europeans invaded the continent.  Apparently, environmental degradation and predator destruction have benefited marmots.  Of course, any position has its opponents.  A handful of varmint hunters in Virginia have been complaining that non-native coyotes are killing groundhogs in record numbers.  For its part, the US Fish and Wildlife Service is more concerned with preserving the population of lake sturgeon in the Groundhog River than with the well-being of actual groundhogs.

A Statistical Profile of College Freshman, Fall 2009

I’m sadder to say that Americans seem to be giving more attention to the predictive propensities of an aggressive rodent than to the UCLA Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) profile of the college class of 2013.  Despite the lack of public enthusiasm, it’s a significant study.  The Chronicle of Higher Education reported the data without commentary, but I’ll offer interpretations for a few salient findings, which–you’ll be relieved to learn–I will neither text to your mobile device nor upload to YouTube.

A college education in the US costs far more than in Canada, Europe or Japan, and funding is understandably important to first year students.  For an untold number of American college students, financial hardship is a daily reality.  It is also the most common reason given for discontinuing higher education.  That said, it is surprising to me that two-thirds (66.7%) of the 2009 HERI respondents said that they were concerned about financing their education.  Moreover, this proportion is virtually unchanged since 2004, when 65.5% of respondents expressed the same concern.  In other words, America may be in a recession, but teenage worries about money for college developed before the current downturn.

Student concern about money for college has little connection to parental employment status.  For example, the percentage of unemployed fathers among first year students increased from 2.5% to 4.5% in the five years between ’04 to ‘09, hitting an all-time high for a HERI study. However, when compared to the national December 2009 unemployment rate of ten percent, college students come from comparatively secure households.

Another measure of financial security is the self-report of estimated parental income.  Fully seventy percent of HERI respondents answered that their annual, natal household income was equal to or greater than $50,000 US.  Self-report items lack the reliability of objective IRS figures or census data.  However, allowing for a degree of exaggeration, it is likely that the median income for families of first-year college students exceeds the 2007 US median household income of $50,740.

In sum, two out of three first-year college students report worrying about college costs, but only one in twenty has an unemployed father while seven in ten students come from families with incomes above the midpoint for American households.  These findings lend support for a phenomenon that I have observed in my work with student-clients.  In the spirit of this week, I’ll call it the “groundhog forecast.”

The groundhog forecast bears no relation to objective financial exigency.  It is the offer by a student not to take advantage of an educational opportunity solely in order to spare his/her parents an expense which they are willing and able to meet.  Here are two January examples from families that make education a high priority.  In the first instance, a sophomore at a private liberal arts college offers to transfer to a cheaper public university to reduce the strain on the parents’ finances.  In the second case, a junior at a private high school elects not to join a summer study abroad program so the parents may apply the funds toward college tuition.  Household incomes in both cases are comfortably six-figured and ample education monies have been set aside long ago.  Again in both cases, the parents decline their children’s puzzling offers then pick up the phone and dial my number.

Next time I receive that phone call, I’ll refer to the child’s expression of anxiety about educational funds as groundhog forecasting.  It’s too soon to be certain, but I have a hunch that groundhog forecasting among adolescents and emerging adults is, at least in part, a function of prevailing cultural messages that originate outside the home.  Is it possible that anxiety about college costs has become yet another caustic reagent acting upon the American sensibility of entitlement, as corrosive in its expression as our national obsession with homeland security?

Turning from attitudes and anxieties to the behavior of selecting a college, Item 38 of the HERI survey asked respondents to rank each of twenty-two reasons that “might have influenced your decision to attend this particular college” on a Likert scale of “very important,” “somewhat important” and “not important.”  Cost was an important factor for respondents (41.6% cited cost among the very important reasons).  Interestingly, however, it was no more important in the overall decision than a campus visit (41.4%).  This is, to my way of thinking, a weird and disturbing finding, one that is only partly attributable to the item construction.

Most campus tours are scripted events, directed by enrollment management firms, coordinated by experienced admissions counselors and enacted by members of the student body who are well paid for their efforts.  I’m not the only one to notice the depressing sameness.  Last week, the mother of a perceptive high school senior related that her daughter had been stunned by the formulaic simplicity of every tour she had taken.  There’s as much merit to the typical campus visit as to a meteorological prediction by Punxsutawney Phil.  I wouldn’t plan a ski trip around the famous groundhog’s predictions.  I wouldn’t encourage a student-client to make a college selection based in large part on a campus visit.

The top reason given by HERI respondents for selecting a college was more troubling than cost or campus visits.  More than half (56.5%) of the first-year students in the study selected a college because its “graduates get good jobs.”  Obviously, no college student aspires to a boring, underpaid, dead-end job.  At issue is the means by which a student knows with confidence that graduates of Institution A obtain better positions than those of Institution B, net of factors such as major field of study, internships, and research experience.  Most such prognostications depend on institutional reputation, which is little more reliable than rumor.  In actuality, reputation may be nothing more than rumor which has been sanctioned by an alleged authority, such as the annual college rankings of US News and World Report.

In the long span of a person’s life, the decision to arise one wintery dawn for the purpose of watching a dozen middle aged men in quaint attire make deferential overtures to an ill-tempered, obese marmot is of little consequence.  Not so, the selection of a college, which profoundly influences life choices and chances.  When it comes to the bases of college selection, I can only hope that the 219,864 respondents of the 2009 HERI survey are not representative of the 1.4 million first-year college students in this nation.  I’d like to believe that most of these promising young women and men took the time to ask the tough questions and to find the real answers.

hoping, too, for overcast skies,

dkb

Recipes & Resolutions: When to Take Standardized Tests

It’s a dark afternoon in Cockeysville this New Year’s Eve, and I’ve been thinking about resolutions as I consider recipes to serve for Sunday brunch.  The couple coming to brunch, weather permitting, are dear friends.  Our friendship reaches back through the decades, to my senior year at University of the Pacific, when they–older and better established–rented a flat on Octavia Street in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco.  These days, we manage to get together only a couple times a year, although our Maryland homes are no more than half an hour apart.  That’s life in middle age.

I’ve settled on the recipe for Soupe a l’Oignon Gratinee that Craig Claiborne published in The New York Times in 1974, short months before I met my Sunday brunch friends.  Like our friendship, the recipe’s tried and true, simple and good through and through. Interestingly, Claiborne didn’t concoct this onion gratin.  He lifted it from Gastronomie Practique, a 1907 cookbook by Ali-Bab, which is the weirdly “Oriental” nom de plume of Henri Babinski.  (I don’t recall Ed Said commenting on the adoption of pseudo-Arabic names, but perhaps someone should investigate the practice.)

The trick to Babinski’s onion gratin is timing.  Let it go too long, and it turns as stiff and dry as cardboard.  Undercooked, the dish lacks its signature crusty brown top.  I’ll let you know how mine turns out.  Meanwhile, there’s still the subject of resolutions to ponder.

For the year of 2010 C.E., I resolve to work on timing.  In my middle age, it seems that many problems, big and small, could be eased by judicious timing.  When to provide disaster relief, when to withdraw American troops, when to remove the gratin from the oven, and when to take standardized tests can be critical considerations.

I’ve slipped standardized tests into my list of time sensitive activities because the topic has been on my mind for most of December.  It’s a topic that comes up frequently in my work with client families of Becker Academic.  I’ve developed a response that is unorthodox among college counselors and planners.  But, I’m an educational sociologist, and I see higher education through different lenses.  Here are my recommendations:

High school students are wise to take the first round of SATs and ACTs shortly after winter break of their junior year.

The winter break allows for concentrated test prep.  The January test date comes before due dates for major spring semester assignments.  It also allows time to prepare for a second round of testing, optimally scheduled after the end of spring semester.  With rare exceptions, mid-year juniors have completed the coursework measured by both standardized tests:  e.g., neither the SAT or the ACT covers calculus.  Subject tests may be scheduled as late as fall of senior year if there is a compelling reason.

Persons intending to proceed to graduate or professional school are wise to take GREs, LSATs, MCATs, GMATs, or another required test BEFORE submitting applications for admission.

Like standardized tests for undergraduate admission, tests for advanced study may be retaken until a desired score is achieved.  However, if schools have been selected and applications already tendered, there is no window for a second round of testing, should the first score fall below the acceptable level of the chosen institutions.

I wish that I had composed the core message of this post earlier.  By “earlier” I mean any date before the son of my Sunday brunch friends applied to ten law schools without having learned his score on the LSAT.  I hope my oversight doesn’t sour a valued friendship. This year I resolve to work on timing.  The people in my personal and professional circles may be better for my efforts.

If God (or the devil) is in the details, then fate is in the timing.  So, too, the Sunday brunch.

dkb

Children @ Play, Part IV: Cultural Systems and Social Choices

A quarter century ago, before I gave up the notion of writing a dissertation about Hello Kitty, I sat down at my IBM Selectric to compose my doctoral qualifying exams. One late spring day in upstate New York, I tackled the exam in the sociology of art and culture. Details have grown hazy, but I believe the question concerned differences between art called “high-brow,” “middle-brow” and “low-brow.” High-brow meant stuff like Tosca, and The Simpsons is contemporary low-brow. Nobody was really clear about the middle, but Josh Groban would probably fit the bill.

I had no more to say about brow art then, than I do now, and any variant of the two preceding sentences seemed insufficiently academic for the occasion. Not knowing what else to do, I rewrote the question and answered it. No one objected.

CULTURAL SYSTEMS

Being enamored with French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, I shaped my question with his notion of cultural capital in mind. Being a good French intellectual, Bourdieu had been shaping a new understanding of patterns of inheritance. The inheritances that most interested him were the intellectual and artistic legacies of the children of educators, clergy, scholars and arts professionals–basically, people like himself, whom we now call knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers seldom amass fortunes. Compared to industrialists and high financiers, their economic capital is limited. Short of a sudden, rabid demand for IBM Selectrics, it will remain limited. The bequests of knowledge workers are the intangibles of their professional lives: intellectual sophistication and artistic appreciation. In the august culture that is France, these intangibles are matters of consequence.

Intellectual sophistication and artistic appreciation are what Bourdieu meant by cultural capital. Cultural capital as a love of Bach is what I acquired from Great-uncle Auggie, who was a teacher–unsurprisingly for Bourdieu. Instead of high brow art, I typed pages about a cultural elite system, which traded in the currency of cultural capital.

That left two brows. Whatever one may think of either man, Matt Groening and Josh Groban have more in common than the first three letters of their last names. They’re making fortunes, respectively, by drawing cartoons and crooning tunes for the American public at large. Compared to the Rockefellers or the Gateses, their fortunes may be small, but relative to faculty salaries at Towson University, they look damn good. I decided to lump low and middle brows together under the umbrella notion of a cultural industry system. Although perks like fame draw some, in the final instance, cultural industry systems trade in the bottom line: economic capital.

I was out of brows, and I had a dichotomy of elites and industries. I dislike dichotomies (think: good/bad, win/lose). I needed a third cultural system. I turned to my number two sociologist of art, Howard Becker (no family relation). There’s much to commend Becker. He’s a jazz pianist; he lives in San Francisco; he travels in France. In the tradition of American pragmatism, Becker promotes clear communication and derides sociological jargon.

Becker developed the concept of an art world, “the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized via their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produce(s) the kind of art works that art world is noted for” (1982). Don’t be misled by a first impression of verbosity; after a couple readings, the definition shines as a gem of concise writing.

Becker also wrote about folk art as the transmission of expressive community traditions. In common usage, we think of an activity such as quilting as a folk art, but Becker includes humble rituals like singing Happy Birthday. It is not necessary to have sung the role of Floria Tosca at La Scala to croak out a passable Happy Birthday.

I had my third option: the cultural community system. Nowdays, I believe that cultural communities primarily exchange social capital, or the access to reciprocity within social networks. Sane folks don’t expect a recording contract or a gig with the Met just for singing Happy Birthday to a great-uncle. We do hope to be feted in turn when our birthdays come around. I answered my question and passed the qualifying exams.

SOCIAL CHOICES

I also soon forgot about the formalism of cultural systems. It came back to me recently, when I was trying to make sense my social calendar last July. There they were, one after another: a cultural elite system (The Sidney Silverman Young Artists), a cultural industry system (Otakon 2009) and a cultural community system (The Baltimore County 4-H Fair). In case you skipped the earlier installments, I’ll rank the three events on a scale of one to five Trophies for Global Betterment.

The Sidney Silverman Young Artists: 2.5 trophies for global betterment
Otakon 2009: 1 trophy for global betterment
The Baltimore County 4-H Fair: 4 trophies for global betterment

Ethics and activities co-exist in dynamic tension, particularly for individuals in formative stages of the life course. What emerging adults do today shapes who they become tomorrow. As a corollary, the activities that parents and other caring adults promote now influence the choices that mature adults will be making ten or twenty years in the future. For these reasons, I encourage all to consider the consequences of our social actions. Here’s a multiple-choice question to ponder.

Who do you want [your child/ren] to become?

A. a member of an elite that preserves its privileged status
B. a member of an industry that encourages wasteful spending
C. a member of a community that transmits core values to the next generation
D. none of the above

Feel free to compose your own question, if you have trouble with mine. You’ll be part of a fine tradition in critical thinking.

cheers,
dkb

p.s. If you a need a gently used IBM Selectric, don’t hesitate to call.

Children @ Play, Part III: Bach and the Kids

In the days between posts in this series, Halloween Frank and his Green Lady have been carted to the landfill for their eternal repose. In my mind’s eye, I see Great-uncle Auggie shaking his head at my wastefulness. The Thanksgiving weekend and my banjo-playing Texan nephew, Barry, have come and gone. On Saturday after Spanikopita Day–as we refer to the celebration in our vegetarian household–Barry, husband Kit, and I went downtown to the landmark Zion Church for the annual Christkindlmarkt. We drank Gluhwein mit Schnapps in the sunny courtyard, loaded up on Hannover stollen and enjoyed the brass band playing holiday favorites in the loft of the Aldersaal.

I’d like to believe that my great-uncle would have approved, but I can’t recall him drinking mulled wine–with or without cherry brandy. The thousands of boxes of imported candies and baked goods spilling across the upper floor of the Aldersaal would have offended his sense of proper proportion. The band, however, would have struck a chord. Auggie would have loved the band.

Auggie knew his German music and his Lutheran composers. He knew Schutz from Schein. He sniffed at the tainted commercialism of the gadabout, Handel. He had a passion for Praetorius. Above all, in Auggie’s esteem, stood J.S. Bach. The works of Bach were his divine inspiration, and over the years they have become mine.

THE SILVERMAN YOUNG ARTISTS

There was no Bach this past Saturday, but I did think of my great-uncle the last time I heard a fugue. That was back in summer, and the piece was Fugue and Prelude in B-flat Minor, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (1722). It was performed at Hood College, in Frederick, Maryland. The date was July sixteenth, the Thursday evening before the Baltimore County 4-H Fair and Otakon 2009. The occasion was the annual concert of The Sidney Silverman Young Artists. This year’s young artists were David Conway, Justin Furnia and Jeremy Rosenberg.

A rising junior at Hood, Furnia opened with the sublime Bach. I could have spent the evening in the eighteenth century, but Furnia jumped into the nineteenth via the Chopin barcarolle and Liszt’s sixth Hungarian rhapsody, the one in D-flat major. His selections were canonical, and his playing had an uncommon purity. The young man’s slender build, precision and preference for the left hand reminded me of Luke Gillespie at that age. Gillespie is on the faculty of The Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University; he’s an accomplished performer of jazz and classical piano. Youngest of the 2009 Silverman pianists, Furnia is on the path to an equally rewarding career.

The second young artist, Conway, reminded me of no one. He is a sui generus kind of guy. A Hood alumnus (2008) who double majored in music and computer science, he pursues classical composition and performance. Before playing two original works, he favored us with a couple Kapustin etudes, the Prelude and Toccatina from 1984. Kapustin writes quirky contemporary classical music. Conway is crafting his own distinctive sound, encoding jazz idioms and rock riffs within classical structures. There are moments of brilliance here, along with a bravura that could be worked into Hollywood movie magic, should Conway wish to go down that road.

After intermission, it was Rosenberg’s turn. This rising senior at The Boston Conservatory reminded me of another established pianist and composer. That man is Keith Jarrett, who needs no introduction for listeners of jazz or classical. More than technique, the resemblance was one of personal style in the concert hall. Rosenberg gave a muscular interpretation of Chopin’s Fantasy in F-minor, Op. 49. He followed with another muscular interpretation of another fantasy–de Falla’s Fantasia Betica.

The de Falla had the heft to match Rosenburg’s fingering, but the work may have been chosen on other grounds. I later learned that the Andalusian composer had dedicated Betica (1919) to the piano virtuoso Arthur Rubinstein, whom he met in Spain during the First World War. Rubinstein was the great-great-uncle of Rosenburg, on his father’s side. With his parents and paternal grandparents in the audience of the Hodson Theater, the performance became an insider’s tribute to family history.

The evening ended on a blustery note, with five brief works by Rachmaninoff. In round-robin pairs, the artists performed three of Six Pieces for Piano Duet. They then elbowed one another through two selections for piano, six hands. Few are the pieces for one piano and three pianists. If the reason for this scarcity was in doubt, the Hood performance clarified the matter. I imagined Great-uncle Auggie up there in a child’s heaven, stubbing out his cigar on a cloud in a fit of pique.

Other than this blogger, no one actually present seemed to mind the Rachmaninoff folly. Afterwards, the performers took their bows, as the audience of family, college friends and Silverman supporters applauded pridefully. Noel Lester joined the young men on stage to more hearty appreciation. For non-cognoscenti, Lester is the faculty member who coordinates the annual festival and mentors the young artists. He radiated intelligence and unflagging good humor on that sultry summer evening.

PRO MUSICA RARA @ THE WALTERS

The last time my banjo-playing nephew came to town was in late May. We attended a matinee of Biber’s Mystery Sonatas (1676), performed by Pro Musica Rara at the Walters Art Museum. The Biber was part of the grand finale for the exhibit of the St. John’s Bible. The group bills itself as “Baltimore’s premier early music ensemble,” and I’ve never known anyone to quibble with the billing.

Pro Musica Rara is permanently based at Towson University, as artists-in-residence of the Center for the Arts. (Kudos to Towson!) The ensemble is ably led by artistic director and cellist Allen Whear. Whear was one of three performers at the Walters on May twenty-fourth. The featured soloist was Cynthia Roberts (violin), and Yale University’s Avi Stein (harpsichord) was the accomplished guest artist.

I had only a passing familiarity with Heinrich Biber (1644–1704). His works were not part of my great-uncle’s legacy. Auggie was an upright German-American Lutheran, and his church defined his musical tastes. Recordings of the Bohemian-Austrian Catholic were not played on the gramophone by the horsehair sofa in his parlor. It’s a pity that Auggie didn’t live to appreciate the majesties of our ecumenical age.

The heart of the Mystery Sonatas is the stunning passacalgia for solo violin, and Robert’s interpretation was breathtaking. During her solo, everything fell away from me in the narrow hall known as the Jacob and Muriel Blaustein Gallery of Italian sixteenth century art. The gilt-framed masterpieces on dark velvet walls, the men of my family seated beside me, the performers themselves dissolved in a meditation of sublime sound. Applause and shouts of “Brava,” brought me back.

I took note of the hundred people in the gallery. There was a sprinkling of the curious and a double handful of museum elite, but the majority were serious musicians. Many, no doubt, came from the other side of Mount Vernon Place, from The Peabody Institute of Music of The Johns Hopkins University.

The longer I watched the men and women around me watching Whear, Stein and especially Roberts, the clearer it became that these folks knew Biber inside out. I could see them anticipating each note, each chord. With every masterful fingering of string or key, I could feel their immense satisfaction. Emphatically, the collective response of the musicians in the audience was satisfaction. It was the satisfaction an insider derives from a peer’s accomplishments, when they redound to all within the sphere of knowledge. A sense of professional satisfaction is immeasurably far from the uncritical pleasure I took in the passacalgia. It is equally remote from the aura of familial pride pervasive among the audience of The Sidney Silverman Young Artists.

On our way out the door, nephew Barry turned and said with a grin, “You don’t hear that down at Emo’s Austin, Ltd!”

cheers,
dkb