CELEBRATING OUR ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FIFTH YEAR OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM Friday, January 9, 2015
Ann Arbor, Michigan
michigandaily.com
THE FINAL NOTE
GOVERNMENT
Mich. gets low grade for higher ed. costs State receives poor marks for college affordability in nonprofit’s report By JACK TURMAN
ZACH MOORE/Daily
Daily Staff Reporter
Rackham student Sandra Periord performs opera singing in the Concerto Competition in Hill Auditorium on Thursday.
ANN ARBOR
New fire chief to employ 2 innovative approach in A Larry Collins to be sworn in Friday after year-long search process By EMMA KINERY Daily Staff Reporter
There’s a new chief in town. After a year-long search, Monday marked the first day for
Larry Collins, Ann Arbor’s new fire chief. He will be officially sworn in at a ceremony on Friday. Collins succeeds former Chief Chuck Hubbard, who retired in January of 2014 after serving as chief since 2011. Prior to that, Hubbard had been a firefighter in Ann Arbor for almost three decades. Ann Arbor Police Chief John Seto has overseen the fire department for the past year. Collins’ starting salary is set
at $122,000 a year, an increase from the $104,549 he received at Brevard County Fire Rescue, his previous job. Collins has experience serving at two other fire departments. He spent 30 years with the Dayton Fire Department in Ohio, retiring as its director and fire chief in 2008. Collins was also fire chief of the Brevard County Fire Rescue in Florida from 2009 until he departed in September. Florida Today reported
ACADEMICS
By CARLY NOAH Daily Staff Reporter
Three years ago, the University was one of four founding partners of Coursera, a digital platform that hosts Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, which allow individuals from across the world to take academic courses online. Though a relatively new idea in higher education at the time, now 15 University professors teach courses on the platform and have reached a collective 1.5 million students worldwide, according to the University’s department of Digital Education and Innovation. For University students and faculty, MOOCs have been a key example of digital education’s growth and change both on campus and beyond — one that’s been met with both enthusiasm and caution. University Prof. Scott Page, who teaches complex systems, political science and economics, taught the University’s first MOOC, Model Thinking. “At the time, no one knew what
WEATHER TOMORROW
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would happen — how many people would take the course, how much work it would be… (I) did it because I thought it would be a learning experience and because I believe in the material I’m teaching,” Page said. “(The University) wanted a social science course that was easy to decompose into models that did not rely on much copyrighted material.” Page said he thought the benefits of online courses were vast and could be altered to fit a wide range of students. “The benefits everyone mentions are retrievability and scale,” Page said. “Once it’s taped, you can access the course anytime and anywhere. And you can have hundreds of thousands of students — I’m nearing three-quarters of a million.” Page added that MOOCs helped improved his own skills as an educator. “I found that there was an enormous benefit from going through the process of constructing the lectures,” Page said. “I became a better teacher and thinker. Also, it’s really a thrill to interact with people globally, even if only electronically.” While many professors and individuals in the higher education community like Page have responded to MOOCs with enthusiasm, research also shows that See MOOCS, Page 3
SPORTS
LET’S GET HISTORICAL
Massive Open Online Courses progress at ‘U’ MOOCs taught by University profs. have reached 1.5 million students
his leave, noting differences between Collins and his superior regarding how the fire department should operate. “You can use the term fired, but really what it was an amicable separation on the part of both parties,” Collins said in an interview with The Michigan Daily. Collins said that he had been hired under a progressive manager in Brevard, and the assistant manager who succeeded him See CHIEF, Page 3
In a series of report cards published earlier this week by youth advocacy group Young Invincibles, the state of Michigan’s investment in higher education ranked as one of the lowest nationwide. The report cards ranked Michigan as the third worst state in the country based on five metrics — tuition, state appropriations average, average burden on families, financial aid for students and higher education as a priority in the state government. Michigan was one of 31 states to receive an “F” in appropriations for higher education funding. It also numbered among 47 states that spend less per student today than they did before the recession in 2008. In an interview Thursday, Tom Allison, policy and research manager at Young Invincibles, provided several reasons for Michigan’s ranking. He cited the fact that the
state has cut its state appropriations per student by 27 percent over the past few years, which is 7 percent higher than the national average at 20 percent. Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s administration cut higher education funding by 15 percent in 2011, his first year in office. After the decrease his administration has incrementally increased higher education funding by 3.1 percent in 2012, 2.2 percent in 2013 and 6.1 percent in 2014. Snyder’s office did not return requests for comment on the ranking Thursday. Allison added that the state awards fewer dollars than the national average, which is over $6,000 per student. Michigan allocates about $4,500 per student. In an interview Thursday, Donald Heller, dean of the College of Education at Michigan State University, noted a few factors as possible reasons for why the state ranked poorly on the report card. He cited the two major recessions of 2002 and 2008 in the state as possible influences. “The cut in state funding which has caused the universities to raise tuition very rapidly,” Heller said. ” The relatively high See COSTS, Page 3
D.J. Durkin hired as ‘M’ defensive coordinator
36-year-old served three seasons as Harbaugh assistant while at Stanford By MAX COHEN Managing Sports Editor
MCKENZIE BEREZIN/Daily
Susan Caulfield, associate professor of history, gives a lecture on topics about 19th century African-Bahian families for a lecture series held by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies at Tisch Hall on Thursday.
EDUCATION
Switch to SAT to have low impact on ‘U’ admissions ACT loses contract for standardized testing in Michigan high schools By GENEVIEVE HUMMER Daily Staff Reporter
The state of Michigan will no longer require high school juniors take the ACT. Beginning in spring of 2016, the SAT is the state’s new exam of choice. On Wednesday, the Michi-
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gan Department of Education and Department of Technology, Management and Budget jointly announced that all students attending high school in Michigan take the SAT in place of the ACT. The state requires that a college entrance exam and a job skills test, which evaluates students’ possible career opportunities, are provided free of charge to all high school students. These tests are competitively bid every few years and ranked by a joint evaluation committee made up of the MDE, the
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INDEX
DTMB, a high school principal, a local school superintendent, a testing and assessment consultant from an intermediate school district and the vice president from a Michigan community college. The College Board, which administers the SAT, won the three-year contract with a $17.1 million bid, $15.4 million less than the next bidder, the ACT, and was rated higher by a tenpoint margin. The shift to the SAT will be an adjustment for high school students, teachers and adminSee SAT, Page 3
Vol. CXXIV, No. 44 ©2015 The Michigan Daily michigandaily.com
Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh made his first coaching staff hire official Thursday morning when he named D.J. Durkin Michigan’s defensive coordinator and linebackers coach. “D.J. is one of the top young defensive coordinators in football, and I look forward to having him work with our student-athletes,” Harbaugh said in a statement. Durkin, 36, comes to Michigan after spending five years at Florida, where he was the team’s defensive coordinator and linebackers coach for the previous two seasons, as well as special teams coordinator and defensive ends coach for three years before that. Durkin and Harbaugh have worked together before, when Durkin was Stanford’s defensive ends coach and special teams coach from 2007-2009 and Harbaugh was the head coach. “Reuniting with Jim at the University of Michigan is an opportunity that I could not See HIRED, Page 3
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CL ASSIFIEDS.................6 ARTS.............................7 SPORTS.........................8