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Doug Brent wrote:

> One more question: does anyone have any interesting news about funding
> of linked courses?  Did anyone have any success getting new money out of
> central funds or out of the disciplines served, or did it all come out
> of money that was being used to teach writing anyway.

In our case, and I suspect in yours, the folks with the power to fund
said, okay, where are your _costs_?  And why should we fund _your_
program as opposed to others?  We were (are) in a position to say well,
there there really are no costs, because we're taking money that would
have been used to teach these courses, well, to teach these courses.
The difference is that they're linked.  That doesn't involve money.

Now, if you do _real_ collaboration, of the kind I've been involved in
in the Aquinas Program, you do have costs, because no teacher can do it
without released time or a death wish.  Real collaboration takes time,
and if you don't extort it out of your teachers it costs money.  And the
money has to come from some place, and if what it means is that it'll
cost more to teach a student in this situation than that one, you need
to be able to convince someone it's worth it.  The argument here is,
well, if you put that extra money in _my_ course, and lowered _my_
student ratio, I'd do better, too.

> This is _really_ the agenda here.  Right now the entire writing service
> is funded by charging students $50 to write the test.  SInce it's the
> test I'm trying to phase out, I need to find a way to get the monkey off
> my back without shooting myself in the foot.  (Perhaps I should shoot
> the monkey in the back?)

My own view is that it's sleight of hand to say linking courses isn't a
new program, but we'll need the same funding as if it were . . . if you
can convince people, fine, but I think that monkey bites.

                                        -- Russ