Following The Science...

...right down the rabbit hole. 

Higher Ed has been broken for some time, what with the publish-or-perish system creating aberrant and abhorrent behavior, but now, with Large Language Models, there is a deluge of fictional "scientific" publications. Retraction Watch has been diligent in rooting out suspect publications, but now the flood of publications, and suspect publishers and editors has the attention of none other than the Grey Lady. The Times article points to a Moore's Law doubling of suspect publications and notes the increase in publishers of sketchy journals with equally sketchy editors and reviewers on staff. 

This is indeed a serious problem. One that has been around for quite some time, but now is headed in the direction of bogus articles far outnumbering legitimate research. Remarking on corrupt paper mills as lucrative business operations does little, and what little is being done, relies on automated processing to detect doctored and fabricated data, and scan for absurd wording. Have you ever read an article in popular press that uses the words "furthermore," "what's more," or "moreover," then you are reading something spewed out by a LLM. Nobody really uses those words. In an effort to hide their plagiarism, these millworkers pump out drivel that includes similarly uncomfortable diction, as well as artificial hallucinations and citations that do not exist. 

The Grey Lady finishes up as she so often does of late: with a swipe at Trump. A postdoc is quoted saying that the "stuff that the Trump administration is doing" is going to make the situation worse. Yes. That's right. "Stuff" is the appropriate technical term. It is worth noting that neither the NYT author, nor any of the sources provided any kind of solution. None whatsoever.

Time And A Half

This is not about overtime pay. It is about a method used by students and their parents to improve the chances their little snowflakes can improve their GPA. In colleges and universities across the United States there is a branch of administrative bloat known as "Learning Resource Center" or "Disability Resource Center." Sounds benign, almost warm and fuzzy. But let's look at how this operates.

What you do, as a parent, is trot your little darlin' to a pliable, buyable shrink. She will generate some official looking paperwork claiming your child needs special consideration. You take this and the "special" one to the aforementioned Resource Center and now, magically, they are accorded special treatment most commonly extra time-time and a half-for all quizzes and exams and these will be administered and proctored by the Resource Center workers (administrative bloat, remember) and NOT anyone associated with other classroom activities. Once your unique snowflake is branded special it is as if they are enrolled in a separate school within a school. That is because they are and it is a school with lesser academic rigor. Why? Because that's what your snowflake needs. Because this is an open secret it is no longer about a few snowflakes. It has become a blizzard. No one has a snowblower and no one is interested in getting one.

It is a money-making sham and every knows it. Try as you might you'll not find peer-reviewed research in any top journals suggesting that time-and-a-half is THE amount of time leveling the intellectual playing field for any and all of the various disabilities students suffer. Why? Because it just isn't so. And it really, really isn't the point. The education industry is now focused on graduation rates and growth, particularly in the administrative, non-educational functions that are not now and never will be subject to objective measures. This is merely an extension of education's war on testing. There are no scientific studies that would undermine this effort because the basic premise is silly and metastatic administrative growth will not subject itself to scrutiny.