Yesterday’s guest blog by Bert Shaposka was an interesting read, but it is also the latest in a long line of blogs about Gallaudet. To some extent, this is to be expected, given the events of the past year, and the accreditation woes aired in public earlier this year.
But you know what? Gallaudet isn’t the be-all and end-all of the Deaf universe. I visited with a friend a couple months ago while I was in DC, and we were discussing my blogging endeavors, here and elsewhere. We talked about the Gallaudet-related blogs on DeafDC as well, and he remarked, “I’m a bit tired of seeing Gallaudet slammed all the time. What about NTID? CSUN?” [Full disclosure: we’re both Gallaudet alumni]
I found myself agreeing with him. As much as I love Gallaudet, and I’m willing to converse about Gallaudet and debate both the good and the bad, it isn’t the only school that serves deaf people, or has a sizeable deaf population. We’re always hearing about Gallaudet here, and not always in the best light. Rarely do I see blogs talk about NTID, or CSUN, or even SWCID. This doesn’t even include schools with sizeable programs, like Arizona State University, Utah State University, or graduate programs that offer deaf education, such as Lamar University, McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College), and other schools.
While this doesn’t mean I’m inviting everyone to now switch their attention from Gallaudet and start slamming other schools and programs, I do wonder, when everyone seems to agree that there needs to be a re-examination of deaf education across the board, why no one is mentioning these other schools. A good number of my fellow DeafDC bloggers are NTID alumni. I’d be curious to hear their perspective about their alma mater, both the good and the bad. At the moment, I don’t believe we have any CSUNites, although that could change– you never know.
I certainly would love to hear opinions from people who have attended more than one school. I know a number of Gallaudetians who originally started at NTID, and vice-versa. I know a fair number who started here at Kendall Green, then earned their degree in the San Fernando Valley. There are people at these schools who garner their Bachelor’s at one school, then enter a graduate program at another. I remember a number of my wife’s classmates deciding to head west to Arizona State after their high school graduation; a number of them winged their way back to Gallaudet the following year. I would love to know their thoughts on the pros and cons, but even more so, on how best to improve programs and schools across the board.
I think a healthy debate about higher education of the deaf in general, not just Gallaudet, would benefit us all. What say you?
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Well, I went to MSSD in the early nineties…so I have some perspective on Gallaudet. Then I spent a year at Arizona State (before it became a big program) in 93′. Then I went to CSUN the for the next 6-7 years.
Pro and Con?
I’d say gallaudet’s main selling point is it being the “Mecca of the Deaf community”. It’s con..unsure…was only a MSSD student so really cannot comment on this.
Arizona State….beautiful campus, friendly people, great weather, cheap college football tickets, and etc.. Con? Not enough Deaf students. When I was there in 93′, there were maybe 30 students who had “hearing problems”, only 10 of them signed, and 7 out of 10 were over 30 years old (me being 18). So, i literally had to make hearin friends. While I made some meaningful friendships…I still needed more exposure tot he Deaf community and went to CSUN next.
CSUN…big program…200+ Deaf students. Nice campus until the earthquake hit in 94′…but I liked the trailers we had class in after that…made things interesting. The only negative thing about CSUN is that it’s largely a commuter school. No real “dorm life”. They had dorms, but living in Southern California..you didn’t want to live in a friggin’ dorm.
Education wise…it would depend on what you majored in. For example, a great major at Gallaudet would be ASL liguistics or Deaf Studies…at ASU it would be architecure and engineering…at CSUN it would be business (which I majored in). Then again, your education is what you make of it. At Gallaudet, I am sure the classes were smaller and you’d get more personal with the professors…at ASU..the professors never knew your name, stood on a stage, and used a microphone with 4-6 large speakers blasting out to 200-300 students…at CSUN..the average class size was 40-50 students…I got to know maybe 10% of my professors by going to office hours…
Anyway..any more questions..just fire away…
I thoroughly enjoyed your perspective on the different educational institutions and would heartily endorse any blog on this subject.
Hi All:
I know that the point of this thread is to focus on comparing/contrasting other schools with D/deaf programs, but can I throw in a little something I found to be VERY interesting? Go to this article on the graduation rates for players on the Sweet 16 basketball teams. Do click around on some of the links in that article, but especially on the chart that shows you how dismal the graduation rates (for players) actually are for some schools (0%, 10%, 15%). And just to stay outside of the argument that this *only* applies to basketball, take a look at what more than a few of the statements say about the disparity in overall graduation rates, especially between white and black students (non-athletes), etc.
http://www.newamerica.net/prog.....r_ed_watch
These two NTID statistics are quite compelling:
In the last 5 years, 93 percent of NTID graduates entering the labor force found sustainable employment commensurate with their level of education and training. And in the last 39 years, more than 92 percent of more than 5000 NTID graduates did the same.
However, I’ll go out on a limb and say that I have observed that NTID’s level of “cultural enlightenment” isn’t as high as it is at Gallaudet.
But as David astutely states, this is a debate about deaf higher ed. But this raises the question of whether “cultural enlightenment” should be a part of the deaf higher ed equation.
You need to define what you mean by “cultural enlightenment.” Do you mean cultural literacy? Do you mean having a liberal arts education and background?
To me, a “cultural enlightenment” means a liberal arts background and that seems consistent with the direction of your comments.
While NTID graduates may find “sustainable employment commensurate with their education and training,” I think that you do need to have liberal arts knowledge to advance to the ranks of management. A liberal arts education exposes you to a lot of other things that you might not otherwise experience or understand.
These might be useful primers for cultural enlightenment although they’re definitely not a substitute for a liberal arts college.
http://www.amazon.com/Cultural.....55-2524743
http://www.bartleby.com/59/
Meant “deaf cultural enlightenment”. Apologies for the confusion.
Hi Rob:
Does anyone have a breakdown on how many deaf students at NTID receive AA degrees, BA degrees, etc, and furthermore, what disciplines those degrees are offered in? Because if Gallaudet offers a BA in English or Philosophy and a student has a hard time finding a job, it can be argued that not a lot of employers are looking for a candidate with a BA in philosophy right now, but plenty of them need candidates with AA degrees in Office _______. Thus it’s possible that 93% statistic isn’t only due to a better education or a better program.
Other point of consideration: while we’re analyzing NTID/Gallaudet/CSUN like this, should we not be analyzing also smaller programs? David did mention “sizeable,” after all. So if you take UW-M, which currently has X number of deaf students, what are the literacy rates (among the deaf students only)? I’ll bet you’re going to find students there with literacy problems. What are the graduation rates? I’ll bet you’re going to find a lot of students who dropped out. But the catch is that the smaller a program is, the less it’s responsible for graduating its students… the OVERALL UNIVERSITY is what becomes responsible for graduating those students. But what if they don’t? What if they simply cut them? Then we’d be bashing larger Deaf programs for something huge universities with successful overall graduation rates possibly fail to do all the time.
Hi Mr. Chris Heuer,
You can find answers to some of your questions in NTID’s annual report that is available at http://www.ntid.rit.edu/media/.....t2006.pdf.
I will give you some references. Pages 54 to 56 give the complete breakdown into all majors. 764 students or 61.2% are in NTID programs; 484 students or 38.7% are in RIT programs.
Page 80 tells you the level of academic skills of the entering students based on ACT score. As you can see from the table, those who have high ACT score are able to enter RIT programs upon arrival while those who have low ACT score must go through NTID programs. Taking these numbers with the mean ACT scores on page 43, it is easy to conjecture that some students have difficulties in developing their reading and writing skills and if they are not able to raise their skill levels to satisfy the requirements of RIT programs, they cannot go beyond the associate programs. It may sound cruel but that is what RIT expects before accepting the students into the bachelor programs.
Page 87 and few pages after it tell what kinds of jobs that the students obtained after graduation.
The annual report contains a wealth of quantitative data that probably will answer many of your questions.
I want to digress a bit. The law (20 U.S.C. 4354) required NTID to submit annual report every year. The same law also required Gallaudet University to submit annual report but I could not find it on its website. If you know where it is, can you let all of us know the location?
Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
Isn’t it obvious? DeafDC.com covers Washington, DC hence Gallaudet University falls under its scope. There should be several “DeafDC.com” across the country with their own domain and local bloggers.
Some quick fun facts to add to David’s article-
Gallaudet University as of Fall 2006 has 1,206 undergraduate students.
RIT/NTID as of Fall 2006 has approximately 1,200 undergraduate students (750 in the Associate Degree program and 450 in the Baccalaureate degree program)
While this does not include Graduate students or non-matriculated students (Gallaudet currently has a little over 400 Graduate students, I’m not sure about RIT/NTID). I think this bolsters David’s point- especially when you look at the numbers, RIT/NTID has pretty much the same amount of deaf students that Gallaudet has in the undergraduate program and throw in the fact that NTID isn’t exactly as renowned in the world as an institution for the deaf like Gallaudet is.
Another interesting tidbit about RIT/NTID- the graduation rate.
Their graduation rate for deaf students in the Baccalaureate program is 70%
For the Associate program, it is 49%
To rebuff Rob’s comment about “cultural enlightenment”, I do have to agree with you, however I think it is fair to point out that the diversity of deaf students at RIT/NTID is incredibility different than what you would find at Gallaudet. By this, I mean there are students from every corner of the “deaf world” oral students, “D”eaf students, “d”eaf students, and many more that have come to merge, mix and evolved into a vastly different deaf culture than what you would find at Gallaudet.
Source material
http://www.gallaudet.edu/x2294.xml
http://www.rit.edu/~960www/pdf/requirements.pdf
I’m with ya, David. I would like to see more discussion about Deaf higher education and not necessarily Gallaudet alone.
However, Gallaudet will always remain the alpha and omega of the Deaf Universe, the Big Kahuna, King of Kings among Deaf academica, The Great White Shark, Deaf Mecca, etc. etc.!
(I had to smile when I typed in the Great White Shark comment; If they stopped moving, the sharks die. The same may hold true for Gallaudet; If it stops moving, what will happen to the Deaf community?)
But, enough about Gallaudet. :) I’ll admit to some surprise at NTID/RIT’s enrollment numbers. I had no idea such numbers were very close with that of Gallaudet’s. That said, what was the Federal Government’s (PART?) rating on NTID/RIT and CSUN?
As indicated by the report at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/.....2005.html, NTID’s rating is adequate. I don’t find it very satisfactory. I expect NTID to do better than adequate.
That report is a little too old and I am waiting for the new report.
CSUN did not have a separate federal appropriation for itself like Gallaudet University and NTID do. That is why ExpectMore.gov does not include CSUN.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
According to ExpectMore.gov, NTID seems to be beset with the same problems affecting Gallaudet, i.e., not meeting enrollment goals and graduation/retention rates not being met.
Looks like NTID and Gallaudet are in the ’same boat’ as far as enrollment, retention, and graduating Deaf students are concerned. I can see problems that may appear in enrollment/recruiting, as there’s not a lot of Deaf students, and incidence of Deafness in the general population continues to plummet.
But, retaining these students and graduating them remain a huge source of concern. I can understand that the incidence of Deafness are beyond the control of these institutions, but this issue is squarely upon their shoulders. I’m all for more creative solutions where we can retain these students and graduate more of them, on par with regular, established academic institutions of comparable size.
That said, I think NTID and Gallaudet are about equal in this arena. It would be nice to see actual statistics as to which institution has better retention/graduation rates for the past five years or so.
Another thing… And this doesn’t appear to be mentioned at all in the ExpectMore.gov’s reports; What about the job outlook facing these graduates, and how well do these respective institutions prepare them for the employment market. It does the Federal Government no good in funding these institutions, when its graduates continue to face a difficult employment climate upon graduating.
As for CSUN, maybe they can voluntarily give out some information about their enrollment, retention, graduation, and job figures for the public to digest. Apart from that, I’m afraid that some sleuthing may be needed to pore over public documents to find this information, if CSUN ever bothers to separate such information in the first place in its public reporting.
ToddE,
I’m interested in this information. Can you link to a website where it says that the incidence of deafness is plummeting? How much has it plummeted each year?
I am aware of the drop-off in the incidence of deafness since the rubella bulge and could probably understand further decrease as other illnesses are cured in time before the onset of deafness.
(Forgive me for going OT! When I first started this, I had no idea it would run for so long, either! My apologies.)
The GRI is your friend. Granted, it’s not the definitive answer detailing the incidence of deafness among the general population, but due to a paucity of comparable statistics found elsewhere, this’ll have to do. :) (Source: gri.gallaudet.edu)
Take a look at the 1999-2000 Regional and National Summary of Deaf demographics, especially in the 0-5 age range. This is the pre-lingual Deaf category, and this numbered 5,247 Deaf children nationwide.
Now, check out the 2004-2005 Regional and National Summary on Deaf demographics, again centering in this same age range, that of pre-lingual children. This time, the numbers have gone down to 4,663 Deaf children nationwide.
From 1999 to 2005, Deaf America has lost roughly 584 pre-lingual Deaf children. But this is only one-half of the equation; In this time span, America’s population has increased.
According to the decinnial (sp?) census data (P12 - Sex By Age), the total combined population of children under 5 years of age for both sexes are: 19,175,798 children.
(Source: http://www.census.gov - However, they use dynamic databases, and I’m not sure how to make a direct link.)
Dividing that figure by the 1999 GRI demographic report comes to a rough estimate of a miniscule incidence figure of .000273 of Deaf children among the mainstream population. Or, roughly speaking, 2.73 Deaf children per 10,000 children for the U.S.
As for the 2005 census, I was only able to get a rough estimate on the pre-lingual population, as they did not break it down by age or sex. According to the estimated census data, America grew 5.3% from 2000-2005. (Dividing the total population figures of 296,507,061 from 281,421,906)
Taking this 5.3% increase with the 2000 American pre-lingual population of 19,175,798 children comes to a total estimate of 20,203,684 children for 2005.
Again, dividing the number of the 2005 Deaf pre-lingual population against the 2005 estimated pre-lingual population comes to this incidence figure of .000230. Or roughly 2.3 Deaf children per 10,000 children in the pre-lingual population.
In five years, Deaf America, among its pre-lingual population, has seen a .000043 decrease in incidence. Granted, it may not sound much. I’m glad I did this ad hoc research, and I’m probably a little bit off in doing so. The exercise has been illuminating.
However, I don’t need to see such statistics as these, as I wonder how GRI collects its demographic data; Historically, the incidence rates were 1 Deaf person per 1,000 people. Yet, if GRI’s statistics were to be the gold standard, it would appear that there are only 2.3-2.73 Deaf people per 10,000 people, a significant deviation.
Rather, I can see lowered incidence figures via anecdotal observation in the school where I currently teach. There’s only under 20 Deaf students in the program, compared with 60+ such students during the Rubella boom of the 1970’s.
And this is what Gallaudet, RIT/NTID, CSUN, and other Deaf programs have to face for the foreseeable future and have to adapt/adjust.
So, your statistics appear to support the position that either Gallaudet, CSUN, or NTID, need to downsize faculty and other support employees in response to a decreased student body or choose to expand the student body by not focusing solely on Deaf individuals.
Now that I’m here, and being a current student at RIT, I’ll try to offer some fresh perspective about my school. But as others have pointed out, David, this is a predominantly DC-area blog, and all the recent controversy makes Gallaudet a natural lightning rod. Good idea though.
Full disclosure: I am a RIT/NTID alumnus, graduated in 1985. Also, my son will attend NTID in the fall. I try not to be heavily biased towards NTID in my comments but I do like RIT/NTID very much. :-)
Anyway, if anyone really wants to know how NTID is doing, all he has to do is to read the annual report that is available at http://www.ntid.rit.edu/media/.....t2006.pdf. NTID is far from perfect and has problems that are common to all colleges. You can find few rotten apples somewhere in NTID. But, it is clear that it is striving for excellence.
The primary reason why Gallaudet University got bad press is the great shock that the public got when it learned of the low admission standards and lack of academic rigor in the university. That is not what university is meant to be.
There are two differences between Gallaudet University and NTID that I find very glaring. NTID is part of the hearing college and therefore, is under the watchful eye of the mostly hearing administration. If NTID is not doing well, I bet that RIT has no hesitation in kicking out NTID pronto. This is also true for almost all college programs for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. These colleges are within the larger hearing environment and therefore, have great challenge in keeping themselves in same level as the hearing peers. Gallaudet University, on the other hand, is on its own without anyone watching over it. Only MSA can take the role of watchdog and it happens only once every five years (comprehensive review every 10 years with a review during mid-term).
The other difference is that NTID does not have any problem with identity. For long time, it adopted the pluralistic approach and tries to cater to the deaf and hard-of-hearing students’ needs. Gallaudet University is embroiled in the ideological battles between different groups.
As I cautioned my son, NTID is not a paradise. There are always some problems here and there. But, that is not the norm. The norm is excellence in education. I believe that this is also true for many other college programs for deaf and heard-of-hearing students.
Joseph Pietro Riolo
josephpietrojeungriolo@gmail.com
Public domain notice: I put all of my expressions in this post in the public domain.
david,
yes that’s the big picture! Good blog! I have some food for thoughts brewing in me :-)
Grading the Mission Statement
Gallaudet’s Mission (WAD’s grade B-)
It is a lloonngg mission statement. It can be compressed easily. I do not see much focus on students to obtain career goals after graduating from the university.
http://www.gallaudet.edu/x237.xml
NTID’s Mission (WAD’s grade A-)
It is to the point and clear defined. I would omit either “outstanding” or “state-of-the-art” as it is not necessary.
http://www.ntid.rit.edu/VPandDean/mission.php
CSUN’s NCOD mission (WAD’s grade D-)
I haven’t seen any mission like this before. Too many boring words are used. It requires a lot of revisions.
http://ncod.csun.edu/programs/mission.html
Hello there!
I attended both sister universities such as NTID/RIT and Gallaudet University since summer 1999. Both have different approaches with education and campus climate. I agreed with all above of your comments in regarding of retention, employment, and other matters.
From my own personal perspectives, both schools give me rich experience by learning the education and social life. Yet, I enrolled both when I was older student in between 35 and 40’s. I wish I could attend either of them when I was young. However, I was too young to be stupid and to play around. Then I pursued my acting career in Los Angeles in mid 20 something. Eventually, I realized it was very tough to compete with others and had through the financial situation. Of course, I do love acting very much including the filmmaking effort when I was a student at UCLA Extension. While I lived in L.A., I worked with Deaf Arts Council, my expertise involves soliciting the donations from the vendors, who were willing to donate food, arts and supplies, filmmaking supplies, etc to support the filmmaking production camp for deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing children and youths under Multimedia Arts Camp in mid-1990’s in Hollywood. For reason, I have not adequate in my talent for the office environment. I decided to return to school to take academic courses to improve my education that would apply for office jobs in elsewhere.
Subsequently, I changed my career to public relations/public affairs. I went to Santa Monica College in Southern California. I found myself very frustrating and challenge in hearing classroom with sign language interpreter. I realized that I missed something important information from hearing instructors such as English and Math except film class that I truly enjoyed to watch and to provide the critical classroom discussion. One day, I met a good friend, who happened to be NTID/RIT alumni. Thereafter, I encounter this person, my rationale influenced my thoughts about going to NTID/RIT. I began to apply to enroll. In the winter time, I visited RIT campus to get an introduction preview and a city of Rochester. Of sudden, I love this town which compared to the largest metropolitan. It is bizarre to feel very calmly about Rochester with the beautiful wintry season and country scenes outside the small city. It reflected me of the early America (colonial) history experience. In few months later, I received the acceptance letter from NTID Administration and my reaction was thrilled. When I arrived into the campus for Summer Vestibule Program (SVP) in 1999, the campus atmosphere gave me great and warm hospitality with blissful and bright.
For the next four years, most instructors were very dedicated for their best and work-hard effort to support our students to accomplish the technology education. I admired them very much and influenced my great motivation to study harder. By collecting my tools from the classroom, it benefited my knowledge and ability to work on the office environment including the understanding of technology. The foundation was very essential benefit for me to build. Without the foundation, I can’t have the skill of technology knowledge to use the computer. Thanks to NTID for their contribution to me! Then I was hoping to enroll RIT for Professional Technology in Communication. Unfortunately, my English was not enough to demonstrate and to compatible what the liberal arts department’s highest expectation. Yet, I wish I could have read books and write a lot when I was very younger. It was very disappointment. I decided to transfer to Gallaudet University and my goal to get bachelor’s degree for job opportunities.
When I enrolled Gallaudet University, I had homesick from NTID/RIT. During my Gallaudet days, I visited the tiger land often. I almost decided to withdraw from Gallaudet in a week during New Student Orientation. My academic advisor at NTID advised me to stay on Bison land. Time flew fast indeed. Gradually, my life adjusted slowly. By my graduation of last year, I realized I love Gallaudet so much with my warm and rich experience on insightful of classroom discussion among the students, social life, and collaborated working with few wonderful instructors and my favorite academic advisor to endure my academic excellence. The torch blessed my heart to reflect what NTID and Gallaudet provide me.
Absolutely, Gallaudet University needs to improve their academic education to restore for primary students to accomplish for job opportunities to unlock. I wish to see the expansion of beautification campus such as campus apartments, mini-convenience stores and college town nearby. I pray that Gallaudet administration will continue to listen and to focus what students need.
Thank you for bringing up the topic discussion related to Gallaudet University.
Nick Vera