RIP Myles Brand
Myles Brand, former NCAA chairman, passed away yesterday from pancreatic cancer at the age of 67. Brand was also president of Indiana University from 1994-2002, a tenure which overlapped that of ITA’s resident Hoosiers I believe. Brand first came to the attention of the wider public when he fired legendary IU basketball coach Bobby Knight in 2000.
Some of Brand’s prior appearances at ITA:
- “Indiana-related Sports News,” by Eric Seymour, August 6, 2005.
- “Indiana University President Adam Herbert,” by Zach Wendling, August 9, 2005
- “IU Basketball Has Up-and-Down Week,” by Adam Packer, August 15, 2005
Everybody Wants a Piece
Yesterday, the Carnegie Corporation took out two page spreads in major newspapers, including the Washington Post and the New York Times, asking for higher education to get a piece of the government stimulus action. They want lawmakers to set aside five percent of the stimulus money, probably in the $40-$45 billion range, to rebuild the infrastructure of higher education. They argue that spending money on higher ed would “have a direct and immediate impact on economic activity beyond the dollars expended.” You can see the ad here (PDF).
This is of course not surprising, as when the government starts passing money out, everyone wants a piece of the action. Frankly, I can think of a lot worse things to spend taxpayer money on than classrooms and research labs. But the bailout party in Washington is illustrative of why fiscal restraint is so difficult and so necessary. Every Tom, Dick, and Harriet comes running whenever someone hears the federal wallet opening.
On a different note, tucked away in the text of the ad (first paragraph, second column) is this nugget: “For the first time in our history, the cohort of Americans ages 25 to 34 is less well educated than the older cohorts that preceded it.” This is shocking to me if true. Ross Douthat asserted in his book that the march to higher education had slowed considerably, but I had missed evidence of an actual decline. In the same paragraph, Carnegie asserts that the U.S. has dropped from first to tenth in percentage of population with a college degree. Given that all the writers here at ITA are part of this 25-34 cohort, what are we to make of this fact?
In Other News
Taking a break from bailout news,* here are some bits from the education arena:
- An evangelical megachurch in suburban Atlanta has won accreditation, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. 25 students who took classes at New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, GA will receive degrees in criminal justice, hospitality, and business administration from North Carolina Central University. The university had failed to notify a regional accreditor that some of its students were taking classes 400 miles away.
- Soda bans in school do little to improve childhood health. Thanks nanny state.
- Via Lifehacker, here are 77 books that a person can read to give themselves the equivalent of an MBA. This “personal MBA” is an interesting idea. B-school is largely about personal networking, so you’ll miss that, but at least you’ll get the book learning part of it. And if you can get your hands on some church letterhead…
- Conservatives go highbrow in trying to make inroads on campus.
* McCain should debate on Friday so Obama doesn’t get free press. This crisis campaigning does not look presidential.
Tuition Rebates: Money Poorly Spent
Matthew Kahn, mulling over a decision by Columbia University to lower tuition to middle class parents, asks, “So, what makes a great university? A great faculty or happy middle class students?” Here’s my answer.
Consider also that higher education is oversold and merely a signal of being middle class, Columbia’s policy seems like a step in the wrong direction.
And How, Brother
Kevin Drum strikes a chord:
For reasons I can’t really explain, a couple of days ago I picked up Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind and started reading it. Ugh. What a whiny, petulant little book it turned out to be. Did people really take it seriously when it was first published? Am I not giving it a proper chance by giving up after a hundred pages? Did it seem more relevant in 1987 than in 2008? Or what?
My previous thoughts on CotAM here. I have since found more rewarding ways to make myself feel stupid.
By George
Check this out. Starting tomorrow, the Orwell Prize is publishing George Orwell’s diaries as a blog. Orwell wrote diaries on domestic and political happenings from August 9, 1938, until October 1942. The Orwell Prize will be posting each diary entry as a blog post in real-time, 70 years after the fact, for the next four years. The events covered will be Orwell’s recuperation in Morocco, his return to Great Britain, and his opinions on the descent of Europe into World War II. It should be a fascinating look into Orwell’s mind.
Indiana University Alumni Trustee Election — 2008
It’s that time of the year again. All interested IU alumni can find my analysis and endorsement below the fold.
Locking the Ivory Tower
Anonymous Professor X writes in the June 2008 issue of Atlantic Monthly against the universality of a college education. “The idea that a university education is for everyone is a destructive myth,” s/he says. I think s/he’s correct. College isn’t for everyone, but people need to make that decision for themselves, not have it made for them.
The Exploits of Mr. Chicken
Having served as the associate editor of the The Wabash Commentary, an independent student publication at Wabash College, I sympathize with the staff of The Montclarion. Since 1928, The Montclarion has served as “the student voice of Montclair State University.” That is, until last week, when Ron Chicken, president of the student union, axed the paper’s funding.
At the heart of the dispute is New Jersey’s “Open Public Meetings Act,” N.J.S.A. 10:4-6 et seq. Like other “sunshine” laws, the statute requires all pubic bodies which vote on matters and spend pubic funds to give adequate notice of meetings and allow interested outside parties to attend. According the staff of The Montclarion and their attorney, Mr. Chicken’s regime has violated the statute, holding meetings behind closed doors. In responding to this tenebrous charge, Mr. Chicken froze the paper’s funding, apparently upset that the paper’s attorney would not shed light on a number of attorney-client communications.
It is fairly typical to see independent student publications in a laocoon struggle with their institutions or student governments. That a university’s weekly would be shut down, however, is noticeable. Perhaps this is why the Times took notice earlier this week. Even the ivory tower of the academy is sometimes rocked by the gritty reality of money, self-preservation, and political machinations.
Update: After considerable exposure, it appears that The Montclarion’s budget was unfrozen for one month.
Cooking Books
Here’s a clever site that’s been making the rounds: Books That Make You Dumb. The gist is that the creators downloaded the top ten books at every college listed on Facebook, then correlated the books with the average SAT scores at the colleges at which they are popular. The results, sorted by genre, are plotted here.
Really, this probably doesn’t tell us much about the books or their readers, but there are some interesting observations.
- The top titles (scoring roughly more than 1150):
Lolita
100 Years of Solitude
Crime and Punishment
Freakonomics
Catch 22
Atlas Shrugged
The Alchemist
Cat’s Cradle
Ender’s Game - Lolita is an outlier within the ‘Erotica’ genre (much dispute, apparently, over that classification); otherwise that genre scrapes the bottom of the barrel. Slightly above that lies the ‘African-American’ genre. All of those titles scored lower than “I Don’t Read.”
- While Atlas Shrugged scores high, the kind of committed Objectivists who would delve deeper into Ayn Rand’s works will find Anthem quite a bit lower, scoring mid-range among ‘Dystopian’ literature.
- The Da Vinci Code scores well, and those who went back to read Angels and Demons score even higher. Oddly, those who expressed a preference for “Dan Brown” scored lower than DVC.
- Interesting distinction between those who list The Bible (~1050) and those who list The Holy Bible (~925), the only title to score lower than The Purpose Driven Life (no favorite of mine) in ‘Religion.’ Those hard-working Mormons lead the pack in that genre.
- As noted elsewhere, Crime and Punishment far outranks Anna Karenina. Also noted elsewhere, some derision for tagging Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven as ‘Philosophy.’
