Tidbits on January 24, 2012
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

In this edition of of Tidbits the following pictures are featured:
The Seasonal Life Cycle of Bob Jensen's Impatiens
Part 1:  April-June
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Impatiens/ImpatiensSet01/ImpatiensSet01.htm
 

Patience is golden; Duct tape is silver.
As quoted in a recent email from Rick Newmark
Think about this one until you get the point.
Erika instantly thought of me and where I keep huge roles of duct tape in the basement and in the barn.

More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

Blogs of White Mountain Hikers (many great photographs) ---
http://www.blogger.com/profile/02242409292439585691

Especially note the archive of John Compton's blogs at the bottom of the page at
http://1happyhiker.blogspot.com/

White Mountain News --- http://www.whitemtnews.com/

Blast from the Past With Hal and Rosie Wyman ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/Wyman2011.htm

 

Tidbits on January 24, 2012
Bob Jensen

For earlier editions of Tidbits go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/.


Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   


Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/




Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

A CBS Sixty Minutes module on January 15, 2012
What's the difference between a prodigy and an autistic genius"
Here's an autistic genius who will commence a PhD program in mathematics/science at Age 14
Jake's Memory put to the Test ---
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7395226n&tag=cbsnewsMainColumnArea.2

Inspiration Video:  He's No Wimp ---
http://www.wimp.com/watchingthis/

Bravo! Fifth Generation of Fighter Planes --- http://player.vimeo.com/video/3437045?autoplay=1

Hubble Ultra Deep --- http://www.flixxy.com/hubble-ultra-deep-field-3d.htm

Fallingwater, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Creations, Animated --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/fallingwater-one-of-frank-lloyd-wrights-finest-creations-animated.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Decline of Scientific Research in America --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/neil_degrasse_tyson_on_the_decline_of_scientific_research_in_america.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Richard Feynman Trilogy: The Physicist Captured in Three Films --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/the_richard_feynman_film_trilogy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Celebrate Stephen Hawking’s 70th Birthday with Errol Morris’ Film, A Brief History of Time --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/celebrate_stephen_hawkings_70th_birthday_with_the_errol_morris_film_of_ia_brief_history_of_timei.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Free: The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/free_the_guggenheim_puts_65_modern_art_books_online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

100 Years in 10 Minutes: A Quick Video History of the Past Century --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/100_years_in_10_minutes_a_quick_video_history_of_the_past_century.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

David Lynch in Four Movements: A Video Tribute --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/david_lynch_in_four_movements.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

A Christmas Eve Story from a Retired State Trooper ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxjZB5S_g7s&feature=youtu.be

What happens when the tide goes out?
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Z0qGvC3vqaA

America's First Jet Flight, October 1942 ---
http://www.aircraftowner.com/videos/view/americas-first-jet-flight-october-1942_1617.html

Touched by a Wild Mountain Gorilla (Non HD version) --- Click Here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eXS0o6r-Wk&feature=player_embedded#!

Katharine Hepburn Rearranges the Furniture on The Dick Cavett Show --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/katharine_hepburn_rearranges_the_furniture_on_the_dick_cavett_show.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

George Orwell’s Animal Farm & 1984 Adapted to Film --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/orwells_1984_animal_farm_adapted_to_film.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/fellinis_fantastic_tv_commercials.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Best and Worst 2011 films --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2830772/posts

Here’s Sergey Brin’s talk on how Google started off a simple idea built for one person and the need to just try things to be successful ---
http://startupdigest.com/sergey-brin/

Cute Dog Tricks --- http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=P9Fyey4D5hg

"Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time,"  by Richard MacManus. ReadWriteWeb, January 9, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php
Thanks but no thanks.


Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm

Auld Lang Syne by Sissel (Norwegian Soprano).wmv ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x91rBzNKvlc&NR=1

David Lynch in Four Movements: A Video Tribute --- Click Here

The 1940s --- http://www.objflicks.com/decadeofthe1940s.html

An Uplifting Musical Surprise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997) --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/an_uplifting_musical_surprise_for_dave_brubeck_in_moscow_1997.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

 Web outfits like Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2

TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free online music site) --- http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) --- http://www.slacker.com/

Gerald Trites likes this international radio site --- http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:  Search for a song or band and play the selection --- http://songza.com/
Also try Jango --- http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) --- http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live --- http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note
U.S. Army Band recordings --- http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp

Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials) --- http://www.slacker.com/ 


Photographs and Art

How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/how_film_was_made_a_kodak_nostalgia_moment.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

University of Utah Photographic Exhibits --- http://www.lib.utah.edu/collections/photo-ex

Travel Alberta --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThFCg0tBDck

Madeline 365: A Year in the Life --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/madeline_365_a_year_in_the_life.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Painted Churches of Texas --- http://www.klru.org/paintedchurches/history_czechs.html

Print by Print: The Baltimore Museum of Art [Flash Player] ---
http://www.artbma.org/PrintbyPrint-project/index.html

The 1940s --- http://www.objflicks.com/decadeofthe1940s.html

Hell in the Pacific: Rare World War II photographs show American soldiers' fight for survival in brutal Battle of Saipan ---
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087023/World-War-II-photographs-American-soldiers-fight-survival-brutal-Battle-Saipan.html

U.S. South Pole Station --- http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/

Lincoln Park Architectural Photographs --- http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/lpnc1

Track and Field Galleries --- http://www.trackandfieldnews.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=573&Itemid=118

National Geographic: Maps --- http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps

Lake Superior --- Click Here
https://www.google.com/search?q=Lake+Superior&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&as_qdr=all&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8cwaT-WvPOLo0QGn9b3OCw&ved=0CEIQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=604

Fallingwater, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Creations, Animated --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/fallingwater-one-of-frank-lloyd-wrights-finest-creations-animated.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

The Virtual Museum of Japanese Arts --- http://web-japan.org/museum/menu.html

Whatever happened to Joe Namath (by his own admission tackled repeatedly by alcohol that changed him into a jerk)?---
http://broadwayjoe.tv/

He Folds Money and Lives in a Garbage Truck
Part 1 --- http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=fv9p9htfnr4jveie74peku5922&topic=405786.msg2885429#msg2885429
Part 2 --- http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php?topic=405786.0

Life in 4,748 Self-Portraits --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/life_in_4748_self-portraits.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art [Flash Player] --- http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/rivera/

Countries and Coastlines: A Dramatic View of Earth from Outer Space --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/countries_and_coastlines_a_dramatic_view_from_space.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Pergamon Museum  (Berlin) --- Click Here
https://www.google.com/search?q=Pergamon+Museum&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=QHcRT8LRLtHE0AHs4MTIAw&ved=0CE0QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=629

Africa in Black and White Photos --- Click Here
https://www.google.com/search?q=AFRICA+IN+BLACK+%26+WHITE+PHOTOS&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=sHYRT53OFcPV0QHtqLHPAw&ved=0CGwQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=629

Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (and visualization) ---
http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa
Thank you Ramesh Fernando for the heads up.

Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History


Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

200,000 Martin Luther King Papers Go Online --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/200000_martin_luther_king_jr_papers_go_online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Digital Public Library of America --- http://dp.la/

Remembering Eve Arnold, Pioneering Photojournalist --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/remembering_eve_arnold_pioneering_photojournalist.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

"BLACKWELL ON WRITING: The Long and the Very Short of It," by Elise Blackwell, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 1, 2012 --- http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/blackwell-on-writing-the-long-and-the-very-short-of-it/42488?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en 

Free Philip K. Dick: Download 11 Great Science Fiction Stories --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/free_stories_by_philip_k_dick.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

"Sherlock: the case of Moriarty's maths," by Pete Wilton, University of Oxford via Financial Education, January 9, 2012 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

Nabokov Reads Lolita, Names the Great Books of the 20th Century --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/nabokov_reads_lolita_names_the_great_books_.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI




Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on January 24, 2012
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2012/TidbitsQuotations012412.htm            

The booked National Debt on January 24, 2012 was slightly over $15 trillion ---
U.S. National Debt Clock --- http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

World Giving Index 2011: U.S. Is #1 (Out of 153 Countries)
Gallup Survey:  Giving money, volunteering time and helping a stranger ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2011/12/world-giving-index-2011.html
The comments at the end are nasty.

From BBC News, December 13, 2011
Top Economists Reveal Their Graphs --- http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-16090055
Click on the Start Slide Show button

Some links for Martin Luther King Day 2012 ---
http://twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23MLKDay

"Lessons from a century of large public debt reductions and build-ups," by S. M. Ali Abbas, Nazim Belhocine, Asmaa El-Ganainy, and Mark Horton, Vox, December 18, 2011 ---
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7437

Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm

 

Crowded House: How the World’s Population Grew to 7 Billion People --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/crowded_house_how_the_worlds_population_grew_to_7_billion_people.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Peter G. Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/

Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm




"5 Predictions for Higher Ed Technology in 2012," by Audrey Waters, Inside Higher Ed, January 1, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/5-predictions-higher-ed-technology-2012

"Three Big Law, Policy and Internet Issues of the New Year," by Tracy Mitrano, Inside Higher Ed, January 3, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/three-big-law-policy-and-internet-issues-new-year

The Best of Open Culture 2011 --- Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/the_best_of_open_culture_2011.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

Best and Worst 2011 films (not free) --- http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2830772/posts

Tax Analysts society names as its 2011 Person of the Year
Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform, and notes the other individuals who were considered for the title
---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/files/tax-notes-1.pdf

"The 11 Coolest Gadgets From CES 2012," by Steve Kovach, Open Forum, January 19, 2012 ---
http://www.openforum.com/articles/the-11-coolest-gadgets-we-saw-at-ces-this-year?extlink=em-openf-SBdaily 

Bob Jensen's threads on gadgets ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm#Technology


"The Friday Podcast: The Secret Document That Transformed China," NPR Podcast, January 13, 2012 ---
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/01/13/145184551/the-friday-podcast-the-secret-document-that-transformed-china?sc=tw&cc=shar


The Rotten Apple iBooks

Apple launches iBooks 2 e-Textbook platform (video) --- http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/19/apple-iBooks-2/

iBooks: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) --- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4059

What are the requirements to use iBooks?

 

January 19 Comment by Alex at the end of the article at
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/apple-reinvents-textbooks

There is indeed a lot to like except one major objection: Apple has once again opted not to support open standards and instead chosen to implement interactive iBooks via a proprietary format that could only be consumed on Apple-only devices.

Clearly, Apple is most interested in locking the education market into a closed system where iBooks textbooks can only be produced, sold, distributed and consumed by Apple-only technology.

Also, the iBooks Author app capability to export interactive multimedia-rich books as plain-text or PDF is a lame face-saving gimmic.

Shame on Apple for not fully supporting open standards like HTML5 and ePub3, and for undermining the open Web and Web browsers in favor of a closed proprietary system.

January 20, 2012 reply from Richard Campbell

One concern I have with Apple's iBooks Author program is in respect to the EULA

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/20/apple_ibooks/ 

I would prefer that Apple would charge for this authoring program and allow the standard file format (epub) be sold wherever the author wanted. Under the current conditions, Apple gets 30% of anything created with this program.

On a brighter note, it means that individual entrepreneurs who create their own works will be at a competive advantage vis-a-vis the major publishers.

Richard

January 20, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Richard,

As one of the most diehard ToolBook users are you still writing ToolBooks?

It's amazing how iBooks have apparently borrowed almost all the ideas (such as wizards) from ToolBook with a couple of major exceptions. ToolBook has relatively expensive licensing fees but will play back on most Internet Browsers, including 100 millions of Windows machines.

As far as I can tell, iBooks will only play back on iPads which has to greatly limit the population of users to only those with access to iPad machines. Meanwhile, Amazon is still winning the high volume user and price wars on eBook downloads to its Kindle.

I would hate to have to author a textbook with touchscreen keys and a small screen. I realize there are limited apps for iPad keyboards and screen projections, but life would be so much simpler if IPads just had two or more UBS ports and a VGA port.

Also there are many, many readers and authors who want optional hard copy books. Depending too much upon multimedia for book authoring may be premature until hard copy books themselves have built in video playback screens on the inside back cover --- which is not yet a technology that I've seen developed.

Alternately, hard copy books may one day have UBS-type ports where video player headsets can be plugged into the binding of a hard copy book. This might be a neat way to publish hard copy books with multimedia components. The days of ubiquitous computing are just dawning and this may include a small computer built into the binding of a hard copy book --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ubiquit.htm

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen

PS I disagree with your implication that publishers have lost comparative advantages vis-a-vis custom (Vanity Press) authoring. Since you teach CVP analysis you must appreciate the fact that publishers still can add greatly to the "V" in CVP. You witness this every semester when publisher book reps walk up and down the halls outside your faculty office. The proportion of accounting textbook market share held by major textbook publishers may be declining slightly, but it's certainly not enough of a decline to contend that major textbook publishing houses do not currently have very important comparative advantages to authors of textbooks.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Ebooks.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


"A Good and Bad Week for Free Speech," by Christopher Jon Sprigman, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 20, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-GoodBad-Week-for-Free/130422/

Jensen Comment
Quotations from this long article can be misleading. It needs to be read in its entirety.

Bob Jensen's threads on the dreaded DMCA ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright


"Ernst & Young: Named Top Employer In 2012 Stonewall Workplace Equality Index," by Erica deVry, Big4.com, January 20, 2012 ---
http://www.big4.com/ernst-young/eernst-young-named-top-employer-in-2012-stonewall-workplace-equality-index

The Stonewall Workplace Equality Index, which showcases the UK’s top 100 public and private sector employers for gay, lesbian, and bisexual staff, has named Ernst & Young Employer of the Year for 2012, climbing from third place last year. The firm also received top ranking in Stonewall’s inaugural ‘Global Best Practice Index’.

Commenting on Stonewall’s recognition, Harry Gaskell, Managing Partner for Advisory and Head of Diversity and Inclusiveness at Ernst & Young said:

“Being named the 2012 Employer of the Year is an achievement that we’re very proud of. I’m really happy with the great progress the firm has made since it first entered the Workplace Equality Index in 2005 and look forward to continuing to champion diversity and inclusiveness in 2012.”

Ernst & Young’s leading role in developing the concept of inclusive leadership, its sponsorship of National Student Pride, its engagement with clients about sexual orientation as a workplace issue, and strong leadership driven from the top are some of the progressive initiatives attributed to the firm’s success.

Continued in article

"Deloitte Given Perfect Rating on Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index," by Kalen Smith, Big4.com, January 13, 2012 ---
http://www.big4.com/uncategorized/deloitte-given-perfect-rating-on-human-rights-campaign-corporate-equality-index

The Human Rights Campaign has named Deloitte one of the best places to work for the sixth year in a row. In their 2012 Corporate Equality Index, the HRC noted that it gave Deloitte a 100 percent rating.

Deloitte chief talent officer, Jennifer Steinmann, said that Deloitte is constantly working to provide a workplace that employees will be proud of. Steinmann said that they offer a culture that helps the LGBT community and encourages all of its employees to feel accepted.

Steinmann said that Deloitte offers a number of solutions to the variety of challenges they face as they strive to create an environment that increases employee morale and gives all employees the opportunity to thrive. Deloitte has used a number of Business Resource Groups to educate employees and offer them the resources they need to address the challenges they face in the workplace.

HRC is making its standards increasingly strict. Due to the changes in their eligibility standards, about 50 percent of companies have fallen off of the list. New standards include providing a culture for members of the LGBT community and promoting company citizenship.

Steinmann and other representatives at Deloitte state that they are proud of the fact that Deloitte has consistently earned this recognition since 2006.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on the best places to work are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers


The sad part about going into business apart from writing books is that having such a huge vested interest in that business creates moral hazard in terms of independence as on of the leading personal finance commentators in the world. The champion of the poor and troubled may be trying to increase her 1% at the expense of the poor and troubled.

Suze Orman --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suze_Orman

"Suze Orman, Debit-Card Dealer:  The money guru introduces her first financial product—and vexes some fans," by Karen Weise, Bloomberg Business Week, January 19, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/suze-orman-debitcard-dealer-01182012.html

“I love you!” a woman yells as personal finance guru Suze Orman enters the drab conference room at a Barnes & Noble (BKS) in suburban New Jersey. Fans cheer and clap while a man in the front row tears up from excitement. Orman is here to preach the tough-love brand of financial advice that she’s been peddling for more than a decade through nine bestselling books, a highly rated CNBC show, and regular appearances on the old Oprah Winfrey Show. “You have got to be the masters of your own financial future,” she tells the 200-strong crowd. While the event coincides with a new paperback edition of her 10th book, The Money Class, that’s not the main focus of her talk. “You need more than books,” she says. “Now you need the tools.”

Orman has a particular tool in mind. Just a few days earlier she introduced her first financial product: a prepaid debit card emblazoned with her name. She sees her Approved Card as an alternative way for people who are fed up with—or don’t have—traditional checking accounts and credit cards to manage their cash. And if the most ambitious part of her plan succeeds, the card may eventually help users improve their credit scores.

Orman’s Approved Card, issued by Wilmington (Del.)-based Bancorp Bank (TBBK), is in part designed to play the role of pestering mom. The basics are simple: People use electronic transfers or cash to load money onto their cards, then use them like regular debit cards, buying groceries or shopping online. The Orman touch comes in such features as automatic text message alerts sent to mobile phones that note the balance remaining on the card after each purchase. The card’s website has Orman issuing such sharply worded reminders as, “Before you make a purchase, you’d better be able to afford it—do you hear me?!”

Prepaid cards are the fastest-growing payment method, Federal Reserve data show. In 2010 people used them for $65 billion in transactions, compared with $48 billion in 2009, the industry newsletter Nilson Report says. Part of the cards’ appeal is that you can’t get into debt with them. “I think it’s a good idea to have a prepaid card rather than going out willy-nilly with a credit card,” says Glinda Kidd at the book signing.

Still, prepaid cards often come loaded with fees—and Orman’s is no exception. It has a standard $3 monthly charge. While there’s no cost to reload the card with direct deposits or automatic transfers from a checking account, people must pay up to $4.95 to put cash on the card at Western Union (WU) or MoneyGram (MGI) locations. And if they load with cash rather than electronically, all ATM withdrawals cost $2. One free call to a customer service rep is included each month; extra calls are $2 each.

“What people don’t understand is the cost to do business,” says Orman in an interview. “If I could have given this to you for free, I would have.” Orman, who says she invested $1 million in the venture, declines to discuss how much money she might make from it. And she vows to train customers to keep their costs down. In videos on the card’s website, she explains the fees, warning that people who load their cards electronically can get cash from one of the 35,000 ATMs in the Allpoint network for free but will incur a $2 charge for using other ATMs—plus whatever fee the ATM operator imposes. “Why would you want to waste money like that?” she says in the video. “Don’t be lazy, and go to an Allpoint ATM.”

Orman says if she finds people are incurring fees to put cash on the card, only to spend another $2 to get cash at an ATM, she will ask them to turn in their plastic. If you’re going to squander money that way, “just keep it in cash! You don’t need the damn card,” she tells the audience at the book signing.

Michael Collins, an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies the financial decision-making of low-income families, says people will eventually figure out the costs of any product. “The question is how long will it take” and how much in fees they will have racked up by then, he says. Collins adds that if Orman’s messages help people control their spending impulses, the card could be beneficial: “Anything that gets people to think harder about their financial security and take some responsibility is a good thing.”

Some personal finance bloggers have complained about the fees and charged that Orman is using her influence to bilk her fans. On Twitter, the Blog Finanza website said: “You are taking your authority figure to make a $$ from your audience. #DENIED”—echoing a catchphrase from Orman’s TV show. Others, such as MSNBC.com consumer finance columnist Herb Weisbaum, said many people would be better served by building their credit immediately with a secured credit card.

Orman dismisses the criticisms, saying the card reflects her understanding of people’s financial habits and needs. “I am the personal financial expert of the world,” she says. “I know what I am talking about.” Publicly, Orman lashed out on Twitter against the naysayers, calling them “small thinkers,” “idiots,” and “Suze haters.” After New York Times personal finance columnist Ron Lieber and others protested the harsh words, she issued a blanket apology: “For anyone I called an idiot, I too am sorry.”

Continued in article

"Does Suze Orman's Prepaid Debit Card Make Sense for You?" by Sarah Gilbert, Get Rich Slowly, January 17, 2012 ---
http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2012/01/17/does-suze-ormans-prepaid-debit-card-make-sense-for-you/?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-48064510

Suze Orman is famous for her personal, easy-to-digest, and friendly personal finance advice. Many of us less famous (far less famous, in the case of this writer) finance writers admire her general approach, which boils down to “spend less than you earn.” Who can argue with that? So imagine my amazement at the news this week that Suze will be offering a branded prepaid debit card.

Prepaid debit cards have a star-crossed reputation
You know about branded prepaid debit cards, but they're usually not connected with individuals known for their sensible finance advice. Think
Russell Simmons. Think the Kardashians. See? Sample words and phrases from our collective wisdom on those topics include “skeptical” and “reprehensible” and “urge to scream” and “hit cash-strapped consumers over the head with nickel-and-dime charges.”

Suze Orman is famous for her personal, easy-to-digest, and friendly personal finance advice. Many of us less famous (far less famous, in the case of this writer) finance writers admire her general approach, which boils down to “spend less than you earn.” Who can argue with that? So imagine my amazement at the news this week that Suze will be offering a branded prepaid debit card.

Prepaid debit cards have a star-crossed reputation You know about branded prepaid debit cards, but they're usually not connected with individuals known for their sensible finance advice. Think Russell Simmons. Think the Kardashians. See? Sample words and phrases from our collective wisdom on those topics include “skeptical” and “reprehensible” and “urge to scream” and “hit cash-strapped consumers over the head with nickel-and-dime charges.”

The biggest problems with prepaid debit cards are, really, threefold:

While they are cards that are available to consumers with bad credit, they don't help consumers build credit, though they are advertised as doing so (any help would be mild at best - the reporting they do is only to smaller credit reporting agencies, not the “big three” that man the velvet rope for most consumer debt in America). They're punishingly expensive and seem more directed toward association with the personality branding the card than any financial benefit. Russell's “Rush” Card costs between $4 and $15 upfront, with $10 monthly fees and $1 per-transaction fees. They're accused of using celebrities to take advantage of both the hopes and difficult situations of the “unbanked,” mostly-lower-class, often minority consumers whose financial situation is so bad that banks won't take the risk of giving them checking accounts.

Suze Orman wants to make a difference (but, is it a fool's errand?) Orman has a different idea. She, too, wants to convince the unbanked to use her prepaid debit card, but she wants to charge less. Her “Approved Card” is far cheaper than Rush or the K thingy - only $3 to purchase the card and a $3 monthly fee. ATM transactions from the Allpoint network (found in 7-Eleven, Costco, Kroger, CVS, and Walgreens) are $2 per withdrawal, and point of sale transactions, such as purchases at the grocery store or coffee shop or online, are free. Balance inquiries and some declined transactions are $1 , but it's free to be declined at the register for a regular PIN/signature transaction. Many of these transactions, especially ATM withdrawals, are free for 30 days with a direct deposit or bank transfer into the Approved Card account, making them a great product for customers with some sort of automatically-deposited income (even, for instance, unemployment).

Notably, electronic debit bill paying is free. Many competing products charge for this service, from $1 to $3 per transaction, and it's the service that customers without a regular bank account need. Often, discounts and special deals are available to customers who allow vendors to debit their account each month.

The great credit score kerfuffle
The concept that sells many prepaid debit cards - the quasi-justification for how expensive they are - is that they might help in the quest to raise a credit score. If a credit score is low enough so that a mainstream bank isn't part of your personal finance portfolio, can a prepaid debit card even help? Probably not.

The problem that Suze Orman has mentioned in public statements about the Approved Card is that credit bureaus, beyond even knowing about the transactions made by the millions of unbanked consumers, don't care about sensible use of money. They just care about sensible use of credit. A New York Times piece quotes Orman as saying, “There is something radically wrong here. We are rewarding people for having credit and punishing people who pay in cash. I want to change that paradigm.”

Wanting to change credit score calculation is easy. Changing is hard.
Orman has done the near-impossible and convinced TransUnion, one of the big three credit bureaus, to collect the data about spending habits from her customers. But what that will do to credit scores is another thing entirely. The answer, probably, is nothing.

The problem that Suze Orman has mentioned in public statements about the Approved Card is that credit bureaus, beyond even knowing about the transactions made by the millions of unbanked consumers, don't care about sensible use of money. They just care about sensible use of credit. A New York Times piece quotes Orman as saying, “There is something radically wrong here. We are rewarding people for having credit and punishing people who pay in cash. I want to change that paradigm.”

Wanting to change credit score calculation is easy. Changing is hard.
Orman has done the near-impossible and convinced TransUnion, one of the big three credit bureaus, to collect the data about spending habits from her customers. But what that will do t
o credit scores is another thing entirely. The answer, probably, is nothing.

The problem is that TransUnion has only been persuaded to evaluate the data Orman will collect with her Approved Card; it has not promised to include that in credit reports nor in the calculation of scores. If, after two years, it finds the data meaningful, it's still unlikely to have much of an effect on the resultant calculations. Responsible use of a prepaid debit card, after all, hasn't had much impact on the financial institutions that sponsor the card - in this case, Orman's own company - so the patterns of data don't have much meaning.

What kind of debit card use could demonstrate the sort of behavior creditors want to see, such as:

These all can be shown far more reliably through existing reporting. A consumer who pays rent on time each month in cash won't differ, to the eyes of TransUnion, from a consumer who pays rent on time each month by automatic debit from her Approved Card. Similarly, failing to overdraw an Approved Card account (that is impossible to overdraw from, except perhaps for a few $1/$2 ATM transaction declined fees) is very different from failing to overdraw a bank account.

Why would you use a prepaid debit card?
There are two groups of people I can see benefiting from using a prepaid debit card, as well as one group I would caution to avoid it. All of them could achieve higher credit scores, but not in the way you think. Let me explain
.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
The sad part about going into business apart from writing books is that having such a huge vested interest in that business creates moral hazard in terms of independence as on of the leading personal finance commentators in the world. The champion of the poor and troubled may be trying to increase her 1% at the expense of the poor and troubled.

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers


Question
When is the last time you ever heard of taxes being lower in Massachusetts, New York, and California?
Thank you Paul Caron for the heads up.

"NFL Final Four: Boston, New York, and San Francisco Trump Baltimore in Lower Taxes," by Steve H. Hanke and Stephen J.K. Walters, The Wall Street Journal, January 21, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204468004577167283166176946.html?KEYWORDS=nfl

This Sunday's NFL championship games have it all: future Hall-of-Famers in abundance, jet-fueled offenses, bone-crushing defenses, and even a pair of coaches vying to bring a sibling rivalry to Super Bowl Sunday in two weeks.

And if you're a fan of cities more than their sports teams, you know that these games feature genuine superstars: Boston, New York and San Francisco are magnets to residents and employers, engines of prosperity, and league leaders on any quality-of-life measure.

Then there's our hometown. Baltimore is in need of a strategy for urban revival—the type of elixir that turned the other three cities around.

Some historical perspective is in order. Three decades ago, none of these cities worked very well and all were losing residents. Between 1950 and 1980, New York's population declined 10%, San Francisco's 12%, Baltimore's 17% and Boston's an astounding 30%.

These losses were accompanied by steady erosion of each city's job base, rising crime, declining school quality, and a sense that cities themselves might be passé. Many embraced the notion that the post-World War II exodus from core cities was a result of racism (fueling "white flight") or Americans' unfortunate taste for detached homes and expansive lawns.

Then, around 1980, some cities that had been in decline enjoyed dramatic reversals of fortune. Between 1980 and 2010, Boston's population grew 10%, New York's 16%, and San Francisco's 19%. But Baltimore continued its descent, losing another 21% of its residents.

Did those in turnaround cities magically discover the virtues of racial diversity or high-density living? Or did their leaders heed the lessons of previous decades and correct policy errors that had contributed to urban decay?

Neither. There was no sudden change in the cultures of the cities that would become superstars, and no real awareness among their governing elites that they were doing anything wrong. But their most damaging policy reflexes were, in fact, altered—against their will.

All these cities had long pursued progressive political agendas with pride. But the problem with redistributive policies at the local level is that the donor classes might move out as fast as beneficiary classes move in—or, as the population figures cited earlier show, even faster. Robin Hood may seem a heroic figure, but once his rich victims flee Nottingham, even that city's poor might question his effectiveness. Related Video

Steve Hanke on why New York, Boston, and San Francisco are flourishing while Baltimore is languishing.

San Francisco and Boston were rescued from their folly by statewide tax revolts. California's Prop 13, passed in 1978, capped property taxes in that state at 1%—which slashed San Francisco's rate by almost two-thirds. Massachusetts followed suit in 1980 with Prop 2½, which mandated that municipalities could not increase their total property tax receipts by more than 2.5% annually. New York City taxpayers did not revolt, but state legislators rationalized the Big Apple's chaotic property tax system in 1981; it now enjoys property tax rates that average about one-third of those in its surrounding suburbs (though its other taxes are certainly punishing).

While no single factor explains any city's destiny, it is not a mere coincidence that Boston, New York and San Francisco reversed their declines at the exact moment they became favorable environments for private investment in residential and business capital.

Every time a city raises the tax rate on residential and business property, its owners suffer a capital loss (which economists refer to as "tax capitalization"). In effect, tax hikes are incremental expropriations; owners flee not just because of short-term wealth losses but in fear of future damage to their property rights. Tax caps not only improve the immediate cash flow on investments in real property but—perhaps more important—secure it against further expropriations.

Baltimore has blithely ignored basic property-rights theory. When high property taxes chased many residents and business owners to the suburbs, the city raised rates further. When grandiose slum-clearance and transit plans destabilized neighborhoods, Baltimore's one-party establishment arranged eminent-domain seizures and pushed even more "big footprint" renewal projects.

The results leave no doubt about which strategy is more effective. Baltimore's real, median household income has been stagnant for the last three decades. New York's has risen 22% while Boston's and San Francisco's have soared by half. Baltimore's 2009 homicide rate was 4.7 times Boston's and 6.7 times New York's and San Francisco's.

Even Baltimore's sports facilities, which many assume have contributed mightily to our mythical renaissance, carry a lesson. Boston, New York and San Francisco have all declined to build their football teams new, lavish, government-financed stadiums within city limits. They've nevertheless thrived.

Maryland taxpayers, on the other hand, gifted Baltimore wonderful football and baseball stadiums near our Inner Harbor, on the theory that "stimulating" downtown development would be a game-changer that inevitably spread prosperity throughout the city. They're still hoping for that change.

In this, Baltimore is no different from other cities wedded to policies that repel investment. All try to make up for this deficiency via capital allocation by government—and all show disappointing results. As this weekend's championship cities demonstrate, greater respect for private capital and some protections for the property rights of its owners can have miraculous effects. Someday, even Baltimore might call that play.

Jensen Comment
But when you compare states rather than cities, people and businesses are exiting Taxachusetts, New York, and California to states having lower taxes. For example, many very wealthy people (like Mitt Romney) now reside in New Hampshire and commute or telecommute to Boston. Similarly, some wealthy people live in Delaware and commute and telecommute to New York and Baltimore. They have to pay state taxes on earned income within a state, but for very wealthy people earned income is generally less than investment income such as income from tax exempt bonds. The retired Barnie Frank, who is now quite wealthy, admits that a major portion of his investment portfolio is in Mass. municipal bonds that are tax exempt in his federal and state returns.

My good friend Bob Anthony, now deceased, made a lot of money on textbook royalties and investment income. It didn't take much imagination to figure out one of the major reasons he made New Hampshire his home state even when he was on the full-time  faculty of Harvard University for most of his career. I'm not a wealthy man, but with my more modest savings in retirement it also does not take a lot of imagination to figure out why I chose to retire in New Hampshire rather than other states I considered such as the coast of Maine, the lakes of northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, or wonderful retirement places in northern California. The runner up retirement choice for me was the Nevada shores of Lake Tahoe, but real estate prices were too steep for me in that vicinity.

"States Where People Pay the Most (and Least) in Taxes," by Charles B. Stockdale, Michael B. Sauter, Douglas A. McIntyre, Yahoo Finance, July 21, 2011 ---
http://finance.yahoo.com/taxes/article/113173/states-pay-most-least-taxes-247wallst

Bob Jensen's threads on taxation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#010304Taxation


Marginal Tax Rates Around the World --- http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/MarginalTaxRates.html

"How Much the Rich Pay Mitt Romney, the 1% and taxes," The Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168683705018156.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Mitt Romney's disclosure this week that his effective federal tax rate is "probably closer to the 15% rate than anything" has created the predictable political uproar. The White House and its media allies figure they've now got their stereotype of the Monopoly man, albeit without his cane and top hat, who they can crush in their planned class-warfare campaign.

We're not sure if facts will matter in this cacophony, but someone should at least try to introduce a little reality into the debate, especially since Mr. Romney seems so unprepared to make the case.

Start with the fact that, like Warren Buffett, Mr. Romney said he makes most of his money from investments, not wages or salary. Thus his income is really taxed twice: once at the corporate tax rate of 35%, then again at a 15% tax rate when it is passed through to him as dividends or via capital gains from the sale of stock.

All income from businesses is eventually passed through to the owners, so to ignore business taxes creates a statistical illusion that makes it appear that the rich pay less than they really do. By this logic, if the corporate tax rate were raised to, say, 60% from today's 35% and the dividend and capital gains tax were cut to zero, it would appear that business owners were getting away with paying no federal tax at all.

This all-too-conveniently confuses the incidence of a tax with the burden of a tax. The marginal tax rate on every additional dollar of capital gains and dividend income from corporate profits can reach as high as 44.75% at the federal level (assuming a company pays the 35% top corporate rate), not 15%.

The Congressional Budget Office recently examined the distribution of federal taxes on various income groups. The report was ballyhooed by liberals as proof of rising income inequality, but that argument is for another day. What everyone has ignored is what CBO found about the relative taxes paid by different groups. And, lo, the rich pay more, which is probably why the press didn't report it.

The nearby table from the CBO report shows that in 2007 the average income tax rate paid by the 1% was 18.8%, compared to 4.2% for Americans in a broadly defined middle class from the 21st to 80th income percentiles. The poorest 20% on average paid a net negative income-tax rate of 5.6% because of the checks they receive for tax credits that are "refundable." These are essentially transfer payments redistributing income from the rich and middle class to the poor.

As for all federal taxes, CBO found that in 2007 the top 1% paid an average rate of a little under 30%, compared to 15.1% for middle-income earners. In calculating this overall tax burden, CBO takes account of payroll taxes, which moves the rate of the lowest 20% of earners into positive territory at 4.7%. CBO also apportions to individuals who are shareholders the tax that corporations pay on corporate profits.

Continued in article

"Why Americans think the tax rate is high when it is not," The Economic Times ---
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/why-americans-think-the-tax-rate-is-high-when-it-is-not/articleshow/11568197.cms

When people heard that Mitt Romney's federal income tax rate was about 15 per cent, the immediate reaction of many was to assume that their own tax rate was higher. The top marginal rate is 35 per cent, after all, and the marginal rate on a couple with $70,000 in taxable income is 25 per cent.

But the truth is that most households probably pay a lower rate than Romney. It is impossible to know for sure, given that he has yet to release his tax return. What is clear, though, is that a large majority of US households - about two out of three - pays less than 15 per cent of income to the federal government, through either income taxes or payroll taxes.

This disconnect between what we pay and what we think we pay is nothing less than one of the country's biggest economic problems.

Many Americans see themselves as struggling under the weight of a heavy tax burden (partly for the understandable reason that wage growth has been so weak). Yet taxes in the United States are quite low today, compared with past years or those in other countries. Most important, US taxes are not sufficient to pay for the programs that many people want, like Medicare, Social Security, road construction and education subsidies.

What does this combination create? An enormous long-term budget deficit.

Together, all federal taxes equaled 14.4 per cent of the nation's economic output last year, the lowest level since 1950. Add state and local taxes, and the share nearly doubles, to about 27 per cent, according to the Tax Policy Center in Washington - still lower than at almost any other point in the past 40 years.

As the economy recovers and incomes rise, tax payments will increase somewhat. But they will not keep pace with projected spending, in the form of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And total taxes at current rates would still make up a smaller share of the economy than in virtually any other rich country - not just European nations but also Australia, Canada, Israel and New Zealand.

Obviously, tax increases are not the only way to solve the deficit. Spending cuts can, too. But so far, at least, many voters seem to prefer small, symbolic cuts, like those to foreign aid. Substantial cuts - be they the changes to Medicare that President Barack Obama included in his health care bill or the Medicare overhaul that Republicans prefer - tend to be politically unpopular.

Since the late 1970s, just before the modern tax-cutting push began, total federal tax rates have fallen for every income group. The payroll tax has risen, but declines in the income tax have more than made up for those increases. Nearly half the population now pays no federal income tax.

Most households pay less than 15 per cent of their income to the federal government because of tax breaks, like the exclusion for health insurance, and because marginal rates apply to only a small part of a taxpayer's income. On the first $70,000 of a couple's taxable income, the total federal income tax rate is only 13.8 per cent.

That said, taxes have fallen the most for the very affluent. Romney and his father - George W. Romney, the former automobile executive, Michigan governor and presidential candidate - do a nice job of illustrating the change.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Of course rich and poor alike pay other taxes such as taxes at the fuel pump and payroll deduction taxes if those ever come back (which seems increasingly unlikely in our political dogfight). And there are serious ways to be mislead by media-alleged tax rates. For example, do you compute the tax rate that you're paying now on your own tax return on the basis of full gross income versus adjusted gross income after exclusions and deferrals for such thinks as interest on municipal bonds, 401-K deferrals, and other tax breaks in the current tax rules? Chances are if you divide your 2011 what you pay in 2011 federal income taxes by the full "gross" income you will find that you're paying 10% or less.

Rich people take greater advantages of such tax law provisions such as exemption of interest on municipal and school bonds. But in a sense they are paying a virtual tax on those exemptions since municipal and school bonds have lower interest returns and/or more default risk. Hence computing the marginal rate that rich people pay in taxes becomes more complicated than you will ever learn from watching MSNBC or reading the New York Times.

Bob Jensen's helpers for taxpayers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#010304Taxation


How many bottom feeder journal articles does it take to get tenure at a diploma mill?
A person called Flag in a comment to the article below.

"A Plague of Journals," by Philip G. Altbach , Inside Higher Ed, January 15, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/plague-journals

Clever people have figured out that there is a growing demand for outlets for scholarly work, that there are too few journals or other channels to accommodate all the articles written, that new technology has created confusion as well as opportunities, and (finally) and somewhat concerning is that there is money to be made in the knowledge communication business. As a result, there has been a proliferation of new publishers offering new journals in every imaginable field. The established for-profit publishers have also been purchasing journals and creating new ones so that they “bundle” them and offer them at high prices to libraries through electronic subscriptions.

Scholars and scientists worldwide find themselves under increasing pressure to publish more, especially in English-language “internationally circulated” journals that are included in globally respected indices such as the Science Citation Index. As a result, journals that are part of these networks have been inundated by submissions and many journals accept as few as 10%.

Universities increasingly demand more publications as conditions for promotion, salary increases, or even job security. As a result, the large majority of submissions must seek alternative publication outlets. After all, being published somewhere is better than not be published at all. Many universities are satisfied with counting numbers of articles without regard to quality or impact, while others, mostly top-ranking, are obsessed with impact—creating increased stress for professors.

A variety of new providers have come into this new marketplace. Some scholarly organizations and universities have created new “open access” electronic journals that have decent peer-reviewing systems and the backing of respected scholars and scientists. Some of these publications have achieved a level of respectability and acceptance, while others are struggling.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
What really sets me off are journals that will publish articles for authors willing to pay by the page for such "journal publications." This is a real moral hazard that is likely to corrupt the refereeing process --- if there is any refereeing of such articles. Anybody has the freedom to publish an academic article at a Website. Authors who pay to be able to cite a "journal" hit are most likely padding their resumes. This can, however, be dysfunctional to their careers if word gets out about the author-pays "journals."

In my opinion paying to have a journal article published is more serious than having a book custom published. When a book is custom published the author's resume does not (or at least should not) imply that other peer scholars published the item. Journal articles usually imply that some outside referees have accepted the article.

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

Our UnderAchieving Colleges ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Bok

 


Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (and visualization) ---
http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa
Thank you Ramesh Fernando for the heads up.

Bob Jensen's threads on visualization of multivariate data ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm 


Many broad sweeping generalizations signify ignorance in our Academy
These are the kinds of things that I expect from my barbers and not my colleagues
"Lazy Higher Ed Journalism," by Melonie Fullick, Inside Higher Ed, January 17, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/01/17/essay-flawed-commentary-higher-education-during-2011


Question
Why are Social Entrepreneurs Like Ginger Rogers?

Answer from Stanford University
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/osberg_skoll_2011.html?cmpid=alumni&source=gsbtoday

Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers - "Dirty Dancing" ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvaClxiF-xM
Note this is not the sound track of the original movies

One of my favorites
Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers (Tap Dance) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAB12aeI6nA


Question
Does the IRS offer professional courtesy to delinquent taxpayers on the federal payroll?
Is the IRS especially lenient with Congressional staffers?

"Federal employees owe $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes," by Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post, January 23, 2012 --- Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/post/federal-employees-owe-103-billion-in-unpaid-taxes/2012/01/20/gIQAv7KKJQ_blog.html

Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide.

The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries.

About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by the Internal Revenue Service. The total number of delinquent employees dipped slightly from 2009, but the amount owed jumped by $32 million.

The figures are “totally unacceptable and disrespectful to hardworking American taxpayers,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “If you’re on the federal payroll, the very least you can do is pay your taxes.”

Chaffetz and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) have authored bills that would force federal agencies, the U.S. Postal Service and congressional offices to fire employees who purposely avoid paying taxes. Exceptions would be made for employees suffering from family turmoil or working to correct significant financial hardship. Chaffetz’s bill was approved by a committee last spring, but Coburn’s still awaits consideration by a Senate panel.

“Nobody’s going to take any joy in firing someone,” Chaffetz said in an interview. “But there’s enough people there that are simply thumbing their nose at American taxpayers that it’s not acceptable.

(RELATED: Which federal workers owed taxes in 2010?)

But on Capitol Hill, 684 employees, or almost 4 percent, of the 18,000 congressional staffers owed taxes in 2010 – a jump of 46 workers from 2009. Four percent of House staffers owed $8.5 million and 3 percent of Senate employees owed $2.1 million, the IRS said.

Continued in article

 

So why not the Turbo Tax Defense?
"Former Ohio State Bar President Gets One Year in Prison for Tax Fraud," by Paul Caron, Tax Prof Blog, January 19, 2012 ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/

Leslie Hines, a former senior antitrust partner in Thompson Hine's Cleveland office, was sentenced Tuesday to serve a year and a day in prison in connection with his guilty plea on a federal tax fraud charge, according to a press release issued by the Justice Department.

Federal prosecutors had been seeking a sentence of up to 16 months in prison for Jacobs, who was charged last October with filing false tax returns and overstating his business expenses by more than $250,000.

According to court filings [PDF], Jacobs filed four federal income tax returns between 2004 and 2007 that inflated his business expenses by as little as $25,000 and as much as $94,000 in an effort to lower the taxable income he collected from his Thompson Hine partnership. Prosecutors said Jacobs's income in each of those years should have ranged from $633,303 to $759,973.

Jensen Comment
A better lawyer would've embezzled more than that from clients.
Even a lousy accountant could've fabricated expense receipts better than that.
Hence Mr. Hines should've been either an accountant or a better lawyer.

Better yet he should've used the TurboTax Defense that works for big crooks ---
Watch the video how how Mr. Hines should6ve proceeded ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKVxGlkPRlo


University of Capetown's Centre for Education Technology --- http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/ 

"Wikis Made Simple -- Very Simple:  Wetpaint and other wiki startups are offering free and easy-to-use tools. But will most consumers really care?," by Wade Roush, MIT's Technology Review, June 21, 2006 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17009&ch=infotech

A Seattle startup called Wetpaint launched the newest Web-based "wiki" platform this week, offering people who register with the company the ability to create community websites that can be edited easily by any user, or by invited members only, depending on the creator's preference.

Wikis have been a popular tool for Internet geeks for about a decade, and now they're beginning to be adopted inside many businesses. For the most part, though, they haven't crossed into the mainstream -- the way that other Web-based publishing technologies such as blogs have. Wetpaint's founders hope to make that transition -- in part, by making their free, advertising-supported service as easy to use as familiar software tools such e-mail and word-processor programs.

Starting a Wetpaint site is as simple as picking a name and design, creating a few pages, writing something in them, and deciding who can edit them. The company's CEO, Ben Elowitz, says he hopes everyone from neighborhood watch groups to Cub Scout leaders will warm up to Wetpaint and start using it to collaborate on projects and manage group information.

Elowitz believes that online collaboration is a largely unexplored market. "Message boards are good for dialogues, blogs are good as soapboxes, and social networks are good for meeting people, but none of those really let you manage relationships," he says. "For people who are online now, the technology is there to give them a chance to connect over their common interests."

But the public still has a shaky idea of wikis. Surveys conducted by the Harris polling organization for Wetpaint show that only 5 percent of adults who go online can define the word "wiki," according to Elowitz. And it's not clear that Wetpaint or any other wiki-focused company has made the technology simple -- or useful -- enough to attract large numbers of users.

The most famous wiki, of course, is Wikipedia -- it's the largest encyclopedia ever written, with 1.2 million articles contributed by more than 1.6 million registered users and policed by approximately 1,000 volunteer administrators. Indeed, Wikipedia has become the 16th-most-trafficked site on the Web; on any given day, about 4 percent of all Internet users stop there, according to Web traffic research firm Alexa.

But while most of Wikipedia's readers are aware that they can edit encyclopedia entries, the average visitor does so very rarely. In fact, a core of around 500 people account for about half of Wikipedia's content -- an indication that the technical process of writing and editing wiki items remains forbidding for the average user.

From the Scout Report on April 27, 2007

Wikyblog 1.4.9 --- http://www.wikyblog.com/ 

A number of people have been intimately involved in blending the worlds of the wiki and the blog together into one efficient and engaging application, and Wikyblog is one of the very fine results of those ruminations. Designed as a piece of open source software, Wikyblog allows users to create their own different data types, and to arrange various fields and variables as they see fit. Visitors can download this software, and also take advantage of the “how-to” section offered on the Wikyblog homepage. This version is compatible with all computers.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. Congress ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_Online_Piracy_Act

How SOPA Would Affect You ---
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57329001-281/how-sopa-would-affect-you-faq/

"The Real SOPA Battle: Innovators vs. Goliath," by James Allworth and Maxwell Wessel, Harvard Business Review Blog, January 18, 2012 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/the_real_sopa_battle_innovators.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_dat

"Wikipedia begins 24-hour shutdown protest," New Zealand Herald, January 19, 2012 ---
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/technology/news/article.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10779616

Wikipedia has gone 'dark' for 24 hours in protest of US anti-piracy legislation. Photo / Supplied Expand Wikipedia has gone 'dark' for 24 hours in protest of US anti-piracy legislation. Photo / Supplied

Wikipedia went dark, Google blotted out its logo and other popular websites planned protests to voice concern over legislation in the US Congress intended to crack down on online piracy.

Wikipedia tonight shut down the English version of its online encyclopaedia for 24 hours to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) introduced in the House of Representatives and the Senate version, the Protect IP Act (PIPA).

Google placed a black redaction box over the logo on its much-visited US home page to draw attention to the bills, while social news site reddit and the popular Cheezburger humour network planned to shut down later in the day.

The draft legislation has won the backing of Hollywood, the music industry, the Business Software Alliance, the National Association of Manufacturers and the US Chamber of Commerce.

But it has come under fire from digital rights and free speech organisations for allegedly paving the way for US authorities to shut down websites accused of online piracy, including foreign sites, without due process.

Continued in article

Jensen Copy
This is a classic example of trying to pop a pimple with a sledge hammer. If Congress passes this legislation as proposed it will be a disaster to open sharing as we know it today.

The good news is Wikileaks --- http://wikileaks.org/
I despise the Wikileaks site itself, but the good news is that Congress could not remove Wikileaks from the Internet even if it tried. Wikileaks may fold due to diminished financial support, but an act of Congress cannot shut it down unless there is worldwide cooperation to shut it down, and there will probably be ice fishing in Hell before the U.S. could engineer such cooperation. Similarly, I don't think an act of Congress can shut down Wikipedia or any other open sharing site that moves off shore. Stick that in your ear Rep. Lamar Smith.

"Brake the Internet Pirates:  How to slow down intellectual property theft in the digital era," The Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203471004577142893718069820.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Wikipedia and many other websites are shutting down today to oppose a proposal in Congress on foreign Internet piracy, and the White House is seconding the protest. The covert lobbying war between Silicon Valley and most other companies in the business of intellectual property is now in the open, and this fight could define—or reinvent—copyright in the digital era.

Everyone agrees, or at least claims to agree, that the illegal sale of copyrighted and trademarked products has become a world-wide, multibillion-dollar industry and a legitimate and growing economic problem. This isn't college kids swapping MP3s, as in the 1990s. Rather, rogue websites set up shop oversees and sell U.S. consumers bootleg movies, TV shows, software, video games, books and music, as well as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, fashion, jewelry and more.

Often consumers think they're buying copies or streams from legitimate retail enterprises, sometimes not. Either way, the technical term for this is theft.

The tech industry says it wants to stop such crimes, but it also calls any tangible effort to do so censorship that would "break the Internet." Wikipedia has never blacked itself out before on any other political issue, nor have websites like Mozilla or the social news aggregator Reddit. How's that for irony: Companies supposedly devoted to the free flow of information are gagging themselves, and the only practical effect will be to enable fraudsters. They've taken no comparable action against, say, Chinese repression.

Meanwhile, the White House let it be known over the weekend in a blog post—how fitting—that it won't support legislation that "reduces freedom of expression" or damages "the dynamic, innovative global Internet," as if this describes the reality of Internet theft. President Obama has finally found a regulation he doesn't like, which must mean that the campaign contributions of Google and the Stanford alumni club are paying dividends.

The House bill known as the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, and its Senate counterpart are far more modest than this cyber tantrum suggests. By our reading they would create new tools to target the worst-of-the-worst black markets. The notion that a SOPA dragnet will catch a stray Facebook post or Twitter link is false.

Under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998, U.S. prosecutors and rights-holders can and do obtain warrants to shut down rogue websites and confiscate their domain names under asset-seizure laws. Such powers stop at the water's edge, however. SOPA is meant to target the international pirates that are currently beyond the reach of U.S. law.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on the dreaded DMCA ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright

January 18, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Pat,

The Copyright Trolling Business Model is Most Often a Fraud Model
One disturbing trend is the rise in purchase of companies like failing newspapers by attorneys for pretty much the sole purpose of pretending they will sue. For example, if the Cactus Gulch Daily Sentinel has lousy cash flow prospects, bottom feeders may instead buy the newspaper for almost nothing with a focus on threatening to sue people who put portions, even a single picture from the newspaper's archives, on the Web or in an email message to family.

The copyright trolling buyers may even shut down publishing current articles by the failing newspaper and simply scour the Web daily for people they can threaten to sue for publishing quotations and pictures from the archives.

What is evil is that many of these copyright trolls prey on the weak.
For example, suppose Grandma posts a 1958 newspaper picture of her children at the Cactus Gulch July 4, 1958 parade on her Facebook page. The copyright troll owner of the defunct Cactus Gulch Daily Sentinel will send a threatening letter to her demanding $5,000 immediately or he will sue her for copyright violation. She trembles in fear that if she has to hire an attorney, it will cost her more than $5,000 when hauled into court.

What weak people like Grandma do not know is that more often than this copyright trolling fraudster really has no intent of suing. The reason is that his lawsuit most likely will be thrown out of court if she only copied one old picture from the newspaper, and even if he should win in court this fraudster's damage award may be less than $100. This is how copyright trolls are fraudsters preying on the weak by trying to scare the weak into paying out of fear..

All this may be technically legal, but I still find this copyright trolling business model distasteful.

Look up "Copyright Troll" in Wikipedia when Wikipedia ends its one-day protest of SOPA.

There are quite a few copyright trolling fraudsters out there, some of whom are defrauding other copyright trolls themselves (ha ha)  ---
http://current.com/technology/92979069_copyright-troll-john-steele-uses-flawless-software-he-paid-250k-to-create-in-order-to-generate-evidence-to-sue-1000s-in-torrent-lawsuits.htm 

Respectfully,
Bob Jensen


"Ideas of Academic Freedom," by Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed, January 18, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2012/01/18/review-robert-posts-democracy-expertise-academic-freedom 

Robert C. Post’s Democracy, Expertise, Academic Freedom, published by Yale University Press, is a succinct and tightly argued book, and its subtitle, “A First Amendment Jurisprudence for the Modern State,” clearly signals a calm sobriety that can't be taken for granted. It covers topics that typically provoke controversy more often than thought.

Academic freedom and the First Amendment come up for discussion, most of the time, when some conflict is under way, with the ideological battle lines already drawn. The editorials on either side write themselves. And that’s to be expected. Knee-jerk reactions are a pretty shabby substitute for civic virtue, but it’s not like you can respond to every dispute in the public sphere by arguing from first principles. The urgent task is to defend a position.

Post, who is dean of the Yale Law School, is not writing in that rut. The arguments in Democracy, Expertise, Academic Freedom were originally presented at the Northwestern University School of Law when he delivered the Julius Rosenthal Lectures there in April 2008. Opening the book, my first move was to check its index for the names of certain culture-war belligerents who were much in the news back then. (You can probably guess which ones.) They are, happily, absent from its pages. Post is thinking about structural questions -- not commenting on recent affairs, as such.

Rather than indulge in the columnist’s privilege of going off on tangents, let me offer a précis of the book, followed by some very brief remarks.

That the First Amendment exists “to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail” is a familiar and venerable argument, originally framed by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. almost a century ago, and invoked in Supreme Court decisions many times since then. The bit in quotations marks just now, for example, is a typical instance from 1969. The formulation has been assessed and contested at great length by legal theorists. Whatever its merits or deficiencies in general, however, the “marketplace of ideas” argument is no help at all in understanding the relationship between the First Amendment and what Post calls “the production of expert knowledge.”

Expert knowledge is produced within disciplines that regulate what counts as knowledge and what doesn’t. Disciplines involve methods, practices, and judgments that make preempt a laissez faire attitude. And that is a good thing. “If a marketplace of ideas model were to be imposed upon Nature or The American Economic Review or The Lancet,” writes Post, “we would rapidly lose track of whatever expertise we possess about the nature of the world.”

There is a complex and constant tension between the need for untrammeled argument in the public sphere, on the one hand, and the disciplinary protocols that constitute expert knowledge.

Continued in article

"An Authoritative Word on Academic Freedom," by Stanley Fish, The New York Times, November 23, 2008 ---
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/an-authoritative-word-on-academic-freedom/?ei=5070&emc=eta1

More than a few times in these columns I have tried to deflate the balloon of academic freedom by arguing that it was not an absolute right or a hallowed principle, but a practical and limited response to the particular nature of intellectual work.

Now, in a new book — “For the Common Good: Principles of American Academic Freedom,” to be published in 2009 — two distinguished scholars of constitutional law, Matthew W. Finkin and Robert C. Post, study the history and present shape of the concept and come to conclusions that support and deepen what I have been saying in these columns and elsewhere.

The authors’ most important conclusion is presented early on in their introduction: “We argue that the concept of Academic freedom . . . differs fundamentally from the individual First Amendment rights that present themselves so vividly to the contemporary mind.” The difference is that while free speech rights are grounded in the constitution, academic freedom rights are “grounded . . . in a substantive account of the purposes of higher education and in the special conditions necessary for faculty to fulfill those purposes.”

In short, academic freedom, rather than being a philosophical or moral imperative, is a piece of policy that makes practical sense in the context of the specific task academics are charged to perform. It follows that the scope of academic freedom is determined first by specifying what that task is and then by figuring out what degree of latitude those who are engaged in it require in order to do their jobs.

If the mission of the enterprise is, as Finkin and Post say, “to promote new knowledge and model independent thought,” the “special conditions” necessary to the realization of that mission must include protection from the forces and influences that would subvert newness and independence by either anointing or demonizing avenues of inquiry in advance. Those forces and influences would include trustees, parents, donors, legislatures and the general run of “public opinion,” and the device that provides the necessary protection is called academic freedom. (It would be better if it had a name less resonant with large significances, but I can’t think of one.)

It does not, however, protect faculty members from the censure or discipline that might follow upon the judgment of their peers that professional standards have either been ignored or violated. There is, Finkin and Post insist, “a fundamental distinction between holding faculty accountable to professional norms and holding them accountable to public opinion. The former exemplifies academic freedom: the latter undermines it.”

Holding faculty accountable to public opinion undermines academic freedom because it restricts teaching and research to what is already known or generally accepted.

Holding faculty accountable to professional norms exemplifies academic freedom because it highlights the narrow scope of that freedom, which does not include the right of faculty “to research and publish in any manner they personally see fit.”

Indeed, to emphasize the “personal” is to mistake the nature of academic freedom, which belongs, Finkin and Post declare, to the enterprise, not to the individual. If academic freedom were “reconceptualized as an individual right,” it would make no sense — why should workers in this enterprise have enlarged rights denied to others? — and support for it “would vanish” because that support, insofar as it exists, is for the project and its promise (the production of new knowledge) and not for those who labor within it. Academics do not have a general liberty, only “the liberty to practice the scholarly profession” and that liberty is hedged about by professional norms and responsibilities.

I find this all very congenial. Were Finkin and Post’s analysis internalized by all faculty members, the academic world would be a better place, if only because there would be fewer instances of irresponsible or overreaching teachers invoking academic freedom as a cover for their excesses.

I do, however, have a quarrel with the authors when they turn to the question of what teachers are free or not free to do in the classroom.

Finkin and Post are correct when they reject the neo-conservative criticism of professors who bring into a class materials from disciplines other than the ones they were trained in. The standard, they say, should be “whether material from a seemingly foreign field of study illuminates the subject matter under scrutiny.”

Just so. If I’m teaching poetry and feel that economic or mathematical models might provide a helpful perspective on a poem or body of poems, there is no good pedagogical reason for limiting me to models that belong properly to literary criticism. (I could of course be criticized for not understanding the models I imported, but that would be another issue; a challenge to my competence, not to my morality.)

But of course what the neo-conservative critics of the academy are worried about is not professors who stray from their narrowly defined areas of expertise; they are worried about professors who do so in order to sneak in their partisan preferences under the cover of providing students with supplementary materials. That, I think, is a genuine concern, and one Finkin and Post do not take seriously enough.

Responding to an expressed concern that liberal faculty too often go on about the Iraq War in a course on an entirely unrelated subject, Finkin and Post maintain that there is nothing wrong, for example, with an instructor in English history “who seeks to interest students by suggesting parallels between King George III’s conduct of the Revolutionary War and Bush’s conduct of the war in Iraq.”

But we only have to imagine the class discussion generated by this parallel to see what is in fact wrong with introducing it. Bush, rather than King George, would immediately become the primary reference point of the parallel, and the effort to understand the monarch’s conduct of his war would become subsidiary to the effort to find fault with Bush’s conduct of his war. Indeed, that would be immediately seen by the students as the whole point of the exercise. Why else introduce a contemporary political figure known to be anathema to most academics if you were not inviting students to pile it on, especially in the context of the knowledge that this particular king was out of his mind?

Sure, getting students to be interested in the past is a good thing, but there are plenty of ways to do that without taking the risk (no doubt being courted) that intellectual inquiry will give way to partisan venting. Finkin and Post are right to say that “educational relevance is to be determined . . . by the heuristic purposes and consequences of a pedagogical intervention”; but this intervention has almost no chance of remaining pedagogical; its consequences are predictable, and its purposes are suspect

Still, this is the only part of the book’s argument I am unable to buy. The rest of it is right on target. And you just have to love a book — O.K., I just have to love a book — that declares that while faculty must “respect students as persons,” they are under no obligation to respect the “ideas held by students.” Way to go!

 

The term "political correctness" and related phrases have a long history --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_correctness#In_the_United_States
However, probably no U.S. scholar is more associated with "political correctness" since than Stanley Fish when he was at Duke University and the phrase "political correctness" with feminist language constraints and liberalism in campus politics --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Fish

Bob Jensen's threads on freedom of speech and political correctness in higher education are at
 http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#PoliticalCorrectness


"Who Gets to See Published Research? Opponents of a proposed bill say it would work against the open exchange of ideas," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 22, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Hot-Type-Who-Gets-to-See/130403/?sid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en

The battle over public access to federally financed research is heating up again. The basic question is this: When taxpayers help pay for scholarly research, should those taxpayers get to see the results in the form of free access to the resulting journal articles?

Actions in Washington this month highlight how far from settled the question is, even among publishers. A major trade group, the Association of American Publishers, has thrown its weight behind proposed new legislative limits on requiring public access, while several of its members, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's press, have publicly disagreed with that position.

The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy just closed a period of public comment on public access to what it called "peer-reviewed scholarly publications resulting from federally funded research." The office hasn't set a timetable for what happens now, but its next moves could also determine whether federal mandates that govern public access have much of a future.

In Congress, meanwhile, U.S. Reps. Darrell E. Issa, a Republican of California, and Carolyn B. Maloney, a Democrat of New York, introduced the Research Works Act (HR 3699) last month. The bill would forbid federal agencies to do anything that would result in the sharing of privately published research—even if that research is done with the help of taxpayer dollars—unless the publisher of the work agrees first. That would spell the end of policies such as the National Institutes of Health's public-access mandate, which requires that the results of federally supported research be made publicly available via its PubMed Central database within 12 months of publication.

The publishers' association came out with a strong statement of support for the proposed legislation. Many commercial publishers of research journals, including major players such as Elsevier, belong to the group.

A number of university presses are members of the association's Professional and Scholarly Publishing division, including the presses of MIT, the University of California, and the University of Oxford.

The MIT Press was the first to say it didn't agree with the association's endorsement of the bill. Other academic presses, including California's, have said the same.

The Nature Publishing Group and Digital Science issued a joint statement last week saying that they do not support the Research Works Act. "We seek to enable the open exchange of ideas, especially in scientific communities, in line with the requirements and objectives of relevant stakeholders," the statement said, noting that the Nature group "encourages self-archiving of the author's accepted manuscript" in PubMed Central six months after publication.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science, also issued a statement saying it is not in favor of the bill. "We believe the current NIH public-access policy provides an important mechanism for ensuring that the public has access to biomedical research findings," said Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer. "At the same time, the NIH policy provides appropriate support for the intellectual-property rights of publishers who have invested much in science communication."

Both the AAAS and the Nature group are members of the publishers' association.

More Than Words

The debate over mandates is not just administrative and legislative but also rhetorical. In this case, rhetoric does matter. What does "resulting from" federally financed research mean, exactly? Who gets to claim credit for—and control of—research products?

Continued in article

Commercial Scholarly and Academic Journals and Oligopoly Textbook Publishers Are Ripping Off Libraries, Scholars, and Students ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals


What is a good formula for balancing creative license with historical accuracy?
Case in Point: A woman with a tattoo on her chin
"She's a Character Who Could Have Stepped Out of Melville or Hawthorne" by Michael Stratford, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 15, 2012 --- 
http://chronicle.com/article/An-English-Professor-Explores/130344/

Jensen Comment
I added this link to Zane's AAA Commons Writing Forum ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/c5fdcaace5#13893


"Marquet Embezzlement Report Reveals Continued High Rate Of Employee Theft For 2011 - Vermont tops list of highest risk states," Market Watch, January 17, 2012 ---
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/marquet-embezzlement-report-reveals-continued-high-rate-of-employee-theft-for-2011-2012-01-17
Thank you Caleb Newquist for the heads up.

Marquet International Ltd. announced today that it has released The 2011 Marquet Report On Embezzlement -- its annual study of major embezzlement cases in the United States. The study examined 473 major embezzlement cases active in the US in 2011 -- those with more than $100,000 in reported losses. The 2011 Marquet Report On Embezzlement examined several broad categories related to the white collar fraud phenomenon of employee theft, including:

-- Characteristics of the Schemes

-- Characteristics of the Perpetrators

-- Characteristics of the Victim Organizations

-- Judicial Consequences

Some noteworthy findings from the 2011 study include:

-- The number of major embezzlements dropped only a slight 2% from 2010;

-- Vermont topped the list of states with highest risk for loss due to embezzlement in 2011. Vermont was followed by Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Montana, Virginia, Iowa and Idaho;

-- In 2011, non-profits, including religious organizations, experienced the most embezzlement cases of all industry categories, behind only financial institutions;

-- The average loss was about $750,000 for 2011;

-- The most common embezzlement scheme in 2011 involved the forgery or unauthorized issuance of company checks;

-- Nearly three-quarters of the incidents in 2011 were committed by employees who held finance & accounting positions;

-- The average scheme lasted nearly 5 years;

-- Gambling continues to appear to be a motivating factor in some embezzlement cases; and,

-- Nearly two-thirds of all incidents involved female perpetrators in 2011.

"Unfortunately, 2011 was another banner year for employee theft in the United States, experiencing only a slight drop in frequency from the frenetic pace set in 2010," said Christopher T. Marquet, CEO of Marquet International. "Employee theft is not going away any time soon." The study also reported some conclusions Marquet has derived by combining the data from past four years:

-- Perpetrators typically begin their embezzlement schemes in their early 40s;

-- By a significant margin, embezzlers are most likely to be individuals who hold financial positions within organizations;

-- The Financial Services industry suffers the greatest losses from major embezzlements;

-- Vermont, Virginia and Florida are among the states with the highest risk for loss due to embezzlement;

-- Women are more likely to embezzle on a large scale than men;

-- Men embezzle significantly more than women per scheme;

-- Gambling is a clear motivating factor in driving some major embezzlement cases; and,

-- Only about 5 percent of major embezzlers have a prior criminal history.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Vermonters avoid the highest taxes among states by not reporting embezzlement income.

New Hampshirers avoid taxes by voting for 300+ state legislators with only a one-word vocabulary --- "No!"

Mainers avoid taxes by going on tax free welfare.

"Welfare recipients outnumber taxpayers:  That's the situation Maine faces, and perhaps other states as well," Charleston Daily Mail, December 21, 2011 ---
http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Editorials/201112220151

Paul LePage, the Republican governor of Maine, mentioned an uncomfortable truth in a radio address this month: Maine has more welfare recipients than income tax payers.

Democrats challenged the accuracy of this assertion.

The Bangor Daily News fact-checked LePage and discovered that 445,074 Mainers paid state income tax, while 453,194 received some sort of state aid.

In Maine, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps and subsidies for education have a combined enrollment of 660,000.

Adjusting for overlap reduces the number to 453,194 - or 8,120 more people on state assistance than there are state income taxpayers in Maine.

What is situation in West Virginia?

Nationally, only 53 percent of the nation lives in a household that pays federal income tax.

While just about every worker has taxes withheld, many people have the entire amount refunded at tax time. With child tax credits and earned income tax credits, some people get more money from filing a return than they paid in.

But 30 percent of Americans live in households that receive some sort of public assistance that is means tested, meaning a person must have an income low enough to qualify for the aid.

Another depressing thought is that nearly half the "taxpayers" in the United States pay no federal or state income taxes.


Attribution of an American Accounting Position to One Published Article in an AAA Journal

One of the problems among journalists and bloggers is that they sometimes extrapolate attribution. And we, as professors, are sometimes sloppy in our writing. Ed Ketz has always been up front that his grumpy blogs should not be extrapolated as being opinions of his colleagues or his employer (Penn State). We generally take it for granted than an opinion or conclusion in any article of an AAA journal is not an official position of the AAA.

However we probably need to better communicate what we take for granted. For example, the AAA only rarely takes official positions on articles it publishes in its journals.

"AAA Warns: Watch Your Language on Earnings Reports," The AccountingWeb, January 18, 2012 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/topic/accounting-auditing/aaa-warns-watch-your-language-earnings-reports

. . .

Complaints about such corporate self-congratulation and optimism are a common feature of securities lawsuits – but also a hotly debated one, with some judges dismissing expansive or optimistic language cited by plaintiffs as immaterial and defendants labeling it mere "puffery."

Yet now, a study recently published in an accounting journal finds that, puffery or not, such language makes a major difference in whether or not shareholders initiate lawsuits against companies. According to the current issue of The Accounting Review, published by the American Accounting Association (AAA), research shows that "sued firms use substantially more optimistic language in their earnings announcements than do non-sued firms." Managers, the study concludes, "can reduce litigation risk by dampening the tone of their earnings announcements either by decreasing their use of positive language or by tempering their optimism with statements that are less favorable."

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I plan to post this to the AAA Commons Writing Forum commenced by our AECM friend Zane Swanson ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/c5fdcaace5

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

 


"How to Write a Lot for the Sciences," by Heather M. Whitney, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 17, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/how-to-write-a-lot-for-the-sciences/37966?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

I’ve often been frustrated by the how-to-succeed-in-academia advice that’s out there. To be honest, a sizable portion of it is not applicable to my work in science. Grad school was an especially dim time. Most of the advice doled out online and in other venues was along the lines of “just write! write! write!” and I would sigh and ask myself, “but what about getting productive at planning and doing experiments?”

But lately I’ve had a bit of a change of heart. Maybe there is something I can glean from the advice on writing. I read a fascinating post by Holly Tucker, a historian of science and medicine, in which she details the practice of her writing group. Tucker describes how the book How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing changed her point of view on writing and has led to a greater productivity in this slice of her job.

I figured, if a historian of science can get something out of this, maybe so can I. So I purposed with a faculty friend of mine and we both read the book over the holiday break.

I won’t give all the details of the book here, but in short, the author, Paul Silvia, advises that you write and meet with an accountability group regularly. He claims that if you make appointments with yourself to write, and give these appointments the level of importance that you give other items in your schedule (such as teaching a class), you will see productivity.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I plan to post this to the AAA Commons Writing Forum commenced by our AECM friend Zane Swanson ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/c5fdcaace5

Bob Jensen's helpers for writers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries

 


"JSTOR Tests Free, Read-Only Access to Some Articles," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 13, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/JSTOR-tests-free-read-only-access-to-some-articles/34908?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

It’s about to get a little easier—emphasis on “a little”—for users without subscriptions to tap JSTOR’s enormous digital archive of journal articles. In the coming weeks, JSTOR will make available the beta version of a new program, Register & Read, which will give researchers read-only access to some journal articles, no payment required. All users have to do is to sign up for a free “MyJSTOR” account, which will create a virtual shelf on which to store the desired articles.

But there are limits. Users won’t be able to download the articles; they will be able to access only three at a time, and there will be a minimum viewing time frame of 14 days per article, which means that a user can’t consume lots of content in a short period. Depending on the journal and the publisher, users may have an option to pay for and download an article if they choose.

To start, the program will feature articles from 70 journals. Included in the beta phase are American Anthropologist, the American Historical Review, Ecology, Modern Language Review, PMLA, College English, the Journal of Geology, the Journal of Political Economy, Film Quarterly, Representations, and the American Journal of Psychology .

The 7o journals chosen “represent approximately 18 percent of the annual turn-away traffic on JSTOR,” the organization said in an announcement previewing Register & Read. “Once we evaluate how the beta is going, including any impact on publishers’ sales of single articles, and make any needed initial adjustments to the approach, we expect to release hundreds more journals into the program.”

Every year, JSTOR said, it turns away almost 150 million individual attempts to gain access to articles. “We are committed to expanding access to scholarly content to all those who need it,” the group said. Register & Read is one attempt to do that.

In September 2011, JSTOR also opened up global access to its Early Journal Content. According to Heidi McGregor, a spokeswoman for the Ithaka group, JSTOR’s parent organization, there have been 2.35 million accesses of the Early Journal Content from September 2011 through December 2011. “About 50% of this usage is coming from users we know are at institutions that participate in JSTOR (e.g. we recognize their IP address), and the other 50% is not,” she said in an e-mail. ”We absolutely consider this to be a success. In the first four months after launch, we are seeing over 1 million accesses to this content by people who would not have had access previously. This is at the core of our mission, and we’re thrilled with this result.  The Register & Read beta is an exciting next step that we are taking, working closely with our publisher partners who own this content.”

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Most colleges pay for library subscription access to JSTOR by students, faculty, and staff. As an emeritus professor at Trinity University I've been able to access JSTOR since I retired in 2006.

One search route I commonly take is to first find a reference to an article in MAAW ---
http://maaw.info/
Thank you Jim Martin for this tremendous open sharing MAAW site.

Then most often I download the article from JSTOR unless the publisher provides access either for free or because I subscribe to the journal in question. But even if I have a current subscription to a journal such as The Accounting Review, the publisher of TAR does not have online archives going back nearly as far as JSTOR. So if I want a 1971 TAR article I will go to JSTOR. TAR only has online archives going back to 1999. TAR commenced publishing journal articles in 1925.

It's worthwhile to first check the publisher's site before going to JSTOR. For example, the free archived files (since 1974) for the Accounting Historians Journal are better at the AHJ site than at the JSTOR site ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/dac/files/ahj.html

Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm


Life After College Roadmap --- http://www.mint.com/blog/how-to/life-after-college-roadmap-012012/


"Great Apes Make Sophisticated Decisions: Research Suggests That Great Apes Are Capable of Calculating the Odds Before Taking Risks," Science Daily, December 29, 2011 ---
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111229091636.htm
Thank you Jim Mahar for the heads up.

Jensen Comment
I wish we could say the same thing about teenagers who become parents before graduating from high school


Critical Thinking Badges for Brains That Do Not Have Course Content Competency
"Online Course Provider, StraighterLine, to Offer Critical-Thinking Tests to Students," by Jeff Selingo, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 19, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/online-course-provider-straighterline-to-offer-critical-thinking-tests-to-students/35092?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

As alternatives to the college diploma have been bandied about recently, one question always seems to emerge: How do you validate badges or individual classes as a credential in the absence of a degree?

One company that has been hailed by some as revolutionizing introductory courses might have an answer.

The company, StraighterLine, announced on Thursday that beginning this fall it will offer students access to three leading critical-thinking tests, allowing them to take their results to employers or colleges to demonstrate their proficiency in certain academic areas.

The tests—the Collegiate Learning Assessment, sponsored by the Council for Aid to Education, and the Proficiency Profile, from the Educational Testing Service—each measure critical thinking and writing, among other academic areas. The iSkills test, also from ETS, measures the ability of a student to navigate and critically evaluate information from digital technology.

Until now, the tests were largely used by colleges to measure student learning, but students did not receive their scores. That’s one reason that critics of the tests have questioned their effectiveness since students have little incentive to do well.

Burck Smith, the founder and chief executive of StraighterLine, which offers online, self-paced introductory courses, said on Thursday that students would not need to take classes with StraighterLine in order to sit for the tests. But he hopes that, for students who do take both classes and tests, the scores on the test will help validate StraighterLine courses.

StraighterLine doesn’t grant degrees and so can’t be accredited. It depends on accredited institutions to accept its credits, which has not always been an easy task for the company.

“For students looking to get a leg up in the job market or getting into college,” Mr. Smith said, “this will give them a way to show they’re proficient in key academic areas.”

Jensen Comment

Jensen Comment

College diplomas might be obtained in three different scenarios:

  1. Traditional College Courses
    Students take onsite or online courses that are graded by their instructors.
     
  2. Competency-Based College Courses
    Students take onsite or online courses and are then given competency-based examinations.
    Examples include the increasingly popular Western Governors University and the Canada's Chartered Accountancy School of Business (CASB).
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ComputerBasedAssessment
     
  3. Competency-Based College Courses That Never Meet or Rarely Meet
    Students might study from course materials and videos in classes that do not meet or rarely meet with instructors.
    In the 1900s the University of Chicago gave degrees to students who took only examinations to pass courses.
    In current times BYU teaches the first two accounting courses from variable speed video disks and then administers competency-based examinations.
    The University of New Hampshire now is in the process of developing a degree program for students who only competency-based examinations to pass courses.
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#NoInstructors

Recently, there are increasingly popular certificates of online "attendance" in courses that do not constitute college credits toward diplomas. MIT is providing increasingly popular certificates ---
"Will MITx Disrupt Higher Education?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, December 20, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2011/12/20/will-mitx-disrupt-higher-education/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
There are no admission requirements or prerequisites to enroll in these online courses. Presumably the only tests of competency might be written or oral examinations of potential employers. For example, if knowledge of Bessel Functions is required on the job, a potential employer might determine in one way or another that the student has a competency in Bessel Functions ---
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessel_Functions

In all the above instances, a student's transcript is based upon course content whether or not the student takes courses and/or competency-based examinations in the content of those courses.

StraighterLine's new certificates based upon "Critical-Thinking Tests" is an entirely different concept. Presumably the certificates no longer are rooted on knowledge of content. Rather these are certificates based upon critical thinking skills in selected basic courses such as a writing skills course.

In my opinion these will be a much harder sell in the market. Whereas a potential employer can assess whether an applicant has the requisite skills in something like Bessel Functions, how does an employer or college admissions officer verify that StraightLine's "Critical-Thinking Tests" are worth a diddly crap and, if so, what does passing such tests mean in terms of job skills?

Thus far I'm not impressed with Critical Thinking Certificates unless they are also rooted on course content apart from "thinking" alone.

Bob Jensen's threads on the BYU Variable Speed Video Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

Bob Jensen's threads on assessment ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing courses. lectures, videos, tutorials, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education alternatives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


"Feed the Pig: Great Time to Save Money [INFOGRAPHIC]," AICPA, January 2012 ---
http://blog.aicpa.org/2012/01/feed-the-pig-great-time-to-save-money-infographic.html

Jensen Comment
I know that the AICPA's "pig" depicts a piggie bank, but I still think "Feed the Pig" is a bad name for a personal finance helper site. A better name would be "Feed Your Piggie Bank: Helpers for Saving and Investment"

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers

 

"My Financial Mis-Education," by Lee Bessette, Inside Higher Ed, January 16, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/my-financial-mis-education

Jensen Comment
This reminds me of when I gave my daughter a credit card (the billings came to me) when she left home as a first-year student at the University of Texas. As I recall I did say this card was for "emergencies," but then she started discovering all sorts of emergencies to the tune of nearly $1,000 per month even though I was directly paying for her tuition, room and board, car insurance, etc. One type of "emergency" was rather amusing until I put an end to such amusement. At Christmas time she lavished me with rather expensive gifts that, of course, she'd charged on her credit card.

The need for financial literacy and elementary tax accounting in the common core of both high school and college ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#FinancialLiteracy

Bob Jensen's personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers


Computing from Clouds Versus Computing from Dirt

All isn't lost if your young children can play with the clay.
"Fake iPad 2s hit more major retailers," by Darcy Wintonyk, ctvbc.ca, January 18, 2012 --- Click Here
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/print/CTVNews/20120117/bc_steele_more_ipad_fraud_120117/20120118/?hub=BritishColumbiaHome&subhub=PrintStory
Thank you David Fordham for the heads up.

Walmart and London Drugs say that fake Apple iPad 2s made of clay are also appearing on their store shelves, a day after electronic giants Future Shop and Best Buy revealed they are launching a major fraud investigation into the scam.

In most of the cases, the popular tablet computers are bought for cash and then swapped out for a piece of modelling clay. The boxes are then re-wrapped and returned to the store, only to end up back on the shelves and resold to other unsuspecting customers.

Future Shop and Best Buy say as many as 10 fake models were sold in their Metro Vancouver locations. A Victoria resident wrote to say she purchased one of the fraudulent models at a Vancouver Island Best Buy on New Year's Day.

Since CTV broadcast its exclusive story about the frauds on Monday, more victims have come forward and two more major retailers have confirmed they're also dealing with the fake products. London Drugs said it is aware of four incidents in the past month. Walmart officials haven't provided an exact tally, but officials said they are investigating fewer than 10 cases.

Scam artists are taking advantage of the popularity of Apple's latest offering, says Future Shop spokesperson Elliott Chun.

"It's really sad that people stoop to these low levels to take advantage of really hot sellers. As you probably know, tablets were the number one touted gift items for the holidays this year," he said.

Dayna Chabot purchased a bogus 32-gigabyte iPad 2 at Walmart in Langley, south of Vancouver, on Jan. 5.

She recalls being shocked opening the "perfectly sealed" box with her boyfriend once they got home -- and seeing a block of clay instead.

"It was all sealed properly and everything. It was the shape of an iPad. They even had a piece of clay where the charger went and everything. Like, they knew what they were doing," she told CTV's Steele on Your Side in a telephone interview.

Chabot said she was immediately worried about how the retail chain would react when she brought back a hunk of clay that she paid $600 for.

"I understood that it could have easily been us that did it and went back. But they were really good about it at Walmart. They were all just kind of baffled," she said.

Chabot was given a full refund within 20 minutes after speaking with a manager. Her experience is quite different from Surrey resident Mark Sandhu, who said he was treated like a criminal by a manager when he tried to return his fake device to Future Shop on Boxing Day. He has since been given a full refund, an apology and a new iPad 2 after coming forward to CTV with his story.

For its part, Apple says it is part of the investigation, but has refused to comment on any of the frauds.

Both Walmart and London Drugs say the shrink-wrapping on the bogus products was professionally done, so the items did not look tampered with.

Future Shop and Best Buy said their policies on returning wrapped tablet computers changed in early January because of the frauds.

"We still give them the benefit of the doubt that they're coming in for a proper return or exchange … and then we will physically open it up right in front of them as well and make sure every component is there," Chun said.

Chun said in the future all iPads sold from Future Shop's stores will only come factory sealed, direct from Apple.

London Drugs is also adjusting its refund procedures for computers in a bid to prevent any more incidents. Returned computers will now be opened in front of the customer.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Makes you wonder a bit about getting a bigger batch of clay in your new wide-screen HDTV set. And you had better drive your new car before buying it to be certain the engine is not a box of clay.

Sadly, some returns will become more seriously hard to detect in terms of fraud. You might turn on your new computer and later discover that some of the premium components that you paid extra for (such as a bigger hard drive and more memory) have been replaced with cheap parts. A sales return clerk can turn on the computer to see if it turns on but that clerk is not likely to know how to search for all the premium options.


"Lockdown:  The coming war on general-purpose computing," by Cory Doctorow,
http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html
This article is based on a keynote speech to the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin, Dec. 2011.
 


"The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives," by Eric Jackson, Forbes, January 2, 2012 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-seven-habits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/

Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, published “Why Smart Executives Fail 8 years ago.

In it, he shared some of his research on what over 50 former high-flying companies – like Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn – did to become complete failures.  It turns out that the senior executives at the companies all had 7 Habits in common.  Finkelstein calls them the Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.

These traits can be found in the leaders of current failures like Research In Motion (RIMM), but they should be early-warning signs (cautionary tales) to currently unbeatable firms like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon.com (AMZN).  Here are the habits, as Finkelstein described in a 2004 article:

Continued in article
Summary from The Unknown Professor on January 4, 2012
:http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

  1. They see themselves (and their organizations) dominating their environment
  2. They identify so completely with the organization that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests
  3. They think they have all the answers
  4. They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them
  5. They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image
  6. They underestimate obstacles
  7. They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past
    "I've known deans that embody 2, 3, 4, and 6. How about you?"
    The Unknown Professor

The Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives," by Eric Jackson, Forbes, January 2, 2012 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-seven-habits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/

Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, published “Why Smart Executives Fail 8 years ago.

In it, he shared some of his research on what over 50 former high-flying companies – like Enron, Tyco, WorldCom, Rubbermaid, and Schwinn – did to become complete failures.  It turns out that the senior executives at the companies all had 7 Habits in common.  Finkelstein calls them the Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives.

These traits can be found in the leaders of current failures like Research In Motion (RIMM), but they should be early-warning signs (cautionary tales) to currently unbeatable firms like Apple (AAPL), Google (GOOG), and Amazon.com (AMZN).  Here are the habits, as Finkelstein described in a 2004 article:

Continued in article
Summary from The Unknown Professor on January 4, 2012
:http://financialrounds.blogspot.com/

  1. They see themselves (and their organizations) dominating their environment
  2. They identify so completely with the organization that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests
  3. They think they have all the answers
  4. They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them
  5. They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image
  6. They underestimate obstacles
  7. They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past
    "I've known deans that embody 2, 3, 4, and 6. How about you?"
    The Unknown Professor

Jensen Comment
This may be extending Sydney Finkelstein's observations about corporate executives a bridge too far  (into the Academy) since there are so many differences between being a CEO of a corporation versus being a middle manager in a university. Firstly, the powers of deans has been greatly diminished over the past 50 years. When I was at Michigan State University in the late 1960s, our Dean met what he thought was a famous professor at a conference and hired him on the spot. It turned out that this was another (pretty good) professor with the same name. Such a mistake could not happen these days where since faculty have increased powers (in committee) regarding faculty hiring and firing.

Deans are only middle managers who must share authority with higher levels of university governance. The days of deans "ruthlessly eliminated anyone who is not completely behind them" certainly does not exist today and probably never existed under tenure protections. When I was on the faculty of Florida State University we had a real pain-in-the-ass in the Management Department who went so far as to haul our dean into state court for a mole-hill issue. The dean won the case in court but could not "ruthlessly fire" that tenured professor who continued to be a pain in the tail for both our dean and most of our faculty colleagues.

If a new dean was a previous corporate executive, she or he might "underestimate obstacles" for a short while, but my hunch is that they soon learn to respect obstacles that make the Academy different from Exxon. My experience with deans from industry are quite the opposite. Sometimes they have too much respect for obstacles that should be knocked down.

In industry, a corporate executive raises money from marketing, cost efficiencies, relations with bankers, etc. In the Academy a dean raises money from alumni, outside business fund raising, relations with the University's top brass, and having students and faculty blogging nice things about the college, their professors, and their deans. I don't think any dean who is a former corporate executive "stubbornly relies on what worked for them in the past." Deans just aren't that stupid.

I think Sydney Finkelstein made some great observations about corporate executives. I don't think these observations can be successfully extrapolated to any dean that I've had the pleasure to work for over the years.

There may be some causes of spectacularly unsuccessful deans, but these are most likely due to not being enough like successful corporate executives.


"The Globalized Recipe for Education," by Paula Marantz Cohen, The American Scholar ---
http://theamericanscholar.org/the-globalized-recipe-for-education/
Thank you Ramesh Fernando for the heads up.

Andrew Kipnis in his provocative book, Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics, and Schooling in China, addresses what he refers to as “educational desire”—the extreme interest in educational achievement that crosses China’s class and regional lines. He argues against the idea that Western nations are the models for innovation in China, noting that the turn toward testing and teacher audit, central to the Chinese system and now being pursued in the United States, “suggests that the diffusion of cultural models from the West has been overemphasized.”

Kipnis’s book shows how China and the United States are engaged in a true global exchange in which both countries are adapting elements of the other’s educational system. The Chinese have relied on examinations to determine rank, dating back to the earliest dynasties. The elite in these societies were expected to pass civil service exams that required extensive knowledge of Confucian texts. The form, if not the content, of this method of education, continued through the Maoist period, when children were expected to memorize Mao’s Little Red Book. The method has since been accommodated to the current gaokao, the rigorous test that determines whether a student can go to college, which sifts them according to their scores into a strict hierarchy of universities.

Teachers are audited regularly for their ability to prepare students for this test. Classes are constructed so as to determine which teachers can raise student scores. This is done by mixing weaker and stronger students in the same class and then gauging how they perform on yearly exams. Class size is considered less important than teachers, who serve as exemplars both for students and, if their students perform at a high level, for other teachers as well. As Kipnis notes, this model finds echoes in the “No Child Left Behind” policy, and in other recent efforts in the United States to test student achievement and audit teacher performance.

Continued in article


The euro was a noble experiment, but it has failed. Instead of wasting more money on expanding the system's scope and developing ever larger rescue funds, it would be better for the EU and others to think about how best to revert to a system of individual currencies.
Robert Barro, "An Exit Strategy From the Euro The euro can be phased out the same way Europe's individual currencies were. The bonds of troubled member states would benefit as a result," The Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203462304577134722056867022.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_t

January 10, 2012 reply from Glen Gray

I predicted the demise of the Euro in 1985 which I believe was 14 years before the Euro actually came into existence. I was at a Johnson Wax (which I think is now called Johnson & Son) factory in Amsterdam. They make soaps, shampoos, shaving cream (such as Edge shaving cream), and similar items.

They were trying to improve the productivity of the factory. Productivity was particularly important since it is nearly impossible to lay people off, so they want to keep everybody busy. The big issue was that they had to reconfigure the assembly lines every two weeks and while they were doing this, many employees had nothing to do. One of the reasons why the assembly lines had to be reconfigured was Germans would only buy shampoo in cube shaped bottles that were of a particular capacity and French would only buy shampoo in cylinder-shaped bottles of a different capacity (or I may have that reversed--1985 was a long time ago).

I had a premonition then and there that in the future the E.U. and the euro were doomed. If you can't agree on shampoo bottles, you are doomed.


"What the Heck is Research Anyway?" by Brent Roberts, The Hardest Science, December 20, 2011 ---
http://hardsci.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/what-the-heck-is-research-anyway-a-guest-post-by-brent-roberts/

Jensen Comment
This is pretty much what we teach students about research if we're both practical and idealists. But it's a nice summary.

If I were to add something to this it would be examples of how some of the greatest discoveries in the world came about by accident. It might also be nice to compare the lazy Aristotle with the ambitious Galileo.

Followed by an upskirt fantasy video that got my attention.


"The Hidden Dangers of Low Interest Rates," by David Cay Johnston,  Reuters, January 10, 2012 ---:
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/01/10/the-hidden-dangers-of-low-interest-rates/

The Fed’s campaign to hold short-term interest rates near zero is a loser for taxpayers. A rise in rates would also burden taxpayers, but it would come with a benefit for those who save.

Low rates keep alive the banks that the government considers too big to fail and reduce the cost of servicing the burgeoning federal debt. Low rates also come at a cost, cutting income to older Americans and to pension funds. This forces retirees to eat into principal, may put more pressure on welfare programs for the elderly, and will probably require the government to spend money to fulfill pension guarantees.

Raising interest rates shifts the costs and benefits, increasing the risks that mismanaged banks will collapse and diverting more taxpayers’ money to service federal debt. On the other hand, higher interest rates mean that savers, both individual and in pension funds, enjoy the fruits of their prudence.

No matter which way interest rates go, taxpayers face dangers. The question is where we want to take our losses. For my money, saving the mismanaged mega-banks should be the last priority and savers the first. Of course breaking up the big banks or letting them fail also imposes costs and low interest rates benefit many Americans, though mostly those with top credit scores, but policy involves choices and rescuing banks from their own mistakes and subtly siphoning wealth from the prudent is corrosive to the ethical and social fabric.

ON THE RISE?

The federal government paid $454 billion in interest on its debt in 2011. That is the equivalent of all the individual income taxes paid last year through the first three weeks of June

If rates return to, say, 6.64 percent, the level they were in 2000, one year’s interest costs would equal the individual income taxes for all of 2011 plus the first few weeks of 2012.

Last week , rates took a step in that direction. The yield on the 10-year bond, a benchmark for other interest rates, jumped to 3.3 percent, from 2.57 percent in early November, raising the government’s cost of borrowing in that sale by one fourth.

The average maturity of federal bills, notes and bonds is just five years, with just 7 percent of debt financed for more than 10 years, the equivalent of an adjustable rate mortgage with no upside limit.

PRUDENT PEOPLE

The low interest rates since the financial crisis already have imposed a cost on the prudent people who saved for the future, both those who saved as individuals and those who put their money in pension funds.

Banks are paying less than one percent interest on savings, which means rates are negative in real terms, forcing retirees to dig into their nest eggs or cut spending.

Across the country, some fundraisers have told me of benefactors who called to say that expected bequests would not be forthcoming because they had been forced to dig into their savings.

Tax returns, too, show a disturbing, if logical, trend toward less saving. The share of income from taxable interest fell from 3 percent in 1999 to 2.2 percent in 2009, the latest year for which tax return data are available.

More troubling is that the number of taxpayers grew by more than 13 million over those years, while those reporting any taxable interest fell from 67.2 million to 57.8 million. The share of taxpayers earning interest plummeted from 52.9 percent to 44.1 percent.

RAVAGED PENSION FUNDS

At the same time, low interest rates, on top of weak stock prices, have ravaged pension funds.

Overall, state and local public employee plans lost 22.7 percent of their value in 2009, the Census Bureau reported in October. Their assets fell to $2.5 trillion from more than $3.2 trillion, while annual payments to retirees and survivors rose 6.7 percent to $187 billion.

Continued in article

Greatest Swindle in the History of the World ---
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/01/10/the-hidden-dangers-of-low-interest-rates/


If you have to ask about price you can't afford it.
"Nikon announces D4 DSLR camera: full-frame 16.2 MP sensor, 204,000 extended ISO, $6,000 price tag," by Zach Honig, Engadget, January 5, 2012 ---
http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/05/nikon-d4-dslr-camera/

More than two years after the D3S began shipping and roughly a half-decade after we first got a peek at the D3, Nikon has finally announced the full-frame DSLR's long-awaited successor. As expected, the Nikon D4 boosts both megapixel rating (to 16.2) and extended ISO (204,800 at Hi-4), and includes a brand new full-frame FX-format sensor. Video capture also jumped from 720/24p to 1080/30p, but so did the camera's somewhat-out-of-reach price tag -- you'll be dropping $5,999.95 when the D4 hits stores in late February. You're clearly not spending all that hard-earned photo dough for nothing, though. There's also a 91k-pixel RGB 3D Color Matrix Meter III, compared to a 1,005-pixel meter in the D3S, enabling the camera to evaluate the color and brightness of a scene with much greater precision, yielding much more accurate results. And since the D4 reportedly offers phenomenal low-light performance, you'll probably be using it quite often in the dark -- letting you get good use out of the new back-lit controls.

Photographers can preview images using the 921k-dot 3.2-inch LCD, which offers a 170-degree viewing angle and ambient light sensor. HD video can be previewed on the display as well, or directly through the HDMI port, which also supports uncompressed 8-bit preview video output with optional overlay. Naturally, the D4 is fast. It can power on and be ready to shoot in approximately 0.012 seconds, and can capture 10 fps stills at full resolution with full auto focus and exposure. Willing to lock both AF and AE? The D4 goes to 11. A new 51-point AF system offers full cross-type focusing that's compatible with all Nikon lenses, even when paired with a teleconverter. The D4 includes two card slots with support for both UDMA-7 CF and the
recently-announced XQD format, which brings write speeds of up to 125 MB/s -- enough to capture 105 consecutive RAW images at 10 fps. You'll find full details and specs on the D4 just past the break, along with an overview of Nikon's new AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.8G FX-format lens, which is set to ship in March for $499.95.

Bob Jensen's pictures shot with a cheap Sony camera purchased at Wal-Mart almost 10 years ago and still working ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

I've never met Becky Miller, but every now and then she send me a message about the practice of accountancy.
However, she also sends me messages about her photography hobby.

Hi Bob,

Message 1
Bob --- I have shared with you in the past my JOY in photographing track and field. Retirement is much more fun with an active hobby. Therefore, I wanted to share with you...alright, brag to you...about my recent success. I had one photo published in the August Track and Field News magazine and two photos publishing in the September edition. WOW....not a great supplemental source of retirement income, as they pay only $50 a shot. But, that is not the point. It is the joy of life after accounting.

I hope all is well with you and yours.

 

Message 2
I mostly time my pictures for the best lighting such as at sunset or sunrise. Retired accountant Becky Miller, however, uses a much more expensive camera to time high speed action Anytime you want. The timing of her position is just because my camera shoots 7 frames per second! So, sometimes I get lucky.

Right now I am having fun learning infrared photography and this new HDR stuff. The first has no application in sports, as it needs really long exposures, but the second can create some great images....almost too great. They start looking less like photos. And more like...hmm....not sure how to describe it. But sort of plastic, like a movie that is all computer graphics. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachancell/3987477470/  for an example. I think it is a technique that can be taken too far. But, it is fun to manipulate. I have a couple of young athletes competing in the Thorpe Cup next weekend. They are both looking for sponsors, so we are going to try to shoot some very dramatic images of them. I will let you know if they turn out.

Message 3
Anytime you want. The timing of her position is just because my camera shoots 7 frames per second! So, sometimes I get lucky.

Right now I am having fun learning infrared photography and this new HDR stuff. The first has no application in sports, as it needs really long exposures, but the second can create some great images....almost too great. They start looking less like photos. And more like...hmm....not sure how to describe it. But sort of plastic, like a movie that is all computer graphics. See http://www.flickr.com/photos/zachancell/3987477470/ for an example. I think it is a technique that can be taken too far. But, it is fun to manipulate. I have a couple of young athletes competing in the Thorpe Cup next weekend. They are both looking for sponsors, so we are going to try to shoot some very dramatic images of them. I will let you know if they turn out.

Hugs -
Becky

Becky Miller itsyourmom@hotmail.com 
Becky Miller 22339 510 Street Pine Island, MN 55963

 

Becky focuses her high speed camera largely on the University of Minnesota's Gopher Track and Field and Cross Country events --- 
http://www.gophertrackshots.com/
This is an automatic slide show.

Until I viewed these pictures I thought the Golden Gopher Track Team had to wear snow shoes.


Jim Martin is a retired accounting professor who maintains one of the largest and most useful reference sites for academic accountants ---
http://maaw.info/

January 8, 2012 message from Jim Martin

I have been playing around with the Pearler for several days. It allows you
to collect web pages, place them in Pearltrees and add Pearls or links to
the pages you like. You can use it on the Pearler site, or place your root
tree, or individual Pearltrees on different pages on your own site. You can
also work on your Pearltrees with team members. It's fun to play with, but
somewhat addictive. For what it's worth, I organized MAAW's hundred + topics
into 14 Pearltrees.


MAAW's Pearltrees on the Pearler site -
http://www.pearltrees.com/#/N-reveal=5&N-fa=4029796&N-u=1_484552&N-p=32411065&N-s=1_4074700&N-f=1_4074700

MAAW's Pearltrees on the MAAW site -
http://maaw.info/MAAWsPearltrees/MAAWsPearltreesMain.htm

A single Pearltree for MAAW's Journal bibliographies -
http://maaw.info/MAAWsPearltrees/JournalBibsPearltree.htm

January 8, 2012 reply from Bob Jensen

You are a tremendous open sharing accounting professor!

Respectfully ten times over,
Bob Jensen


Retina iPad 3 Coming in March, ‘Much Improved’ iPad 4 in October?
http://www.mactrast.com/2012/01/retina-ipad-3-coming-in-march-much-upgraded-ipad-4-in-october/


Question
What is this thing called "love" er "do no evil"?

"Google Accused of Fraud Against African Competitor [Updated: Google Statement], ReadWriteWeb, January 13, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_allegedly_poached_african_competitor.php

Mocality, a Kenya-based crowd-sourced web and mobile business listings company, has accused Google of fraudulently stealing its customers. In a blog post today, Mocality's CEO Stefan Magdalinski maintained that Google has targeted its database, the core of its company, and lied to its users in an attempt to get them to join up with Google Africa's Getting Kenyan Businesses Online (GKBO) program.

Shortly after GKBO began in September, Mocality "started receiving some odd calls" from customers who were confused by pitches to build them websites that came from Google in apparent partnership with Mocality. There was no such partnership and Mocality claimed to discover it was Google lying to its customers to bring them into GKBO.

Google has released a statement which we have included at the end of the article after the jump.

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


"Time to junk income taxes?" by David Cay Johnston, Reuters, January 6, 2012 ---
http://blogs.reuters.com/david-cay-johnston/2012/01/06/time-to-junk-income-taxes/
There are a lot of comments following this article.


"Amazon, Indiana strike state sales tax deal," Reuters via the Chicago Tribune, January 9, 2012 ---
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-amazon-indiana-strike-state-sales-tax-deal-20120109,0,5788598.story

Jensen Comment
Amazon is beginning to cave in on sales taxes.
Will eBay follow suit? (I doubt it)
Will LL Bean follow suit? (I doubt it)
Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court will make the final decision
Do I care? (not until New Hampshire adopts a sales tax --- which will be when ski resorts are opened in Hell)

"Amazon, Indiana strike state sales tax deal," Reuters via the Chicago Tribune, January 9, 2012 ---
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-amazon-indiana-strike-state-sales-tax-deal-20120109,0,5788598.story


"Oregon Trains Educators to Improve Learning for All Students," by Tanya Roscorla, Converge Magazine, January 6, 2012 ---
http://www.convergemag.com/curriculum/Oregon-DATA-Year5.html?elq=1e13f85f2dc34e84b8b1397c797c2f58

For years, Oregon school districts have collected student test data. In field assessments, the Oregon Education Department found that 125 different assessments existed in the state to track student progress.

But the data sat in warehouses, unused or misused. Teachers and administrators didn't know how to easily find, analyze and use student assessment results to inform instruction, said Mickey Garrison, data literacy director for the Oregon Department of Education.

Five years ago, the department started the Oregon Direct Access to Achievement Project with a $4.7 million federal grant to improve student learning. This week, the project is publishing its Year 5 report.

Through the project, Oregon now has an adaptable data framework and a network for districts that connects virtual teams of administrators and teachers around the state. The framework has also helped the state mesh the Common Core State Standards with its own.

"Moving ideas from paper into practice is not something that I'm gonna say we in education have necessarily done a good job of in the past, but the model that we created for data definitely goes deep into implementation, and that's essential," Garrison said.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Assessment are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm


Humanities Versus Accountancy Doctoral Programs in North America

"Dissing the Dissertation." by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, January 9, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/09/mla-considers-radical-changes-dissertation

The average humanities doctoral student takes nine years to earn a Ph.D. That fact was cited frequently here (and not with pride) at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. Richard E. Miller, an English professor at Rutgers University's main campus in New Brunswick, said that the nine-year period means that those finishing dissertations today started them before Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Kindles, iPads or streaming video had been invented.

So much has changed, he said, but dissertation norms haven't, to the detriment of English and other language programs. "Are we writing books for the 19th century or preparing people to work in the 21st?" he asked.

Leaders of the MLA -- in several sessions and discussions here -- indicated that they are afraid that too many dissertations are indeed governed by out-of-date conventions, leading to the production of "proto-books" that may do little to promote scholarship and may not even be advancing the careers of graduate students. During the process, the graduate students accumulate debt and frustrations. Russell A. Berman, a professor of comparative literature and German studies at Stanford University, used his presidential address at the MLA to call for departments to find ways to cut "time to degree" for doctorates in half.

And at a standing-room-only session, leaders of a task force studying possible changes in dissertation requirements discussed some of the ideas under consideration. There was a strong sense that the traditional model of producing a several-hundred-page literary analysis dominates English and other language doctoral programs -- even though many people feel that the genre is overused and frequently ineffective. People also talked about the value of digital projects, of a series of essays, or public scholarship. Others talked about ways to change the student-committee dynamic in ways that might expedite dissertation completion.

"We are at a defining moment in higher education," said Kathleen Woodward, director of the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington. "We absolutely have to think outside the box that the dissertation is a book or a book-in-progress."

The MLA's discussion of the dissertation is in some ways an outgrowth of a much-discussed report issued by the association in 2006 about tenure and promotion practices. That report questioned the idea that producing monographs should be the determining factor in tenure decisions. When the report was released, many MLA leaders said that the ideas the association was endorsing also called for reconsideration of graduate education, and especially of the dissertation.

As part of the process of encouraging change, the MLA recently conducted a survey of its doctoral-granting departments. Among the findings:

Continued in article
Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/09/mla-considers-radical-changes-dissertation#ixzz1ixhRrbus
Inside Higher Ed
 

Jensen Comment
I'm suspicious that the nine-year average time to completion of a humanities PhD program is not necessarily nine full-time years in residence. But I've really not researched this issue. The time to completion of an accounting PhD program averages five full-time years beyond the masters degree. However, these are typically five full-time years in residence with some lightened course loads giving time for earning money as research and teaching assistants. Accounting doctoral students who also work off campus often take longer than five years. Those students who take full-time jobs before finishing their theses also tend to take longer than five years ---
http://www.jrhasselback.com/AtgDoctInfo.html

Whereas large R1 research universities typically have large and growing numbers of doctoral students with poor employment prospects in higher education, those same universities have shrinking accounting doctoral programs facing wonderful employment and salary prospects in higher education. The reasons for this "paradox" are complicated. One complication is that accounting doctoral programs are often seeking older candidates who already have a masters degree and several full-time professional experience in accountancy. It is more common for humanities students to progress directly from undergraduate graduation directly into masters and then PhD programs. Humanities doctoral programs in top research universities frequently require masters degrees for admission but not years of full-time prior employment in a profession.

Because supply of new doctorates in humanities greatly exceeds demand for such graduates in the Academy, employment opportunities are much higher for graduates of prestigious universities with billion+ dollar endowments such as larger Ivy League universities. In accountancy, Cactus Gulch University PhD graduates face much better employment and salary opportunities as long as CGU has AACSB accreditation in North America. Most prestigious R1 research universities tend to incestuously trade their own accountancy PhD graduates. These graduates are later dispersed in part because some fail to earn tenure in their first academic job. Then again many of them never wanted to live under R1 university research and publication pressures after the first five years or so on their first high-pressured jobs.


FAQs about humanities doctoral programs
---
http://degreedirectory.org/articles/PhD_in_Humanities_Program_FAQs.html
In 2012 the job market is a bit better for Chinese Languages, American History, some medical science specialties, and Sociology. Academic jobs in some other fields like economics have declined ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Job-Market-Looks-Brighter-for/130240/


Bob Jensen's threads on the sad state of accounting doctoral programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

 

"The Ph.D. Problem On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal," by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November/December 2009 ---
http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/11/professionalization-in-academy

Reprinted from The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. Copyright © 2009 by Louis Menand. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Bass professor of English Louis Menand is a literary critic and intellectual and cultural historian—author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club and a regular contributor to the New Yorker. He is also a scholar of his discipline (he co-edited the modernism volume in the Cambridge History of Literary Criticism) and of the very notion of the academy itself (Menand edited The Future of Academic Freedom, 1997). His new book, The Marketplace of Ideas, to be published in December by W.W. Norton, is informed in part by his recent service as faculty co-leader in the development of Harvard College’s new General Education curriculum, introduced this fall (the book is dedicated to his colleagues in that protracted task).

In this work, Menand examines general education, the state of the humanities, the tensions between disciplinary and interdisciplinary work, and, in chapter four, “Why Do Professors All Think Alike?” The following excerpts, from the third and fourth chapters and his conclusion, probe the professionalization of a research-oriented professoriate and the practice and consequences of contemporary doctoral education, and the resulting implications for liberal-arts colleges, universities, and the wider society. ~The Editors

It is easy to see how the modern academic discipline reproduces all the salient features of the professionalized occupation. It is a self-governing and largely closed community of practitioners who have an almost absolute power to determine the standards for entry, promotion, and dismissal in their fields. The discipline relies on the principle of disinterestedness, according to which the production of new knowledge is regulated by measuring it against existing scholarship through a process of peer review, rather than by the extent to which it meets the needs of interests external to the field. The history department does not ask the mayor or the alumni or the physics department who is qualified to be a history professor. The academic credential is non-transferable (as every Ph.D. looking for work outside the academy quickly learns). And disciplines encourage—in fact, they more or less require—a high degree of specialization. The return to the disciplines for this method of organizing themselves is social authority: the product is guaranteed by the expertise the system is designed to create. Incompetent practitioners are not admitted to practice, and incompetent scholarship is not disseminated.

Since it is the system that ratifies the product—ipso facto, no one outside the community of experts is qualified to rate the value of the work produced within it—the most important function of the system is not the production of knowledge. It is the reproduction of the system. To put it another way, the most important function of the system, both for purposes of its continued survival and for purposes of controlling the market for its products, is the production of the producers. The academic disciplines effectively monopolize (or attempt to monopolize) the production of knowledge in their fields, and they monopolize the production of knowledge producers as well. This is why, for example, you cannot take a course in the law (apart from legal history) outside a law school. In fact, law schools urge applicants to major in areas outside the law. They say that this makes lawyers well-rounded, but it also helps to ensure that future lawyers will be trained only by other lawyers. It helps lawyers retain a monopoly on knowledge of the law.

Weirdly, the less social authority a profession enjoys, the more restrictive the barriers to entry and the more rigid the process of producing new producers tend to become. You can become a lawyer in three years, an M.D. in four years, and an M.D.-Ph.D. in six years, but the median time to a doctoral degree in the humanities disciplines is nine years. And the more self-limiting the profession, the harder it is to acquire the credential and enter into practice, and the tighter the identification between the individual practitioner and the discipline.

Disciplines are self-regulating in this way for good academic freedom reasons. The system of credentialing and specialization maintains quality and protects people within the field from being interfered with by external forces. The system has enormous benefits, but only for the professionals. The weakest professional, because he or she is backed by the collective authority of the group, has an almost unassailable advantage over the strongest non-professional (the so-called independent scholar) operating alone, since the non-professional must build a reputation by his or her own toil, while the professional’s credibility is given by the institution. That is one of the reasons that people are willing to pay the enormous price in time and income forgone it takes to get the degree: the credential gives them access to the resources of scholarship and to the networks of scholars that circulate their work around the world. The non-academic writer or scholar is largely deprived of those things. This double motive—ensuring quality by restricting access—is reflected in the argument all professions offer as their justification: in order to serve the needs of others properly, professions must be accountable only to themselves.

A national conversation about the condition and future of the Ph.D. has been going on for about 10 years. The conversation has been greatly helped by two major studies: “Re-envisioning the Ph.D.,” which was conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, and “Ph.D.s—Ten Years Later,” which was carried out at Berkeley. Both studies identified roughly the same areas where the investigators thought that reform is desirable in doctoral education. These are: interdisciplinarity, practical training, and time to degree.

The studies were necessary in part because data on graduate education are notoriously difficult to come by. Until very recently, departments tended not to track their graduate students very assiduously. Departments knew how many students they admitted, and they knew how many they graduated; but they did not have a handle on what happened in between—that is, on where students were in their progress through the program. This was partly because of the pattern of benign neglect that is historically an aspect of the culture of graduate education in the United States, and it was partly because when some students finish in four years and other students in the same program finish in 12 years, there is really no meaningful way to quantify what is going on. “Are you still here?” is a thought that often pops into a professor’s head when she sees a vaguely familiar face in the hall. “Yes, I am still here,” is the usual answer, “and I’m working on that Incomplete for you.” There was also, traditionally, very little hard information about where students went after they graduated. Graduate programs today are increasingly asked to provide reports on job placement—although, for understandable reasons, these reports tend to emit an unnatural glow. An employed graduate, wherever he or she happens to be working, is ipso facto a successfully placed graduate, and, at that moment, departmental attention relaxes. What happens to people after their initial placement is largely a matter of rumor and self-report.

English was one of the fields surveyed in the two studies of the Ph.D. It is useful to look at, in part because it is a large field where employment practices have a significance that goes beyond courses for English majors. What the surveys suggest is that if doctoral education in English were a cartoon character, then about 30 years ago, it zoomed straight off a cliff, went into a terrifying fall, grabbed a branch on the way down, and has been clinging to that branch ever since. Things went south very quickly, not gradually, and then they stabilized. Statistically, the state of the discipline has been fairly steady for about 25 years, and the result of this is a kind of normalization of what in any other context would seem to be a plainly inefficient and intolerable process. The profession has just gotten used to a serious imbalance between supply and demand.

Up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees (something that appears to be the case in doctoral education generally), and only about half of the rest end up with the jobs they entered graduate school to get—that is, tenured professorships. Over the three decades since the branch was grabbed, a kind of protective shell has grown up around this process, a culture of “realism,” in which exogenous constraints are internalized, and the very conditions that make doctoral education problematic are turned into elements of that education. Students are told from the very start, almost from the minute they apply to graduate school, that they are effectively entering a lottery. This has to have an effect on professional self-conception.

The hinge whereby things swung into their present alignment, the ledge of the cliff, is located somewhere around 1970. That is when a shift in the nature of the Ph.D. occurred. The shift was the consequence of a bad synchronicity, one of those historical pincer effects where one trend intersects with its opposite, when an upward curve meets a downward curve. One arm of the pincer has to do with the increased professionalization of academic work, the conversion of the professoriate into a group of people who were more likely to identify with their disciplines than with their campuses. This had two, contradictory effects on the Ph.D.: it raised and lowered the value of the degree at the same time. The value was raised because when institutions began prizing research above teaching and service, the dissertation changed from a kind of final term paper into the first draft of a scholarly monograph. The dissertation became more difficult to write because more hung on its success, and the increased pressure to produce an ultimately publishable work increased, in turn, the time to achieving a degree. That was a change from the faculty point of view. It enhanced the selectivity of the profession.

The change from the institutional point of view, though, had the opposite effect. In order to raise the prominence of research in their institutional profile, schools began adding doctoral programs. Between 1945 and 1975, the number of American undergraduates increased 500 percent, but the number of graduate students increased by nearly 900 percent. On the one hand, a doctorate was harder to get; on the other, it became less valuable because the market began to be flooded with Ph.D.s.

This fact registered after 1970, when the rapid expansion of American higher education abruptly slowed to a crawl, depositing on generational shores a huge tenured faculty and too many doctoral programs churning out Ph.D.s. The year 1970 is also the point from which we can trace the decline in the proportion of students majoring in liberal-arts fields, and, within that decline, a proportionally larger decline in undergraduates majoring in the humanities. In 1970-71, English departments awarded 64,342 bachelor’s degrees; that represented 7.6 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, including those awarded in non-liberal-arts fields, such as business. The only liberal-arts category that awarded more degrees than English was history and social science, a category that combines several disciplines. Thirty years later, in 2000-01, the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in all fields was 50 percent higher than in 1970-71, but the number of degrees in English was down both in absolute numbers—from 64,342 to 51,419—and as a percentage of all bachelor’s degrees, from 7.6 percent to around 4 percent.

Fewer students major in English. This means that the demand for English literature specialists has declined. Even if a department requires, say, a course in eighteenth-century literature of its majors, the fact that there are fewer majors means that there is less demand for eighteenth-century specialists. But although the average number of credit hours devoted to courses in English literature has gone down over the last 20 years, the number-one subject, measured by the credit hours that students devote to it, has remained the same. That subject is English composition. Who teaches that? Not, mainly, English Ph.D.s. Mainly, ABDs—graduate students who have completed all but their dissertations. There is a sense in which the system is now designed to produce ABDs.

The same trend can be observed in most of the liberal-arts fields. In 1971, 24,801 students received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and statistics, about 3 percent of all bachelor’s degrees. In 2001, there were 11,171 undergraduate degrees in those fields, less than 1 percent of the total number. Again, it is not that students do not take math; it is that fewer students need specialized courses in mathematics, which are the courses that graduate students are trained to teach. There was a similar fall-off in bachelor’s degrees awarded in the social sciences and history. There was upward movement in only two major liberal-arts areas: psychology and the life sciences. American higher education has been expanding, but the liberal arts part of the system has been shrinking.

The Berkeley study, “Ph.D.s—Ten Years Later,” was based on lengthy questionnaires sent to just under 6,000 people, in six fields, who received Ph.D.s between 1982 and 1985. One of those fields was English. People who received their Ph.D.s in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of 10 years. A third of them took more than 11 years to finish, and the median age at the time of completion was 35. By 1995, 53 percent of those with Ph.D.s that had been awarded from 10 to 15 years earlier had tenure; another 5 percent were in tenure-track positions. This means that about two-fifths of English Ph.D.s were effectively out of the profession as it is usually understood. (Some of these people were non-tenure-track faculty, and some were educational administrators. Most of the rest worked in what is called BGN—business, government, and NGOs.) Of those who had tenure, less than a fifth had positions in the kind of research universities in which they had been trained—that is, about 5 percent of all English Ph.D.s. Ph.D.s who began in a tenure-track position took an average of 6.1 years to get tenure. Ph.D.s who began in non-tenure track positions but who eventually received tenure, which about half did, took an average of 8.1 years to get tenure.

The placement rate for Ph.D.s has fluctuated. Between 1989 and 1996, the number of starting positions advertised in history dropped 11 percent; in art and art history, 26 percent; in foreign languages, 35 percent; and in political science, 37 percent. Yet every year during that period, universities gave out more Ph.D.s than they had the year before. It was plain that the supply curve had completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life. That meant if not quite a lost generation of scholars, a lost cohort. This was a period that coincided with attacks on the university for “political correctness,” and it is not a coincidence that many of the most prominent critics of academia were themselves graduate-school dropouts: Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, Richard Bernstein, David Lehman. Apart from their specific criticisms and their politics, they articulated a mood of disenchantment with the university as a congenial place to work.

There were efforts after 1996 to cut down the size of doctoral programs, with apparently some positive effect on the job market. But time-to-degree numbers did not improve. In the sixties, the time-to-degree as a registered student was about 4.5 years in the natural sciences and about six years in the humanities. The current median time to degree in the humanities is nine years. That does not include what is called stop-time, which is when students take a leave or drop out for a semester or longer. And it obviously does not take into account students who never finish. It is not nine years from the receipt of the bachelor’s degree, either; it is nine years as a registered student in a graduate program. The median total time it takes to achieve a degree in the humanities including stop-time is 11.3 years. In the social sciences, it is 10 years, or 7.8 as a registered student. In the natural sciences, time-to-degree as a registered student is just under seven years. If we put all these numbers together, we get the following composite: only about half of the people who enter doctoral programs in English finish them, and only about half of those who finish end up as tenured faculty, the majority of them at institutions that are not research universities. An estimate of the total elapsed time from college graduation to tenure would be somewhere between 15 and 20 years. It is a lengthy apprenticeship.

That it takes longer to get a Ph.D. in the humanities than it does in the social or natural sciences (although those fields also have longer times-to-degree than they once did) seems anomalous, since normally a dissertation in the humanities does not require extensive archival, field, or laboratory work. William Bowen and Neil Rudenstine, in their landmark study In Pursuit of the Ph.D., suggested that one reason for this might be that the paradigms for scholarship in the humanities have become less clear. People are uncertain just what research in the humanities is supposed to constitute, and graduate students therefore spend an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with a novel theoretical twist on canonical texts or an unusual contextualization. Inquiry in the humanities has become quite eclectic without becoming contentious. This makes it a challenge for entering scholars to know where to make their mark.

The conclusion of the researchers who compiled the statistics on English Ph.D.s for the Berkeley study was, See? It’s not so bad! The reason they give for this is the reason that is often heard when the issues of time-to-degree and job placement are raised, which is that most people who get Ph.D.s, whether they end up teaching or not, report high job satisfaction. (Job satisfaction is actually higher among Ph.D.s with non-academic careers than it is among academics, partly because spousal problems—commuting marriages—are not as great outside academia.) And the majority say that they do not regret the time they spent in graduate school (although they have a lot of complaints about the quality of the mentorship they received). Students continue to check into the doctoral motel, and they don’t seem terribly eager to check out. They like being in a university, and, since there is usually plenty of demand for their quite inexpensive teaching, universities like having them. Business is good. Where is the problem?

The effort to reinvent the Ph.D. as a degree qualifying people for non-academic as well as academic employment, to make the degree more practical, was an initiative of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation when it was headed by Robert Weisbuch. These efforts are a worthy form of humanitarianism; but there is no obvious efficiency in requiring people to devote 10 or more years to the mastery of a specialized area of scholarship on the theory that they are developing skills in research, or critical thinking, or communication. Professors are not themselves, for the most part, terribly practical people, and practical skills are not what they are trained to teach. They are trained to teach people to do what they do and to know what they know. Those skills and that knowledge are not self-evidently transferable. The ability to analyze Finnegans Wake does not translate into an ability to analyze a stock offering. If a person wanted to analyze stock offerings, he should not waste his time with Joyce. He should go to business school. Or get a job analyzing stock offerings.

It may be that the increased time-to-degree, combined with the weakening job market for liberal arts Ph.D.s, is what is responsible for squeezing the profession into a single ideological box. It takes three years to become a lawyer. It takes four years to become a doctor. But it takes from six to nine years, and sometimes longer, to be eligible to teach college students for a living. Tightening up the oversight on student progress might reduce the time-to-degree by a little, but as long as the requirements remain, as long as students in most fields have general exams, field (or oral) exams, and monograph-length dissertations, it is not easy to see how the reduction will be significant. What is clear is that students who spend eight or nine years in graduate school are being seriously over-trained for the jobs that are available. The argument that they need the training to be qualified to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates. Undergraduate teaching is part of doctoral education; at many institutions, graduate students begin teaching classes the year they arrive. And the idea that the doctoral thesis is a rigorous requirement is belied by the quality of most doctoral theses. If every graduate student were required to publish a single peer-reviewed article instead of writing a thesis, the net result would probably be a plus for scholarship.

One pressure on universities to reduce radically the time-to-degree is simple humanitarianism. Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process. Many people drop in and drop out and then drop in again; a large proportion of students never finish; and some people have to retool at relatively advanced ages. Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get. Unfortunately, there is an institutional efficiency, which is that graduate students constitute a cheap labor force. There are not even search costs involved in appointing a graduate student to teach. The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes. Of course, overproduction of Ph.D.s also creates a buyer’s advantage in the market for academic labor. These circumstances explain the graduate-student union movement that has been going on in higher education since the mid 1990s.

But the main reason for academics to be concerned about the time it takes to get a degree has to do with the barrier this represents to admission to the profession. The obstacles to entering the academic profession are now so well known that the students who brave them are already self-sorted before they apply to graduate school. A college student who has some interest in further education, but who is unsure whether she wants a career as a professor, is not going to risk investing eight or more years finding out. The result is a narrowing of the intellectual range and diversity of those entering the field, and a widening of the philosophical and attitudinal gap that separates academic from non-academic intellectuals. Students who go to graduate school already talk the talk, and they learn to walk the walk as well. There is less ferment from the bottom than is healthy in a field of intellectual inquiry. Liberalism needs conservatism, and orthodoxy needs heterodoxy, if only in order to keep on its toes.

And the obstacles at the other end of the process, the anxieties over placement and tenure, do not encourage iconoclasm either. The academic profession in some areas is not reproducing itself so much as cloning itself. If it were easier and cheaper to get in and out of the doctoral motel, the disciplines would have a chance to get oxygenated by people who are much less invested in their paradigms. And the gap between inside and outside academia, which is partly created by the self-sorting, increases the hostility of the non-academic world toward what goes on in university departments, especially in the humanities. The hostility makes some disciplines less attractive to college students, and the cycle continues.

The moral of the story that the numbers tell once seemed straightforward: if there are fewer jobs for people with Ph.D.s, then universities should stop giving so many Ph.D.s—by making it harder to get into a Ph.D. program (reducing the number of entrants) or harder to get through (reducing the number of graduates). But this has not worked. Possibly the story has a different moral, which is that there should be a lot more Ph.D.s, and they should be much easier to get. The non-academic world would be enriched if more people in it had exposure to academic modes of thought, and had thereby acquired a little understanding of the issues that scare terms like “deconstruction” and “postmodernism” are attempts to deal with. And the academic world would be livelier if it conceived of its purpose as something larger and more various than professional reproduction—and also if it had to deal with students who were not so neurotically invested in the academic intellectual status quo. If Ph.D. programs were determinate in length—if getting a Ph.D. were like getting a law degree—then graduate education might acquire additional focus and efficiency. It might also attract more of the many students who, after completing college, yearn for deeper immersion in academic inquiry, but who cannot envision spending six years or more struggling through a graduate program and then finding themselves virtually disqualified for anything but a teaching career that they cannot count on having.

It is unlikely that the opinions of the professoriate will ever be a true reflection of the opinions of the public; and, in any case, that would be in itself an unworthy goal. Fostering a greater diversity of views within the professoriate is a worthy goal, however. The evidence suggests that American higher education is going in the opposite direction. Professors tend increasingly to think alike because the profession is increasingly self-selected. The university may not explicitly require conformity on more than scholarly matters, but the existing system implicitly demands and constructs it.

My aim has been to throw some light from history on a few problems in contemporary higher education. If there is a conclusion to be drawn from this exercise, it might be that the academic system is a deeply internalized one. The key to reform of almost any kind in higher education lies not in the way that knowledge is produced. It lies in the way that the producers of knowledge are produced. Despite transformational changes in the scale, missions, and constituencies of American higher education, professional reproduction remains almost exactly as it was a hundred years ago. Doctoral education is the horse that the university is riding to the mall. People are taught—more accurately, people are socialized, since the process selects for other attributes in addition to scholarly ability—to become expert in a field of specialized study; and then, at the end of a long, expensive, and highly single-minded process of credentialization, they are asked to perform tasks for which they have had no training whatsoever: to teach their fields to non-specialists, to connect what they teach to issues that students are likely to confront in the world outside the university, to be interdisciplinary, to write for a general audience, to justify their work to people outside their discipline and outside the academy. If we want professors to be better at these things, then we ought to train them differently.

Still, as is the case with every potential reform in academic life, there are perils. The world of knowledge production is a marketplace, but it is a very special marketplace, with its own practices, its own values, and its own rules. A lot has changed in higher education in the last 50 years. What has not changed is the delicate and somewhat paradoxical relation in which the university stands to the general culture. It is important for research and teaching to be relevant, for the university to engage with the public culture and to design its investigative paradigms with actual social and cultural life in view. That is, in fact, what most professors try to do—even when they feel inhibited from saying so by the taboo against instrumentalist and presentist talk. Professors teach what they teach because they believe that it makes a difference. To continue to do this, academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic. That may be the road down which the debates I have been describing are taking higher education.

But at the end of this road there is a danger, which is that the culture of the university will become just an echo of the public culture. That would be a catastrophe. It is the academic’s job in a free society to serve the public culture by asking questions the public doesn’t want to ask, investigating subjects it cannot or will not investigate, and accommodating voices it fails or refuses to accommodate. Academics need to look to the world to see what kind of teaching and research needs to be done, and how they might better train and organize themselves to do it. But they need to ignore the world’s demand that they reproduce its self-image.

Reprinted from The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. Copyright © 2009 by Louis Menand. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

This material may not be reproduced, rewritten, or redistributed without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Fewer students major in English. This means that the demand for English literature specialists has declined. Even if a department requires, say, a course in eighteenth-century literature of its majors, the fact that there are fewer majors means that there is less demand for eighteenth-century specialists. But although the average number of credit hours devoted to courses in English literature has gone down over the last 20 years, the number-one subject, measured by the credit hours that students devote to it, has remained the same. That subject is English composition. Who teaches that? Not, mainly, English Ph.D.s. Mainly, ABDs—graduate students who have completed all but their dissertations. There is a sense in which the system is now designed to produce ABDs.

The same trend can be observed in most of the liberal-arts fields. In 1971, 24,801 students received bachelor’s degrees in mathematics and statistics, about 3 percent of all bachelor’s degrees. In 2001, there were 11,171 undergraduate degrees in those fields, less than 1 percent of the total number. Again, it is not that students do not take math; it is that fewer students need specialized courses in mathematics, which are the courses that graduate students are trained to teach. There was a similar fall-off in bachelor’s degrees awarded in the social sciences and history. There was upward movement in only two major liberal-arts areas: psychology and the life sciences. American higher education has been expanding, but the liberal arts part of the system has been shrinking.

The Berkeley study, “Ph.D.s—Ten Years Later,” was based on lengthy questionnaires sent to just under 6,000 people, in six fields, who received Ph.D.s between 1982 and 1985. One of those fields was English. People who received their Ph.D.s in English between 1982 and 1985 had a median time to degree of 10 years. A third of them took more than 11 years to finish, and the median age at the time of completion was 35. By 1995, 53 percent of those with Ph.D.s that had been awarded from 10 to 15 years earlier had tenure; another 5 percent were in tenure-track positions. This means that about two-fifths of English Ph.D.s were effectively out of the profession as it is usually understood. (Some of these people were non-tenure-track faculty, and some were educational administrators. Most of the rest worked in what is called BGN—business, government, and NGOs.) Of those who had tenure, less than a fifth had positions in the kind of research universities in which they had been trained—that is, about 5 percent of all English Ph.D.s. Ph.D.s who began in a tenure-track position took an average of 6.1 years to get tenure. Ph.D.s who began in non-tenure track positions but who eventually received tenure, which about half did, took an average of 8.1 years to get tenure.

The placement rate for Ph.D.s has fluctuated. Between 1989 and 1996, the number of starting positions advertised in history dropped 11 percent; in art and art history, 26 percent; in foreign languages, 35 percent; and in political science, 37 percent. Yet every year during that period, universities gave out more Ph.D.s than they had the year before. It was plain that the supply curve had completely lost touch with the demand curve in American academic life. That meant if not quite a lost generation of scholars, a lost cohort. This was a period that coincided with attacks on the university for “political correctness,” and it is not a coincidence that many of the most prominent critics of academia were themselves graduate-school dropouts: Dinesh D’Souza, Roger Kimball, Richard Bernstein, David Lehman. Apart from their specific criticisms and their politics, they articulated a mood of disenchantment with the university as a congenial place to work.

There were efforts after 1996 to cut down the size of doctoral programs, with apparently some positive effect on the job market. But time-to-degree numbers did not improve. In the sixties, the time-to-degree as a registered student was about 4.5 years in the natural sciences and about six years in the humanities. The current median time to degree in the humanities is nine years. That does not include what is called stop-time, which is when students take a leave or drop out for a semester or longer. And it obviously does not take into account students who never finish. It is not nine years from the receipt of the bachelor’s degree, either; it is nine years as a registered student in a graduate program. The median total time it takes to achieve a degree in the humanities including stop-time is 11.3 years. In the social sciences, it is 10 years, or 7.8 as a registered student. In the natural sciences, time-to-degree as a registered student is just under seven years. If we put all these numbers together, we get the following composite: only about half of the people who enter doctoral programs in English finish them, and only about half of those who finish end up as tenured faculty, the majority of them at institutions that are not research universities. An estimate of the total elapsed time from college graduation to tenure would be somewhere between 15 and 20 years. It is a lengthy apprenticeship.

That it takes longer to get a Ph.D. in the humanities than it does in the social or natural sciences (although those fields also have longer times-to-degree than they once did) seems anomalous, since normally a dissertation in the humanities does not require extensive archival, field, or laboratory work. William Bowen and Neil Rudenstine, in their landmark study In Pursuit of the Ph.D., suggested that one reason for this might be that the paradigms for scholarship in the humanities have become less clear. People are uncertain just what research in the humanities is supposed to constitute, and graduate students therefore spend an inordinate amount of time trying to come up with a novel theoretical twist on canonical texts or an unusual contextualization. Inquiry in the humanities has become quite eclectic without becoming contentious. This makes it a challenge for entering scholars to know where to make their mark.

The conclusion of the researchers who compiled the statistics on English Ph.D.s for the Berkeley study was, See? It’s not so bad! The reason they give for this is the reason that is often heard when the issues of time-to-degree and job placement are raised, which is that most people who get Ph.D.s, whether they end up teaching or not, report high job satisfaction. (Job satisfaction is actually higher among Ph.D.s with non-academic careers than it is among academics, partly because spousal problems—commuting marriages—are not as great outside academia.) And the majority say that they do not regret the time they spent in graduate school (although they have a lot of complaints about the quality of the mentorship they received). Students continue to check into the doctoral motel, and they don’t seem terribly eager to check out. They like being in a university, and, since there is usually plenty of demand for their quite inexpensive teaching, universities like having them. Business is good. Where is the problem?

 

The effort to reinvent the Ph.D. as a degree qualifying people for non-academic as well as academic employment, to make the degree more practical, was an initiative of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation when it was headed by Robert Weisbuch. These efforts are a worthy form of humanitarianism; but there is no obvious efficiency in requiring people to devote 10 or more years to the mastery of a specialized area of scholarship on the theory that they are developing skills in research, or critical thinking, or communication. Professors are not themselves, for the most part, terribly practical people, and practical skills are not what they are trained to teach. They are trained to teach people to do what they do and to know what they know. Those skills and that knowledge are not self-evidently transferable. The ability to analyze Finnegans Wake does not translate into an ability to analyze a stock offering. If a person wanted to analyze stock offerings, he should not waste his time with Joyce. He should go to business school. Or get a job analyzing stock offerings.

It may be that the increased time-to-degree, combined with the weakening job market for liberal arts Ph.D.s, is what is responsible for squeezing the profession into a single ideological box. It takes three years to become a lawyer. It takes four years to become a doctor. But it takes from six to nine years, and sometimes longer, to be eligible to teach college students for a living. Tightening up the oversight on student progress might reduce the time-to-degree by a little, but as long as the requirements remain, as long as students in most fields have general exams, field (or oral) exams, and monograph-length dissertations, it is not easy to see how the reduction will be significant. What is clear is that students who spend eight or nine years in graduate school are being seriously over-trained for the jobs that are available. The argument that they need the training to be qualified to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates. Undergraduate teaching is part of doctoral education; at many institutions, graduate students begin teaching classes the year they arrive. And the idea that the doctoral thesis is a rigorous requirement is belied by the quality of most doctoral theses. If every graduate student were required to publish a single peer-reviewed article instead of writing a thesis, the net result would probably be a plus for scholarship.

One pressure on universities to reduce radically the time-to-degree is simple humanitarianism. Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process. Many people drop in and drop out and then drop in again; a large proportion of students never finish; and some people have to retool at relatively advanced ages. Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get. Unfortunately, there is an institutional efficiency, which is that graduate students constitute a cheap labor force. There are not even search costs involved in appointing a graduate student to teach. The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes. Of course, overproduction of Ph.D.s also creates a buyer’s advantage in the market for academic labor. These circumstances explain the graduate-student union movement that has been going on in higher education since the mid 1990s.

But the main reason for academics to be concerned about the time it takes to get a degree has to do with the barrier this represents to admission to the profession. The obstacles to entering the academic profession are now so well known that the students who brave them are already self-sorted before they apply to graduate school. A college student who has some interest in further education, but who is unsure whether she wants a career as a professor, is not going to risk investing eight or more years finding out. The result is a narrowing of the intellectual range and diversity of those entering the field, and a widening of the philosophical and attitudinal gap that separates academic from non-academic intellectuals. Students who go to graduate school already talk the talk, and they learn to walk the walk as well. There is less ferment from the bottom than is healthy in a field of intellectual inquiry. Liberalism needs conservatism, and orthodoxy needs heterodoxy, if only in order to keep on its toes.

And the obstacles at the other end of the process, the anxieties over placement and tenure, do not encourage iconoclasm either. The academic profession in some areas is not reproducing itself so much as cloning itself. If it were easier and cheaper to get in and out of the doctoral motel, the disciplines would have a chance to get oxygenated by people who are much less invested in their paradigms. And the gap between inside and outside academia, which is partly created by the self-sorting, increases the hostility of the non-academic world toward what goes on in university departments, especially in the humanities. The hostility makes some disciplines less attractive to college students, and the cycle continues.

 

The moral of the story that the numbers tell once seemed straightforward: if there are fewer jobs for people with Ph.D.s, then universities should stop giving so many Ph.D.s—by making it harder to get into a Ph.D. program (reducing the number of entrants) or harder to get through (reducing the number of graduates). But this has not worked. Possibly the story has a different moral, which is that there should be a lot more Ph.D.s, and they should be much easier to get. The non-academic world would be enriched if more people in it had exposure to academic modes of thought, and had thereby acquired a little understanding of the issues that scare terms like “deconstruction” and “postmodernism” are attempts to deal with. And the academic world would be livelier if it conceived of its purpose as something larger and more various than professional reproduction—and also if it had to deal with students who were not so neurotically invested in the academic intellectual status quo. If Ph.D. programs were determinate in length—if getting a Ph.D. were like getting a law degree—then graduate education might acquire additional focus and efficiency. It might also attract more of the many students who, after completing college, yearn for deeper immersion in academic inquiry, but who cannot envision spending six years or more struggling through a graduate program and then finding themselves virtually disqualified for anything but a teaching career that they cannot count on having.

It is unlikely that the opinions of the professoriate will ever be a true reflection of the opinions of the public; and, in any case, that would be in itself an unworthy goal. Fostering a greater diversity of views within the professoriate is a worthy goal, however. The evidence suggests that American higher education is going in the opposite direction. Professors tend increasingly to think alike because the profession is increasingly self-selected. The university may not explicitly require conformity on more than scholarly matters, but the existing system implicitly demands and constructs it.

My aim has been to throw some light from history on a few problems in contemporary higher education. If there is a conclusion to be drawn from this exercise, it might be that the academic system is a deeply internalized one. The key to reform of almost any kind in higher education lies not in the way that knowledge is produced. It lies in the way that the producers of knowledge are produced. Despite transformational changes in the scale, missions, and constituencies of American higher education, professional reproduction remains almost exactly as it was a hundred years ago. Doctoral education is the horse that the university is riding to the mall. People are taught—more accurately, people are socialized, since the process selects for other attributes in addition to scholarly ability—to become expert in a field of specialized study; and then, at the end of a long, expensive, and highly single-minded process of credentialization, they are asked to perform tasks for which they have had no training whatsoever: to teach their fields to non-specialists, to connect what they teach to issues that students are likely to confront in the world outside the university, to be interdisciplinary, to write for a general audience, to justify their work to people outside their discipline and outside the academy. If we want professors to be better at these things, then we ought to train them differently.

Still, as is the case with every potential reform in academic life, there are perils. The world of knowledge production is a marketplace, but it is a very special marketplace, with its own practices, its own values, and its own rules. A lot has changed in higher education in the last 50 years. What has not changed is the delicate and somewhat paradoxical relation in which the university stands to the general culture. It is important for research and teaching to be relevant, for the university to engage with the public culture and to design its investigative paradigms with actual social and cultural life in view. That is, in fact, what most professors try to do—even when they feel inhibited from saying so by the taboo against instrumentalist and presentist talk. Professors teach what they teach because they believe that it makes a difference. To continue to do this, academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic. That may be the road down which the debates I have been describing are taking higher education.

But at the end of this road there is a danger, which is that the culture of the university will become just an echo of the public culture. That would be a catastrophe. It is the academic’s job in a free society to serve the public culture by asking questions the public doesn’t want to ask, investigating subjects it cannot or will not investigate, and accommodating voices it fails or refuses to accommodate. Academics need to look to the world to see what kind of teaching and research needs to be done, and how they might better train and organize themselves to do it. But they need to ignore the world’s demand that they reproduce its self-image.

Reprinted from The Marketplace of Ideas by Louis Menand. Copyright © 2009 by Louis Menand. With the permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

This material may not be reproduced, rewritten, or redistributed without the prior written permission of the publisher.

. . .

Still, as is the case with every potential reform in academic life, there are perils. The world of knowledge production is a marketplace, but it is a very special marketplace, with its own practices, its own values, and its own rules. A lot has changed in higher education in the last 50 years. What has not changed is the delicate and somewhat paradoxical relation in which the university stands to the general culture. It is important for research and teaching to be relevant, for the university to engage with the public culture and to design its investigative paradigms with actual social and cultural life in view. That is, in fact, what most professors try to do—even when they feel inhibited from saying so by the taboo against instrumentalist and presentist talk. Professors teach what they teach because they believe that it makes a difference. To continue to do this, academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic. That may be the road down which the debates I have been describing are taking higher education.

But at the end of this road there is a danger, which is that the culture of the university will become just an echo of the public culture. That would be a catastrophe. It is the academic’s job in a free society to serve the public culture by asking questions the public doesn’t want to ask, investigating subjects it cannot or will not investigate, and accommodating voices it fails or refuses to accommodate. Academics need to look to the world to see what kind of teaching and research needs to be done, and how they might better train and organize themselves to do it. But they need to ignore the world’s demand that they reproduce its self-image.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on the Need for Change in Doctoral Programs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DoctoralProgramChange


Association of American Law Schools (AALS) --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AALS

"A View from AALS: What Change Looks Like," by Paul Lippe, ABA Journal, January 11, 2012 --- Click Here
http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/a_view_from_aals_what_change_looks_like/?utm_source=maestro&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly_email

Will smart and privileged people be able to pull together to effectively manage structural change, or will they use their skill to protect their privileges, even if it's clearly against their long-term self interest?

The backdrop of the meeting was set by two articles:

David Segal’s piece in the New York Times on the problems of newly minted lawyers and the frustration with the cost of lawyers; and my friend Bill Henderson’s cover story in the ABA Journal on the law school financing bubble.

Neither critique requires us to throw out the (law school) baby with the bathwater. They both simply point out an unhealthy level of disconnect and a need for reform.

When an industry like law, which enjoys a protected market structure, has been aggressively boosting prices for a generation, it is legitimate to call into question the rising costs. Arguments about cost are an indication of overall problems with the health of a system, and they should lead those who care about the system to ask some searching questions about what is and isn’t working.

My talk—available at Legal OnRampwas my usual mix of change, technology and economics, suggesting that law school (because it has to) will become more change-oriented, client-engaged, technology enabled, metrics-focused and efficient. To see more concrete suggestions, check out the work of my co-panelist and New Normal contributor Susan Hackett.

There are two models of how change happens:

1. Deliberative change, which is our default mode as lawyers, where a formal decision-making body convenes to adopt new rules according to explicit processes (think Constitutional Convention), and the change is implemented more or less at once.

2. Distributed change (also known as technology adoption life cycle or tipping point), where different actors embrace change in different ways and at different times, but in a fashion that is mutually influencing. (Here’s a cartoon showing the distributed model.)

In the distributed model, we can identify five phenotypes of change reactors, who were all very much in evidence at AALS:

Innovators, who do new things because they like doing new things.
Early adopters, who want competitive advantage over others.
Pragmatists, who want to stick with the herd.
Conservatives, who want to hold on.
Laggards, who simply say “no way.”
 

So what were they all saying at AALS? Let’s take them in the opposite order.

Laggards: “don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater” (laggards love strawmen) and “why should I bother? I have tenure.”

Conservatives: “I’ve heard all this before. Nothing will change.”

Pragmatists: “I get it, tell me what to do, what is [School XYZ] doing?”

Early adopters: “Here’s the four initiatives we’ve launched. Will you come speak to our law school? What do you see that’s working?”

Innovators: “I am really depressed. No one is doing enough. My idea is the best one, everyone should adopt it.”

Beyond my general thesis, I certainly don’t predict the exact form or timing of change, although I have suggested some ideas in prior musings. But I will suggest to you that this is precisely where you’d expect a group of folks to be in the midst of a distributed change. Law professors (and lawyers generally) are clever people who can find ways to question innovations they don’t understand and conflate their self-interest with the public interest. So there will be plenty of folks questioning change at this stage. Law professors (and lawyers generally) are also capable and well-intentioned people who will respond to changing resources and incentives in a rational way. And the truly clever law professors (and lawyers) will develop powerful innovations that others will embrace.

If I can get a bit Hegelian on you, the key indicator of the correlation of forces for me was that most of the folks who approached me after my talk were early adopters, and indeed mostly deans. Because the deans have no choice but to confront (and so see fairly clearly) the mix of forces driving change. And when Rick Matasar, viewed as a leading innovator among deans, gave a luncheon keynote summarizing the state of change, the former dean of Georgetown Law, Judith Areen, who was putatively set up to provide a counterpoint to Rick’s change-ist approach, replied in essence: “Well … yeah, you’re right, but it isn’t easy.”

What you didn’t see at AALS, and you don’t see anywhere, is someone willing to stand up and comprehensively expound that “it ain’t broke, so there’s no need to fix it.” And while you can’t fault anyone for their natural tendency to fall somewhere on the spectrum of adoption, you can fault folks for their unwillingness to deal with information that challenges their preconceptions.

For the profession generally, and for each of us individually as the alum or other stakeholder of a particular school, it’s quite reasonable to ask the question of your school:

Given that many signs suggest significant change may be imminent, how "change-ready" are we? And how closely are we listening for further signs of change so that we are able to succeed if things do change fairly quickly?

Continued in article


ALL TIME HITS (for all papers in SSRN eLibrary)
TOP 10 Papers for Tax Law & Policy eJournals
January 2, 1997 to January 15, 2012
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/topten/topTenResults.cfm?groupingId=305496&netorjrnl=ntwk

Rank Downloads  
1           4577 
Understanding the U.S. News Law School Rankings 
Theodore P. Seto, 
Loyola Law School Los Angeles, 
Date posted to database: October 13, 2006 
Last Revised: April 18, 2007 
2            4316 
Two and Twenty: Taxing Partnership Profits in Private Equity Funds 
Victor Fleischer, 
University of Colorado at Boulder - School of Law, 
Date posted to database: March 23, 2006 
Last Revised: September 26, 2007 
3            3996 
Taxes and Corporate Finance 
John R. Graham, 
Duke University - Fuqua School of Business, 
Date posted to database: April 10, 2001 
Last Revised: June 26, 2003 
4            3770 
Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Tax Plan 
Edward D. Kleinbard, 
University of Southern California - Law School, 
Date posted to database: October 10, 2011 
Last Revised: November 1, 2011 
5            2481 
Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Where? 
Paul L. Caron, Jennifer M. Kowal, Katherine Pratt, Theodore P. Seto, 
University of Cincinnati - College of Law, Loyola Marymount University - Loyola Law School Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University - Loyola Law School Los Angeles, Loyola Law School Los Angeles, 
Date posted to database: April 28, 2010 
Last Revised: May 25, 2010 
6            3941 
Pursuing a Tax LLM Degree: Why and When? 
Paul L. Caron, Jennifer M. Kowal, Katherine Pratt, 
University of Cincinnati - College of Law, Loyola Marymount University - Loyola Law School Los Angeles, Loyola Marymount University - Loyola Law School Los Angeles, 
Date posted to database: March 25, 2010 
Last Revised: November 12, 2010 7 3282 
7             3282
Firm Value and Marketability Discounts 
Mukesh Bajaj, David J. Denis, Stephen P. Ferris, Atulya Sarin, 
LECG, LLC, Purdue University - Department of Management, University of Missouri at Columbia - Department of Finance, Santa Clara University - Department of Finance, 
Date posted to database: April 13, 2001 
Last Revised: November 1, 2009 8 3027 
8             3027
Taxing Undocumented Immigrants: Separate, Unequal and Without Representation 
Francine J. Lipman, 
University of Nevada, Las Vegas - William S. Boyd School of Law, 
Date posted to database: February 15, 2006 
Last Revised: May 30, 2008 9 2648 
9             2648 
Understanding Venture Capital Structure: A Tax Explanation for Convertible Preferred Stock 
Ronald J. Gilson, David Schizer, 
Stanford Law School, Columbia Law School, 
Date posted to database: February 28, 2002 
Last Revised: March 26, 2002 10 2588 
10            2588
Tax Evasion and Tax Compliance 
Luigi A. Franzoni, 
University of Bologna - Faculty of Economics, 
Date posted to database: November 11, 1998 
Last Revised: February 3, 2010 

 

 


US News Rankings --- http://www.usnews.com/rankings

US News Top Online Education Programs --- http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education
Do not confuse this with the US News project to evaluate for-profit universities --- a project hampered by refusal of many for-profit universiteis to provide data

Methodology: Online Bachelor's Degree Rankings ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2012/01/09/methodology-online-bachelors-degree-rankings

. . .

Data collection commenced on July 14, 2011, using a password-protected online system. Drawing from its Best Colleges universe of regionally accredited bachelor's granting institutions, U.S.News & World Report E-mailed surveys to the 1,765 regionally accredited institutions it determined had offered bachelor's degree programs in 2010.

Continued in article

"'U.S. News' Sizes Up Online-Degree Programs, Without Specifying Which Is No. 1," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/US-News-Sizes-Up/130274/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

U.S. News & World Report has published its first-ever guide to online degree programs—but distance-education leaders looking to trumpet their high rankings may find it more difficult to brag about how they placed than do their colleagues at residential institutions.

Unlike the magazine's annual rankings of residential colleges, which cause consternation among many administrators for reducing the value of each program into a single headline-friendly number, the new guide does not provide lists based on overall program quality; no university can claim it hosts the top online bachelor's or online master's program. Instead, U.S. News produced "honor rolls" highlighting colleges that consistently performed well across the ranking criteria.

Eric Brooks, a U.S. News data research analyst, said the breakdown of the rankings into several categories was intentional; his team chose its categories based on areas with enough responses to make fair comparisons.

"We're only ranking things that we felt the response rates justified ranking this year," he said.

The rankings, which will be published today, represent a new chapter in the 28-year history of the U.S. News guide. The expansion was brought on by the rapid growth of online learning. More than six million students are now taking at least one course online, according to a recent survey of more than 2,500 academic leaders by the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board.

U.S. News ranked colleges with bachelor's programs according to their performance in three categories: student services, student engagement, and faculty credentials. For programs at the master's level, U.S. News added a fourth category, admissions selectivity, to produce rankings of five different disciplines: business, nursing, education, engineering, and computer information technology.

To ensure that the inaugural rankings were reliable, Mr. Brooks said, U.S. News developed its ranking methodology after the survey data was collected. Doing so, he said, allowed researchers to be fair to institutions that interpreted questions differently.

Some distance-learning experts criticized that technique, however, arguing that the methodology should have been established before surveys were distributed.

Russell Poulin, deputy director of research and analysis for the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, which promotes online education as part of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, said that approach allowed U.S. News to ask the wrong questions, resulting in an incomplete picture of distance-learning programs.

"It sort of makes me feel like I don't know who won the baseball game, but I'll give you the batting average and the number of steals and I'll tell you who won," he said. Mr. Poulin and other critics said any useful rankings of online programs should include information on outcomes like retention rates, employment prospects, and debt load—statistics, Mr. Brooks said, that few universities provided for this first edition of the U.S. News rankings. He noted that the surveys will evolve in future years as U.S. News learns to better tailor its questions to the unique characteristics of online programs.

W. Andrew McCollough, associate provost for information technology, e-learning, and distance education at the University of Florida, said he was "delighted" to discover that his institution's bachelor's program was among the four chosen for honor-roll inclusion. He noted that U.S. News would have to customize its questions in the future, since he found some of them didn't apply to online programs. He attributed that mismatch to the wide age distribution and other diverse demographic characteristics of the online student body.

The homogeneity that exists in many residential programs "just doesn't exist in the distance-learning environment," he said. Despite the survey's flaws, Mr. McCollough said, the effort to add to the body of information about online programs is helpful for prospective students.

Turnout for the surveys varied, from a 50 percent response rate among nursing programs to a 75 percent response rate among engineering programs. At for-profit institutions—which sometimes have a reputation for guarding their data closely—cooperation was mixed, said Mr. Brooks. Some, like the American Public University System, chose to participate. But Kaplan University, one of the largest providers of online education, decided to wait until the first rankings were published before deciding whether to join in, a spokesperson for the institution said.

Though this year's rankings do not make definitive statements about program quality, Mr. Brooks said the research team was cautious for a reason and hopes the new guide can help students make informed decisions about the quality of online degrees.

"We'd rather not produce something in its first year that's headline-grabbing for the wrong reasons," he said.


'Honor Roll' From 'U.S. News' of Online Graduate Programs in Business

Institution Teaching Practices and Student Engagement Student Services and Technology Faculty Credentials and Training Admissions Selectivity
Arizona State U., W.P. Carey School of Business 24 32 37 11
Arkansas State U. 9 21 1 36
Brandman U. (Part of the Chapman U. system) 40 24 29 n/a
Central Michigan U. 11 3 56 9
Clarkson U. 4 24 2 23
Florida Institute of Technology 43 16 23 n/a
Gardner-Webb U. 27 1 15 n/a
George Washington U. 20 9 7 n/a
Indiana U. at Bloomington, Kelley School of Business 29 19 40 3
Marist College 67 23 6 5
Quinnipiac U. 6 4 13 16
Temple U., Fox School of Business 39 8 17 34
U. of Houston-Clear Lake 8 21 18 n/a
U. of Mississippi 37 44 20 n/a

Source: U.S. News & World Report

Jensen Comment
I don't know why the largest for-profit universities that generally provide more online degrees than the above universities combined are not included in the final outcomes. For example, the University of Phoenix alone as has over 600,000 students, most of whom are taking some or all online courses.

My guess is that most for-profit universities are not forthcoming with the data requested by US News analysts. Note that the US News condition that the set of online programs to be considered be regionally accredited does not exclude many for-profit universities. For example, enter in such for-profit names as "University of Phoenix" or "Capella University" in the "College Search" box at
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/university-of-phoenix-20988
These universities are included in the set of eligible regionally accredited online degree programs to be evaluated. They just did not do well in the above "Honor Roll" of outcomes for online degree programs.

For-profit universities may have shot themselves in the foot by not providing the evaluation data to US News for online degree program evaluation. But there may b e reasons for this. For example, one of the big failings of most for-profit online degree programs is in undergraduate "Admissions Selectivity."

Bob Jensen's threads on distance education training and education alternatives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings


"Illinois Attorney General Will Sue For-Profit College," Inside Higher Ed, January 18, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2012/01/18/illinois-attorney-general-will-sue-profit-college

The Illinois attorney general is planning to sue Westwood College, a for-profit institution with four campuses in the Chicago area, saying that it has misled students about its criminal justice program in ways that have left the students facing serious debts without employment prospects, The Chicago Tribune reported. The suit will charge that Westwood is inappropriately recruiting students for the program for a law enforcement career when Illinois requires its police officers to be graduates of regionally accredited institutions. Westwood is nationally accredited so its graduates aren't eligible for the jobs. The suit will say that Westwood "made a variety of misrepresentations and false promises." The students who are enrolling are paying much more than they would have to for a degree that would qualify them for the jobs, the suit says. It notes that to complete a degree in criminal justice at Westwood costs $71,610 (with many students borrowing heavily to pay), compared with $12,672 from the College of DuPage, a nonprofit regionally accredited college.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on for-profit universities operating in the gray zone of fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

Question
How do you stay in college semester after semester with a grade average of 0.0?

"Chicago State Let Failing Students Stay," Inside Higher Ed, July 26, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/26/qt#266185

Chicago State University officials have been boasting about improvements in retention rates. But an investigation by The Chicago Tribune  found that part of the reason is that students with grade-point averages below 1.8 have been permitted to stay on as students, in violation of university rules. Chicago State officials say that they have now stopped the practice, which the Tribune exposed by requesting the G.P.A.'s of a cohort of students. Some of the students tracked had G.P.A.'s of 0.0.

Jensen Comment
There is a bit of integrity at CSU. Professors could've just given the students A grades like some other high grade inflation universities or changed their examination answers in courses somewhat similar to the grade-changing practices of a majority of Atlanta K-12 schools. Now that CSU will no longer retain low gpa students, those other practices may commence at CSU in order to keep the state support at high levels. And some CSU professors may just let students cheat. It's not clear how many CSU professors will agree to these other ways to keep failing students on board.

Bob Jensen's threads on Professors Who Cheat and Allow Students to Cheat are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#RebeccaHoward

Bob Jensen's threads on grade inflation are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


Donald Knuth --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth

Jagdish Gangolly's hero!
"Donald Knuth Turns 74 Tomorrow," ReadWriteWeb, January 9, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2012/01/donald-knuth-turns-74-tomorrow.php

Jensen Comment
During one of my think tank years, Professor Knoth was my next door neighbor in Stanford's faculty housing compound. I really did not get to know him very well. He was a big man who rode a child's bicycle to work that was much too small for his long legs. His friendly wife raised bees in the back yard. I wish that I had known enough about him at the time to appreciate his brilliance.


"On Facebook, Librarian Brings 2 Students From the Early 1900s to Life (complete with photos)," by Nick DeSantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 6, 2012 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/on-facebook-librarian-brings-two-students-from-the-early-1900s-to-life/34845?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Facebook user “joe1915” writes wall posts that would be familiar to any college student these days: He stresses about tests, roots for his university’s football team, and shows off photos from campus dances.

But Joe McDonald isn’t an average smartphone-toting student. He died in 1971 — 33 years before Facebook arrived on the Web.

Donnelyn Curtis, the director of research collections and services at the University of Nevada at Reno, created Facebook profiles for Mr. McDonald and his wife, Leola Lewis, to give students a glimpse of university life during the couple’s college days. Ms. Lewis graduated in 1913, and Mr. McDonald earned his degree in mechanical engineering two years later.

With approval from Mr. McDonald’s granddaughter, Peggy McDonald, Ms. Curtis said she’s using archival material for a history project designed to appeal to a wider audience than the typical patrons of special collections.

“We’re just trying to help history come alive a little bit for students,” she said. At first, only extended family members bothered to “friend” with the pair’s profiles, but as the audience grew, Ms. Curtis said she had to find a humorous voice that would appeal to contemporary students who use Facebook every day.

“It’s been hard to walk the line between being historically accurate and making it interesting for college students,” she said. To help keep the pair’s virtual personalities consistent, Ms. Curtis composes all of their updates. Mr. McDonald’s favorite activities are boxing and “hanging out with friends,” while Ms. Lewis’ include ranching and shopping.

So far, Ms. Curtis has posted photos of the couple’s time on campus, including a picture of them together at a sophomore hop. They even talk to one another: When Mr. McDonald complained about his impending final exams, Ms. Lewis tried to lift her future husband’s spirits with a comment that began “My sympathies!” The pair married in November 1915, and Mr. McDonald went on to a long career in the news industry, retiring as president of Reno Newspapers Inc. in 1956.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
Accountancy doctoral programs really did not take off until after the Pearson and Gordon/Howell scathing criticisms of accountancy degree programs in the 1950s ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm


"Working In Word, Excel, PowerPoint on an iPad," by Walter S. Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, January 12, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203436904577154840906816210.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RightMostPopular

Although Apple's popular iPad tablet has been able to replace laptops for many tasks, it isn't a big hit with folks who'd like to use it to create or edit long Microsoft Office documents.

While Microsoft has released a number of apps for the iPad, it hasn't yet released an iPad version of Office. There are a number of valuable apps that can create or edit Office documents, such as Quickoffice Pro, Documents To Go and the iPad version of Apple's own iWork suite. But their fidelity with Office documents created on a Windows PC or a Mac isn't perfect.

This week, Onlive Inc., in Palo Alto, Calif., is releasing an app that brings the full, genuine Windows versions of the key Office productivity apps—Word, Excel and PowerPoint—to the iPad. And it's free. These are the real programs. They look and work just like they do on a real Windows PC. They let you create or edit genuine Word documents, Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations.

I've been testing a pre-release version of this new app, called OnLive Desktop, which the company says will be available in the next few days in Apple's app store. More information is at desktop.onlive.com.

My verdict is that it works, but with some caveats, limitations and rough edges. Some of these downsides are inherent in the product, while others have to do with the mismatch between the iPad's touch interface and the fact that Office for Windows was primarily designed for a physical keyboard and mouse.

Creating or editing long documents on a tablet with a virtual on-screen keyboard is a chore, no matter what Office-type app you choose. So, although it isn't a requirement, I strongly recommend that users of OnLive Desktop employ one of the many add-on wireless keyboards for the iPad.

OnLive Desktop is a cloud-based app. That means it doesn't actually install Office on your iPad. It acts as a gateway to a remote server where Windows 7, and the three Office apps, are actually running. You create an account, sign in, and Windows pops up on your iPad, with icons allowing you to launch Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (There are also a few other, minor Windows programs included, like Notepad, Calculator and Paint.)

In my tests, the Office apps launched and worked smoothly and quickly, without any noticeable lag, despite the fact that they were operating remotely. Although this worked better for me on my fast home Internet connection, it also worked pretty well on a much slower hotel connection.

Like Office itself, the documents you create or modify don't live on the iPad. Instead, they go to a cloud-based repository, a sort of virtual hard disk. When you sign into OnLive Desktop, you see your documents in the standard Windows documents folder, which is actually on the remote server. The company says that this document storage won't be available until a few days after the app becomes available.

To get files into and out of OnLive Desktop, you log into a Web site on your PC or Mac, where you see all the documents you've saved to your cloud repository. You can use this Web site to upload and download files to your OnLive Desktop account. Any changes made will be automatically synced, the company says, though I wasn't able to test that capability in my pre-release version.

Because it's a cloud-based service, OnLive Desktop won't work offline, such as in planes without Wi-Fi. And it can be finicky about network speeds. It requires a wireless network with at least 1 megabit per second of download speed, and works best with at least 1.5 to 2.0 megabits. Many hotels have trouble delivering those speeds, and, in my tests, the app refused to start in a hotel twice, claiming insufficient network speed when the hotel Wi-Fi was overloaded.

The free version of the app has some other limitations. You get just 2 gigabytes of file storage, there's no Web browser or email program like Outlook included, and you can't install additional software. If many users are trying to log onto the OnLive Desktop servers at once, you may have to wait your turn to use Office.

In the coming weeks, the company plans to launch a Pro version, which will cost $10 a month. It will offer 50 GB of cloud document storage, "priority" access to the servers, a Web browser, and the ability to install some added programs. It will also allow you to collaborate on documents with other users, or even to chat with, and present material to, groups of other OnLive Desktop users.

The company also plans to offer OnLive Desktop on Android tablets, PCs and Macs, and iPhones.

In my tests, I was able to create documents on an iPad in each of the three cloud-based Office programs. I was able to download them to a computer, and alter them on both the iPad and computer. I was also able to upload files from the computer for use in OnLive Desktop.

OnLive Desktop can't use the iPad's built-in virtual keyboard, but it can use the virtual keyboard built into Windows 7 and Windows' limited touch features and handwriting recognition. As noted above, I recommend using a wireless physical keyboard. But even these aren't a perfect solution, because the ones that work with the iPad can't send common Windows keyboard commands to OnLive Desktop, so you wind up moving between the keyboard and the touch screen, which can be frustrating. And you can't use a mouse.

Another drawback is that OnLive Desktop is entirely isolated from the rest of the iPad. Unlike Office-compatible apps that install directly on the tablet, this cloud-based service can't, for instance, be used to open Office documents you receive via email on the iPad. And, at least at first, the only way you can get files into and out of OnLive Desktop is through its Web-accessible cloud-storage service. The free version has no email capability, and the app doesn't support common file-transfer services like Dropbox or SugarSync. The company says it hopes to add those.

OnLive Desktop competes not only with the iPad's Office clones, but with iPad apps that let you remotely access and control your own PCs and Macs, and thus use Office and other computer software on those.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads in Tricks and Tools of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


How one of my favorite technology commentators discovered, as a kid, what we in accounting call CPV, CVP, PCV or whatever analysis

"A Gadget Is More Than the Sum of Its Parts," by David Pogue, The New York Times, January 5, 2012 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/a-gadget-is-more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts/

As a teenager growing up in the Cleveland suburbs, my first real job was at a Chick-fil-A restaurant in a local mall. I did everything: manned the cash register, made sandwiches and cleaned up.

. . .

It’d be fun to report that that job taught me important skills and precepts that followed me for the rest of my life, but that’d be pushing it.

¶That job did teach me, however, one important thing about the business world. My best friend, John, worked next door at a watch shop. He told me he could get incredible discounts on the watches — all I had to do was ask. I needed a watch, in fact, so I picked out a $200 model and asked what I’d have to pay. He said $60.

¶I was appalled. “You mean to tell me that your shop pays $60 for that watch, and then jacks up the price to $200 for the consumer? That’s outrageous! That’s practically robbery! You should be ashamed to work there!”

¶John was amused, and he proceeded to teach me a lesson. “Oh, really? That’s a big ripoff, huh? Well, let me ask you this: How much do you think Chick-fil-A pays for each of the chicken breasts?”

¶I calculated that in the massive quantities this chain purchased, it was maybe 40 cents.

¶“And the bun?” Maybe 4 cents. “The pickle?” One-tenth of a cent. “O.K., and how much do you sell the sandwich for?” $2.40.

¶Now, it’s been 30 years. All of the numbers in this story are vague recollections — I don’t need e-mail from chicken-farm vendors setting me straight. But I’m quite sure of the result: By the time I’d done the math, John had made me realize that my sandwich shop was marking up its product more than his watch shop. I was the one who should be ashamed.

¶Right?

¶I think of this transaction every time somebody does a “teardown analysis” of an iPhone, a Kindle Fire or some other hot new product. These companies buy a unit, take it apart, photograph the components and then calculate the price of each. Then they tally those component costs and try to make you outraged that you’ve paid so much markup.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I eat three or more (usually more) times per day. But I've not bought a new Timex watch in the past ten years.

Bob Jensen's threads and cases on CVP analysis ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#ManagementAccounting
CVP analysis becomes more interesting when we extend it to multiple products, operating leverage, and pricing (with demand functions). David Pogue adds complications when the sum is not equal to the summation of its parts.


Are portable scanners all that they claim?
"Another Take on Doxie Go," by Konrad Lawson, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 5, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/another-take-on-doxie-go/37811?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en


"Was the New York Times Used by Duncan Law School (or were readers duped by the Times)?" by Brian Tamanaha, Balkinization, January 5, 2012 ---
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2012/01/was-new-york-times-used-by-duncan-law.html 
Thank you Paul Caron for the heads up.


A promotional advertisement for a MIT PhD in Freakonomics (more precisely Information Technology)
"Don’t Just Read Freakonomics. DO Freakonomics!," by Andrew McAfee, Financial Education Daily, January 4, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

Jensen Comment
What I found interesting about this site is that it's really a promotional site with a clever title for the MIT Sloan Doctoral Program
(five full time years beyond an MBA degree).

Read the FAQs --- http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub


"6 Tips For Building a High Quality Blog Following," by Shane Snow, Marshable, January 3, 2012 ---
http://ht.ly/8gu3L
Thank you Robert Harris for the heads up.

Jensen Comment
Keys to success for a Website are somewhat different than keys to success for a blogging site. For a Website the key to success is content --- lots of it even if the content is narrowly focused. The reason is that the most hits usually come for users of Web crawlers like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. For blog posts, huge-content files can become wearisome.

Bob Jensen's threads on accounting education blogs are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListservRoles.htm


Free books in Finance --- http://www.e-booksdirectory.com/listing.php?category=342

Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


Windows Phone: The Critics Rave ... for Microsoft?

"The Critics Rave ... for Microsoft?" by Nick Wingfield, The New York Times, January 7, 2012 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/technology/microsoft-defying-image-has-a-design-gem-in-windows-phone.html?_r=1&hpw

 “GORGEOUS,” raves The Huffington Post.

“Best-looking smartphone operating system in the industry,” gushes Slate.

“Far superior to most if not all the Android smartphones,” says TechCrunch.

Sounds like the usual adulation for a gadget from Apple. In fact, they’re actually accolades for a new product from Microsoft.

Microsoft?

Exactly. Long ridiculed as the tech industry dullard, Microsoft actually has a hit, at least with the technorati. It’s cellphone software called Windows Phone — and they need it to be a blockbuster here at Microsoft Central.

Yes, Windows and Office products are ubiquitous and highly profitable. But they’re about as inspirational as a stapler. While the likes of Apple have captured our imaginations with nifty products like the iPhone, Microsoft has produced a long list of flops, from smart wristwatches to the Zune music player to the Kin phones. Steve Jobs used to deride Microsoft for a lack of originality. In his opinion, the company didn’t bring “much culture” to its products. With Windows Phone, though, Microsoft is finally getting some buzz.

“I am a devoted Apple fan — I was in line for the iPhone,” said Axel Roesler, assistant professor for interaction design at the University of Washington in Seattle, but Windows Phone “strikes me as quite different and an advance.”

Windows Phone, which began appearing in devices last fall, certainly stands out visually. It has bold, on-screen typography and a mosaic of animated tiles on the home screen — a stark departure from the neat grid of icons made popular by the iPhone. While most phones force users to open stand-alone apps to get into social networks, Facebook and Twitter are wired into Windows Phone. The tiles spring to life as friends or family post fresh pictures, text messages and status updates.

Even so, relatively few consumers have been tempted, and sales have been lackluster. A big problem is that, initially, the handsets running Microsoft’s software, made by companies like HTC and Samsung, were unexceptional. Even more important, wireless carriers, the gatekeepers for nearly all mobile phones, have not been aggressively selling Windows phones in their stores. Most promote the iPhone and devices running Google’s Android operating system.

And so Microsoft has struck a partnership with Nokia, and executives at both companies have high hopes that their handsets will catch on with consumers. On Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nokia plans to introduce a sleek metallic Windows Phone called the Lumia 900 that will be sold by AT&T in the United States, according to two people with knowledge of its plans who spoke on condition of anonymity because the product has not yet been announced. Unlike other handset makers creating devices with Microsoft’s software, Nokia is not also developing Android phones.

. . . .

When senior executives got their first look at the software, Mr. Myerson said, there was “some hesitancy.” Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, didn’t like that the first screen that appeared after turning on the device contained oversized type that cut off the day of the week. (Wednesday showed up as Wed.) Revisions were made.

But the group was given its creative freedom. And the critics, at least, have approved the final results.

“It looks like nothing we’ve seen before from Microsoft,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, the technology research firm. “The company is being somewhat bold and saying what worked for them in 1992 won’t work now.”

Still, last summer, Mr. Ballmer told Microsoft investors that he was disappointed with Windows Phone sales. In mid-December, he named Mr. Myerson, the engineering head, to take full control of the group. He charged Mr. Myerson with improving the Windows Phone advertising campaign and relationships with wireless carriers. A software update for Windows Phones in the fall added a number of improvements to the product, including basic editing functions like copy and paste.

BUT this year is crucial; it will show whether a respected product is enough to help Microsoft make up for lost time. Even if it feels good to be a favorite of tech critics for a change, Microsoft needs a blockbuster in the mobile business, not a cult hit.

“Entering the market so late with this experience has created some special challenges for us,” Mr. Myerson said. “I think if we were there earlier it would be different.”


"And Now, We're Going to Judge Florida Colleges' Performance on the CPA Exam," by Adrienne Gonzalz, Going Concern, January 6, 2012 ---
http://goingconcern.com/post/and-now-were-going-judge-florida-colleges-performance-cpa-exam

Jensen Comment
I think Adrienne is running a series of tidbits on CPA examination performance by state --- starting with a previous article on California. This is can be a very misleading thing to do unless we're careful about how to mislead with statistics.

For example, Florida A&M is a predominantly African American university that annually comes out at or near the bottom on the CPA examination passage rate. Based upon my experience when I was across town at Florida State University, however, Florida A&M across town had a program that was not very well geared to CPA examination passage. At least in those days, Florida A&M was closely tied to large corporations like IBM and had quite a few practicum (internship) courses and managerial accounting courses in each student's curriculum. In other words, the goal from get go for an accounting major was corporate accounting and not CPA firm accounting. Hence an African American student bent on becoming a CPA would be advised to strongly consider one of the other top state universities in Florida. This may have changed over the years since I left Florida.

Also Florida A&M typically has a very small number of graduates sitting for the CPA examination. After leaving FSU I joined the faculty of Trinity University. Trinity is a small university (about 2,200 students) with a huge endowment that enables it to attract high SAT/ACT performing students, and the accounting program typically attracts some of the top students admitted to the university. However, Trinity's performance on the CPA examination is somewhat of a yo-yo. For example, last year Trinity scored 5th in the nation on the CPA examination. But there are years in which Trinity will perform much lower because the number of exam takers (sometimes less than ten) leads to all sorts of variability common in small samples in general.

There is also bias on examination performance in terms of admission standards vis-a-vis quality of teaching. We might assume that this year's top performing schools in California (US Berkeley) and Florida (UF in Gainesville) also had the best accounting teachers. This is ipso facto not necessarily true when the students are the top SAT/ACT accounting students in those states. The best teachers may actually be the ones who stretch the students further that have lower incoming credentials.

Top-performing accounting programs like Notre Dame, BYU, UC Berkeley, University of Texas, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of Tennessee, Texas A&M etc. are greatly challenged by having large numbers of accounting students. The challenge is how to keep upper division accounting classes relatively small with tightened budgets. Those schools with high SAT/ACT accounting majors might well consider the BYU approach of pushing more faculty resources into the upper division courses by teaching basic accounting via video courses that rarely meet in classrooms ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#BYUvideo

This BYU approach, however, probably will not work as well where accounting majors need more push, inspiration, and live teaching.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tricks and Tools of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm


Over 24 years ago, Barry Rice believed in the learning power of classroom electronic response pads (clickers).
He was right if they are used correctly ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads

"Does Using Clickers in the Classroom Matter to Student Performance and Satisfaction When Taking the Introductory Financial Accounting Course?" by Ronald F. Premuroso, Lei Tong, and Teresa K. Beed, Issues in Accounting Education, November 2011, pp. 701-724
http://aaajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2308/iace-50066
There is a fee for the full text version

ABSTRACT:

Teaching and student success in the classroom involve incorporating various sound pedagogy and technologies that improve and enhance student learning and understanding. Before entering their major field of study, business and accounting majors generally must take a rigorous introductory course in financial accounting. Technological innovations utilized in the classroom to teach this course include Audience Response Systems (ARS), whereby the instructor poses questions related to the course material to students who each respond by using a clicker and receiving immediate feedback. In a highly controlled experimental situation, we find significant improvements in the overall student examination performance when teaching this course using clickers as compared to traditional classroom teaching techniques. Finally, using a survey at the end of the introductory financial accounting course taught with the use of clickers, we add to the growing literature supporting student satisfaction with use of this type of technology in the classroom. As universities look for ways to restrain operating costs without compromising the pedagogy of core requirement classes such as the introductory financial accounting course, our results should be of interest to educators, administrators, and student retention offices, as well as to the developers and manufacturers of these classroom support technologies.

"Some interesting findings and unanswered questions about clicker implementations," by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 4, 2012 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/01/04/some-interesting-findings-and-unanswered-questions-about-clicker-implementations/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

I have been using clickers in my classes for three years now, and for me, there’s no going back. The “agile teaching” model that clickers enable suits my teaching style very well and helps my students learn. But I have to say that until reading this Educause article on the flight out to Boston on Sunday, I hadn’t given much thought to how the clicker implementation model chosen by the institution might affect how my students learn.

Different institutions implement clickers differently, of course. The article studies three different implementation models: the students-pay-without-incentive (SPWOI) approach, where students buy the clickers for class but the class has no graded component for clicker use; the the students-pay-with-incentive (SPWI) approach, where students purchase clickers and there’s some grade incentive in class for using them (usually participation credit, but this can vary too); and the institution-pays-clicker-kit (IPCK) approach, where the institution purchases a box of clickers (a “clicker kit”) for an instructor, and the instructor brings them to class.

For me, the most interesting finding in the study was that there appears to be a threshhold for the perceived usefulness of clickers among students. The study found that in the SPWOI approach, 72% of student respondents said they would buy a clicker if it was used in at least three courses they were taking per semester. But drop that number to “at least two courses” and the percentage drops to 24%! So once the saturation level of clicker use reaches something like 50–75% of a student’s course load, they start seeing the devices as worth the money, even with no grade attached to its use. (Only a depressing 13% of students said they would pay $50 for a clicker based solely on its value as a learning tool. We have some P.R. to do, it seems.)

In the SPWI approach, 65% of respondents said they would buy a clicker if the contribution of clicker use toward their course grades was between 3% and 5%. (This is sort of mystifying. What do the other 35% do? Steal one? Just forfeit that portion of their grade?) The study doesn’t say explicitly, but it implies that if the grade contribution is less than 3%, the percentage would drop — how precipitously, we don’t know.

The study goes on to give a decision tree to help institutions figure out which implementation model to choose. Interestingly, if it gets down to choosing between the SPWI and SPWOI models, the deciding factor is whether the institution can manage cheating with the clickers. If so, then go with SPWI. Otherwise, go SPWOI — that is, if you can’t control cheating, don’t offer incentives.

Here at GVSU, I use the SPWI approach. Students have to pay for the clickers, but they get 5% of their course grade for participation. I take attendance at each class using the Attendance app for the iPhone. Then, once or twice a week, I’ll cross-check the attendance records with the clicker records for the day. If a student is present but doesn’t respond to all the clicker questions, they lose participation credit for the day. This method also mitigates cheating; if a student is absent for the day but has records of clicker response, then I hold the student guilty of cheating, because someone else is entering data for them. (Putting the burden on the absent student makes it less likely they’ll give their clicker to someone else to cheat for them.).

Continued in article

January 10, 2012 reply from Steve Hornik

Late reply to this thread, but my memory is pretty bad and I was trying to remember a "clicker" alternative. I finally did, its Pollanywhere and works the same way as clickers. I've used for presentations at AAA meetings a few years ago, here's a link if anyone is interested in finding out more:

http://www.polleverywhere.com/ 

_________________________
Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739

http://about.me/shornik

Bob Jensen's threads on clickers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#ResponsePads 


"Top 10 YouTube Videos of All Time,"  by Richard MacManus. ReadWriteWeb, January 9, 2012 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_youtube_videos_of_all_time.php
Thanks but no thanks.


Grammar Girl traces the @ symbol back to the middle ages ---
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/where-did-the-at-symbol-come-from.aspx?WT.mc_id=0

.. .

Scribes used to use it to list prices on invoices and accounting sheets, as in 12 eggs AT one pence per egg.

Continued in article

American spelling -- traveled
* British spelling -- travelled

But we see "modelled" and modeled use somewhat interchangeably with "modeled" being more popular in spell checkers and journals. Jagdish says "modelled" is more popular in the U.K.

 


"Game Over for BlackBerry? Not if the mobile ecosystem wars play out the way the operating system wars did," by Holman Jenkins, Jr., The Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2012 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203513604577144614178603068.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t

Motorola is an American company. Microsoft is an American company. Palm was an American company. So BlackBerry's Canadian origins can't be solely to blame for its swamping as Apple and Google reinvented the mobile data industry out from under it.

Still, it might be better to have an ear close to the ground in Silicon Valley to hear the first rumbles of the earthquake about to overturn your business. That said, the next rumble may actually benefit those, including BlackBerry and Microsoft, now left behind.

BlackBerry, of course, is the trade name of devices made by Canada's Research in Motion, about which the good news last quarter was that one Canadian analyst considered the stock too low to be worth shorting.

That was the upbeat assessment. The downbeat assessment came from analyst Kris Thompson at Canada's National Bank Financial, who said: "It's likely game over for RIM. A turnaround is very, very speculative."

Glumness of this order might seem odd given that RIM just announced that devices in its network had reached an all-time high, 75 million, and that quarterly profits were a non-negligible $265 million. Yet the stock price has been an embarrassment to RIM. Its cofounders, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, are no longer billionaires. RIM's PlayBook tablet has been a plodder. New devices based on a reworked BlackBerry operating system are nowhere to be seen. Investors are treating RIM as doomed in a mobile marketplace dominated by the competing Apple and Google ecosystems.

Investors can't see a future that can't be seen. And RIM has not given investors a reason to believe the company has a strategy to survive. A possible reason is that the company doesn't yet have one. But we're here to tell you that's not necessarily a reason to give up on the stock.

Belatedly and unconvincingly, RIM has begun to do what a company should when faced with a strategic pickle it can't solve: Overhaul its corporate governance so at least investors will be reassured that management is ruthlessly prepared to junk its old business model and seize whatever unexpected opportunities turn up.

For hope may well turn up for RIM, for a key reason: Apple's cloud move.

Apple is getting read to shift customer data off the device and into its central servers. As Google does the same, there's every reason to believe competitive pressure eventually will drive both to start making sure customer cloud data is available to every kind of device. The real promise of the cloud, after all, is that your digital life will be available anywhere, on any kind of device. "Mobile," to customers in the future, will mean not just a gadget that goes everywhere with them; it will mean liberation from a particular gadget. You'll be able to access your stuff from any machine handy, even one you throw out at the end of the day.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's technology bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob4.htm


January 2, 2012 message from Ramesh Fernando

Prof. Jensen,
Perhaps this may be of interest to you and others on this site, while looking for free children's books for my daughter  I was led to these two sites.

Interesting site for online historical texts
http://historicaltextarchive.com/

Free e-book directory
www.e-booksdirectory.com

Wow I been surfing this website out all afternoon here's another interesting link "The Promise and Peril of Big Data" from the Aspen Institute Discusses what benefits and problems that may arise regarding big data including medical records and health care and financial markets (XBRL, get American Congress to create a National Institute of Finance)
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/publications/promise-peril-big-data

Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm


Fair Weather Friends
"Are Kodak's Outside Directors Wrong to Desert a Sinking Ship?" by Simon C.Y. Wong, Harvard Business Review Blog, January 5, 2012 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/01/protecting_boards_from_disrupt.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date


You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Appears to be the oldest English proverb that is still in regular use today. It was recorded as early as 1175 in Old English Homilies ---
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/you-can-lead-a-horse-to-water.html

Education is not so prized in the shadows of Harvard, MIT, BU, BC, and the other top universities in the Boston area ---
"Absenteeism rife at Boston high schools City efforts make meager headway," by James Vaznis, Boston Globe,  January 15, 2012 ---
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2012/01/15/absenteeism_rife_at_boston_high_schools/

More than a third of the students in Boston public high schools were chronically absent last year, even as the city undertook additional efforts to lure students to school, according to a Globe analysis.

At East Boston High School, half of the students missed at least 19 days, more than 10 percent of the school year. The rates of chronic absenteeism were even higher at Brighton High, Charlestown High, and Dorchester Academy. Across the city, 7,400 high school students were chronically absent.

The figures illustrate the enormous challenges most local high schools face in keeping students in class, and more significantly, preventing them from quitting altogether. Boston high schools plagued by absenteeism tended to have among the highest dropout rates, the analysis of attendance data showed.

“I think it is absolutely a crisis,’’ said Ranny Bledsoe, headmaster at Charlestown High School, where she has revamped a number of programs to make school more meaningful to students, but also has been hampered by budget cuts. “Are we doing enough to address it? Absolutely not.’’

Students miss school for a variety of reasons: They may be sick, homeless, working, or taking care of a sibling or their own child. Other times, they skip to avoid being bullied, or because they are bored with classes, struggling academically, or frustrated that they are so far behind that they think they will never graduate.

Carynn Donald, a ninth-grader at Jeremiah Burke High School in Dorchester, estimates that she has missed a dozen days this year, often because swoke up tired and went back to sleep. Donald said her interest in school waned in the fourth or fifth grade when the homework became more difficult and she had to repeat two grades in middle school.

“Sometimes, I really don’t want to go to school,’’ said Donald, 16. “I don’t like school.’’

Yet all she has to do to get to school is walk across Washington Street to the Burke, where each morning City Year volunteers sing, clap, and dance as students arrive.

The Burke has made some headway with Donald. Leah Duncan, a City Year member, has been calling Donald’s mother when she misses class and occasionally has lunch with Donald and tutors her.

Continued in article


"U.S. Charges 3 Swiss Bankers in Tax Case," by Chad Bray, The Wall Street Journal, January 3, 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204368104577139043222716600.html

Jensen Comment
These Swiss bankers were indicted for helping U.S. taxpayers hide $1.2 billion from the IRS in offshore accounts

Purportedly their defense is full of holes (sorry about that).

Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm


Controversies in the anonymous blind review process of research journals
"Kill Peer Review or Reform It?" by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, January 6, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/01/06/humanities-scholars-consider-role-peer-review
Thank you Ron Huefner for the heads up.

"Blind peer review is dead. It just doesn’t know it yet." That's the way Aaron J. Barlow, an associate professor of English at the College of Technology of the City University of New York, summed up his views here on the future of the traditional way of deciding whose work gets published in the humanities.

Barlow didn't dispute that most of the top journals in the humanities continue to select papers this way. But speaking at a session of the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association, he argued that technology has so changed the ability of scholars to share their findings that it's only a matter of time before people rise up against the conventions of traditional journal publishing.

While others on the panel and in the audience argued for a reformed peer review as preferable to Barlow's vision of smashing the enterprise, and some questioned the practicality of simply walking away from peer review immediately, the idea that the system needs radical change was not challenged. Barlow said that the system might have been justified once when old-style publishing put a significant limit on the quantity of scholarship that could be shared. But in a new era, he said, the justifications were gone. (Reflecting the new technology era, Barlow and one other panelist spoke via Skype, to an audience that included two tables and wireless for bloggers and Twitter users -- and this journalist -- to write about the proceedings as they were taking place.)

To many knowing nods in the room, Barlow argued that the traditional system of blind peer review -- in which submissions are sent off to reviewers, whose judgments then determine whether papers are accepted, with no direct communication with authors -- had serious problems with fairness. He said that the system rewards "conformity" and allows for considerable bias.

He described a recent experience in which he was recruited by "a prestigious venue" to review a paper that related in some ways to research he had done. Barlow's work wasn't mentioned anywhere in the piece. Barlow said he realized that the journal editor figured Barlow would be annoyed by the omission. And although he was, Barlow said he didn't feel assigning the piece to him was fair to the author. "It was a set-up. The editor didn't want a positive review, so the burden of rejection was passed on to someone the author would not know."

He refused to go along, and said he declined to review the paper when he realized what was going on. This sort of "corruption" is common, he said.

Barlow has a long publishing record, so his frustrations with the system can't be chalked up to being unable to get his ideas out there. But he said that when one of his papers was recently rejected, he simply published it on his blog directly, where comments have come in from fans and foes of his work.

"I love the editorial process" when comments result in a piece becoming better, he said, and digital publishing allows this to happen easily. But traditional peer review simply delays publication and leaves decision-making "in the dark." Peer review -- in the sense that people will comment on work and a consensus may emerge that a given paper is important or not -- doesn't need to take place prior to publication, he said.

"We don't need the bottleneck or the corruption," he said. The only reason blind peer review survives is that "we have made appearance in peer reviewed journals the standard" for tenure and promotion decisions. That will change over time, he predicted, and then the traditional system will collapse.

Peer Review Plus

While Barlow noted the ability of digital publishing to bypass peer review, the idea of an intense, collaborative process for selecting pieces and improving them came at the session from the editor of Kairos, an online journal on rhetoric and technology that publishes work prepared for the web. Kairos has become an influential journal, but Cheryl Ball, the editor and an associate professor of English at Illinois State University, discussed how frustrating it is that people assume that an online journal must not have peer review. "Ignorance about digital scholarship" means that she must constantly explain the journal, she said.

Kairos uses a three-stage review process. First, editors decide if a submission makes sense for a review. Then, the entire editorial board discusses the submission (online) for two weeks, and reaches a consensus that is communicated to the author with detailed letters from the board. (Board members' identities are public, so there is no secrecy about who reviews pieces.) Then, if appropriate, someone is assigned to work with the author to coach him or her on how to improve the piece prior to publication.

As Ball described the process, thousands of words are written about submissions, and lengthy discussions take place -- all to figure out the best content for the journal. But there are no secret reviewers, and the coaching process allows for a collaborative effort to prepare a final version, not someone guessing about how to handle a "revise and resubmit" letter.

The process is quite detailed, but also allows for individual consideration of editorial board members' concerns and of authors' approaches, Ball said. "Peer reviewers don't need rubrics. They need good ways to communicate," she said. Along those lines, Kairos is currently updating its tools for editorial board consideration of pieces, to allow for synchronous chat, the use of electronic "sticky notes" and other ways to help authors not only with words, but with digital graphics and illustrations.

Learning From Law Reviews

Allen Mendenhall, a Ph.D. student at Auburn University who is also a blogger and a lawyer, suggested that humanities journals could take some lessons from law reviews. Mendenhall is well aware of (and agrees with) many criticisms of law reviews, and in particular of the reliance for decisions on law students who may not know much about the areas of scholarship they are evaluating.

Continued in article

"Hear the One About the Rejected Mathematician? Call it a scholarly 'Island of Misfit Toys," Chronicle of Higher Education, August 12, 2009 --- Click Here

Rejecta Mathematica is an open-access online journal that publishes mathematical papers that have been rejected by others. Rejecta's motto is caveat emptor, which is to say that the journal has no technical peer-review process.

As The Economist notes in its article on the journal, there are plenty of examples of scholars who have suffered rejection, only to go on to become giants in their field. (OK, two.) Nonetheless, if you have lots of free time on your hands, by all means, check out the inaugural issue.

And if deciphering mathematical formulae isn't your thing, stand by: Rejecta says it may open the floodgates to other disciplines. Prospective franchisees are invited to contact the journal.

Next up: Rejecta Rejecta, a journal for articles too flawed for Rejects Mathematica, printed on single-ply toilet paper.

"Leading Humanities Journal Debuts 'Open' Peer Review, and Likes It," by Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2010 ---
  http://chronicle.com/article/Leading-Humanities-Journal/123696/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en

A ‘Radical’ Rethinking of Scholarly Publishing
"Upgrading to Philosophy 2.0," by Andy Guess, Inside Higher Ed, December 31, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/12/31/apa

There was no theorizing about ghosts in the machine at an annual meeting of philosophers last Friday. Instead, they embraced technology’s implications for their field, both within the classroom and beyond.

. . .

Harriet E. Baber of the University of San Diego thinks scholars should try to make their work as accessible as possible, forget about the financial rewards of publishing and find alternative ways to referee each other’s work. In short, they should ditch the current system of paper-based academic journals that persists, she said, by “creating scarcity,” “screening” valuable work and providing scholars with entries in their CVs.

“Now why would it be a bad thing if people didn’t pay for the information that we produce?” she asked, going over the traditional justifications for the current order — an incentive-based rationale she dubbed a “right wing, free marketeer, Republican argument.”

Instead, she argued, scholars (and in particular, philosophers) should accept that much of their work has little market value ("we’re lucky if we could give away this stuff for free") and embrace the intrinsic rewards of the work itself. After all, she said, they’re salaried, and “we don’t need incentives external [to] what we do.”

That doesn’t include only journal articles, she said; class notes fit into the paradigm just as easily. “I want any prospective student to see this and I want all the world to see” classroom materials, she added.

Responding to questions from the audience, she noted that journals’ current function of refereeing content wouldn’t get lost, since the “middlemen” merely provide a venue for peer review, which would still happen within her model.

“What’s going to happen pragmatically is the paper journals will morph into online journals,” she said.

Part of the purpose of holding the session, she implied, was to nudge the APA into playing a greater role in any such transition: “I’m hoping that the APA will organize things a little better.”

Scholarship Reconsidered’ as Tenure Policy," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, October 2, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/02/wcu

"Time's Up for Tenure," Laurie Fendrich, Chronicle of Higher Education's The Chronicle Review, April 18, 2008 --- http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/fendrich/times-up-for-tenure?utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en 

"Survey Identifies Trends at U.S. Colleges That Appear to Undermine Productivity of Scholars," by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, June 14, 2009 --- Click Here 

College campuses display a striking uniformity of thought
Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield once famously advised a conservative colleague to wait until he had tenure and only then to "hoist the Jolly Roger." But few professors are getting around to hoisting the Jolly Roger at all. Either they don't have a viewpoint that is different from their colleagues, or they've decided that if they are going to remain at one place for several decades, they'd rather just get along. Is tenure to blame for the unanimity of thinking in American universities? It's hard to tell. But shouldn't the burden of proof be on the people who want jobs for life?
Naomi Schafer Riley, "Tenure and Academic Freedom:  College campuses display a striking uniformity of thought," The Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2009 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124571593663539265.html#mod=djemEditorialPage

Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

Bob Jensen's threads on a rethinking of tenure and scholarship ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#MLA


"When They Are Wrong, Analysts May Dig in Their Heels," by John L. Beshears and Katherine L. Milkman, Stanford Graduate School of Business, August 2011 ---
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/beshears_analysts_2011.html?cmpid=alumni

When they are wrong about quarterly earnings forecasts, analysts may stubbornly stick to their erroneous views, a tendency that might contribute to market bubbles and busts, according to research coauthored by John Beshears of the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on behavioral and cultural economics and finance ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#Behavioral


"Five Deadly Business Sins:  Two avoidable mistakes were enough to trip up Eastman Kodak, once one of America's mightiest companies," by Rick Wartzman, Bloomberg Business Week, January 13, 2012 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/management/five-deadly-business-sins-01132012.html

Just how lethal are Peter Drucker’s “five deadly business sins”? You might ask Eastman Kodak (EK), which has committed at least a couple of them and now finds itself on the verge of bankruptcy.

Word emerged last week that Kodak, founded in 1892 and for many decades widely celebrated as one of the world’s greatest companies, may soon file for Chapter 11 protection if it can’t raise enough cash by selling off pieces of its patent portfolio. The news was a sharp reminder of how incredibly challenging it is to sustain any organization, even the most iconic.

How did it come to this? In certain respects, Kodak has been on the defensive since it began facing heightened competition from its arch rival Fuji (8278:JP) some 30 years ago. But fundamentally the company has slipped because it fell prey to two of what Drucker identified in a 1993 essay as a quintet of “avoidable mistakes that will harm the mightiest business.”

The first is a preoccupation with high profit margins. The second: “slaughtering tomorrow’s opportunity on the altar of yesterday.” (The three other deadly business sins, according to Drucker, are “mispricing a new product by charging ‘what the market will bear’; “cost-driven pricing” in which you merely add up your expenses and then stick a profit margin on top—a subject I’ve explored previously; and “feeding problems” while “starving opportunities.”

Continued in article


Up for tenure, promotion, or accreditation?
"Nominating Your Evaluators," by Elizabeth H. Simmons, Inside Higher Ed, January 6, 2012 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2012/01/06/essay-simmons-nominating-evaluators-faculty-tenure-process

Jensen Comment
I don't think some (most?) of the R1 universities allow candidates to nominate evaluators. Or they may allow candidates to nominate evaluators while insisting that not all evaluators be nominated by the candidate.

I was active in varying degrees in obtaining accreditation for two universities (University of Maine and Trinity University) while being on the faculty of those universities. At UMO I was put in charge of the entire process and, as a result, learned more about the AACSB than ever before.

One of the things that surprised me somewhat is that the AACSB allowed us to nominate what deans would make a visit to our campus as part of the accreditation review process. One of my long-time friends, a dean and former accounting professor, who was very active in the AACSB for over two decades. When I proposed to our local faculty that he be one of our AACSB nominees, another faculty member objected saying that my friend was a known hard ass in the accreditation review process. After a bit of research into this, even I agreed that we sould never nominate my friend as an evaluator.

I must admit that the deans we eventually nominated were pretty easy on us, although in each instance I thought we had a good case for accreditation.

And when asked to evaluate a faculty member for tenure or promotion by another university, I recall how much I dreaded receiving those requests in big brown envelopes that contained ten or more papers to read and evaluate. It especially made me uncomfortable when having to be critical of a friend's published research. However, I don't think I killed the quest for tenure or promotion of any candidate even though I tried to be professional in every one of my evaluations.

Now that I'm retired, I enjoy using retirement as an excuse turn down evaluation requests since moving to the mountains.

 


Question
What if students teach the class and set the assignments?

"Peer-Driven Learning: Success!" by Lee Bessette, Inside Higher Ed, December 8, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing/peer-driven-learning-success 

Jensen Comment
This type of course requires great flexibility in the curriculum plan since it is not always clear ahead of time where students will steer the learning. I don't think I would recommend a peer-driven pedagogy for most accounting courses where learning objectives are usually more specific. For example, if there's only one governmental accounting course in the curriculum, most colleges would not like to have students ace the course and still be unable to solve those big governmental accounting problems that often appear on CPA examinations.

There may be some opportunity in an accounting curriculum such as when there are separate courses for accounting ethics. These days, however, ethics modules are often spread among other accounting courses.

Where I might like to see peer-driven learning gain traction is in accounting doctoral programs in courses where there are enough students to make it interesting.

Lee Bessette maintains a blog on Inside Higher Ed ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/college-ready-writing

I see some analogy here with what happens on our AECM. A scholar posts an article that is sometimes accompanied by a short commentary. This becomes analogous to a "peer assignment" to other scholars who then seek out references and quotations that get into the pros and cons of the initial posted article. Thus happens on the AECM, and this is what makes the AECM rich and rewarding to me!

January 5, 2012 reply from Len Stokes

I don’t do exactly Peer Learning in my Graduate Accounting Ethics course. But what I do is make them, what I call create “their own Society”. We spend a couple of classes where they use ethical theories to support and argue against a CEO’s compensation. After being comfortable with Equalitarianism and what Deontological is, I have them create their society. In this way they decide how important group work is vs. Individual work, what class participation means, what class attendance means, what type of final they want. It causes them to think about the educational process. The course is case/discussion based. The goal is thinking.

In terms of the final they get a choice between multiple-choice questions I don’t want to write, or watch the movie “Wall Street”. Each group writes a question and a response about a scene from the movie. Then for the final exam period each group answers another group’s question. They first think through the answer and then orally we go over the question and the response and the question writing group decides if they have answered the question by asking the responding group questions. I have taught the course three times and all three times the classes ( I have ended up with multiple sections) have chosen the movie. The final has been a great learning experience where we can pull things together.

I agree on having the students be more responsible for their education ,but we still need to provide guidance. If they know what they need to learn than self-designed curriculums with no real full time faculty are sufficient. There are many opportunities for undergraduate as well as students to teach material or to have group quizzes. Again I emphasize the learning process and improving thinking. The hard thing is when we turn more over to the class ,we have to really know what is going on to catch the slightest imperfection.

Thanks for the thread.

Len

 

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


"The Fourth Paradigm: Data-Intensive Scientific Discovery: ," Presenting the first broad look at the rapidly emerging field of data-intensive science," Microsoft Research, 2011 ---
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/
Thank you Ramesh Fernando for the heads up.

The article to be downloaded is as follows
"Sailing on an Ocean of 0s and 1s," by James P. Collins, Science Magazine, March 19, 2010 ---
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/collaboration/fourthparadigm/4thparadigm_science.pdf

Also see http://www.cosc.brocku.ca/~duentsch/papers/methprimer2.html


Harvard University's Mobile Web Applications ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

Jensen Comment
Especially note the features on the right side of the screen. I suspect these are mobile Web applications that other colleges and universities will emulate.

Bob Jensen's threads in Education Technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm


Switching Off Bob Jensen

"Three Powerful Lessons I Learned When I Got Offline," by Tony Schwartz, Harvard Business Review Blog, January 4, 2012 --- Click Here
http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/01/three-powerful-lessons-i-learn.html?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date

Jensen Tongue-in-Cheek Recommendation
It's always possible to download Bob Jensen's tidbits and read them when you're off line.


"Study Finds Mixed Results for Students Attending For-Profit Colleges," Chronicle of Higher Education, January 3, 2012 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/study-finds-mixed-results-for-students-attending-for-profit-colleges/39474?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

For-profit colleges educate a disproportionate share of minority, disadvantaged, and older students, and are more successful at retaining students in their first year and graduating them from short-term programs than are public or private nonprofit colleges, according to a recent study by a trio of Harvard University economists.

However, the study, which was cited in a recent government report on student success, also found that students who attend for-profit colleges are less likely to be employed than comparable students from nonprofit institutions, and tend to have lower earnings six years after enrolling. They also carry heavier debt burdens and are more likely to default on their loans.

The study relied on data from the Education Department’s Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, which followed a sample of first-time students who began their higher education in 2003-4, from their enrollment through 2009.

 


"Undercover Probe Finds Lax Academic Standards at Some For-Profit Colleges," by Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 22, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Undercover-Probe-Finds-Lax/129881/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

An undercover investigation by the Government Accountability Office has found evidence of lax academic standards in some online for-profit programs.

The probe, which is described in a report made public Tuesday, found that staff at six of the 12 colleges that enrolled the investigators tolerated plagiarism or awarded credit for incomplete or shoddy work.

The release of the report, "For-Profit Schools: Experiences of Undercover Students Enrolled in Online Classes at Selected Colleges," comes roughly a year after the accountability office revised an earlier report on recruiting abuses at for-profit colleges, acknowledging errors and omissions in its findings. A coalition of for-profit colleges has sued the office over that report, accusing its investigators of professional malpractice.

In that earlier investigation, the office sent undercover investigators to 15 for-profit colleges to pose as prospective students. It found widespread deception in recruiting by the colleges, with many employees providing students with false or misleading information about graduation rates, job prospects, or earning potential.

This time, the agents attempted to enroll in online programs at 15 for-profit colleges using a home-school diploma or a diploma from a closed high school. Twelve of the colleges accepted them.

The "students" then proceeded to skip class, plagiarize, and submit "substandard" work. Though several ultimately failed their classes, some got credit for shoddy or plagiarized work along the way.

At one college, a student received credit for six plagiarized assignments; at another, a student submitted photos of political figures and celebrities in lieu of an essay, but still earned a passing grade. A third student got full credit on a final project, despite completing only two of the three required components. That same student received full credit for an assignment that had clearly been prepared for another class.

In two cases, instructors confronted students about their repeated plagiarism but took no disciplinary action against them. One student received credit for a response that was copied verbatim from other students' discussion posts.

Instructors at the other six colleges followed their institutions' policies on grading and plagiarism, and in some cases offered to help students who appeared to be struggling.

All of the students ultimately withdrew or were expelled from the programs. Three of the colleges failed to provide the departing students with federally required exit counseling about their repayment options and the consequences of default.

Sen. Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, who requested the report, said its findings "underscore the need for stronger oversight of the for-profit education industry."

"It is obvious that Congress must step in to hold this heavily federally subsidized industry more accountable," he said.

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
This makes me wish that similar investigations (audits?) be expanded to huge samples of nonprofit colleges and universities where grade inflation is also rampant.

Most universities now have financial internal auditors and are subjected to governmental or independent CPA audits. But few have independent audits of the  variability in academic standards between departments and between individual faculty members.

 


On May 4, 2010, PBS Frontline broadcast an hour-long video called College Inc. --- a sobering analysis of for-profit onsite and online colleges and universities.
For a time you can watch the video free online --- Click Here
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=toparea&utm_source=toparea

Even in lean times, the $400 billion business of higher education is booming. Nowhere is this more true than in one of the fastest-growing -- and most controversial -- sectors of the industry: for-profit colleges and universities that cater to non-traditional students, often confer degrees over the Internet, and, along the way, successfully capture billions of federal financial aid dollars.

In College, Inc., correspondent Martin Smith investigates the promise and explosive growth of the for-profit higher education industry. Through interviews with school executives, government officials, admissions counselors, former students and industry observers, this film explores the tension between the industry --which says it's helping an underserved student population obtain a quality education and marketable job skills -- and critics who charge the for-profits with churning out worthless degrees that leave students with a mountain of debt.

At the center of it all stands a vulnerable population of potential students, often working adults eager for a university degree to move up the career ladder. FRONTLINE talks to a former staffer at a California-based for-profit university who says she was under pressure to sign up growing numbers of new students. "I didn't realize just how many students we were expected to recruit," says the former enrollment counselor. "They used to tell us, you know, 'Dig deep. Get to their pain. Get to what's bothering them. So, that way, you can convince them that a college degree is going to solve all their problems.'"

Graduates of another for-profit school -- a college nursing program in California -- tell FRONTLINE that they received their diplomas without ever setting foot in a hospital. Graduates at other for-profit schools report being unable to find a job, or make their student loan payments, because their degree was perceived to be of little worth by prospective employers. One woman who enrolled in a for-profit doctorate program in Dallas later learned that the school never acquired the proper accreditation she would need to get the job she trained for. She is now sinking in over $200,000 in student debt.

The biggest player in the for-profit sector is the University of Phoenix -- now the largest college in the US with total enrollment approaching half a million students. Its revenues of almost $4 billion last year, up 25 percent from 2008, have made it a darling of Wall Street. Former top executive of the University of Phoenix Mark DeFusco told FRONTLINE how the company's business-approach to higher education has paid off: "If you think about any business in America, what business would give up two months of business -- just essentially close down?" he asks. "[At the University of Phoenix], people go to school all year round. We start classes every five weeks. We built campuses by a freeway because we figured that's where the people were."

"The education system that was created hundreds of years ago needs to change," says Michael Clifford, a major education entrepreneur who speaks with FRONTLINE. Clifford, a former musician who never attended college, purchases struggling traditional colleges and turns them into for-profit companies. "The big opportunity," he says, "is the inefficiencies of some of the state systems, and the ability to transform schools and academic programs to better meet the needs of the people that need jobs."

"From a business perspective, it's a great story," says Jeffrey Silber, a senior analyst at BMO Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the Bank of Montreal. "You're serving a market that's been traditionally underserved. ... And it's a very profitable business -- it generates a lot of free cash flow."

And the cash cow of the for-profit education industry is the federal government. Though they enroll 10 percent of all post-secondary students, for-profit schools receive almost a quarter of federal financial aid. But Department of Education figures for 2009 show that 44 percent of the students who defaulted within three years of graduation were from for-profit schools, leading to serious questions about one of the key pillars of the profit degree college movement: that their degrees help students boost their earning power. This is a subject of increasing concern to the Obama administration, which, last month, remade the federal student loan program, and is now proposing changes that may make it harder for the for-profit colleges to qualify.

"One of the ideas the Department of Education has put out there is that in order for a college to be eligible to receive money from student loans, it actually has to show that the education it's providing has enough value in the job market so that students can pay their loans back," says Kevin Carey of the Washington think tank Education Sector. "Now, the for-profit colleges, I think this makes them very nervous," Carey says. "They're worried because they know that many of their members are charging a lot of money; that many of their members have students who are defaulting en masse after they graduate. They're afraid that this rule will cut them out of the program. But in many ways, that's the point."

FRONTLINE also finds that the regulators that oversee university accreditation are looking closer at the for-profits and, in some cases, threatening to withdraw the required accreditation that keeps them eligible for federal student loans. "We've elevated the scrutiny tremendously," says Dr. Sylvia Manning, president of the Higher Learning Commission, which accredits many post-secondary institutions. "It is really inappropriate for accreditation to be purchased the way a taxi license can be purchased. ...When we see any problematic institution being acquired and being changed we put it on a short leash."

Also note the comments that follow the above text.

But first I highly recommend that you watch the video at --- Click Here
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=toparea&utm_source=toparea

May 5, 2010 reply from Paul Bjorklund [paulbjorklund@AOL.COM]

Interesting program. I saw the first half of it and was not surprised by anything, other than the volume of students. For example, enrollment at University of Phoenix is 500,000. Compare that to Arizona State's four campuses with maybe 60,000 to 70,000. The huge computer rooms dedicated to online learning were fascinating too. We've come a long way from the Oxford don sitting in his wood paneled office, quoting Aristotle, and dispensing wisdom to students one at a time. The evolution: From the pursuit of truth to technical training to cash on the barrelhead. One question about the traditional university though -- When they eliminate the cash flow from big time football, will they then be able to criticize the dash for cash by the educational entrepreneurs?

Paul Bjorklund, CPA
Bjorklund Consulting, Ltd.
Flagstaff, Arizona


"The Fear and Frustration of Faculty at For-Profit Colleges," by Anonymous, Chronicle of Higher Education's Chronicle Review, July 10, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/FearFrustration-Faculty/128145/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en

 

Bob Jensen's Yarn Ball
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud


"College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings:  Not all college degrees are created equal," Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, Date unknown but assumed to be late in 2011 ---
http://www9.georgetown.edu/grad/gppi/hpi/cew/pdfs/Unemployment.Final.update1.pdf

Jensen Comments
Not many surprises here although numbers are given for "earnings" and "unemployment." Engineering comes out ahead in broad categories. But I often think these outcomes can be misleading in the sense that "business, finance, and accounting" sometimes facilitate promotions to executive suites. For example, a lowly paid entry level IRS agent who works successfully up the promotion latter in government can sometimes jump over to the private sector at very high salary levels and benefits. Similarly, audit partners commonly cross over to clients at high paid CFO or CAO executive positions.

Bob Jensen's threads on careers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers


An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.
Winston Churchill

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.
Winston Churchill

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.
Winston Churchill

On Regulation and Rules
"The Trojan Horse of cost benefit analysis," by John Kemp, Reuters, January 3, 2012 ---
http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL6E8C31UN20120103

 


"The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value," by Steve Denning, Forbes, November 28, 2011 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/

“Imagine an NFL coach,” writes Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, in his important new book, Fixing the Game, “holding a press conference on Wednesday to announce that he predicts a win by 9 points on Sunday, and that bettors should recognize that the current spread of 6 points is too low. Or picture the team’s quarterback standing up in the postgame press conference and apologizing for having only won by 3 points when the final betting spread was 9 points in his team’s favor. While it’s laughable to imagine coaches or quarterbacks doing so, CEOs are expected to do both of these things.”

Imagine also, to extrapolate Martin’s analogy, that the coach and his top assistants were hugely compensated, not on whether they won games, but rather by whether they covered the point spread. If they beat the point spread, they would receive massive bonuses. But if they missed covering the point spread a couple of times, the salary cap of the team could be cut and key players would have to be released, regardless of whether the team won or lost its games.

Suppose also that in order to manage the expectations implicit in the point spread, the coach had to spend most of his time talking with analysts and sports writers about the prospects of the coming games and “managing” the point spread, instead of actually coaching the team. It would hardly be a surprise that the most esteemed coach in this world would be a coach who met or beat the point spread in forty-six of forty-eight games—a 96 percent hit rate. Looking at these forty-eight games, one would be tempted to conclude: “Surely those scores are being ‘managed’?”

Suppose moreover that the whole league was rife with scandals of coaches “managing the score”, for instance, by deliberately losing games (“tanking”), players deliberately sacrificing points in order not to exceed the point spread (“point shaving”), “buying” key players on the opposing team or gaining access to their game plan. If this were the situation in the NFL, then everyone would realize that the “real game” of football had become utterly corrupted by the “expectations game” of gambling. Everyone would be calling on the NFL Commissioner to intervene and ban the coaches and players from ever being involved directly or indirectly in any form of gambling on the outcome of games, and get back to playing the game.

Which is precisely what the NFL Commissioner did in 1962 when some players were found to be involved betting small sums of money on the outcome of games. In that season, Paul Hornung, the Green Bay Packers halfback and the league’s most valuable player (MVP), and Alex Karras, a star defensive tackle for the Detroit Lions, were accused of betting on NFL games, including games in which they played. Pete Rozelle, just a few years into his thirty-year tenure as league commissioner, responded swiftly. Hornung and Karras were suspended for a season. As a result, the “real game” of football in the NFL has remained quite separate from the “expectations game” of gambling. The coaches and players spend all of their time trying to win games, not gaming the games.

The real market vs the expectations market

In today’s paradoxical world of maximizing shareholder value, which Jack Welch himself has called “the dumbest idea in the world”, the situation is the reverse. CEOs and their top managers have massive incentives to focus most of their attentions on the expectations market, rather than the real job of running the company producing real products and services.

The “real market,” Martin explains, is the world in which factories are built, products are designed and produced, real products and services are bought and sold, revenues are earned, expenses are paid, and real dollars of profit show up on the bottom line. That is the world that executives control—at least to some extent.

The expectations market is the world in which shares in companies are traded between investors—in other words, the stock market. In this market, investors assess the real market activities of a company today and, on the basis of that assessment, form expectations as to how the company is likely to perform in the future. The consensus view of all investors and potential investors as to expectations of future performance shapes the stock price of the company.

“What would lead [a CEO],” asks Martin, “to do the hard, long-term work of substantially improving real-market performance when she can choose to work on simply raising expectations instead? Even if she has a performance bonus tied to real-market metrics, the size of that bonus now typically pales in comparison with the size of her stock-based incentives. Expectations are where the money is. And of course, improving real-market performance is the hardest and slowest way to increase expectations from the existing level.”

In fact, a CEO has little choice but to pay careful attention to the expectations market, because if the stock price falls markedly, the application of accounting rules (regulation FASB 142) classify it as a “goodwill impairment”. Auditors may then force the write-down of real assets based on the company’s share price in the expectations market. As a result, executives must concern themselves with managing expectations if they want to avoid write-downs of their capital.

In this world, the best managers are those who meet expectations. “During the heart of the Jack Welch era,” writes Martin, “GE met or beat analysts’ forecasts in forty-six of forty-eight quarters between December 31, 1989, and September 30, 2001—a 96 percent hit rate. Even more impressively, in forty-one of those forty-six quarters, GE hit the analyst forecast to the exact penny—89 percent perfection. And in the remaining seven imperfect quarters, the tolerance was startlingly narrow: four times GE beat the projection by 2 cents, once it beat it by 1 cent, once it missed by 1 cent, and once by 2 cents. Looking at these twelve years of unnatural precision, Jensen asks rhetorically: ‘What is the chance that could happen if earnings were not being “managed’?”’ Martin replies: infinitesimal.

In such a world, it is therefore hardly surprising, says Martin, that the corporate world is plagued by continuing scandals, such as the accounting scandals in 2001-2002 with Enron, WorldCom, Tyco International, Global Crossing, and Adelphia, the options backdating scandals of 2005-2006, and the subprime meltdown of 2007-2008. The recent demise of MF Global Holdings and the related ongoing criminal investigation are further reminders that we have not put these matters behind us.

“It isn’t just about the money for shareholders,” writes Martin, “or even the dubious CEO behavior that our theories encourage. It’s much bigger than that. Our theories of shareholder value maximization and stock-based compensation have the ability to destroy our economy and rot out the core of American capitalism. These theories underpin regulatory fixes instituted after each market bubble and crash. Because the fixes begin from the wrong premise, they will be ineffectual; until we change the theories, future crashes are inevitable.”

“A pervasive emphasis on the expectations market,” writes Martin, “has reduced shareholder value, created misplaced and ill-advised incentives, generated inauthenticity in our executives, and introduced parasitic market players. The moral authority of business diminishes with each passing year, as customers, employees, and average citizens grow increasingly appalled by the behavior of business and the seeming greed of its leaders. At the same time, the period between market meltdowns is shrinking, Capital markets—and the whole of the American capitalist system—hang in the balance.”

How did capitalism get into this mess?

Martin says that the trouble began in 1976 when finance professor Michael Jensen and Dean William Meckling of the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester published a seemingly innocuous paper in the Journal of Financial Economics entitled “Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs and Ownership Structure.”

The article performed the old academic trick of creating a problem and then proposing a solution to the supposed problem that the article itself had created. The article identified the principal-agent problem as being that the shareholders are the principals of the firm—i.e., they own it and benefit from its prosperity, while the executives are agents who are hired by the principals to work on their behalf.

The principal-agent problem occurs, the article argued, because agents have an inherent incentive to optimize activities and resources for themselves rather than for their principals. Ignoring Peter Drucker’s foundational insight of 1973 that the only valid purpose of a firm is to create a customer, Jensen and Meckling argued that the singular goal of a company should be to maximize the return to shareholders.

To achieve that goal, they academics argued, the company should give executives a compelling reason to place shareholder value maximization ahead of their own nest-feathering. Unfortunately, as often happens with bad ideas that make some people a lot of money, the idea caught on and has even become the conventional wisdom.

Continued in a long article

Jensen Comment
It's a good thing my friend Al Rappaport made it big on book royalties and consulting before this word leaked out ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value

 


"No more snowplows or icy roads," by Neil Reynolds, Globe and Mail (Canada), January 2, 2012 ---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/commentary/neil-reynolds/no-more-snowplows-or-icy-roads/article2287667/
Thank you Jim Mahar for the heads up.

I'm certain there are enormous hurdles to overcome and probably some huge cost, financing, and engineering issues. For one thing, even reinforced concrete cannot take the daily pounding of 18-wheel vehicles that turn tiny cracks into serious chuck holes. But this is definitely thinking outside the box.

Trivia Question
Who insisted upon making U.S. Interstate highways wide enough and level enough in intermittent stretches to become Air Force runways in times of war and other emergencies?


From the Scout Report on January 6, 2012

Comodo Online Storage --- https://www.ccloud.com/ 

Having a backup of important files is crucial, and Comodo Online Storage offers one possible solution. After completing a brief registration, visitors will be able to store up to 5GB at no cost. The site also includes a video presentation, a simple drag & drop feature for adding files, and the ability to create folders for said materials. This version is compatible with Windows XP and newer.  


Airport Monitor Lite App --- http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airport-monitor-lite/id489201297?mt=8 

If you're up in the air quite a bit, this helpful tool will be one that might make 2012 a bit more interesting. This free version of Airport Monitor allows users view arrivals and departures from dozens of airports in the US. Visitors can monitor up to seven arrival and departure airports at one time, and the application can be customized by airline, gate, and flight number. This version is compatible with iPhones running iOS 4.2 and newer.


 

  • Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks


    Education Tutorials

    University of Capetown's Centre for Educational Technology --- http://www.cet.uct.ac.za/

    Digital Public Library of America --- http://dp.la/

    Undergraduate Research Ethics Cases ---
    http://www.udel.edu/chem/white/HHMI3/EthicsCases.html

    Inspiration Video:  He's No Wimp ---
    http://www.wimp.com/watchingthis/

    Personal Learning Trends and Technology ---
    http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/1105/journal_201201/#/32

    What happens when the tide goes out?
    http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=Z0qGvC3vqaA

    Afterschool Alliance: Afterschool and STEM --- http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/STEM.cfm

    Everyday Sociology Blog --- http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/

    Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

    National Geographic: Maps --- http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps

    Salvadori Center [STEM Education Resources] --- http://www.salvadori.o

    Some Ethics Education Sites, Tutorials, and Cases:

  • Undergraduate Research Ethics Cases ---
    http://www.udel.edu/chem/white/HHMI3/EthicsCases.html

    Virtual Mentor: American Medical Association Journal of Ethics ---
    http://virtualmentor.ama-assn.org/

    MIT OpenCourseWare: Ethics (updated)
    6.805 Ethics and the Law on the Electronic Frontier | Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
    15.269 Literature, Ethics, Authority | Sloan School of Management
    6: Introduction to Engineering Ethics: Codes of Ethics, Whistle Blowing, Case Study Methodology | MIT OpenCourseWare
    21W.730-1 Expository Writing: Social and Ethical Issues in Print, Photography and Film | Writing and Humanistic Studies
    21A.216J Dilemmas in Bio-Medical Ethics: Playing God or Doing Good? | Anthropology
    21L.450 Literature and Ethical Values | Literature
    24.231 Ethics | Linguistics and Philosophy
    Hundreds more at the following site:
    Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

    Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse --- http://www.ethicslibrary.org/

    Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Research (particular focus is given to emerging technology ethics) ---
    http://www.onlineethics.org/Topics/EmergingTech.aspx

    TeachEngineering --- http://www.teachengineering.org/ 

    January 10, 2011 message from David Albrecht

    HETL is a professional organization dedicated to advancing teaching and learning in higher education.  It got its start on LinkedIn with discussion groups.  To participate in the discussion group, a collegiate teacher (and now doctoral students) would have to apply.  If the applicant had 2-5 years experience teaching in higher education (and met certain disclosure requirements on their profile), they were admitted.

    LinkedIn membership is now over 10,000 and rapidly climing.  I believe it is the largest LinkedIn discussion group.  Knowing me, you'd probably expect that I'd get involved in the discussions.  I have.  I answered a call for volunteers, and am now a reviewer for its publications.  There are two refereed venues.  One is for commentary pieces on higher education.  So far, contributors have been well-known academics such as Dee Fink.  The other is an on-line journal.

    Currently, HETL has a call out for volunteers to expand its editorial and review boards.  Information can be found at the HETL portal (
    http://hetl.org).  While there, you can see that an option is to join with a paid membership ($60 per year).

    I really like the give and take with profs from around the world.  There were over 450 comments on a thread about whether or not to be a Facebook friend with a student.

    You can find out more information about the group from the web site:
     http://hetl.org

    Dave Albrecht

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology and learning ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm


    From the Scout Report on January 13, 2012

  • Doocuments --- http://www.doocuments.com/site/

    What would you use to send a very important document? Perhaps you could just
    send it using a regular email program, but maybe you should consider using
    Doocuments. This cloud computing tool allows users to take existing
    documents and add a layer with new features. These features include an
    expiration date, access certification, watermarks, and a feature that will
    only allow certain pages to be printed. This version is compatible with all
    operating systems.


     Themeefy --- http://www.themeefy.com/landing

    If you have a particular desire to create an interactive timeline of
    materials and resources you have found online, Themeefy may be worth a look.
    The Themeefy application allows users to create their own interactive
    "magazine" that brings together photos, videos, weblinks, notes, and social
    content from any website they choose, along with social media sites.
    Visitors can use the "Themeefy 101" tutorial on the site to get started, and
    they can also look over examples of what current Themeefy users have created
    thus far. Themeefy is compatible with all operating systems

     


    Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials

    Hubble Ultra Deep --- http://www.flixxy.com/hubble-ultra-deep-field-3d.htm

    The Richard Feynman Trilogy: The Physicist Captured in Three Films --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/the_richard_feynman_film_trilogy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Celebrate Stephen Hawking’s 70th Birthday with Errol Morris’ Film, A Brief History of Time --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/celebrate_stephen_hawkings_70th_birthday_with_the_errol_morris_film_of_ia_brief_history_of_timei.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    What is Bioinformatics? --- http://abacus.bates.edu/bioinformatics1/

    UC Davis Quantitative Biology Courses ---
    http://biosci3.ucdavis.edu/qcourses/course.aspx?CourseID=81b234b0-020b-4a01-9a3d-2e1035eac825  

     "Garage Demos": Physical models of Biological Processes
    http://www.researchandteaching.bio.uci.edu/lecture_demo.html

    Neil deGrasse Tyson on the Decline of Scientific Research in America --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/neil_degrasse_tyson_on_the_decline_of_scientific_research_in_america.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Countries and Coastlines: A Dramatic View of Earth from Outer Space --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/countries_and_coastlines_a_dramatic_view_from_space.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Afterschool Alliance: Afterschool and STEM --- http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/STEM.cfm

    STEM Planet --- http://www.stemplanet.org/

    New York State STEM Education Collaborative
    http://www.nysstemeducation.org/index.html

    Salvadori Center [STEM Education Resources] --- http://www.salvadori.org/

    Journal of Undergraduate Neuroscience Education --- http://www.funjournal.org/

    The Landslide Handbook: A Guide to Understanding Landslides --- http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1325/

    From Stanford University
    Better Know a Bioengineer --- http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

    Discover Engineering --- http://www.discoverengineering.org/

    TeachEngineering --- http://www.teachengineering.org/ 

    Fallingwater, One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Finest Creations, Animated --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/fallingwater-one-of-frank-lloyd-wrights-finest-creations-animated.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Lincoln Park Architectural Photographs --- http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/lpnc1

    U.S. South Pole Station --- http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/livingsouthpole/

    How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/how_film_was_made_a_kodak_nostalgia_moment.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    From MIT's Open Courseware (OCW) Project
    39 Topics:  "Introduces principles and mathematical models of electrochemical energy conversion and storage."
    Electrochemical Energy Systems ---
    http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/chemical-engineering/10-626-electrochemical-energy-systems-spring-2011/ 

    "So you want to learn to program?" by Robert Talbert, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 16, 2012 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/castingoutnines/2012/01/16/so-you-want-to-learn-to-program/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

    Jensen Comment
    Having taught both Fortran and COBOL at one point in my career, I will pass on this opportunity to upgrade my programming skills. However, these sound like valuable free resources for the younger generation headed for college or that generation of unemployable history majors seeking new skills.

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science


    Social Science and Economics Tutorials

    Everyday Sociology Blog --- http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/

    Research!America --- http://www.researchamerica.org/

    Remembering Eve Arnold, Pioneering Photojournalist --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/remembering_eve_arnold_pioneering_photojournalist.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    National Geographic: Maps --- http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps

    Does America imprison too many people?" by Judge Richard Posner ---
    http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/12/does-america-imprison-too-many-people-posner.html
    Reply from Nobel Laureate Gary Becker
    http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2011/12/does-america-imprison-too-many-people-becker.html

    Frequently Asked Questions in Corporate Finance
    By Pascal Quiry, Yann Le Fur, Antonio Salvi, Maurizio Dallochio 
    http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-111997755X.html
    Thanks to SmartPros for the heads up.

    Harvard Thinks Green: Big Ideas from 6 All-Star Environment Profs --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/harvard_thinks_green_big_ideas_from_6_all-star_environment_profs.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


    Law and Legal Studies

    Everyday Sociology Blog --- http://www.everydaysociologyblog.com/

    Sociology of Knowledge --- http://www.trinity.edu/~mkearl/knowledg.html

    Sociology Databases and Other Great Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/ 

    Research!America --- http://www.researchamerica.org/
     

    Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law


    Math Tutorials

    Amser links in mathematics and science --- http://amser.org/

    Primer on Probability [Microsoft Word] --- http://www.hhmi.org/coolscience/resources/SPT--DownloadFile.php?Id=3

    UC Davis Quantitative Biology Courses ---
    http://biosci3.ucdavis.edu/qcourses/course.aspx?CourseID=81b234b0-020b-4a01-9a3d-2e1035eac825  

    Salvadori Center [STEM Education Resources] --- http://www.salvadori.o

    "Sherlock: the case of Moriarty's maths," by Pete Wilton, University of Oxford via Financial Education, January 9, 2012 ---
    http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics


    History Tutorials

    100 Years in 10 Minutes: A Quick Video History of the Past Century --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/100_years_in_10_minutes_a_quick_video_history_of_the_past_century.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    From Rice University
    Woodson Research Center: Digital Collection (history) --- http://scholarship.rice.edu/handle/1911/12341

    The Painted Churches of Texas --- http://www.klru.org/paintedchurches/history_czechs.html

    200,000 Martin Luther King Papers Go Online --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/200000_martin_luther_king_jr_papers_go_online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Studies in the History of Tax Law, Volume 5
    Edited by John Tiley
    Hart Publishing, December 2011. 514 pages
    Hardback ISBN 9781849462242
    http://www.hartpublishingusa.com/books/details.asp?isbn=9781849462242

    Video: America's First Jet Flight, October 1942 ---
    http://www.aircraftowner.com/videos/view/americas-first-jet-flight-october-1942_1617.html

    Gerald Steinacher, “Nazis on the Run: How Hitler’s Henchmen Fled Justice” --- Click Here
    http://newbooksinhistory.com/2011/12/13/gerald-steinacher-nazis-on-the-run-how-hitlers-henchmen-fled-justice-oxford-up-2011/

    George Orwell’s Animal Farm & 1984 Adapted to Film --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/orwells_1984_animal_farm_adapted_to_film.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    The Virtual Museum of Japanese Arts --- http://web-japan.org/museum/menu.html

    Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/fellinis_fantastic_tv_commercials.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    National Museum of American History: The First Ladies ---
    http://americanhistory.si.edu/exhibitions/small_exhibition.cfm?key=1267&exkey=863&pagekey=864

    American Presidents --- http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/presidents/

    Free: The Guggenheim Puts 65 Modern Art Books Online --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/a_personal_journey_with_martin_scorsese_through_american_movies.html

    University of Utah Photographic Exhibits --- http://www.lib.utah.edu/collections/photo-exhibits/

    Remembering Eve Arnold, Pioneering Photojournalist --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/remembering_eve_arnold_pioneering_photojournalist.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Hell in the Pacific: Rare World War II photographs show American soldiers' fight for survival in brutal Battle of Saipan ---
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2087023/World-War-II-photographs-American-soldiers-fight-survival-brutal-Battle-Saipan.html

    Provincetown History Preservation Project (American Colonial History) --- http://www.provincetownhistoryproject.com/

    1828 Edition of Noah Webster's Dictionary --- http://1828.mshaffer.com/

    Canadian Pamphlets and Broadsides Collection http://link.library.utoronto.ca/broadsides/

    Canada's History-Magazine --- http://www.canadashistory.ca/Magazine.aspx

    Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art [Flash Player] --- http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2011/rivera/

    The 1940s --- http://www.objflicks.com/decadeofthe1940s.html

    Pergamon Museum  (Berlin) --- Click Here
    https://www.google.com/search?q=Pergamon+Museum&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=QHcRT8LRLtHE0AHs4MTIAw&ved=0CE0QsAQ&biw=1024&bih=629

    Transportation Library Menu Collection (Airline History)  --- http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/transportation-menus/

    Drinking with William Faulkner --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/drinking_with_william_faulkner.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    Digital Public Library of America --- http://dp.la/

    National Geographic: Maps --- http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps

    Print by Print: The Baltimore Museum of Art [Flash Player] ---
    http://www.artbma.org/PrintbyPrint-project/index.html

    M.C. Escher (Graphic Arts) --- http://www.facebook.com/pages/M-C-Escher/103776486328068
    Thank you Richard Sansing for the heads up

    Neil Gaiman’s Free Short Stories and New Year’s Wishes --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/neil_gaimans_free_short_stories.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    15 Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/free_charlie_chaplin_films_on_the_web.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    David Lynch in Four Movements: A Video Tribute --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2011/12/david_lynch_in_four_movements.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29

    "BLACKWELL ON WRITING: The Long and the Very Short of It," by Elise Blackwell, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 1, 2012 --- http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/blackwell-on-writing-the-long-and-the-very-short-of-it/42488?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en 

    Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
    Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm  

    Lincoln Park Architectural Photographs --- http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/lpnc1

    Whatever happened to Joe Namath (by his own admission tackled repeatedly by alcohol that turned him into a jerk)? ---
    http://broadwayjoe.tv/

    From William and Mary University
    The Colonial Echo
    https://digitalarchive.wm.edu/handle/10288/2112

    History: The Colonial Williamsburg Official History Site http://www.history.org/history/index.cfm

    How Film Was Made: A Kodak Nostalgia Moment --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/how_film_was_made_a_kodak_nostalgia_moment.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


    Language Tutorials

    Our Mother Tongues [Flash Player] http://www.ourmothertongues.org

    Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages


    Music Tutorials

    From the Scout Report on January 13, 2012

  • Is the Old Better Than the New? A Study That Puts the Stradivarius to the Test In Classic v. Modern Violins, Beauty Is in Ear of the Beholder [Free registration may be required] ---
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/science/in-play-off-between-old-and-new-violins-stradivarius-lags.html  

    Aesthetics and money: Fiddling with the mind --- http://www.economist.com/node/21542380 

    Stradivarius Fails Sound Test versus Newbie Violins ---
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=stradivarius-fails-sound-test-versu-12-01-04  

    Stradivarius v. modern violins: why this latest study strikes a discordant note ---
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2012/jan/03/stradivarius-v-modern-violins-study?newsfeed=true 

    Rare Violins Play Starring Role in Concert
    http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/arts/Rare-Violins-Play-Starring-Role-in-Concert--136325293.html  

    Stradivarius Violins ---  http://www.stradivarius.org/

    Bob Jensen's threads on music tutorials ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music

    Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm


    Writing Tutorials

    Grammar Girl Tips --- http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

    The Writing Center at Harvard University --- http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/resources.html

    "Mistakes Are Made (but Using the Passive Isn’t One of Them)," by Geoffrey Pullum, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 1, 2011 ---
    http://chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2011/10/01/mistakes-are-made/
    Thank you Dan Stone for the heads up.

    National Writing Project ---  http://www.nwp.org/

    In particular note the Resources for Teachers at
    http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource_topic/teaching_writing
    Note that many of the resources are not free.

    One of the resources is a book called Breaking the Rules, by Edgar H. Schuster
    http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/1293

  • . . .

    Schuster devotes eleven pages on how to teach students the difference between the active and passive voices. A simpler explanation—that the active voice, where the subject is performing the primary action and not having it performed on him, leads to more concise, lively writing, but the passive voice is acceptable at times—would eliminate Schuster's stultifying morass of lessons that evoke the following quote from Shakespeare's Macbeth: ". . . I am . . . . stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more/Returning were as tedious as go o'er . . ." (III, iv, 135-137).

    Continued in this book review.

    From the Scout Report on January 6, 2012

  • An annual tradition from Lake Superior State University identifies the
    most overused words of 2011
    'Baby bump', 'Man cave' make banned words list
    http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/story/2011-12-30/banned-words-list/52287668/1

    Don't let these words occupy your vocabulary in 2012
    http://goo.gl/cW3jb

    Lake Superior State University: Banished Words List
    http://www.lssu.edu/banished/current.php

    Word Warriors' 2012 Top 10
    http://www.wordwarriors.wayne.edu/2011/

    A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson
    http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/

    1828 Edition of Noah Webster's Dictionary
    http://1828.mshaffer.com

    Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries


    Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/

    January 3, 2012

    January 4, 2012

    January 5, 2012

    January 6, 2012

    January 7, 2012

    January 10, 2012

    January 11, 2012

    January 12, 2012

    January 13, 2012

    January 14, 2012

    January 16, 2012

    January 17, 2012

    January 18, 2012

    January 19, 2012

    January 21, 2012

    January 23, 2012

    January 24, 2012

     


    Continuous Chest Compression CPR ---
    http://medicine.arizona.edu/spotlight/learn-sarver-heart-centers-continuous-chest-compression-cpr
    Thank you Linda Specht for the heads up.


    Study Finds Nicotine Gum and Patches Don’t Help Smokers Quit ---
    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/10/health/study-finds-nicotine-gum-and-patches-dont-help-smokers-quit.html?_r=1&hp


    Inspiration Video:  He's No Wimp ---
    http://www.wimp.com/watchingthis/


    Northwestern Mutual Lifespan Calculator --- http://media.nmfn.com/tnetwork/lifespan/




    The Apron forwarded by Auntie Bev

    The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath because she only had a few and because it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and aprons required less material. But along with that, it served as a potholder for removing Hot pans from the oven.

    It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

    From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming

    oven.

    When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.

    And when the weather was cold, Grandma wrapped it around her arms.

    Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

    Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

    In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees.

    When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

    When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men folk knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

    It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes.

    Send this to those who would remember their Grandma's aprons.

    REMEMBER:

    Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.

    They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron.

    I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron - but love...

     




    Some Quotations from Winston Churchill (who is so despised by President Obama that the White House's long-time bust of Churchill was returned to England) ---
    http://jpetrie.myweb.uga.edu/bulldog.html

  • We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

    There is no such thing as a good tax.

    Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.

    The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

    We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

    An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last.

    The problems of victory are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

    From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I shall not put.

    A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.

    Bessie Braddock: “Sir, you are drunk.” Churchill: “Madam, you are ugly. In the morning, I shall be sober.”

    Nancy Astor: “Sir, if you were my husband, I would give you poison.” Churchill: “If I were your husband I would take it.”

    A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

    Once in a while you will stumble upon the truth but most of us manage to pick ourselves up and hurry along as if nothing had happened.

    If you are going to go through hell, keep going.

    It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

    You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

    If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

    You can always count on Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.

    History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

    Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement; then it becomes a mistress, and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.

    The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.

    A sheep in sheep’s clothing. (On Clement Atlee)

    A modest man, who has much to be modest about. (On Clement Atlee)

    I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

    The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

    A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

    To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.

    Politics is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.

    Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

    Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

    Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

    The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

    It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

    Everyone has his day and some days last longer than others.

    The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

    From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. -“The Sinews of Peace” speech, Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri, March 5, 1945

    If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

    Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

    Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others.

    The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.

    If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

    You ask, What is our policy? I will say; “It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.” You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

    We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and the oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

     




    Interesting and often humorous links --- http://twitter.com/millerbear77

    NO FRILLS AIRLINES - Carol Burnett Show ---
    http://www.youtube.com/v/QCz8he36hsk

    Katharine Hepburn Rearranges the Furniture on The Dick Cavett Show --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/katharine_hepburn_rearranges_the_furniture_on_the_dick_cavett_show.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


    An actual add on Google
    Meet 50+ Singles for Dating
    Question:  Does this refer to ages or numbers?


    Forwarded by Auntie Bev

    What you can learn about marketing at a party

    However, people often ask for a simple explanation of "Marketing."

    Well, here it is:

    1. You're a woman and you see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and say, "I'm fantastic in bed." That's Direct Marketing.

    2. You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a handsome guy.One of your friends goes up to him and, pointing at you, says, "She's fantastic in bed." That's Advertising.

    3. You see a handsome guy at a party. You go up to him and get his telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Telemarketing.

    4. You see a guy at a party; you straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, "May I?" and reach up to straighten his tie, brushing your breast lightly against his arm, and then say, "By the way, I'm fantastic in bed." That's Public Relations.

    5. You're at a party and see a handsome guy. He walks up to you and says, "I hear you're fantastic in bed." That's Brand Recognition.

    6. You're at a party and see a handsome guy. He fancies you, but you talk him into going home with your friend. That's a Sales Rep.

    7. Your friend can't satisfy him so he calls you. That's Tech Support.

    8. You're on your way to a party when you realize that there could be handsome men in all these houses you're passing, so you climb onto the roof of one situated towards the center and shout at the top of your lungs, "I'm fantastic in bed!" That's Junk Mail.

    9. You are at a party, this attractive older man walks up to you and grabs your ass. That's former President Bill Clinton.

    10. You like it, but twenty years later your attorney decides you were offended and you are awarded a settlement. That's America!


    "Sherlock: the case of Moriarty's maths," by Pete Wilton, University of Oxford via Financial Education, January 9, 2012 ---
    http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

    Interesting and often humorous links --- http://twitter.com/millerbear77

    Katharine Hepburn Rearranges the Furniture on The Dick Cavett Show --- Click Here
    http://www.openculture.com/2012/01/katharine_hepburn_rearranges_the_furniture_on_the_dick_cavett_show.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29


    January 18, 2012 message from Rick Newmark

    What if Jeff Foxworthy Was an Accountant? - a humorous video created by an accounting educator using a computer and a multimedia application :-)

    I created this video--http://youtu.be/mBEVjTLIKgg--using Xtranormal. It is very easy to use. You can either use the on-line browser-based version or the desktop version. The desktop version has more advanced features than the online version.

    They even have an education licensing program. Special tools allow you to create assignments, moderate, grade, and give feedback. All within the privacy of your class. The monthly fee is $10 + [$0.50 per student]. http://www.xtranormal.com/edu/

    Here is another video entitled, ”Hitler works in public accounting http://youtu.be/DkWH9AYsalI. It is a parody-subtitled video based on a pinnacle scene from Der Untergang (2004). Warning, may cause excessive laughter that can lead to suffocation!

    Rick

    ----------------------------------------

    Silence is golden. Duct tape is silver.

    Richard Newmark
    Professor, School of Accounting and Computer Information Systems
    Kenneth W. Monfort College of Business
    2004 Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Winner

    University of Northern Colorado
    Campus Box 128, Kepner Hall 2095D
    Greeley, CO 80639

     




    Humor Between December 1-31, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q4.htm#Humor123111 

    Humor Between November 1 and November 30, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q4.htm#Humor113011 

    Humor Between October 1 and October 31, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q4.htm#Humor103111 

    Humor Between September 1 and September 30, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q3.htm#Humor093011

    Humor Between August 1 and August 31, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q3.htm#Humor083111 

    Humor Between July 1 and July 31, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q3.htm#Humor073111

    Humor Between May 1 and June 30, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q2.htm#Humor063011 

    Humor Between April 1 and April 30, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q2.htm#Humor043011  

    Humor Between February 1 and March 31, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q1.htm#Humor033111 

    Humor Between January 1 and January 31, 2011 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book11q1.htm#Humor013111 

     




    Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm

    Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
    For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron" enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and other universities is at http://www.searchedu.com/

    Online Distance Education Training and Education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
    For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud  (College, Inc.) --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud

    Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm

    What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?  ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong

    The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms

    AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1

    Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm

    Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and Statistics ---
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So

    Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews

     

    World Clock --- http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
    Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/

    Interesting Online Clock and Calendar --- http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
    Time by Time Zones --- http://timeticker.com/
    Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) --- http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
             Also see http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
            
    Facts about population growth (video) --- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
    Projected U.S. Population Growth --- http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
    Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 
    Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons --- http://zipskinny.com/
    Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.

    Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

    CPA Examination --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
    Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle --- http://cpareviewforfree.com/

    Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/

    Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social Networking ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

    Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

    Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
    In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available free on the Web. 
    I created a page that summarizes those various links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm

    Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials

    Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
    Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting educators.
    Any college may post a news item.

    Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm

     

    Accounting  and Taxation News Sites ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm

     

     

    For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to   http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
    AECM (Educators) http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
    AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.

    Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing, doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics) research, publication, replication, and validity testing.

     

    CPAS-L (Practitioners) http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/  (Closed Down)
    CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments, ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed. Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or education. Others will be denied access.
    Yahoo (Practitioners)  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
    This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything  from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA.
    AccountantsWorld  http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 
    This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation.
    Business Valuation Group BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com 
    This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM
    FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
    Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
    FINANCIAL REPORTING PORTAL
    www.financialexecutives.org/blog

    Find news highlights from the SEC, FASB and the International Accounting Standards Board on this financial reporting blog from Financial Executives International. The site, updated daily, compiles regulatory news, rulings and statements, comment letters on standards, and hot topics from the Web’s largest business and accounting publications and organizations. Look for continuing coverage of SOX requirements, fair value reporting and the Alternative Minimum Tax, plus emerging issues such as the subprime mortgage crisis, international convergence, and rules for tax return preparers.
    The CAlCPA Tax Listserv

    September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker [lister@bonackers.com]
    Scott has been a long-time contributor to the AECM listserv (he's a techie as well as a practicing CPA)

    I found another listserve that is exceptional -

    CalCPA maintains http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/  and they let almost anyone join it.
    Jim Counts, CPA is moderator.

    There are several highly capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and the answers are often in depth.

    Scott

    Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts

    Yes you may mention info on your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of what you say please say [... any CPA or attorney or a member of the Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is possible to join without having a free Yahoo account but then they will not have access to the files and other items posted.

    Once signed in on their Yahoo account go to http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/TaxTalk/ and I believe in top right corner is Join Group. Click on it and answer the few questions and in the comment box say you are a CPA or attorney, whichever you are and I will get the request to join.

    Be aware that we run on the average 30 or move emails per day. I encourage people to set up a folder for just the emails from this listserve and then via a rule or filter send them to that folder instead of having them be in your inbox. Thus you can read them when you want and it will not fill up the inbox when you are looking for client emails etc.

    We currently have about 830 CPAs and attorneys nationwide but mainly in California.... ]

    Please encourage your members to join our listserve.

    If any questions let me know.

    Jim Counts CPA.CITP CTFA
    Hemet, CA
    Moderator TaxTalk

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
    Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

    Some Accounting History Sites

    Bob Jensen's Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
     

    Accounting History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) --- http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
    The above libraries include international accounting history.
    The above libraries include film and video historical collections.

    MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting --- http://maaw.info/

    Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
    http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/

    Sage Accounting History --- http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269

    A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
    "The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
    Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 --- http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm 

    A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING

    From Texas A&M University
    Accounting History Outline --- http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html

    Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds

    History of Fraud in America --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
    Also see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

    More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
    http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm

    All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/

     

    Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
    190 Sunset Hill Road
    Sugar Hill, NH 03586
    Phone:  603-823-8482 
    Email:  rjensen@trinity.edu