Report: Harvard seeking federal bailout

With Harvard's endowment having taken an $8.2 billion hit over the past four months, Harvard President Drew Faust has ordered a salary freeze for all faculty and elimination of tenure-track and tenured faculty searches.

Well placed Pillage Idiot sources report that Faust has met privately with Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) and Senator John Kerry (D-MA) to negotiate a federal bailout of Harvard. Our sources indicate that the three were in agreement that Harvard is too self-important to fail. Under the agreed plan, an outline of which was provided to Pillage Idiot, the Treasury would offer Harvard a bridge loan of $7.5 billion, but as part of the deal a federal "Liberal Arts Czar" would be appointed. The Czar would have authority to make decisions on curriculum, prohibit preppy attire, and renegotiate faculty contracts, with a particular focus on the women's and ethnic studies departments, which have been the worst performers over the past year.

Neither Frank nor Kerry would respond to a request for comment. Faust remarked that this was the kind of bargain one sometimes has to make.

Developing....

UPDATE (12/15): We have learned that Yale wants "in" on the bailout.

It is important to recognize that $17 billion is still a very large endowment. This was where the endowment stood as recently as January 2006. Still, the 25% decline we have experienced has a very significant impact on our operations because income from the endowment supports 44% of the University’s annual expense base of $2.7 billion.

And Yale is asking you alumni for suggestions on what to do: "officers would also welcome any suggestions you would wish to make by e-mailing suggestions@yale.edu."

Still developing.....

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Dress code

I went to law school some years ago. When I was there, professors typically wore dark suits, or at least a shirt and tie. One prof had made waves a few years earlier by insisting on wearing jeans, because he was cool beyond words.

It seems to be different on law faculties these days. I say this based on this blog post at "The Shark" (apparently a blog at Hastings Law School) about an article that a law professor is publishing in a law review, in which he advocates a dress code among the law faculty:

Prof. Jensen (left) accuses denim-clad professors of "trying—unsuccessfully—to look as young as students" and suggests that academics are the "worst-dressed middle-class occupation group in America." Apparently, if professors send a "signal of seriousness, of civility" by wearing a tie or tweed pants or maybe even a robe of some kind "students will pick it up."

Students are a hopeless group themselves, according to Jensen. He indicates that although he can't turn back the clock to a time when students did a better job of covering themselves up, he wishes he could.

Regarding student attire, The Shark's item quotes a student commenting at another law blog:

Whale-tail is no more distracting than attractive classmates in general, both of which are less distracting than web-surfing. Decorum is one thing, but one might as well take it further and get rid of laptops and attractive classmates.

Like The Shark, I had no idea what whale tail meant, so I looked it up. If you don't know, please don't Google it, and if you do, please don't click on "I'm Feeling Lucky."

Anyway, the last thing I want to think about right now is student attire. What I want to think about is student freebies.

Yes, freebies. According to this article in the Business section of the New York Times, colleges are beginning to give out free iPhones or internet-connected iPods to students. I kid you not.

Taking a step that professors may view as a bit counterproductive, some universities are doling out Apple iPhones and Internet-capable iPods to students.

The always-on Internet devices raise some novel possibilities, like tracking where students congregate. With far less controversy, colleges could send messages about canceled classes, delayed buses, campus crises or just the cafeteria menu.

While schools emphasize its usefulness — online research in class and instant polling of students, for example — a big part of the attraction is, undoubtedly, that the iPhone is cool and a hit with students. Basking in the aura of a cutting-edge product could just help a university foster a cutting-edge reputation.

Let me translate this for you. The money you're sending to your kid's college is being used to give the kid electronic equipment you didn't think was worth buying for him yourself.

If you read the article, you'll see various educational activities that these give-aways supposedly facilitate. But the real reason for giving the equipment away is marketing. You have to compete with other colleges to attract students -- and the tuition money that accompanies them.

I guess I'm pleased, curmudgeon that I am, that there are at least a couple of skeptics on the faculty:

The rush to distribute the devices worries some professors, who say that students are less likely to participate in class if they are multitasking. “I’m not someone who’s anti-technology, but I’m always worried that technology becomes an end in and of itself, and it replaces teaching or it replaces analysis,” said Ellen G. Millender, associate professor of classics at Reed College in Portland, Ore. (She added that she hoped to buy an iPhone for herself once prices fall.)

Robert S. Summers, who has taught at Cornell Law School for about 40 years, announced this week — in a detailed, footnoted memorandum — that he would ban laptop computers from his class on contract law.

“I would ban that too if I knew the students were using it in class,” Professor Summers said of the iPhone, after the device and its capabilities were explained to him. “What we want to encourage in these students is active intellectual experience, in which they develop the wide range of complex reasoning abilities required of the good lawyers.”

So here's my compromise: Ban the electronic equipment but spare the attractive classmates.

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Yale goes to court

I'm not sure why, but I find it amusing that our high-minded solons of academia -- those in the Ivy League, in particular -- speak of grand ideals, yet when push comes to shove, they're not above playing a little hardball.

Some quick background: In 2005, a Korean woman named Shin Jeong-ah was hired in the art-history department at Dongguk University in South Korea. When officials there got a little nervous about her bona fides, and especially about her Yale degree, they sent a letter to the Yale Graduate School, enclosing a purported letter from Yale that attested to her degree, and they asked Yale for confirmation that Shin had actually received a doctorate. The reality was that she had not; the letter attesting to the degree was a forgery. For some reason, however -- Yale now calls it an "administrative error" committed in reliance on the forged Yale letter -- the associate dean of the graduate school faxed back a confirmation that the degree was valid. (There's a little more background in a short piece in the Yale Alumni Magazine. My favorite part: Yale denied that its own confirming fax was authentic until the associate dean discovered a copy of it two months later.)

Fast forward: In March, Dongguk filed a $50 million lawsuit against Yale, with the main damages being loss of reputation.

Last week, Yale moved to dismiss the complaint. Although the AP account of Yale's court papers is not terribly clear, the article leads with this statement:

Details of a sex scandal involving a top South Korean official and an art history professor, who lied about having a Yale degree, will be used by the Ivy League school to defend itself against a federal lawsuit filed by the South Korean university that hired the professor.

Don't mess with Yale.

Here are Yale's arguments, according to the AP article:

In court papers Thursday, Yale said the scandal involving Shin and a former aid to South Korea's president goes to the heart of those charges. Yale is seeking to get the lawsuit dismissed.

A South Korean court sentenced Shin, 36, in March to 18 months in jail for faking her Yale doctorate and embezzling official museum funds, a court said.

Shin was convicted for using her fake degree to become an art history professor at Dongguk and acquire financial support from businesses for an art museum she was working for, said Kim Myung-su, a spokesman at the Seoul Western District Court.

The court also handed down a suspended one-year jail term to a 59-year-old former presidential aide, Byeon Yang-kyoon, with whom Shin was romantically linked.

Shin and Byeon made headlines last year after Byeon allegedly used his influence to get Shin hired by Dongguk University. He was forced to step down as an aide to then-President Roh Moo-hyun because of the scandal.

Byeon was ordered to conduct 160 hours of community service for exercising his influence to provide state tax benefits to a Buddhist temple founded by a former Dongguk University official who helped hire Shin as a professor, according to Kim.

Yale insists that Dongguk kept Shin on until way past her story's sell-by date: "Dongguk fired Shin on July 20, 2007, 'long after Shin's lies unraveled,' Yale's attorney, wrote in court papers."

The moral of all of this is: If you ever hear someone say "it's all about sex," don't believe him. Yale knows better: "Yale says Shin's fraud, 'Dongguk's involvement in it and reaction to it' and Byeon's conviction 'will be at the heart of this case.'"

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Monday evening linkfest

I've been collecting items that don't necessarily warrant their own post, and I'm going to dump them all here. Don't thank me. It's for your own good.

1. Have you ever thought to yourself, "Sure, Barack Obama is a well groomed and articulate young Negro, but what has the gentleman done for me?" Think no longer. Barack Obama is your new bicycle. Don't forget to keep clicking once you get there. (via Ace)

2. I'll tell you, though, what Barack Obama's done for a little townhouse in Greenwich Village that disappeared one day in 1970. Undoubtedly out of compassion for their loss, Obama has befriended some of the folks in the Weathermen unit with the guys who blew it up.

3. Speaking of Obama, an Obama supporter was choking his Hillary-supporting brother-in-law, who responded by stabbing the Obama supporter. Did you understand that? No? Well, read this, then. (via JammieWearingFool, via HotAir) And here's the punch line from the article: "On a side note: Voter registration records reveal that Ortiz, who supports Clinton, is registered Republican." Although that doesn't mean a heck of a lot these days.

4. Nobody but nobody gives Governor O'Malley credit for dealing with the crime problem other than the superannuated WaPo columnist David Broder. Maryland Conservatarian has got the goods.

5. Martin Kramer has great news for you if you enjoy being majorly depressed about the state of academics at certain Ivy League universities located in Morningside Heights. Amnon Rubinstein, a visiting Israeli professor has written a column about his time at Columbia. In Kramer's words: "Rubinstein discovered that the only truly active friends of Israel on campus were orthodox Jewish students. For him, a self-avowed secular humanist, it came as crushing disappointment that like-minded Israelis weren't standing up." Disappointment, yes; surprise, no. As Kramer points out, a professorship of Israel studies was set up in 2005, but the search committee included two notoriously anti-Israel professors. The result is that an Israeli was hired who "isn't a hard-left post-Zionist, but [is] far enough left to have signed a May 2002 open letter by some Israeli faculty" supporting Israelis who refused to serve as soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza.

6. On the lighter side, if The Graduate were being produced today by the U.N., it would not be "plastic" but rather "bugs." The headline says it all: "U.N. Conference Promotes Insect-Eating for Everyone From Famine Victims to Astronauts." (via Fark)

7. For those of you who are afraid to undergo a colonoscopy, please read this important public service announcement. From Dave Barry. (also via Fark) This will ease the fear, or at least keep you laughing about it. Regarding the "prep" -- that stuff you're supposed to drink to clean out your colon -- Barry writes: "The instructions for MoviPrep, clearly written by somebody with a great sense of humor, state that after you drink it, 'a loose watery bowel movement may result.' This is kind of like saying that after you jump off your roof, you may experience contact with the ground."

8. How do you know if your newspaper is on life support? One answer is: The entire 8-page sports section has two quarter-page ads, and they're both for non-medical remedies for erectile dysfunction. And I use the word "remedies" loosely. (via Ace)

9. Related: How do you know if your country is on life support? Answer: Your hospitals buy unisex underwear for the patients: "Male and female patients admitted to Swedish hospitals will soon be required to wear the same underwear." But there's a silver lining to these underwear. Now, some moron on MTV can ask Hillary this question: "Boxers or briefs?"

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Three videos

Three videos (four, really) for your viewing pleasure.

1. PSA (sick). (Check here -- scroll down -- for another one that's almost, but not quite, as sick.)

2. Barbie and Ken spend the night?

3. Like, where are the munchies, dude?

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How one college recruits by politics

The faculty at many colleges and universities tilts heavily leftward, as you know. But there's still a possibility that some admitted students won't share that political outlook. Here's how one college, with an excess of qualified applicants, tries to winnow out for admission those who see the world from the left.

According to this article in the New York Times's Education Life section, which Mrs. Attila pointed out to me, Tufts University offers applicants a chance to write an optional essay:

Tufts has a problem shared by most competitive universities: After it rejects the weak and admits the geniuses, too many decent applicants remain — about three for every spot. Recommendations and polished essays “all pretty much say the same things,” says Lee Coffin, dean of undergraduate admissions.

So for the second year, Tufts is inviting applicants to write an optional essay to help admissions officers pinpoint qualities the university values — practical intelligence, analytical ability, creativity and wisdom. These attributes make students intellectual leaders, according to Tufts’s dean of arts and sciences, Robert J. Sternberg, a psychologist whose work on measuring intelligence inspired the experiment. Applicants choose one of eight unlabeled questions, each designed to home in on a different attribute. Questions will change every year.

Now, just in case you're saying to yourself, "Hey, practical intelligence, analytical ability, creativity, and wisdom are all great, non-political qualities for an applicant to possess," the article disabuses you of that notion. Here's a good example of what I mean -- practicality. Note well what's a "good answer."

Practicality

Tufts’s Definition Can implement an idea — gather the necessary resources, attract others to the cause and lead them to a solution.

Question Describe a moment in which you took a risk and achieved an unexpected goal. How did you persuade others to follow your lead? What lessons do you draw from this experience?

Good Answer My family owns a vacant town home, so at our weekly family meeting I suggested we offer it to a Katrina family. When my father contacted the homeowners’ association, we received a certified letter from them stating that a Katrina family was prohibited from living in our town home because the bylaws prohibit “transients.” ... I called the local newspaper and talked to a reporter about the Katrina family. ... When the board considered their racist position being printed in the newspaper, the morality of the issue was forced on them.

What Tufts Said She does not sit back and watch life go by. Academically, she is not the strongest applicant from this school, but she has very compelling personal qualities, initiative and drive.

Coincidence? I think not. Here are questions and "good answers" for analytical ability and wisdom:

Question An American adage states that “curiosity killed the cat.” If that is correct, why do we celebrate people like Galileo, Lincoln and Gandhi, individuals who imagined longstanding problems in new ways or who defied conventional thinking to achieve great results?

Good answer While we celebrate the great thinkers who challenged predominant beliefs in the past, we hypocritically criticize those who do the same today. Gay marriage advocates are criticized today as threatening the institution of marriage. ...This ironic situation emanates from the fact that human nature finds comfort in conformity.

****************

Question A high school curriculum does not always afford much intellectual freedom. Describe one of your unsatisfied intellectual passions. How might you apply this interest to serve the common good and make a difference in society?

Good answer I love Shakespeare not only for the deliciousness of language, but for its applicability to current events. Political instability and rapidly changing leadership in the Congo? Macbeth draws shocking parallels. Race relations in South Africa causing unrest? Sounds like Othello. Since many people in India, and Africa, and Latin America can’t afford to read or attend plays, I want to take Shakespeare to them.

And I discovered again today that the kind of training that this writing reflects begins in high school.

In an article in the Rockville Gazette, entitled "B-CC students hit trail to activism," there's a description of a course given at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in which students are required to become "activists."

Danny McCarty and Mimi Ray are high school students who assumed nobody would heed their opinions — not when it came to politically divisive issues like mass transit, development and the environment.

But a class assignment in their Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School’s national, state and local government class converted them into energetic activists for a cause they barely knew about a few months ago. It tossed them into the middle of an effort to keep the Capital Crescent Trail unobstructed by Bethesda’s commercial growth and mass transit.

"It definitely has opened my eyes to take up any issue that I feel strongly about, to take initiative and do something about it," McCarty said.

Fine, and all that, but in school? For credit? As part of a class requirement?

And just why was this done? Ask the teacher: "The class’s teacher, Nathan Herchenroeder, said his motive was to convince students that citizen participation is necessary to a democracy."

It happens that I agree with their position on the Capital Crescent Trail, which remains a beauty of open space in our rapidly growing county that needs to stay open. I also oppose the Purple Line completely, which is a pet project of the anti-car left. But I hate the idea of some goofball high school teacher using class time to get kids to advocate for this.

"I said every kid had to take five public actions," like sending e-mails to local policymakers, interest groups or Gov. Martin O’Malley, Herchenroeder said. Some students interviewed walkers, joggers and bikers using the trail. Others made fliers or posters.

So for those of our kids who plan to apply to Tufts, never fear. You'll get good experience in becoming the right kind of thinker in high school.

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Quotation of the day

Well, it's not even 9 a.m. yet and we already have a quotation of the day.

In an article in the Post about George Washington University's decision to fine students $200 to $300 to clean up the shuttle bus if they're drunk and ralph in it, Supriya Shah, a freshman, is quoted thus: "To just target the Vern [shuttle bus] seems random. People throw up all the time in the dorms, they throw up in the elevator, they throw up everywhere."

Your $50,000 a year at work.

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Meanwhile, back at Columbia

If the clip I've seen is any indication, this'll be a fun documentary to watch: Indoctrinate U.

To see the clip, click on the link above and scroll down to "Deleted Scenes - Columbia Quiz."

(via HotAir)

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When colleges game the system

A high-school senior we know was wait-listed at his top choice for college. He called them up, told them he was very interested in them, and asked if they'd interview him. They agreed, and after the interview, he received a letter from the school that said, roughly, "If we were to make you an offer, would you accept it?" He said, Sure. They did, and he did.

Happy ending, right?

Now, you probably asked yourself, "Why didn't the college just make the kid a real offer instead of using the subjunctive and playing with his mind?" But that's because you're a normal human being, who's sadly unaware of the shenanigans colleges engage in to boost their rankings in the annual U.S. News and World Report survey. Colleges want to have low acceptance rates for applicants, but high acceptance rates from accepted students. If the school had made this student an offer, he might have turned it down. By making it hypothetical and getting him to agree to accept before the offer was actually made, the college made sure it wasn't risking a hit to its acceptance rate for offers made.

You follow that, right?

On Friday, the New York Times had an interesting article explaining these and other tricks colleges play to boost their rankings. Let's start with acceptance rates of students:

A college’s acceptance rate, or the proportion of applicants it admits, counts towards its rank, and the more selective the college is, the better.

So some colleges try to increase the number of applicants they receive — and turn down — by waiving fees and dropping requirements. Some send out applications by e-mail, with most of the student’s personal information already filled in. Others send out persistent e-mail appeals to high school sophomores, with breathless subject lines like “Time is running out.”

“It’s pumping up the numbers, it’s making colleges look more selective, and it’s contributing to the frenzy,” said Robert J. Massa, vice president for enrollment at Dickinson College. “What if we become ridiculous and just go out to a shopping mall and hand out applications?”

Or try average SAT scores:

Some colleges used to drop athletes’ SAT scores from their computation of incoming students’ scores in order to increase their averages and make their institutions look more selective, Mr. Kelly said.

In response, U.S. News helped to create common definitions with organizations like the College Board so that data reporting would be standardized and harder to fudge.

Still, critics say that the magazine, which does not verify information submitted by the colleges, bears some responsibility for the litany of tactics that colleges employ.

James M. Sumner, dean of admission and financial aid at Grinnell College, said a counterpart from a well-regarded institution told him that when computing average SAT scores he excluded the SAT’s of students accepted as “development cases,” whose grades and test scores are often below average but whose families are likely to make major donations. Mr. Sumner declined to identify the university.

Or alumni donations:

U.S. News reports the proportion of a university’s alumni who contribute money each year, as a way of measuring consumer satisfaction. Michael Beseda, vice president for enrollment at St. Mary’s College of California, said he knew someone whose college sent him a $5 bill, asking him simply to send it back so it would count as a donation. Several colleges have admitted taking a single donation and spreading it over two, three or five years, to raise their annual numbers.

The article notes that many of the tricks involve admissions, because that's the easiest for colleges to control.

To their credit, about 60 colleges have signed a letter agreeing not to participate in one aspect of the survey that asks colleges to rate other schools. (What could possibly go wrong there?) But, according to the Times, "virtually none of the most select and highly ranked colleges signed on."

The only redeeming thing about this funny business is that college is way less important than most people think. If it were more important, we'd have a real problem.

The way I think of it, if colleges were corporations that issued stock, the vast majority of them would be up on charges of securities fraud.

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On vacation mini-linkfest

You're probably pretty bored with re-reading the Bill Clinton photo comic by now, but I'm on vacation, so I'll just give you a little to read for now.

1. If you tell a joke to your grandfather or your father and he doesn't get it, it might be because of cognitive decline resulting from age. On the other hand, it might just be that the joke you told was idiotic.

2. Two can play at that game. Or changing the allocation of electoral votes in large blue states can help Republicans, just as doing so in red states can help Democrats.

3. 237 reasons for having sex? Well, they are college students, after all.

(first two via HotAir)

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Riding the college circuit

Note: There originally was a different post here. When I returned from a college visit last night, I put up a jokey, stupid post making fun of the whole experience, which, as my regular readers will know, is typical for me. Nothing was really meant to be serious.

Most of the time, I just go with it as it is, but this time, I felt that I shouldn't have tried to write after an exhausting trip home, and I've taken the post down. It really didn't come out the way I intended.

Trust me. You haven't missed anything.

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