Dear Commons Community,

A law firm hired by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday that the governor was not involved in a plot to create gridlock on the George Washington Bridge as part of a political retribution scheme.    As reported by the Associated Press and The Huffington Post.

“The taxpayer-funded report released by former federal prosecutor Randy Mastro relies on interviews with Christie and other officials in his administration and 250,000 documents, many of them emails and text messages.

“We found that Gov. Christie had no knowledge beforehand of this George Washington Bridge realignment idea,” Mastro said at a news conference.

He also said the lane closures were not reflective of the way the governor’s office generally operates. “We found that this was the action of the few,” he said. “This is not reflective of the whole.”

His report comes out ahead of any results from independent investigations by federal prosecutors and a special committee of state lawmakers. Some of the key figures would not cooperate with Mastro’s investigation, leading Democrats to question the credibility of the report and its thoroughness.

Defending the report at the news conference, Mastro said his team was able to review a trove of documents, including emails and text messages among Christie, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, top governor’s office staff and former staffers. “We believe we have gotten to the truth or we wouldn’t be reporting it,” he said.”

I question whether anyone other than Chris Christie believes this report.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The American Council on Education published a report indicating that prospective students largely ignore college rankings  in magazines such as US News and World Report. The ACE report is directly largely at the proposed federal ratings system that would grade colleges and universities on measures like access, affordability and student outcomes. As reported in The Huffington Post: 

“Twenty-four percent of college freshmen from wealthy backgrounds said that rankings were a “very important” factor in deciding where to go to school, the highest proportion among any demographic, according to data from the 2013 Higher Education Research Institute Cooperative Institutional Research Program cited in the report. Among low- and middle-income students, the proportion of those who said college rankings were “very important” was only about 10 percent…

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insists that the proposed federal rating system would be significantly different from existing college rankings, such as those issued by U.S. News & World Report. But college leaders have been mostly critical of the Obama administration’s proposal.”

ACE and the college leaders are right on this issue!  In my 45 years of higher education administration and as a faculty member, I have never met a student who ever referred to a college ranking system.

Tony