Dear Commons Community,

A New York Times editorial today examines a recent judge’s ruling against the US Department of Education’s attempt to rein in unscrupulous for-profit colleges and certificate providers.  Specifically the editorial comments:

“A federal judge in Washington has overturned a central provision of the Obama administration’s rules for evaluating career-training programs that receive federal student aid. But the judge left the door open for the Department of Education to rewrite the regulations and strongly reaffirmed its authority to rein in unscrupulous, for-profit schools that bury students in debt while giving them valueless certificates or degrees. Instead of backing down, the department should revise the regulations and increase its efforts to make this industry accountable.

The ruling, issued by Judge Rudolph Contreras last month, focused on the department’s “gainful employment” rules, which are intended to prevent for-profit colleges from saddling students with loans that they can never earn enough to repay. For-profit schools account for nearly half of all student-loan defaults, even though they have only a little more than 10 percent of the country’s college enrollment.

Under the regulations, both for-profit and nonprofit career-training programs had to meet one of three tests to remain eligible for federal student aid: at least 35 percent of graduates must be repaying their loans, the typical graduate’s estimated annual loan payments must not exceed 12 percent of earnings, or they must not exceed 30 percent of discretionary income.

An association representing private-sector colleges filed suit, and Judge Contreras ruled that the government had not offered a convincing rationale for requiring a 35 percent repayment rate.

But he ruled that the department had the authority to issue regulations, noting that, by trying to curb unscrupulous behavior by schools, “the department has gone looking for rats in ratholes — as the statute empowers it to do.”

The editorial concludes by calling for the department to return to court, with a better explanation of why the 35 percent threshold is rational or it could simply drop that provision and judge the schools by the two remaining criteria. Beyond that, the department should reconsider an overly lax provision that allows programs to remain eligible for aid unless they fail all three eligibility tests for three of four consecutive years.

The editorial is on target.  Some of these schools purposely took advantage of and hurt people who were simply looking to improve their skills in order to get a better job.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Ta-Nehisi Coates, a senior editor at The Atlantic, has a guest column in the New York Times, describing his experiences as a black male in a Baltimore public school and what they mean to him now that he is a parent.  His language is quite dramatic:

“I can tell you everything that was wrong with my education — how cold pedagogy reduced the poetry of Macbeth to a wan hunt for hamartia, how the beautiful French language broke under rote vocabulary. But more than that, I can tell you what happens when education is decoupled from curiosity, and becomes little more than an insurance policy.

I was a black boy at the height of the crack era, which meant that my instructors pitched education as the border between those who would prosper in America, and those who would be fed to the great hydra of prison, teenage pregnancy and murder. That impulse still reigns today, and compelled by a disturbing range of statistics, it is utterly understandable. But for me it meant seeing learning not as an act of work and romance, but as a kind of hustle, a series of trials in the long effort to get over…

I was saved by the relentless energy of my mother and father, and the greatest education I received was in seeing those who lacked that advantage ultimately not make it.

“There before the grace of hard parents go I” was the lesson of my life. The lesson was unintentional and ironic. I acquired it in the midst of failure in the very environs that I now deem unfit. And so you must forgive my overthinking. I am watching my child grow in a new world of comparable bounty and privilege and I can’t help but wonder, and worry, at what unintentional lessons I am now imparting.”

Important commentary for parents everywhere!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Brooks comments today on the disparities in the lives of children growing up in today’s America.  Citing the research of Robert Putnam, Harvard political scientist, the children of the more affluent and less affluent are raised in starkly different ways and have different opportunities. Decades ago, college-graduate parents and high-school-graduate parents invested similarly in their children. Recently, more affluent parents have invested much more in their children’s futures while less affluent parents have not.  More specifically:

“A generation ago, working-class parents spent slightly more time with their kids than college-educated parents. Now college-educated parents spend an hour more every day. This attention gap is largest in the first three years of life when it is most important.

Affluent parents also invest more money in their children. Over the last 40 years upper-income parents have increased the amount they spend on their kids’ enrichment activities, like tutoring and extra curriculars, by $5,300 a year. The financially stressed lower classes have only been able to increase their investment by $480, adjusted for inflation.

As a result, behavior gaps are opening up. In 1972, kids from the bottom quartile of earners participated in roughly the same number of activities as kids from the top quartile. Today, it’s a chasm.

Richer kids are roughly twice as likely to play after-school sports. They are more than twice as likely to be the captains of their sports teams. They are much more likely to do nonsporting activities, like theater, yearbook and scouting. They are much more likely to attend religious services.

It’s not only that richer kids have become more active. Poorer kids have become more pessimistic and detached. Social trust has fallen among all income groups, but, between 1975 and 1995, it plummeted among the poorest third of young Americans and has remained low ever since.”

Brooks’ conclusion is that political candidates will have to spend less time trying to exploit class divisions and more time trying to remedy them — less time calling their opponents out of touch elitists, and more time coming up with agendas that comprehensively address the problem. It’s politically tough to do that, but the alternative is “national suicide”.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Thomas Edsall has a sobering blog post today exploring the state of American employment and exploring whether or not our economy has reached a point where due to technology, many jobs that have disappeared since the Great Recession will never come back and in fact, might get worse.  Particularly worrisome is what he calls “the hollowing out” of mid-level jobs.

“The issue of the disappearing middle is not new, but credible economists have added a more threatening twist to the argument: the possibility that a well-functioning, efficient modern market economy, driven by exponential growth in the rate of technological innovation, can simultaneously produce economic growth and eliminate millions of middle-class jobs.

Michael Spence, a professor at N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business, and David Autor, an economist at M.I.T., have argued that this “hollowing out” process is a result of twin upheavals: globalization and the hyper-acceleration of technological progress.”

Perhaps most troubling is an analysis by Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, and Andrew McAfee, a research scientist at M.I.T.’s Center for Digital Business.  Providing the graphic below they offer that the economy has recovered and is doing exceptionally for all indicators except job growth.

“Since the Great Recession officially ended in June of 2009 G.D.P., equipment investment, and total corporate profits have rebounded, and are now at their all-time highs. The employment ratio, meanwhile, has only shrunk and is now at its lowest level since the early 1980s when women had not yet entered the workforce in significant numbers. So current labor force woes are not because the economy isn’t growing, and they’re not because companies aren’t making money or spending money on equipment. They’re because these trends have become increasingly decoupled from hiring — from needing more human workers. As computers race ahead, acquiring more and more skills in pattern matching, communication, perception, and so on, I expect that this decoupling will continue, and maybe even accelerate.”

Click to Enlarge

Edsall does provide several counter arguments.  Amar Bhidé, author of the book “The Venturesome Economy,” and senior fellow at the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises at Tufts, did not mince words responding to a request for comment:

“As you might guess I find the storyline rather unconvincing and Luddite. What’s new about automation? I’ve been banging away for years about the phenomenon of non-destructive creation as a vital complement to creative destruction. The two don’t move in lock step but I have no reason to believe that non-destructive creation has ceased. Until someone persuades me it has, I will limit my anxieties to global warming, financial misregulation, a screwed up health care system, etc.”

This is heavy stuff and important issues for political and economic leaders in our country to consider and the sooner the better.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a lead article today on corporate giving to various groups in order to influence elections and public policy at all levels.  As if Super PACs were not enough, large corporations are trying to influence campaigns by donating money to tax-exempt organizations that can spend millions of dollars without being subject to the disclosure requirements that apply to candidates and parties.  The article states:

“The secrecy shrouding these groups makes a full accounting of corporate influence on the electoral process impossible. But glimpses of their donors emerged in a New York Times review of corporate governance reports, tax returns of nonprofit organizations and regulatory filings by insurers and labor unions.

The review found that corporate donations — many of them previously unreported — went to groups large and small, dedicated to shaping public policy on the state and national levels. From a redistricting fight in Minnesota to the sprawling battleground of the 2012 presidential and Congressional elections, corporations are opening their wallets and altering the political world…

“Companies want to be able to quietly push for their political agendas without being held accountable for it by their customers,” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which has filed complaints against issue groups. “I think the 501(c)(4)’s are likely to outweigh super PAC spending, because so many donors want to remain anonymous.”

Because social welfare groups are prohibited from devoting themselves primarily to political activity, many spend the bulk of their money on issue advertisements that purport to be educational, not political, in nature. In May, for example, Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a group co-founded by the Republican strategist Karl Rove, began a $25 million advertising campaign, carefully shaped with focus groups of undecided voters, that attacks Mr. Obama for increasing the federal deficit and urges him to cut spending.”

Among the companies mentioned in the article are:   AETNA, American Electric Power, Prudential, Dow Chemical and Merck.  One of the largest recipients of these funds is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a tax-exempt trade group that has pledged to spend at least $50 million on political advertising this election cycle.

Isn’t it time that someone in our government clean up this cesspool of influence peddling.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just did a search on the CUNY Commons on Higgs boson and there was but one result that  was written in French.  As an academic community, I thought that one of our physics colleagues would have provided some discussion on the discovery this week of the “God Particle” by scientists using the large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.   I also did a google search on Higgs boson and the simplest definition I could find was:  “A hypothetical, massive subatomic particle with zero electric charge whose existence would explain the masses of the elementary particles.”   A second more extensive definition in layman terms was provided by Prof. Stefan Soldner-Rembold, from the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester, England,  who explains that Higgs boson “can help us understand the big universal question, which is what are we made out of” hence the name “God Particle”.   We can still use a bit more help with this so if anyone wants to chime in, please feel free to do so.

If you are happy with having a fuzzy understanding of Higgs boson but would like to have a chuckle or two, I suggest you read Gail Collins column today in the New York Times, where she spoofs various politicians providing their commentary on the Higgs boson discovery.  Here is a sample:

“President Barack Obama told a crowd of blue-collar workers that there have been more Higgs bosons discovered during his administration than during those of both George Bushes combined.

Mitt Romney said today that when he called for an American effort to beat the Europeans in particle physics research, he did not actually mean spending money to build a supercollider, but merely “the need for our physicists to think harder.” The Republican presidential contender said he believed this could be accomplished by “the elimination of onerous, physics-research-killing regulations.”

Donald Trump told reporters that “my people in Hong Kong” have uncovered evidence that America’s failure to take the lead in subatomic particle research was because of a conspiracy between the Obama administration and unnamed Chinese industrialists. He also said that he had invited the Higgs boson to be a contender on “All-Star Celebrity Apprentice.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The lead article in today’s New York Times, concludes that the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation enacted ten years ago has been whittled down in most states.  With President Obama’s Department of Education policy of granting waivers from NCLB, the key provisions of the law have effectively been nullified in most school districts.

“While No Child Left Behind has been praised for forcing schools to become more accountable for the education of poor and minority children, it has been derided for what some regard as an obsessive focus on test results, which has led to some notorious cheating scandals. Critics have also faulted the law’s system of rating schools, which they say labeled so many of them low performing that it rendered the judgment meaningless.

In exchange for the education waivers, schools and districts must promise to set new targets aimed at preparing students for colleges and careers. They must also tether evaluations of teachers and schools in part to student achievement on standardized tests. The use of tests to judge teacher effectiveness is a departure from No Child Left Behind, which used test scores to rate schools and districts.

Congress has tried and failed repeatedly to reauthorize the education law over the past five years because Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on an appropriate role for the federal government in education. And so, in the heat of an election year, the Obama administration has maneuvered around Congress, using the waivers to advance its own education agenda. “

Any approach that relieves public schools from NCLB is a plus for educating our children.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Brooks, in his New York Times column, comments on the growing disconnect between boys and school.  Having just attended the Aspen Ideas Festival, he is full of insights into this problem which has become widespread throughout the Western world.

“The education system has become culturally cohesive, rewarding and encouraging a certain sort of person: one who is nurturing, collaborative, disciplined, neat, studious, industrious and ambitious. People who don’t fit this cultural ideal respond by disengaging and rebelling.

Far from all, but many of the people who don’t fit in are boys. A decade or so ago, people started writing books and articles on the boy crisis. At the time, the evidence was disputable and some experts pushed back. Since then, the evidence that boys are falling behind has mounted. The case is closed. The numbers for boys get worse and worse…

By 12th grade, male reading test scores are far below female test scores. The eminent psychologist Michael Thompson mentioned at the Aspen Ideas Festival a few days ago that 11th-grade boys are now writing at the same level as 8th-grade girls. Boys used to have an advantage in math and science, but that gap is nearly gone.

Boys are much more likely to have discipline problems. An article as far back as 2004 in the magazine Educational Leadership found that boys accounted for nearly three-quarters of the D’s and F’s.

Some colleges are lowering the admissions requirements just so they can admit a decent number of men. Even so, men make up just over 40 percent of college students. Two million fewer men graduated from college over the past decade than women. The performance gap in graduate school is even higher.

Some of the decline in male performance may be genetic. The information age rewards people who mature early, who are verbally and socially sophisticated, who can control their impulses. Girls may, on average, do better at these things. After all, boys are falling behind not just in the U.S., but in all 35 member-nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.”

For those of us in education, the problem has been well-known for a number of years.  The concern is even more pronounced for black and Latino boys.  Furthermore, there has not been any significant policy initiatives at either the federal, state or local levels to address the problem.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Daily Finance has an article on the investments of college/university endowments  claiming that losses incurred in part might be attributed  to steering funds to properties managed or owned by their trustees.  Reuters reports that colleges and universities including Dartmouth, Brown, Northwestern, and Stanford, just to name a few, have disclosed investments in funds linked to their trustees.  And in a 2010 survey of tax returns filed by 618 private colleges, The Chronicle of Higher Education found that about 25% of the schools examined disclosed financial connections to real estate businesses, construction companies, and other service providers associated with their trustees.  On average, college endowment higher than $1 billion averaged one-year losses totaling 20.5% since 2008.

The article refers specifically to data on Dartmouth College investments of  almost $80 million to properties connected to their trustees.  Inside Higher Ed notes that while Dartmouth is open about its investments in these firms, stakeholders are complaining that the board has stonewalled them in the face of questions about the fees associated with its investments. In addition, stakeholders say that the school fails to offer online archives of investment notices, and so it is difficult to get a full and accurate picture of the amounts invested in trustees’ firms or of how well these investments have performed.

We don’t know how extensive this problem is but one thing is sure:  When trustees make irresponsible investments, students and their families will have to pay more for their college education.

Tony