New Bookmarks
Year 2001 Quarter 4:  October 1-December 31 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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For the October 1-December 31, 2001 Additions and Summaries scroll down this document 
For the other editions go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
For the full set of Bob Jensen's Bookmarks go to http://WWW.Trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm
    (The full set is never up to date with the latest additions to my New Bookmarks.)
Click here to go to Bob Jensen's home page http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

Choose a Date for Additions to the Bookmarks File

December 20, 2001     December 10, 2001     December 3, 2001     

November 23, 2001    November 14, 2001    November 7, 2001      November 1, 2001     

October 24, 2001        October 18, 2001        October 10, 2001        October 2, 2001    

Scroll down this page to view this week's new bookmarks. 

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

I maintain threads on various topics at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 

San Antonio Events and Regional Links --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/sanantonio.htm 

Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter --- Search Site.
This search engine may get you some hits from other professors at Trinity University included with Bob Jensen's documents, but this may be to your benefit.

Whenever a commercial product or service is mentioned anywhere in Bob Jensen's website, there is no advertising fee or other remuneration to Bob Jensen.  This website is intended to be a public service.  I am grateful to Trinity University for serving up my ramblings.

Bob Jensen's video helpers for MS Excel, MS Access, and other helper videos are at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/ 
Accompanying documentation can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/default1.htm and http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

Bob Jensen's Commentaries, Quotations, and Links Regarding the Latest U.S. War are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm 

December 20, 2001

This is the last edition of New Bookmarks for the Year 2001.  My wife and I will be spending the holidays with my father in Algona, Iowa.  Archived editions are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm 

My father (Vernon) is nearly 90 years old and in the best of health considering his age.  In 1995, he asked me to write a story about his first trip away from the farm (when he was fourteen years old).  You can read the story about when life was difficult but, at the same time, more genuine because few people had any money to waste on anything. 
See http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/vernon.htm 

A Year 2001 message of love from my wife, Erika
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/erika/xmas01.htm

A Year 2000 message of love from my wife, Erika.  
She describes how a Munich street urchin became Cinderella filled with love and joy --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/erika/xmas00.htm 

Bob's Old Story About Growing Up in Iowa
Short story entitled My Glimpse of Heaven:  What I learned from Max and Gwen

Brotherhood - in memory of the 343 fallen firefighters --- http://www.brotherhoodfdny.com/
Bob Jensen's threads on terrorism are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JusticeAppeal.htm

The State Department unveils a site dedicated to September's terrorist attacks, and it's surprising some observers with its emotional tone, raising a question about propaganda  --- http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,49067,00.html 

Quotes of the Week

The ultimate fate of any profession lies not in its rules, regulations, and controls. The fate lies in the will and dedication of the majority of people who serve in that profession --- the honest cops, the devoted doctors, the dedicated professors, the faithful clergy, and the ardent auditors.
Bob Jensen in a message to his students following the Enron scandal.

To Andersen's credit, it has long advocated a tighter rule.  But that would crimp the Big Five's clients --- companies and Wall Street.  Accountants have helped stall changes.  
Enron's collapse may finally break that logjam.  Like it or not, the Big Five must accept new rules that give investors a clearer picture of what risks companies run with SPEs.
Mike McNamee (See below)

Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
Mark Twain

Now, will you please move that elephant? It's blocking the television.
Laura Palmer Noone & Craig Swenson, "5 Dirty Little Secrets in Higher Education," (See Below)

Think now of the youth camp traditions.  Much of higher education is attached to a model that privileges the baccalaureate student who is eighteen to twenty-two years old, studying full-time to obtain a degree in four years, and residing in institutional housing.  These students are the privileged few--already a minority in American higher education in actual numbers but still dominant in the myths of what higher education is about.  These privileged few are granted a special opportunity in life: to spend four years of adulthood, mainly withdrawn from productive employment, in the exploitation of their physical and mental capabilities for their own purposes--some high-minded, some frankly bent on the pleasures of youth--while being protected from most of the ordinary consequences (often even the legal consequences) of irresponsible conduct.  (It is no accident that drug abuse has historically been a phenomenon among the un-employed young--with the graciously un-employed upper-class youths buying their supplies from the unwillingly un-employed lower-class youths.  The two groups have more in common than we like to imagine.)  Dormitories and fraternity/sorority houses and student ghettos are the scenes of a wide variety of childish behaviors to which the denizens feel entitled.  Many students living in the same settings are disgusted by some of what they see and refrain from much of the behavior around them, but they rarely succeed in overthrowing the dominant culture.
James O'Donnell "Youth Camp:  A Long Farewell" (See Below)

Nihilism is the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy. While few philosophers would claim to be nihilists, nihilism is most often associated with Friedrich Nietzsche who argued that its corrosive effects would eventually destroy all moral, religious, and metaphysical convictions and precipitate the greatest crisis in human history. In the 20th century, nihilistic themes--epistemological failure, value destruction, and cosmic purposelessness--have preoccupied artists, social critics, and philosophers. Mid-century, for example, the existentialists helped popularize tenets of nihilism in their attempts to blunt its destructive potential. By the end of the century, existential despair as a response to nihilism gave way to an attitude of indifference, often associated with antifoundationalism.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy --- http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/nihilism.htm 

It's almost springtime in Texas.

From our beloved Lady Bird Johnson
The Wildflower Center http://wildflower.avatartech.com/Plants_Online/Native_Plants/native.html 

New
Bob Jensen's Threads on Return on Business Valuation, Business Combinations, 
Investment (ROI), and Pro Forma Financial Reporting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm 

A New Kind of Cheating

Use of a cell phone for purposes of cheating during an examination would seem to be an obvious problem.  It just never dawned on me until I witnessed it in a men's room on December 15, 2001.  It was the beginning day of final examinations.  I did not have my final examinations scheduled until the following week.  However, I listened in while a student quite obviously was asking questions on a cell phone and then waiting for answers.

Leaving books and crib notes in a bathroom or hallway is a common problem.  The cell phone idea, however, just had never dawned on me.  This could be a particular problem on makeup exams.  How often have you made a student leave books and notes in your office and then put the student alone in a room to take a test?  Have you ever thought about that tiny cell phone that might be in a pocket?

I suspect the next best thing is having a buddy with books and a computer hidden in one of the stalls such that it is not necessary to make a phone call to the buddy.

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

Reply from Rohan Chambers [rchambers@CYBERVALE.COM] 

How about this.....

Some students use cell phones as calculators, and.....during the examination they send text messages to each other!

Rohan Chambers 
Lecturer in Auditing and Finance School of Business Administration 
University of Technology, Jamaica

Reply from Andrew Priest [a.priest@ECU.EDU.AU] 

Hi

We ban cell (mobile) phones from exam rooms and an invigilator goes with student to the men's/women's room so as to minimise this risk. However, I have often noticed some invigilator waiting outside the toilet facility rather than discreetly inside.

Regards, 
Andrew

 

Reply from Christine Kloezeman [ckloezem@GLENDALE.CC.CA.US] 

I too bought 52 hand held calculators from Pic and Save for the use in all my classes. Last semester I found a student using her palmtop that had all the notes. I have a container that keeps them in the division office so others can use them. The bathroom trick has been very well used this semester so I told them for the final they had to take care of business. I like the comment about when they leave the room they have finished the test.

I do this to be fair to those 60% that will not cheat. I have even been thanked by the students because they felt studied hard and it wasn't fair to have student get good grades without learning.

I like the idea of re-developing an honor code. Many times we need to revisit these areas with the students.

I wish there was a site we could develop that would keep the instructors on top of the current cheating techniques. It's like having teenagers. You can save a lot of problems by being aware of the things they are trying to pull. Anybody know of a site like that. I know I will visit it before each test.

Hi Christine,

I have updated a site concerning how students plagiarize at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

I am also trying to build up the above site for cheating on examinations. I hope others will send me great ideas on how to cheat.

Bob Jensen rjensen@trinity.edu 

Reply from Patricia Doherty [pdoherty@BU.EDU]

What bothers me about all this is the lengths to which we all go to prevent cheating. It is, as a faculty member here described it, another "1% solution" in that for the very few who would really cheat, we spend huge amounts of our time, and restrict those who wouldn't cheat anyway. I used to have someone accompany people to the rest room, but we frequently have so few proctors that I cannot spare anyone, and began to feel silly about it, so now I do random checks. I had never thought of the cell phone thing. I do know that the graphing calculators provide ample opportunity to cheat, so we have resorted to buying, as a department, 400 cheap calculators, which we pass out for each exam, then collect. That restricts that avenue.

We used to check ID, have not recently. So yesterday (yes, Saturday) while grading I found a "fake" exam. Really irritated me that someone would waste our time that way, and I plan to investigate further after we have grades in, with little hope of success.

We give case exams in managerial, which are harder to cheat on. And we do allow a page of handwritten (no photocopies or printed) notes. I always question how far I am willing to go to prevent cheating, and where I just say, if you are that clever, go ahead, you'll get your "reward" someday.

I have updated my threads on cheating with additional items at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

An Old Kind of Cheating

The first edition of New Bookmarks in Year 2002 will feature sites where you can either purchase research papers or download them for free. Since many of you are grading or have just graded term papers, I thought it might be of interest to show how sophisticated these papers are becoming --- cheating is becoming more difficult to detect.

For example, note the index on the left margin at http://www.a1-termpaper.com/wom-gen.shtml 

I clicked on Business to obtain the index at http://www.a1-termpaper.com/bus-idx.shtml 

I then clicked on Accounting and obtained the listing at http://www.a1-termpaper.com/bus-acc.shtml 

In the first Year 2002 edition of New Bookmarks, I will relay a study by a student who used this and other services, sometimes paying as much as $90 for papers and then examining the grades and comments written by professors. For an advance view of this study, see http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm#SethStevenson 

Note that most term papers are not free online and, therefore, will not show up in Web search engines unless some student was required by his instructor to put his or her term paper online.

You might be able to detect cheating in a search engine if the clueless student did not even bother to change the title of the paper (which can be found using search engines.)

I have updated my threads on plagiarism with additional items at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/plagiarism.htm 

This is a Good Idea

One way to actually make money off spam is to sue the people sending it. That's what Bennett Haselton did under Washington State's anti-spam law, and now he has $2,000 coming his way. Others are doing the same to junk faxers.  "Wham, Bam, Thank You Spam," by Jeffrey Benner, Wired News, December 12, 2001 --- http://www.wirednews.com/news/ebiz/0,1272,49089,FF.html 

The IRS has released Revenue Procedure 2001-59, which includes the new 2002 tax tables as well as numerous inflation-related changes to tax deductions, credits, and exemptions. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66066 

Computer Hero of the Year
Professor. Herbert A. Simon, 1916-2001, Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics and the 1986 National Medal of Science.  He was the fourteenth foreign scientist to ever be admitted into the Chinese Academy of Sciences.  Dr. Simon was a long-time professor of Political Science, Economics, Business, and  Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University

You can read a tribute to him in the May/June edition of EDUCAUSE Review, pp. 26-27.

Also see one of his last, perhaps the last, published paper entitled "What Makes Technology Revolutionary," EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2001, beginning on Page 28 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/edreview.html 
The paper was, however, written in 1987 in EDUCOM Bulletin and reprinted in EDUCAUSE Review.

In the above article, Professor Simon asserts that the steam engine was the start of the first industrial revolution, and the computer was the start of the second industrial revolution.

Overwhelmed, underappreciated, overexpectant, underdone--2001 was a year of dramatic extremes. Here are some trends and strategies that flew high or flamed out. http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFS80BcUEY04e0BD3g0A4 

New Items on the Enron Scandal

Factoid:  Enron's external "independent" auditors made more from consulting and internal auditing at Enron than the firm's fees from its "independent" audit.

"The Big Five Need to Factor in Investors," Mike McNamee, Business Week, December 24, 2001, Page 32 --- http://www.businessweek.com/ (not free to download for non-subscribers)

At issue are so-called special-purpose entities (SPEs), such as Chewco and JEDI partnerships Enron used to get assets like power plants off its books.  Under standard accounting, a company can spin off assets --- an the related debts --- to an SPE if an outside investor puts up capital worth at least 3% of the SPE's total value.  

Three of Enron's partnerships didn't meet the test --- a fact auditors Arthur Andersen LLP missed.  On Dec. 12, Andersen CEO Joseph F. Berardino told the House Financial Services Committee his accountants erred in calculating one partnership's value.  On others, he says, Enron withheld information from its auditors:  The outside investor put up 3%, but Enron cut a side deal to cover half of that with its own cash.  Enron denies it withheld any information.

Does that absolve Andersen?  Hardly.  Auditors are supposed to uncover secret deals, not let them slide.  Critics fear the New Economy emphasis means auditors will do even less probing.

The 3% rule for SPEs is also too lax.

To Andersen's credit, it has long advocated a tighter rule.  But that would crimp the Big Five's clients --- companies and Wall Street.  Accountants have helped stall changes.  

Enron's collapse may finally break that logjam.  Like it or not, the Big Five must accept new rules that give investors a clearer picture of what risks companies run with SPEs.

The rest of the article is on Page 38 of the Business Week Article.

"Let Auditors Be Auditors," Editorial Page, Business Week, December 24, 2001 --- http://www.businessweek.com/ (not free to download for non-subscribers)

But neither proposal (plans proposed by SEC Commission Chairman Harvey L. Pitt) goes far enough.  GAAP, the generally accepted accounting principles, desperately need to be revamped to deal with cash flow and other issues relevant in a fast-moving, high-tech economy.  The whole move to off-balance sheet accounting should be reassessed.  Opaque partnerships that hide assets and debt do not serve the interests of investors.  Under heavy shareholder pressure from the Enron fallout, El Paso Corp. just moved $2 billion in partnership debt onto the balance sheet. Finally, Pitt should consider requiring companies to change their auditors who go easy on them, as we have seen time and time again.

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

"Arthur Andersen:  How Bad Will It Get?" Business Week, December 24, 2001, pp. 30-32 --- http://www.businessweek.com/ (not free to download for non-subscribers)

QUOTE 1
Berardino, a 51-year-old Andersen lifer, may find the firm's competence in auditing complex financial companies questioned.  While Andersen was its auditory, Enron's managers shoveled debt into partnerships with Enron's own ececs to get it off the balance sheet --- a dubious though legal ploy.  In one case, says Berardino, hoarse from defending the firm on Capitol Hill, Andersen's auditors made an "error in judgment" and should have consolidated the partnership in Enron's overall results.  Regarding another, he says Enron officials did not tell their auditor about a "separate agreement" they had with an outside investor, so the auditor mistakenly let Enron keep the partnership's results separate.  (Enron denies that the auditors were not so informed.)

QUOTE 2
Enron says a special board committee is investgating why management and the board did not learn about this arrangement until October.  Now that Enron has consolidated such set-ups into its financial statements, it had to restate its financial reports from 1997 onward, cutting earnings by nearly $500 million.  Damningly, the company says more than four years' worth of audits and statements approved by Andersen "should not be relied upon."

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

One of the most prominent CPAs in the world sent me the following message and sent the WSJ link:

Bob, More on Enron. It's interesting that this matter of performing internal audits didn't come up in the testimony Joe Beradino of Andersen presented to the House Committee a couple of days ago

"Arthur Andersen's 'Double Duty' Work Raises Questions About Its Independence," by Jonathan Weil, The Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2001 --- http://interactive.wsj.com/fr/emailthis/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1008289729306300000.djm 

In addition to acting as Enron Corp.'s outside auditor, Arthur Andersen LLP also performed internal-auditing services for Enron, raising further questions about the Big Five accounting firm's independence and the degree to which it may have been auditing its own work.

That Andersen performed "double duty" work for the Houston-based energy concern likely will trigger greater regulatory scrutiny of Andersen's role as Enron's independent auditor than would ordinarily be the case after an audit failure, accounting and securities-law specialists say.

It also potentially could expose Andersen to greater liability for damages in shareholder lawsuits, depending on whether the internal auditors employed by Andersen missed key warning signs that they should have caught. Once valued at more than $77 billion, Enron is now in proceedings under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Internal-audit departments, among other things, are used to ensure that a company's control systems are adequate and working, while outside independent auditors are hired to opine on the accuracy of a company's financial statements. Every sizable company relies on outside auditors to check whether its internal auditors are working effectively to prevent fraud, accounting irregularities and waste. But when a company hires its outside auditor to monitor internal auditors working for the same firm, critics say it creates an unavoidable conflict of interest for the firm.

Still, such arrangements have become more common over the past decade. In response, the Securities and Exchange Commission last year passed new rules, which take effect in August 2002, restricting the amount of internal-audit work that outside auditors can perform for their clients, though not banning it outright.

"It certainly runs totally contrary to my concept of independence," says Alan Bromberg, a securities-law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. "I see it as a double duty, double responsibility and, therefore, double potential liability."

Andersen officials say their firm's independence wasn't impaired by the size or nature of the fees paid by Enron -- $52 million last year. An Enron spokesman said, "The company believed and continues to believe that Arthur Andersen's role as Enron's internal auditor would not compromise Andersen's role as independent auditor for Enron."

Andersen spokesman David Tabolt said Enron outsourced its internal-audit department to Andersen around 1994 or 1995. He said Enron began conducting some of its own internal-audit functions in recent years. Enron, Andersen's second-largest U.S. client, paid $25 million for audit fees in 2000, according to Enron's proxy last year. Mr. Tabolt said that figure includes both internal and external audit fees, a point not explained in the proxy, though he declined to specify how much Andersen was paid for each. Additionally, Enron paid Andersen a further $27 million for other services, including tax and consulting work.

Following audit failures, outside auditors frequently claim that their clients withheld crucial information from them. In testimony Wednesday before a joint hearing of two House Financial Services subcommittees, which are investigating Enron's collapse, Andersen's chief executive, Joseph Berardino, made the same claim about Enron. However, given that Andersen also was Enron's internal auditor, "it's going to be tough for Andersen to take that traditional tack that 'management pulled the wool over our eyes,' " says Douglas Carmichael, an accounting professor at Baruch College in New York.

Mr. Tabolt, the Andersen spokesman, said it is too early to make judgments about Andersen's work. "None of us knows yet exactly what happened here," he said. "When we know the facts we'll all be able to make informed judgments. But until then, much of this is speculation."

Though it hasn't received public attention recently, Andersen's double-duty work for Enron wasn't a secret. A March 1996 Wall Street Journal article, for instance, noted that a growing number of companies, including Enron, had outsourced their internal-audit departments to their outside auditors, a development that had prompted criticism from regulators and others. At other times, Mr. Tabolt said, Andersen and Enron officials had discussed their arrangement publicly.

Accounting firms say the double-duty arrangements let them become more familiar with clients' control procedures and that such arrangements are ethically permissible, as long as outside auditors don't make management decisions in handling the internal audits. Under the new SEC rules taking effect next year, an outside auditor impairs its independence if it performs more than 40% of a client's internal-audit work. The SEC said the restriction won't apply to clients with assets of $200 million or less. Previously, the SEC had imposed no such percentage limitation.

The Gottesdiener Law Firm, the Washington, D.C. 401(k) and pension class action law firm prosecuting the most comprehensive of the 401(k) cases pending against Enron Corporation and related defendants, added new allegations to its case today, charging Arthur Andersen of Chicago with knowingly participating in Enron's fraud on employees.
Lawsuit Seeks to Hold Andersen Accountable for Defrauding Enron Investors, Employees --- http://www.smartpros.com/x31970.xml 

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm 

The Public Oversight Board, the group that oversees the peer review process required of all public accounting firms that audit publicly held companies, has decided to take an active role in the expanded peer review that Deloitte & Touche is providing to Andersen. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65920 

But We're Hanging in There at a Reduced Rank 11 (Which is About in the Middle Among 23 Professions)!

A recent poll jointly conducted by CNN, Gallup Organization, and USA Today ranked various professions according to how members are perceived in terms of conveying honesty and ethics. Find out how accountants ranked in comparison to members of other professions. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66220 

A recent poll jointly conducted by CNN, Gallup Organization, and USA Today ranked various professions according to how members are perceived in terms of conveying honesty and ethics. In recent years, nurses and pharmacists have monopolized the top positions on the annual survey.

This year, in the wake of the September 11 events, firefighters took a decisive victory as frontrunners in the poll. Accountants appeared in 11th position, with 41 percent of respondents giving the profession "High" or "Very High" ratings for honesty and ethical standards.

Rounding out the top 10 were Nurses in second position, followed by U.S. Military Personnel, Policemen, Pharmacists, Medical Doctors, Clergy, Engineers, College Teachers, and Dentists.

Following Accountants in the ranking of 23 professions were Bankers, Journalists, Congressmen, Business Executives, Senators, Auto Mechanics, Stockbrokers, Lawyers, Labor Union Leaders, Insurance Salesmen, Advertising Practitioners, and Car Salesmen.

One thousand five adults participated in the poll, which was conducted November 26 and 27.

Details are given at http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr011205.asp 

As promised, the Securities and Exchange Commission has revisited the issues that concern publicly held companies regarding Regulation Fair Disclosure, the ruling that requires publicly held companies to provide information that could influence the purchase of shares simultaneously to every potential investor. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/65824 

Bob Jensen's commentaries and threads on the Enron scandal are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.ht

New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani plans to start his own consulting firm when he leaves office in January. Reports are that the new firm will have an affiliation with Ernst & Young and will receive financial backing from the Big Five firm. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/66338 

From the Free Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews for December 13, 2001 

TITLE: Former Auditor of Superior Bank Cites Grand-Jury Probe Into Collapse of Thrift 
REPORTER: Mark Maremont 
DATE: Dec 12, 2001 
PAGE: C16 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1008126509354552200.djm  
TOPICS: Accounting, Accounting Fraud, Accounting Irregularities, Auditing, Auditing Services, Bad Debts, Banking, Loan Loss Allowance

SUMMARY: Ernst & Young LLP, former auditor of Superior Bank, is cooperating with a grand-jury investigation. Superior Bank, which failed in July, is one of the largest banking institutions to fail in recent years. A representative from the Office of Thrift Supervision told Congress that Ernst and Young permitted improper accounting. Ernst and Young contends that there were no accounting mistakes.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What actions has Ernst and Young taken in cooperation with the grand-jury investigation? Is Ernst and Young required to take these actions? Are they violating client confidentiality by surrendering working papers to a third party? Under what circumstances is it acceptable to share client work papers with a third party?

2.) What factors does Ernst and Young contend contributed to the failure of Superior Bank? If Ernst and Young had perfect foresight about these events, what changes in the financial reporting would have been required? Is it reasonable to expect auditors to anticipate changes in the economy? Why or why not?

3.) What factors does the Office of Thrift Supervision claim contributed to the failure of Superior Bank? Discuss two financial reporting issues that should have been considered by Ernst and Young. Do you think that Ernst and Young allowed misleading financial reporting by Superior Bank? Why or why not?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island 
Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University 
Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

From the Free Wall Street Journal Educators' Reviews for December 13, 2001

TITLE: EPA Will Destroy Hudson River to Save It 
REPORTER: Bonner R. Cohen 
DATE: Dec 12, 2001 
PAGE: A18 
LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1008121274639180560.djm  
TOPICS: Financial Statement Analysis, Financial Accounting

SUMMARY: This commentary by a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute provides environmental and civic arguments against the EPA's recent decision to dredge the Hudson River to remove PCBs legally dumped there by GE prior to 1977. Related articles provide the history of GE's efforts to prevent this decision to dredge the river. Questions relate to environmental remediation reporting requirements and assessing GE's disclosure of this particular Superfund clean-up project.

QUESTIONS: 
1.) What financial accounting standards address reporting requirements for environmental liabilities? Specifically, describe the AICPA's statement of position on this topic. What are the major points of disclosure and liability recognition discussed in that document?

2.) Using the AICPA's statement of position, summarize the environmental laws currently in effect in the U.S. What is the Superfund Law?

3.) What is a "Superfund site"? Who decides on the actions which must be taken in cleaning up a "Superfund site"?

4.) Both the commentary by Bonner Cohen and the related articles emphasize the fact that GE legally disposed of PCBs in the Hudson River. If the company's actions have always been legal, then why must GE pay for the cost of cleaning up the river, estimated to total $460 million?

5.) Obtain GE's 2000 annual report from the company's web site. Note 21 provides disclosure related to liabilities including their involvement in various environmental clean-up efforts. How detailed are the disclosures of their obligations in this area? Compare this disclosure to the requirements in the AICPA's statement of position. Do you think the company has accrued any amount for the liability to clean up the Hudson River? If so, how much? Cite any accounting standards you rely on to make this estimate.

6.) How significant is the expected cost of cleaning up the Hudson River under the EPA's plan relative to GE's overall operations? Given the EPA's decision and based on the AICPA's statement of position, what requirements do you think GE must meet in reporting its results for the year ended December 31, 2001?

Reviewed By: Judy Beckman, University of Rhode Island Reviewed By: Benson Wier, Virginia Commonwealth University Reviewed By: Kimberly Dunn, Florida Atlantic University

--- RELATED ARTICLES --- TITLE: EPA Orders Dredging of PCBs from the Upper Hudson River REPORTER: Matt Murray ISSUE: Dec 05, 2001 LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1007497237159676640.djm 

TITLE: U.S. Decision to Seek River Clean-Up is Big Setback for General Electric REPORTER: Matt Murray And Tom Hamburger ISSUE: Aug 02, 2001 LINK: http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB996670293589550385.djm 

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ +

CPA2Biz Unveils Business Valuation Resource Center --- http://www.smartpros.com/x31976.xml 

The BV Center will include resources and information from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and industry experts on various factors affecting the value of a business or a transaction, such as mergers and acquisitions; economic damages due to a patent infringement or breaches of contract; bankruptcy or a reorganization; or fraud due to anti-trust actions or embezzlement. The BV Center will provide a comprehensive combination of solutions that meet the professional needs of CPAs practicing business valuation, including those who have achieved the AICPA's Accredited in Business Valuation credential. The BV Center will also provide networking communities for BV practitioners as well as a public forum for discussion of business valuation trends, developments and issues.

"Tremendous growth in the BV discipline, coupled with a dynamic group of factors affecting business valuation, means that CPAs need a consistent, timely and relevant vehicle through which BV-related information can be disseminated to them," said Erik Asgeirsson, Vice President of Product Management at CPA2Biz. "The BV Center on CPA2Biz will provide them with AICPA books, practice aids, newsletters and software, along with industry expert literature and complementary third-party products and solutions. Because the issues associated with valuation impact CPAs in both public and private sectors -- auditors, tax practitioners, personal financial planners as well as BV specialists -- the BV Center will have a powerful horizontal impact on the profession."

"I think that CPAs who practice in business valuation ought to go to the BV Center for information and tools that are timely, relevant and easy to obtain," said Thomas Hilton, CPA/ABV, Chairman of the AICPA Business Valuation Subcommittee. "The BV Center is a source CPAs can use to offer their clients a higher level of service, as well as to connect with other CPAs who provide valuation services."

The CPA2Biz Website is at www.cpa2biz.com/ 

Bob Jensen's Threads on Return on Business Valuation, Business Combinations, Investment (ROI), and Pro Forma Financial Reporting --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/roi.htm 

News from Fathom

December 2001

Forward this newsletter to a friend!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 
In this issue: 
* Financing Terrorism 
* Is Globalization to Blame for the Terrorist Attacks? 
* Free Seminar: Manufacturing Anywhere 
* Back by popular demand: Prospecting for Business Information ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Columbia University 
* The London School of Economics and Political Science 
* Cambridge University Press 
* The British Library 
* The New York Public Library 
* The University of Chicago 
* University of Michigan 
* American Film Institute 
* RAND * Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 
* The Natural History Museum 
* Victoria and Albert Museum 
* Science Museum *

~~~~~~~~~~~ IN THE NEWS ~~~~~~~~~~~ 

Immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, US officials began an intense effort to freeze bank accounts and financial transactions linked to terrorist groups. As the search continues with the help of foreign nations, investigators are finding that Al Qaeda's network of assets is wider reaching and more complex than they ever imagined, encompassing funds from private corporations, charitable organizations, investment groups, and organized crime operations around the world.

Jean-François Seznec, adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University and Raporteur to the UNESCO-Amar standing conference on relations between Islam and the West, examines the financing behind terrorist operations and explores ways to stop the flow of funds in the free feature "Financing Terrorism: Channels for Depositing and Moving Money": http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=603&page=feature&id=122459

FREE BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS FEATURES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** TERRORISM AND THE DEVELOPING WORLD ... September 11 and the Dark Side of Globalization Lisa Anderson, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, explores the dark side of globalization-- transnational networks and underground markets nearly invisible from state governments: "The World Bank estimates that half of the commercial transactions that take place in Egypt every year are in the black market..." http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=604&page=feature&id=122424 

*** TERRORISM AND THE DEVELOPING WORLD ... Terrorism, Imperialism and Globalization John Harriss, director of the Development Studies Institute at The London School of Economics and Political Science, considers the economic, political and cultural contexts for the emergence of terrorist movements: "The enemy that we are now fighting--terrorism--is to an important extent a creature created by western imperialism, headed up by the US..." http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=605&page=feature&id=122430 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ONLINE COURSES ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

* Free Seminar * MANUFACTURING ANYWHERE, a free seminar from RAND, explores the changes the 21st century will bring to manufacturing. Learn about "Napsterization," postponement, outsourcing, vertical disintegration, and more. The seminar is free; simply follow the checkout process to enroll: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=606&page=course&id=10701041 

* Short e-Course * PROSPECTING FOR BUSINESS INFORMATION, a short online course from the New York Public Library, is designed to help small business owners, job-hunters, grant seekers, investors, advertisers and others navigate Web- and library-based company information services for business research. Also includes temporary access to databases from LexisNexis, infoUSA and Standard and Poor's. Class starts December 19: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=607&page=course&id=49704700 

* Short e-Course * DEVELOPING YOUR CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT PLAN, a short online course from Columbia University, is designed to help beginning teachers strengthen their classroom management skills from the start. Enroll anytime: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=612&page=course&id=41704005 

* Semester-Length Course * CHILDREN'S MATERIALS: EVALUATION AND USE, an online course from the University of Washington, is designed primarily for educators seeking an endorsement as school library media specialists and teachers who want to build a classroom collection of the "best of the best" in children's literature. Enroll anytime: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=613&page=course&id=1406

Search for more online courses in Fathom's Course Directory: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=614&page=directory 

Search for more online courses in Fathom's Course Directory: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=608&page=directory&id=0 

THINKING IS ENCOURAGED @ FATHOM.COM  (TM) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Search for more online courses in Fathom's Course Directory: http://www.fathom.com/link.jhtml?cid=608&page=directory&id=0 

You can listen to part of my August 2001 workshop in Atlanta devoted to Fathom at 
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm 

Lesson Plans Library (K-12) ---  http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/index.html 

Find hundreds of original lesson plans, all written by teachers for teachers. Use the pull-down menus below to browse by subject, grade, or both.
 
Lesson Plans for Assignment Discovery and TLC Elementary School
If you are searching for lesson plans to support Assignment Discovery and TLC Elementary School programming, click here.
 
See NEW lesson plans for the fall! Click here.

"To Youth Camp:  A Long Farewell," by James J. O'Donnell, EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2001, pp 14-19 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 
Excerpts are quoted below.  Go to the above link to download the full article.

Five years ago, the revolution in "distance learning" (or "distance-independent learning" or "distributed learning") seemed to be upon us.  Two or three years ago, the sounds of the revolution could be heard in all quadrants of the sky.  Yet as we go into the fall of 2001, the rumblings are much quieter.  What appeared inevitable only a couple of years ago now looks puzzlingly remote.  To be sure, evidence of the revolution can be seen here and there: new products are becoming available, many more courses are available in some location-independent form, and Western Governors University already has its first Chancellor Emeritus and an enrollment of five hundred students.  And there is wisdom in persistence and patience.  If the dot-coms have gone dot-bust, it's reasonable to think that the inflated expectations in the not-for-profit sector¹ would also deflate, and what was overvalued two years ago would be undervalued today--making this a good time to invest.

It baffles some that the revolution has not occurred.  But when a question won't answer itself, chances are you're asking the wrong question.

Distance learning was certainly high concept for the 1990s in higher education.  But like the "horseless carriage," this notion materialized through an unimaginative extension of traditional forms.  The key insight was that networked information technology makes it possible to reorganize the process of learning and to redistribute what takes place face to face so that it takes place when learners and teachers are separated in space and time.  Traditional students could learn in new ways, and new kinds of students could join the academic community for the first time.

Many of those who felt keenly the clarity of that vision also thought that existing institutions harbored some excess capacity of instructional time and attention that could be sold cheaply in bulk.  This was a shimmering dream, never realistic.  Much time and energy was spent trying to prove that concept, with precious little to show as a result.  Nobody has succeeded in building outlet malls for the mind--offering cheap and serviceable merchandise of sometimes dubious origin more or less protected by prestige name brands.  That is, in fact, good news.  And even where more realistic projects were put in notion, markets have been slow to evolve, faculty hard to recruit, and production costs impossible to bring in line with the results that can be demonstrated.  At least one university that made a splash announcing its for-profit subsidiary for distance learning has now quietly closed down the operation.

Nothing is as easy as it seems.

Think now of the youth camp traditions.  Much of higher education is attached to a model that privileges the baccalaureate student who is eighteen to twenty-two years old, studying full-time to obtain a degree in four years, and residing in institutional housing.  These students are the privileged few--already a minority in American higher education in actual numbers but still dominant in the myths of what higher education is about.  These privileged few are granted a special opportunity in life: to spend four years of adulthood, mainly withdrawn from productive employment, in the exploitation of their physical and mental capabilities for their own purposes--some high-minded, some frankly bent on the pleasures of youth--while being protected from most of the ordinary consequences (often even the legal consequences) of irresponsible conduct.  (It is no accident that drug abuse has historically been a phenomenon among the un-employed young--with the graciously un-employed upper-class youths buying their supplies from the unwillingly un-employed lower-class youths.  The two groups have more in common than we like to imagine.)  Dormitories and fraternity/sorority houses and student ghettos are the scenes of a wide variety of childish behaviors to which the denizens feel entitled.  Many students living in the same settings are disgusted by some of what they see and refrain from much of the behavior around them, but they rarely succeed in overthrowing the dominant culture.

Colleges and universities are deeply and complexly attached to the infantilization.  The social position of higher education in European and American societies is firmly rooted in a notion of prolonged and irresponsible childhood.  Though only a fraction of students actually have the opportunity to live such a life, servicing their needs still provides the conceptual and bureaucratic structure of higher education institutions.  A new administrator in my university asked me how "the typical student" gets computer support-and when I pressed the question, I found that "the typical student" is the undergraduate, even though undergraduates make up less than 50 percent of our FTE population.

Parental anxiety plays a significant part in encouraging institutions to establish and preserve these patronizing cultures.  Parents want levels of security that would be unreasonable to expect if their eighteen-year-old son or daughter instead moved off to the big city to get a job.  They want to be absolutely sure that their children have easy access to three super-abundant meals a day and don't have to worry about paying for the food.  They expect health care, counseling, and other services that would be preposterous to expect elsewhere, and colleges and universities compete aggressively to deliver all these services.

So when most people think of higher education, they think of something that happens to people between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two and that lasts for about four years.  In reality, many students are already well into their twenties, still working on a first degree while taking a responsible economic role in society as well.  Many others, in their twenties and thirties, are engaged in professional education, whether for the academic Ph.D. or in the myriad professional disciplines.  Higher education institutions serve a huge variety of adult learners, some working for a bachelor's degree, some for professional degrees, some for continuing professional education, and some for reasons of cultural and personal enhancement.  But on the traditional campus, all those adults are in one way or another made to feel marginal.  Even--one might say especially--the search for a parking space often reminds them that they are second-class citizens.²

---

NOTES

¹    I mean here the deliberately not-for-profit sector, to distinguish traditional colleges and universities from that new sector of the economy that would really like to make a profit if they could, but...

²    Notice that complaints about the failings of higher education rarely include the astonishingly successful system of professional education.  Although we may argue about the specifics of curriculum and the focus in, say, law and medical school, few dispute that those schools do what they do extraordinarily well.  Likewise, nobody writes best-sellers complaining about the quality of community college education, yet few outside those institutions hear anything about the extraordinary and beneficial impact they have on students' lives.

Bob Jensen's documents on distance education are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

From Syllabus News on December 11, 2001

Blackboard, CollegisEduprise Expand Partnership

Blackboard Inc. and CollegisEduprise, Inc. said they would bundle their respective tools and services to strengthen their offerings to the higher education market. The collaboration will blend the Blackboard 5 Learning System, software licensing, application hosting and integration services from Blackboard with education assessment, strategic planning, end-user help desk services, and faculty pedagogical training from CollegisEduprise. Clients of both companies include the Community College of Denver, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Montgomery Community College, New York Institute of Technology, Norfolk State University and the University of Baltimore.

The Bb homepage is at http://www.blackboard.com/ 

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

---

Seton Hall University unveiled a program to provide technology resources and training to economically disadvantaged people. Project SHUTTLE, for Seton Hall University Technology Training for Lifelong Education, aims to provide technology education, resources and training to people without a personal computer or technological resources. The project will collaborate with the school's Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and Upward Bound Program to provide laptop computers to participating high school seniors. The students receive training in laptop use and are encouraged to take the computers home for schoolwork and home use. EOP director Carol McMillan-Lonesome called SHUTTLE "a conduit for families to embrace lifelong learning through technology, understand the ... importance of higher education and achieve personal ... aspirations."

For more information, visit: http://academic.shu.edu/shuttle/index.html 

---

eCollege Says Courseware Exceeds Disability Standards

Courseware developer eCollege said the software it will release this month will exceed Section 508, the federal accessibility standard for information technology. The comany said its software targets student users as well as disabled faculty authoring online courses. It will also provide a support staff trained in assistive technologies. The software will be available without requiring a new version purchase, upgrade or implementatioin, the company said. Mike Gibson, coordinator of the Professional Training in Adaptive Technology Program at the Colorado Center for the Blind, said, "working with an e-learning company that is proactive in understanding and meeting the needs of the blind helps us to change what it means to be blind."

The eCollege homepage is at http://www.ecollege.com/ 

Bob Jensen's threads on course authoring systems and shells can be found at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

---

Pepperdine University, eNeuralNet, and IBM Corp. have joined forces to open the Murray S. Craig Digital Democracy Lab at Pepperdine's School of Public Policy. The lab is dedicated to promoting political accountability via the use of artificial intelligence software. eNeuralNet is donating its Minutes-N-Motion political accountability software, a 50-seat license, and an IBM server. Craig, the software's creator, will serve as a strategic advisor to lab director, Pepperdine professor Mike Shires, in developing curriculum and research applications.

For more information, visit: http://www.pepperdine.edu 

A Century of Drawing: Works on Paper:  Works on Paper from Degas to LeWitt (Art, History) --- 
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/drawinginfo.htm 

---

Evaluation of Websites

I recommend the comprehensive site at http://www.prana3.com/tools/  

A message from Ed Scribner

Here's a guide Susan Beck at the NMSU Library has prepared for student evaluation of Web sites --- http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html 

A message from Ron Tidd about evaluation of Web Sites:

Bobby- http://www.cast.org/bobby/  
web page validation for accessibility by people with disabilities (be attentive and expand the community)

W3C- http://validator.w3.org/  
free HTML validation service

Web Site Garage- http://websitegarage.netscape.com/  
tune up your web page

Web Wonk- http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/  
Tips for designers and writers

Web Shui at http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/0-3881.html?tag=st.bl.3880.dir.3881 

Web sales have proven to be a small slice of most sectors, so retailers are more selective about their investments in Web initiatives. They're starting to view their Web sites like any other store--now that it's built and functioning, what justifies spending more money on it? http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eFS80BcUEY04e0BD3h0A5 

Bob Jensen's bookmarks for evaluation of Websites are at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob4.htm#Evaluation 

The Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta is pleased to accept applications for its Master of Arts degree in Humanities Computing. The programme integrates computational methods and theories with research and teaching in the Humanities. The Faculty is committed to offering its students opportunities to combine their interests in the Arts and emerging computing technologies, particularly in the areas of information management, multimedia, electronic publishing, and distance education. The new M.A. in Humanities Computing will help form students who not only understand, create, and manage multimedia and technological projects, but also understand the critical and intellectual traditions of Humanities scholarship.

Please find enclosed a poster and brochures that outline the programme, which should provide interested students with the information they need to make an informed decision. To be most widely considered for funding, applications to the programme should arrive no later than January 7, 2002, although we will continue to review all applications after this date.

Please circulate the posters and brochures to interested departments, institutes, and potential students. Thank you for your support of this new and exciting endeavour.

Yours truly,

Nasrin Rahimieh 
Associate Dean (Humanities) Faculty of Arts 6-14 
Humanities Centre University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E5 
Tel: (780) 492-9132 Fax: (780) 492-7251

Here's a guide Susan Beck at the NMSU Library has prepared for students:

http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html 

Ed Scribner 
New Mexico State

For professional Website evaluation, you might take a look at http://www.prana3.com/tools/ 

"5 Dirty Little Secrets in Higher Education," by Laura Palmer Noone & Craig Swenson. EDUCAUSE Review,
  November/December 2001, pp. 20-31 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 

Dirty Little Secret #1
You Don't Have to Be a Researcher to Be a Good Teacher

Lest there be any misunderstanding, let us make clear that we think research is a good thing.  We support it, benefit from it, and think the "scholarship of discovery" to be a worthy pursuit.¹  But let's all be honest: some researchers make great teachers, whereas others--some of the most celebrated researchers, in fact--have no place inside a classroom (if judged by their ability to facilitate learning).  The irony is that many in this second group don't want to be in the classroom anyhow.

If a "good researcher" is defined as someone who is a critical and reflective observer, who asks good questions, who draws warranted conclusions from data, and who understands the limits of prediction, we'll agree that the researcher does indeed have a place inside the classroom.  If, on the other hand, a "good researcher" means what it usually means--that he or she is publishing formal "academic" research--that's where we part company.

The pattern followed by most researchers leads them to learn more and more about less and less.  Narrow specialization often precludes interdisciplinary breadth.  The gift of so many great teachers, by contrast, rests in their breadth of knowledge--in their ability to synthesize and communicate the ideas of others and to inspire their students.

 

Dirty Little Secret #2
Professors Know a Lot about Their Disciplines but Very Little about Teaching

The process of getting a doctorate has never been about learning how to teach.  Oh sure, most traditional doctoral programs require candidates to serve as teaching assistants, but that usually means little more than assigning them to classes.  Faculty in most disciplines tend to look down their noses at those who choose education (i.e., "teaching") as their discipline.  Doctoral candidates in most disciplines primarily learn their disciplines and learn how to do research.  Teaching is way down in the pecking order, and everybody knows it.

Thus, until very recently, there were few efforts to teach doctoral candidates how to teach and even fewer to teach professors how to be better teachers.  And even though many institutions have now created centers to help instructors teach better--a hopeful sign--directors of those centers state that relatively small percentages of professors use these services.  In addition, those who do learn teaching techniques are probably ignorant about how those techniques work.   Simply put, those who do most of the teaching don't know all that much about how their students actually learn.

Dirty Little Secret #3
Professors Know Even Less about Learning Than They Do about Teaching

See  http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 

Dirty Little Secret #4
Part-Time Instructors Are Just as Effective as Full-Time Faculty Members

See  http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm01/erm016w.html 

Dirty Little Secret #5
Seat-Time Measures Don't Measure Seat Time

One of the most widely used measures in higher education is the Carnegie Unit of Instruction.  Ostensibly, the Carnegie Unit measures "time on task"--the amount of time that students spend with instructors.  Time on task is considered a "best practice" in undergraduate education,⁶ but the dirty little secret is that student time spent on a task is not generally what the Carnegie Unit measures.  What it usually measures is the amount of time for which a course is scheduled.  It doesn't measure time on task for the simple reason that attendance isn't required at most institutions.  In many traditional classes, a student who shows up only for the mid-term and final exams, and hands in required assignments, won't be directly penalized.

The situation is more acute in this age of electronically mediated instruction.  Here the Carnegie Unit is an obvious anachronism. This realization is at least partially behind the initiatives of accrediting bodies that now require a much greater emphasis on assessing student learning--that is, on measuring the outcome rather than the input.

But measuring outcomes is difficult, as innovators have discovered.  Like the old saying about the weather, everybody talks about it, but nobody (or at least a relatively small number) does anything about it.  Inputs are easy to measure, though, and so higher education clings to outdated measures like the Carnegie Unit as if they were articles of faith. That presents a problem if student learning is the goal: when we are concerned about how long a student's rear end is in a seat, we are concerned about the wrong end of the student.

Family Therapy

Well, there it is--the elephant in the living room has been uncloaked.  There are likely a few more dirty little secrets lurking among us, but enough already.  Higher education will probably never be one big happy family.  We are an awfully diverse bunch, we tend to be argumentative by nature, and we seem to like it that way.  Besides, nothing says that we all have to be the same--or that being the same would be a good thing.  But we can learn from one another, and the good news is that there is nothing particularly earthshaking about the secrets revealed above.  Higher education does not have to give up its emphasis on research, which has, after all, built in the United States and Canada the greatest research infrastructure and capability in the world.  What is needed is much greater attention to student learning--how it happens, the conditions under which it occurs best, and how to measure it.  Then college and university faculty must prepare themselves to manage that process.

Now, will you please move that elephant? It's blocking the television.

Notes

^1.    We here use Ernest L. Boyer's term.  See Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (Princeton, N.J.: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1990).

^2.   Stephen D. Brookfield, The Skillful Teacher: On Technique, Trust, and Responsiveness in the Classroom (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990).

^3.   Boyer, Scholarship Reconsidered.

^4.   Judith M. Gappa and David W. Leslie, The Invisible Faculty: Improving the Status of Part-Timers in Higher Education (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993).

^5.   Edward E. Lawler III, "Challenging Traditional Research  Assumptions," in Edward E. Lawler III et al., Doing Research That Is Useful for Theory and Practice (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985).

^6.   See A. W. Chickering and Z. F. Gamson, "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," Wingspread Journal 9, no. 2 (1987).  See also AAHE Bulletin, March 1987.

External Auditing of Information Security: Perception Versus Reality

A message from E. Scribner [escribne@NMSU.EDU]

One client's view of security-related external audit procedures:

"Security Journal: Annual Audits Target Security, But Miss Mark"

http://www.computerworld.com/itresources/rcstory/0,4167,KEY73_STO66354,00.html 

Ed Scribner 
New Mexico State

Jensen Comment:  The above article is very timely and very disturbing.  A quotation is shown below:

Perception vs. Reality

When I first started working in the security world, I looked forward to external audits. I saw the auditors as independent experts who could review objectively what I had been trying to achieve and give me pointers on how to improve. I expected a strong report that would help keep management support for my security initiatives.

Think you could do it better as an information systems auditor? Pass the Certified Information Systems Auditor exam and perhaps you’ll be providing companies like mine with more thorough security assessments. This Web site includes conferences and training programs as well as exam information.

Read Kevin Van Dixon’s “Spoof Bounce” paper at the SANS Institute Web site to see the kind of risk that having a predictable IP identification can cause.

This paper on TCP/IP “spoofing sets” shows how technically esoteric bugs get, but the threat is real.

The annual audit is just one hoop security managers in financial services organizations must jump through. These 23 other regulatory agencies all have an impact as well.

Anomaly-based intrusion-detection systems are in their infancy, but interesting projects such as these provide valuable security services.

Now I know the process much better. I don't look forward to external audits; I just prepare my list of user accounts and logical access controls. To be polite, I play the game properly: The auditors come, and I provide an hourlong presentation about our work this year: the deployment of personal firewalls to every desktop, the extension of our intrusion-detection systems from signature-based to anomaly-based, the automated virus update process and the delivery of dual Internet connections to provide some protection against distributed denial-of-service attacks.

They listen—the fresh graduate auditor looking wide-eyed on his day out of the office to earn some billable time, the older auditor looking harried and lost. Then they nod and ask to run their cheapo in-house scanner software on our domain controller. They don't ask to run it on our production domain controller, but on our corporate desktop domain controller. Of course we refuse, because it's untested software and we have a change-control process for that sort of thing.

They look surprised, but we save the day by asking what information they require. They list the usual: account name, privileges, last log-in and so on. We run a shiny report from our vulnerability assessment systems and hand it over in hard copy. The graduate looks crestfallen, realizing he'll be spending tonight reading it to find something—anything—to report.

A week later, their report arrives with a spurious "medium risk" assigned to information security because, out of the thousands of accounts they reviewed, they found one that hadn't been used for a few weeks.

I suppose I shouldn't be bitter. If they did a proper job, they might find many problems, and we'd look bad. And we'd never hire them again. It's a nice, comfortable arrangement that helps both sides—the auditors don't have to do any real work (apart from that poor graduate), and we don't get any real hassle. But how are we supposed to get better unless we are under pressure?

I can't imagine what it must be like on the other side of this farce—why would you become an auditor? Now that I've seen the time they can allocate to their reviews, I realize they just don't have the time to get to the bottom of anything until external factors force them to investigate.

So will auditors who are too underfunded to find anything guarantee me a nice, healthy bonus? I wish. My management is well aware of the depth of investigation involved in an annual audit. Instead, they will be measuring my performance based against my objectives set at the beginning of the year.

The rest of the article is at http://www.computerworld.com/itresources/rcstory/0,4167,KEY73_STO66354,00.htm

Trinity University students may access the article at J:\courses\acct5342\readings\ExternalAudits 

My threads on related issues are in "Opportunities of E-Business Assurance & Security: Risks in Assuring Risk" at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/assurance.htm 

If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is fully enforced, stations will be unable to afford to webcast their tunes

"Why college radio fears the DMCA," by Mark L. Shahinian, Salon, December 13, 2001 --- http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/13/college_webcast/print.html 

In the heady days of the late 1990s, Internet radio broadcasts were a poster child for the free flow of information over the Web. But if a 1998 federal law is fully enforced, webcasting could be just a fond memory for college radio.

Under the terms of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), radio stations around the country are supposed to pay thousands of dollars in annual fees to broadcast streaming audio over the Web. Managers of college and community stations say while their commercial counterparts may be able to pay the fees, their stations don't have the cash and will shut down their webcasts.

The 1998 law came up on Capitol Hill Thursday, as members of the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property held an oversight hearing on how temporary copies stored on computers should be counted when calculating copyright fees.

The hearing, said congressional staffers, was an early skirmish in a battle to defang the DMCA and transfer power from record companies back to broadcasters.

Webcasting was once touted as an example of the Internet's leveling power -- it allows small local stations to reach Internet users all over the world. And college stations, which run tight budgets and eclectic playlists, fit the webcast bill perfectly. But record companies don't like webcasting, with its potential for copying and distributing unlimited digital copies of songs.

Under long-standing U.S. copyright law, broadcasters pay a coalition of songwriters' groups to air music over the Internet and the airwaves. But until the DMCA, performers and record companies did not have the rights to royalties when stations played their music. As part of the 1998 law, Congress allowed performers and record companies to start collecting fees on songs sent over the web, said Joel Willer, a mass communications professor at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. There are still no performer fees for regular airwave broadcasts.

But until now, the law has yet to be fully enforced. If it is, college radio on the Web will be in trouble.

According to Bob Kohn, founder of eMusic.com, and author of a book on music licensing, classic Beltway dealmaking partially explains why radio stations are being asked to pay performers for webcasts,

As the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act came together, says Kohn, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Digital Music Association, or DiMA, struck a deal: The DiMA, made up of webcasting heavies such as MTV, wanted to shut small webcasters out of the market. The RIAA wanted money for its artists and record companies.

The RIAA got their fees -- and the fees effectively strangled the interest in small-time webcasting, says Kohn. The fees may end up doing the same for college webcasting.

Both the RIAA and the DiMA strongly disagreed with Kohn's characterizations.

"That's just pathetic," says Jonathan Potter, head of the DiMA. "The MTVs and AOLs of the world have spent millions to argue for lower rates for everybody." Agreeing to webcast fees was painful, and was only done because members of the DiMA, faced with huge lawsuits over copyright infringement, had their back to the wall, says Potter.

Will Robedee, general manager of KTRU at Rice University in Houston, is trying to pull together a coalition of college radio stations to change the DMCA. Some fees are acceptable, but college stations shouldn't have to pay anywhere near what the big commercial stations pay, says Robedee. The law makes some provision for special treatment of nonprofit stations, but Robedee wants guarantees of substantially lower fees

The law also includes requirements that stations report every song played -- requirements, says Robedee, that would be impossible for low-budget, nonautomated stations to meet.

"There is a public interest in having these stations webcasting," Robedee said, citing exposure given to unknown bands, and the eclectic playlists that characterize college radio.

Still, performers deserve payment for their songs, says Jano Cabrera, spokesman for the RIAA. "We think that the law makes sense because artists and record companies who invest time, energy and resources should be compensated."

The fees, if implemented, would mean the end of webcasting at KALX, the University of California at Berkeley's radio station, says KALX general manager Sandra Wasson.

KALX pays a total of $623 per year to songwriters (as opposed to performers) to play music over the Web. The fee is low, Wasson said, because KALX doesn't run advertisements. If the recording industry's fee proposal goes through, KALX would have to dish out $10,000 to $20,000 a year in webcasting fees, Wasson said. And the fees would be retroactive to 1998.

"On our small budget, there's just no way we can afford those amounts," says Wasson, who also notes that KALX's $200,000 yearly budget is huge compared to most college stations.

The recording industry and broadcasters are battling in front of a federal arbitration panel over just how high those fees should be. The RIAA, representing performers, is asking for 0.4 cents per listener per song. Broadcasters want fees many times lower. Record companies and performers will split the fees equally, Cabrera said.

Robedee, at Rice, hopes a new bill intended to gut the Millennium Copyright Act will include protections for college stations.

The Music On-Line Competition Act is designed to break the hammerlock the recording industry has over music distribution, says Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah. Cannon co-authored the bill along with Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va.

Continued at http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/12/13/college_webcast/print.html

Bob Jensen laments the DMCA from an educator's perspective at 
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm 

Innovation of the Week

"Distributed computing's prime moment," by Stephen Shankland, ZD Net News, December 13, 2001 --- http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100648,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02 

A 20-year-old in Owen Sound, Canada, has found the world's largest known prime number using a mere desktop computer. But he didn't work alone: His system was part of a 210,000-machine quasi-supercomputer stretched across the globe. Using a computer with an 800MHz chip from Advanced Micro Devices, Michael Cameron found the prime number on Nov. 14, according to Entropia. The San Diego company sells software to enable "distributed computing," which harnesses the unused processing abilities of computers scattered across the Internet.

Although the arrival of profit motive has transformed distributed computing, its roots remain in academic pursuits such finding optimal Golomb rulers or alien radio signals.

Cameron's computer found the number, but he shares credit with others: George Woltman, who founded the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) and wrote the search software, and Entropia founder Scott Kurowski, who created the network system called PrimeNet that governs the 210,000 computers that are part of the effort.

Prime numbers, once a mathematical curiosity but now crucial to encrypted communications, are numbers greater than one that are divisible only by one and the number itself. Cameron was participating in a project to search for a particular type of prime number called a Mersenne prime.

The number that Cameron discovered--2 to the 13,466,917th power minus 1--has 4,053,946 digits. In order to cram his discovery onto a 29-inch-by-40-inch poster sold by Perfectly Scientific, the number is printed in a tiny 1.37-point font and read with a magnifying glass.

Mersenne primes are named after Marin Mersenne, a French monk born in 1588 who investigated a particular type of prime number: 2 to the power of "p" minus one, in which "p" is an ordinary prime number.

Mersenne primes are much rarer than ordinary primes. The GIMPS effort, exhaustively searching for possible candidates since 1996, has been responsible for discovering the five most recent examples. Altogether, 39 have been discovered so far.

Cameron's computer took 42 days to verify that the number was a Mersenne prime. After that, researchers using a workstation took three weeks to confirm the work.

Prime numbers are needed for encrypted communications such as a Web browser's Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology that makes it harder to sniff out credit card numbers or other private information. But those systems typically use primes that are merely 300 or so digits, said Stanford University mathematician Dan Boneh.

"The large Mersenne primes are not very useful," Boneh said, though finding one will grant a person 15 minutes of fame.

Mathematical hobbyists have provided online versions of Cameron's number written out in decimal form or in words.

Searching for Mersenne primes is computationally intense, but it is a problem that's known as "embarrassingly parallel," which means it can easily be broken down into independent parts that separate computers tackle. Many supercomputer problems take another form, requiring high-speed communication between separate computers or requiring that a problem be solved one step at a time with little opportunity for sharing among many systems.

Parallel computing tasks aren't merely academic. Sun Microsystems and Intel use distributed computing software to help design microprocessors, and companies such as Entropia, Turbolinux, Platform Computing, Parabon Computation and United Devices have software that can be used for work in genetics, pharmaceuticals or financial services. Typically, this software is used within a single corporation rather than on strangers' computers across the Internet.

The concept of distributed computing is closely related to "grid" computing, which unites computers and storage systems into a single pool of resources. The National Science Foundation is among those interested in the concept, devoting $53 million to one grid.

Continued at http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,5100648,00.html?chkpt=zdnnp1tp02

Innovation of the Future

"A new spin on computing UC scientists suggest way to harness electrons for processors," by Carl T. Hall, San Francisco Chronicle, December 10, 2001 --- http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/10/MN230810.DTL  

Some radically new ways of building computers are starting to take shape as scientists venture ever deeper into the weird realm of quantum mechanics.

A team of researchers at the University of California at Santa Barbara has taken a key step by suggesting for the first time a practical way to bring the elusive phenomenon known as "electron spin" under precise control.

Experts said it opens up a path toward a whole new style of computing, one that is expected to be particularly useful at performing calculations that stymie conventional machines, such as breaking complex codes and searching huge databases at lightning speed.

"We're trying to explore how to go about building real quantum devices," said David Awschalom, a physicist and director of the Center for Spintronics and Quantum Computation at UC Santa Barbara.

Although such devices are a long way off, experts say the basic scientific foundation is being laid for machines capable of exploiting the quirky behavior of matter at the scale of individual atoms and subatomic particles.

"Quantum computers are proving to be very difficult to build, for many reasons, but one of them is how do you get these little quantum elements to behave the way you want them to," said Mark Kubinec, a chemist at the University of California at Berkeley.

Awschalom reported the results of his latest adventures in the quantum world last week in the journal Nature. The experiments were among the first under a $1.2 billion research initiative launched by the state of California.

The high-profile effort, announced last December by Gov. Gray Davis, includes corporate partnerships and four new "Centers for Science and Innovation" being created at UC campuses throughout the state.

Continued at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/10/MN230810.DTL 

PDA reliability has got to get better, says David, but it won't until we stop thinking about PDAs as traditional computers. http://clickthru.online.com/Click?q=0a-ZnBCIrrVci48ArtKshNYSOuR 

Online Guide to Eastern Shorebirds (Science, Ecology) http://www.a2z4birders.com/cgi-bin/birds 

A "shopping list for terrorist organizations" is being distributed by the Customs Service to businesses as a guide to guard against future attacks --- http://www.wirednews.com/news/conflict/0,2100,48993,00.html 

Book Recommendation: "'Good Enough' isn't enough: Nine Challenges for Companies That Choose to Be Great"

Mediocrity. It's the comfortable curse that a company can live with...but not grow with. And according to business writer, thinker, and consultant Alan Weiss, if mediocrity continues long enough, it can deteriorate into paralysis and business failure. In "'Good Enough' isn't enough," Weiss declares war on the shrug- and-smile culture that maintains a sparkling appearance while allowing gross inefficiency and concealed incompetence to fester.