New Bookmarks
Year 2005 Quarter 3:  July 1 - September 30 Additions to Bob Jensen's Bookmarks
Bob Jensen at Trinity University

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

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

Choose a Date Below for Additions to the Bookmarks File

July 31               July 15

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September 30, 2005

 

 

Bob Jensen's New Bookmarks on September 30, 2005
Bob Jensen at Trinity University 

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

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

Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/ 
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.  Think it over 
http://www.inlibertyandfreedom.com/Flash/Think_It_Over.swf

Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq --- http://www.costofwar.com/ 




Click Here for Tidbits and Quotations Between September 16 and September 30

Click Here for Humor Between September 16 and September 30

Click here for commercialization corruption of higher education --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book05q3.htm#EducationCommercialization

Click here for business school ranking controversies --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book05q3.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings

For Fraud Updates go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm

For my Tidbits Directory go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbitsDirectory.htm

My communications on "Hypocrisy in Academia and the Media" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisy.htm 

My  “Evil Empire” essay --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/hypocrisyEvilEmpire.htm

My unfinished essay on the "Pending Collapse of the United States" --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm 




Economics is the only field in which two people can get a Nobel Prize for saying exactly the opposite thing.
Economist Jokes --- http://netec.mcc.ac.uk/JokEc.html


Jensen in a Blue Suit:  The head is somewhat familiar but where did that body come from?

September 26, 2005 message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

Amy,

I agree with you, we wouldn't want Bob any other way. Bob is so energetic, he sends out links to all the interesting and related sites that I could ever possibly use. I recall when Ed tatooed a Nike swoosh on Bob's forehead. I've come to think of Bob as Superman in a crew cut. Can anybody come up with this image?

David Albrecht

September 27, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Amy and David,

Thank you for the kudos. I hate to take too much credit for some things that are mostly due to circumstance.

My wife is in New Hampshire awaiting my retirement from teaching in May. Aside from short visits once each month this fall and less next spring due to risks of blizzards in the mountains, I don't have much else to do besides work seven days per week. I've never really handled leisure very well.

I'm too old (and too poor) to chase wild women, and my single malt allotment is one ounce per day. In some ways the AECM is my therapy. Many years ago I was a library crawler in the stacks. I'm still a library crawler, but the stacks I wander through are now on the Web.

The example that I'm trying to set in academe is one of open sharing. My hope that some of our many lurkers will be become sharers in the likes of Jensen, Dunbar, Albrecht, Beresford, Fordham, Williams, Jagdish 1, Jagdish 2, Bonicker, Sansing, Campbell, Scribner, and the various others who weekly make the AECM something special. I include in this list the many of you who make less frequent but often more useful comments/replies on the AECM. I am truly grateful when we hear from subscribers outside the United States (even you Mac) who help to make this a smaller world and closer world.

And what I really like is the academic way in which we can vigorously debate issues without taking anything personally, even when Fordham and Williams go off on lengthy and sometimes emotional tangents (I love it). I'm actually grateful when Sansing, Williams, and others point out my errors and shortcomings. They do a great service to me personally by helping me to learn and to keep me from spreading long-lasting errors on the AECM.

What often disappoints me is that some lurkers need to be specifically prodded to share. They only tell us about their experiences with a type of software or database when a Dunbar or somebody else specifically requests a response. It would be better if they shared their experiences early on with new software and databases and interesting Websites before being prompted to reply on the AECM. Richard Campbell is very good about early-on sharing with software.

And I would truly like to inspire some of our younger and newer members of this profession to share more frequently with us. It seems like our most active contributors are getting along somewhat in years. We need to learn more from younger whippersnappers. I also wish that more of the leading current researchers in our top journals more openly shared on the AECM. It would be great if they discussed their research with us.

I'm forever grateful the Barry Rice for starting this listserv and the rest of you who truly work at making it one of the better forums in the world in terms of adding value to our teaching, our research, and even our entertainment.

Thanks for the good times,

Please turn up your speakers and
Imagine All the People --- http://www.jessiesweb.com/imagine.htm 
If the sound does not commence after 30 seconds, scroll to the bottom of the page and turn it on

Bob Jensen

September 27, reply from David Albrecht (using a picture provided by Ed Scribner)

Ed,

I believe you have captured the vision I have of Bob!

Dave

At 05:41 PM 9/27/2005 -0600, Ed Scribner wrote:

 


Stupid questions you may be asked in interviews

"Stupid Interview Questions," by Liz Ryan, Business Week, September 21, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/StupidIQ 

Where do you see yourself in five years?
This is the great-granddaddy of goofy questions, and I give you permission, if you have any misgivings about a job opportunity, to walk out the door when you hear it. It's such a time-waster that only the most hidebound interviewers will utter it, but it lives on.

Here's why it's dumb. No company will guarantee you a job for five years, much less a career path. To construct such a plan for yourself, you'd have to make predictions about industries, companies, and your likes and dislikes that could only serve to constrain your choices. And in any case, why is it so all-fired important to have a dang career plan in mind? Every successful entrepreneur and many top corporate people will tell you their key to success: I did what I felt driven to do at the moment.

So when you get asked this question, you can say: "I intend to be happy and productive five years from now, working at a job I love in a company that values my talents" and leave it at that. Or you can give the expected answer and say: "I hope to be three levels up the ladder, here at Happy Corp." Or you can say: "I hope to own this company," just to shake things up.

But for an interviewer to ask the question at all is a bad sign. Come on, people! There are millions of thoughts in the human brain. Can we change the ones we use in job interviews every decade or so?

If you were an animal/a can of soup/some other random object, which one would you be?
  This is a question typically asked of new grads, because it's considered cute. It's supposed to test how people think. But it's asinine. You can pretend to think about your answer for a moment (eyes to the ceiling, chin resting on hand) and then come up with something. Or stare blankly at the interviewer and say, deadpan: "Are you serious?" Or try one of these answers:

(Animal) "Oh, any crepuscular animal would do well for me -- a rabbit or a bat, perhaps." (Crepuscular means most active during dawn and dusk, so you'll get to show off your extensive vocab.)

(Soup) "Probably the low-sodium chicken broth." Fix the interviewer with a penetrating gaze -- she won't know whether you're mocking her imbecilic question or are deadly serious.

What are your weaknesses?
By now, such a large percentage of the job-seeking public has gotten clued in on the politically correct answer to this one -- which is, "I'm a hopeless workaholic" -- that the question's utility is limited. But it's also offensive.

This is a job interview, not a psychological exam. It's one thing for an interviewer to ask you what you do particularly well. It's another thing to ask what you don't do well and expect to get a forthright answer -- in a context where it's clear to both parties that you're being weeded in or out. The most honest answer might be this: "That's for me to know and you to find out." But that won't help your chances.

So if you can't bear to repeat the "workaholic" line, I'd say something that is true of yourself but also terribly common -- like the fact that you get bored easily, or prefer numbers to people or vice versa. None of these is actually a weakness, but that's O.K.

What in particular interested you about our company?
Now, on one level this is a reasonable question. If you say: "I'm interested in this job because it's three blocks from my apartment," you might not be the world's best candidate. But the disingenuous, and therefore offensive, aspect of this question is that it assumes that you have unlimited job opportunities and have pinpointed this one because of some dazzling aspect of the role or the company.

I mean, please. Most of the job-seeking population is living on the lower two-thirds of Maslow's pyramid, where the most appealing thing about any job is that you got the darned interview. Why am I interested? Because you guys called me back. But you can't say that, so you have to rhapsodize about the company's wonderful products and services and the world-class management team and so on.

Now, it's important to show that you know a lot about the company. But you have lots of ways to demonstrate that in an interview (and lots of ways for the interviewer to ask you to do so) without pretending that the company had to fight every employer in town to get an audience with you. Everybody involved knows the company is shredding 10 times the number of résumés it's reading, so let's not pretend it was your breathtaking credentials that got you the interview. It was the fact that the company responded to your overture, unlike 90% of the employers you contacted.

Below the director level or so, where it might be reasonable to assume you sought out the company for particular job-hunting attention, it's not necessary to pretend that you carefully chose it from a raft of others pursuing you. So unless you approached the outfit in the absence of a posted job opportunity, it's just silly to ask: "Why us?"

Rather, the interviewer can say: "When you saw our ad on Monster.com, what made you respond?" And, of course, the logical answer is: "Because I know I can do the job that was posted." Duh. No one said job-hunting was easy.

What would your past managers say about you?
This is a fine question, but it's not a true interview question. It's an intelligence question. It's like the question on one of those "honesty" tests that are becoming more and more popular in the hiring process (to add insult to injury, they're often called Personality Profiles): "Do you think it's O.K. to steal from your employer?"

These are intelligence questions because you have to have the intelligence to know the answer in order to be smart enough to go and get a job.

The trick here is to say something sufficiently witty or pithy to make you stand out from the crowd, because the standard answers are so tired: My managers would say that I'm hard-working, loyal, reliable, and a great team player. Snoozeville.

Why not try: My past managers would say that I was an outstanding individual contributor who also supported the team 100%. Or: My managers would say that I came up with breakthrough solutions while never losing track of the bottom line. You can probably dream up something better.

The point is, this is a softball: Don't think too much about it. It says more about the interviewer (who lacks the moxie to think up unique or penetrating questions) than it ever will about you.

The secret of good job interviewers is that they never ask traditional, dorky interview questions. They don't need to. They jump into a business conversation that does three powerful things in a one-hour chat:

a) Gets you excited about this opportunity (or, as valuably, makes it clear that you and this job are not a good fit)
b) Reveals to the interviewer how you'll fit into the role and the company, based on your background, perspective, temperament, and ideas
c) Gives you a ton of new information about the job, the management, the goals, the culture, and what life at this joint would be like.

If any of this doesn't happen, it's a problem. If you're lukewarm on the job when you leave the interview, or if you don't feel you've had a chance to show what you know and how you think, or -- worst of all -- if the interviewer used your time together to satisfy his need for more information about you while sharing almost nothing about the job, that's an enormous red flag.

And if you get called back for a second interview while you're still information-deprived, say so. "I'm interested in learning more about the opportunity before a second interview," you can say. "Would a phone call with the hiring manager be an effective way to help me get up to speed?" That kind of suggestion respects the hiring manager's time and won't waste yours on a second, no-new-data interview.

Try it. You might save yourself some aggravation -- along with some extra time you can use to work on your five-year career plan and on tackling those pesky weaknesses of yours before the next interview.

Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education

If we are really concerned about academic standards, then we should apply those standards uniformly to the University of Phoenix and the major universities now listed in the Top 25 NCAA Division 1 football, basketball, and baseball rankings.

Battle Over Academic Standards Weighs On For-Profit Colleges
Now Congress appears poised to pass legislation that favors the for-profits, a group of heavily marketed schools that are often owned by publicly traded companies. Traditional colleges -- the public and private nonprofit institutions from the Ivy League to state universities that long have formed the backbone of U.S. higher education -- are fighting the changes. The traditional colleges question the rigor of many of these newer rivals, which offer degrees in such subjects as auto repair and massage therapy but have also branched out into business and other courses of study. The eight regional associations that have long set standards for traditional colleges recognize only a few of the thousands of for-profit colleges. These gatekeepers evaluate everything from the faculty's level of preparedness to the quality of libraries. Meanwhile, some for-profit graduates have been left with heavy debts and unfulfilled goals.
John Hechinger, "Battle Over Academic Standards Weighs On For-Profit Colleges:  Many Traditional Schools Don't Accept Degrees; Congress Ponders New Law," The Wall Street Journal,  September 30, 2005; Page A1 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112804419660556426,00.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

Jensen Comment
I remind readers that there is a definitional definitional difference between the commercialization of colleges and the corporate (or for-profit) colleges.  Commercialization of not-for-profit colleges is in many ways a much more serious (at least much bigger) problem as is noted by former Harvard President Derek Bok --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book05q3.htm#EducationCommercialization

The debate is really not over distance versus non-distance education except from the standpoint where both non-profit (even Harvard) and for-profit (notably the University of Phoenix) might try to cut costs and use distance education as a cash cow.  Bok lists this as one of his three most serious problems with the commercialization of non-profit universities.  For example, the 100,000 online students at the University of Wisconsin provide a serious source of revenue.

The so-called corporate model is simply a form of ownership that allows newer colleges and training schools to raise equity capital for financing new operations.  I personally don't think the model is necessarily bad per se.  Some corporate universities are quite rigorous and prestigious.  These typically are affiliated with prestigious corporations and consulting firms that help draw quality students into the programs.  The problem is that most for-profit schools are newer institutions that do not have established reputations required for drawing top students.  A university can never have academic respect without quality students.  In spite of Jay Leno's continued snide remarks about community college students, some of these students have great abilities and become outstanding students.  Jay now has dug himself into a hole on this one by ignoring appeals from community colleges to cease and desist.

My bottom line advice is to be careful about definitions.  Commercialization is an enormous problem for academic standards, curricula, and program growth/decline in not-for-profit as well as for-profit colleges.  So is the problem of academic standards when full-time basketball players from UCLA sue the university after four years because they still can't read.

If we are really concerned about academic standards, then we should apply those standards uniformly to the University of Phoenix and the major universities now listed in the Top 25 NCAA Division 1 football, basketball, and baseball rankings.

My added comments on this are at  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book05q3.htm#EducationCommercialization


Community colleges are upset with Jay Leno
Leno had perturbed leaders of two-year colleges with his occasional cracks and gibes questioning the intelligence of those who’ve attended the institutions, and by ignoring letters they’d written urging him to stop. So in June, Young, president of Ohio’s Northwest State Community College, hit upon an idea: inviting (daring?) Leno to hop on one of his Harley-Davidsons and ride with the motorcycle-driving Young while talking about community colleges. The comedian (or, more likely, his publicists) ignored that invitation, too, and so last month, the college announced that Young and some of her aides would head out to Hollywood, where Leno tapes “The Tonight Show,” on a seven-day swing in which they would also tout the crucial role that two-year institutions in preparing workers and educating lifelong learners.
Doug Lederman, "Letting Leno Have It (Gently)," Inside Higher Ed, September 29, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/29/leno


How can you play 70 games of baseball, half of which are out of town, and pretend to go to class?
"The Brutal Truth about College Sports," by Skip Rozin, The Wall Street Journal, September 15, 2005; Page D7 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112673590440041002,00.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep

Big time college sports are a mess. While headlines hype the new football season and speculate on an eventual champion, accounts surface daily of athletes' stealing, assaulting women and getting busted on alcohol and drug charges. And when a title game is played, shadowing the coverage will be news of woeful graduation rates.

Meanwhile, the juggernaut that is college sports keeps getting bigger, with more television networks airing more games, not just on weekends but during the week, and colleges expanding their seasons to meet TV's unquenchable thirst -- up to 40 games each basketball season and 70 in baseball.

. . .

College sports' current crisis has generated unprecedented reform efforts by groups inside and outside the establishment. The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics and the 16-year-old Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletes, for example, both work in cooperation with the NCAA. The Drake Group has bypassed the NCAA; its plan for full disclosure of all classes taken by athletes was read into the Congressional Record in March by Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky in hopes of getting Congress involved.

Their combined efforts have netted tougher NCAA academic requirements, but reform energy still gets bogged down in issues like the political correctness of team names. Substantive improvement has been minimal. The system is broken, and the impact is far reaching.

"The transgressions that universities commit in the name of winning sports undermine the values of the institution," says Derek Bok, former president of Harvard. "In all too many cases, they tarnish the reputation of the university by compromising its admissions standards, its grading practices, and the academic integrity of its curriculum."

To create winning teams, reformers believe, universities break rules on training, on the allocation of funds to athletics, and most frequently on athletes' eligibility. Deception begins early, when schools recruit sports prodigies who are ill-equipped -- or uninterested -- in academics. Popular rhetoric maintains that these students are preparing for pro careers, just as medical students are training to be doctors. This is naïve thinking. The best 1% to 3% may become professionals, but far too many of the rest are left with no degree and a clouded future.

"The biggest problem is recruiting fine athletes who should not be in college," says Andy Geiger, who retired this summer as Ohio State's athletic director after 11 years that included a national football championship and scandals in football and basketball. "Do we really want a gifted athlete at our school for any reason other than our own gain? Are we only in it to use these kids and then spit them out?"

At the core of the college sports problem is an obsession with winning. Winning is admittedly the goal in all competitions and is a treasured American characteristic, but universities are supposed to live by different standards from those that govern big business, the New York Yankees, or war.

Continued in article

September 15, 2005 reply from Carol Flowers [cflowers@OCC.CCCD.EDU]

Having gone through this with a son in sports, I find the whole thing a joke. I applauded the requirement of 12 units of C to stay eligible. However, I didn't realize they are not at class most of the semester -- they seem to be at away games most of the time. Scholarship offers came with tutorial help (tutoring turns out to be all but non existent (not to mention that you need to be in the area for the tutor to tutor). Sports and education don't mix. I only observed one team whose coach I respected for trying to enforce eligilbility (after the ball game the athletes went to dinner, then had a mandatory study hall from 8-9 pm at away games). However, I questioned how much the students absorbed at that hour and after a big game and dinner!!! But, kudos to the coach for attempting to keep "education" in the college experience.

Carol

Jensen Comment

I think the problem lies heavily with professional sports team owners.

College is a free way that they can filter out the best athletes who are put to the test and dump the majority of others who just don’t quite cut it. It would be analogous to sending all young people to war and then making professional soldiers out of the ones that win medals.

I think sports are important to the physical and social development of young people as well as giving them confidence and pride. But I like the way Trinity does it in NCAA Division 3 where there are no athletic scholarships and athletes are not dreaming of professional contracts.

Bob Jensen

September 15, 2005 reply from Paul Williams

Carol, et al,

You have pointed out the real problem in college athletics for the athlete. Of course it is hypocritical for the Wall Street Journal to harumph about college sports. College athletics is big business increasingly funded and promoted by big business. At NC State we have completed a third phase of a four phase renovation of the football stadium -- total projected cost over $100 million dollars. It sits beside the RBC Center (named after a corporation), where the Wolfpack plays basketball (and the Carolina Hurricanes play hockey) -- total cost $170 million. When all is said and done, there will be $300 million dollars invested in two college sports. Both facilities are plastered with ads for corporations and the luxury seating (the biggest cost of the facilities) is rented by corporations for the purpose of entertaining clients. Major college sports are entertainment, merely a medium for advertising and corporate promotion. Wealthy alumni and the business community are the prime movers behind the enormous investment in athletic facilities and the prime providers of the money. The university goes along because it has Title IX obligations it must finance and the big revenue sports are what fund it. Women's la crosse does not generate time on ESPN. And before we bash Title IX, the explosion in women's participation in sports at the collegiate level indicates that all women lacked was opportunity. Women crave the opportunity to participate in sport. Women and the men in the minor sports play for the love of playing. No lucrative pro career awaits a woman or man playing la crosse, but they work as hard at it as any of the revenue players.

What to do for the athletes since no university administrator is going to say let's just scrap our $300 million investment in facilities -- the alumni would have their head. Let's just quit being hypocritical about the "student athlete." Much of the problem is the NCAA and its rules that have a rather Victorian smell to them. Trivial behavior is criminalized by the NCAA in a vain attempt to foster a prissy rectitude that has never existed in the history of humankind.

When Tiger Woods was still a college player at Stanford he played at Bay Hill in Florida. Arnold Palmer wanted to meet with him, took him to lunch in the grill room, picked up the tab for a burger and fries and voila put Arnie, Tiger and Stanford in violation of NCAA rules. The tab was less than $20. There is no longer the amateur athlete -- look who competes for the US during the Olympics. The problem for the athlete is being a student AND an athlete at the same time.

Why don't we face the reality of big time college athletics and take the pressure off of the athlete? During the season, let the athletes play their sports -- why do they have to be a students at the same time? Every sport can have a season that corresponds to one semester or another. Football is played during the fall semester and the bowl season ends before the start of the second semester. So football players play football in the fall and are full time students during spring and summer. Basketball doesn't need to start in November. It could start after final exams in the fall and, instead of March madness, we could have April madness. Basketball players would be students in fall and summer semesters. There is no sport whose season could not be accommodated to just one school term or another. If a student wanted to and could take classes during the season, then all well and good. But they shouldn't be made to take them.

As Bernie Sliger, president of FSU when I was there, harped on constantly, "The more successful the athletic program, the more money people give to academics." It may be a brutal truth about college athletics, but most of the brutality is absorbed by the athletes because of archaic notions of the "scholar/athlete." And we on the academic side benefit as well. Those athletes bring a lot of resources to us academics, too. Perhaps a lot of the "crimes" athletic programs commit could be alleviated if we let young people be a scholar sometime and an athlete sometime, but quite expecting them to be both.

Paul Williams

September 15, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Paul,

Well said about the new NCS Stadium. This reminds me of Rochester/Simon School's new investment in "games" intended to lift its US News MBA program ranking from 26th into the Top 10 or Top 5. Has the Wolfpack ever made it into the media's Top 5 in basketball or football? Perhaps your new $300 million investment will pay off --- if that's the real anticipated payoff.

Also, I think you just made my point when choosing the word "hypocritical" when the WSJ reported a position harmful of big business. The WSJ is really two newspapers wrapped into one, where one of those "papers" is allowed to roam free and call it like some very good reporters roaming about.

In my September 14 edition of Tidbits, I wrote the following --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2005/tidbits050914.htm

How can the media and professors achieve greater credibility?
You probably observed that I quote a lot from both The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The New York Times (NYT).  Both have credibility in spite of their opposing biases on the editorial pages.  The WSJ is unapologetic in its biases for financial institutions and business enterprises.  And yet the WSJ is the best place to look for damning criticism of particular accounting firms, financial institutions, and corporations.  CEOs live in fear of WSJ reporters.  For example, when Enron was riding high, before the Watkins memo, WSJ reporters did some very clever investigations and wrote articles that commenced the slide of Enron share prices (particularly dogged reporters named John Emshwiller and Jonathan Weil).  The NYT sometimes has editorials that make me want to vomit.  But the Business Section of the NYT is one of the best places to go for balanced coverage of business and finance news.  

Certainly not all of my accounting professor friends agree with me about the WSJ.  David's Fordham's book length reply is just too long to paste in here.  Some others like Bobbi Lee agree with him.


The proof is in the pressure to change grades:  Repeating the same frauds year after year in academe
Louisiana State University has settled a lawsuit by a former instructor who said that she was pressured to change the grades of football players, the Associated Press reported. No details of the settlement were released and the university denied wrongdoing. Last year, LSU settled a similar suit for $150,000.
Inside Higher Ed, September 19, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/19/qt
 

Coach Takes the Test
More evidence that many universities are losing (or never had) quality control on athlete admissions and grading

The National Collegiate Athletic Association punished Texas Christian University’s men’s track program on Thursday for a set of rules violations that included some of the most egregious and unusual examples of academic fraud in recent history. They included an instance in which a former assistant coach took a final examination alongside a track athlete — with the consent of the faculty member in the course — and then swapped his version of the test with the athlete’s, allowing him to pass.
Doug Lederman, "NCAA Finds Fraud at TCU," Inside Higher Ed, September 23, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/23/tcu



Derek.Bock, Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Pr., 2003. 233p. alk. paper, $22.95 (ISBN 0691114129). LC 2002-29267.
Reviews are provided from many sources.  One review is at http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/crl2004/backjan2004/bokbookreview.htm

Athletics is the first area subject to Bok’s critique. Candidly and mercilessly, he summarizes the ugly history of intercollegiate football—its failed promise to "build character," its unsupportable claim to have helped minorities achieve a high-quality education, and its grievous undermining of academic standards. Students whose academic achievement and potential would hardly qualify them for careers in any learned profession are not only routinely admitted to universities of every quality but are even turned into national celebrities. Looking at the revenue-generating sports, mainly football and basketball, Bok informs the reader that as of 2001, some thirty coaches were earning in excess of a million dollars annually, far more than most college and university presidents. Bok strongly focuses on the almost complete disconnect between athletic prowess and academic achievement. He builds a powerful indictment:

What can intercollegiate sports teach us about the hazards of commercialization? First of all, the saga of big-time athletics reveals that American universities, despite their lofty ideals, are not above sacrificing academic values—even values as basic as admission standards and the integrity of their courses—in order to make money.

Indeed, Bok reaches the conclusion, described by him as "melancholy," that through their athletic programs, "universities have compromised the most fundamental purpose of academic institutions."

Turning to his second area, scientific research, Bok maintains that the record has been no less dismal and the battles between the worlds of intellect and industry no less ruthless: Scientists have been prohibited from publishing (or even discussing at conferences) results unfavorable to their commercial sponsors’ marketing goals. Companies have punished universities by threatening to withhold promised financial support should scientists dare to publish data unfavorable to sponsors’ interests. Researchers have been threatened with lawsuits, even grievously defamed. Companies have imposed a militarylike secrecy upon faculty who work with them, severely edited scholars’ reports, and even had their own staffs write slanted drafts to which university researchers were expected to attach their names. By Bok’s account, some elements of the commercial sector merely look upon faculty and graduate students as company agents—virtual employees, hired guns—charged to produce a stream of research from which will follow a stream of revenue for their businesses. Bok’s charges are not vague hints; he cites prestigious institutions, names researchers whose careers were jeopardized or damaged by threats and personal attacks, and provides many poignant details.

In the third area, higher education itself, Bok outlines the temptations of easy money, ostensibly available via universities’ willingness, indeed eagerness, to use the income from distance education (both domestically and abroad) to finance programs only indirectly linked to higher education. Bok further suggests that some schools willingly exploit the Internet more for the money than for any possible social benefit.

"Is everything in a university for sale if the price is right?" asks the book jacket. Are universities now ready to accept advertising within physical facilities and curricula? Will they permit commercial enterprises to put company names on the stadium, team uniforms, campus shuttle buses, book jackets sold at the campus bookstore, plastic cups at food service points, or even on home pages? Will universities sell the names of entire schools as well as of buildings? Worse yet, will some schools be tempted to accept endowed professorships to which the sponsors seek to attach unacceptable or harmful restrictions and conditions? There appears to be no end to the opportunities.

To respond to these and similar troubling questions, Bok’s two concluding chapters lay out practical steps the academic community might consider to avoid sinking into a quagmire of commercialism in which the academy is sure to lose control of both its integrity and its autonomy. Throughout his work, Bok reminds his readers of the obvious, but sometimes camouflaged (or ignored), distinction between the academy and commerce: The mission of the former is to learn, that of the latter to earn. Conflict between these missions is inevitable, and should it disappear, the university as we know it also may vanish. We may not like what replaces it.



In line with Bok's "Commercialization of Higher Education," a newer (2005) book explores the role of market forces in changing higher education — and the danger of market forces having too much influence

Three longtime observers of higher education explore the ways — positive and negative — that universities are changing in Remaking the American University (Rutgers University Press).  The authors are Robert Zemsky, a professor and chair of the Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania; Gregory R. Wegner, director of program development at the Great Lakes Colleges Association; and William F. Massy, a professor emeritus of higher education at Stanford University and currently president of the Jackson Hole Higher Education Group. The three authors recently responded (jointly) to questions about their new book.
Scott Jaschik"Remaking the American University," Inside Higher Ed, September 21, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/21/remaking
Q: Of the trends you examine, which ones are most worrisome to you?

A: What worries us most is that universities and colleges have become so preoccupied with succeeding in a world of markets that they too often forget the need to be places of public purpose as well. We are serious in arguing that universities and colleges must be both market smart and mission centered. Not surprisingly, then, we are troubled by how often today institutions allow their pursuit of market success to undermine core elements of their missions: becoming preoccupied with collegiate rankings, surrendering to an admissions arms race, chasing imagined fortunes through impulsive investments e-learning, or conferring so much importance on athletics as to alter the character of the academic community on campus.

By far the most troublesome consequence of markets displacing mission, though, is the reduced commitment of universities and colleges to the fulfillment of public purposes. More than ever before, these institutions are content to advance graduates merely in their private, individual capacities as workers and professionals. In the rush to achieve market success, what has fallen to the wayside for too many institutions is the concept of educating students as citizens — graduates who understand their obligations to contribute to the collective well-being as active participants in a free and deliberative society. In the race for private advantage, market success too often becomes a proxy for mission attainment.

Q: We’ve just come through rankings season, with U.S. News and others unveiling their lists. Do you have any hope for turning back the ratings game? Any ideas you would offer to college presidents who are fed up with it?

A: On this one there is no turning back — the rankings are here to stay. Two, frankly contradictory ideas are worth thinking about. First, university and college presidents should accept as fact that the rankings measure market position rather than quality. An institution’s ranking is essentially a predictor of the net price the institution can charge. The contrary idea is to make the rankings more about quality by having most institutions participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement and agree to have the results made public. Even then, we are not sure that prestige and market position would not trump student engagement.

Continued in article



In line with Bok's "Commercialization of Higher Education," a newer (2005) book explores the role of market forces in changing higher education — and the danger of market forces having too much influence
Three longtime observers of higher education explore the ways — positive and negative — that universities are changing in Remaking the American University (Rutgers University Press).  The authors are Robert Zemsky, a professor and chair of the Learning Alliance at the University of Pennsylvania; Gregory R. Wegner, director of program development at the Great Lakes Colleges Association; and William F. Massy, a professor emeritus of higher education at Stanford University and currently president of the Jackson Hole Higher Education Group. The three authors recently responded (jointly) to questions about their new book.
Scott Jaschik"Remaking the American University," Inside Higher Ed, September 21, 2005 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/09/21/remaking

Q: Of the trends you examine, which ones are most worrisome to you?

A: What worries us most is that universities and colleges have become so preoccupied with succeeding in a world of markets that they too often forget the need to be places of public purpose as well. We are serious in arguing that universities and colleges must be both market smart and mission centered. Not surprisingly, then, we are troubled by how often today institutions allow their pursuit of market success to undermine core elements of their missions: becoming preoccupied with collegiate rankings, surrendering to an admissions arms race, chasing imagined fortunes through impulsive investments e-learning, or conferring so much importance on athletics as to alter the character of the academic community on campus.

By far the most troublesome consequence of markets displacing mission, though, is the reduced commitment of universities and colleges to the fulfillment of public purposes. More than ever before, these institutions are content to advance graduates merely in their private, individual capacities as workers and professionals. In the rush to achieve market success, what has fallen to the wayside for too many institutions is the concept of educating students as citizens — graduates who understand their obligations to contribute to the collective well-being as active participants in a free and deliberative society. In the race for private advantage, market success too often becomes a proxy for mission attainment.

Q: We’ve just come through rankings season, with U.S. News and others unveiling their lists. Do you have any hope for turning back the ratings game? Any ideas you would offer to college presidents who are fed up with it?

A: On this one there is no turning back — the rankings are here to stay. Two, frankly contradictory ideas are worth thinking about. First, university and college presidents should accept as fact that the rankings measure market position rather than quality. An institution’s ranking is essentially a predictor of the net price the institution can charge. The contrary idea is to make the rankings more about quality by having most institutions participate in the National Survey of Student Engagement and agree to have the results made public. Even then, we are not sure that prestige and market position would not trump student engagement.

Continued in article


September 29, 2005 reply from Kim Robertson

Bob,

Somewhat related to your recent email: There is a "survey of higher education - The Brains Business" in the Sept 10, 2005 edition of The Economist magazine.

Kim

The Brains Business
For those of a certain age and educational background, it is hard to think of higher education without thinking of ancient institutions. Some universities are of a venerable age—the University of Bologna was founded in 1088, the University of Oxford in 1096—and many of them have a strong sense of tradition. The truly old ones make the most of their pedigrees, and those of a more recent vintage work hard to create an aura of antiquity.…
"The brains business," The Economist,  September 10, 2005 --- http://snipurl.com/BrainsBusiness

 




 

Business School Ranking Controversies

'03 Update | '02 Data | '01 Update | '00 Data | '99 Update | '98 Data | '96 Data

 
2004 rankings ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/04/?campaign_id=nws_mbaxp_oct10&link_position=link8


 


U.S. Top 30
1 Northwestern
2 Chicago
3 Pennsylvania
4 Stanford
5 Harvard
6 Michigan
7 Cornell
8 Columbia
9 MIT
10 Dartmouth
 
11 Duke
12 Virginia
13 NYU
14 UCLA
15 Carnegie Mellon
16 UNC Chapel-Hill
17 UC Berkeley
18 Indiana
19 Texas - Austin
20 Emory
 
21 Purdue
22 Yale
23 Washington U.
24 Notre Dame
25 Georgetown
26 Babson
27 Southern California
28 Maryland
29 Rochester
30 Vanderbilt


Non-U.S. Top 10
1 Queens
2 IMD
3 INSEAD
4 ESADE
  
5 London Business School
6 Western Ontario
7 IESE
  
8 HEC - Paris
9 Toronto
10 HEC - Montreal


U.S. Second Tier
•  Arizona State
•  Boston College
•  Boston University
•  Brigham Young
•  UC Irvine
•  Case Western
•  Georgia
  
•  Georgia Tech
•  Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
•  Iowa
•  Michigan State
•  Minnesota
•  Ohio State
•  Penn State
  
•  Rice
•  Southern Methodist
•  Thunderbird
•  Wake Forest
•  Washington
•  Wisconsin

Jensen Comment
These differ somewhat from how business school deans rank business schools in the  rankings --- http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba/brief/mbarank_brief.php

01. Harvard University (MA) 
02. Stanford University (CA)
03.  University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) 
04. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
      Northwestern University (Kellogg) (IL)
06. Dartmouth College (Tuck) (NH)
      University of California–Berkeley (Haas)
08. University of Chicago
09. Columbia University (NY)
10. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Ross)

Business Week's Executive MBA Rankings and Profiles ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/03/emba_rank.htm?campaign_id=nws_mbaxp_oct10&link_position=link9

The entire ranking system is now considered dysfunctional to program integrity and is being studied as a huge academic problem by the AACSB (See below)

MBA (Casino?) Games:  The house plays the odds and hopes to come out ahead!
Resorting to contests and prizes shows just how tough times are for full-time M.B.A. programs. The Graduate Management Admission Council reports that 72% of full-time M.B.A. programs experienced an application decline this year as more people opted to keep their jobs and seek a part-time, executive or online M.B.A. degree instead . . . Simon's business-strategy contest resulted from a challenge put to students on the school's advisory council to concoct ways to improve the M.B.A. program. As an incentive, alumni kicked in $10,000, half for the students with the best proposal and half to implement their idea. Several student projects focused on the application slump, which clearly is the most pressing issue at Simon. Applications were down 23% this year, following a 24% drop in 2004. This fall, the incoming class of about 110 students compares with 150 last year and 185 in 2003. "These are the toughest years in management education I have ever seen," says Dr. Zupan.
"MBA Program Hopes Online Game Will Lure Recruits with Prizes," The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2005; Page B12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112657077730738778,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace


Since curriculum revisions are not working well to reverse the slide of MBA applications, some universities not happy with their US News, Forbes, WSJ, and Business Week rankings may turn to gaming with sizeable rewards

Can an online game offering thousands of dollars in prizes reverse the slide in master of business administration applications? The University of Rochester certainly hopes so. Starting Sept. 26, potential M.B.A. applicants to Rochester's William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration will begin playing a business-simulation game that promises a full scholarship of more than $70,000 to the winner, plus smaller scholarships for the runners-up. The goal is to attract top-notch applicants who may never have heard of the Simon School but find the game, and the scholarship money, enticing. "We hope to get a little viral marketing going so that people spread the word that Simon is an innovative place worth taking a look at," says Dean Mark Zupan.
"MBA Program Hopes Online Game Will Lure Recruits with Prizes," The Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2005; Page B12 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112657077730738778,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

The following tidbits were in my August 29 edition of Tidbits:

Earlier threads on the business school ranking controversies

Business Week's Rankings of Business Schools
'03 Update | '02 Data | '01 Update | '00 Data | '99 Update | '98 Data | '96 Data

 

U.S. Top 30
1 Northwestern
2 Chicago
3 Pennsylvania
4 Stanford
5 Harvard
6 Michigan
7 Cornell
8 Columbia
9 MIT
10 Dartmouth
 
11 Duke
12 Virginia
13 NYU
14 UCLA
15 Carnegie Mellon
16 UNC Chapel-Hill
17 UC Berkeley
18 Indiana
19 Texas - Austin
20 Emory
 
21 Purdue
22 Yale
23 Washington U.
24 Notre Dame
25 Georgetown
26 Babson
27 Southern California
28 Maryland
29 Rochester
30 Vanderbilt


Non-U.S. Top 10
1 Queens
2 IMD
3 INSEAD
4 ESADE
  
5 London Business School
6 Western Ontario
7 IESE
  
8 HEC - Paris
9 Toronto
10 HEC - Montreal


U.S. Second Tier
•  Arizona State
•  Boston College
•  Boston University
•  Brigham Young
•  UC Irvine
•  Case Western
•  Georgia
  
•  Georgia Tech
•  Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
•  Iowa
•  Michigan State
•  Minnesota
•  Ohio State
•  Penn State
  
•  Rice
•  Southern Methodist
•  Thunderbird
•  Wake Forest
•  Washington
•  Wisconsin

Jensen Comment
These differ somewhat from how business school deans rank business schools in the  rankings --- http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/mba/brief/mbarank_brief.php

01. Harvard University (MA) 
02. Stanford University (CA)
03.  University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) 
04. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
      Northwestern University (Kellogg) (IL)
06. Dartmouth College (Tuck) (NH)
      University of California–Berkeley (Haas)
08. University of Chicago
09. Columbia University (NY)
10. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor (Ross)

The entire ranking system is now considered dysfunctional to program integrity and is being studied as a huge academic problem by the AACSB (See below)


From Jim Mahar's blog on August 26, 2005 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

 

What's Really Wrong With U.S. Business Schools?
by Harry DeAngelo, Linda DeAngelo, Jerold Zimmerman:

Wow, it sounds bad. I (Jim Mahar) am very glad I chose a small university (St. Bonaventure). However, the choice leads me to not really comment on the paper since being at a small university removes me from many (but not all) of the problems cited in the paper. Moreover, I do not feel I can add any value to what the authors say.

Rather I will only give you the abstract and link.

Abstract:
"U.S. business schools are locked in a dysfunctional competition for media rankings that diverts resources from long-term knowledge creation, which earned them global pre-eminence, into short-term strategies aimed at improving their rankings. MBA curricula are distorted by 'quick fix, look good' packaging changes designed to influence rankings criteria, at the expense of giving students a rigorous, conceptual framework that will serve them well over their entire careers. Research, undergraduate education, and Ph.D. programs suffer as faculty time is diverted to almost continuous MBA curriculum changes, strategic planning exercises, and public relations efforts. Unless they wake up to the dangers of dysfunctional rankings competition, U.S. business schools are destined to lose their dominant global position and become a classic case study of how myopic decision-making begets institutional mediocrity."
Cite:
DeAngelo, Harry, DeAngelo, Linda and Zimmerman, Jerold L., "What's Really Wrong With U.S. Business Schools?" (July 2005). http://ssrn.com/abstract=766404

Jensen Comment:
The DeAngelos and Jerry Zimmerman are leading advocates of capital market research and positivist methodology.  Harry and Linda are from the University of Southern California and Jerry is from the University of Rochester.  Their business schools rank 23 and 26 respectively in the latest US News rankings.  Their WSJ rankings are 23 and 20.

I think the authors overstate the problem with media rankings and curricula.  I don’t think curriculum choices or PR enter into the rankings in a big way.  Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton will almost always come out on top no matter what the curriculum or PR budget.  What counts heavily is elitism tradition and alumni networking (helps Harvard the most), concentration of researchers/names (helps Stanford the most), and insider tracks to Wall Street (helps Wharton the most).  These, in turn, affect the number of MBA applicants with GMAT scores hovering around 700 or higher.  The GMAT scores, in turn, impact most heavily upon media rankings.  The raters are looking for where the top students in the world are scrambling to be admitted.  Can the majority of applicants really tell us the difference between the business school curriculum at USC versus Stanford versus Rochester?  I doubt it!

Media rankings differ somewhat due to differences in the groups doing the rankings.  The US News rankings are done by AACSB deans who tend to favor schools with leading researchers.  The WSJ rankings are done by corporate recruiters who are impressed by the credentials of the graduating students and their interviewing skills (which might indirectly be affected by a curriculum that is more profession oriented and less geeky).

The major "media rankings" are given in the following sources as reported in Tidbits on August 19:
Business school rankings and profiles from Business Week Magazine ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/04/?campaign_id=nws_mbaxp_aug16&link_position=link6

The Wall Street Journal rankings of business schools --- http://online.wsj.com/page/0,,2_1103,00.html

US News graduate business school rankings --- http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/grad/rankings/rankindex_brief.php

August 27, 2005 reply from Dennis Beresford (University of Georgia)

Bob,

Thanks for this link. The DeAngelo, DeAngelo, and Zimmerman paper is quite interesting. Because football season doesn't start until next week, I had a little time to kill this afternoon and used it to read this paper.

My own rather short academic experience causes me to agree with the paper's assertion that MBA program rankings tend to drive much of what happens at a business school. We recently proudly reported that we were number 30 in the US News rankings (
without pointing out that there was a 30 way tie for that spot). And we also trumpeted the fact that the Forbes rankings just out reported that our MBA graduates earned $100,000 in starting pay vs. $40,000 when they entered the program. (I think the ghosts of Andersen must have developed those numbers.)

We went through a curriculum revision a couple of years ago and we now emphasize "leadership." (I suspect this puts us in the company of only about 90% of MBA programs that do the same.) Most of our classes are now taught in half semesters. Perhaps there is good justification for this but it seems to me to encourage a more superficial approach. And managerial accounting is no longer a required part of the curriculum in spite of our pointing out that most of the elite schools still require this important subject.

While I agree with the premise that MBA programs are focusing too much on rankings and short term thinking, I believe the paper's arguments on how to "cure the problem" aren't well supported. In particular, while I strongly agree with the idea that MBA programs should primarily help students develop critical thinking and analytic skills, I think the authors are too critical of the practical aspects of business education as described by Bennis and O'Toole in their earlier Harvard Business article. The authors of this paper seem to feel that more emphasis on research published in scholarly journals will bring more of a long-term focus to MBA education and will address the concerns about rankings, etc. I think a better response would be to balance the practical and theoretical - although I know that is a very hard thing to do.

As a final note, would you agree that the capital asset pricing model and efficient markets research "inspired" indexed mutual funds?
Asserting such a causal connection seems like a pretty big stretch to me.

Denny Beresford

August 29, 2005 response from Paul Williams at North Carolina State University

And we all know what rigorous conceptual framework these folks have in mind. This paper is the knee-jerk response to the Bennis/ O'Toole paper. This is an argument that has been going on since business schools were started. It's the on-going argument over case method vs modeling as the proper way to teach business.

Odd that such believers in market solutions should question what is obviously working -- would universities play this game if it didn't work? Or is it only universities that are irrational? (I'll bet Rochester and Southern Cal are playing the game, too. What kind of research do you suppose Bill Simon expects for his millions?) Passions run so high and retribution is swift. Note what happen to Bob Kaplan's service on the JAR board when he suggested (after he got some religion at Harvard) that case studies might be a worthwhile thing for us to consider.

Denny, et al:
You have made some very good points about blending. A very long time ago, Aristotle, in the Nichomachean Ethics, described three types of knowledge: techne, episteme, and phronesis. Techne = technical knowledge (how to bake a pie). Episteme = scientific knowledge. Phronesis (the highest form) = wisdom, i.e., the knowledge of goodness; how to be a good citizen. Business is a practice and the Harvard approach is one that acknowledges that "wisdom can't be told" (the title of the classic 1950s essay on the value of the case approach). Modelers miss a key element of management. It is not a constrained optimization problem, but a process of intervention. Experience matters


The ratings game is played because it pays off. Duke didn't have a graduate program in business until 1970 compared to UNC's, which predated Duke's by about 25 years. When Tom Keller became dean he had a stroke of genius and hired a public relations firm to promote the MBA. Duke always marketed itself from the day it was founded as the "Harvard of the South" and was able to attract wealthy Northeasterners not able to get into Ivy league schools. Now Duke is able to attract highly talented students, high priced faculty and big donattions (note that Wendy's founder Dave Thomas didn't raise millions for Eastern State U.).
Marketing works -- look how many pick-up trucks with 1975 technology under the hood got sold as Sport Utility Vehicles (Pick- up Trucks with Walls doesn't have the same ring). Half the battle at becoming the best is telling people you are, a fact every con man knows. People don't give money to Harvard because it needs it -- they give to Harvard to say they gave to Harvard. Do you think any of the terminally vain people who give money to get their names chiseled on the buildings do so because they have read all of the brillians academic papers people inside the building have produced? No, they give it because someone has told them that the people inside the building are writing brilliant academic papers.


It really becomes a post-modern moment when the people writing the papers truly believe they are brilliant.
 

You can read about the Bennis and O'Toole paper at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#AcademicsVersusProfession

September 7, 2005 Update

A report on the controversial paper by Harry DeAngelo,  Linda DeAngelo, and Jerry Zimmerman now appears in an AACSB report at   http://www.aacsb.edu/publications/enewsline/Vol-4/Issue-8/lead-story.asp

The study precedes an upcoming AACSB International report that calls for the media to change the way it assigns rankings to business degree granting institutions. The AACSB document, to be released in September, calls the ranking methods used by BusinessWeek, Financial Times, U.S. News & World Report, and other media outlets flawed because of inconsistent and unverified data, which confuses rather than helps the consumer.

 


As accounting courses in MBA core are shrinking, finance courses are increasing

From Jim Mahar's Blog on August 29, 2005 --- http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/

Core Finance Trends in the Top MBA Programs in 2005 by Kent Womack, Ying Zhang:

Following Friday's mention of the DeAngelo, DeAngelo, and Zimmerman paper that looks at what is wrong with MBA programs at some universities, I was sent