Any MBA student is going to have a strong grounding in the vocabulary of finance, including interest rates and lending. But some schools are now adding programs and courses that are teaching a new vocabulary for an increasingly visible sector of the financial world—Islamic banks that conduct business according to the tenets of Islamic law.

One of the latest schools to take an interest in Islamic banking is the Cass Business School, part of the City University, London, which in the fall is launching an Executive MBA based in Dubai featuring specializations in Islamic finance, energy and general management, and finance. The school says there's a need for more MBAs with experience in the area.

The number of schools offering Islamic finance programs is still relatively small—and at some universities, relevant courses can be found outside the confines of the business programs. But experts say that, at the very least, business students should know something about this expanding industry. "Anyone who seeks to work in the Islamic world should be interested in this area, because it's booming," says Ibrahim Warde, author of the soon-to-be-updated Islamic Finance and the Global Economy (Edinburgh University Press, 2000). "Understanding Islamic finance is highly valued in the marketplace."

Travel Incentives

The basic principle behind Islamic banking—which is based on Shariah, or Koranic law—is that people shouldn't be charged interest on loans or be paid interest on investments. A venerable system of banking, Islamic finance resurfaced in the 1970s and was updated in the wake of the oil boom in the Middle East.

Today, there's an increasing number of financial products and services available that are compliant with Islamic finance. Rising petroleum prices, increased attention on the Middle East as a result of politics, and competition between Bahrain and Dubai for the title of Middle Eastern financial center are other factors contributing to the economic surge (see BusinessWeek.com, 8/8/05, "Islamic Banks: A Novelty No Longer").

Islamic institutions and banks offer everything from sukuks—bonds that are structured to comply with Shariah and have become hugely popular—to asset selling, where a bank purchases a car, for example, and resells it to clients rather than offering an interest-based loan for the vehicle. Islamic credit cards that have users essentially borrowing money from themselves and incentives, such as trips to the holy city of Mecca, are other examples of how institutions are drawing Muslim customers.

Future Hub? With all this growth, there's a shortage of skilled workers in Islamic finance, says Hassan Hakimian, Cass's associate dean for Off-Campus Programs, which says Islamic finance is growing at about 15% per year and will continue to do so for at least the next decade. Hakimian is one of the creators of the school's 24-month executive MBA program, which will debut in September. The school purposefully decided to offer Islamic finance and energy concentrations, says Hakimian, because of the relevance of those two topics to the program's home in Dubai.

Cass seems to be in Dubai's corner when it comes to the argument about which Middle Eastern capital will reign supreme. The Cass EMBA program will include online learning complemented by one weekend a month in Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates. "I wouldn't be surprised if, in coming years, parts of the Middle East will grow, and Dubai will become the hub of business education," says Hakimian. He expects to admit 30 to 40 students in the inaugural class.

Continued in article

Bob Jensen's threads on Islamic accounting are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#IslamicAccounting

With a recent study showing that today's college students are the most narcissistic and self-centered in decades, a small chorus of professionals is offering a bold response: We have no one to blame but ourselves.

"For today's kids, everything is all about them:  One study blames parents for a failure to say, 'No'," by Barbara F. Meltz, The Boston Globe, April 01, 2007 ---

With a recent study showing that today's college students are the most narcissistic and self-centered in decades, a small chorus of professionals is offering a bold response: We have no one to blame but ourselves.

"Things went too far," says psychologist Jean Twenge, lead author of the study and a professor at San Diego State University.

What she means is that parents overcorrected for the harshness of a previous generation that preferred children to be "seen and not heard." She points to the soccer trophies that coaches hand out to all team members just for showing up rather than to a few for outstanding athleticism, and to a song taught in a colleague's daughter's preschool to the tune of "Frère Jacques": "I am special/I am special/Look at me."

"If you're that child, it's not surprising that pretty soon you start to believe it," says Twenge, whose new book, "Generation Me," examines feelings of entitlement among young Americans.

In her analysis, which uses a questionnaire that has been administered to college students periodically since 1982, a nationwide sample of 16,000 students choose among 80 statements to best describe themselves — for instance, "I think I am a special person," or, "I am no better or no worse than most people." Thirty percent more students had elevated narcissism in the 2006 survey than in 1982, although the numbers have been steadily creeping up over the years.

Called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, the study does not directly link children's increased entitlement to parenting style, but the connection is inescapable, says social psychologist and researcher Robert Horton of Wabash College in Indiana. Parent educators have long identified four styles of parenting: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive and passive. The styles are based on a combination of how loving and restrictive parents are.

In the authoritarian style, parents are not very affectionate but very controlling, says Horton. Permissive parents tend to lavish love but are barely able to impose limits or consequences, and passive parents tend to be literally unavailable as well as unreliable and unpredictable.

"The ideal is to express affection and set limits in a way that respects a child's feelings," says parent educator Nancy Samalin, director of the Parent Guidance Workshops in New York City. She's describing the authoritative style, probably the most labor intensive. It demands a careful balance between loving and restricting a child, between being involved but not suffocating. "It's a parent who sees the need for limits and is willing to be unpopular," says Samalin, author of the best-seller "Loving Without Spoiling."

Increasingly, being unpopular makes parents uncomfortable, says psychologist David Walsh of Minneapolis.

"Humans are born hard-wired with certain drives," he says — for instance, to fight or flee, to seek pleasure rather than pain, and to seek connection. "Think of the drives as a team of horses. If you learn how to hold the reins and manage the horses, they take you to wonderful places. If the horses get out of control — if one drive dominates — you end up in a ditch."

Today's college kids are in the ditch called narcissism in part because the popular culture glamorizes the drive for pleasure above all others. " 'More! Fast! Easy! Fun!' " Walsh says. "That translates to parents as an allergic reaction to our children's unhappiness and an inability to say no for fear it will destroy their self-esteem."

Discipline deficit disorder — a term he coined — is the result. "The symptoms include impatience, disrespect, inability to delay gratification, self-centeredness and rampant consumerism. Guess what? Those are also the characteristics of narcissism," says Walsh, author of "No: Why Kids of All Ages Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It."

He tells a story of one way this played out in his own parenting. When his children were young, he and his wife assigned them chores knowing that would help build a sense of responsibility. His 6-year-old daughter's chore was the bathroom. "She was doing a 6-year-old's version of cleaning," he says. "I came by and said, 'Let me show you.' Before long, she disappeared. My wife came along and asked, 'Do you want a clean bathroom or a competent daughter?' "

Whether it was his wish to make things easier for his daughter or easier for himself doesn't matter. Either way, he says, she got the message that she was entitled. Continually bailing children out or doing for them what they should do for themselves — the book report, the science project — describes the permissive style of parenting.

"By not giving them practice in handling frustration and disappointment we destroy self-esteem, not build it," he says.

Could this report end up spurring a backlash from parenting experts who call for a return to authoritarian parenting, which endorses spanking as well as a "because-I-said-so" attitude?

"I hope not. There's a lot of research that says spanking is a bad idea," says Twenge, who is the mother of a 4-month-old. Instead, she hopes the report will prompt parents to step back and examine their parenting.

"We live in a very individualistic culture. Telling each child he or she is special is based on the premise that building self-esteem leads to good outcomes. It works the other way around: Good outcomes lead to self-esteem. What people thought builds self-esteem turns out to build narcissism."

The four types of parents

The authoritative parent

Affectionate and engaged

Sets limits and enforces consequences

Uses reason, logic and appropriate negotiation

Empowers a child's decision-making

His or her child is likely to be:

Happy, responsible and kind

Good at problem-solving

Self-motivated and confident

Cooperative

An excellent student

A leader

The authoritarian parent

Emotionally aloof

Bossy; likely to say, 'Because I said so'

Uses physical punishment or verbal insults

Dismisses a child's feelings

His or her child is likely to be:

Moody and anxious

Well-behaved

An average to good student

A follower

The permissive parent

Affectionate

Anxious to please, ends every sentence by asking, 'OK?'

Indulgent

Can't say no and stick to it

Easily manipulated

His or her child is likely to be:

Demanding and whiny

Easily frustrated

Lacking kindness and empathy

A poor to average student

A follower

The passive parent

Emotionally removed or indifferent

Uninvolved

Abdicates discipline

Inconsistent and unpredictable

His or her child is likely to be:

Clingy and needy

Inappropriate and rude

Likely to get into trouble

A poor student

A follower

Also see Iraq and the Liberal Baby Boomers ---
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110008452

 

I'm active on two accounting ListServs called the AECM and CPA-L, both of which were formed many years ago by Barry Rice. I was asked recently by someone close to Barry to comment on these ListServs. Below is my response including why the medium is much more than the message in the case of a ListServ:

Hi XXXXX,

I did not know Barry Rice when he started up the AECM and CPA-L Listservs. I got to know him better by email and met him quite a few years later. Barry is a world class accounting teacher with administrative skills as well. I now consider him a great friend.

ListServs are much like forums except that a forum usually has an assigned leader or group of leaders with their own agendas. ListServs are totally voluntary and spontaneous communities. Forums often have invited memberships, whereas most ListServs can be freely joined by any person on the world’s Internet. When a message is sent to a forum, the sender generally knows where it is going. When a message is sent to a ListServ, the sender has some idea of a few people who will receive it but no idea about all the people in the world who are lurking for messages. 

Off the top of my head, I would say that a ListServ aids in the following:

• Communication of news intended to be of common interest to members (e.g., accounting education news). Internet links are probably the most common and useful items shared in those communications.
   
• Questions and answers where one member raises a question and others try to answer either in private or for all members.
   
• Debates that follow unpredictable paths and are generally interesting until they get too tedious. Theories are often built and and/or destroyed on ListServs.
   
• ListServs make us humble. Just when we think we know a lot about something, all we have to do is comment about it on the AECM. Suddenly we discover that there’s a whole lot we did not know. We learn from a ListServ because of the scholars who are willing to share what they know and feel.
   
• ListServs capture moods and opinions of members more spontaneously and deeply than formal surveys.
   
• Sharing of research and scholarship. For example, members may have work-in-progress that they put at a Website and then use the ListServ to inform members of where to find this work-in-progress. Members then contribute comments in private or in public about these works.
   
• Archiving of communications and Web links. This library function makes ListServs more valuable than telephone and most other forms of communication that do not have easily-accessible archives.
   
• Entertainment (sometimes communications are off-topic and entertaining with humor and links to outside topics).
   
• Building of friendships with people in all parts of the world that are not likely to ever meet face-to-face.
   
• Building of reputations where some participants reveal knowledge, talent, skills, and effort beyond what would otherwise be known about these rare diamonds in the rough.
   
• Motivating some members about career choices/changes. On the AECM students get an inside peek at professors who comment about the beautiful and the ugly aspects of being in academe.

A ListServ does not generally do all of the things listed above, although the AECM initiated by Barry comes about as close as possible to doing all those things mentioned above. The CPA-L list that Barry also formed is primarily a Q&A List that does none of the other things listed above. Practitioners on the CPA-L generally raise a question (often a tax question) and others provide answers. There’s almost nothing in the way of daily news, debates, sharing of research/scholarship, entertainment, building of friendships, or building of reputations.

The AECM somehow evolved into a multi-purpose ListServ that accomplishes all of the things mentioned above. Its international success was primarily timing and leadership and luck. Barry offered up this service when there was very little else for accounting educators on the Internet. There were at least three other early competitors, and I honestly cannot say why the AECM emerged as the main ListServ for accounting educators around the world. I do think that time is too valuable for people to join in on very many active ListServs. Hence it’s not likely that all competitors early on would’ve flourished. Why the AECM emerged as the main general-purpose higher education ListServ for accounting educators is indeed a mystery. The American Accounting Association for a time offered another alternative, but I think bad timing and bad luck destroyed its efforts. The AAA was too late on the scene. There was also the stigma, not a fact, that the AAA’s effort was only for members of the AAA.

I have to say that Barry’s leadership in communicating on the AECM was probably not the crucial factor at the germination stage. After a very short time Barry became more of a lurker. It was about a dozen accounting educators who emerged out of nowhere to make the AECM germinate. Then more leaders and lurkers evolved like wild flowers in a worldwide field.

Keep in mind that Barry did not begin the AECM as a general-purpose accounting educator ListServ. In the beginning it was primarily intended for messaging about computers and multimedia technologies that could be used in new ways by teachers of accountancy. In fact the acronym “AECM” stands for “Accounting Education using Computers and Multimedia.” Today the AECM ListServ is much more than its title. Why this happened is complicated to answer, but the title is unfortunate today whenever someone is looking for the main accounting education ListServ and naively thinks that the AECM is restricted to messaging about computers and multimedia.

A better name for the AECM as it evolved is the Internet’s “Accounting Education Communications Medium.” And the “medium is the message.” I am forever grateful to Barry for letting the original AECM evolve into what it is today. He could’ve jumped on every message that was not deemed “on topic” in the context of “computers and multimedia.” Instead he let the AECM messaging follow their own serendipitous meanderings. And he forgave us for some of the dumb things we messaged.

In this regard we were lucky. AECM participants had the good sense to avoid some turn-off topics like politics, advertising, religion, and too much humor. But the messaging did follow many serendipitous paths that were not tied to computers and multimedia, including topics of accounting theory, fraud, student cheating, professorial cheating, plagiarism, pedagogy in general, research methodologies, and learning theories. These evolved into topics that AECM subscribers wanted to learn more and more about.

ListServs are fragile things that in general do not work well. Leaders either emerge out of nowhere and keep a ListServ going or it dies from lack of participation. Participants must find rewards or ListServs simply fade away. Most participants in a ListServ are “lurkers” who often “listen in” but rarely if ever contribute to the membership. This puts the burden on “actives” to evolve as leaders. These actives can either be terrific and draw new ListServ members wanting to listen to what the actives have to say or ListServs can become very tedious and/or boring and causing members to resign from the ListServ.

ListServs have interesting behavioral dynamics that emerged with newer technology. This is an interesting topic to study and needs to be studied in much greater depth. The medium is much more than the content of the messages.

ListServs provide wonderful and unique opportunities to make a difference. For example, an accounting educator and world leader who I supremely respect is Dennis Beresford. Denny is a popular Accounting Hall of Fame speaker at academic, business, and accounting profession conferences. But a speech is a speech and is limited to a given audience and a given point in time. Denny’s published a lot of papers, but a paper is a paper that is a bleep at a fixed point in time.

Remember that “the medium is the message” as discovered by Marshall Mcluhan many years ago. AECM messages are bleeps that resurface in new and different ways repeatedly over time on the AECM. Denny has probably had more impact on changing accounting education via the AECM than in all his speeches and all his publications combined. His messaging to the AECM is continuous over time and reacts to concerns of accounting educators around the world. His AECM audience is unlimited in terms of size and scheduled times.

And we learn a lot about Denny just by learning when he messages. Keep in mind that I’m talking about one of the busiest accountants in the world. He teaches at the University of Georgia full time and is an extremely popular consultant and on the boards of directors of several worldwide corporations. He’s even head of the Audit Committee and a Board member for Fannie Mae after this trillion-dollar company hit the rocks. And yet he seemingly keeps his eye on AECM communications 24/7. What impresses me most is when I send messages out to the AECM at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday mornings I have them answered within minutes by Denny Beresford. Hence I learned a whole lot more about the man beyond the content of his excellent messages. I also learned that he’s respectfully a very humble man.

Denny does not want more money or more trophies. What Denny wants is to make a lasting difference for the betterment of the accounting profession and accounting education. And he’s proved this countless times to all of us on the AECM. Those many other accounting leaders and educators who failed to grab this AECM brass ring missed out and continue to miss out of the opportunity to make a continuous and lasting difference.

I’m also a 24/7 AECM active like Denny. And I’m certain that Denny, like me, will say that he tries to make a difference. But the AECM is so rewarding that in the end he, like me, got more than he received. That is why we’re on the AECM.

We get more than we give no matter how much we give. That’s because so many scholars big and small contribute to our learning and loving. The Internet forever changed research and scholarship and learning. ListServs are a lasting part of this process.

Bob Jensen

April 5, 2007 reply from Dennis Beresford [dberesfo@TERRY.UGA.EDU]

Bob,

Thanks for your kind comments below.  And thanks to Barry for getting this whole thing started.  AECM is a wonderful learning opportunity for me and I'm just glad that you and many others are willing to share so much knowledge.

Denny
 

Online Doctoral Programs (All Disciplines) --- http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com/doctorate-degrees-online.html

There are several types of doctoral degrees online:

1. Diploma mills where you can simply buy a PhD and have a diploma within a matter of days. Warnings about Type 1 programs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
    
2. Diploma frauds that give a lot of credit for life experience and perhaps have some minimal course or paper writing assignments that in reality are a sham.  Warnings about Type 2 programs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
    
3. Diligent-effort programs that may require several years to complete but admit virtually anybody and have dubious academic standards even though a few teachers may try ever so hard to make it work.  Warnings about Type 3 programs can be found at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#DiplomaMill
    
4. Diligent-effort programs have some admission standards and varied faculty participants that try to make the program respectable. Many of these faculty participants are moonlighting in online doctoral programs but are also full-time faculty in respected colleges and universities. A listing of Type 4 doctoral programs is provided at
   http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com/doctorate-degrees-online.html
    
5. Major universities that have extended their onsite doctoral programs to online or partly online programs.

Type 5 programs are highly limited in number, especially programs that do not require at least one or two years of onsite residency. But there are a few programs such as the University of Colorado's online doctoral program in pharmacy. I do not know of any major universities that offer a similar doctorate in accounting and business.

Type 1, 2, and 3 programs are virtually frauds and are wasting the student's money and perhaps her/his time.

Type 4 programs are problematic. They offer genuine learning opportunities to students who, due to life's circumstances, are not able to enroll in onsite programs. But Type 4 programs do not yet have the status of degrees comparable with doctoral degrees of onsite programs of major universities.

A phony argument against Type 4 programs is that students enrolled in the same program cannot learn from each other like students in onsite programs learn from each other. About the only thing that students in Type 4 programs cannot do is have beer together and otherwise socialize face-to-face. Communications technology today makes it possible to get inside the head of a professor or a student better than face-to-face in many instances.

In fact a student may graduate from a Type 4 program and become a better teacher and/or researcher as a result of germination in a Type 4 program. But it is misleading to say that starting opportunities are equivalent to a Type 5 Program doctoral degree. They are not equivalent, and it will be quite some time before they have a chance of becoming equivalents.

The term "accreditation" is highly misleading. An online university that has a regionally accredited undergraduate program does not make its doctoral program accredited. In fact the same is true of onsite universities. For example, the AACSB is the premiere accrediting body for colleges of business within major colleges and universities. But the AACSB limits accreditation to undergraduate and masters of business or accounting programs. The AACSB has never had an accreditation program for doctoral programs within AACSB accredited colleges.

When it comes to doctoral programs, everything rides on the general reputation and prestige of the entire university is the most important factor. The reputation of the college or department offering the doctoral degree is the second most important factor. What goes into that college's reputation is the research reputation of the faculty involved in the doctoral program. Admissions standards are also very, very important. Any doctoral program that is easy to get into becomes suspect. This was especially the case of some major universities that during some years admitted most military retirees who applied as long as the applicant had 20 or more years of service with the military. These programs generated some fine teachers for regional colleges, but the market generally recognized that these graduates had little prospects of establishing research reputations. I think most universities no longer give such ease of admission to veterans.

Doctoral programs should probably be judged more on the quality of the dissertations. Fortunately or unfortunately, many  dissertations are pretty well ignored unless papers published from them are accepted by major research journals. A dissertation may be important for landing that first faculty job in a prestigious college or university. This depends heavily on level of competition. In fields like accounting and finance there is such a shortage of doctoral graduates from major universities that applicants can usually get great job offers before the quality of the dissertation can really be judged. Job offers are frequently made in the very early stages of a mere dissertation proposal subject to huge changes later on before the degree is granted. Sadly, many great dissertation proposals are never carried to fruition.

In any case, you might be interested in the new online Type 4 doctoral degree alternatives listed at http://www.distance-learning-college-guide.com/doctorate-degrees-online.html

Many excellent online undergraduate and masters education programs are linked at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
A few good doctoral programs are also linked.

April 5, 2007 reply from Mitchell A Franklin [mifrankl@syr.edu]

Dear Bob,

One of my colleagues on your ACEM listserv forwarded me the below E-mail, and I wanted to add to some of your responses. This past month, I completed my PhD in accounting from Walden University, one of the schools that you classify into category 4 of online programs. A few things I’d like to add based on personal experience:

Though called an ‘online’ program, the program is more than just online independent study via the internet. As part of the degree requirements, students are required at various points in the program to attend mandatory face to face residencies in which they attend intensive format classes/seminars and take part in research based colloquia with other students in the same program. Students are in close interaction with each other on an academic and social level, including your reference of ‘having a beer together’ which some type 4 programs may lack. A vast majority of the faculty I worked with all have PhD’s from schools that are considered ‘top tier’ business schools. Not only did they hold their degrees from ‘top tier’ schools, but they also hold full-time senior faculty appointments at other top tier major business schools. These faculty members have their own reputations to uphold, and wouldn’t be involved in this type of program signing off on dissertations if they didn’t believe in the quality of the work and quality/merit of this type of program. I would also agree that at present, many people may not recognize this type of education as comparable and put someone starting out at a disadvantage if looking at major schools for tenure-track placement, but the number of people who DO recognize it as comparable is growing at a good clip. Over the long-run I do feel that at some point it will be equally recognized. As anything different, it will just take time and a concentration of alumni to show that their teaching/research skills are comparable, if not better, as you state in your post.

As someone who has been through this program, I would wholeheartedly recommend it for someone who needs/desires a PhD but can’t enroll into an onsite program because of whatever the personal reason may be.

Regards,

Mitch Franklin

 April 6, 2007 reply from Steve Doster [sdoster@SHAWNEE.EDU]

I graduated from Argosy’s DBA program (management major—the accounting major was added a few years later) in about 2002 and was very pleased with the program. My experience was that the 1 to 2 week on-site course format that involved a considerable amount of pre and post study was much more useful, less work, and more satisfying than the exclusively on-line courses. Two of my colleagues have since enrolled Argosy’s DBA—Accounting program and are satisfied with program.

Steve Doster, DBA, CPA, CMA
Professor, Accounting & Management
Shawnee State University
Portsmouth, OH 45662

Nontraditional Doctoral Degree Programs: Some With No Courses

"New Ideas for Ph.D. Education," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed, August 18, 2006 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/08/18/grad

For educators and state officials who want to reform doctoral education, “it’s easy if you just want to make it easier,” said E. Garrison Walters, interim chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents.

The challenge, he said, is to undertake reforms that don’t sacrifice quality. “It’s difficult to keep the core values of a Ph.D. and keep it flexible,” he said. Walters spoke this week at a conference in Chicago of the State Higher Education Executive Officers — the officials who approve new Ph.D. programs in their states and periodically review such programs, sometimes with an eye toward saving money by eliminating them.

At a session on new approaches to doctoral education, state officials were briefed on two new approaches — both of which were warmly received. One involves non-residential Ph.D. programs for students who are older than most who earn doctorates. The other involves doctoral programs that are run by more than one university — and that sometimes cross state lines and public/private distinctions. Officials at the meeting said they believed there was strong demand for both kinds of programs, and wanted to find ways for their agencies to encourage such innovations.

Laurien Alexandre, director of Antioch University’s Ph.D. program in leadership and change, said it was easy to see that there is interest in the kind of non-traditional doctorate her institution has created. The students are already far along in their careers and lives — 85 percent are over 40, with many in their 50s and 60s — and they don’t need the doctorate as a credential. “No one is coming at 55 because they need it for their job,” she said. “So why are people paying $80,000 for a doctorate?”

Her answer is that Antioch’s doctoral students are on an “evolved path” in which they are seeking to take their understandings of organizations to a higher level, and want to conduct the kind of in-depth research associated with doctoral programs. The program attracts students from all over the country, who periodically meet in person at Antioch’s campuses around the country, but conduct much of their work in close collaboration with faculty members, who are also spread out around the country and communicate with students via phone and videoconferencing.

The program is “courseless,” Alexandre said, and students must demonstrate their competencies in knowledge and research skills after completing “multiyear learning paths” that are supervised by faculty members. Only then, Alexandre said, can they write their dissertations. And while Alexandre clearly relishes the way Antioch is “pushing the envelope” on most aspects of the program, she said that the dissertation process is traditional: committees, chapters, defense, and so forth. “The dissertation is the gold standard,” she said.

The concept underlying this approach, she said, is “rigor without rigidity,” and that approach may be what it takes to encourage doctoral education from older students. She noted that Antioch just graduated its first students in the program and that retention rates are well above the typically low rates for many Ph.D. programs.

If the Antioch model demonstrates flexibility within a graduate program, two new biomedical engineering programs may represent the ability of universities to be flexible in how they put together a graduate program in a hot science field — and one that can be expensive to support. One program joins forces of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, and the other combines offerings at Virginia Tech with Wake Forest University. Both programs have one institution with a medical school (Chapel Hill and Wake Forest) and one institution with an engineering school (N.C. State and Virginia Tech).

Stephen Knisley, director of the North Carolina program, said that it grew out of a stand-alone program at Chapel Hill that officials there felt would be strengthened with more ties to engineering. To make the program effective, Knisley said, real partnerships are needed. That means admissions decisions, curricular requirements and the like are all decided jointly. And to really have students be able to move back and forth to the two campuses, officials have also had to make sure they can get dual ID cards, parking spaces, and access to all facilities. There are currently 103 graduate students in the program, and North Carolina hopes to double that number in the next few years.

In a similar approach, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech decide matters together — and have managed to do so even though the former is private and the latter is a public university in another state. Brian J. Love, a professor at Virginia Tech, noted that the two universities don’t observe the same holidays or have the same class schedules, so everything must be negotiated. “This program now has its own calendar,” he said.

But he said that’s a small price to pay to have combined resources that neither institution could otherwise create. “This can really be a win-win situation.”

One difficulty such collaborations sometimes face is with accreditation. Gail Morrison, interim executive director of the South Carolina Commission on Higher Education, said that the Medical University of South Carolina and the University of South Carolina recently merged their pharmacy schools. While both entities had been accredited, they needed an entirely new review, even though it seemed to Morrison that the new school was clearly stronger than the two separate ones of the past.

Her story brought knowing nods from the audience of state officials, several of whom said later that specialized accreditation was a barrier to the kinds of collaboration being encouraged at the session.

Of course some collaborations don’t require any accreditors’ approval. Morrison said that generally breaking down institutional boundaries was a great way to encourage more efficiency and that formal units aren’t always needed. For example, the state’s three doctoral institutions are opening a building in Charleston that will bring professors together. No outside approval needed.

Jensen Comment
The problem with the some of these is that, when students are allowed to customize a curriculum, they often take the easiest way out. Success of these nontraditional doctoral programs rests heavily upon admission standards for getting into the programs and a successful track record of graduates from the programs. If low GRE (or GMAT) students are accepted, the schools will have a difficult time overcoming image flaws. Older adults seeking nontraditional doctoral programs often do not have strong admission test scores.

Museum of Hoaxes --- http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/

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• April Fools Pranks --- http://search.ebay.com/pranks_W0QQfclZ4QQfnuZ1QQfsopZ1
• Pranks --- http://search.ebay.com/pranks_W0QQfclZ4QQfnuZ1QQfsopZ1

To seriously investigate claims on the Web, begin with http://www.snopes.com/

Bob Jensen's threads on consumer fraud are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm

American Civil War History Site

April 4, 2007 message from tagate [tagate@gmail.com]

Hello my name is Ann And i found your nice site and i have a history site about the american civil war and i wonder if you can link me on your site. I think that my site can be a good school resource

American Civil War http://www.factasy.com 

It´s about the American Civil War 1861-1865 and the slavery history and it´s greatly with information. It´s includes the history of the slaves in america, i have also civil war letters in the catagori (Family War Stories)

Regards Ann

Please tell me if you can link me

Jensen Comment
I added the above link to the following two pages:

• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
      (Scroll down to the history sites and books)
   
• http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History

Networks Show Power Laws
Why the Rich Get Richer:  New Theory Shows How Wealth Sticks to Some and Not Others
A new theory shows how wealth, in different forms, can stick to some but not to others. The findings have implications ranging from the design of the Internet to economics.
PhysOrg, April 3, 2007 --- http://physorg.com/news94753105.html

Real-world data -- whether distributions of wealth, size of earthquakes or number of connections on a computer network -- often follow power-law distributions rather than the familiar bell-shaped curve. In a power-law distribution, large events are reasonably common compared to smaller events.

Networks often show power laws. They can be caused by the "rich get richer" effect, also known as "preferential attachment," where nodes gain new connections in proportion to how many they already have. That means some nodes end up with many more connections than others. The phenomenon is well known, but had been assumed to be just a fundamental property of networks.

Raissa D'Souza, an assistant professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at UC Davis, together with colleagues at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., UCLA and Cornell University, looked at how "preferential attachment" can arise in networks.

"'The rich get richer' makes sense for wealth, but why would it happen for Internet routers?" she said.

D'Souza and colleagues found that they could make tradeoffs between the network distance between nodes and the number of connections between them. By tweaking the conditions, they could make preferential attachment -- a power-law distribution of the number of connections -- stronger or weaker.

These tradeoffs in networks are an underlying principle behind preferential attachment, D'Souza said. The general framework could be extended to all kinds of different networks, in biology, engineering, computer science or social sciences.

"It's exciting because it shows the origins of something that we had assumed as axiomatic," D'Souza said.

The other authors on the study, which is published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are Christian Borgs and Jennifer T. Chayes at Microsoft Research, Noam Berger at UCLA and Robert D. Keinberg at Cornell University. A figure from the study will also be used for the cover art of the April 10 print issue of the journal.

Source: UC Davis

Jensen Comment
I think they forgot the all-important cheating factor. But then again, maybe that’s part of networking as well.

When Honesty is Not the Best Policy at Work
A new book argues that honesty may not be the best policy in the workplace. From Hire to Liar: The Role of Deception in the Workplace says lies may not be so bad — they're an essential part of how business gets done.
"Making Lies Work for You at the Office," NPR, April 4, 2007 ---
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9318961
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9318961

ALPFA:  The Association of Latino Professionals in Finance and Accounting offers career and community resources --- http://www.alpfa.org/

Bob Jensen's career helpers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers

March 30, 2007 message from

TEACHING WITH WIKIS

"Wikis are Web pages that can be viewed and modified by anyone with a Web browser and Internet access. Described as a composition system, a discussion medium, and a repository, wikis support asynchronous communication and group collaboration online." ("7 Things You Should Know about Wikis," from EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative;

http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7004)

In "Wiki as a Teaching Tool" (INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE AND LEARNING OBJECTS, vol. 3, 2007, pp. 57-72), Kevin R. Parker and Joseph T. Chao review the current state of wiki use in education. Some of the uses include "webpage creation, project development with peer review, group authoring, tracking group projects, data collection, and class/instructor reviews." They also discuss how wikis can be used in online learning. The paper is available at
http://www.ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p057-072Parker284.pdf.

Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects [ISSN:

Print 1552-2210, CD 1552-2229, Online 1552-2237] is published by the Informing Science Institute, 131 Brookhill Court, Santa Rosa, CA 95409 USA. For current and back issues, go to http://www.ijklo.org/.

For a report on how a well-known wiki, Wikipedia, handles links to research and scholarship see:

"What Open Access Research Can Do for Wikipedia"

by John Willinsky

FIRST MONDAY, vol. 12, no. 3, March 2007 http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_3/willinsky/index.html

---

E-MATERIALS POSSIBLY CONTRIBUTING TO RISING TEXTBOOK COSTS

The University of North Carolina system's Board of Governors recently proposed controlling the rising cost of textbooks by instituting rental or buyback programs. Triggering such a recommendation is the increasing costs of college textbooks, with prices rising faster than the rate of inflation. Students, administrators, bookstores, and publishers argue who or what is causing these increasing costs. One argument places the blame on faculty who demand not only frequent new editions, but also want students to have access to materials that technology enables -- CD-ROMs, e-books, course-related software, private-access websites.

Instructors may find themselves caught in the middle of this blaming game. Publishers say that if textbook authors and adopters did not insist on having additional bundled materials, the costs could be kept down to a reasonable level. Students argue that in many courses the extra materials are seldom or never used. In addtion, these extras drive up prices, but often make it hard for students to resell their texts.

For more about the textbook cost discussion and the UNC Board of Governors' proposal see:

"Who Controls Textbook Choices?"

INSIDE HIGHER ED, March 16, 2007

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/16/unc

For textbook publishers' perspectives, see:

http://www.textbookfacts.org/

The Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) campaign to lower textbook prices:

http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks

 

Bob Jensen's threads on the Ward Churchill saga are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HypocrisyChurchill.htm

Given the dire shortage of accounting doctoral students, there's an explosion in part-time accounting faculty.
This is also the trend in most other disciplines.
"Inexorable March to a Part-Time Faculty," by Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, March 28, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/03/28/faculty

New data from the U.S. Education Department confirm what faculty leaders increasingly bemoan: The full-time, tenure-track faculty member is becoming an endangered species in American higher education.

A new report from the National Center for Education Statistics shows that of the 1,314,506 faculty members at colleges that award federal financial aid in fall 2005, 624,753, or 47.5 percent, were in part-time positions. That represents an increase in number and proportion from 2003, the last full survey of institutions, when 543,137 of the 1,173,556 professors (or 46.3 percent) at degree-granting institutions were part timers. (The statistics may not be directly comparable because the department reported part-time/full-time figures only for degree-granting institutions in 2003, and for all Title IV institutions in 2005.)

The new report, “Employees in Postsecondary Institutions, Fall 2005, and Salaries of Full-Time Instructional Faculty, 2005-06,” also finds the proportion of all professors who are tenured or on the tenure track to be shrinking. Of the 675,624 full-time faculty members at degree-granting colleges and universities in 2005, 414,574, or 61.4 percent, were either tenured or on the tenure track. That is down from the 411,031 of 630,419 (or 65.2 percent) of professors at degree-granting institutions who were tenured or tenure track in 2003.

Full-time Faculty at Degree-Granting Institutions, 2005 and 2003

	Fall 2005	Fall 2003	% Change
All faculty	675,624*	630,419	7.1%
With tenure	283,434	282,429	0.4%
Tenure track	131,140	128,602	1.9%
Not on tenure track/ no tenure system	235,171	219,388	7.2%

*Figure includes 25,879 staff members with faculty status.

The NCES report contains a wealth of other information about faculty and staff members at colleges and universities. Among the other highlights:

• The proportion of full-time faculty members at degree-granting institutions who are women rose slightly, to 40.6 percent in 2005 from 39.4 percent in 2003.
• The proportion of full-time faculty members who are white dropped slightly, to 78.1 percent in 2005 from 80.2 percent in 2003. The biggest gain was among Asian/Pacific Islanders, whose share of the full-time professoriate rose to 7.2 percent from 6.5 percent. The proportion who are black dipped by a tenth of percentage point (from 5.3 percent to 5.2 percent), while the share who are Hispanic rose to 3.4 percent from 3.2 percent.
• Men were significantly more likely to be tenured or tenure track than were women. Of full-time male professors, 47.5 percent were tenured and 18.1 percent were tenure track, while 33.9 percent of women were tenured and 21.3 percent were tenure track.

Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on the Obsolete and Dysfunctional System of Tenure: 
Over 62% of Full-Time Faculty Are Off the Tenure Track --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Tenure

March 28, 2007 reply from Elliot Kamlet [ekamlet@STNY.RR.COM]

I am a low esteem lecturer, albeit full time not part time. Eliminating us is very expensive, especially at a State University like mine. For example, say we hire a brand new PhD at (to use a low but round number) $100,000 per year. (S)he teaches, say, 2 sections per semester at 40 students each. That is a total of 160 students per year or, on average $625 per student. The student takes 8 courses per year for about $4350 in tuition. Therefore there might be a problem growing if we want to pay our professor benefits, turn on the lights, run the buildings, run the administration, etc. Of course our professor will research and publish. While that brings additional recognition to us, it takes a while before it might bring some money. Like it or not, that’s the way it is.

Elliot Kamlet

March 29, 2007 reply from James M. Peters [jpeters@NMHU.EDU]

The problem is far worse in larger state schools. When I was the Department Chair at the U. of Maryland, we would have had to pay $180,000 for a new PhD, including summer support, which pretty much had to be guaranteed as long as they were research active, to teach 3 sections per year. We still couldn’t hire a new PhD because we couldn’t compete for any that had a chance of making tenure at Maryland. The last assistant that was tenured at Maryland was in 1976, 31 years ago, and they currently have no assistant professors and are not hiring any. We required 5 JAR, JAE, or TAR hits in their first five years for tenure. Nothing else really counted. So we tried to hire tenured Associates at higher rates. However, again because of the tenure standards and the short supply, most of the new hires wanted 2 section teaching loads (per year).

As our Dean was famous for saying, every business school in the US is working with a “going out of business” model. We just can’t continue to pay research faculty more and more to teach less and less. That is a “going out of business” economic model. Given the importance of research to a major school’s reputation, however, the top school must continue to compete for research faculty.

I believe the only solution is to do what Maryland did (and CMU did when I was there), and develop a cadre of full-time teaching faculty that are consider full faculty members, except for Tenure and PhD issues. This is the European model. It means downsizing the research faculty and it also means a form of enforced specialization. It isn’t that most research faculty aren’t dedicated teachers, it is just that the competition in the research market, particularly in the “big three” journals, is so intense that they cannot afford to put time into the classroom and survive on the research side.

So, we need to move to a model with fewer research faculty that form the intellectual core of our departments and who regularly interact with the teaching faculty to share their research results. However, the core of teaching cannot be done by research faculty anymore. We just can’t afford them.

Jim

March 29, 2007 reply from Peters, James M [jpeters@NMHU.EDU]

The problem with trying to affect tenure requirements is that they are driven by free labor and free "reputation" markets, and not under anyone's control. Also, there is an excellent theory developed by an MIT economist who speaks to this issue and explains why, due to basic human overconfidence, a ratcheting up of both review standards and tenure requirements is inevitable. Any University that unilaterally dropped tenure requirements would have their reputation trashed.

As for the classic argument that research benefits teaching, I see very little in the articles published in the "big three" that I can bring into a graduate classroom, much less and undergraduate one. And, again, it isn't because doing so might not be a bad idea, it is because research faculty can no longer afford to focus on teaching.

The bottom line is the system is badly broken and out of control, but no one can fix it. The system is a free labor market and a free "reputation" market for schools that no one controls and will have to correct itself, probably after a "train wreck."

Jim Peters

March 29, 2007 reply from Paul Williams [Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]

On 29 Mar 2007 at 12:34, Richard C. Sansing wrote:

> Perhaps the best solution involves evaluating research by reading and
> thinking instead of just categorizing and counting.

Bravo Richard. this is now an ongoing debate in our college at the moment: a journal list of "elite" "high quality" and "other." There is simply no substitute for reading your colleagues' work regardless of where or how it is published. Counting is likely a feature of administrators creating butt covering criteria to make hard decisions easier. I remember when Maryland got to where it is and Robin is quite correct. Maryland hired a new chancellor who proclaimed the institution would be a top tier school and issued a ukase that only publishing in the so-called elite journals would count (this was 30 years ago). The accounting program at Maryland has yet to recover from an administration that opted to make the autocratic way the way to greatness: do it, or else. For many programs at Maryland it appears that "or else" was their choice. In D. McCloskey's The Rhetoric of Economics she discusses the dangers of modernist pretensions of science (what commentators on this net mean by rigorous). She provides this little ditty on page 52:

Little wonder that youths in science are durnk with methodology. "Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink For fellows whom it hurts to think. And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past The mischief is that 'twill not last Output, man, output's the stuff to get SO DEANS AND CHAIRMEN WILL NOT FRET.

April 3, 2007 reply from

Dr. Williams,

As a soon-to-be academic and recent practitioner of 10 years (Big 4), I wholeheartedly agree with your comment about lack of intellectualism in the practicing community, in general. Yes, there are pockets of folks in the larger firms that work on research. Grant Thornton operates a research think tank comprised of ex-academics from a variety of different universities. However, they are clearly in the background. The Grant Thornton office managing partner and the other partners here in Central Florida had never even heard of the research group until I mentioned it.

Practice becomes so consumed with the grind to complete audits and secure new, more profitable business that they can hardly see past the current engagement, concentrating on chargeable hours, realization rates, and the like. I must admit, as a senior manager, I was one of those headed down that narrow path. My annual sales goal as a KPMG manager was $750k with an increase to $1m at senior manager. There was no time between audits to concern myself with anything other than finding new business just to be rated as "meeting expectations" and keep my job. I also recognize that I would never have paid much attention to the academics sitting in their "ivory towers" (general feeling out there) had I stayed on to pursue partnership.

All is not lost, though. If the Grant partners here are any indication, many folks would have an interest in research if academics made a concerted effort to raise the general awareness and speak in layman's terms (i.e. no scientific bluff and bluster).

Randy Kuhn

April 6, 2007  reply from Paul Williams [Paul_Williams@NCSU.EDU]

Randy

Thank you for the reply. There were at one time mechanisms for practice and academe informing each other, but those were severed during the early 1970s with the triumph of the U. of Chicago group. They had contempt for practice (normative) and a dogmatic persistence that accounting should be "positive" (which is merely rhetoric to tell the big lie about one of the most blatantly normative movements in U.S. political history). Nick Dopuch and his minions have a lot to answer for.

I do see some hopeful signs. Bill McCarthy's associate editorship, Judy Rayburn's diversity initiative seems to have some traction in that Shyam Sunder is acting as if he wants to keep its momentum going. Rumor has it that there will be speakers at the Chicago meeting that are other than the typical fare, representing diverse disciplinary perspectives. I don't usually look forward to AAA annual meetings, butI am for this one.  The theme of "imaginary worlds" at least gives legitimacy to accountants being permitted to use their imaginations!

I also (respect) Gary Previts as president elect, and a historian, understands from personal experience what the damage has been to both academe and the profession of the absence of diverse perspectives. To Gary's great credit, he accepted the invitation to attend the diversity section's mid-year meeting. For the first time in AAA history we may have a succession of presidents who understand the depth of the problem and understand that many things have to change. We shall see. Stay in touch.

If you are in Chicago this August, look me up.

Paul

March 29, 2007 reply from J. S. Gangolly [gangolly@CSC.ALBANY.EDU]

Paul,

I completely agree.

AACSB requirements on PHD AQ faculty is a ploy to support PhD programs (irrespective of their quality or relevance), to artificially inflate salaries to monstrous proportions, and create artificial shortages (to justify the salaries) totally out of line with what the market would pay PhDs in the profession with little practice experience..

I find it unconscionable to have to pay an ABD, with NO real world experience in the chosen profession IN WHICH EXPERTISE IS CLAIMED, salaries higher than what we pay world-renowned scholars who have won Lancaster Prizes, Guggenheim Fellowships, McArthur Fellowships, Pulitzer Prizes,... Justification based on the "market" shortage is a phony argument, since the "market" has been rigged.

We are buying an option, in many cases with taxpayers' money, that has often a high probability of becoming worthless in a few years.

I think there has to be a balance. However, to denigrate practice to a second-class status in a professional field is preposterous.

Can you imagine a medical school where you are a second class citizen if you do not have a PhD? Or a law school where a person without a PhD is a second class citizen?

In begging for respectability in the academia, by denigrating the profession, we have forfeited our rightful claim to the status of a learned profession. By ignoring the profession in our research, we also have forfeited our right to be serious academics in a profession. We have become Finance wannabes, Economics wannabes,... just plain whatever wannabes, without gaining respectability of serious disciplines.

We also have become irrelevant to both the academia and the profession.

Jagdish

March 30, 2007 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Paul and Jagdish,

I'm hesitant to call this a "ploy." The word "ploy" implies some type of planned conspiracy to create shortages of doctoral students in accountancy and increase salaries. The root causes are much more complicated and indeed even naïve.

I think the only "conspiracy" or "ploy" (both words are too pejorative in this well-intended context) commenced in the 1960s on the part of deans and business faculty in reaction to the Pierson Carnegie Report [1959] and the Gordon and Howell Ford Foundation Report [1959]. The intent was to instill scientific research skills (especially mathematics, statistics, econometric, and psychometric skills) into virtually every accounting doctoral student.

Added funding such as grants to doctoral programs from the Ford Foundation initially increased enrollments in accounting doctoral programs. In fact I would never have become one of Stanford's three accounting doctoral students in the 1960s had it not been for Ford Foundation money given to Stanford. Stanford laundered that money and gave me five years of room, board, tuition, and incidental funding. In those five years I took only one course (from Bob Jaedicke) in accounting. The rest of the courses in all those years were taught outside Stanford's business school. Stanford wanted to make me a scientist.

And I was not unique. Under Tom Burns at Ohio State did any accounting doctoral students take accounting courses? When I was on the faculty at Michigan State a doctoral student named Jim McKeown used to brag that he was not required to take a single accounting course in the doctoral program.

New doctoral programs in accounting emerged across the U.S. and around the world. At the same time the AACSB made it more difficult in the business school accreditation processes for accounting programs to use doctoral graduates from other disciplines such as from economics and education departments. I think this was somewhat an effort to strengthen accounting doctoral programs. But I do not think it was a ploy to create shortages and higher salaries.

In the 1960s academic accounting research journals started to give preference to empirical and quantitative analytical submissions. The eventual outcome by the end of the 20th Century is that virtually all accounting doctoral graduates are applied mathematicians, econometricians, and/or psychometricians. This is necessary for any hope of publishing in top academic accounting research journals.

The problem with this is that most accounting doctoral students are now drawn from the pool of younger professionals in public accounting firms who have 1-10 years experience. Many of these professionals would like to enter doctoral programs that focus to on accountancy rather than science. They have little interest in spending the next four years of their lives studying quantitative research methods that are increasingly more rigorous in virtually all accounting doctoral programs.

The bottom line is that we have a mismatch between the interests and aptitudes of the potential doctoral studies pool of accounting professionals and the scientific requirements of virtually all doctoral programs. Many solid accountants, especially auditors, AIS, and tax specialists, simply do not want to become mathematicia