QuestionsWhy must all accounting doctoral programs be social science (particularly econometrics) doctoral programs?
Are PhD programs in education schools failing for similar
reasons?
Why are doctorates (EED and PhD) failing?
The education doctorate, attempting to
serve dual purposes—to prepare researchers and to prepare practitioners—is not
serving either purpose well. To address what they have termed this "crippling"
problem, Carnegie and the Council of Academic Deans in Research Education
Institutions (CADREI) have launched the Carnegie Project on the Education
Doctorate (CPED), a three-year effort to reclaim the education doctorate and to
transform it into the degree of choice for the next generation of school and
college leaders. The project is coordinated by David Imig, professor of practice
at the University of Maryland. "Today, the Ed.D. is perceived as 'Ph.D.-lite,'"
said Carnegie President Lee S. Shulman. "More important than the public
relations problem, however, is the real risk that schools of education are
becoming impotent in carrying out their primary missions to prepare leading
practitioners as well as leading scholars."
"Institutions Enlisted to Reclaim Education Doctorate," The Carnegie Foundation
for Advancement in Teaching ---
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/news/sub.asp?key=51&subkey=2266
Jensen Comment
Practitioners in education school context are generally are K-12 teachers and
school administrators. In the case of accounting doctoral programs, our dual
mission is to prepare college teachers of accountancy as well as leading
researchers. Our accounting doctoral programs are drying up (less than 100 per
year now graduating in the United States, many of whom know virtually no
accounting) primarily because our doctoral programs have become five years of
social science and mathematics concentrations that do not appeal to accountants
who might otherwise enter the pool of doctoral program admission candidates.
Note that the above Carnegie study also claims that education doctoral programs
are also failing to "prepare researchers." I think the same criticism applies to
current accountancy doctoral programs in the United States. We're failing in our
own dual-mission accountancy doctoral programs and need a concerted effort to
become a "degree of choice" among the accounting professionals who would like to
move into academe in a role other than that of a low-status and low-paid adjunct
professor
Advice to students planning to take standardized tests such as the SAT, GRE,
GMAT, LSAT, TOEFL, etc.
See Test Magic at
http://www.testmagic.com/
There is a forum here where students
interested in doctoral programs in business (e.g., accounting and finance) and
economics discuss the ins and outs of doctoral programs.
Of Course Local, County,
and State Governments Do Not Want to Disclose How Much They Owe
Now They're Going to Pass Laws to Keep Their Astounding Debt Levels a Big
Secret
First They
Do
"Bill Requires Reporting Unfunded Federal Liabilities,"
AccountingWeb, April 12, 2006 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102016
With state and local governments
scrambling to meet the Government Accounting Standards Board’s (GASB)
amended rules for reporting on postretirement benefits, and
private and public companies getting ready for compliance with
the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s (FASB) proposed
statement on recording pension liabilities, a congressman from
Indiana has introduced legislation that would require the
federal government to meet a similar standard. The Truth in
Accounting Act, sponsored by Rep. Chris Chocola (R-Ind) and
co-sponsored by Reps. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn) and Mark Kirk (R –
Ill), would require the federal government to accurately report
the nation’s unfunded long-term liabilities, including Social
Security and Medicare, a debt that amounts to $43 trillion
dollars, during the next 75 years, Chocola says, according to
wndu.com.
The U.S. Treasury Department is not
currently required to file an annual report of these debts to
Congress, wndu.com says.
“When I was in business, the federal
government required our company to account for long-term
liabilities using generally accepted accounting principles,”
Chocola told the South Bend Tribune. “This bill would require
the federal government to follow the same laws they require
every public business in America to follow. If any company
accounted for its business the way the government accounts, the
business would be bankrupt and the executives would be thrown
into jail.”
The legislation doesn’t propose
solutions for the burgeoning liabilities, but it takes a crucial
first step, according to Chocola, “by requiring the Treasury
Department to begin reporting and tracking those liabilities
according to net present value calculations and accrual
accounting principles,” the Tribune reports.
“In order to solve our problems and
prevent an impending fiscal crisis,” Chocola said, “we have to
first identify where and how large the problem is.”
Chocola clearly sees a looming fiscal
crisis. “Congress is the Levee Commission and the flood is
coming,” he told the Tribune. “This [bill] is intended to sound
the warning bell.”
To support his position, according to
the Tribune, Chocola referred to an article written by David
Walker, a Clinton appointee who serves as Comptroller General of
the United States and head of the U.S. Government Accountability
Office (GAO). Walker wrote that the government was on an
“unsustainable path”.
Speaking to a British audience last
month, Walker said that the U.S. is headed for a financial
crisis unless it changes its course of racking up huge deficits,
Reuters reported. Walker said some combination of reforming
Social Security and Medicare spending, discretionary spending
and possibly changes in tax policy would be required to get the
deficits under control.
“I think it’s going to take 20-plus
years before we are ultimately on a prudent and sustainable
path,” Walker said, according to Reuters, partly because so many
American consumers follow the government’s example. “Too many
Americans are spending more than they take in and are running up
debt at record rates.”
Now They Don't
"Auditing Rule Is Put at Risk by Texas Bill," by Mary
Williams Walsh, The New York Times, May 18, 2007 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/business/18pension.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Texas
lawmakers are on the verge of rejecting a requirement that
state and local governments disclose the cost of the health
care they have promised to retired employees.
Passing a
bill would be an unprecedented rebuff to the independent
board that writes accounting rules for the nation’s states
and cities, and officials of the board are watching to see
if Texas inspires copycat rebellions elsewhere.
The
accounting rule that has run into a buzz saw of criticism in
the state capital, Austin, is intended to encourage
politicians to deal ahead of time with the huge obligations
they have imposed on future taxpayers.
Until now,
most governments have been using pay-as-you-go accounting,
which does not show the benefits’ total cost. This method
shows only how much a government spends each year to buy
health care for its retirees — not the value of the benefits
coming due in the future.
With large
numbers of baby boomers expected to retire soon and start
receiving benefits, those costs are likely to rise markedly,
perhaps crowding out other public services.
“Politicians
don’t want to deal with the problem,” said Michael H. Granof,
an accounting professor at the University of Texas. He said
state lawmakers were betting that by the time rising health
care costs became unmanageable, they would no longer be in
office and could not be held accountable.
Officials in
Texas argue that having to disclose the state’s total
obligation — roughly estimated around $50 billion — could
bring pressure to cut benefits. They also contend that the
figures are misleading and impossible to compute accurately,
assertions a spokesman for the accounting board called “an
attempt to hide the truth from the public.”
Some places,
like New York City, have already disclosed their retiree
health obligations and have started setting aside money to
pay for them.
Other state
and local governments appear to be delaying disclosure,
waiting to see if the federal government will save the day.
The cost of retiree health care is turning out to be so
great in some places that officials say they think that
Washington will have no choice but to step in and remake the
nation’s health care system, taking states and local
governments off the hook.
The
spokesman for the Governmental Accounting Standards Board,
Gerard Carney, said it was the first time in the board’s
23-year history that any legislature had tried to derail one
of its standards.
“This is a
disturbing reminder of what can happen when politicians
interfere with an independent system that was designed to
protect financial reporting from politics and other
self-interests,” Mr. Carney said.
The bill to
ignore the accounting standard, which has already passed the
Texas House 142 to 0 and is awaiting a vote in the state
Senate, flies in the face of prevailing trends in private
industry, where the failures of Enron and other companies
prompted efforts to bolster accounting and crack down on
companies that skirt the rules.
If other
governments follow the lead of Texas, it will be nearly
impossible for taxpayers, bondholders or anyone else to know
how much those governments will be spending on retiree
health care in the coming years. Auditors and ratings
agencies will then have to decide whether to sign off on
their financial statements, or penalize the governments for
failing to disclose significant obligations.
In its
initial form, the bill prohibited government bodies in Texas
from adopting the new accounting rule. But it has been
softened somewhat, so that it would now permit authorities
to adopt the new standard, but not require them to. The
Senate is expected to vote on the bill on Monday. It would
next go to Gov. Rick Perry, who is expected to sign it
Continued in Article
May 18, 2007 reply from Elliot
Kamlet
[ekamlet@STNY.RR.COM]
A former TA
of mine is running for Congress in Las Vegas. He is a
partner in a well regarded small CPA firm. A big issue for
him is the real amount of the national debt. You can read
some authoritative information on the real amount of the
debt at
http://www.andrewmartinforcongress.com/fy06gaoauditorreport.pdf
BTW he is a
hell of a nice guy.
Elliot
Kamlet
Binghamton University
Bob Jensen's threads on
Pensions and Post-retirement Benefits: Schemes for Hiding Debt
are
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen//theory/00overview/theory01.htm#Pensions
Why should liberal arts
education be encouraged more in undergraduate business schools?
Carnegie will begin a major
three-year project in July, examining how to integrate the
benefits of a liberal arts education into undergraduate business
programs. The project will focus on developing models that
schools can use to enrich their students' educations and
transform their business programs. It builds on considerable
prior Carnegie Foundation work, including studies of
professional preparation in higher education, of ethical and
social responsibility as educational goals, and of integrative
learning in undergraduate education.
"How Can Liberal Education Give Business Majors A Boost? Study
to Examine Integration of Professional Goals with Liberal Arts
Education," The Carnegie Foundation for Advancement in Teaching
---
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/news/sub.asp?key=51&subkey=2317
Question
What is the new "Popfly" product from Microsoft?
Microsoft has announced the alpha version of Popfly, its new
application creation, mashup enabling tool and social networking
software for nonprogrammers. Popfly consists of two parts:
Popfly Creator, which is a set of online visual tools for
building Web pages and mashups; and Popfly Space, which is an
online community of creators where you can host, share, rate,
comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users.
"There's
an obvious desire or need for people to want to create online
applications, but it's too
difficult today. So our goal is to democratize development,"
said Dan Fernandez,
Microsoft's
lead project manager for Visual Studio
Express, of the Popfly
project.
PhysOrg, May 19, 2007
---
http://physorg.com/news98807333.html
Why should athletes get
preferential admissions?
"Why should the ability to hurl a
football a little bit farther than the next guy play any role in
allocating educational opportunities, let alone a decisive one?"
asks Barbara H. Fried, William W. and Gertrude H. Saunders
Professor of Law at Stanford University, in this month's Change.
In her article, Fried argues that the current emphasis on
preferential admissions of athletes—just as much a tradition at
elite institutions as at big-time sports powerhouses—makes about
as much sense as setting aside slots for really good cooks.
Barbara H. Fried, Change Magazine, May/June 2007 ---
http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/change/sub.asp?key=98&subkey=2352
Jensen Commentary
I've been a long-time critic of moral hazard when it comes to
curricula and grading of college athletes. However, the topic of
admissions is, in my opinion, more complex. In some ways it's
analogous to tax cuts for the wealthy and/or corporations. We
can raise taxes to the hilt only to discover that more low
income people are harmed than wealthy people by economic
downturns. We can raise the academic hurdles to levels that bar
admission to prized athletes only to discover that virtually all
students are harmed in some way by dried up funding from private
sources. I remember when the President of Notre Dame insisted
that alumni build a new library before donating millions to
Notre Dame athletics. The problem lies in striking a balance
such that admitted athletes must perform acceptably in academics
even though they may take longer due to the training and travel
rigors unique to athletes.
I'm reminded of my naive comment
to the President of Trinity University years ago that we could
save a great deal of money by dropping the football team that
operates at a huge deficit every year. He reminded me that in so
doing we would've never landed some our best scholars on campus.
I met the parents (both business professors from Missouri) of
one of our top chemistry graduates who later went on the Cal
Tech for a PhD. They claimed that their daughter came to Trinity
because of a conversation with our soccer coach.
Bob Jensen's threads on
academic standards and athletics are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Athletics
Question
How taxing is New Hampshire?
May 19, 2007 message from a
Trinity University professor
I need some
clarification. I always thought that New Hampshire did not
have income tax. This was denied by a friend who had been
there recently. What is the truth about this matter?
May 19, 2007 reply from Bob
Jensen
No income taxes (with one exception noted below), sales
taxes (except in hotels and restaurants), or seat belt
requirements for adults (grrr). It's great to buy a new
$10,000 LP backup generator and a $20,000 lift for Erika
without having to pay a cent in sales tax. Apple Corporation
has a huge outlet just across the border so Mass. customers
can avoid sales taxes on new computers. Whenever I go to
Wal-Mart up here in the north, there are more green
(Vermont) plates in the parking lot than NH plates.
It's no
accident that Wal-Mart is locating a new super store in
Woodsville just across the river from Vermont. Tour buses
from Canada aim for our Wal-Mart stores. Whenever a new
Wal-Mart store is built, new hotels are bound to follow. I
could write sad and/or humorous poems about this horrible
phenomenon in our society. But being a hypocrite I will
probably make the half hour drive to Woodsville at least
once each week and fill up the back of my Jeep SUV.
Of
course there's no sales tax on mail orders such as orders
from Amazon.com where I now buy almost everything, including
groceries. There's also no sales tax on mail orders sent by
my wife to JC Penney (and QVC) even though JC Penney has
stores in NH. Of course there's no tax inside the stores as
well.
There's a huge problem with
tax cheats who try to claim New Hampshire residency just to
avoid sales taxes on new vehicles. The New Hampshire DOT has
a new initiative to cut back on this type of cheating.
Many professors from the
Boston area live just across the southern border in New
Hampshire just to avoid state income taxes on their royalty
and consulting fees. This is especially the case for MIT and
Harvard professors. It's only about a half hour or less to
get into Boston from some parts of NH. It's also cheaper and
more convenient to fly out of Manchester than Logan Airport.
People who live in places like Cambridge and Amherst prefer
the Manchester airport.
But there's an income tax of
sorts on portfolio income of wealthy people (it's called an
intangibles tax) which might make Delaware or Alaska a bit
more attractive than NH for wealthy people who mainly want
to avoid state taxes. The intangibles tax can also be
avoided up here by investing in bonds of NH municipalities
and school districts.
NH also has some rather high
hidden fees. It just cost me over $200 this year to get new
tags for two relatively old (1989 and 1999)cars manufactured
before the turn of the century. Home and auto insurance
rates are significantly less up here relative to what I had
to pay in San Antonio.
Property taxes in NH are not
cheap, but I find them less per $1,000 of valuation than I
was paying in San Antonio. They revalue property up here
every ten years rather than every other day like they do in
San Antonio's Bexar County Appraisal District.
Interestingly, NH ranks near
the bottom in taxation by states whereas neighboring Vermont
and Maine alternate year to year for highest ranking with
enormous income taxes, sales taxes, and real estate taxes
combined. Some people argue that schools are not as good in
NH, but all the small rural schools up here are, in my
viewpoint, much better than most large urban schools.
Interestingly, California is
not deemed a high tax state among the 50 states. This is
largely due to the infamous Proposition 13. It's a wonder
Proposition 13 did not catch on in other states. Of course
that would not help people (like me) who move to another
state to retire. In fact, Proposition 13 clobbers people
who've recently purchased homes in California.
Bob Jensen
PS
I compare states and discuss state taxation in greater
detail at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2007/tidbits070416.htm
"Beyond the
Standard-Issue: Keyboard Replacement Options Improve User
Comfort; Built-In Shortcuts," by Katherin Boehret, The
Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2007; Page D8 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/the_mossberg_solution.html
Many
computer users assume that the keyboard and mouse they
receive with a new computer or built into a laptop are
optimal for typing and quick access to digital media. But
plenty of alternative keyboards and mice provide ergonomic
comfort and/or shortcuts built into special keys or buttons.
Though these options cost extra, chances are good that
they're worth the money.
This week, I
tested three such replacement options: two keyboard sets
that operate wirelessly using Bluetooth -- the replacement
for wires running short distances -- and a stand-alone wired
ergonomic keyboard made for touch typists who value comfort
during long hours in front of a computer screen.
The two
wireless sets I used are Microsoft Corp.'s Wireless
Entertainment Desktop 7000, which came out just a few months
ago, and Logitech Inc.'s comparable but older Cordless
Desktop MX 5000 Laser, which has been available for about a
year and a half. Each costs $150. These keyboards have
built-in shortcuts that make them handy to use on or off the
desk when browsing through digital media like photos, videos
and music.
I also tried
Microsoft's wired $65 Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000. It
incorporates some shortcut buttons of its own, but stands
out more because of its appearance: its keys are split into
two groupings for right and left hands and each side slants
upward in the center around an arch, forcing your hands to
rest more naturally as if positioned to shake. The keyboard
comes with a detachable wrist rest that raises your wrists a
third of an inch above the rest of the keyboard.
Each product
brought something slightly different to the table: The ergo
offers comfort and functionality; the wireless Logitech has
a multifunctional mouse and a keyboard with a built-in LCD;
the wireless Microsoft shows off a sleek look and 17
touch-sensitive buttons. As a touch typist, I preferred
Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 for its
hand-relaxing setup and 13 shortcut buttons. I'm using it
now to type this column, and my fingers have less distance
to go before reaching a key than on a regular keyboard.
The basic
functions of these keyboards/keyboard sets work out of the
box on Mac and Windows operating systems, but their extra
features work only after installing included or downloaded
software, and neither the wireless Microsoft set nor the
Logitech set will work on a Mac, period. Both companies
claim that these products will work with Windows Vista,
Microsoft's newest operating system, but the ergonomic
keyboard's extra bells and whistles didn't work properly on
my Vista laptop.
I easily got
the wireless Logitech and Microsoft keyboard sets
communicating with their corresponding Bluetooth receivers
on PCs and laptops. I pressed a Connect button on the base
of each set's mouse and keyboard before pressing the same
button on the USB Bluetooth receiver and a few seconds
later, I was in business.
The
Microsoft and Logitech wireless desktops use USB plug-in
Bluetooth receivers to connect the computer with the mouse
and keyboard. Both mice operated on rechargeable batteries
and must be docked occasionally for recharging, which is
annoying -- especially if you're forgetful. But each will
fully recharge in two hours, giving two and three weeks for
the Logitech and Microsoft mice, respectively. Both mice get
enough juice for a full day of usage after charging for 10
minutes.
Both
keyboards use regular keys and a series of touch-sensitive
buttons that work when you hover your finger over the
intended button and touch it very slightly. Logitech's
touch-sensitive media buttons are relegated to the far left
of its keyboard, including zoom and volume buttons that
adjust with a finger flick up or down. Microsoft's
touch-sensitive keys line the entire top edge of its keypad.
Logitech's
wireless keyboard is about two inches wider than
Microsoft's, and for good reason: the Microsoft keyboard
lacks a numeric keypad on its far right side, a feature that
I missed. In place of the keypad are a set of directional
buttons that mimic the basic functionality of a mouse. These
let you push back from your desktop to browse digital photos
while leaving your mouse on the desk yet still taking
advantage of some of its functions.
The Logitech
Cordless Desktop MX 5000 Laser keyboard uses a built-in LCD
at the center top of its keyboard. This screen reflected the
keyboard's synching with my computer: it displayed my name,
the date and the time. When I played music, the artist and
song title scrolled across the screen. This could come in
handy if you planned to constantly use the keyboard away
from the PC. But in most cases, the content on the LCD
wasn't that helpful, and seemed repetitive of what was on
the computer screen.
The Logitech
mouse is sculpted to fit a hand and it offered more buttons
for scrolling and navigation than the Microsoft set's mouse.
To recharge, this mouse fits upright in a stand. Microsoft's
wireless mouse recharges by lying flat on a recharging
strip.
I used
Microsoft's Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 with my desktop
computers at work and in place of a small laptop's squished
keyboard. Its arched center and split keys took a little
getting used to, but I was soon hooked. A special feature in
the center of the keyboard called the Zoom Slider lets you
zooms in or out to adjust the view of a screen. This worked
for me in Microsoft Word documents, but not in Outlook
Express or within Firefox's browser.
Five large,
numbered buttons at the center top of this ergo keyboard are
called My Favorites, and I programmed them with ease by
pressing one and entering the desired destination, including
folders, browsers, or specific Web sites.
But typing
on this keyboard really won me over. Its split setup won't
work for everyone, but for touch typists, it's truly more
comfortable. I typed away with ease using my right and left
fingers, and keys felt closer together due to their
inward-tilting shape. I noticed that I made fewer mistakes
typing on this keyboard than on a regular keyboard.
Continued in article
Question
Is the market for credit default swaps rife with insider
trading?
That depends on what you mean by
insider trading.
See "Credit Default Swaps: The Land of Efficient Insider
Trading?" DealBroker ---
http://www.dealbreaker.com/2007/04/credit_default_swaps_the_land.php
Use the term
in a loose sense—say defining “insider trading” as trades
where one party has material nonpublic information
unavailable to their trading counterparts—and the answer is
clearly yes. There is a lot of that sort of insider trading
in the credit default market, and there is likely to be even
more as the market grows and more players gather around the
table.
But since
federal securities regulations against insider trading apply
only to insider trading in securities, the question of
whether this counts as "insider trading" in a strictly legal
sense is murkier. Credit default swaps do not fit the
traditional definition of securities. Prior to the enactment
of the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, there
was a lot of debate over the legal answer to the question of
whether they should be categorized with the most common
types of securities-stocks and bonds. The CFMA split the
difference by declaring that swaps were not securities but
that insider trading and other federal anti-fraud measures
still applied to swaps where the underlying credit was a
security, such as those based on publicly traded bonds.
But this has
been controversial from the start. Few of those trading in
the credit default swap market were calling out for
protection from insider trading. Many hedge funds and other
debt-holders active in the credit default market lack the
kind of internal controls and so-called “Chinese Walls” that
investment banks and brokerages have had to build to prevent
insider trading in securities. And most of the other market
participants are aware that this is the situation. In short,
there is plenty of asymmetrical information in the credit
default swap market but that fact is widely--even
symmetrically--known. Moreover, the legal status of more
complex financial products not directly tied to individual
securities remains murky.
Regardless,
it seems the regulators are exactly crying out to enforce
insider-trading laws against the traders in the credit
default market either. Right now no US regulatory agency
claims oversight jurisdiction for credit-default swaps. Not
the SEC. Not the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Not
the Treasury Department. Not the Federal Reserve.
Since no one
enforces insider trading laws in the credit default swap
market, and apparently no one has the jurisdiction to
enforce insider trading laws, it seems the laws only apply
to the market in some metaphysical, theoretical sense.
There's something of a tree falling in an empty forest thing
going on with the application of insider trading laws to
credit default swaps. If a statute applies insider trading
regs to credit default swaps but no one enforces it, does
the tree make any sound?
Over on his
new blog at Portfolio, Felix Salmon points us toward the
remarks of Erik Sirri, the director of the SEC's division of
market regulation.
Salmon
writes:
Sirri came
out and said what everybody in the markets knows but nobody
wants to admit: "In a world of important pricing efficiency,
you want insiders trading because the price will be more
efficient. That is as it should be."
Sirri then
went on to explain that insider-trading laws should still
exist, for the purpose of investor protection. But he added
that he thought it "very important" that credit default
swaps be traded – something which won't happen if the
tradable contracts fall under insider-trading regulations
while the present bilateral contracts don't.
Sirri’s rationale here seems
relatively simple. Insider trading laws have efficiency
costs but the government has made the decision that in the
case of markets for securities those costs are outweighed by
the gains in investor protection and investor confidence.
Part of the reason for deciding things in this way is
because the government, corporate America and the large
brokerages want ordinary investors to feel confident they
are playing on something of a level playing field with those
with potentially better access to information. But in trades
involving more sophisticated players trading more
sophisticated financial products, it’s far from clear that
this rationale applies. Do we really need to protect hedge
funds from other hedge funds and investment banks in credit
default swap trading? The enforcement and compliance costs
with insider trading rules may outweigh the benefits.
Nonetheless,
it is entertaining watching the easily scandalized become so
easily scandalized when a regulator mentions the benefits of
insider trading. One question: why are so many of the easily
scandalized also British?
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on
Credit Derivatives are under the C-Terms at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/acct5341/speakers/133glosf.htm#C-Terms
Bob Jensen's "Rotten to the
Core" threads are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm
A New Website for Visitors to
San Antonio
May 19, 2007 message from Matt
[matt@informationsanantonio.com]
Mr. Jensen-
I have
a website about San Antonio that I work on daily. My
website,
http://www.informationsanantonio.com/
might be a useful addition to your
webpage
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/sanantonio.htm
and its visitors. It would undoubtedly
be a useful addition for me as I work on building my inbound
traffic while adding new content.
Thanks,
Matt Terry
May 20, 2007
message from Matt
Dr. Jensen,
Thank you
for adding my link to your page-I saw it today. I also spent
a good bit of time on your website in several different
areas. I didn’t have enough time to go through all of it of
course but will be reading more as time goes on. Your
thoughts about ethics (or lack of) in the business world
today I found to be very interesting and dead on. I am a
small businessman in a family propane business here in San
Antonio. My wife is a banker at Frost Bank and we just had
our first child. We both work very hard to earn our money
and support our family. We believe it is our job to raise
our daughter to be a responsible and productive citizen and
we hope that her future educators will be as concerned with
honor, integrity, and the difference between right and wrong
as you are. Thank you again for adding my link but even more
so, thank you for being the kind of professor this country
needs more of.
Matt Terry
"Helio's New Ocean Has a
Clever Design For Phone and Email," by Walter S. Mossberg,
The Wall Street Journal, May 10, 2007; Page B1 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/personal_technology.html
One dilemma
for designers of smart phones is how to optimize them both
for making voice calls, a task best done by a smaller device
with just a phone keypad, and for email and Web surfing, a
task best done by a larger device with a full keyboard.
Some
devices, like Treos and full-size BlackBerrys, opt for the
larger size and the keyboard, while others assume you'll
peck out email or Web addresses on a phone keypad.
I've been
testing a new $295 smart phone from Helio, an upstart
company based in Los Angeles, that provides an elegant
solution to this design problem. It's called the Helio Ocean
and it can look like either a standard voice phone or a
keyboard-equipped email and Web device, depending on which
way you open its unusual two-way sliding mechanism.
The Ocean
also has some very nice software touches to complement this
clever hardware design.
It isn't as
slender as some of its competitors and it has a few
downsides, but the Ocean is an innovative, thoughtfully
designed smart phone that advances the state of the art. It
goes on sale over the next week or so at helio.com and in
some retail stores later this month.
Helio not
only designed the Ocean, but the phone works on Helio's own
cellphone service, which runs on Sprint's network at
broadband speeds. It lacks Wi-Fi wireless networking.
Plans with
unlimited data access range from $65 to $135 a month,
depending on the number of voice minutes. For $145 a month,
you can get unlimited data and minutes.
When closed,
the Ocean is just a roomy screen with some buttons at the
top and bottom of a black rectangular body with rounded
corners. If you hold it vertically with the screen in
portrait mode and slide the screen up, a standard phone
keypad is revealed that you can hold to your ear when making
calls, just as on a standard voice phone.
Continued in article
From the Mathematical
Association of America: Innovative Teaching Exchange
The purpose of the Exchange is to allow
people teaching mathematics at the college level to share new
methods they have tried, invented, or discovered, which they
feel help the students learn better and/or more easily. The
intention is to encourage more experimentation with more methods
than the traditional lecture/questions method. While the editor
of the Exchange tries to see to it that articles are
well-written and contain at least enough detail that readers can
decide whether they're interested in trying the method, she
doesn't necessarily endorse all suggested activities, nor does
the MAA - that is, caveat emptor. All articles in the Exchange
will include contact information for their authors. Since the
articles are short, you might wish to contact the writer for
further details or advice before trying the ideas in your class.
http://www.maa.org/t_and_l/exchange/exchange.html
From the National Council of
Teachers of Mathematics
We All Use Math Everyday ---
http://www.weallusematheveryday.com/tools/waumed/home.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free
online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Question
Why have investment banks been so profitable?
From Jim Mahar's Blog on May 18,
2007 ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
Why have investment banks been so
profitable? From the Economist
The Economist
gives us another great article! This one
is on investment banking. Not only does
it provide a short history (going back
pre-JP Morgan), but also brings us up to
date with a look at the current (very
profitable) state of investment banking.
The alchemists of finance |
Economist.com:
A relatively long
look-in:
"Brokerage used to be described as a
haulage business, lugging money, as
a member of the Rothschild dynasty
once put it, “from point A, where it
is, to point B, where it is
needed”.... But any haulage firm
would be flabbergasted by the
trading profits and returns on
equity seen in investment banking in
recent years....earnings from
capital-market-related activities at
the top ten global investment banks
have risen by almost two-thirds in
two years....That sort of profit
increase is comparable with Apple's
rewards for inventing the iPod....
Yet in investment banking there is
nothing nearly so tangible to which
to ascribe the gains.
Bankers themselves are fuzzy about
explaining their trading
profits....But it is clear that
three powerful forces are at work,
all of them overlapping and mutually
reinforcing....
The first is the alchemist's trick
of turning debt (mostly leaden) into
derivatives (mostly liquid); the
second is the emergence of a new
class of leveraged client (hedge
funds and private equity); and the
third is seeking out new capital
markets, and clients, around the
world. Moreover, in all these
pursuits the firms are now using not
just their clients' money but, to
differing degrees, their own too."
Which predictably lead to a discussion
of whether this leads to increased risks
(probably), whether investment banks
have taken enough precautions (maybe),
and a warning that these profits have
arisen in "an unusually benign economic
climate" that will eventually come to an
end.
Good stuff!
Check it out!
Bob Jensen's tutorials on
derivatives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
Question
What did we learn from the stock market crash of 1987?
From Jim Mahar's Blog on May 14,
2007 ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/
A look back to the 1987 Stock Market Crash
Almost 20 years
ago the stock market lost over 20% in
the course of a single day and
about 30% over a two week period.
Now the Fed's Mark
Carlson looks back at the crash in a
fascinating history piece.
A Brief History of the 1987 Stock Market
Crash
A quick look in:
"The market crash of 1987 is a
significant event not just because
of the swiftness and severity of the
market decline, but also because it
showed the weaknesses of the trading
systems themselves and how they
could be strained and come close to
breaking in extreme conditions. The
problems in the trading systems
interacted with the price declines
to make the crisis worse. One
notable problem was the difficulty
gathering information in the rapidly
changing and chaotic environment.
The systems in place simply were not
capable of processing so many
transactions at once."
Not surprisingly
given it is a Fed governor pays
particular attention to the Fed's
response which was (correctly) to add
liquidity to the market.
A definite must read!
Thanks to
Research-Finance.com
for the link!
"Middle Eastern Women Discuss
Challenges They Face at Home and Abroad,"Knowledge@wharton,
May 16, 2007 ---
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm;jsessionid=9a30130849145a3b153e?articleid=1740
This spring,
Wharton and the University of Pennsylvania law school hosted
37 professional women from the Middle East for a four-week
legal and business fellowship program. Depending on their
professional experience, the women attended classes at
Wharton executive education or the law school, and then
began five-month internships with large companies and
top-tier law firms across the U.S.
The program,
in partnership with America-Mideast Educational and Training
Services (AMIDEAST) and the U.S. State Department, teaches
management, business and legal skills, and encourages women
to share information and network with each other as well as
faculty.
Continued in article
More Articles from
Wharton's Knowledge Network
|
From Purdue University:
Teaching Engineering
In 1983 we developed and taught for
the first time a graduate course, Educational Methods for
Engineers, geared toward Ph.D. candidates who were interested in
an academic career. Our sources came from a variety of
disciplines, journals, and books because we immediately noticed
that no textbook was available which focused solely on
engineering. Classic texts such as Highet’s and McKeachie’s
became starting points and we scoured the literature for what
was available in engineering. With a grant from the National
Science Foundation in 1990 we expanded the course to include all
of engineering, conducted a summer workshop, and began this book
much earlier than we otherwise could have. Although the writing
of this book was supported by NSF, all of the views in this book
are the authors’ and do not represent the views of either the
National Science Foundation or Purdue University.
https://engineering.purdue.edu/ChE/News_and_Events/Publications/teaching_engineering/index.html
Materials Engineering ---
http://www.gatewaycoalition.org/sub_category/sub_category.aspx?subcatid=1022&mcatid=105
Science and Engineering Encyclopedia
http://www.diracdelta.co.uk/science/source/h/o/home/source.html
Penn State University Center for Nanotechnology Education and Utilization
---
http://www.cneu.psu.edu/
The Center for International
Earth Science Information Network ---
http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/
40 + Years of Earth Science:
The Landsat Program ---
http://www.earth.nasa.gov/history/landsat/landsat.html
University of Wisconsin
Energy Institute [Audio and Video) ---
http://www.energy.wisc.edu/
Bob Jensen's links to free
online science tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Online Historical Population
Reports ---
http://www.histpop.org/ohpr/servlet/
Bob Jensen's links to social
science helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Bob Jensen's history links
are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Question
Where can I be compensated for my scholarly videos?
May 17, 2007 message from
Richard Campbell
[campbell@RIO.EDU]
There are a number of video
sharing sites out there - Google and youtube are the most
well known. However a number of video sites out there are
interested in monetizing that content for the benefit of the
author as well as the web sites.
www.veoh.com
is one site in which revenue sharing is possible as well as
the ability to add advertiising to either the beginning or
the end of the movie, with the money going back to the
author. I just uploaded a video on Quickbooks 2007, and am
considering adding additional videos. Check the link below.
http://www.veoh.com/videos/v5029468QznF5Ag
Richard J. Campbell
mailto:campbell@rio.edu
Drexel Caves in on
Student Loan Charges
Under the terms of the accord, Drexel
agreed to redistribute to student borrowers about $250,000 that
it had received from Education Finance Partners as part of
revenue sharing agreements in which the lender paid the
university a portion of the private loans its students took out.
Drexel also agreed to abide by the code of conduct that Cuomo’s
office has promulgated, and that two dozen colleges and a
half-dozen lenders have endorsed.
Doug Lederman, "Drexel to Cuomo: Um, Never Mind “Fight on,
Drexel!” “Stand Strong Drexel!” Inside Higher Ed, May 16,
2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/16/drexel
Bob Jensen's threads on the
student loan scandals are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#Accountability
"Beyond Research Rankings,"
by Luis M. Proenza, Inside Higher Ed, May 17, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2007/05/17/proenza
Research
competitiveness and productivity are complex subjects that
should inform the development and oversight of R&D programs
at the national, state and institutional levels. From a
national policy perspective, studies of our national
innovation ecosystem – of the factors that promote discovery
and innovation – are important to America’s economic
vitality.
Ironically, rather
than advance our knowledge and discussion of
these important topics, many university
presidents seem more inclined to debate the
shortcomings of available measures such as
the rankings of U.S. News & World Report,
sometimes even
threatening to boycott
the surveys. What is
more, these same presidents defend the
absence of adequate measurements of
institutional performance by saying that the
strength of American higher education lies
in the diversity of its institutions. So why
not develop a framework that characterizes
institutional variety and demonstrates
productivity understandably, effectively and
broadly throughout the spectrum of our
institutions?
Of course, it is not easy to characterize
the wide range of America’s more than 3,500
colleges and universities. Even among the
more limited number of research
universities, institutional diversity is so
broad that every approach to rank or even
classify institutions has been rightly
criticized. Most research rankings use only
input measures, such as amount of federal
funding or total expenditures for research,
when funding agencies would be served better
by information about outcomes — the research
performance of universities.
The Center for Measuring University
Performance,
founded by John Lombardi, has compiled some
of the most comprehensive data on research
universities. Its annual studies examine the
multi-dimensional aspects of research
universities and rank them in groups defined
by relative performance on various
measurable characteristics — research
funding, private giving, faculty awards,
doctorate degrees, postdoctoral fellows and
measures of undergraduate student quality.
The 2005 report of the
Center and
a recent column on this site by Lombardi
note the upward or
downward skewing of expenditure rankings by
the mere presence or absence of either a
medical or an engineering school, thereby
acknowledging the problems of comparability
among institutions. Lombardi hints at a
much-needed analysis of research
competitiveness/strengths and productivity,
stating, “Real accountability comes when we
develop specific measures to assess the
performance of comparable institutions on
the same measures.”
Indeed, a particularly thorny question
always has been how to create meaningful
comparisons between large and smaller
research universities, or even between
specific research programs within
universities. This struggle seems to arise
in part from the fundamental question that
underlies the National Science Foundation
rankings — namely, should winning or
expending more research dollars be the only
criterion for a higher ranking? I think not.
Quite simply, in the absence of output
measures, the more-is-better logic is
flawed. If research productivity is equal,
why should a university that spends more
money for research be ranked higher than one
that spends less? The sizes of research
budgets alone do not create equally
productive outcomes. Other contributing
factors need to be considered. For example,
some universities have much larger licensing
revenues than those with comparable research
budgets, and all surveys that measure
licensing revenues compared to research
income show no correlation, especially when
scaled.
Because there are no established frameworks
to get at the various factors that are
likely involved, I think a good beginning
would be to characterize research
competitiveness and productivity separately.
Research competitiveness:
Because available R&D dollars vary widely by
agency and field of research, and because
universities do not have uniform research
strengths, I suggest that portfolio analyses
of research funding need to be performed. A
given university’s research portfolio can be
described, quantified and weighed against
the percentage of funding available from
each federal agency and, when possible, by
the sub-areas of research supported by each
agency. For example, the upward skewing of
rankings is partially explained by the fact
that 70 percent of all federal funding is
directed at biomedical research. Likewise,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture funds
only 3 percent of federal research, but
provides virtually all of such funds to land
grant universities.
Analyses should focus on federal obligations
for R&D, rather than total expenditures,
because federal obligations are by-and-large
competitively awarded and thus come closest
to demonstrating competitiveness. Available
data, however, present various challenges.
For example, some federal funding that
supports activities other than research will
need to be excluded from analyses (e.g.,
large contracts that give universities
management of support programs). Also, data
are available only at the macro level of
disciplines, such as engineering versus life
sciences, which means that detailed
distinctions between research areas will be
difficult to achieve.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on
college ranking controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
What's happening to
eCollege for $477 million?
In a move that could have many
reverberations in higher education, the publishing giant
Pearson announced a deal Monday in which it will purchase
eCollege, which offers course
management and other services for distance education. Many
analysts predict that the move will create a major competitor to
Blackboard in course management and some say the sale could
presage more consolidation among producers of software and
content for higher education.
Scott Jaschik, "Shaking Up the Market,"
Inside Higher Ed, May
15, 2007 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/15/ecollege
