therussophileorg--2019-09-30--American Higher Education Is Even More Corrupt Than It Looks

This  [post](https://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Truthdig/ChrisHedges/~3/uW55W4-JQ-o/)  was originally published on  [this site](https://feeds.feedburner.com/Truthdig/ChrisHedges)  _This story is a collaboration between ProPublica and New York magazine._  The unhappy heroine of “The Mistakes Madeline Made,” which premiered Off Broadway in 2006, hates working as one of 15 personal assistants to a financier and his family. The patriarch, she observes, “runs his home the way he runs his hedge fund — using a model to protect his family against the possibility of loss or waste or even just the unexpected.” His “Household System” demands perfection: Even the hunt for a duplicate pair of New Balance sneakers is to be executed with the logistical finesse of a Navy SEAL strike.  The play was written by Elizabeth Meriwether, who would go on to create the sitcom “New Girl” for Fox. Her fictionalized account of her brief stint working for the Wall Street billionaire David E. Shaw never reached a wide audience, but the script became samizdat among the harried members of Shaw staff — as the family’s highly compensated, Ivy-educated, hierarchical cadre is known. Her disgruntled protagonist’s job making sure “nothing bad can ever happen to this family” has felt familiar to some of Meriwether’s successors.  The 68-year-old Shaw made his estimated $7.3 billion fortune by bringing the computing revolution to finance. D.E. Shaw & Co., the legendary hedge fund that bears his name, pairs proprietary trading algorithms with obsessive risk management. Less well publicized, however, are the various ways in which Shaw has applied his fund’s risk-averse, quantitative approach to nearly every aspect of his life. Employees tell stories about Shaw wanting Chinese food or a comfortable mattress, and Shaw staff exhaustively researching and testing the options in advance. It was company lore that before Shaw traveled, an assistant would take the exact same trip — same car service, same airport, same seat on the plane — to eliminate any inefficiencies. Shaw has been said to purchase tickets for several different flights on the same day in case his plans change.  He has even devised a model to protect his family from the possibility of loss or disappointment (what some might call the stuff of life itself) in that most uncertain of contemporary futures markets — namely, the college-admissions process. Like other couples of ample means, Shaw and his wife, financial journalist Beth Kobliner, have sent their three children to an elite prep school, supported them with hyperqualified nannies and tutors, and encouraged their extracurricular interests. But while the typical snowplow parent quietly eliminates potential obstacles by clearing the road ahead, Shaw and Kobliner have seemingly bulldozed an entire mountain. Even though their children were by all accounts excellent students, the Shaws pursued a remarkably elaborate and expensive pattern of philanthropy to seven of the most renowned universities in the country.  Starting in 2011, when the oldest of their three children was about two years away from applying to college, the Shaw Family Endowment Fund donated $1 million annually to Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford and at least $500,000 each to Columbia and Brown. The pattern persisted through 2017, the most recent year for which public filings are available, with a bump in giving to Columbia to $1 million a year in 2016 and 2017. The foundation, which lists Kobliner as president and Shaw as treasurer and secretary, has also contributed $200,000 annually to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 2013.  The total donations for “general” purposes across seven years and seven elite schools are $37.3 million, which represents 62% of the foundation’s giving over that period. At minimum, experts in higher-education fundraising say, Shaw and Kobliner’s strategy improved their children’s chances of getting into at least one of the country’s top universities. At best, it would allow them to choose whichever blue-chip school they preferred, making selecting a college as easy as ordering from a takeout menu.  Most American tycoons who sweeten their children’s admissions prospects rely on a major donation to a single college, often their alma mater. And yet, from a hedge funder’s perspective, investing in multiple colleges is a classic asymmetric bet — one with minimal risk and massive potential upside. “For someone of his mentality, making a portfolio bet would make a lot of sense,” said one former Ivy League development officer. “I can tell you that within the hedge-fund community and private-equity community, this wouldn’t be unusual. It’s common for people to be giving to two or three or four schools.” (Just how many of these donations are made is hard to know because, while those from foundations like the Shaws’ are typically publicly reported, gifts from individuals are not.)  As Parke Muth, an independent counselor and former associate dean of admissions at the University of Virginia, explained, the very wealthy “are accustomed to diversifying their investments, and they apply that same philosophy to their kids’ choices.”  For his own college education, David Shaw, who grew up in Los Angeles, went to the University of California, San Diego, where he studied math, physics and information science. In 1973, he entered Stanford’s Ph.D. program in computer science. After earning his doctorate, he got a job teaching at Columbia. One former colleague remembers that Shaw arrived in New York driving a Ferrari and had his own public-relations representative, which was unusual for a faculty member. Profiles of Shaw over the years have reported that he left Columbia because Morgan Stanley & Co. made him an offer that was too good to refuse, but that may have been only part of the equation. He was also in his up-or-out year at Columbia, and his promising research project on an experimental supercomputer was perceived to have run into difficulties. “I don’t believe he was going to get tenure,” said Stephen Unger, emeritus professor of computer science. “His clock was running out.” (Through a spokesperson, the Shaw family declined to be interviewed for this story.)  At Morgan Stanley, Shaw realized that computers could do far more than simply help humans gain a financial edge; if programmed correctly, they could replace our faulty intuitions entirely. In 1988, he left Morgan Stanley to found D.E. Shaw & Co., which he conceived of as a research firm that happened to study the intersection of computing and finance. The company’s proprietary algorithms scoured markets across the world for tiny price anomalies. Shaw “pursued numerical precision with a zealous intensity,” Sebastian Mallaby writes in his 2010 book on hedge-fund giants, “More Money Than God.” “It was no good telling him that a programming task might take three to eight weeks; you had to say that it would take 5.25 but with an error of two weeks.”  The conventional wisdom in the hedge-fund world is to bet big. DESCO, as Shaw’s firm is known internally, did things differently. Its philosophy, explained one former trader at the firm, is to “bet small and bet many, many times.” Traders are advised never to make a bet that could cripple the firm. “They definitely practice what I would call extreme diversification,” the trader added. “It permeates the culture.”  To fill its storied ranks, D.E. Shaw & Co. depended on the same criteria elite colleges use in their own admissions processes. No matter one’s age or status, every applicant — from secretarial workers to traders lured from top mathematics and physics departments — had to submit their SAT scores. “It was incredibly insulting to recruit professors from MIT and ask them for their SAT scores and high school GPA,” a recruiter recalls. “They would be like, ‘I’m a tenured professor, why are you asking?’” When former Treasury secretary and Harvard president Lawrence Summers applied for a job at the firm in 2006, he was required to solve brainteasers.  Housed in a glass skyscraper near Times Square, D.E. Shaw & Co. ranks as one of the five highest-grossing hedge funds of all time. The company employs around 1,200 people, including 87 Ph.D.s and 25 International Math Olympiad medalists. At one point in the aughts, of the five employees in the D.E. Shaw mailroom, three had degrees from Columbia and one was a concert pianist from Carnegie Mellon, according to a former worker. Among its alums are John Overdeck and David Siegel, who left to form their own legendary quant firm, Two Sigma, as well as Jeff Bezos and his ex-wife, MacKenzie Tuttle. Eric Schmidt, the former Google chairman, owns a 20% stake in the firm, which he has said “feels like Silicon Valley in Manhattan.” Shaw owns almost all of the rest.  Although Shaw left the day-to-day management of the hedge fund nearly two decades ago, he’s still the chairman, and it remains molded in his image: decidedly elitist, tight-lipped and risk-averse. The firm has always operated in stealth mode, keen to protect its secret formulas. “Shaw mostly prohibited us from talking to colleagues in other groups — or sometimes even our own office mates — about what we were doing,” Cathy O’Neil, who worked at DESCO as a quant from 2007 to 2009, wrote in her 2016 book, “Weapons of Math Destruction.” (As soon as most applicants arrived at their first interview, they signed nondisclosure agreements. If hired, they signed more, which may be why former employees spoke with us anonymously.)  This secrecy and vigilance extended to the company’s extreme caution on legal and compliance issues. One of Shaw’s common sayings, repeated at an annual training session by a compliance officer, was that it was important to avoid risks and legal trouble because Shaw wanted to make sure that his kids could go to college. “He used to say that semifacetiously, as a way of saying, ‘I’m depending on this firm for my future income,’” one former employee recalled. The management of the Shaw family’s foundation reflects this prudence. At the end of 2017, more than 90% of its investments were in short-term Treasury bills.  Shaw left the hedge fund in 2001 to found D.E. Shaw Research, which applied computer simulations to the arduous process of drug development. At both places, former employees said Shaw cared about saving time almost as much as he cared about minimizing risk. “The one thing you can’t get back is his time,” a former employee who worked at the hedge fund recalled. “So you spend as much of your time to get him back his time. My bosses would tell me that if my spending eight hours on something would save David five minutes, it would absolutely be a good use of my time.”  Shaw, who often dressed in cargo shorts, a T-shirt and New Balance sneakers, wanted to make sure that wherever he went, he could stroll in and begin working. Desks and computers were set up to his liking. His guidelines for visitors to his office were equally specific. In the early 1990s, he became frustrated that people who came by when he was busy would walk away before he could see who they were and what they wanted. In a two-and-a-half-page interoffice memo titled “Stopping by David’s Office,” he detailed his solution: hand signals. To indicate that Shaw should return a visit, he wrote, “the visitor points back over his or her shoulder.” To indicate the opposite, “the visitor makes the ‘don’t bother’ or ‘no thanks’ sign, moving his or her hand back and forth, with palm showing, as if cleaning a window, while possibly shaking his or her head and/or wrinkling his or her nose.”  Shaw’s hand signals were parodied in an advice column in the company’s internal newsletter. Columnist “MarySue” explained to “Frustrated in Finop” how to interpret Shaw’s gestures. “You saw a basic left-right combination, which means ‘I’m on the phone with Bill Clinton (left shoulder point) and the Dalai Lama (right ear pull) right now.’”  Shaw and Kobliner, then a staff writer for Money magazine, were married in New York in 1993. Two years later, they had their first child, Rebecca, now 23, followed by Adam, 21, and Jacob, a high school sophomore. In orchestrating his family life, Shaw borrowed the methods of his hedge fund, much as “The Mistakes Madeline Made” describes. Many of the personal assistants on Shaw staff had impressive credentials. “It felt like getting into college all over again to get a job there,” a former staffer recalled. “It felt like a huge accomplishment.”  Hiring for Shaw staff was done separately from that of the firm but was comparably rigorous. Recruiters would sometimes swap out mathematical brainteasers for hypothetical problems that might arise for the family: If David is concerned about ticks, how would you prevent them from invading his property? David doesn’t like fluoride: How would you figure out the bottled- water brands that have the least? If money were not an issue, how would you design a safety helmet for a child?  Once hired, Shaw staff soon learned that many of these questions were far from hypothetical. One staffer remembered being told to find a rug for a child’s bedroom that was both cost-effective and “the best.” “Everything was like that,” the staffer said. Shaw also instructed his staff to protect the family’s 38,000-square-foot Hastings-on-Hudson estate from Lyme disease. One proposal supposedly involved building a moat — dry and lined with sheer glass — that would prevent tick-carrying squirrels and deer from entering the property.  As in the corporate world, responsibilities for different tasks and specialties, such as medical research, travel and child care, were divvied up among various Shaw staff; some assisted other assistants. “Devoted professional couple with three wonderful, school-aged children,” read one ad the family posted in 2011, “seeks highly intelligent, amiable, responsible individual to serve as part-time personal assistant helping with child care, educational enrichment, and certain other activities at various times during afternoons, evenings, and weekends.” The ad went on to explain that the assistant would have a private room on a different floor from the family’s apartment and that “an aptitude for math and science is a plus, though not required.”  The existence of this fleet-footed band of assistants — armed with advanced degrees and six-figure salaries and fighting an ever-losing battle against contingency — appears to have been a well-kept secret. Even the children’s friends who visited the Shaws’ apartment on the Upper West Side were not aware that the family owned other apartments in the building brimming with personal staff.  Shaw staffers confirmed that the standard was as Meriwether depicted it: perfection. Those who didn’t measure up suffered the consequences. Meriwether, who joined Shaw staff as a 22-year-old Yale graduate, was fired after forgetting to put snacks — bottled water and Asian pears sliced a quarter of an inch thick — into the car that picked the children up from school, according to two people familiar with the incident.  While Shaw was shifting his focus to medical research, Kobliner was expanding her personal-finance franchise. In books like “Make Your Kid a Money Genius (Even If You’re Not)” and “Get a Financial Life,” she fashioned herself as a self-help guru for the financially dazed and dispossessed. Kobliner has described her “mission” in life as encouraging people to have “open, honest conversations about money.” She advises parents who give charitably to include their children in those decisions and warns that “giving shouldn’t mean taking from others.”  One of her areas of expertise is how to pay for college. In her writing, media interviews and YouTube videos, she cautions parents not to “follow the herd with your donating dollars” or pin their hopes for their children on getting into brand-name colleges. “Don’t believe the hype,” she tells them. “You might find yourself obsessing over those annual college rankings. Don’t take them too seriously.” The sensible solution, she argues, is for families to “pick a few financial safety schools” — public universities close to home. A degree from an elite college, she reminds readers, may not translate into higher earnings in later life. “The Ivy League isn’t necessarily the gravy train.”  This is not quite the message imparted by Horace Mann, the exclusive prep school where the Shaws sent their children. At Horace Mann, the need to battle for slots at the nation’s most prestigious colleges is ingrained in students from an early age. Peers of the Shaw children remember classmates talking about where they wanted to go to college — and understanding that they might very well not go there — as early as the sixth grade. “It is difficult to dodge the school’s reputation as a ‘pressure cooker,’ college-obsessed school when, for example, a seventh-grade class has divided into teams named after the eight Ivy League institutions,” noted an editorial in the school’s newspaper, The Record, in a 2014 issue printed shortly before Rebecca Shaw’s graduation.  Conversations around choosing classes and clubs were tied to which would be most useful for college applications. Among her extracurriculars, Rebecca founded the Anti-Bullying Leadership Network. The summer before applying to college, she organized a conference on bullying at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center auditorium, where she spoke alongside leading academics and experts. “The speakers seemed like something that came to be through Rebecca’s parents’ connections,” one former classmate said. Over the years, some of their institutions had been recipients of the Shaws’ giving. Speakers included Lisa S. Coico, president of City College (the Shaw foundation has donated $3 million to the school to endow a chair in Kobliner’s father’s name); Thomas Kelly, the head of Horace Mann (to which the family has donated at least $3.9 million); and Sarah Hurwitz, special assistant to then-President Barack Obama. Shaw is one of the country’s top donors to the Democratic Party. Both he and Kobliner served on presidential advisory committees, and Rebecca later authored a guest post about the Anti-Bullying Leadership Network on an Obama White House blog.  By the time Rebecca applied to college, the family foundation had been donating millions to premier universities for at least two years. Large giving to multiple colleges isn’t as redundant as it may sound. “People sometimes feel, A million dollars should give me a lot of clout,” said Ron Brown, former director of gift planning at Princeton. “In the scheme of things, not so much. … A million-dollar gift doesn’t have the impact it used to have 20 years ago.”  At the same time, prestigious colleges have become even harder to get into. In 2015, for example, more than 8,000 students with perfect grade-point averages applied to Harvard, which admits about 2,000 candidates each year. “It’s quite a rarefied pool,” William Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions, later observed. Harvard admitted only 4.5% of applicants this year, half of its acceptance rate a decade ago. Yale, Princeton, Columbia and Brown all accepted fewer than 7% of applicants in 2019. Since certain groups, including alumni children and recruited athletes, are admitted at considerably higher rates, the odds against other applicants who don’t enjoy any such preference are even longer.  It was these anxieties that the independent college counselor Rick Singer infamously exploited in his wealthy clientele. Singer told his clients they could no longer rely on a major gift to one university — what he called the “back door” to college admissions. Instead, he sold them on the “side door” of fraud, persuading dozens of rich families to pay him a total of more than $25 million to secure spots at schools like USC, Georgetown, Yale and Stanford through inflating test scores and bribing college coaches. At least 52 people, including 35 parents, have been charged in the scheme, nicknamed “Varsity Blues” by the FBI. Fifteen parents have pleaded guilty, including actress Felicity Huffman, who was sentenced in September to 14 days in prison for paying $15,000 to inflate her daughter’s SAT score.  Shaw and Kobliner’s giving strategy was a lawful — if exceedingly more expensive — response to the same upper-class angst. In essence, they created multiple back doors. At a time of renewed debate about whether colleges are vehicles of social mobility or a means of reproducing class privilege, such a philanthropic adaptation suggests that the ultrarich won’t easily surrender their advantages. It “looks like a clever plan, but not illegal,” said William Zabel, a New York attorney who spent two decades as the head of Princeton’s planned-giving advisory committee.  Others questioned whether Shaw’s donations were intended to gain an edge for his children. Mark Lipton, a professor of management at the New School who has worked with the hedge fund, said that while Shaw cares deeply about his family, “he’s a real meritocracy fan. My hunch is that he invests in his kids from Day One so they can get in at these schools on their own. What’s so self- evident, whether it’s for his own kids or not, is the extraordinary importance he puts on the best higher education.”  Spokespeople for the universities enriched by the Shaws’ family foundation said they too are meritocracy fans and seek “applicants of exceptional ability and character,” as Harvard’s Rachael Dane put it. Yale, said spokesperson Karen Peart, “takes great care in its admissions process, and we stand behind the merit of all of our students.” Ernest Miranda of Stanford said “a donation does not purchase a place” there. “Stanford does not accept gifts if it knows a gift is being made with the intention of influencing the admissions process.”  Nevertheless, the Shaws’ pattern of giving has several signs that experts associate with parental campaigns to boost their children’s chances. Neither Shaw nor Kobliner graduated from Harvard, Yale or Princeton, three of the four universities to which the foundation has made annual seven-figure gifts.  Their favoring of institutions they didn’t attend runs counter to the traditional practice of wealthy Americans. When donors have no previous ties to a university, explained Brown, the former director of gift planning at Princeton, gifts are usually restricted to a specific academic purpose, such as funding a research program in their field of interest or a friend’s faculty chair. The Shaw family foundation has made dozens of smaller, targeted gifts to medical or computer-science research at schools over the years, yet its largest annual donations to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Brown, Columbia and MIT have been unrestricted.  Such general-purpose gifts, which are especially prized by universities, tend to be relatively small. In 2018, only 3% of total giving to Stanford and 4% to Yale was unrestricted, according to Ann Kaplan, who oversees a fundraising survey at the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. In other words, a major unrestricted donation to a school, especially from someone who had no connection with it, would stand out. “It would be a flag,” Brown said. “Someone would ask him: ‘We’re very grateful for these gifts, but tell me why. Why now? What do you hope to accomplish?’”  Brown and Baker said development offices at elite universities generally won’t discuss a large gift with a prospective donor who has a child applying or about to apply, because admitting the student would look like a quid pro quo. When Shaw began giving, his daughter was just outside that window. More than likely, each university’s development office would have notified its admissions counterparts of applicants whose parents, like the Shaws, had become major donors.  “It’s obvious he picked the four schools he’d rather get into with a million dollars a year and the lesser schools with half a million a year,” said Zabel, the former head of Princeton’s planned-giving advisory committee. “If it didn’t help at Yale, he wouldn’t mind if it helped at Princeton. It’s pretty clear he’s hedging his bets.” Zabel now specializes in setting up private foundations for wealthy clients, some of whom have donated to two or three colleges to help their children get in but never as many as six or seven. Muth, the former University of Virginia admissions dean, said he knew of several Asian billionaires who gave millions to multiple elite universities to which their children were applying in recent years. Dismayed by their efforts to buy acceptances, Muth declined to work with them.  Well-heeled parents ply universities with donations even when their children, like Rebecca and Adam, are high achievers. “Friends of mine who wield a lot of influence, I tell them, ‘Just don’t do it,’ but they find it irresistible,” explained the former Ivy League development officer. “It’s a tragedy, actually. People will tell you that it’s a prisoner’s dilemma and that you just have to play by the rules of a perverted system.”  Rebecca and Adam excelled academically at Horace Mann, no small feat given its notoriously challenging curriculum. They were National Merit finalists, scoring in the top 1% on the sophomore-year PSAT test. Both belonged to the Cum Laude Society, ranking in the top 20% of their class. Adam received honors in computing and communications, English, Japanese, mathematics and science; Rebecca received honors in English, mathematics and psychology. In her senior year, Rebecca won the school’s community-service award and co-wrote and co- directed “Upper West Side Story,” a high school-themed musical that parodied the school’s culture.  Jacob, the Shaws’ youngest child, goes to Horace Mann and attended Stanford’s summer jazz program for teens. Kobliner and Jacob co-authored a children’s book, “Jacob’s Eye Patch,” in 2013, the year he turned 9. Editorial guidance and illustrations were provided by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist and screenwriter Jules Feiffer. (“They live in a large, makes-you-want-to-kill apartment, it’s so spacious and gorgeous,” said the 90-year-old Feiffer. “They offered me real money, and I was in the market for real money.”)  In the fall of her senior year, Rebecca was accepted early at Yale. In 2016, Adam — who classmates say was also accepted at Stanford and Harvard — joined her in New Haven. Adam has served as president of the Yale chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, an honor society for history students. Rebecca majored in psychology. At Yale’s graduation ceremony in 2018, she and her boyfriend performed a comedy skit titled “Moving On,” in which she pretended to break up with him. It went viral on YouTube with over 4 million views, and this year she was hired as a writer on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”  Yale’s acceptance of Adam and Rebecca gratified Kobliner, who had applied there herself and been rejected. “I walk around Yale and tell all their friends that I didn’t get in,” Kobliner, who attended Brown instead, said in a 2018 radio interview. In her columns, she has advised readers on how to handle such rejections with equanimity. “Getting into your ninth-choice school might not feel as good as opening an envelope — or a DM — from the exclusive private college of your fantasies,” she wrote on her blog in March. “But no matter where your kid goes, she’ll have experiences, make friends, and learn things that will change her life. And that makes for an amazing picture, even if it’s not one you can post on the ’gram.”  _ProPublica research reporter[Doris Burke](https://www.propublica.org/people /doris-burke) contributed to this story._


windowoneurasiablog--2019-06-20--Soloveys Resignation from MGIMO Highlights Kremlin Moves to Impose Ideological Control on Higher Ed

Solovey’s Resignation from MGIMO Highlights Kremlin Moves to Impose Ideological Control on Higher Education

Staunton, June 20 – Valery Solovey’s dramatic announcement that he was resigning from MGIMO before he might be fired is not an isolated case but rather part of a new Kremlin drive to impose tighter controls over the expert community, many of whose members work for higher educational institutions full or part time.  “For political reasons,” he continued, “the institute no longer wants to have a relationship with me. I understand this attitude. And I will be grateful,” the scholar-commentator said, “if in the future no one will associate me with MGIMO.”  Solovey indicated that he plans to write a book and will not be returning to teaching. “Russia is entering a period of major changes, and I intend to take a most active part in them. Stay tuned,” he concluded.  Solovey is only the most prominent of political analysts to lose a position because of his views. Earlier this month, several political scientists at the Higher School of Economics lost their employment when their positions were made redundant by the folding in of that department into a larger section of the university.  Many people have been angered by this extension of ideological control, another way the powers that be have of imposing their views besides control of access to the media and censorship of electronic and print media (  But as Aleksey Chesnakov, director of the Center for Political Conjunction, notes, fundamental weaknesses in the organization of the social sciences in general and political science in particular make it easy for the powers that be to take these steps, often in ways that do not attract attention and resistance (


yahoonews--2019-04-30--If God existed Id have gotten into Penn Meet the Trump official working on higher education pol

'If God existed, I'd have gotten into Penn': Meet the Trump official working on higher education policy

WASHINGTON — What does it take to get a job working on higher education policy in the White House? Ambition helps. So does, apparently, writing an awkwardly honest book about failing to gain admittance to an Ivy League college. At least that seemed to do the trick for 23-year-old Eli Nachmany, whose self-published memoir “Good Enough” appears to be his sole contribution in the field of higher education before coming to work in the Office of American Innovation, which is overseen by presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, earlier this spring.  In any other administration, the recruitment of Nachmany to work on one of the most pressing and divisive issues in American culture would have been remarkable. Higher education was handled in the Obama administration by Ted Mitchell, who had been the president of Occidental College and the California State Board of Education.  Trump came to Washington vowing to slim down the federal bureaucracy. He would do so without the coterie of longtime political loyalists and policy experts usually attached to a winning presidential candidate. But Trump never lived up to his promise that he would hire “the best people” to work in his administration. Meanwhile, his Presidential Personnel Office, which vets political appointees, has been depicted as a fraternity house run by recent college graduates hosting drinking games in their Eisenhower Executive Office Building suite.  Nachmany’s hiring also underscores the lack of a coherent White House plan on higher education. President Trump has rolled back various Obama-era reforms, including those having to do with college loans, sexual assault and oversight, but he has advanced no new policy of his own.  Even before coming to the White House, Nachmany enjoyed a relative level of prominence within the Trump administration, having been hired at the tender age of 21 to serve as a speechwriter for Ryan Zinke, the Interior secretary who was forced to resign from his position last December amid ethics investigations. The news of his move to the White House was initially reported by Politico Playbook, which described Nachmany as “detailed” to the White House from the Department of Interior.  At the White House, Nachmany is working in the Office of American Innovation, Kushner’s secretive policy shop, which lacks even a website. Nor does it have a clear agenda on higher education, which is also among the issues handled by the Domestic Policy Council, another White House office. Kushner has shown an interest in how colleges are accredited, but White House deputy press secretary Judd Deere would not say on the record whether that remained Kushner’s focus, or whether Nachmany would be working on that issue.  None of the relevant parties could explain to Yahoo News what qualifications Nachmany has to work on higher education at the uppermost reaches of American government. “We are excited that he has the opportunity to contribute his talents to the White House and the Office of American Innovation,” Interior spokesman Alex Hinson told Yahoo News. Nachmany himself did not respond to multiple requests for comment.  Higher education is in desperate need of innovation. Nachmany’s posting at the White House came just as federal authorities uncovered a massive cheating ring that would allow the children of wealthy parents to gain admittance to elite universities. At the same time, cumulative student debt has reached $1.5 trillion, even as the uses of a traditional college education are increasingly being questioned by high technology leaders and others.  But those do not appear to be Nachmany’s concerns, judging by his sole contribution on the topic. “Good Enough” — the clearest guide to Nachmany’s thoughts on higher education — was published in 2015 by Outskirts Press, a self-publishing company based in Denver. The 140-page book has 11 reviews on Amazon, with an average rating of 2.5 stars. One of the book’s rare five-star reviews comes from Nachmany himself and consists of a single sentence: “I wrote this book.” The product of a comfortable New Jersey suburb, Nachmany’s book reflects some of the societal issues later exposed by the college cheating scandal: the self-regard of well-off whites, the inordinate concern with ranking and status. Despite a middling high school record, Nachmany was confident that he would get into the college of his choice. “I had grown up believing I was Ivy League material,” he writes in Good Enough, adding a little later, “I thought I’d get into Penn because I was Eli Nachmany.” The main theme of “Good Enough” is the author’s quest to get into University of Chicago — or the University of Pennsylvania, or the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, or Fordham University, or the University of Michigan, or Villanova University, or Case Western Reserve University or Franklin & Marshall College. The failure to get into any of these colleges left Nachmany embittered. “I want to be so successful that they ended up regretting not being able to have their name on my Wikipedia page,” Nachmany writes after being rejected from the University of Chicago, a school famous for producing and serving as an academic home to more Nobel Prize laureates than almost any other institution in the world. By his own admission, Nachmany was not exactly Nobel material while a student at Demarest High School in Demarest, N.J., a wealthy bedroom community for professionals many of whom work in Manhattan. The average household income there is about $150,000, triple the national average. Nachmany venerates Penn, the college Trump graduated from after beginning his studies at Fordham. In Trump’s case, a donation from his father may have allowed the future president to make the move. A $1 million donation from Charles Kushner may have similarly helped his son — Jared — gain admission to Harvard, despite an unimpressive high school record. Trump frequently touts his own educational accomplishments. “You know, people don’t understand. I went to an Ivy League college,” he said in 2017. “I was a nice student. I did very well. I’m a very intelligent person.” He has frequently highlighted the elite educational backgrounds of judges he has nominated and politicians he has endorsed. Yet an Ivy League education remains out of reach for most Americans, even as the allure of such an education remains as strong as ever: 304,909 people applied for seats at the eight Ivy League schools for the incoming class that will graduate in 2022. The average acceptance rate for an Ivy League college was 7.04 percent last year. Nachmany, who is now one of the few White House officials explicitly working on higher education, does not appear to be perturbed by the state of things, judging by his book. “I wanted clout,” he wrote, describing his motivation behind his college applications in the fall of 2012. “I wanted a brand name university that would impress people.” It is not clear yet how that desire for clout will translate into Nachmany’s work at the White House. Unlike the parents caught up in Operation Varsity Blue, the college cheating scandal, he does not resort to means that were improper or illegal. But like many Americans who have been told that admission to a “good” college is imperative for happiness and success, he seeks for every possible way to get himself into a top-tier school. For example, he decides that football would be his “back door” to Chicago, even as he continues to lust for a spot at Trump’s alma mater. Spoiler alert: Nachmany’s lackluster record keeps him from getting into the schools he so badly wanted to attend. It also keeps him from getting into some of the schools he did not especially want to attend, including Fordham and Villanova. This disappointment grew, leading to an existential crisis.“If God existed, I’d have gotten into Penn,” he reasons. There are flashes of self-awareness, as when Nachmany visits Elon University in North Carolina after being accepted there. Nachmany is put off by the racial homogeneity of the student body, writing, “How was I going to grow as a person over the next four years, socially and culturally, if most of my classmates looked the same?” Now he will be working for an administration that is fighting to promote race-neutral admissions at universities, urging them to scrap affirmative action policies that seek to diversify student bodies. Trump has also proposed cutting federal financial aid. Nachmany finally ends up at NYU’s continuing education school, now called its School of Professional and Continuing Studies. “The only opinion that mattered was mine and I opined that I was good enough,” Nachmany writes near the conclusion of “Good Enough.” “I decided to disregard objectivity and proceed with my opinion as though it were fact.” At NYU, Nachmany interned for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, then for Christie’s presidential campaign, until that imploded in the winter of 2016. He did press-related work on the Trump campaign throughout that summer and fall of 2016, then worked as an event coordinator for the presidential inauguration before returning to NYU to complete his studies in the spring of 2017. That June, he joined the Department of the Interior, where he served as a speechwriter for Zinke. Nachmany’s sojourn in the Trump administration may be temporary. After graduating with distinction from NYU, he earned admission to Harvard Law School, which he has deferred for a year. What he will do after law school is unclear, but Nachmany has said that he may want to run for elective office. 'It's already begun': Feedback loops will make climate change even worse, scientists say Revealed: The U.S. military's 36 code-named operations in Africa Biden lost big in 2008. Is he a better candidate now?


yahoonews--2019-10-11--Latinx Heritage Month: ‘You’re not smart enough to go to college’: How first-generation Latinx stude

Latinx Heritage Month: ‘You’re not smart enough to go to college’: How first-generation Latinx students are overcoming the odds in pursuit of higher education

Yahoo News brings you this exclusive video in celebration of Latinx Heritage Month.  Among the first-time college goers who are settling in to their new surroundings is University of Pennsylvania freshman Michelle Mahecha Perez. Her journey to the Ivy League was no easy feat. The overall acceptance rate for Perez’s UPenn class of 2023 was a record-low 7.4 percent. And as a low-income Latina and first in her family to go to college, Perez had additional obstacles to overcome.  When she was growing up, her mother emphasized the importance of education and how it has the possibility to change her life. That’s why she will remember March 28, 2019 — the day she was accepted to UPenn — as the “best day” of her life.  Her parents immigrated to the United States 20 years ago from Colombia. “They obviously had to leave behind their family, their jobs, life as they knew it. They had to start over completely, and they had this dream of having a child that would one day be bilingual and have the opportunities that they didn’t,” Perez said in an interview with Yahoo News. “I love my parents, they’ve been the best support system, but obviously it’s hard because neither of them went to college.”  “When I was applying to colleges ... I had no idea where to start,” Perez said. She also attended a public high school that didn’t offer specific support for students applying to college. “I would try my hardest to navigate the things that I did know, like the SAT, but my parents couldn’t afford tutors. They couldn’t afford to send me to a prep class, so I had to do it all on my own.”  Navigating the college application process, Perez battled some inner thoughts: “I always had this thing in the back of my head of like, ‘You can't afford college.’ And there was constantly this idea of ‘Oh, well you’re first-generation, like you’re not smart enough to go to college.’”  According to a Pew Research study, Hispanic college enrollment in public and private colleges increased 180 percent from 1.3 million in 1999 to 3.6 million in 2016. Even though progress is being made, Hispanics still lag behind blacks, Asians and whites in obtaining four-year degrees, according to Pew.  “Many Latino students are first-generation college goers, and that brings with it multiple opportunities and challenges. The challenges are that you really have to be prepared to be very resourceful,” Sarita Brown told Yahoo News. Brown is the president and co-founder of Excelencia in Education, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating Latino success in higher education.  Perez’s turning point came when she discovered a flyer for Latino U, an organization that helps first-generation low-income Latinx students attend college. “Latino U really helped my [family] understand what college is in America, and how the process works. … My relationship with my parents has only flourished since then because they’ve seen what it really takes to get here,” said Perez.  “For Latinx students or for students of color period, I think it’s kind of an uphill battle because we’re trying to function in a system that wasn’t necessarily made for us,” Mara Dorta told Yahoo News. Dorta, who has a master’s degree from New York University, experienced a similar journey to Perez being the first in her family to navigate the college application process.  “My parents immigrated here from Puerto Rico back in the ’60s. … They made a family in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and we survived all six of us in a two-bedroom tenement.” She attended a public high school and faired well academically, but wasn’t given the tools to prepare for an exam like the SAT. Discouraged by her guidance counselor, she only applied to two state schools and got into one in Buffalo, N.Y. “It was a terrible fit. … I had no resources on campus. I didn’t know where to go, who to reach out to, to try to find community,” Dorta recalled. She ended up leaving in 2000 and felt like “a complete failure.”  Dorta reconnected with a friend from Buffalo who was working at New York University and told her about tuition remission. “That’s where my journey kind of really blossomed. … I managed to finish my bachelor’s in four years working full-time and part-time.” Seven years after she received her bachelor’s, she earned an M.A. from NYU in educational leadership, politics and advocacy. Mara Dorta, who received her M.A. from NYU in educational leadership, politics and advocacy, poses in her NYU gown. “I’m now the director of college access and leadership at the YWCA Brooklyn. I get to work with amazing young women from all over Brooklyn, just like me still figuring this out, whose parents maybe don’t know the system, but we’re helping them navigate it.” “Approximately 97 percent of the Latino students in America today are U.S. citizens or permanent residents, and that number has not changed,” said Brown. “It’s worth talking about it because there is so much emphasis on immigration, and the emphasis unfortunately has not been positive. … The politics aside, framing of borders aside, we are part of this country’s life force, and as a student population we are eager to participate. … The next generation of students is essential to the life of this country.”


freedombunker--2019-12-04--Fraud in Higher Education

Fraud in Higher Education

This year’s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing athletic coaches. They paid William Singer, a college-prep professional, more than $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators and to change test scores on college admittance exams such as the SAT and ACT. As disgusting as this grossly dishonest behavior is, it is only the tiny tip of fraud in higher education.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, “More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes.”  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.” Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test’s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).  It’s clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A’s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation’s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59).  The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is a study conducted by Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45% of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.”  An article in News Forum for Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75% of two-year college students and 50% of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20% of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30% of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in “basic English.”  Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Learning from YouTube,” “How To Watch Television,” and “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?  The fact that unscrupulous parents paid millions for special favors from college administrators to enroll their children pales in comparison to the poor educational outcomes, not to mention the gross indoctrination of young people by leftist professors.  The post Fraud in Higher Education appeared first on LewRockwell.


instapundit--2019-02-09--HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE Now its not just rape and skyrocketing tuition to worry about it

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  Now it’s not just rape and skyrocketing tuition to worry about, it’…

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Now it’s not just rape and skyrocketing tuition to worry about, it’s also soaring rates of mental illness among college students. “We are seeing an epidemic of mental illness on college campuses across the country. According to national data, 40% of undergraduate students have felt so depressed within the past year that it’s been difficult for them to function, 10% have seriously considered suicide, and these numbers are higher than the numbers for kids and young adults of the same age who are not attending college.”


instapundit--2019-10-16--HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  The Gig Academy.  “Over the past two decades, higher education empl

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:  The Gig Academy.  “Over the past two decades, higher education empl…

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Gig Academy. “Over the past two decades, higher education employment has undergone a radical transformation with faculty becoming contingent, staff being outsourced, and postdocs and graduate students becoming a larger share of the workforce. For example, the faculty has shifted from one composed mostly of tenure-track, full-time employees to one made up of contingent, part-time teachers. Non-tenure-track instructors now make up 70 percent of college faculty. Their pay for teaching eight courses averages $22,400 a year—less than the annual salary of most fast-food workers.”  As I’ve said before, if Trump were smart he’d make an issue of this. It would divide a major source of his opposition.


latimes--2019-11-30--California higher education hangs in the balance as UC, Cal State search for new leaders

In a rare confluence that will shape the future of California higher education, the state’s two top university jobs are open, high-profile vacancies that position its leaders as national pacesetters because of the size and status of the two systems.  The dual searches at the University of California and California State University have generated a daunting list of desired job qualifications. The new chiefs will be expected to figure out how to meet enormous admission demands, increase student diversity, raise academic achievement, lower costs, secure stable sources of money and deal with fierce politics. All this while improving the quality and prestige of two of the nation’s most popular and renowned public university systems.  And this must be accomplished with limited state funding and salaries well below their comparable peers.  “They probably are two of the most important institutions on the planet in terms of their role and mission,” said Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University who is viewed as one of the nation’s most innovative higher education leaders and is often mentioned as a potential candidate for the UC job.  The native Californian said he was too busy “doing my job as hard as I can” to even think about either position.  Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, summed up the ideal skills as “walking on water with a thick skin.”  The two jobs — open after the recent announcements by UC President Janet Napolitano and Cal State Chancellor Timothy P. White that they will step down next summer — share broad similarities and significant differences.  Cal State is the largest and most diverse four-year university system in the nation, educating 482,000 students on 23 campuses who are drawn from the top 40% of California’s annual high school graduates. The system is often referred to as the “job engine” of California, filling many of the state’s most pressing workforce needs, including half of the teachers and more than half of the nurses.  The 10-campus UC system educates 280,000 students who rank in the top 12.5% of the state’s senior class and is California’s lead generator of PhDs, in addition to its bachelor’s and master’s degrees. The system is distinguished by its massive and top-ranked research enterprise, five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories and an overall budget of $37.2 billion, bigger than those of more than 30 states.  Both systems enroll far higher proportions of low-income and first-generation students than do similar universities in other states. But both are struggling to close achievement gaps for low-income, first-generation and underrepresented minority students.  The UC job is “probably the most complex and challenging job in higher education,” said Mary Sue Coleman, president of the Assn. of American Universities, which represents North America’s top 65 research universities. “It could also be a very exciting job because the platform the UC system has is enormous and enormously important.”  Napolitano has been credited with using that platform to support immigrant students and sexual assault survivors. But some higher education leaders say the next UC president must step up to champion an even broader task: marshaling public support for the value of a university education amid mounting skepticism about rising costs and perceived political biases.  The UC regents recently released a list of 29 criteria for the next leader based on closed-door consultations with committees of students, staff, faculty and alumni. The top two criteria have drawn particular attention: knowledge of the academic enterprise and a demonstrated track record promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.  The regents themselves are believed to be the most diverse board in UC history, with both Chairman John A. Pérez and Vice Chairwoman Cecilia Estolano of Mexican descent and nearly half of the 26 voting board members Latino, African American and Asian American. Pérez has said UC particularly needs to work harder to increase geographical diversity, as most students come from urban areas.  Faculty were thrilled by the regents’ stated preference for candidates with “exceptional academic administrative experience” and the highest possible degree in their field. At recent faculty town halls at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara, participants lamented that regents ignored their desire for an academic in the last presidential search six years ago when they selected Napolitano, then U.S. Homeland Security secretary and a former Arizona governor.  Although many faculty eventually came to appreciate Napolitano, they said it took time for her to learn how to manage the UC system and consult with them on key issues as required by the UC tradition of shared governance, which gives the Academic Senate a uniquely powerful voice in university operations.  Other top priorities named in a UC Santa Barbara faculty survey were a commitment to academic freedom, shared governance, research, graduate education and budgetary transparency.  At both sessions, faculty members complained about the “secrecy” of past search processes. Regents, however, have announced that they would hold open public forums at UC Davis on Dec. 13 and at UCLA on Jan. 14.  Cal State has held four public forums, with two more planned at its campuses in San Marcos on Dec. 3 and in Fresno on Dec. 5. At a recent Long Beach forum, speakers said they wanted the next chancellor to champion full access to all eligible applicants, more faculty diversity, support for students with disabilities and increased programs for prison inmates.  For their part, UC students want a leader who is familiar with California public education and will commit to meet regularly with them, as Napolitano did, said Varsha Sarveshwar, a UC Berkeley senior and president of the UC Student Assn. Top issues, she said, include affordable housing, food security and meeting the basic needs of all students.  UC insiders say hundreds of names will probably be submitted for an initial look before the field is narrowed to serious candidates and a decision is made by regents, possibly next spring.  Potential candidates named at the faculty meetings included Crow and F. King Alexander, president of Lousiana State University who previously headed Cal State Long Beach for seven years and has made a national mark with his advocacy of greater federal partnerships and state public funding for higher education.  In an interview, Alexander said key challenges for California higher education were the enormous demand for seats in university systems with limited capacity and state funding levels that, while recovered from deep cuts after the Great Recession, remain well below levels two decades ago. While more online learning is part of the answer, he said, the state must increase funding “if it wants to remain the nation’s beacon of affordable higher education.”  Asked if he was interested in either job, Alexander said he is leaving his options “open” — adding that his wife is “particularly fond of the weather in Long Beach.”  “It’s a great place,” he said. “California public higher education is kind of like the Rose Bowl — the granddaddy of them all.”  Crow is both widely admired for his visionary rebuild of traditional higher education models and criticized for his aggressive use of educational technology.  In an interview, he said UC and Cal State both need to figure out how to better use technology and innovation to vastly open access to both traditional college students and adult learners. He also said campuses need more freedom to launch entrepreneurial projects and partnerships that can help them raise money and lessen dependence on state funding.  Crow has used all of those approaches at ASU, building enrollment to 120,000 students — more than one-third of them online — in what he calls a New American University model that offers wide access over the selectivity favored by many elite universities.  “The old model has run its course,” Crow said. “It’s time for new ways to engage while not giving up one iota of quality or one iota of excellence.”  Other names mentioned for the UC job include Michael Drake, who is stepping down next year from the helm of Ohio State University and who previously served as chancellor of UC Irvine and UC vice chancellor for health affairs. Under his leadership, Ohio State set all-time highs in student retention and graduation rates, diversity, applications and research expenditures while reducing debt burdens. He also launched a tuition guarantee program for each incoming class of students, a model that UC regents are currently considering. Drake could not be reached for comment.  Past and present UC chancellors and Cal State presidents may also be considered.  Michael Poliakoff, president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, said former legislators and governors should not be overlooked because educators who came up through the ranks are not always willing to shake up the status quo as needed. UC, he said, needs a leader willing to look at the system’s at-times inefficient use of facilities and relatively light teaching loads.  For outside candidates, one potential sticking point could be pay. In 2018, Napolitano earned $627,000 in total compensation and White $493,000, according to a Chronicle of Higher Education database. Drake earned $1.2 million and Crow $1.1 million, two of 17 university leaders whose pay topped seven figures. Pay at top private universities is even higher.  “The challenge for all public universities is that many, many candidates view those [top] positions as patently unattractive,” said Richard Chait, a Harvard University professor emeritus of higher education. “Public university presidents are embroiled in a thicket of politics, constantly in the crosshairs, and the money is not there.”  But Robert Anderson, president of the State Higher Education Executive Officers, predicted plenty of candidates will be drawn to the California opportunities in order to make a difference in such a large, diverse state and “move the needle both nationally and globally.”  “I really don’t believe someone will come to this job for a paycheck,” said Mitchell of the American Education Council. “The right person will come to this job for a mission and a legacy.”


redstate--2019-03-31--Higher Education and the Diversocracy

Higher Education and the Diversocracy

=========   =========   Like what you see? Then visit my story archive.   Follow @streiffredstate  I’m on Facebook. Drop by and join the fun there.   =========   =========  There is no money to be made or votes to be accumulated telling people the truth when it comes to the failure of today’s schools which fail to adequately prepare students for college, a career, or a job.  The main culprit in the demise of America’s educational system can be blamed on a growing army of bureaucrats, especially in higher education, and their blind adherence to the concept of diversity at all costs.  These are the “diversocrats” who have invaded the educational system.  For years, they dominated the social sciences and humanities.  Not content, they are now invading the hard sciences.  The currency of the diversocrat is racism, mostly imagined.  It is not the amount of pigmentation in one’s skin nor the country of origin of their parent that is denying students opportunity.  It is the failure of the social structure in the communities of failing schools along with economic disadvantages and lousy unionized public schools.  We are privy to a barrage of charges regarding a lack of diversity in schools and charges of discrimination.  The reason is simple: a problem must be created and gussied up with big words in order to justify the existence and expansion of the diversity complex.  When it comes to higher education, in order to appease the diversity bureaucrats, universities must consider proportional representation among the student body.  It is telling that a failure to achieve such a student body is predicated upon a mathematical metric- proportional representation-, but they likewise discard a more important metric that has been proven over the years to be the best predictor of academic success in college: the SAT.  In 2015, Princeton conducted a study comparing SAT scores and college admission standards as they applied to different ethnicities.  They discovered that the scores of blacks are boosted by an average of 230 points, Hispanics by 180 points, and Asians deducted by 50 points.  This is systematic bias in favor of less-qualified applicants which will, down the road, magnify the current harm.  So given these facts, what is a diversocrat to do?  The answer is simple: deny that the SAT is predictive of college success and undermine the one determinant that predicts success.  For example, the University of Chicago has already announced that they would no longer be considering SAT scores when it comes to college admission.  The reason: they wanted to increase student body diversity.  One can expect a ripple effect of admitting less qualified applicants: the usefulness of a degree, the monetary cost to society, the skills of graduates, and quality of the faculty and courses.  Why should we even care?  Why should colleges and universities base admission on a SAT score?  Perhaps the biggest reason is to ensure that the country has an adequate future supply of STEM graduates.  This is one area where even the most hardline immigration restrictionist agrees there is a need in the labor pool.  When you use race or ethnicity over SAT scores in admissions, you get these facts: Only 16% of blacks or Hispanics who enter the STEM fields in college graduate with a degree in that field (about one-half the rate for Asians or whites).  Yet as the Princeton study revealed, we actually penalize those most likely to get a degree in a STEM field when it comes to admission.  In the name of diversity, we are effectively shutting out those most likely to meet the need in STEM fields thus perpetuating a need from foreign sources for these fields.  Another tool of the diversocrat is to trot out the privilege card.  This is rather disingenuous considering that more than half of all students are nonwhite and slightly less than half of all job applicants are nonwhite.  In fact, when underrepresented minorities are numerical minorities when it comes to academic success at all levels, it makes even more sense that merit be reestablished as the sole criteria for college admission.  Instead, the diversocrat aims to force a less-qualified applicant into a position where they are at a decided competitive disadvantage.  This creates all sorts of havoc in the educational system.  It creates bitterness and cynicism in the more qualified applicant who was passed over.  It often ends in failure for those given the opportunity where their chances of success were slim from the beginning.  Entire industries and institutions are undermined to make room for less qualified people.  Corporations are now bending over backwards to prove they are inclusive and diverse.  It makes no sense for a company to be “racist.”  They survive by hiring the most qualified applicants regardless of race or ethnicity.  But instead, the diversocrats trot out well-worn phrases like “institutional racism” and the like.  If minority communities really want to achieve academic success, it would pay great dividends to cease invoking the specter of racism at every turn.  Instead, it may better serve minority communities for their leaders to address the social failures of their communities.  Two very salient features that guarantee academic success are gang activity and family status.  But, it is just much easier for these leaders to yell “racism” and strong-arm the government to spend more money on failure.


sputnik--2019-02-25--Russia Aims to Implement Dual Diploma Certificate with India in Higher Education

New Delhi (Sputnik): In a bid to provide impetus to collaboration in higher education, Russia has proposed a dual diploma certificate with Indian institutions that will provide relief to those Indian students who go to Russia for higher education. Currently, in the absence of a mutual recognition agreement with India, students who have pursued higher education in Russia face difficulties especially in the field of medicine. India and Russia have been discussing the proposed agreement regarding mutual acceptance of degrees and diplomas for years.  READ MORE: Prof on US Space Force Creation: It May Have Grave Consequences for Humankind  "We have been talking to some of the semi-government institutions in India to implement dual diploma certificate", Mikhail Pogosyan, rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), told Sputnik on Monday.    "At present, everybody knows that the institute (MAI) is a renowned and world-class university and so are its graduates. Although there is no formal document covering the recognition process, still it has a world-renowned name. The signing of necessary documents towards this is very important and it will be beneficial for all spheres of education", said Pogosyan added.  Besides providing world-class education in engineering, MAI also cooperates with leading Russian and foreign industry-based corporations such as COMAC, ENAC, Safran, BrahMos Aerospace, HAL, PJSC, United Aircraft Corporation, Roscosmos, Rostec and others.  Given the current status of industrial cooperation in the field of military aviation and rocket building, and at the same time looking into the future, the Russian institutions hope that the Indian need for proper theoretical and practical skill-sets in these areas will be catered to in a big way. MAI is Russia's leading aerospace university and holds the official status of National Research University.


thedailycaller--2019-01-27--UGA Became The Birthplace Of Public Higher Education 234 Years Ago

The University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia, became the birthplace of public higher education on Jan. 27, 1785 — 234 years ago.  This was the first time an educational system was run by the state rather than by a religious institution.  The General Assembly of Georgia earmarked 40,000 acres of land to be endowed for an institution of higher education in 1784, according to UGA’s website. Yale University graduate Abraham Baldwin was UGA’s first president and was part of drafting the charter in 1784.  The university was not established until 1801 and the first class graduated in 1804.  The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, however, says it is the “first public university in the nation” on its website. The long-held dispute seems to be over the establishment date. UNC-Chapel Hill was established in 1789 with the first students arriving in 1795.  “UNC is the nation’s first public college to admit students,” UGA Executive Director of Media Communications Greg Trevor said to The Daily Caller News Foundation over email.  The College of William and Mary in Virginia also believes it is the first public university since it was chartered in 1693. But the university was private for more than 250 years. William and Mary shut down after the Civil War due to financial troubles. The college started accepting funds from the state in 1906. It still is the second oldest university in the county behind Harvard University in Massachusetts.  UGA’s curriculum at the time of its founding was traditional classical studies. It was expanded to include law courses in 1843 and then included agriculture and mechanical arts after receiving federal funds in 1872.  Nearly 15 million students attend public colleges or universities with more than 300,000 students who are part of the University System of Georgia, according to the university’s website. (RELATED: Elite Universities Hide Information On Funding From Ultraconservative Nation Of Qatar)  More than 60 percent of university-based research is done by public universities and more than two-thirds of first generation students attend public universities, according to American Association of State Colleges and Universities data reported by UGA.  Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.


theguardianuk--2019-07-31--Private higher education college goes into administration

One of the biggest private providers of higher education in England has gone into administration, leaving students stranded on unfinished courses and looking for alternative places to study.  GSM London, which offered undergraduate and postgraduate business courses at its campuses in Greenwich and Greenford, told its 3,500 students that all tuition, classes and exams would stop at the end of September.  The for-profit college said it had been unable to recruit and retain sufficient student numbers to remain afloat in what it described as “highly challenging market conditions”.  A GSM statement said: “Our students will be supported as far as possible while efforts are made to provide them with informed options for where they may be able to continue their studies beyond the end of the current teaching semester.  “Discussions are already under way with other higher education providers to identify options, and information, advice and guidance will be provided to students as soon as the details have been finalised.”  GSM’s demise will be seen as a blow to government attempts to open up the higher education sector to private providers as part of its marketisation of the higher education sector. It also reflects the growing financial pressures on universities.  The University and College Union, which represents university and college workers, called on the government to look again at what it described as the “funding free-for-all” around private providers.  “UCU has repeatedly highlighted concerns about the marketisation of education and the rapid increase in poorly regulated private providers,” said its acting general secretary, Paul Cottrell.  “We hope that the government finally takes note and looks again at the funding a free-for-all among private providers who enjoy a competitive advantage in being under-regulated, but will always put profit before education.”  GSM, which awarded degrees validated by the University of Plymouth, has claimed a longstanding commitment to widening access to, and participation in, higher education, offering a route to degree-level study for students from a wide range of non-traditional academic backgrounds.  With insufficient numbers, however, it was forced to seek out additional funding, securing capital cash injections of £22m in the last three years. Efforts to find a new buyer earlier this year failed and administrators were appointed.  A Department for Education (DfE) spokesperson said: “We are working closely with the provider and all relevant sector bodies to ensure the students affected are given the support and advice they need to continue their studies.  “We want a broad, sustainable market in higher education which offers students flexibility and a wide range of high-quality choices for where and what they study. Whilst the vast majority of institutions are in good financial health, the DfE and [the universities regulator] the Office for Students have been clear that neither will bail out failing providers.”  Nearly one in four universities in England were in deficit last year. The number of universities in England with operating deficits in 2017-18 increased to 32, compared with 24 the year before and 10 in 2015-16. Across the UK, the number reporting deficits rose to 47, compared with 40 in 2016-17.  Commenting on the collapse of GSM, the Office for Students said: “We understand that this news will be worrying for the students and staff at GSM. We understand that some students who are nearing the end of their studies will be able to stay at GSM but it is likely that most will need to transfer to another higher education provider.  “We are, therefore, working with the DfE and partners across the higher education sector to ensure that students are supported and are able to make informed choices about the options that are available to them to transfer and continue their studies, or receive appropriate recognition for their academic achievements to date.”


wnd--2019-12-03--The bigger higher education scandal

The bigger higher education scandal

This year's education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing athletic coaches. They paid William Singer, a college-prep professional, more than $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators and to change test scores on college admittance exams such as the SAT and ACT. As disgusting as this grossly dishonest behavior is, it is only the tiny tip of fraud in higher education.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, "More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes."  According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent." Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test's readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).  It's clear that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, "Good Grieve! America's Grade Inflation Culture," published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A's. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation's leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59).  The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. "Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses" is a study conducted by professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45% of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in "critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years."  TRENDING: Ex-Clinton employee Ronan Farrow says Hillary changed as Weinstein scandal threatened her money  An article in News Forum for Lawyers titled "Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent" cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75% of two-year college students and 50% of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20% of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30% of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in "basic English."  Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: "What If Harry Potter Is Real?" "Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame," "Philosophy and Star Trek," "Learning from YouTube," "How To Watch Television," and "Oh, Look, a Chicken!" The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?  The fact that unscrupulous parents paid millions for special favors from college administrators to enroll their children pales in comparison to the poor educational outcomes, not to mention the gross indoctrination of young people by leftist professors.


thetelegraph--2019-07-04--First higher education institution is stripped access to student loans amid concerns over low qualit

First higher education institution is stripped access to student loans amid concerns over low quality degrees

The first higher education institution has been stripped of its access to student loans amid concerns over low quality degrees.  The Bloomsbury Institute, which is based in central London and run by a for-profit company, offers degrees in business, accountancy and law.  But the higher education watchdog, the Office for Students (OfS) announced on Thursday that it has refused the registration application of the institute, citing concerns about the “quality of student outcomes”.  Almost a third  (29.3 per cent) of students dropped out before completing their degrees, according to the latest data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) which showed that out of 730 full time students, 215 failed to complete their courses in 2016/17.  The OfS said it was also not satisfied with the graduate employment rates for students after completing degrees at the institution.  Nick Hillman, director of the higher education policy institute, said this is likely to be the first of a “handful” of institutions that will have its application to register declined.  He said that the move is “completely unprecedented” adding that the reputational consequences are “quite severe”.  Every higher education provider has to register with the OfS in order to receive public funds, recruit international students, award degrees and call itself a university.


zerohedge--2019-11-12--'Solutions Are Obvious' - The US Higher Education System Is Broken

Authored by 'Solutions Are Obvious' via The Burning Platform blog,  The US higher education system is broken. In many cases, it produces individuals with useless degrees purchased at outrageous cost. The system itself is an infestation of ultra liberal professors, spineless administrators and a student body that becomes more and more radicalized and detached from reality the more courses they take.  The higher education system is the incubator for the anti white, anti male, anti Trump, pro freak, pro censorship, anti gun, pro socialist, anti conservative, pro unlimited immigration, pro free everything mentality that pervades what purports to be the evening news. It infantilizes young adults to produce a steady stream of victims and mental midgets completely unprepared to meet the real adult world. In short, it produces the Democrat voter.  All is not lost, however. By and large, STEM graduates are less affected by the SJW mental aberration as their critical thinking abilities are necessarily on a higher plane to be able to cope with a curriculum that is more than just opinion. STEM fields have empirically based phenomena to comprehend and must use known tested methods of reasoning and logic to handle the problems and situations a particular field is called upon to investigate. Although STEM students are typically forced to sit through nonsense classes and regurgitate what the instructors deem critical information, they instinctively know its BS and promptly forget it once the class is over. They’re typically not permanently scared.  The problem lies with the ‘Basket Weaving’ majors where no proof of anything is required or even possible as it’s all just opinion and supposition. The Humanities / Social Sciences / Liberal Arts courses offer an easy path towards a degree, many of which are absolutely worthless. It’s actually a shame that some of them do lead to living wage and beyond employment options that end up producing many of the fraudulent professions society is encumbered by like Economics, Psychiatry and other specializations that can’t prove anything past common sense.  I’ll concentrate primarily on what to do to eliminate only the most egregious fraudulent degrees that are currently plaguing society.  The concept of tenure needs to be eliminated. No one should be guaranteed a livelihood by managing to hit some arbitrary mark and thereafter have no responsibility for doing a good job as reviewed by their employer. The education profession needs to get rid of the dead wood clogging the system and consuming resources. All higher education facilities should be mandated to provide their graduates with job opportunities via an employment agency owned and operated by the institution, not a contracted for service. The schools should be totally responsible for finding each graduate a position in the degree field of study for 5 years post graduation. If the institution is unable to place a graduate, then the former student is entitled to a full refund of all tuition paid for a proven obviously useless degree plus 5 times tuition paid for the waste of time involved and to provide the former student with a funds cushion to get retrained in something with a future. In the case where a graduate is unemployable for no reason the school is responsible for or where there is a dispute over responsibility, a 3rd party would be called upon to make a judgment.  If this were implemented, Gender Studies, Recreational Science, Hospitality Science, Museum Curator, Drama Studies and similar courses would disappear overnight from most campuses along with the faculty that teach the classes. The schools know these are for the most part BS courses and know that the chances of someone getting employed with one of the basket weaving degrees is so low that it would be financially too risky to offer the course.  Gone would be the professors teaching these nonsense courses. Gone would be the lenders to provide the student loans, guaranteed by the Fed Gov which steals the funds from the general public. Gone would be the students mentally or some other way incapable of STEM degrees with no option but to consider vocational training or learn how to say – ‘Do you want fries with that’. Gone would be the windfall profits higher ed facilities have enjoyed in recent decades. Gone would be the unsustainable building boom for facilities completely unrelated to teaching but used as enticements to attract low IQ students easily dazzled by shiny objects. Gone would be the nonsense classes STEM students are now forced to take. Gone would be the environment were the purveyors of bullshit get to indoctrinate the latest crop of weak susceptible minds.  Some may claim this violated free market principles. I would counter that the advancement of institutionalized fraud is not in the society’s best interests. If a student were to sign away his/her rights to compensation and effectively opt for today’s environment, then that would absolve the institution of responsibility. The free market would be restored as long as informed consent is involved.  In addition, it should be obvious that no one should be able to get an advanced degree in a field that can’t prove it’s basic precepts. As mentioned previously, something like Economics is almost entirely BS. Economists can’t prove anything past common sense and can’t even provide a proper postmortem after an economic catastrophe. Likewise, Psychiatry has not a single empirical test for the hundreds of conditions listed in their DSM. Psychiatry is opinion masquerading as science and is simply an outlet for Big Pharma to push their mind altering poisons. The large majority of mass shooters have been on prescription only psychoactive drugs.  Other fields that I generally refer to as the ‘story telling’ professions should likewise be reigned in. Paleontology, Anthropology, Cosmology, large portions of Geology and many more fields are largely based on a plausible story as their foundation, sans evidence. Absolute proof for their assertions is impossible and consequently it should be impossible to get a degree above Bachelors in these disciplines.  No one should claim to be an expert (PhD) in a field that is based on opinion. In the off chance that something like Climate Science might someday actually be able to provide proof of their assertions, it, as an example, should be able to produce Bachelors graduates that can attempt to further the field but would no longer be able to fool the public into thinking they know what’s going on due to their bogus PhD pedigree.


conservativehome--2019-09-20--Richard Bingley Five pillars of higher education success driven by Conservative reforms

Richard Bingley: Five pillars of higher education success driven by Conservative reforms

Richard Bingley is the Managing Director of a private Higher Education Institution and former Director of a public sector UK University Business School.  For almost a decade, I’ve read numerous policy documents and op-ed pieces about the supposed dire state of UK higher education. Despite the fact that the UK founded three of the world’s top ten universities and checks in at number two on the QS World Ranking of higher education systems.  Often such pontifications are by left-leaning societal advisers or consultants who – no matter how bright and passionate – perhaps have never taught within a university, nor gained the appropriate postgraduate qualification to do so. Their solutions are often to strangle our sector with yet more regulation or formal reviews. They usually involve cutting the tuition fees and/or not trusting the tutor to deliver in class.  Paradoxically, the longer I’ve worked in higher education – in both the public and private sector side – the more straightforward I’ve found it to understand the fee-paying customer. Most rightly want, and deserve, connectivity with experienced, industry-facing tutors, practical curricula relevant to the world of work, and the opportunity to realistically apply for decent job opportunities at the end.  So, let’s be clear: British higher education is at a far stronger place than perhaps it has ever been. The most recent Conservative government innovations have been refreshing both for providers (well, those who are ambitious for their learners) and also for consumers. They have introduced market realism and real-world innovation.  Higher Degree Apprenticeships (HDAs) stand to transform vast sections of the sector, with a major shift away from an outdated textbook approach toward teaching practicalities and underpinning theory hand-in-glove with employers. Graduates with HDAs will get jobs, quite simply because most already are employed by their sponsor.  The downside for higher education is that apprenticeships are too cumbersome to manage and the margin for the teaching institution is far too thin to incentivise widespread engagement or to build in student protection contingencies if something goes wrong.  The newly established Office for Students (OfS), which has already taken a robust intervention to ‘rescue’ a failing provider, has geared itself towards widening access and thinning down the frequency of intensive regulatory reviews, whilst the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has empowered learners to understand the roles and responsibilities of higher education providers.  Quite simply, if marketing is incorrect, then service providers will be held to account (often by publishing corrections and repaying a portion of money to the consumer.) After all, if a learner is paying almost £30,000 for course fees over three years, they surely should have the rights of any comparable consumer.  Most practical academics will tell you that there are common characteristics that drive forward higher-performing education institutions (note, that I didn’t use the word ‘ranking’). Aligned to most reforms described above, my five pillars for success are:  1) Effective, broad-based, governance. Independent-minded, qualified experts, key stakeholders, industry networks and paying customers (student reps) are at the heart of oversight and formal strategic advice. The institution and its staff intuitively know and subscribe to its core mission, inherent strengths and collective sense of purpose.  2) Focus on what matters. The institution’s senior management does not chase ever-changing shadows of market behaviour driven by today’s preposterous levels of media hype. Too many higher education Institutions mimic poor restaurants by offering a vast array of half-baked course products, unrelated to their unique origins and specialisms.  3) Discipline. Learners… turn up on time and be prepared. Turn off the phone. Tutors… informal and formal assessment promptly marked with personal, constructive feed-back. Non-attendees removed and Student Finance informed. The demoralisation of good performers, because bad performers are tolerated, should never be permitted  4) Quality of teaching. Tutors must exude authority. Authority is usually only earned from learners if a) the tutor can point to pre-existing high-achievement in both academia and the ‘real world’, and b) the tutor can apply their career achievement into the classroom in an engaging, structured manner. All tutors must be credible ‘captains of ship’. If you can’t command an audience, don’t apply to a profession which is all about working one!  5) Intensive academic support. If ministers want to widen access and ensure that learners can excel, intensive support of student engagement must be invested in. Academic support is costly and plans outlined in the recent Augar Review to significantly reduce student fees raises a problem in this regard.  Further sector concerns around finance are magnified by Jeremy Corbyn’s policy to scrap tuition fees altogether, and directly fund higher education by £9.5bn (funded by increasing income tax for those above £80,000). This is an unrealistic throwback, and would prove totally unworkable and destructive.  Firstly, the funding pot is too small for the modern-day global business that is British higher education provision.  Second, removing consumer power is likely to make degree programmes less job-market focused, and reverse employability progress made during the past decade. If universities and colleges struggle to gain income from teaching, the top-end will revert principally to research. (Most research that is not ‘world class’ is money down an endless drain: it earns, and pays for, nothing.)  Meanwhile other teaching-intensive institutions, usually the more accessible former-polytechnics and private providers, often sited within Labour’s own heartlands (if any exist these days) will collapse.  In the real world of higher education, cash flow generated by tuition fees matter. It provides more institutional stability and also drives up internationalisation and diversity, both within the teaching curriculum and among the audiences that an institution can reach out to and attract.  If providers struggle further to attract or retain decent lecturers (particularly those with industry experience and contacts – remember, this is a global employment market!), and academic staff development budgets are trimmed further, how can this ultimately help the learner?  For a ‘real world’ example in how a student fee cut might impact upon the coal-face, consider as follows: a Grade 9 ‘Lecturer with little or no classroom teaching experience, nor industry work experience, nor post-grad teaching certificate, is appointed to an undergraduate teaching post at £30,000 per annum. This is likely to occur because a Grade 10 ‘Senior Lecturer’ (circa £50,000 per annum), with much stronger career and academic credentials, including industry experience and contacts, had, in effect, made themselves too expensive for the sector.  This is where we are heading back to under Corbyn’s existing proposal. Lower fees and more regulation aren’t always the best fix.  Strong governance, strong institutional identity, strong discipline, strong teaching and strong academic support, always are.