Graham's in Terrible Shape....Just Pass the Damn Thing for God's Sake!

On Monday, Democrats in Harrisburg held up funding for the four state-related universities and The Old Main Government Bribery and Cajoling Unit sprung into action as doctors rushed to the Schreyer House to attend to Graham's skyrocketing blood pressure.  A letter was sent to state lawmakers with the urgent message, "Graham's in terrible shape....just pass the damn thing for God's sake!" Ok,not quite, here is what they wrote, (via)

This has been a most difficult budget season, and it is safe to say that no one is entirely satisfied with the budget bills you will be asked to vote on over the next several days.  It is important, nonetheless, to complete your work this week by making sure that the non-preferred bills are passed in a timely fashion — that is, before the end of the fiscal year.

It did the trick, the Dems folded.  Local Democratic representative Scott Conklin said through his spokesman that he didn't want the guilt of being responsible in someway for Graham's stroke..... if you read between the lines, that is.

State Rep. Scott Conklin, D-Rush Township, had said that he would not
support any state budget unless it included level funding for Penn
State. But the letter from DiEugenio and DiRaimo "has certainly affected
his thinking," Conklin's chief of staff, Tor Michaels, said earlier
Tuesday.

Michaels said Conklin would give the correspondence some weight.

And everyone lived happily ever after....well, at least until the tuition bills go out.

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Democrats in Harrisburg are trying to Slowly Kill....

....Graham.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting today that

State funding for the University of Pittsburgh and three other
universities could be in jeopardy as Democratic lawmakers flex what
little muscle they have in a Capitol controlled by Republicans.
Democrats are rebelling against a GOP cuts to the state-related
universities, the only spending bills that require a two-thirds vote of
each chamber.

"There isn't any doubt that this is the one place where Democrats can
wield some power. It's the one place where they do have leverage," said
G. Terry Madonna, political scientist at Frankin & Marshall College
in Allentown. "This could get very dicey."

Democrats are threatening to use their votes to get Republicans to
allocate some of an estimated $650 million surplus to state-related
universities as well as other education and health programs.

But if Democrats block passage, Pitt, Temple University, Lincoln
University and the University of Pennsylvania could wind up with
nothing.

I'm guessing that about now  Graham is  wishing that he followed his dream and joined that circus right out of high school.

[Update 6/27/2011 10:18 pm: The Dems blocked passage of funding for the state-related universities this evening.  No word on Graham's mental and physical states.]

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The Best Ranking Money Can Buy

In early April, the lead story in the Penn State Faculty and Staff Newswire, a product of The Old Main Propaganda Shop,  was about a top ranking awarded to the Penn State World Campus by Best Colleges.

The same day the Collegian also ran a story about the World Campus and Best Colleges  and  the reporter got Graham to weigh-in on the ranking.

Penn State President Graham Spanier wrote in an email that World Campus has been a great success and established itself as a premier online program since its launch.
“We have already served tens of thousands of students with high-quality courses,” Spanier wrote. “I’m pleased to see that it has been recognized for its achievements.”

I had never heard of Best Colleges and neither had Don Heller, Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State. While I was digging around to see what I could find out about Best Colleges, he was emailing Lisa Powers,  Director of Public Information Bullshit, at  The Old Main Propaganda Shop with a warning:

Last week, Penn State issued a press release touting its World Campus' selection as the "the No. 1 online institution for 2011." This designation was conferred by the website, TheBestColleges.org, which I had never heard of before - and I've seen lots of different rankings over the years. So I spent a little bit of time going through the website, and after about 30 minutes or so, I sent this message to Penn State's Director of Public Information:

I read your press release, and not having heard of Best Colleges, took a look at the website. Unless you have some information establishing the validity and/or reputation of the website, I d be a little cautious about how much you want to promote the WC and other rankings from this site. While they say We do not accept paid placements for our school rankings, it appears to me that this is a site supported entirely by advertising fees from universities. When you do a search for any of the degrees they show there (not the rankings, but a degree search), no matter what the degree, you get a list of for the most part for-profit and online universities, and very few of what most of us would consider more traditional universities whose quality and rankings are more universally recognized.

Here are the criteria they say they use to calculate the rankings for the 25 best online universities:

We ve relied on the following criteria to generate our online colleges and universities rankings: student satisfaction (as measured by graduation and retention rates), peer and instructional quality (as measured by acceptance rate and student-teacher ratio), affordability (as measured by tuition costs and availability of financial aid), and credibility (as measured by years of accreditation, reputation and awards).

To be blunt, this is garbage. Graduation and retention rates are not measures of student satisfaction, any more than acceptance rates and student-teacher ratios are measures of peer and instructional quality.
We can all agree there are problems with the U.S. News & World Report rankings, but they are at least considered reputable by most parties. I would be cautious about trumpeting rankings from Best Colleges externally unless you know more about this organization (which I d be interested in hearing).

Don Heller

One can imagine that  Lisa responded to Don with  Old Main's fallback position whenever they are faced with a ranking problem...."Oh, pshaw...we don't take theses things seriously," and she might have even tossed in a we're so glad you brought the error of our ways to our attention. But apparently no one set Graham set straight or he refused to see the error of his ways, because at the last Board of Trustees meeting in May he bragged to the Trustees that

Students also have embraced Penn State s World Campus, which was named the No. 1 online institution in 2011 by the Best Colleges.

My research into Best Colleges confirms Don's suspicion that these rankings are paid for by the universities being ranked,or at least some of the universities being ranked.  .