So?......

...... anything happen while I was gone?

A Victory Media Friendly School

In the comments to my post on The Best Colleges ranking, I received a heads-up from jhicks23 about another questionable accolade which The Penn State Propaganda Portal has recently pimped:

G.I. Jobs magazine has designated Penn State a military friendly school for 2012. It is the third straight time the  Pittsburgh-based publication has recognized the University's programs and services designed specifically to help active-duty military  service members and veterans pursue an education online through Penn State's World Campus.

I decided to take a closer look at how  G.I. Jobs magazine's military friendly school list works.  

According to the Military Friendly Schools website, G.I. Jobs starts with a list of 7000 colleges, universities and trade schools nationwide and narrows these down to around 1000 schools.  The explanation  of how this is done is a bit vague. It supposedly involves "exhaustive research" by the G.I. Jobs Military Friendly Schools Team. And that research "includes government agencies and private entities which administer education benefits and a comprehensive survey administered by G.I. Jobs. A Military Friendly Schools Academic Advisory Panel, consisting of five higher education administrators, helps determine survey questions and weightings."   What does it mean for the research to include government agencies and private entities? Does it mean that the data used in the research comes from these source?  No mention of to whom the survey is administered. Anyway, once they somewhat mysteriously assemble the data they use a set of criteria to winnow the  list down to about 1000 schools.   It is worth noting that the schools on the list are not ranked. Here is the nominal  reason for that

We purposely do not use a numerical ranking system as we encourage student to use our resources as a starting point for seeking education. School choice is not a one-size fits all process, so we built the Matchmaker tool to help narrow down the field.

Up to this point everything seems on the up and up. If we take G. I. Jobs at their word the collect and analyze data to come up with a list of schools for vets to select from by purely objective means.

It is the next step in the process where things get dicey. Once the list of military friendly schools is assembled G. I. Jobs sends out a  media kit to the schools on the list soliciting advertizing from them. Here's the pitch from that kit

Through its many established brands, long experience, deep relationships and unparalleled rating system, Victory Media’s print and web media products serve as the foundation for any school serious about recruiting the military and veteran student. If you’re one of the 20% of all schools nationwide which made the Military Friendly Schools® list, congratulations on such an elite achievement. Our media products, which start at only $990 per year, stand ready to carry your recruiting message to the enormous and valuable military student market. Only Military Friendly Schools® can run advertising in the print version of the Guide
to Military Friendly Schools® and www.militaryfriendlyschools.com. All other media are open to all schools.

[...]

In September 2011, the Military Friendly Schools® list will be released nationally to the press. Your school is encouraged to issue its
own press release to promote your inclusion.

That's Penn State's press release that I linked to back in  the first paragraph.

Here's the  menu of advertizing options from the kit.

From Drop Box

We see here the real reason that G. I. Jobs doesn't assign ranks to the schools. They want to give schools that advertize with them an advantage over those that don't advertize with them.  So even if one is generous in assuming no manipulations are involved in compiling the list,  we see that the manipulation comes in at this stage.   And how big of an advantage do schools that pay for advertizing have over those that don't?  Well, here's what the folks at G. I. Jobs provides a partial answer in their media kit.

From Drop Box

How much does this all cost? Other than the reference to $990 per year in the above quote from the kit, all  prices have been redacted from the publicly available media kit.

But apparently no one at G. I. Jobs had a background in military intelligence, they redacted the prices by pasting opaque images over them which I was able to edit out with a PDF editor. The uncensored kit is here and here are the price lists from that uncensored kit.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

So has the Penn State World Campus spent any money on advertizing with the nice folks at G.I. Jobs? You betcha

From Drop Box

Note the "add to my school list" button. Schools that don't advertize don't get one of those which make it harder for vets to compare the schools that don't pay to those that do.

How much has Penn State spent on these ads? Once more I turn to the Snyder Reports which, unfortunately, do not give a definitive answer to the question. Penn State has been on the list three years running 2009-2010, 2010--2011 and this year, 2011-2012. This years payments will show up in a future Snyder Report, either the 2011-2012 report or the 2012-2013 depending on if the check for his went out before or after July 1^rst this summer. 

What about past years? According to the reports, Victory Media, the publisher of G.I. Jobs, was paid $24,235 in fiscal year 2007-2008 (p. 471). If the military friendly list came out during the summer of 2009-2010, then this payment predated the World Campus' first appearance on the list.  If this  is the case, one must wonder how Penn State's prior advertizing with G.I. Jobs influenced its first appearance on the list.  And the payment of $17,226 in fiscal year 2008-2009 (p. 551) could be for either of the first two years on the list. 

No matter how you slice this, Penn State  World Campus is certainly a Victory Media Friendly School.

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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.  .

In Case You Were Distracted by All of the Hockey Porn Today...

....I would  like to draw your attention to this tidbit from this morining's Board of Trustees meeting.

In a worst-case scenario [next year], if the federal-stimulus funds disappear and the resulting hole goes completely unfilled, Penn State could face "the most significant budget cuts in our history," Spanier said.

Graham didn't see fit to mention this little fact  in his latest propaganda film. You would think that a film ostensibly  about the state of the university would work that in somehow. But no, it was all ponies, rainbows and empty pride. By the way, I wonder if Graham bribed Micheal Bérubé with the promise of unlimited ice-time  to get him to debase himself in that film.

Obscene

That is the only word I can think of for the $88 million tax deductible gift Penn State received to build a hockey arena and to support the University's entry into men's and women's Division I ice hockey. I'm aghast.... Think of all  of the better uses to which this money could have been put....Don Heller did just that...go read what he has to say.

Something is Rank

I've been meaning to update you on the reaction from The Old Main Propaganda Shop on Penn State plummeting from 7^th place last year to 35^th place this year in the Washington Monthly National University Ranking.

First, let's go back to 2007 when Penn State finished fifth in the ranking due to the erroneously high Pell Grant percentage used by the magazine for Penn State. Here's the reaction.

"It's something that Penn Staters should be proud of," Penn State [Bullshit Artist] Geoff Rushton said. "It uses scientific criteria that measures how universities impact the nation, and Penn State has done very well. "

Geoff had to know that the Pell Grant percentage was off by just shy of a factor of two , yet he was counseling pride on the part of Penn Staters. I'll cut him some slack since empty pride is the Penn State way and even empty pride can be used to separate gullible alumni from their money.

Now, let's compare this to the reaction this year.

"I have to say that rankings as a whole are something that we don't take too seriously," [Penn State Bullshit Artist Annemarie] Mountz said. "We don't look for ways to rise in the rankings."

Not too seriously, Annemarie? Why does Penn State maintain a Web site Where We Stand:Current Rankings?  The site,which  was updated last month,  still has the 2009 Washington Monthly ranking and not the 2010 ranking. Why is that? You and Graham  have to know that the 2009 ranking, like all of that magazine rankings before this year, is based on a too high Pell Grant percentage for  Penn State. It's a lie to leave it up.

By the way, a couple of  years ago I pointed out that Penn State slams the Princeton Review rankings as not being scientific whenever its party school ranking draws unwelcome attention to the University (Rushton's quote above is a not too subtle dig at Princeton Review), yet Penn State listed other Princeton Review rankings on the site which made the University look good. Shortly thereafter, The Old Main Propaganda Shop scrubbed the Princeton Review rankings from the site. Guess what?  Princeton Review is listed again this year. I guess they figured no one was paying attention anymore....don't even begin to think about erasing anything this time, Annemarie, I've notarized the site.

The fascinating claim by Annemarie is, "We don't look for ways to rise in the rankings."  No, of course not, Annemarie.

Dickinson School of Law (DSL) is being offered a $60-plus million new home on the Penn State campus in State College if the university's board of governors agrees to forsake Carlisle.
Board approval is the only thing that stands in the way of the proposed relocation by fall 2008.
An agreement made when the law school and the state-affiliated university were merged in 1997 says the 169-year-old school will remain in the Carlisle in perpetuity unless the governors vote to go to another site.
In a 28-page memo marked "Confidential For DSL Board Members Only" in preparation for a Nov. 21-22 board meeting, law school Dean Phil McConnaughay tells the board that the university "is prepared to assume the entire cost of a new facility without any repayment" if the law school "completes the design of a new facility within the next 12 months."
The crux of the dean's argument favoring an exodus from the borough is strongly rooted in U.S. News and World Report magazine's third-tier ranking of the school and "a languishing reputation" that caused "DSL grads" in one firm to inform McConnaughay about "their law firm's decision not to hire any longer from our law school because of our low rank."

Penn State was willing to spend $60 million to boost DSL's US News and World Report ranking and ultimately it spent an unknown amount in a legal fees and a pr campaign to abrogate the original merger agreement and to win the right to build a second campus at University Park at the cost of having to renovate the Carlisle facility. That construction cost $100 million.

What's a little fiddling with the way it reports its Pell Grant percentage to boost its Washington Monthly ranking in comparison to that?

It's Beginning to Look Like Penn State Exists Solely For THON

Today's Collegian has a half-assed story  on Penn State's precipitous drop in the Washington Monthly National University Ranking.  The reporter, Micah Wintner, makes no effort to explain why the University dropped like a rock from 7^th to 35^th place.  Basically the story is Penn State drops in Washington Monthly ranking....hey, look over there THON....economic impact...wait!... is that Graham playing the washboard?

You would think that explaining the drop would be the obvious angle on this story.   Let's review, this is from my post last year on the ranking.

This brings me to Social Mobility which clearly is what drives Penn State in to the top ten schools on the overall ranking and something ain't right here. Anyone who has spent any time in Happy Valley over the past fifteen years knows that the Main Campus of Penn State is increasingly populated by upper middle class and upper class students. It's gotten so bad that the University Faculty Senate issued a report a couple years ago on Access and Affordability. It did not paint a pretty picture.

Then there is the 2006 report from Education Trust, Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equality in the Nation's Premier Public Universities, which I blogged about at the time. Penn State received and overall grade of an F and an F on low income access. The Old Main Propaganda Shop wasn't happy.

The grade on low income access was based on the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at the University Park campus in 2004 which stood at 18.0%, according to the report, compared to 33.6the% of all college students in Pennsylvania with Pell Grant that year. The report also noted a trend toward less access at the Main Campus of Penn State. In 1992, the percentage of students with Pell Grants at the flagship campus was 22.2% compared to 27.7% overall in Pennsylvania.

Washington Monthly has the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at Penn State in 2008 as 25%. Has the University dramatically improved low income access to the Main Campus in the last four years? It is highly unlikely.

The Education Department keeps track of this statistic. For 2008, the total number of recipients of Pell Grants at all campuses of Penn State stood at 16,707 or roughly 25% of system-wide enrollment. (You can download the Excel file here.) That percentage is very likely to be lower at University Park and higher at the branch campuses.

Unfortunately, the most recent data on Pell Grant with a campus breakdown from the National Center for Educational Statistics is 2006. It shows substantial inequality amongst the campuses from a high of 63% at the Shenango campus in northwestern Pennsylvania to a low of 14% at the University Park, the flagship campus. However, the percentage of students with Pell Grants at the University Park campus has been very stable around 15% from 1999 through 2006, hence it is likely that the current percentage is significantly lower than the 25% system-wide number used by the Washington Monthly.

You can find a comparison to the other Big Ten schools plus Berkeley for 2006 here.

I think that it is reasonable to concluded that the Washington Monthly over estimated the percentage of Penn State University Park students on Pell Grants...

So this year Washington Monthly got the Pell Grant percent right and Penn State plunged in the ranking.  How hard was that?

Next question, what does that low Pell Grant percentage  tell us about Penn State fulfilling its mission under Graham?....hands....anyone....com'on people....did anyone do the assigned reading?

Drat! Spoiled Again by Veblen

For the past five years, Washington Monthly has ranked universities according to their purported contribution to  society. Penn State has done very well in the ranking: 2005, 6^th  place ;2006, 3^rd place; 2007, 5^th place; 2008, a presidential election year, the ranking was not done; 2009, 7^th place. 

Penn State has been very proud of finishing in the top ten every year. The headline at The Penn State Propaganda Portal the first year that the ranking came out was, "Penn State ranks near the top of magazine's rankings." The next year the headline was more specific , "Penn State third in Washington Monthly national rankings." In 2007, Graham figured that there's money to be made from Penn State's high finish in this sweepstakes.  His spiel to fat cat donors included this,

...the University has improved the lives of countless citizens of the Commonwealth and beyond. In fact, Washington Monthly has ranked Penn State third among all American universities and colleges for fostering social mobility, public service, and economic growth.

Last year The Penn State Propaganda Portal returned to declaring that "Penn State seventh in Washington Monthly national rankings"

I've discussed the faulty nature of this  ranking in the past on several occasions. The biggest problem with the ranking is on it social mobility scale which uses the percentage of students on Pell Grants in  both components which which make up the scale. There have been some problems with the percentages used by the Washington Monthly. The Pell Grant percentage reported for Penn State, 25%, was for the entire school. The actual percentage for University Park has been closer to 15%. You can read my critiques here,  here and  here.

This year Washington Monthly made an effort to get the Pell Grant percentages right and......drum roll, please............Penn State's Pell Grant percentage, as reported this year, is 13% and Penn State drops like a stone in the ranking to 35^th  place.

Here's your challenge. Help out The Old Main Propaganda Shop by writing a headline for this year's press release announcing Penn State's finish in the Washington Monthly ranking or help out Graham directly by suggesting how this 37^th place  ranking can be used to separate the filthy rich from their money.The title of this post is my headline suggestion, leave your suggestions in the comments. 

This Will Work Out Well

Earlier this week at Ag Progress Days, Graham announced the formation of a new Penn State research and outreach center^[1] focused on the Marcellus Shale. The purpose of the center, Penn State's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research (MCOR), according the to The Penn State Propaganda Portal is

....to work with state agencies, elected officials, communities, landowners, industry and environmental groups to protect the Commonwealth’s water resources, forests and transportation infrastructure while advocating for a science-based and responsible approach to handling the state’s natural gas deposits.

A center such as this could be very valuable if it is trusted by all parties involved. One of he factors which will determine whether there will be trust is the funding sources for the center. The press release linked to above notes that initial funding for the center is internal.

Penn State has committed major resources to establish and staff the Marcellus Center (MCOR) with support from the colleges of Agricultural Sciences and Earth and Mineral Sciences, the Penn State Institutes for Energy and the Environment (PSIEE) and Penn State Outreach, Spanier said.

Additional funding from PSIEE and the Social Sciences Research Institute (SSRI) at Penn State is underwriting investigation of human/social impacts and environmental issues related to Marcellus development by teams of cross-disciplinary collaborators ...

But eventually, as noted by The Penn State Propaganda Portal,  Penn State hopes to leverage this investment, "The goal of these research seed grants is to develop proposals for external funding agencies."  This is where things get a bit sticky.

External funding agencies suggest that the center is interested in obtaining government grants which would be a good way of avoiding conflicts of interest, but Graham actually elaborated on this in his remarks at Ag Progress Days.

Spanier said the center does not yet have outside funding, but the university hopes to get financial support from the state and the industry.

Financial support from industry, what could go wrong with that?

Earlier this summer, there was an outcry over an Penn State economic impact study of the Marcellus Shale which was funded by industry and very likely grossly over estimated the economic impact. 

On two separate occasions, the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center counseled law makers to disregard the conclusions of these two “Penn State studies” because of their funding and bias. The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry produced a parallel study on employment, “Marcellus Shale Industry Overview,” which estimated only a small fraction of the touted jobs. Neither Pennsylvania College of Technology’s “Marcellus Shale Workforce Needs Assessment” nor Penn State Cooperative Extension’s “Potential Economic Impacts of Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania” supports the exaggerated claims of these two industry funded papers.

The report  also advocated against the implementation of a severance tax on drillers, which the drilling industry opposes.

If Penn State wants this center to be seen as an honest broker, then it must eschew all industry funding.

But being an honest broker may not be what is on Graham's mind. There's money to made in the Marcellus Shale and where there's money to be made Graham will try to get a little taste. Consider that  the Office of the Vice President for Research at Penn State maintains a database of University research centers, institutes and facilities for industry to find potential research partners which includes the Astrobiology Research Center. If they are dreaming of making  a couple of industry dollars on Astrobiology, imagine the wet dreams they are having in Old Main over the Marcellus Shale.

[1] This link to the CDT article, published on August 19th, 2010, will evaporate in about two weeks. You can access the article after that at NewsBank which is available free online at Schlow Library or the Penn State library.

Technorati Tags: The Penn State's Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research, Penn State, Spanier, Marcellus Shale, conflict of interest

Setting an Example

Carnegie Mellon University's President Jared L. Cohon will step down on June 30, 2013 after sixteen years in the job. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review,

Penn State University President Graham Spanier called Cohon "one of the great leaders in American higher education in the modern era."

While Cohon had this to say about his retirement,

"It's just time," Cohon, 62, said during a conference call with reporters. A CMU tenured-faculty member, he plans to teach courses spanning civil and environmental engineering and public policy.

"Sometimes individuals can go on for longer than they should," Cohon said. "Universities need new leaders from time to time. They need people with fresh ideas."

Graham I suggest that you listen real close to this great leader's words of  wisdom and consider following in his footsteps....as fast as you can.

Technorati Tags: Graham Spanier, Jared L. Cohon, Carnegie Mellon University

If a Drunk Penn State Student Falls in an Alley and "This American Life" Isn't There to See It, Does Penn State Still Have an Alcohol Abuse Problem?

I am a little late on this, but earlier this month the Princeton Review Party School Ranking came out. Penn State dropped from  first place last year to third place this year. That mean's that the national spotlight will now shift away from Penn State to the University of Georgia, this year's top school.  We'll have to wait and see if  Old Main's will to deal with the alcohol abuse problem around here , which was dialed up last year after the first place showing in the Party School Ranking, the alcohol related death of freshman Joe Dado, and a revealing portrayal of Penn State's party culture on This American Life,  diminishes now that the public relation problem has been solved to some degree.

It's worth noting the Penn Staters are taking the drop in the ranking in stride.  Here's Jake Wiest a junior architectural engineering major in a letter to the Collegian.

The review relies on a survey that states an average of 325 students per school filled it out. First, we must assume everyone filling this out is doing so in an honest manner, not just to talk up the school's party scene. Assuming this, than a poll of less than 0.8 percent of the student population, a horribly inadequate number, determined our ranking.
I'm not saying that we would've stayed at No. 1 had more people filled out the survey -- perhaps quite the opposite. I'm saying who cares. Both the university and student population should put little stock into this overly hyped and insufficient survey.

Jake echos Penn State Bullshit Artist Geoff Rushton reaction,

"How do you scientifically gauge something like this?" Rushton said. "I don't think you do."

[...]

For Rushton, the rankings not only hold no real legitimacy -- they also have zero purpose.

The ranking is not representative of all students, he said, as many students drink responsibly.

"It's kind of insulting to our students, who are very bright, hard-working and dedicated to their studies," he said.

But Jake takes a very different lesson away from this observation about the lack of scientific legitimacy of the ranking,

I say the students should just keep doing your thing; everyone knows we party harder than the University of Georgia and Ohio University anyway.

I've gotta say, I think Jake's got a better grip on the reality here than Geoff does.

I mean it was a couple of those very bright, hard-working and dedicated recent Penn State graduates  that used their talents to come up with this.

During their time here, some Penn State graduates engineered a way to drink liquor without actually tasting anything -- and they say it may become the next social staple for college students across the nation.

Their product is the SLIZ Cup -- a "drinking vessel designed to eliminate the cringe between taking a shot and reaching for the chaser," said Anthony Vella, one of the product's creators.

It's a cup on top, with a straw for the handle.

To get the shot and chaser experience, co-creator Maurio Foire, Class of 2010, said users pour the alcohol into the SLIZ cup, add a non-alcoholic beverage and then drink quickly through the straw before letting the drink mix.

[...]

Inventing, marketing and selling SLIZ has been quite the experience, Vella said. The group got the chance to learn hands-on about entreprenuership, meet some interesting people along the way and "probably had too much fun conducting the necessary 'market research' which came with a lot of vodka," he said.

Hey, I know you're curious about the SLIZ Cup, so  here's their Web site.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on Graham and Old Main this year to see if they slack off in their efforts to deal with Penn State's alcohol abuse problem.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Princeton Review Party School ranking, Spanier

Captains of Erudition

The New York Times (via University Diaries) ran story today on the increasing number of university presidents who sit on multiple corporate boards. As you may recall, Graham sits on at least three separate boards.

Then there are the corporate boards that Graham sits on.  In  2008, he made $270,9800 in compensat[ion] as a director of US Steel and last year he pulled in another $170,000 from the gig. ...He has also sat on the board of Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania  for a number of years and it was announced this summer that he was appointed as a director of FM Global,an insurance company, which according to the press release announcing  Graham's appointment does business with Penn State. Unfortunately, these are not publicly traded companies, hence the compensation of a director is not disclosed by either...

The Times article discusses what's in it for the corporations, whats in it for the presidents-hint: hundred of thousands of dollars annually is big part of it- and what could go wrong for the universities.

Amongst the reasons that corporations like university presidents on their boards

...according to James H. Finkelstein, a professor in the George Mason School of Public Policy, probably the biggest reason companies have sought out academics is the prestige they bring. Universities are among the few institutions trusted by the public, he says, and companies believe they can associate themselves with this quality by installing an academic on the board.

“Corporations think this is a way of enhancing their prestige and legitimacy, especially in the case of Ivy League presidents,” he says. “I suspect that’s the principal motivation. It’s probably not for their business sense.”

So a president on the board helps to burnish the image of the corporation. Amongst the problems that board service can cause a university is a

... chance of reputational risk if a company runs into difficulties.

“Woe to the university president who would sit on BP’s board,” says Richard P. Chait, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

So the downside includes damage to the university's reputation. Think of it as The Law of Conservation of Total Reputation.

There are other reasons that corporations like to have university presidents on their boards.

John Gillespie, who has written a book on corporate boards, “Money for Nothing,” says academics are often selected for another reason — because they are less likely to rock the boat than directors from the business world.

Academics may be trained to ask tough questions in their own fields, but when confronted with tricky business issues far above their level of expertise they “often become as meek as church mice,” he says.

Put another way, university presidents are pushovers. Pushovers on a board increase the likelihood of a scandal and a scandal will hurt the reputation of the university run by the pushover. It's a nonlinear phenomena.

And these scandals and corresponding damage to the reputations of universities are not hypothetical, "Ruth J. Simmons, the president of Brown University and the first African-American woman to lead an Ivy League university, sat on the Goldman Sachs board until she stepped down this year."

The risk of a damaged reputation seemed to be an issue when Dr. Simmons announced in February that she was stepping down from the Goldman board.

At the time, Goldman was being battered by questions about its involvement in the financial crisis and the lucrative pay it doled out to executives and employees even after the firm had received a huge taxpayer bailout. As a director, Dr. Simmons was partly responsible for approving Goldman’s bonuses during the boom years — including the $68 million pay package awarded to its chairman, Lloyd C. Blankfein, in 2007, the largest ever on Wall Street.

And then there was this.

Erroll B. Davis Jr., chancellor of the University System of Georgia, was on the BP board for 12 years, though he stepped down in April, just days before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, causing the massive oil spill  in the Gulf of Mexico. His retirement, however, wasn’t enough to protect him from being named, along with other directors, in a small number of lawsuits filed against BP over the disaster.

“There is a big risk to academics when they serve on boards. They especially attract criticism when a company gets into trouble,” said James Kristie, editor of Director & Boards, a trade publication. “They are more harshly criticized because they are supposed to be the smartest guys in the room.”

Keep in mind that these presidents wouldn't be on these boards if it weren't for their position as presidents of universities. and they are gambling the reputations of their institutions for personal financial gain. I'm looking at you, Graham.

Technorati Tags: Academia, Corporate Boards, New York Times, confilit of interst, Spanier

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Queen Ida

..more trenchant analysis and snark coming soon. In the mean time, enjoy a little Zydeco...and Graham this is how a  washboard is played.

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For the Record

It was announced at yesterday's Board of Trustees meeting that Penn State had collected $203 million in donations during fiscal year 2009-2010, an amount which was claimed to be a record.  The amount is in nominal dollars and, as we learned last year when it was announced that Penn State had collected the second highest amount ever in fiscal year 2008-2009, the record is not going to hold when all monies are converted to constant dollars.

Last year when the giving time-series was converted to constant dollars using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) the amount collected turned in to be the sixth highest amount collected in the ten year time span,not the second highest amount.

As you can see in the graphs below, this years nominal record amount is only the fifth greatest amount collected since fiscal year 1997-1998 when the CPI is used to convert nominal dollars to 1998 dollars.

The CPI underestimates the rate of inflation for universities. Therefore the Commonfund has developed the Higher Education Price Index (HEPI) to track the rising cost of running colleges. The HEPI rises faster than the CPI. Hence when nominal dollars are converted to 1998 dollars with the HEPI the record turns into the seventh highest amount collected.

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In this light, Graham doesn't seem so much like a high horse-power money raising machine  so much as a worn out plow horse ready for the glue factory. 

Remind me again why Graham received a  12.9% raise.

(The data for fiscal years 1999-2000 through 2008-2009 comes from the 2008-2009 President's Report on Philanthropy. The data for fiscal years 1997-1998 and 1998-1999 comes from the 2006-2007 President's Report on Philanthropy. The number of this year comes from yesterdays press release. The CPI conversion was done with this Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator. The HEPI conversion was done using the HEPI data  found here.)

Technorati Tags: Penn State, philanthropy, Spanier

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She's On Fire

With the Penn State Board of Trustees meeting today, I think this video of Eva von Dassow, professor of Classics and Near East Studies at the University of Minnesota and critic of the University of Minnesota's central administration's budget and academic  priorities, speaking at an open forum before that schools Regents is worth a view for a few reasons.

First is her dramatic flare.

Second is the reasoning  behind her on fire presentation. That reasoning can be found in more detail at the second link above. Readers may want to bookmark that link to refer to when Old Main starts making cuts at Penn State.

Third is the novelty, to  Penn Staters, of the idea of an open forum at a Regents meeting. Could you imagine the control freak Graham allowing such a thing at a Board of Trustees meeting? Me neither.

(h/t Bill Gleason, aka Bonzo, a friend of this blog and another critic of UMN's central administration who blogs at Periodic Table and Periodic Table Too.)

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Spanier, Eva von Dassow, University of Minnesota

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A Couple of Observations on Graham's Remarks to the BOT

The Board of Trustees are meeting today in at the Du Bois campus. The big ticket on the agenda are tuition rates for the upcoming year. There's no news on that or much else coming out of meeting yet, beyond Graham's opening remarks.

Graham's discussion of applications and admissions did grab my attention for two reasons, one rhetorical, the other substantive.

As you heard throughout the year, our application and enrollment numbers look very strong for this year’s class. It is clear that this is another record setting year in the number of admissions applications received by Penn State.
Graduate applications are ahead of last year by 10 percent, and we have received more undergraduate applications to date than in any prior year. Applications to Dickinson are up 31 percent and applications to Hershey are up 7 percent. Out-of-state minority applications are ahead by 7 percent and Pennsylvania minority applications are ahead 8 percent. Total applications, for all campuses, are ahead by 6 percent compared to 2009.
Acceptances have been on pace so we fully expect to achieve the target of 7,350 new students for University Park summer and fall, and Commonwealth campus acceptances are shaping up to be record highs.
Out-of-state acceptances overall are up 17 percent compared to last year for University Park. This means that out-of-state students will comprise one-third of the incoming class. Almost 10 percent of the entering class will be international students.
Out-of-state paid accepts at the campuses are up 8 percent, which includes an increase in the international cohort. Most campuses will continue to accept applications and make offers into the summer. We will keep you informed as the numbers progress.

Note that Graham managed to talk about applications without repeating his favorite lie that Penn State is the most popular university in the country.

More substantially, I'm not sure what to make of Graham's claim that 17% increase in out-of-state acceptances over last year means that out-of-state students will comprise a third of the incoming class. Last year 34%,i.e. a little more than a third, of freshman were from out of state. 

Is Graham trying to downplay an actual increase in the percentage of out-of-state students in the new freshman class, have things actually not changed as a result of the increase in the percentage of accepts  or is something else at play? Someone should ask Graham about this.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Spanier, Penn State Board of Trustees

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Penn State Subverts the Rules

Graham recently told BlueWhite Illustrated's Phil Grosz that

I’ve always been alarmed and disconcerted by the dishonesty that we see around intercollegiate athletics. There is cheating that goes on and there is rule-breaking that goes on. It has to stop.

Just because there is a lot of pressure on coaches to win doesn’t justify any of it. People can have the opportunity to win by operating a clean program.

We do it at Penn State.

Apparently though, that deep concern for running a clean program doesn't extend to the research side of things. The New York Times reported today about the ways in which Congresscritters have found ways to get around a ban against giving earmarks to  profit-making organizations by channeling the money through nonprofits. Guess what? Penn State is a player in one of the scams.

In Pennsylvania, General Electric is likely to get as much as 80 percent of a $2 million earmark proposed by Pennsylvania State University for research on clean-burning GE locomotives. At the suggestion of the company and the university’s lobbyist, according to a Penn State professor, the university is listed as the lead player in the collaboration instead of GE, as was done previously. GE executives made a series of political contributions to Representative Kathy Dahlkemper, Democrat of Pennsylvania, days after she submitted the earmark request.

Well, Graham what do plan on doing about this?

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Earmark Ban, GE

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Layoffs Anticipated at Penn State Great Valley

There was a Friday night dump about Penn State Great Valley  from the The Penn State Propaganda Portal, which is full of talk of  "respond[ing] to the emerging needs of the region, changes in the way higher education is delivered, and opportunities for greater collaboration with other Penn State campuses in southeastern Pennsylvania." You had to read nearly to the end of the 437 word pile of bullshit to get  to the chase in the penultimate paragraph.

These changes to accommodate demand will result in some future personnel reductions in certain programming areas, particularly in the area of support staff.

BTW, changes are a comin'.

The reorganization of the Great Valley campus is part of Penn State's continuing evaluation of University programs and operations that has been ongoing for more than a decade. To date, the University has identified more than $190 million in cost savings, with plans to identify substantial additional reductions annually in the years ahead.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Penn State Great Valley, Layoffs

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