Will CSU's motto someday be: 'I am a Phoenix'?

Quote:By William Tierney
Special to The Bee

Published: Sunday, Oct. 4, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 5E
Last Modified: Monday, Oct. 5, 2009 - 10:53 am

It's March 2011. California's next governor calls a morning news conference to make a stunning announcement: The Apollo Group's University of Phoenix will pay $2.3 billion to buy the California State University system.

"The previous administration left us with few alternatives," explains the new governor, who won election on a campaign pledge to end California's chronic imbalance between what it takes in and what it spends. "Selling state parks nets a few hundred million dollars," he continues, "but transferring ownership of CSU to Phoenix will permanently save us billions. And Phoenix says it will increase enrollments."

Far-fetched? Is Phoenix, the nation's largest for-profit university, really a candidate to take over CSU, the nation's largest four-year public university system? Consider:

The 23-campus CSU system, which serves 450,000 students, has struggled to increase enrollment as tight budgets have eaten into its share of the general fund. The most recent state budget brought into full relief the extent of its financial straits. In July, its trustees voted to take no new admissions in spring 2010 and to raise fees by 20 percent, to $4,026 a year. The 47,000 faculty and staff will be asked to take two unpaid furlough days a month.

And the system's money woes will likely continue. The state's jobless rate reached 12.2 percent in August, a postwar record. While the California economy is slowly recovering from recession, many forecasters expect growth to be too tepid to cut into the state's double-digit unemployment through 2011. Continued high employment means less tax revenues. The state's Legislative Analyst's Office projects budget deficits through 2012-13.

This uncertain financial outlook undercuts CSU's primary mission: giving students greater access to quality higher education at an affordable price, keeping them in school and sending them into the labor market with bachelor's degrees.

The problem is that California's need for college-educated workers is outpacing its ability to produce them, and the gap is expected to widen, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. If current trends continue, the state will experience a serious shortfall of college graduates by 2025.

Enter the University of Phoenix, a member of the fastest-growing sector in higher education. In 2007, the number of students enrolled in for-profit universities and colleges totaled nearly 1.2 million, roughly 6.5 percent of all students attending degree-granting institutions. In 1967, 22,000 students were enrolled in for-profits like Phoenix. Apollo, Phoenix's corporate parent, has increased enrollment from about 100,000 to 400,000 since 2000.

Most of Phoenix's current students are part-time working adults, a student-body profile that makes Phoenix a logical candidate to run CSU. According to estimates by the National Center for Education Statistics, many future college-goers probably won't be able to afford school full time and, as such, will not have the same desire for a campus experience as do younger full-time students at traditional colleges. They want to hold a job and/or raise a family as they learn. Many also opt for online learning, and the University of Phoenix is the largest purveyor of such learning.

Phoenix's methods would introduce greater efficiency into California State University. Unlike CSU, it tracks and publicly reports on what students learn in its courses. It puts faculty applicants through an instructor "boot camp" to weed out weak teachers and to ensure that those who graduate are prepared to teach. It keeps tabs on teaching quality as well, and the contracts of weak teachers are not renewed. Contrary to expectations, Phoenix's part-time faculty has proved to be every bit as qualified as full-time faculty in some academic areas, and the graduation rates of its part-time students are comparable or exceed those of their counterparts in traditional colleges.

Phoenix also has the ability to ramp up enrollment in one area and decrease it in another. For example, if more students want to go into business, then business courses will be added until the demand lessens.

Finally, the for-profit university offers a bonus for state legislators weary of years of budget meltdowns. Based on a recent Sallie Mae study, a higher proportion of students at for-profit institutions rely on federal financial assistance than do students at public institutions. With Phoenix's acquisition of the CSU system, lawmakers could look forward to a shift away from subsidizing CSU toward greater federal student subsidies.

Yes, the University of Phoenix has many drawbacks. It has little concern for academic freedom. Tenure is nonexistent. Its ability to adapt courses to the latest findings in scholarship is frequently missing. It lacks transparency and resists any meaningful regulatory oversight. It would likely increase student indebtedness.

But Phoenix is a proven generator of trained graduates ready to enter the work force. At a time when the California economy needs educated workers and its higher-education system is less able to deliver them because of severe budget constraints, a University of Phoenix's takeover of the California State University system may be more plausible than one might think.

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William Tierney is a professor of higher education at the University of Southern Califronia and is the author of numerous books, among them "New Players, Different Game: Understanding the Rise of For-Profit Colleges and Universities."

DETC-accredited Yorktown University is among the sponsors for this year's Western Conservative Political Action Conference (WCPAC) confab being held October 16-17 in Newport Beach, California.

Nice to see Yorktown taking a stand against the oppressive socialist orthodoxy that permeates higher education.  Yorktown bills itself as "'The' place in American higher education for Supply-side Economics."

Although they are not unique.  I also see Hillsboro College joining forces with author and radio commentator Mark Levin on his website.

It's also nice to see a college being upfront with it's political orientation, instead of pretending to be "one size fits all" and then catering to socialists and perverts the way so many do.  

Yorktown became DETC-accredited last year.  I wonder what the outcome of their DETC application would have been if they had sponsored conservative events before it was approved.  Not that DETC is a statist-oriented accreditator at all, but they can't afford to be politically naive and hope to maintain DoE recognition.  Surely they saw what happened to the AALE.

Dr. George Brown's hair: rug, wig, divot, toupe', tarantula?

Say it ain't so. Former online.degree.net icon Johann is now posting at DI. He showed up briefly at degreeboard over the summer but vanished just as quickly. I expected an eventual return but guessed that it would be when it got colder than 14 degrees C in Ottawa.

DI thread

AS POSTED ELSEWHERE.

Quote:Mr Hill today announced the State Government would adopt the recommendations of a parliamentary committee examined therapies being offered by unregistered doctors.

These included offering to cure cancer through the use of "organic coffee enemas" and another practitioner who claimed to be able to cure cancer through "vaginal blowing".

He said the move was aimed at a small group of unregistered doctors who were intentionally exploiting vulnerable people.

Would you want a pedophile-pandering pervert like Chip White running your kid's school?  Dear Leader Barry Soetoro thinks it's a great idea, and appoints a "safe school czar" who promotes man-boy sex!

Promotes homosexuality and has utter contempt for religion?  I hear Gollum wants to "collaborate" with him as soon as possible.  Sounds like the ideal person for a seamless transition to replace Contreras at the Oregon ODA.

Is Chip next in line as "safe DL czar"?  He's a pervert who doesn't know anything about DL, so by Obama's standards that makes him well-qualified.

'Safe school czar' encouraged child sex with an older man

Quote:Monday, September 28, 2009
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES

A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man." At the very least, statutory rape occurred. Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse. That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama's "safe school czar." It's getting hard to keep track of all of this president's problematic appointments. Clearly, the process for vetting White House employees has broken down.

In this one case in which Mr. Jennings had a real chance to protect a young boy from a sexual predator, he not only failed to do what the law required but actually encouraged the relationship.

According to Mr. Jennings' own description in a new audiotape discovered by Fox News, the 15-year-old boy met the "older man" in a "bus station bathroom" and was taken to the older man's home that night. When some details about the case became public, Mr. Jennings threatened to sue another teacher who called his failure to report the statutory rape "unethical." Mr. Jennings' defenders asserted that there was no evidence that he was aware the student had sex with the older man.

However, the new audiotape contradicts this claim. In 2000, Mr. Jennings gave a talk to the Iowa chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an advocacy group that promotes homosexuality in schools. On the tape, Mr. Jennings recollected that he told the student to make sure "to use a condom" when he was with the older man. That he actively encouraged the relationship is reinforced by Mr. Jennings' own description in his 1994 book, "One Teacher in 10." In that account, the teacher boasts how he allayed the student's concerns about the relationship to such a degree that the 15-year-old "left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated."

Mr. Jennings' denials about these events reveal a lack of remorse. He has not admitted that he made mistakes in this case, and he now refuses to answer any questions about the scandal. Don't forget, this is a presidential appointee we're talking about. Mr. Obama should make clear what his standards are for public servants serving at the pleasure of the president. Encouraging and covering up man-boy sexual activity are serious offenses. The White House should force Mr. Jennings to come clean.

Mr. Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools and about his utter contempt for religion that render him unsuitable for a prestigious White House appointment. His job in the Obama administration is to ensure student safety, and this scandal directly calls into question his ability to perform that job. Mr. Jennings and Obama administration officials refuse to answer any questions about this newly discovered evidence. A lot of Americans want answers about this guy and how he was approved for a job in the White House.

The author is talking about the obsolete print media, but he could just as easily be talking about the obsolete higher education cartel and their brick & mortar classrooms.

Don't Bail Out Newspapers--Let Them Die and Get Out of the Way

Quote:Posted Sunday, September 27, 2009 10:59 AM

Daniel Lyons

Nobody in their right mind believes the future of the news business involves paper and ink rather than pixels on a screen. We all know where the news business is headed, and what's more, we've known it for at least a decade. So why on earth are people talking about a bailout for newspapers? Why is President Obama saying he'd consider it? Why is Congress holding hearings and considering "The Newspaper Revitalization Act" in a bid to save these ailing old rags with tax breaks and other handouts? It's like introducing legislation to save horse-drawn carriages, or steam engines, or black-and-white TV. It's stupid. It's pointless. It won't work.

The fact is, all this hysteria has nothing to do with saving the news, or saving jobs. Nor is it about saving democracy, which is what the red-in-the-face newspaper lovers always get themselves huffed about, as if newspapers and democracy were inextricably linked. Democracy existed long before newspapers did, and it will survive without them. And plenty of countries that don't have democracy do have newspapers. Nor would a bailout help readers. In fact, it would only slow down our shift to the Internet, which is a far better medium for delivering information.

The only beneficiaries of a bailout would be a handful of big newspaper companies that used to be profitable and powerful and now, well, aren't. Those companies saw the Internet charging toward them like a freight train, and they just stood there on the tracks. They didn't adapt. Why? Because for decades these companies enjoyed virtual monopolies, and as often happens to monopolists, they got lazy. They invested their resources in protecting their monopolies, using bully tactics to keep new competitors from entering their markets. They dished up an inferior product and failed to believe that anything or anyone could ever take their little gold mines away from them.

It's hilarious to hear these folks puff themselves up with talk about being the  Fourth Estate, performing some valuable public service for readers—when in fact the real customer has always been the advertiser, not the reader. That truth has been laid bare in recent years. As soon as papers got desperate for cash, they dropped their "sacred principles" as readily as a call girl sheds her clothes. Ads on the front page? Reporters assigned to write sponsored content? No problem.

Now, new companies with names like Politico and Huffington Post and The Daily Beast and Gawker are beating newspapers at their own game. The new guys are faster, and often better. They're leading, with newspapers chasing behind. If the old guys really want to retain their chokehold on the news business, they should consider buying up the new guys. Problem is, the old guys waited too long, and now they're too broke to make acquisitions. Whoops.

Sure, nobody has yet figured out how to make loads of money delivering news over the Internet. But that's partly because there are too many old newspaper companies, stumbling around like zombies: creatures from another century, clinging to their lame old business model, surviving but not thriving—and sucking up money that Internet companies could put to better use.

Instead of giving newspapers bailouts, we should be hastening their demise. The weak papers need to die. The strong newspapers need to go into bankruptcy and restructure their businesses with smaller staffs and lower cost structures. Yes, it will be painful. But journalists will find jobs—and they'll be working in a better, faster medium.

Meanwhile, all of us need to get over this pious notion about the sanctity of the newspaper. I've been a journalist for 27 years, and I love that romantic old notion of the newsroom as much as the next guy. But I recently canceled my two morning papers—The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal—because I got tired of carrying them from the front porch to the recycling bin, sometimes without even looking at them. Fact is, I only care about a tiny percentage of what those papers publish, and I can read them on my computer or my iPhone. And I can rely on blogs and Twitter to steer me to articles worth reading.

As for all the hand-wringing about the great "in-depth" information that only a newspaper can provide, let's be honest: the typical daily newspaper does a lousy job. It tries to provide a little bit of everything—politics, sports, business, celebrity stuff—and as a result it doesn't do anything particularly well. Ask anyone who's an expert in anything—whether it's bicycle racing or brain surgery—what they think when they read a newspaper article about their field. Chances are they cringe, because the material is so dumbed-down, and because it's so clear that whoever wrote the article has no real expertise on this topic.

Frankly, a lot of newspapers just stink. People worry about the fate of the San Francisco Chronicle, but that paper has been an embarrassment for decades. The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press are in trouble, but they deserve it: for one thing, they spawned  Mitch Albom; for another, they're both pretty awful. The Boston Globe, my current hometown paper, is smug and provincial, and the writing is embarrassingly bad. Much of the Globe reads like a college newspaper. Would any of us really be worse off if these crusty, crappy old relics suddenly disappeared?

Please, Congress, drop this crazy idea about saving newspapers. You can't save them. They are going to die. All you can do is prolong their agony, and delay the shift to the Internet. That doesn't do any of us any good.

An international student seems to have had a less-than-wonderful experience at Australia's Griffith University. He states his case in passionate and amusing fashion on YouTube.

How is a government-run "crook slum" different from a "diploma mill"? As a general rule diploma mill customers seem highly satisfied with their purchases, and according to the epic research work of Dr. R. C. Douglas find high utility as well. On the other hand, we hear many similar tales of exploitation and woe incurred at the hands of the vaunted government-endorsed cartels.

Quote:This is a video to WARN ALL FELLOW INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS who are planning to go study abroad or overseas of REASONS WHY NOT TO STUDY AT GRIFFITH UNIVERSIY THIS CROOK SLUM

THIS VIDEO TELL YOU THE TRUTH of what HORRIFYING MATTERS HAVE ACTUALLY BEEN HAPPENING IN THIS CROOK SLUM AND WHAT DIRTY EVIL SCHEMES THIS CROOK SLUM HAVE BEEN USING TO MOB ON THE PREY OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS!!

If you all have any questions or want to discuss about matters related to the info of this video please feel free to leave comments here or at my blogs. I will be glad to give you a reply as soon as possible. Thank You!! :-)

These guys have been around for about 20 years now. Everyone says that they're a diploma mill or a degree mill with minimal standards, but it's worse than that. What they really do is lure you in with the impression of lax standards, collect money from you up front and a tuition fee from you monthly and then give you literally endless amounts of work until you drop out in desperation.

There aren't any graduates because no one can complete the endless amounts of work MUST gives its students. The people who try to stick with the program end up paying tens of thousands of dollars and decades of study until they drop out in shame. The value of its degrees never comes up because there are NO graduates.

Even Harvard allows its students to graduate after all. With MUST the policy is to graduate no one. They have you read a library's worth of books and write endless papers and introspections until you've understood everything known to man and have written a dissertation on every word in the dictionary. And even then they'd probably ask you to do it over and pay some more in tuition.

Does that make MUST the best school in the US?

Has anyone noticed that on DegreeDiscussion that the majority of Gollin's threads have like ZERO replies ? Zilch, zero, nada, zed.

Gollin, hate to break it to ya, no one cares about what you have to write or say. No one cares even on DD. It is now officially time to go back to your day job and teach your two 300 level physics courses.