Need Extra Cash? Work for the D.C. Government

The lesson from the news this week is that if you want to embezzle money without anyone taking notice, work for the Washington, D.C. government. The headlines, of course, have belonged to the two D.C. tax office employees who embezzled $20 million by issuing fake tax refund checks. What did they do with all that money? Nothing particularly creative—they bought the typical furs, expensive purses, jewelry and cars that must be fashionable in the embezzler social circle these days.

The Washington Post follows up today with a disheartening story about vanishing school activity funds in D.C. public schools—read the story if you can stomach it. Apparently, no one is accurately keeping track of this money, making it all too easy for employees to deposit checks into their own bank accounts instead of schools’. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, “poor record keeping and the absence of internal controls at D.C. schools often make it difficult to prosecute thieves”. The story details one tale after another of ‘lost’ activity funds—grant money, personal donations, even student dues that just disappear.

Appropriately enough, this weekend $800,000 of purses, furs and electronics purchased by the ex-teacher’s union leader Barbara Bullock will be up for sale on EBay in an attempt to recoup some of the over $4 million she embezzled from the union. Too bad these folks don’t have better taste.

Sad, Sad, Sad.

I moved to DC in early 2001 from Indianapolis, where I had worked in the Statehouse for the previous six years as a Democratic staffer for the state Senate and then the governor. That meant, necessarily, working at various times in close concert with the state teachers union. The union reps were by and large smart, committed people who fought hard for public education, and I have a very clear memory of all of us gathered in a downtown hotel ballroom on a cold election night in November 1999 celebrating the election of Bart Peterson as the new Mayor of Indianapolis.

It was a watershed moment. Indiana is a red state by inclination, and Republicans had dominated the mayoralty and city council in Indianapolis ever since the city and surrounding county governments had merged in 1970. Blowout losses in city-county elections became a habit and Republican dominance a foregone conclusion, until Peterson arrived as young, dynamic candidate who ran a smart campaign against the sitting Secretary of State and won by double digits. It was what candidates often promise and rarely deliver: A new day, a sense that things are different now.

And Bart followed through. He was a strong, sensible mayor who brought a lot of great ideas to the table, particularly on education. Legally, Indianapolis mayors have little say over the budget or administration of the city-county schools, which are split into eleven separately-governed and financed school districts, a legacy of racial segregation. But where other mayors ran away from the public schools as a money pit and an insoluble mess, Bart took responsibility for the success of public charter schools that he personally authorized. No blaming poverty or the school board or circumstances beyond his control. He said, I stand by these schools; judge me by judging them.

So it was a shock to learn that Bart narrowly lost his bid for re-election on Tuesday to a little-known, under-financed challenger. Frankly, I didn't even bother to check yesterday morning, I assumed winning was a foregone conclusion. Initial news coverage lay the blame on turnout, voter fatigue, and anti-tax anger. But now, via Eduwonk, we learn that lack of support from a city teachers union angered by charter schools played a role:

The Indianapolis Public Schools Teacher's Union did not endorse a mayoral candidate, but Indianapolis Education Association President Al Wolting believes many IPS teachers and employees voted against Peterson because of his support for charter schools.

"All they're doing is taking our students, taking our money and they're taking away all our efforts we're trying to make with public schools," said Wolting.

Wolting admits however that he doesn't know the mayor-elect's position on charter schools. [Mayor-elect] Ballard admits he rarely was asked about education on the campaign trail.

"Yes, I plan to continue charter schools," said Ballard. In fact, Ballard sounds as if he may start one of his own. "I have a model that I'd like to try but if that's ineffective then we'll move to something else because every kid in this city deserves a fair shot."

This should be said until nobody says otherwise: Charters schools are public schools. Public. Schools. That doesn't mean all charter schools are good public schools, but guess what--Indianapolis charters turn out to among the good ones, overall, at least compared to the traditionally-governed public schools from which students voluntarily left were "taken."

So what can we expect, educationally, from the conservative Republican mayor my former teachers union colleagues helped put in office? Who knows? It's hard to tell from reading his education agenda, other than charter schools are the one Peterson initiative he supports. Indianapolis will apparently be getting some kind of "public-nonprofit partnership" involving "the faith community" and "character education starting in the 5th grade." Hopefully the local union has socked away some money because more school funding is decidedly not on the way. Says the mayor-elect, apparently unaware that Indiana has these things called academic standards:

Do we have any goals for our school systems? Not that I can tell. Without defined goals, we really don’t know how many resources we need. We do know that our graduation rates and literacy rates throughout the city are unacceptable, and I don’t believe more money is the answer.

Sad, sad, sad.

Pondering Richard Simmons

Editing Q&E's worldwide exclusive interview with Richard Simmons (below) yesterday led me to ponder what seems like the essential Richard Simmons question: is this guy serious, or what?

I think he is. The mistake with Richard is to equate ridiculousness with lack of seriousness, which is usually a safe assumption, but not in this case. Think of it this way: here you have a guy who'se NCLB proposal is, objectively speaking, just as serious as many of those being put forth by various legit organizations, advocates etc.--in some cases, more so. He goes on national TV in front of millions of people to pitch his ideas, and as a result generates a lot of public response, letters to Congressman, and gets people like us, Education Week, etc., to publicize his ideas. Public Advocacy 101. The only difference between Richard and everyone else with an NCLB agenda is that he's doing a better job of promoting his. It's frivolity with a purpose, in other words. The voice and frizzy hair, the short shorts and outsized persona--those are all just a means to an end, and should be considered in those terms. Unlike most people, Richard is willing to be mocked if that furthers his goals, which makes him more serious, not less.

"We're Leaving Our Children's Behinds Behind" -- An Interview with Richard Simmons

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about Richard Simmons, the fitness guru who first rose to multi-media fame in the 1980s as a TV personality and purveyor of excercise videos like "Sweatin' to the Oldies," parts 1, 2, and 3. Ostensibly, the post was about his plan--which I called "silly"--to include physical education as part of school accountability under NCLB. But it was really just an excuse to tell one of my favorite stories, which takes place during a year of shiftless wandering between undergrad and grad school in the early 1990s, wherein my best friend and I went--for purely ironic purposes--to see Richard at an event in a North Carolina shopping mall, made fun of his promotional materials, and were publicly chastised (in a friendly way) by the great man himself.

Well, because Richard Simmons is clearly a better man than I, he not only took all of this in good humor but personally reached out to the Quick and the ED and offered to talk to us about his education plan. We spoke on the morning of November 6th, and here's what he said:

RS: Kevin…

Q&E: Richard!

RS: How have you been, you little devil you? Look at you, how far you’ve come!

Q&E: I've come a long away since my irresponsible youth.

RS: Never lose a little bit of that. I’m so proud of you, you actually help get things done, you actually put things in the forefront of peoples’ minds, and that's the main reason I wanted to talk with you, to ask for your help. I know that in your blog you said the work that I was doing on the NCLB was really silly…

Q&E: I did say that, but I’d like you to tell me why I’m wrong.

RS: Here’s where I’m coming from. I don’t want the kids today to grow up and be me. Because I was the kid who hated PE (physical education), I was the kid who hated exercise, and I was not introduced to it in a palatable way, it was only in the schoolyard where people picked teams and I was never on one. And about two years ago, a colleague of mine said, "Richard, what is your legacy?” I said, "I want to keep people healthy and I want people to continue to exercise." I want to get PE back in the school system, because to me it’s never really been introduced properly in the majority of schools.

Here’s my dream: To get a bill passed where we can get PE back in the schools. And we tried those bills but they didn’t go anywhere, because they weren’t attached to anything. To get a brand-new bill going is, as you know, very difficult. I was just in Washington recently, and I got a taste of that hectic, crazy life, and—Wow! I don’t know why everyone isn't on more Tums.

Q&E: We're on stronger things than Tums.

RS: (Laughs) So I met with Congressman Wamp and then Chairperson George Miller and other people and they said, "Look, NCLB is going to be up for reauthorization, let’s see if we can get something in there." So—as you said in your little blog—I went to David Letterman, trying to get as many people interested as I can, and thousands of people went to my Web site and sent emails to Chairperson George Miller and Senator Kennedy. I was very strong in what I was saying even though David was trying to drive me crazy.

The people in Washington said, "There are these things called 'multiple measures,' and this is where the school gets a report card and if the report is good and they get kids to excel, their grade goes up for the school." So I said, "Great--but where’s PE? Let’s make that a multiple measure." That’s where we are right now. They all said there’d be a vote, but now it looks like this will not be really addressed until next year.

Q&E: I looked at your legislation, and the standard is based on time—schools would have to offering 150 minutes per week of phys ed for all students in elementary school, and 225 minutes a week in high school. What about quality?

RS: Before I answer that, you tell me—how do we get PE back in the school system?

Q&E: Frame it terms of health problems, like childhood obesity, and the long-term financial consequences—spend a little money now, get big returns down the road in terms of reduced health care costs. That's the single biggest fiscal problem the federal government has, the long-term cost of health care.

RS: You'd think that the health world would embrace us, but…I’m the one the mother’s write to. They write to different TV personalities for different reasons, and I have here a group of emails from people who have had weight loss surgery and they’ve gained all their weight back. I have another group writing me about their daughters or sons who are morbidly obese, and they have type II diabetes, and they are taking medication for blood pressure—and they are 11 years old. Our kids are going to die, they are going to end up morbidly obese with no future and no dreams, and if we do something now we can save all those health costs. But I’ve tried all the different avenues, so let me ask you again: how do we get PE back in the school system?

Q&E: Putting it in the NCLB debate seems to be working for you, because now people are paying attention. I agree with your goals, but I’m worried that if we put so many things in NCLB it gets hard for schools to navigate...

RS: Well, we have to have some priorities here. Our kids are in school longer than they are any place else for that many consecutive hours. You know the kids are not getting up and exercising, because they're eating and getting ready for school and finishing their homework, and all these silly tests and the crazy math and reading…

Q&E: We want them to be physically fit and be good at math and reading, right?

RS: But where do we carve out the time for PE? When some the new things are added to NCLB—a lot more science, more reading and more math—when are we going to find time for the kids to go out and socialize, for the kids to go out and move? I just talked to this wonderful lady, Catherine Davis. She’s amazing. She has proven that when kids go outside, socialize, work up a sweat—she did two different studies, one 20 minutes of working out and one 40 minutes and most of the test scores went up. And so doesn’t that show us this is important? Why does everybody in Washington have blinders on?

Q&E: I think they see phys-ed as a marginal activity, compared to other things.

RS: It’s more than phys-ed.

Q&E: Right, that's an important distinction for you to make.

RS: It’s creating and planting the seed of a healthy lifestyle in a child’s mind. Kevin, what percentage of the parents of these kids do you think are overweight?

Q&E: 20 percent?

RS: I can only tell you from sitting at this desk for 34 years and doing this, I’m going to say close to 60 – 70 percent of overweight children have one or both overweight parents. If the mother is getting up and having a Pop Tart, and the father’s having one, guess what the kid's having? And what percentage of these people who have overweight children, or even regular-size children, exercise on a regular basis?

Q&E: I think part of the problem is in the language you're using, the legislation talks about "physical education," When I was in school, phys-ed was pretty useless, the teachers said "go play dodge ball" or whatever, and then sat on the sidelines. People may think you're trying to mandate something that isn’t very effective, so you need a new way to talk about it. Re-brand physical education.

RS: I’d love that, but what a hard sell. Now it looks like Chairperson George Miller won't be able to move the legislation because everything is rushed right now, and next year is an election year. How many laws get passed in an election year?

Q&E: It’s a tough environment.

RS: We've left our children's behinds behind. That really is the sad part, it's just heartbreaking. I go through so many airports and still teach at shopping malls like where I met you last time, and you should see the size of these children and the size of their parents.

Q&E: Have you talked to Governor Schwarzenegger? Isn't he a big phys-ed guy?

RS: I have not talked to Governor Schwarzenegger, he has a lot on his plate. But I’ll tell you, here in California, our kids are in desperate need of moving. I have taught classes for the Unified School District and I see what’s out there. Some schools have nothing; some schools have PE once a week for 15 minutes.

Plus, it has to be part of a curriculum. We test our kids in math and science based on a curriculum, but when we test our kids on physical activity, we say get down and give me 100 crunches, 100 push ups, give me 500 jumping jacks, and these kids don’t know how to do it because their bodies are not prepared. They have no stamina, no lung capacity, their hearts aren't strong.

How do I say this nicely—of the people who work for Congress and all the rest of the government, what percentage of these men and women are healthy? What percentage are so stressed out, just like plumbers and people that work in a bank, that they don’t take care of themselves, they don’t eat properly, because they're always on the go in meetings, grabbing things here and there? Does this sound familiar?

Q&E: Dinners with clients…

RS: Dinners with clients, no time for exercise, what percentage of the people who make the decisions in our government are healthy?

Q&E: President Bush seems pretty healthy. Say you what you want about George Bush, he seems genuinely committed to physical fitness. Have you talked to any of his people?

RS: Yes, I actually had some conversations with his publicist, and he said he didn’t really want to talk to me.

Q&E: What about the teachers unions? You're going to be talking to the National Education Association soon, right? They invited you?

RS: Either next month or in February, they're flying me in for their meeting.

They didn't think I was silly, Kevin.

Q&E: Fair point! What are you going to tell them?

RS: I have an idea to incorporate all the PE teachers and certified aerobic instructors--there are more than 300,000 in our country. When you want to be a certified aerobic instructor, you go through a certification through IDEA or AFA or ACE or the ACSM. And then you teach at Bally's and 24-Hour Fitness and all these other studios. Well, guess what? The studios are starving. They're closing left and right, so the majority of certified aerobic instructors aren't working. So let's take the expertise from the PE teachers at the NEA and the expertise of these individuals that are certified instructors and bring them into a melting pot and come up with a way that they can work together and teach at the schools.

Q&E: That seems like a good idea.

RS: Well, that's my big idea. I believe if I addressed every Congressman and Senator, not one would doubt my plan for our school system, because they are all very concerned about health care and our future. We've got a huge, expensive problem. That's why there are so many weight loss surgeries. Overweight people tended to be chronically ill; it was breaking the insurance company's bank. So they give them the surgery, cut their intestines—easy, quick! Well, guess what? They're gaining the weight back, they're having a second and third surgery, finding a blood clot or a burst hernia, and now the insurance companies are saying, "Oops! Wait a minute. I think we made a mistake."

Q&E: There's the long-term cost issue again—Medicare and Medicaid are becoming unbelievably expensive.

RS: I can help turn the whole thing around. I have the support of hundreds of thousands of people. If I went to PTA meetings I could put a hat out and people would give me money to pay these aerobic instructors and the PE teachers at NEA so you they could make a living and we could have healthy kids.

Q&E: The aerobic instructors could become members of the NEA, they'd love that.

RS: They would! I'm working with the NEA, and I'm working with the National School Board, I'm trying to gather up as many gold charms on my bracelet as I can, so that we can go and take this bracelet to President Bush. And if it doesn't get done by then, we'll take it to the next president.

Q&E: Are there any particular states, school districts or schools that you think have exemplary physical education programs that other schools should look to as an example?

RS: Well, here's what happens. You get a school district that says, "Let's start a walking program!" And everyone gets excited and flies to these places to look at the role model, and by the time they've flow there, it's over. It has to be long-lasting, but everyone only does it for a short period of time. It's like the weight loss surgeries—there is no research done for the long-term care and future of someone who has the surgery, and we may find in three years the whole thing was wrong. Yet there are schools—you see them in USA Today—where people say, "Look at this! These children picked up trash on the highways and lost two pounds." That's great, but it's temporary, it's just a quick fix.

Q&E: So we need more long-term, systemic reforms?

RS: Right. And people will say, "That silly little guy in the tank top and shorts knew what he was saying, because look at our kids now." He helped introduce them to moving and activity and social time together, and now instead of them learning how to exercise in their 20's, 30's, or 40's, and suffering from obesity and health problems, they'll get a taste of it at an early age and continue to believe in themselves.

Q&E: Are there any other areas we should look at, junk food advertising on children's television, that sort of thing?

RS: You know, everyone writes me: "Richard, they should close McDonald's. Richard, Burger King, KFC!" There will always be fast food, none of those foods will ever be illegal. People just don't have the right focus and the right food program, because our country does not educate people about eating. Plus, the food industry is a huge, huge monster. It turns out and churns out exactly what the public wants, and that's quick, fast, processed food that has a nice taste to it. Sadly enough, that taste is trans-fatty acids, grease, cream, butter and salt.

Q&E: What about sports? My gym classes were terrible, but I ran track and cross-country, so I did a lot of physical activity after school. Should we give schools credit for that?

RS: Kids should have a choice about physical activity. A certain percentage of children can't wait to play soccer, or hoops and loops, or run track. But that's not the majority of people. If you look at a football stadium, you see 60,000 people in the stadium eating hot dogs, French fries, popcorn and a soda pop. Then you see a select few people with little helmets on that run around the field and entertain everybody. That's just like the world. Most people don't want to play sports, they don't feel comfortable, they don't have the body, the strength, they don't have the self-worth. So the school should offer sports, but they should offer alternative programs for people who are not jocks. It has to be balanced, giving children a choice of physical activity.

Q&E: You've been great. What's next?

RS: I want you to stay in touch, because you know you have your pulse there, this is your life. Like a vampire, all this is your blood. We need to continue this, because if NCLB is not reauthorized it'll mean another five years of our kids being denied physical activity and their parents taking them to the doctor. Our kids need more.

Speak Up

So here's a great tool for your school or district:

Project Tomorrow (formerly NetDay) has opened its fifth annual online "Speak Up" survey of teachers, students, parents and school leaders. The survey focuses broadly on "21st century education" and asks a whole range of questions about how students and teachers feel about different forms of technology, what they think about math and science classes and how these classes could be better, and how, in an ideal world, they would change their schools.

All districts and schools, K-12, in the U.S. and Canada are pre-registered-- an adult just needs to sign up the school or district and let the community know about it so students, teachers, parents and leaders can go online to take the survey.

School and/or district results are available, free and online, to any school and district that participates (national survey data available also). Register your school or district now--you've only got until Dec 15th when the survey closes.

Fame and Fortune are Only an Excel Spreadsheet Away

Today's your lucky day. You, personally, can join the elite circle of infamous college rankers, and accrue all the notoriety it entails.

Here's why: a few months ago, I wrote an article for Washington Monthly that included a ranking of "America's Best Community Colleges," along with a profile of Cascadia Community College, one of the best. The rankings were primarily based on the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE), a student-based survey of best educational practices, with some graduation rate data thrown in. The personal responses I received from two-year education folks have been almost universally positive; they were glad to see a discussion of the importance of community colleges and the recognition of excellence in a sector that gets very little attention despite enrolling 45 percent of college freshmen every year. The only negative feedback was from the adminstrators of CCSSE itself, who believe rankings are an inappropriate use of their data. I disagree, and explained why here.

I was able to create the rankings because CCSSE (much to its credit) makes its data available to the public. The same is not true for the the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), which administers a very similar survey to 4-year colleges. That data is only released with the permission of individual colleges. Recently, USA Today asked all the universities that have participated in the survey (currently almost 700 per year, and over 1,200 total since the survey began eight years ago) for such permission. 257 institutions agreed, and you can see the results here. There are ten data points for each institution, showing their NSSE score on five "benchmarks" (an aggregation of individual survey questions, converted to a 100-point scale) of good practices like student-faculty engagement, active and collaborative learning, etc., for both freshman and seniors.

You're thinking: USA Today has beat me to the punch. No! Part of the deal was that USA Today wouldn't display all the data in a rankings format, listing the universities in numerical order from highest to lowest. NSSE's FAQ about the USA Today effort makes this explicit, saying:

2. Will institutions be ranked?

No. The project is intended to respond to calls for greater institutional transparency and to underscore the idea that educational quality is more complex than typically reported elsewhere, such as in rankings. The focus will be on informing people with an interest in collegiate quality about the indicators of educational effectiveness represented by NSSE benchmarks and survey items, as well as distinctive patterns of engaging educational activities offered by different types of institutions around the country.

This doesn't make sense. "Rankings" in general aren't inherently complex or non-complex, it just depends on which rankings you're talking about. The U.S. News rankings, for example, are quite complex, based on fifteen separate measures, some of which use regression equations and the like. You can argue about whether those are the right measures (I have; they're not), but that's a different argument. And NSSE can't say that it's inherently wrong to boil down multiple indicators into a single number, since that's exactly what the NSSE benchmarks themselves do--summarize multiple survey questions into one number.

The best way to "inform people with an interest in collegiate quality about indicators of educational effectiveness" is to compare institutions--i.e., rank them. And while USA Today and NSSE won't do that, you can. Just open up a new Excel spreadsheet, set your iPod to shuffle, and type in the ten numbers for each university. It's an afternoon's work, max. Then add them up, press "sort," and voila--new rankings, which will be much more interesting and informative than anything from U.S. News. Issue a press release, name them after yourself--go crazy!

You should, of course, do the right thing and include the appropriate caveats that your list doesn't include all institutions and that there's bound to be some upward bias because of self-selection. But don't be too humble about it, because frankly the institutions who (A) are doing the best job educating their students, and (B) are willing to released their data deserve all the attention they get. And don't feel too guilty about outing the institutions at the bottom, because while it might create some heartburn in the administrative offices, their students really need to know. The good institutions--and these are more likely to be good, since they've chosen to release the data--will do the right thing and use this as an opportunity to improve.

Student Loans Are Not Financial Aid

A couple of weeks ago, my colleague Erin Dillon wrote a short policy brief about student loan default rates, pointing out that they're far higher than commonly-reported government statistics indicate, particularly for student of color, students who borrow a lot of money, and students who go into careers that don't pay very much. As college costs continue to skyrocket and students borrow more and more money, this under-recognized problem will become worse and worse. While the college cost / debt crisis has many origins, I think one source of the problem lies with language: Student loans are routinely characterized as "financial aid." They're really not.

Some background data: Over the last 20 years, tuition and fees at private 4-year universities (measured in enrollment-weighted, inflation-adjusted dollars) have almost doubled. At public 4-year institutions, they've more than doubled. Higher education folks are quick to point out that these figures don't include discounted tuition rates or alternate price deflators or the effect of Baumol's cost disease, and there's truth in all of these things. But trust me when I tell you that no matter how you look at it or what allowances you make, college is getting more expensive, period.

Obviously, this hits poor students the hardest. While need-based aid programs like Pell grants have increased in size, they haven't grown nearly as fast as the cost of college. The resulting gap has been filled largely with student loans. In 1992, the average student's grant aid was double what they borrowed; today loans exceed grants. In just the last ten years, the total annual amount of student loans has nearly doubled, from roughly $38 billion to $75 billion (also in constant dollars). The risk and consequence of student loan defaults have increased accordingly.

Colleges have gotten away with this for a lot of reasons. People like higher education, and there's really no alternative to getting a college degree. Plus, as we're often told, higher education pays, to the tune of $1 million in extra earnings over a lifetime. A few extra thousands dollars in debt seems to pale by comparison.

But there's also a subtle language game going on, whereby the higher education industry likes to talk about grants and loans as if they're the same thing. The College Board, for example, says "Today, loans are the largest form of student aid, making up 54 percent of the total aid awarded each year." This is typical, everyone in higher education talks about aid this way, as if loans and grants are just too different flavors of the same beneficent gift, student financial aid.

They're not. The only parts of student loans that are "aid" are the subsidized parts. This comes mainly in the form of reduced interest rates, with lower-income borrowers who receive subsidized Stafford loans also getting their interest paid while they're in school. How much is the subsidy worth? On average, in percentage terms, low single digits. Stafford loans come at a fixed interest rate of 6.8 percent. With a decent credit history, you can go into the private loan market and borrow at less than 10 percent. For people with good credit considering the PLUS loan program for parents of students in college, the 8.5 percent rate can be more expensive than what you can get on the open market. There are certainly some cases, like a low-income student with poor credit, where the subsidy is higher. But on average, we're talking pennies on the dollar. Which means that students aren't getting nearly as much "financial aid" as we tell them they're getting. They're just paying more for college, plus interest.

One of the reasons loans are described as aid is that historically the benefit was thought to be the availability of the loan. When the federal student loan program was created back in the mid-60s, there was no private student loan market to speak of, and the assumption was that nobody would lend money to students with no assets and credit history, particularly when they thing they were borrowing money to buy (a diploma) can't be repossessed if they default. But the rapid growth in the private loan market shows this is becoming less and less true. In 1997, private loans made up 6% of all student loans. That percentage doubled to 12% by 2001, then doubled again to 24% in 2007.

Now, referring to the total amount of the loan as aid--rather than the small fraction of the aid that is the subsidy--mainly serves to obscure the rising cost of college. You apply to college and wonder how the heck you're going to afford tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the college says "Don't worry! We will provide you with a financial aid 'package' to make up the difference between what we're charging and what you can afford." But more and more of that package is just a loan, which means the price of college is actually even more than the gut-wrenching price of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars you've been quoted, once you add the interest, never mind the opportunity cost of having your career decisions determined by the size of your monthly nut once you graduate.

It's time to call student loans what they are: debt, and little more.

Shanghai Diary, Part 2

More thoughts from last week's trip to Shanghai for the 3rd Meeting of the International [College] Rankings Expert Group (IREG-3):

* You know how every time you go to some conference, they give you a little canvass tote bag filled with papers, folders, ID badges, and other sundry meeting materials, and you throw the bag away because (A) you'd look pretty silly walking down the street with an "American Education Research Association 2002" tote bag, and (B) if you didn't you'd have a closet full of them at home? Well, here's the tote bag you get in Shanghai:

China 1, USA 0.

* It's not until you attend a conference conducted in English, attended primarily by people who don't speak English as their first language, held in a city halfway around the world where all the signs are printed in both the native language and English, that you realize what an absurd luxury it is to be English-speaking in this day and age.

* On a related noted, one of the interesting ways people are using to compare colleges these days is through "bibliometrics," which involves using huge commercial databases of scholarly journal articles to count up the number of times articles published by scholars from different universities are cited, giving more weight to more prestigous journals, etc. It's interesting and one of the many things that have been theoretically possible for some time, but practically far too expensive and time-consuming to implement, until cheap fast computing and the Internet made it otherwise. Like most measures, however, bibliometrics have bias--in this case toward the sciences over the humanities, since the scholars in the former publish more cited journal articles than the latter, and toward English language journals, which are much more widely read than journals in other languages. One conference attendee was a humanities professor from Sweden (and who thus wrote in Swedish) who basically said, re: bibliometrics, in a very down-to-earth Swedish way, "So I guess we're out of luck, then."

* Something I saw walking down an alley full of random street vendors in the older, soon-to-be-demolished-to-make-room-for-another-exotic-glass-skycraper section of Shanghai:

I'm not quite sure what this means, but I don't think it's good.