I'm in Panama (the country with the canal, not the city with the Spring Break parties) seeing some family. Driving down the Pan-American Highway, a road that links Prudhoe Bay, Alaska to the far south of South America, I see a sign for a Panamanian presidential candidate with the slogan, "El Cambio en que puedes confiar." Translated: The Change You Can Believe In.
I guess this means President-elect Obama is already shaping foreign elections...
Friday, January 02, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Too Much Information?
Higher education policy disputes in Washington, DC are generally about information. As a rule, the federal government doesn't (and shouldn't) regulate how universities conduct their academic affairs. So most new federal initiatives consist of lawmakers asking questions: How many of your students graduate? How much money do you spend? On what? And so on. For the DC higher education lobby, the standard response to proposed new information reporting requirements is to (A) Loudly declare that they're a bad idea, and then (B) Go back to the office and try to come up with a justification for (A).
Such justifications come in three flavors. First, that American colleges and universities operate under a sacred principal of autonomy that dates back to (and possibly precedes) the founding of the Republic. This one hasn't been working very well lately, mostly because it's not true, but also because it begs the question of what, exactly, universities have to hide. The second argument is that new reporting requirements represent a terribly onerous administrative burden--because higher education institutions are apparently the only organizations in all the world that have been unable to use information technology to realize vast increases in the efficiency of gathering, storing, and processing information. Third, colleges argue that sending more information to the feds would constitute a grave threat to student privacy, a kind of creeping Big Brotherism that must be opposed at all costs. This one has been gaining traction lately, particularly given the current administration's attitudes towards civil liberties.
It's also nonsense. Colleges are more than happy to cough up individual student data to non-profits set up by the student loan industry. Then I pick up the New York Times and read that colleges are perfectly willing to disclose information about individual students to large private corporations, in exchange for money, so those corporations can sell students high-interest credit cards and give them a head start on pursuing the American dream of over-consumption and ruinous debt. Because while the U.S. Department of Education (a public agency accountable to elected officials which operates under strict federal privacy rules) can't be trusted, Bank of America can. It all depends, as it usually does, on whose interests are being served.
Such justifications come in three flavors. First, that American colleges and universities operate under a sacred principal of autonomy that dates back to (and possibly precedes) the founding of the Republic. This one hasn't been working very well lately, mostly because it's not true, but also because it begs the question of what, exactly, universities have to hide. The second argument is that new reporting requirements represent a terribly onerous administrative burden--because higher education institutions are apparently the only organizations in all the world that have been unable to use information technology to realize vast increases in the efficiency of gathering, storing, and processing information. Third, colleges argue that sending more information to the feds would constitute a grave threat to student privacy, a kind of creeping Big Brotherism that must be opposed at all costs. This one has been gaining traction lately, particularly given the current administration's attitudes towards civil liberties.
It's also nonsense. Colleges are more than happy to cough up individual student data to non-profits set up by the student loan industry. Then I pick up the New York Times and read that colleges are perfectly willing to disclose information about individual students to large private corporations, in exchange for money, so those corporations can sell students high-interest credit cards and give them a head start on pursuing the American dream of over-consumption and ruinous debt. Because while the U.S. Department of Education (a public agency accountable to elected officials which operates under strict federal privacy rules) can't be trusted, Bank of America can. It all depends, as it usually does, on whose interests are being served.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Department of Things I Am Sad to Have Been Right About
From a post dated July 12, 2008:
From The Onion AV Club, this week:
From the New York Times:
Etc., etc. It's a shame.
Walking out of an afternoon showing of Wall-E last weekend, I noticed some big cardboard movie displays advertising The Spirit, a forthcoming movie based on the classic Will Eisner comic book series, to be written and directed by Frank Miller. We're clearly living in a Frank Miller heyday, and it's been a long time coming...[four-paragraph summary of Miller's career]...but to be honest I'm worried that Miller's descent into over-stylization and self-parody, both visually and verbally, is too deep to reverse, and that he'll end up crashing and burning at the very moment when decades of influential work are finally bringing him fame and fortune."
From The Onion AV Club, this week:
In comics, it took Miller decades to devolve into embarrassing self-parody. In film, he’s made that leap over the course of a single disastrous film. A.V. Club Rating: D
From the New York Times:
To ask why anything happens in Frank Miller’s sludgy, hyper-stylized adaptation of a fabled comic book series by Will Eisner may be an exercise in futility. The only halfway interesting question is why the thing exists at all...a talky, pretentious stew of film noir poses and crime-fighter clichés.
Etc., etc. It's a shame.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)