The Trouble With Watchmen

I don't think Watchmen is a very good movie. 

I say this not because I'm a hater, like this guy. I first read Watchmen, the comic book, as it was published in 12 installments in 1986. A few years later, I bought the collected version so I wouldn't wear out the originals. Then DC published an oversized hardback version, allegedly with new color separations or something; I bought that too. I've probably read it cover-to-cover 15 or 20 times. 

And that's likely part of the problem. Watchmen is not a comic book adaptation like Spider-Man or The Dark Knight. It's much more a translation in the vein of Robert Rodriguez's Sin City, or 300, which got Zack Snyder the Watchmen gig. Like those movies, it repeats much of the source dialogue and, more importantly, the same progression of images that form the narrative backbone of the film. Good as a story might be, it starts to wear thin on the 21st viewing. 

As for the rest of the trouble--it isn't the acting. Malin Ackerman should stick to comedies, but otherwise everyone is good. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Billy Crudup, and Jackie Earle Haley as, respectively, The Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, and Rorschach, are very good. There are a few terrible scenes, like the, um, encounter in the Owlship after the building fire, and a lot of the gore is distractingly gratuitous. Snyder re-stages the left-to-right, horizontally framed, speed-up / slow-down fight scene from 300 during the prison break for no particular reason other than it was cool the first time. But the atmosphere of Cold War dread is there and the characterization is totally faithful, so we get Moore's explorations--now somewhat dated, but a revelation 23 years ago--of traditional superhero archetypes set in a version of the real world. So the masked urban avenger is an unbalanced right-wing fanatic; the man who suddenly gains God-like powers is promptly co-opted by the military, until he starts to become unmoored from his--and our--humanity. People who beat up other people while wearing leather costumes have a penchant for fetishization, egomania and/or cruelty. It's good stuff, yet it doesn't save the film. 

Nor does the problem lie in what didn't make it into the movie. Rather, Watchmen suffers from the opposite issue. Sin City and 300, both originally by Frank Miller, made sense to translate because both are straightforward dramas told in an inherently cinematic visual style. Watchmen, by contrast, stretches a thin plot over nearly 400 dense and multi-layered pages, much of which is devoted to flashbacks, side stories, background material, and snippets of a pirate-themed comic-book-within-the-comic-book that serves as a thematic counterpoint. Snyder tried to include as much as of this as possible, apparently on the theory that the first duty of a director is to feed the passions of obsessive Internet message board-dwelling comics super-fans. He seems convinced that, as a recent Wired profile put it, that "Even slight changes to Watchmen, changes that will enhance its appeal to the masses, seem certain to alienate the very people who loved it in the first place." 

If such people exist--and I suspect there aren't nearly as many of them as Snyder believes-- they're insane. I loved it in the first place and found myself fidgeting throughout most of the dragging, disjointed 2 hours and 45 minute running time. The single major deviation from the original comic is the ending, and it's arguably an improvement. 

But the real problem with Watchmen the movie isn't the story or the running time or Malin Ackerman or Zach Snyder's unwillingness to risk the wrath of geek fandom for the sake of narrative drive. It's that Watchmen the comic book really is, as its author Alan Moore has said, "unfilmable." Or, to be more precise, the aspects of Watchmen that make it a great comic book are unfilmable, because they're inseparable from the medium itself. Said Moore in 2003:

The stuff that makes Watchmen radical is not really the stuff that's in the plot. It's not the dark treatments of the super-heroes...the most radical thing about Watchmen was the storytelling, the ideas behind it, things that only emerged in the telling...We had a ton of intellectual ideas, but it was just around about issue #3 when we suddenly noticed that something interesting was happening with the storyline. It was just borne out by the fact that Dave [Gibbons, the artist], was capable of putting in all of this incidental detail and that I was capable of writing narratives that have more than one strand to them...The story seemed to demand a specific way in telling it, a specific way of seeing the world. It had to be seen all at once rather than in a strictly linear way...All these tiny, little moments, coincidences, linkages--that all boiled up into this sort of complex tapestry or piece of machinery. It turned out very much like a piece of watchwork. It was like--well, there was a kind of Swiss watch feel to the structure of it, as though it was sort of jeweled flywheels and everything all completely in place in their settings...there are some sequences that you've got two or three separate narratives all going on in the same sequence and occasionally linking up with each other in ambiguous ways or non-ambiguous ways. We were trying out a whole new repertoire of things...

It's not a coincidence that the best part of Watchmen the movie is the one that hews most closely to the actual experience of reading the book--the sequence where Dr. Manhattan tells the story of his life, shown in brief fragments, some only a few seconds long, jumbled up out of sequence, with Philip Glass' beautiful score to Koyaanisquatsi (Hopi for "life out of balance") playing in the background. Watchmen the comic is an exceptionally complex symphony of words and images that can't be untangled any more than one could pull apart and re-arrange in another medium a Glass composition and expect not to lose the greatness of it in translation.  

Unions Supporting a Spending Cap?

In 2005 the California Teachers Association (CTA) and other unions declared war on Governor Schwarzenegger when he called a special election and placed a spending limit and tenure reform initiatives on it. The CTA coalition was able to soundly defeat the Governor’s initiatives in the special election, and Schwarzenegger’s tenure as an education reformer was largely over. In the process, the pounding that he took lead to his approval rating falling from 58% approval in Jan. 2005 to 34 percent in August 2005. Fast forward to 2009. To fill a $40 billion budget hole the Governor and the Legislature negotiated a budget package that no one is particularly happy about, but it may have saved the state from budget anarchy. A part of that solution was to once again call a special session and place a spending cap before the voters. For voters this might seem like déjà vu all over again, but not for the teachers’ union. What has changed? While the CTA has still not decided whether it will formally support the spending cap, it is not likely to oppose it either(here). So what has changed? The answer is a technical ambiguity with the state’s education funding guarantee in the state constitution.

A little background. California lives in a world of ballot box budgeting where much of the key decisions on spending are determined by voter approved initiatives. One of the most imposing initiatives is Proposition 98, a funding mechanism for K-14 education (K-12, community colleges and child care/preschool funds). Generally Proposition 98 creates a minimum funding guarantee that is increased annual by the growth in student population and growth in the economy (growth in per capita income). When the state General Fund is having a bad year, the state can provide less funding to education, but must restore the funding to education when the General Fund has a good year. This mechanism has generally resulted in funding for schools following the overall economy with lots of booms and busts (For a primer on Prop 98 I wrote in my prior life see here). But, because of the unique level of decrease in state revenues this year, and specifics of the Proposition 98 formulas, there is constitutional uncertainty about what the minimum guarantee would be in 2009-10 and beyond. At stake is $8 billion in annual funding for schools. In a rational world, the Governor and Legislature would figure out what an appropriate funding level is in 2009-10, but California budgets are often far from rational. And, the guarantee that prop 98 provides is what schools get especially in tough times regardless of whether the amount makes any sense. For example, in the current year, the just adopted budget decreases funding for the 2008-09 school year by $7.3 billion, with about half of this decrease being achieved by providing funding to school districts on July 1 that they would have normally received throughout this spring. This accounting and cash flow move lower the 2008-09 funding level which in turn lowers the 2009-10 required spending level. Normally the reductions that school experienced in 2008-09 would be restored to their budget over the next several years (ususally 3-5 years or so. But no one can agree whether in this particular year, the state would need to restore these cuts in the future. This is a big uncertainty for the school community, and clear would lead to lawsuits for the foreseeable future. Instead of letting the courts decide, the Governor and Legislature are sending this issue back to voters.

And the Governor has been able to take advantage of this constitutional uncertainty to neutralize the CTA on the spending cap initiative by only allowing an initiative (Prop 1B) that fixes the $8 billion constitutional uncertainty to be implemented if the spending cap passes (Prop 1A). In addition, Schwarzenegger was able to delay the repayment of the $8 billion plus a little more until after he is out of office. So, instead of suffering a second defeat at the hands of CTA, he has neutralized the education lobby. Of course the interests of CTA in this package are not the same as the rest of California’s public employee unions which are likely to oppose the spending cap. This will be an interesting tension to watch. In the end what will voters think? We will find out May 19th.

Geographic Divide

Digging around Census data, trying to find something else entirely, I came across this chart. I knew the South had lower educational attainment rates, but I don't think I realized just how stark it would look on a map. In 2007, the Census estimated that 84 percent of adults had at least a high school diploma. States colored pink in this chart are states that are above that mark. States in white are below the average. Other than New York and Florida, there's a pretty clear geographic trend. Nothing surprising maybe, but a pretty nice visual.

LittleBrownie.com

As a long-time Girl Scout (from Brownies through my senior year of high school), I felt it was important to share this excellent cookie locator tool: http://cookielocator.littlebrownie.com/

For everyone living in a city, where it is very difficult to find Girl Scout cookies, this site is a lifeline to Tagalongs and Samoas. And an important step in the right direction in the Girl Scouts' efforts to modernize.

Bubble Trouble

If you haven't yet read the discussion room chat on Bill Tucker's Beyond the Bubble, it's well worth your time. I found this paragraph most striking:

There is an implication in [the] question that classroom assessment are rich, performance based tasks compared with the low-level multiple-choice tests administered by the state. It appears that Monty hasn't been in schools lately to listen to the hum of scanning machines scoring these "wonderful" classroom assessments. When I was the director of assessment in Wyoming, we included extended performance tasks on the state assessment (the first state assessment under IASA) that shocked the field. Why was it a shock? Because teachers-by their own admission-had not moved to the depth of knowledge called for in our performance tasks. Therefore, I would argue that state tests can serve as a model of what we want to see in the classroom.

This is a really interesting idea and one that often gets overlooked. While a lot of people deride the use of bubble tests, we tend to ignore the fact that the exact same score sheets are used to evaluate classroom learning all the time. As someone who hasn't been out of the classroom that long, I can attest that very good teachers, teaching high-level classes, employ Scantrons, too. They aren't just used for the statewide exams mandated by NCLB. Teachers at all levels choose to use them for their own formative assessments. Partly this is done out of ease and partly it's a reflection of limited resources. Scantron machines return quick, decisive results. Newer versions even format the results into a gradebook. Individual teachers simply do not have the time or resources to investigate more promising assessments. It will be up to districts, states, or other partnerships to develop the types of assessments that move us beyond the bubble.

Watchmen Part One

The Post's Philip Kennicot says Watchmen is a bad movie, which may or may not be true, I haven't seen it yet. His reasoning: it's an overly reverent adaptation of a bad comic book. Now, everyone's entitled to their opinion--even opinions as wildly divergent from the critical consensus as that one--but sentences like this don't inspire much confidence in Kennicot's judgment:

The graphic design, by Gibbons, was manically detailed, hyperkinetic and worked out with the precision of a movie storyboard.

Manically detailed, yes. Precision of a storyboard, yes. But "hyperkinetic"? Does Kennicot even know what that word means? I'm not sure I could name a major comics artist whose art is less hyperkinetic than Gibbons'. The whole visual aesthetic of Watchmen deliberately avoids motion lines and splashy, jittery panel layouts in favor of a steady montage of mostly equal-sized panels in a standard 3 by 3 grid. This is just a case of a critic throwing in a word that's commonly used to describe comic books without actually knowing what he's talking about. 

What's Wrong With Astronomy?

Maureen Dowd approvingly quotes Senator John McCain's twittered mockery of $2 million in federal funding for the promotion of astronomy in Hawaii, because "nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy." Last I checked, astronomy was a legitimate branch of science. To conduct the kind of astronomy that involves observation of light, you ideally need to put your observatory somewhere that is A) high in the air, and B) far away from artificial light. As such, there's no better place in America to build an observatory than the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii, which is A) nearly 14,000 feet above sea level, and B) in Hawaii, which is farther away from the rest of civilization than anywhere else on planet Earth. They take light pollution on the Big Island so seriously that individual light fixtures in restaurants on the beach, some 14,000 feet and 40 miles away from the observatory, are required to have special shields that keep the light from emitting upward. The observatory site is managed by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, which notes:

Mauna Kea is unique as an astronomical observing site. The atmosphere above the mountain is extremely dry -- which is important in measuring infrared and submillimeter radiation from celestial sources - and cloud-free, so that the proportion of clear nights is among the highest in the world. The exceptional stability of the atmosphere above Mauna Kea permits more detailed studies than are possible elsewhere, while its distance from city lights and a strong island-wide lighting ordinance ensure an extremely dark sky, allowing observation of the faintest galaxies that lie at the very edge of the observable Universe. A tropical inversion cloud layer about 600 meters (2,000 ft) thick, well below the summit, isolates the upper atmosphere from the lower moist maritime air and ensures that the summit skies are pure, dry, and free from atmospheric pollutants...More major telescopes are now located on Mauna Kea than on any other single mountain peak, and Mauna Kea is widely recognized as offering better conditions for optical, infrared and millimeter/submillimeter measurements than any other developed site.

Of course, there was a time when other states also had areas with similar geographic features--high elevation, little light-polluting human development--and as such built observatories that were the site of important scientific achievments, like the discovery of Pluto, which happened at the Lowell Observatory in 1930 in the then-very small town of Flagstaff. That is, Flagstaff, Arizona, currently represented in the United States Senate by John McCain. 

Preparing to Fall Off a Cliff – The Problem of One-Time Funds

Last Friday Joseph Conaty, acting Assistant Sec. of Elementary and Secondary Education discussed the unique opportunity that this one-time infusion of stimulus funds provides in an event hosted by Teachscape and the Carnegie foundation (audio discussion and slides here starting Thursday). Much is still unknown about how some of the funding will be distributed and what its uses are especially the $5 billion available for incentive funding. Of course, many school districts will just be using this infusion of federal funds to backfill severe budget cuts that they would otherwise have to make because of falling local property tax revenues or declining state budgets. These districts will be trying to use the new funds to keep in place their current program while trying not to violate the supplement not supplant and maintenance of effort requirements of the federal funds. (See here for discussion). But even the districts that are trying to backfill for potential cuts may not be acting in a fiscally prudent way. One of the first axioms of budgeting is not to use one time funds for ongoing purposes. This is how many states got into fiscal difficulty at the start of this decade when they used dot-com bubble funding to create on-going programs or cut taxes. When the bubble burst, then states were stuck. At least one state – California – has yet to work its way out of the bad decisions it made with one-time funds. Effectively it wasn’t politically viable to increase the taxes back the level they were before the windfall or eliminate the new programs that were created.

During Dr. Conaty’s briefing, he responded to a question about the one time nature of these funds by describing the stimulus funds as a “cliff effect” or a large one-time (or limited term) infusion of funds that will end. So what should districts do with these funds when they are facing a cliff? (It should be noted that for the political reasons discussed below, the steep cliff that schools are currently facing - basically cutting federal funding in half - will likely be more of a gentle bluff because of the politics discussed below.)
Dr. Conaty threw out one concrete answer – districts could invest these funds on school facility repairs, a somewhat unsatisfying answer for many reformers because new shiny buildings may not change the outcomes for kids much (An aside, my wife, a resource economist, hit me with the same suggestion when I described the issue to her). Of course schools don’t tend to like to use operation funds for capital outlay because they can usually go to their voters and get more funding for facility needs, but often have a difficult time when they ask voters for more operational funds.

This raises the question, of what states and school districts should do when faced with a cliff? Should they jump by investing much of their new one time funds on on-going programs? There are two ways to approach this issue: What is best for education collectively and what is best for a specific district. Collectively, the education community may want to see most of this new funding committed to on-going staffing costs. Unions would certainly support this type of use of the funds because it would mean an increase in union membership, or salaries and benefits, or both. In addition, use of the funding for ongoing program purposes creates a better negotiating position when the stimulus funding runs out, and Congress is faced with having to ask education to go back to their historic budgeting levels (i.e. minus these one-time funds). If much of the stimulus funds are committed to ongoing investments, the education community will be able to argue that cutting funds back will diminish the educational gains that have been made and would lay off large numbers of teachers in districts with the kids that need it most. In addition the impact of teacher lay offs would be detrimental to the economic recovery (that we all hope is happening in two years). So, if the education community can collectively act somewhat irresponsibly, by spending this one-time funding on ongoing purposes, they can make it even more difficult for Congress to reduce their historic investment. First, this would fly in the face of the “New Era of Responsibly.” (here). Second, this would often not be in the best interest of the district as discussed below.


The best course of action for a specific district is likely different than the collective approach, and the answer really depends upon the condition of the districts budget going into this. If the district just fell off of a cliff because of a dramatic fall in its state and local funds, then using this federal parachute to avoid cuts makes sense (although making some cuts and saving some of this one-time money would likely be a better approach).
If the district is in a somewhat better position, then the district will be faced with a choice between many of these sexy and perhaps most promising new school reform ideas (early childhood education, rewarding effective teachers, creating promise neighborhoods … ) and considering the boring conservative budget axioms like never invest one-time funds on ongoing programs. So while it is great to talk about all of the reforms that could be funded using these dollars, taking the school reform leap is a risky one. What will those more fiscally conservative districts do with the funds?

1. Create large reserves – Not very sexy, but this is likely the best use of these funds. Through creating a reserve, districts could spread the benefits of the federal investment over a longer time period than 2 years. Now technically, the stimulus funds need to be spent in a timely fashion or districts will lose the funds. But, there are carry over provisions for the base federal budget funds. And most states allow districts to carry over a certain share of their state and local funds. So, districts should spend stimulus funds first, and then horde some of their base funds (again trying not to get in trouble with the accountants and auditors). Even districts that are using all of their federal funds to backfill cuts, might be well advised to make some cuts, and put a little aside for 2011-12 when they might fall off a cliff.

2. Make investments which will reduce future operating costs. Invest in district upgrades and data systems that will make the central office more effective. Replace old boilers, deferred maintenance other repairs that will lead to greater energy efficiencies, and/or reduce future cost obligations.
3. Improve the quality of local assessments, instructional materials, and computer technology.
4. Contract out for temporary services. This could include targeted professional development for teachers and principals, hiring school turn around consultants …

Taking these actions would best position a school district to weather the difficult fiscal times that are likely to be a part of education finance for the foreseeable future. But as discussed above, if all districts took these steps that are fiscally prudent for the district, it would be easier for Congress to reduce the funding at the end of the stimulus funding. So the interest of the collective and of the individual district may be in conflict.

Of course we can likely count on their being some less fiscally prudent districts that will:

1. Hire new staff or increase salaries.
2. Create new programs within the district.
3. Provide reward incentives. While over the long run teacher compensation should be reformed to have a portion of a teachers salary depend upon some measure of performance, using one-time funds for teacher and principal rewards is not likely to have the incentive effect that one might like. For example if funding for teacher rewards was going to be provided in 2009-10, it would likely be based at least partially on 2008-09 assessment results. But, guess what you can’t create an incentive through rewarding teachers after the fact. Ask California how well this worked for the hundreds of millions that they provided in rewards after the fact.

Unfortunately, the types of reforms that have the most promise are more likely to take ongoing resources instead of one-time. So some districts may be temped to not be conservative, and use the funds to maintain existing programs, create new ones, hire new staff and generally improve the quality of their educational services while at the same time stimulating the economy by creating jobs. And what happens two years from now when they fall of the cliff? Maybe the feds will provide another parachute (even though it is not in the current budget planning). If not base jumping off cliffs may not be that much fun. “Base jumping is a highly dangerous sport that can easily injure and kill participants” (basejumper.com).

Given that the funding that districts control (Title I, special education and stabilization funds) is not likely to go to investments that will drive the type of reforms that education needs, it becomes apparent why the $5 billion in incentive funding is so important to the reform community. We will have to wait any see the rules on these funds.

In response to this post a friend sent me this link on basejumping. Can stimulus funds be used for this? Maybe some of the incentive and innovation funds?

Department of Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid

New York magazine has an interesting article this week about former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey, now president of the New School in New York City. Kerrey has been warring with his faculty over a variety of issues, leading to angry protests, votes of no confidence., etc. Why? Well...

...Yet most faculty say they would have been fine with all of Kerrey’s proposals (and then some) if he’d done one simple thing: Consult them. “He saw us as employees,” says Prewitt. “And senior faculty don’t think of themselves as employees of the president.”

Isn't that one of those things you don't admit in public? One gets the sense from the article that while Kerrey has some good ideas and is in a tough spot, he's also kind of unfocused and may not have the right disposition for the job. Still...

The Utility of Perkins Loans

While President Obama's proposal to end subsidies to private student loan companies may have been his boldest financial aid move in the budget, his proposal to expand the Perkins Loan program was the most surprising. Starting with Eisenhower, presidents have been trying to cut the Perkins Loan program and, given Obama's big moves on Stafford Loans and Pell Grants, I would have expected Perkins Loans to be on the chopping block in the 2010 budget.

Instead, the President is proposing to fix some longstanding inequities in the program, expand it, and use it as leverage to get colleges and universities to do other things he wants, like keep tuition increases low and give out more need-based financial aid. Perkins loans are unusual because colleges originate and service the loans using a revolving loan pool funded by the government -- colleges also get substantial discretion in deciding which "exceptionally needy" students get the loans. This discretion, combined with a distribution formula that results in wealthier, more expensive colleges getting more funds, make it a popular program among private colleges and universities.

Perhaps the President decided that, rather than fighting the higher ed establishment over cutting the program, he would use its popularity with some of the oldest and most influential campuses to leverage bigger changes in higher education. Not a bad trade-off, especially since the $1.1 billion Perkins Loan program is small relative to the $40+ billion Stafford Loan Program, but ultimately Perkins Loans are duplicative and don't help to simplify the complicated tangle of financial aid programs. And with other proposed changes in the budget, they won't even be the best loan deal for students anymore.

Used as an additional source of loan funds for the neediest students, Perkins loans have generally had the most generous terms of the three federal loan programs - the lowest interest rate at 5%, subsidized interest during school, and flexibility during repayment. But President Obama is proposing to eliminate the in-school interest rate subsidies and the Stafford Subsidized loan program will have a lower interest rate by the 2010 school year (4.5%) thanks to the Democrats' 2008 legislation cutting interest rates in half.

There are better ways to increase aid for low-income students than expanding the Perkins Loan program, including raising limits on the Subsidized Student loan program (now that it has a super-low interest rate) or using funds from cutting the Perkins Loan program to further increase Pell grants. The utility of expanding the Perkins Loan program isn't to provide more aid to students (there are better and easier ways to do that), the utility of the program is that it provides a point of leverage for the federal government among staunchly independent private (and public) colleges.

A Step Forward

Yesterday Dartmouth University announced that its next president will be Jim Yong Kim, currently chairman of the department of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School. Asian-Americans make up a much greater percentage of students in America's elite colleges and universities than the population as a whole, to the point where there seems to be a pretty strong circumstantial case that Asian students are now subject to race-based admissions discrimination not dissimilar to the infamous "Jewish quotas" utilized by Ivy League institutions in the early 20th Century. (Dan Golden's The Price of Admission has a whole chapter on this and is well worth reading in full.) But for a variety of reasons that hasn't translated into representation in the upper reaches of higher education leadership, where Asian-Americans remain few and far between. So this is welcome news.

Open for Discussion: The Future of Student Assessment

There is one place where you can find a rare consensus among NCLB proponents, critics, teachers, and policymakers—none are really satisfied with the state of testing today. At a time when students are tested more than ever—and test results are used to make critical judgments about the performance of schools, teachers, and students—our testing methods don't serve our educational system nearly as well as they should. Can technology transform the way we assess our students?

Today through Thursday, please join us in an online discussion to explore technology's role in improving student assessment. Our all-star panel, including Charles Barone, Ph.D., director of federal policy for the Democrats for Education Reform and former Democratic staff director of the House Education and Labor Committee under Congressman George Miller from 2001 to 2003, Margaret Honey, Ph.D., president of the New York Hall of Science, and former vice president of the Education Development Center and director of EDC's Center for Children and Technology, and Scott Marion, Ph.D., vice president of the National Center for the Improvement in Educational Assessment and former director of assessment and accountability for the Wyoming Department of Education, will engage with your questions.

Recruiting

One of the consequences of electing an administration that's ideologically predisposed to believe that government can make the world a better place is that it puts a premium on hiring talented people to run the government. (If you hold the opposite view, shortchanging personnel, and thus government services, just proves you were right all along.) The vast amounts of new money pouring forth from Washington, DC just increases the urgency--the new administration really has to deliver the goods. Recruitment is complicated and involves many factors like pay, responsibility, status, etc., but it's important not to forget environment.

For example, this afternoon I went to a meeting at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In addition to rhyming with "thud," H.U.D. has the bad fortune of being located in southwest Washington, DC, which is generally isolated and filled with big office buildings and not much else. Upon arriving at H.U.D., I was immediately shuttled to a security desk, whereupon I waited in line for twenty minutes behind eight other people,  each of whom was required to present an I.D. (the information from which was entered into a computer) and then stand behind a piece of tape on the ground and stare into a camera. Then they were given an official visitor's pass, complete with photo. After this I went through an x-ray machine and metal detector set-up and had to be wanded by the security guy after setting off the alarm. Then I was led past a series of security checkpoints through doors that locked behind me. 

In other words, going to a meeting at H.U.D. involves experiencing, in rapid succession, the charms of the DMV, airport security, and prison. 

The meeting itself was interesting and full of friendly, smart folks. I learned, for example, that people and organizations that are in the business of building new housing in economically distressed neighborhoods are called "housers." But it was a relief to go back to a normal, friendly think tankish work environment, and these kinds of things mater. 

Flexibility

As the global economy continues its terrifying free-fall into an abyss of undetermined depth, the demand for high-quality, government-subsidized services will naturally increase. But since government revenues are being dampened by the same world-wide economic meltdown, public institutions have less money to meet surging demand. To wit:

Admissions officers at the State University of New York college campus here are suddenly afraid of getting what they have always wished for: legions of top high-school seniors saying “yes” to their fat envelopes. Students are already tripled up in many dorm rooms after an unexpectedly large freshman class entered last fall. And despite looming budget cuts from the state, which more tuition-paying students could help offset, officials say they are determined not to diminish the quality of student life by expanding enrollment at their liberal-arts college beyond the current 6,000 undergraduates.

The assumption that the potential degradation of student life is so great as to make any expansion of services impossible deserves more scrutiny than it gets here. I accept the basic premise that an over-capacity university provides less to students than an at-capacity university. But how much less? In what way, exactly? I lived in a triple room for a semester in college; it annoyed me mildly on some days, and then I walked out of the room and lived a student life no different than when one of my roomates moved out. Are larger class sizes the problem? I'd be more concerned about this if a robust body of research existed that examined the link between class size and student learning in higher education, but alas it does not. In other words, I don't think it makes sense to just automatically assume that the marginal costs of adding, say, 500 slots to a campus, which will in some ways be disbursed among all 6,500 students plus faculty and administration, necessarily outweigh the considerable benefits to those 500 students. Times are tough, public universities need to adjust along with everyone else. 

More broadly, I'd observe that an information-centered industry that's tethered to a site-based model of service delivery with high fixed costs and an inability to easily or quickly scale is going to have a tough time managing over the long term in a world where information technology is changing the cost and scale equations so fundamentally. 

An Out and Back Hike on the FFELP Trail

President Obama's budget proposal, released last week, called for an end to government subsidies to banks and private loan companies making federal student loans through the FFEL Program. Instead, the government would ramp up the Federal Direct Loan Program (FDLP) under which the government lends directly to students, eliminating the "middlemen" in the FFELP. This represents a bold shift in policy from the previous administration, which favored the privately administered FFELP, and it means that Obama's administration is willing to take on the lobbying force of the private loan companies, which include heavy-hitters like Sallie Mae.

Of course, now is the time to take on banks and loan companies since they have already spent a lot of lobbying capital getting government money to just stay afloat. Also, with the recent government infusion of support for FFELP, it will be harder for its advocates to argue that it is more efficient and less expensive than the government-administered FDLP. In the past year, the Department of Education has propped up private loan companies in the wake of the credit-market freeze by offering to buy up loans, thereby providing some liquidity to the student loan market and freeing up money for loan companies to make new loans. This helps the lenders, and it also helps students by ensuring continued access to federal loans. But it doesn't do much for taxpayers, which, as Kevin Carey explained earlier, are stuck paying for two loan programs to do pretty much the same thing.

President Obama's proposal makes sense in the current credit climate, but it's nothing new - he's basically taking us back to 1965, when the FFELP was born, and is proposing to run the program as it was first envisioned - with little government support. [insert dreamy, flashback music here]

When the federal student loan program began (then called the Guaranteed Student Loan Program), the federal government provided private loan companies with an 80 percent guarantee against default and a 6 percent interest rate - to compare, there is now a 97 percent guarantee against default and a guaranteed profit called the "Special Allowance Payment", which President Obama wants to eliminate.

Policymakers in 1965 opted to administer the student loan program through private loan companies, instead of through a direct loan program, in order to attract private loan capital to the student loan market, using a government guarantee as an incentive. But, lenders were reluctant to participate and had trouble getting money to make new loans, so the government gradually ratcheted up the guarantee and the subsidies to lenders. And, in 1972, the government created "Sallie Mae" as a secondary market for student loans (for more history, see here).

Like other "government sponsored entities," such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Sallie Mae was established as a for-profit, privately operated corporation set up to increase investments in student loans. And it was successful - Sallie Mae was profitable and supported the growing student loan market. Then, as private loan capital became cheaper and easier to get in the 1990's and early 2000's, Sallie Mae went completely private - cutting off its access to government funds. The original goal of creating a loan program that used private capital (not Treasury funds) was realized, and as the Bush administration lowered subsidies and the loan guarantee, FFELP was headed toward the original 1965 vision.

And then we all know what happened - credit markets dried up and lenders were left without any money or access to Treasury funds. This is where we turn around and head back down the trail.

First, the Department of Education passed the Ensuring Continued Access to Student Loans Act, which created a type of secondary market by authorizing the Department of Education to buy up loans and create liquidity in the market. Then, the Department of Education advocated for increasing subsidies by changing the way they are calculated.

And now the Obama administration is taking us back to the very beginning, where we're deciding whether to head back down the trail using private loan companies or switch direction to the direct loan trail. Only now, using private loan companies doesn't seem like such an innovative way to leverage private capital to administer a federal loan program, instead it seems risky and unstable. If Obama's budget goes through as planned, we'll get a chance to see where the other trail takes us. Hopefully it's a little less rocky.