Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
What I Read Today - Tuesday August 30, 2011
From: The New York Times
The Haimish Line
By DAVID BROOKS
Recently I did a little reporting from Kenya and Tanzania before taking a safari with my family. We stayed in seven camps. Some were relatively simple, without electricity or running water. Some were relatively luxurious, with regular showers and even pools.
The simple camps were friendly, warm and familial. We got to know the other guests at big, communal dinner tables. At one camp we got to play soccer with the staff on a vast field in the Serengeti before an audience of wildebeests. At another camp, we had impromptu spear-throwing and archery competitions with the kitchen staff. Two of the Maasai guides led my youngest son and me on spontaneous mock hunts — stalking our “prey” on foot through ravines and across streams. I can tell you that this is the definition of heaven for a 12-year-old boy, and for someone with the emotional maturity of one.
The more elegant camps felt colder. At one, each family had its own dinner table, so we didn’t get to know the other guests. The tents were spread farther apart. We also didn’t get to know the staff, who served us mostly as waiters, the way they would at a nice hotel.
I know only one word to describe what the simpler camps had and the more luxurious camps lacked: haimish. It’s a Yiddish word that suggests warmth, domesticity and unpretentious conviviality.
It occurred to me that when we moved from a simple camp to a more luxurious camp, we crossed an invisible Haimish Line. The simpler camps had it, the more comfortable ones did not.
This is a generalized phenomenon, which applies to other aspects of life. Often, as we spend more on something, what we gain in privacy and elegance we lose in spontaneous sociability.
I once visited a university that had a large, lavishly financed Hillel House to serve as a Jewish center on campus. But the students told me they preferred the Chabad House nearby, which was run by the orthodox Lubavitchers. At the Chabad house, the sofas were tattered and the rooms cramped, but, the students said, it was more haimish.
Restaurants and bars can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. At some diners and family restaurants, people are more comfortable leaning back, laughing loud, interrupting more and sweeping one another up in a collective euphoria. They talk more to the servers, and even across tables. At nicer restaurants, the food is better, the atmosphere is more refined, but there is a tighter code about what is permissible.
Hotels can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. You’ll find multiple generations at a Comfort Inn breakfast area, and people are likely to exchange pleasantries over the waffle machine. At a four-star hotel’s breakfast dining room, people are quietly answering e-mail on their phones.
Whole neighborhoods can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. Alan Ehrenhalt once wrote a great book called “The Lost City,” about the old densely packed Chicago neighborhoods where kids ran from home to home, where people hung out on their stoops. When the people in those neighborhoods made more money, they moved out to more thinly spaced suburbs with bigger homes where they were much less likely to know their neighbors.
In the 1990s, millions of Americans moved outward so they could have bigger houses and bigger lots, even if it meant long commutes. Research by Robert Frank of Cornell suggests this is usually a bad trade-off.
People are often bad at knowing how to spend their money — I’ve been at least as bad as everybody else in this regard. Lottery winners, for example, barely benefit from their new fortunes. When we get some extra income, we spend it on privacy, space and refinement. This has some obvious benefits: let’s not forget the nights at the Comfort Inn when we were trying to fall asleep while lacrosse teams partied in the hallways and the rooms next door. But suddenly we look around and we’re on the wrong side of the Haimish Line.
We also live in a highly individualistic culture. When we’re shopping for a vacation we’re primarily thinking about Where. The travel companies offer brochures showing private beaches and phenomenal sights. But when you come back from vacation, you primarily treasure the memories of Who — the people you met from faraway places, and the lives you came in contact with.
I can’t resist concluding this column with some kernels of consumption advice accumulated by the prominent scholars Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson. Surveying the vast literature of happiness research, they suggest: Buy experiences instead of things; buy many small pleasures instead of a few big ones; pay now for things you can look forward to and enjoy later.
To which I’d only add: Sometimes its best to spend carefully so you can stay south of the Haimish Line.
The Haimish Line
By DAVID BROOKS
Recently I did a little reporting from Kenya and Tanzania before taking a safari with my family. We stayed in seven camps. Some were relatively simple, without electricity or running water. Some were relatively luxurious, with regular showers and even pools.
The simple camps were friendly, warm and familial. We got to know the other guests at big, communal dinner tables. At one camp we got to play soccer with the staff on a vast field in the Serengeti before an audience of wildebeests. At another camp, we had impromptu spear-throwing and archery competitions with the kitchen staff. Two of the Maasai guides led my youngest son and me on spontaneous mock hunts — stalking our “prey” on foot through ravines and across streams. I can tell you that this is the definition of heaven for a 12-year-old boy, and for someone with the emotional maturity of one.
The more elegant camps felt colder. At one, each family had its own dinner table, so we didn’t get to know the other guests. The tents were spread farther apart. We also didn’t get to know the staff, who served us mostly as waiters, the way they would at a nice hotel.
I know only one word to describe what the simpler camps had and the more luxurious camps lacked: haimish. It’s a Yiddish word that suggests warmth, domesticity and unpretentious conviviality.
It occurred to me that when we moved from a simple camp to a more luxurious camp, we crossed an invisible Haimish Line. The simpler camps had it, the more comfortable ones did not.
This is a generalized phenomenon, which applies to other aspects of life. Often, as we spend more on something, what we gain in privacy and elegance we lose in spontaneous sociability.
I once visited a university that had a large, lavishly financed Hillel House to serve as a Jewish center on campus. But the students told me they preferred the Chabad House nearby, which was run by the orthodox Lubavitchers. At the Chabad house, the sofas were tattered and the rooms cramped, but, the students said, it was more haimish.
Restaurants and bars can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. At some diners and family restaurants, people are more comfortable leaning back, laughing loud, interrupting more and sweeping one another up in a collective euphoria. They talk more to the servers, and even across tables. At nicer restaurants, the food is better, the atmosphere is more refined, but there is a tighter code about what is permissible.
Hotels can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. You’ll find multiple generations at a Comfort Inn breakfast area, and people are likely to exchange pleasantries over the waffle machine. At a four-star hotel’s breakfast dining room, people are quietly answering e-mail on their phones.
Whole neighborhoods can exist on either side of the Haimish Line. Alan Ehrenhalt once wrote a great book called “The Lost City,” about the old densely packed Chicago neighborhoods where kids ran from home to home, where people hung out on their stoops. When the people in those neighborhoods made more money, they moved out to more thinly spaced suburbs with bigger homes where they were much less likely to know their neighbors.
In the 1990s, millions of Americans moved outward so they could have bigger houses and bigger lots, even if it meant long commutes. Research by Robert Frank of Cornell suggests this is usually a bad trade-off.
People are often bad at knowing how to spend their money — I’ve been at least as bad as everybody else in this regard. Lottery winners, for example, barely benefit from their new fortunes. When we get some extra income, we spend it on privacy, space and refinement. This has some obvious benefits: let’s not forget the nights at the Comfort Inn when we were trying to fall asleep while lacrosse teams partied in the hallways and the rooms next door. But suddenly we look around and we’re on the wrong side of the Haimish Line.
We also live in a highly individualistic culture. When we’re shopping for a vacation we’re primarily thinking about Where. The travel companies offer brochures showing private beaches and phenomenal sights. But when you come back from vacation, you primarily treasure the memories of Who — the people you met from faraway places, and the lives you came in contact with.
I can’t resist concluding this column with some kernels of consumption advice accumulated by the prominent scholars Elizabeth W. Dunn, Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson. Surveying the vast literature of happiness research, they suggest: Buy experiences instead of things; buy many small pleasures instead of a few big ones; pay now for things you can look forward to and enjoy later.
To which I’d only add: Sometimes its best to spend carefully so you can stay south of the Haimish Line.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
What I Read Today - Saturday August 27, 2011
(I actually saw this a few days ago but wanted to add it to my blog)
From: The Batesville Daily Guard via Angelia's Facebook Page.
Music lessons
by Angelia Roberts
on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 2:55pm.
My mother was under the illusion that I had some kind of musical talent.
Mothers are like that.
“If you don’t use your God-given talents, they will be taken away from you,” she would say while writing out a check for my weekly singing and piano lessons and reaffirming it with the “use it or lose it” biblical lesson.
I knew the parable of the talents by heart and I didn’t want to lose mine.
So, at the appointed time each weekday I would head over to the Calico Rock elementary classroom (strategically placed at the end of the building) where I would take voice lessons and place my tiny hands on the keyboard while Ms. Bobbie Silvey patiently instructed me on the art of hitting the right notes.
While it wasn’t obvious to my mother, no doubt my music teacher caught on a little quicker, that music was not going to be my forte.
That didn’t stop my mom. No siree.
She knew I had talent and I was not going to lose it on her watch.
Every Sunday at the Dolph Cumberland Presbyterian Church, while my friend Darlis was playing the piano, my cousin Tina and I were expected to sing a special. Revivals were the same song, second verse and again on Decoration Day when we would gather to eat over the dead. More than one hotter-than-hell Sunday afternoon was spent inside the old country church at Hand Cemetery or at the Wayland Arbor while we waited our turn to sing in front of God and everybody.
It was all free practice for when Ms. Silvey would put together the annual “recital” where our parents would gather to see what accomplishments the young protegees had gained as future musicians.
I could fumble through my piano solo, but when it came to what I was going to sing, it was a tug-of-war.
You see, Ms. Silvey made the mistake of saying I could sing whatever I wanted.
That was music to my ears.
When I came in toting my sheet music with “You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man,” the little four-foot-something mini-music instructor nearly had a major stroke.
That would not be proper singing at the Calico Rock Presbyterian Church, she explained. “Pick another.”
I decided on “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” and she nixed that too.
At the last minute, she decided on the proper selection.
I still remember standing there on shaky legs and singing:
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet,
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
By the next year, Ms. Silvey had learned her lesson and I would not have the option of embarrassing her in public (other than the fact I couldn’t carry a tune and might hit a few extra notes on the piano), so I would be singing “Que Sera, Sera.”
I’m not sure just how many years Ms. Silvey and I kept up the pretense for my mom that I might someday have some musical talent, but no doubt it was music to her ears when our partnership was over.
FYI: I did have a natural talent of being able to copy (“forge” seems so judicial) my mother’s signature. And, while that came in pretty handy in high school I also managed to duplicate Superintendent T.J. Silvey’s name so well that it would be nearly impossible to tell that he did not sign it. At that time, I would consider that a talent, albeit a lost one. The fact I didn’t pursue it as a career is probably music to my mother’s ears.
Angelia Roberts is the executive director of advertising and editorial for the Batesville Daily Guard. She can be reached at angeliaroberts@hotmail.com or by calling the Guard office at (870) 793-2383
From: The Batesville Daily Guard via Angelia's Facebook Page.
Music lessons
by Angelia Roberts
on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 2:55pm.
My mother was under the illusion that I had some kind of musical talent.
Mothers are like that.
“If you don’t use your God-given talents, they will be taken away from you,” she would say while writing out a check for my weekly singing and piano lessons and reaffirming it with the “use it or lose it” biblical lesson.
I knew the parable of the talents by heart and I didn’t want to lose mine.
So, at the appointed time each weekday I would head over to the Calico Rock elementary classroom (strategically placed at the end of the building) where I would take voice lessons and place my tiny hands on the keyboard while Ms. Bobbie Silvey patiently instructed me on the art of hitting the right notes.
While it wasn’t obvious to my mother, no doubt my music teacher caught on a little quicker, that music was not going to be my forte.
That didn’t stop my mom. No siree.
She knew I had talent and I was not going to lose it on her watch.
Every Sunday at the Dolph Cumberland Presbyterian Church, while my friend Darlis was playing the piano, my cousin Tina and I were expected to sing a special. Revivals were the same song, second verse and again on Decoration Day when we would gather to eat over the dead. More than one hotter-than-hell Sunday afternoon was spent inside the old country church at Hand Cemetery or at the Wayland Arbor while we waited our turn to sing in front of God and everybody.
It was all free practice for when Ms. Silvey would put together the annual “recital” where our parents would gather to see what accomplishments the young protegees had gained as future musicians.
I could fumble through my piano solo, but when it came to what I was going to sing, it was a tug-of-war.
You see, Ms. Silvey made the mistake of saying I could sing whatever I wanted.
That was music to my ears.
When I came in toting my sheet music with “You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man,” the little four-foot-something mini-music instructor nearly had a major stroke.
That would not be proper singing at the Calico Rock Presbyterian Church, she explained. “Pick another.”
I decided on “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” and she nixed that too.
At the last minute, she decided on the proper selection.
I still remember standing there on shaky legs and singing:
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet,
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat.
By the next year, Ms. Silvey had learned her lesson and I would not have the option of embarrassing her in public (other than the fact I couldn’t carry a tune and might hit a few extra notes on the piano), so I would be singing “Que Sera, Sera.”
I’m not sure just how many years Ms. Silvey and I kept up the pretense for my mom that I might someday have some musical talent, but no doubt it was music to her ears when our partnership was over.
FYI: I did have a natural talent of being able to copy (“forge” seems so judicial) my mother’s signature. And, while that came in pretty handy in high school I also managed to duplicate Superintendent T.J. Silvey’s name so well that it would be nearly impossible to tell that he did not sign it. At that time, I would consider that a talent, albeit a lost one. The fact I didn’t pursue it as a career is probably music to my mother’s ears.
Angelia Roberts is the executive director of advertising and editorial for the Batesville Daily Guard. She can be reached at angeliaroberts@hotmail.com or by calling the Guard office at (870) 793-2383
Thursday, August 25, 2011
What I Read Today - Thursday August 25, 2011
From: The Wall Street Journal
Without Jobs, Are Apple Shares Worth Keeping?
By Jack Hough
Apple (AAPL) shares lost 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday following an announcement that Steve Jobs will resign as chief executive. Jobs will stay on as chairman, but in a letter wrote that he was no longer able to complete his duties as CEO, raising questions about his health and continued contribution.
That leaves shareholders wondering whether to sell. Jobs wasn’t alone in creating Apple’s remarkable success, but he has long been the face of it. He founded Apple with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976, left in 1985 and returned in 1997. Not long after his return, the company ranked among the bottom half of S&P 500 companies by stock market value. Today it is No. 2, behind Exxon Mobil (XOM); it briefly hit No. 1 earlier this month.
As investors adjust to the news in coming days, Apple’s outsized market value could be a drag on stock indexes like the S&P 500, in which giant companies hold disproportional sway, and on the many mutual funds that are based on such indexes. Jobs’ departure has also started to ripple through other tech companies. Shares of Apple rival Research in Motion (RIMM), maker of the Blackberry smart phone, rose more than 1% late Wednesday.
Apple’s rise is well-chronicled: the launch of the iPod and iTunes in 2001; the 2006 switch to Intel (INTC) computer chips, which lured users to Mac computers; the 2007 debut of the iPhone, which has sold 100 million units worldwide; and last year’s introduction of the iPad, which already dominates the market for tablet computers. To the company’s admiring fans and shareholders–its stock has multiplied more than 35 times in price over the past decade–Jobs was the visionary who understood that customers value style and simple functionality over tech specifications and complex customization options.
The company Jobs leaves is anything but struggling. Sales last quarter jumped 82% from a year earlier, growth that would be impressive even for a much smaller company. Operating profit was nearly 33 cents per dollar of sales, more than double the margin of most computer and cell phone companies. Apple sits on cash and securities worth one-fifth of its stock market value.
Shares, however, sell for just 14 times earnings, close to the price of the broad stock market. That’s owed to challenges even Jobs might have struggled with–ones that come with extreme success. No. 1 companies in their sector tend to hold that perch for only about a decade before losing it to competitors, studies show. Above-average profit margins tend to revert to industry averages over long time periods. Success invites mimickers, and Apple has plenty, especially in smart phones, which have become its top seller.
On the other hand, Apple has long made naysayers look foolish. And its modest stock valuation now gives shareholders plenty of reason to hang on, and others–including Apple itself, with all that cash–reason to buy if shares dive.
Two numbers to keep in mind are $81 and $32. The first is Apple’s cash and securities per share. That means if the stock falls to $350, as it might Thursday, it’s really falling to $269, net of what’s sitting in the till (albeit much of it overseas). The second is Apple’s expected profit per share during its next fiscal year, which begins in late September. Divide the first number by the second and the result is a price-to-earnings ratio of eight. That’s the sort of valuation usually reserved for a company that’s badly in need of turning around, not one that has completed the most striking corporate comeback in history.
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
Without Jobs, Are Apple Shares Worth Keeping?
By Jack Hough
Apple (AAPL) shares lost 5% in after-hours trading Wednesday following an announcement that Steve Jobs will resign as chief executive. Jobs will stay on as chairman, but in a letter wrote that he was no longer able to complete his duties as CEO, raising questions about his health and continued contribution.
That leaves shareholders wondering whether to sell. Jobs wasn’t alone in creating Apple’s remarkable success, but he has long been the face of it. He founded Apple with friend Steve Wozniak in 1976, left in 1985 and returned in 1997. Not long after his return, the company ranked among the bottom half of S&P 500 companies by stock market value. Today it is No. 2, behind Exxon Mobil (XOM); it briefly hit No. 1 earlier this month.
As investors adjust to the news in coming days, Apple’s outsized market value could be a drag on stock indexes like the S&P 500, in which giant companies hold disproportional sway, and on the many mutual funds that are based on such indexes. Jobs’ departure has also started to ripple through other tech companies. Shares of Apple rival Research in Motion (RIMM), maker of the Blackberry smart phone, rose more than 1% late Wednesday.
Apple’s rise is well-chronicled: the launch of the iPod and iTunes in 2001; the 2006 switch to Intel (INTC) computer chips, which lured users to Mac computers; the 2007 debut of the iPhone, which has sold 100 million units worldwide; and last year’s introduction of the iPad, which already dominates the market for tablet computers. To the company’s admiring fans and shareholders–its stock has multiplied more than 35 times in price over the past decade–Jobs was the visionary who understood that customers value style and simple functionality over tech specifications and complex customization options.
The company Jobs leaves is anything but struggling. Sales last quarter jumped 82% from a year earlier, growth that would be impressive even for a much smaller company. Operating profit was nearly 33 cents per dollar of sales, more than double the margin of most computer and cell phone companies. Apple sits on cash and securities worth one-fifth of its stock market value.
Shares, however, sell for just 14 times earnings, close to the price of the broad stock market. That’s owed to challenges even Jobs might have struggled with–ones that come with extreme success. No. 1 companies in their sector tend to hold that perch for only about a decade before losing it to competitors, studies show. Above-average profit margins tend to revert to industry averages over long time periods. Success invites mimickers, and Apple has plenty, especially in smart phones, which have become its top seller.
On the other hand, Apple has long made naysayers look foolish. And its modest stock valuation now gives shareholders plenty of reason to hang on, and others–including Apple itself, with all that cash–reason to buy if shares dive.
Two numbers to keep in mind are $81 and $32. The first is Apple’s cash and securities per share. That means if the stock falls to $350, as it might Thursday, it’s really falling to $269, net of what’s sitting in the till (albeit much of it overseas). The second is Apple’s expected profit per share during its next fiscal year, which begins in late September. Divide the first number by the second and the result is a price-to-earnings ratio of eight. That’s the sort of valuation usually reserved for a company that’s badly in need of turning around, not one that has completed the most striking corporate comeback in history.
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
What I Read Today - Thursday August 25, 2011
From: The New York Times
Online Enterprises Gain Foothold as Path to a College Degree
By TAMAR LEWIN
Harvard and Ohio State are not going to disappear any time soon. But a host of new online enterprises are making earning a college degree cheaper, faster and flexible enough to take work experience into account. As Wikipedia upended the encyclopedia industry and iTunes changed the music business, these businesses have the potential to change higher education.
Ryan Yoder, 35, a computer programmer who had completed 72 credits at the University of South Florida years ago, signed up with an outfit called Straighterline, paid $216 to take two courses in accounting and one in business communication, and a month later transferred the credits to Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, which awarded him a bachelor’s degree in June.
Alan Long, 34, a paramedic and fire captain, used another new institution, Learning Counts, to create a portfolio that included his certifications and a narrative spelling out what he had learned on the job. He paid $750 to Learning Counts and came out with seven credits at Ottawa University in Kansas, where he would have had to spend $2,800 to earn them in a traditional classroom.
And Erin Larson, who has four children and works full time at a television station but wanted to become a teacher, paid $3,000 per semester to Western Governors University for as many classes as she could handle — plus a weekly call from a mentor. “Anywhere else, it would have cost three arms and legs,” said Ms. Larson, 40, “and as a certified procrastinator, I found that weekly call very useful.”
For those who have the time and money, the four-year residential campus still offers what is widely considered the best educational experience. Critics worry that the online courses are less rigorous and more vulnerable to cheating, and that their emphasis on providing credentials for specific jobs could undermine the traditional mission of encouraging critical thinking.
But most experts agree that given the exploding technologies, cuts to university budgets and the expanding universe of people expected to earn postsecondary degrees, there is no end in sight for newfangled programs preparing students for careers in high-demand areas like business, computer science, health care and criminal justice.
Chester E. Finn Jr., a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, predicted that all but the top tier of existing universities would “change dramatically” as students regained power in an expanding marketplace.
“Instead of a full entree of four years in college, it’ll be more like grazing or going to tapas bars,” Mr. Finn said, “with people piecing together a postsecondary education from different sources.”
While many students at the nascent institutions offer glowing reviews and success stories, a recent study by Teachers College at Columbia University that tracked 51,000 community college students in Washington State for five years found that those with the most online course credits were the least likely to graduate or transfer to a four-year institution. And traditional professors like Johann Neem, a historian at Western Washington University, see places like Western Governors University as anti-intellectual, noting that its advertising emphasizes how fast students can earn credits, not how much they will learn.
“Taking a course online, by yourself, is not the same as being in a classroom with a professor who can respond to you, present different viewpoints and push you to work a problem,” Professor Neem said. “There’s lots of porn and religion online, but people still have relationships and get married, and go to church and talk to a minister.”
But Anya Kamenetz, whose 2010 book, “DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education,” tracks the new wave of Web-based education efforts, says the new institutions will only continue to improve and expand. “For some people, it will mean going from a good education to a great one,” she said. “For others, it will mean getting some kind of education, instead of nothing.”
The emerging menu of new offerings is startlingly varied, as are the institutions. One unaccredited nonprofit startup, University of the People, gives English-speaking high school graduates a chance to study business or computers free, with volunteer teachers. There are also budding joint ventures between brick-and-mortar campuses and online entities, like Ivy Bridge College — a collaboration between Tiffin University, a nonprofit school in Ohio, and Altius Education, a commercial business, offering two-year online degrees transferrable to dozens of partner four-year colleges. And there are grass-roots nonprofits like Peer 2 Peer University, where people start study groups on topics as diverse as JavaScript and Baroque art.
Nationwide, almost three quarters of college students attend public institutions, and commercial career colleges like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan now make up almost as much of the remaining quarter as traditional nonprofit private universities like Stanford or Duke. Many of the emerging models are far cheaper than the publicly traded career colleges, some of which have come under scrutiny over the last year for leaving students with mountains of debt and credentials of little value.
Most are still new and very small, making it hard to locate students who have used them, other than those referred by the businesses themselves.
And it is too soon to know which will take off, or what might come along to overtake them.
“I’m just waiting for a Wikipedia University, with high-quality, online, open-source courses provided by a variety of different people,” said Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor who directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. “Or the moment when someone like Bill Gates creates Superstar University, finding the best professors for the 200 courses that a good liberal arts college offers, and paying them $25,000 each to put their classes online.”
Online Enterprises Gain Foothold as Path to a College Degree
By TAMAR LEWIN
Harvard and Ohio State are not going to disappear any time soon. But a host of new online enterprises are making earning a college degree cheaper, faster and flexible enough to take work experience into account. As Wikipedia upended the encyclopedia industry and iTunes changed the music business, these businesses have the potential to change higher education.
Ryan Yoder, 35, a computer programmer who had completed 72 credits at the University of South Florida years ago, signed up with an outfit called Straighterline, paid $216 to take two courses in accounting and one in business communication, and a month later transferred the credits to Thomas Edison State College in New Jersey, which awarded him a bachelor’s degree in June.
Alan Long, 34, a paramedic and fire captain, used another new institution, Learning Counts, to create a portfolio that included his certifications and a narrative spelling out what he had learned on the job. He paid $750 to Learning Counts and came out with seven credits at Ottawa University in Kansas, where he would have had to spend $2,800 to earn them in a traditional classroom.
And Erin Larson, who has four children and works full time at a television station but wanted to become a teacher, paid $3,000 per semester to Western Governors University for as many classes as she could handle — plus a weekly call from a mentor. “Anywhere else, it would have cost three arms and legs,” said Ms. Larson, 40, “and as a certified procrastinator, I found that weekly call very useful.”
For those who have the time and money, the four-year residential campus still offers what is widely considered the best educational experience. Critics worry that the online courses are less rigorous and more vulnerable to cheating, and that their emphasis on providing credentials for specific jobs could undermine the traditional mission of encouraging critical thinking.
But most experts agree that given the exploding technologies, cuts to university budgets and the expanding universe of people expected to earn postsecondary degrees, there is no end in sight for newfangled programs preparing students for careers in high-demand areas like business, computer science, health care and criminal justice.
Chester E. Finn Jr., a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, predicted that all but the top tier of existing universities would “change dramatically” as students regained power in an expanding marketplace.
“Instead of a full entree of four years in college, it’ll be more like grazing or going to tapas bars,” Mr. Finn said, “with people piecing together a postsecondary education from different sources.”
While many students at the nascent institutions offer glowing reviews and success stories, a recent study by Teachers College at Columbia University that tracked 51,000 community college students in Washington State for five years found that those with the most online course credits were the least likely to graduate or transfer to a four-year institution. And traditional professors like Johann Neem, a historian at Western Washington University, see places like Western Governors University as anti-intellectual, noting that its advertising emphasizes how fast students can earn credits, not how much they will learn.
“Taking a course online, by yourself, is not the same as being in a classroom with a professor who can respond to you, present different viewpoints and push you to work a problem,” Professor Neem said. “There’s lots of porn and religion online, but people still have relationships and get married, and go to church and talk to a minister.”
But Anya Kamenetz, whose 2010 book, “DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education,” tracks the new wave of Web-based education efforts, says the new institutions will only continue to improve and expand. “For some people, it will mean going from a good education to a great one,” she said. “For others, it will mean getting some kind of education, instead of nothing.”
The emerging menu of new offerings is startlingly varied, as are the institutions. One unaccredited nonprofit startup, University of the People, gives English-speaking high school graduates a chance to study business or computers free, with volunteer teachers. There are also budding joint ventures between brick-and-mortar campuses and online entities, like Ivy Bridge College — a collaboration between Tiffin University, a nonprofit school in Ohio, and Altius Education, a commercial business, offering two-year online degrees transferrable to dozens of partner four-year colleges. And there are grass-roots nonprofits like Peer 2 Peer University, where people start study groups on topics as diverse as JavaScript and Baroque art.
Nationwide, almost three quarters of college students attend public institutions, and commercial career colleges like the University of Phoenix and Kaplan now make up almost as much of the remaining quarter as traditional nonprofit private universities like Stanford or Duke. Many of the emerging models are far cheaper than the publicly traded career colleges, some of which have come under scrutiny over the last year for leaving students with mountains of debt and credentials of little value.
Most are still new and very small, making it hard to locate students who have used them, other than those referred by the businesses themselves.
And it is too soon to know which will take off, or what might come along to overtake them.
“I’m just waiting for a Wikipedia University, with high-quality, online, open-source courses provided by a variety of different people,” said Richard Vedder, an Ohio University economics professor who directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. “Or the moment when someone like Bill Gates creates Superstar University, finding the best professors for the 200 courses that a good liberal arts college offers, and paying them $25,000 each to put their classes online.”
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
What I Read Today - Wednesday August 24, 2011
From: The New York Times
Obama, Tiger, Golf and Politics
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Despite the carping by critics, I’m glad the president went on vacation because one of the most useful things he could do right now is play golf — a lot of golf — but not that friendly foursome thing with his aides that he usually does. No, real golf: Match play, head to head, with real money on the line. Match-play golf is a great teacher. As any good golfer will tell you, the first rule of match play is this: Never play not to lose. Do not wait and hope for your opponent to make a mistake. Always play the course, always play to win and always assume your opponent will do well — will make that long putt — so you have to do better.
For months now, Obama has been playing not to lose, keeping his own plans for a “Grand Bargain” on debt, deficits, taxes, jobs and investment vague, while waiting for the Republicans to say crazier and crazier stuff — like promising the return of $2-a-gallon gasoline, or insisting that climate change was made up by scientists to get research grants (but politicians taking millions from oil companies can be trusted to tell us the truth on this issue), or that Texas has a right to secede. But while the G.O.P. candidates have been obliging the president with their nuttiness, it has not helped Obama’s poll ratings.
Many Americans can see that most of these G.O.P. candidates are closer to professional wrestlers than politicians — with their fake body slams and anti-Obama bluster. All they are missing are the Tarzan outfits. This is the silly season. But I would not assume that Republicans won’t come up with more serious candidates when it counts, or that some of these candidates won’t move to the center. I would definitely assume that they’ll do better.
That’s why the last few months have been so worrying to Obama supporters. Obama surprised everyone by broaching the idea during the debt negotiations of a “Grand Bargain” — roughly $3 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade and $1 trillion in tax increases — as a signal to the markets that we’re getting our fiscal house in order. It was absolutely the right idea — as long as it is coupled with investments in infrastructure, education and research — but House Speaker John Boehner could not deliver his Tea Party-led G.O.P. caucus.
Yet rather than flesh out his Grand Bargain in detail and take it on the road — and let every American everywhere understand and hear every day that he had a plan but the Republicans wouldn’t rise to it — Obama dropped it. Did he ever try to explain the specifics of his Grand Bargain and why it was the only way to go? No.
This left his allies wondering whether he was committed to it — and really did have his own party on board for it. And it left his opponents thrilled and setting the agenda themselves. It is why Obama’s recent bus tour fell flat. People don’t want to cheer just the man anymore. They want to cheer the man and his plan — a real plan, not just generalities and tactics to get him re-elected with 50.0001 percent and no real mandate to do what’s needed to fix the country now.
Without his own Grand Bargain on the table — imprinted on the mind of every American — Obama has been left playing defense, playing to get the least-bad deal, or playing not to lose. That’s what’s producing all the “What happened to Obama?” talk and its silly variants. (He’s a loser; he’s not very bright; he’s Jimmy Carter.)
It’s all nonsense. Obama is smart, decent and tough, with exactly the right instincts about where the country needs to go. He has accomplished a lot more than he’s gotten credit for — with an opposition dedicated to making him fail. But lately he is seriously off his game. He’s not Jimmy Carter. He’s Tiger Woods — a natural who’s lost his swing. He has so many different swing thoughts in his head, so many people whispering in his ear about what the polls say and how he needs to position himself to get re-elected, that he has lost all his natural instincts for the game. He needs to get back to basics.
It’s crazy what’s happening in America today: We’re having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election — and there is almost no overlap between the two. The president needs to bring them together. But that can only happen if he stops playing not to lose and goes for broke himself. Our problems are not insoluble. We need a Grand Bargain — where each side gives something on spending, taxes and new investments — and we’re on our way out of this.
Run on that, Mr. President: At best you’ll generate enough public pressure (now totally missing) to shame sane Republicans into joining you, and we’ll get a deal, and at worst you can run in 2012 on a platform, which, if you win, will actually give you a mandate for the change the country needs.
Meanwhile, Mr. President, on a rainy day, rent the movie “Tin Cup.” There is a great scene where Dr. Molly Griswold is trying to help Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy, the golf pro, rediscover his swing — and himself. She finally tells him: “Roy ... don’t try to be cool or smooth or whatever; just be honest and take a risk. And you know what, whatever happens, if you act from the heart, you can’t make a mistake.”
Obama, Tiger, Golf and Politics
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Despite the carping by critics, I’m glad the president went on vacation because one of the most useful things he could do right now is play golf — a lot of golf — but not that friendly foursome thing with his aides that he usually does. No, real golf: Match play, head to head, with real money on the line. Match-play golf is a great teacher. As any good golfer will tell you, the first rule of match play is this: Never play not to lose. Do not wait and hope for your opponent to make a mistake. Always play the course, always play to win and always assume your opponent will do well — will make that long putt — so you have to do better.
For months now, Obama has been playing not to lose, keeping his own plans for a “Grand Bargain” on debt, deficits, taxes, jobs and investment vague, while waiting for the Republicans to say crazier and crazier stuff — like promising the return of $2-a-gallon gasoline, or insisting that climate change was made up by scientists to get research grants (but politicians taking millions from oil companies can be trusted to tell us the truth on this issue), or that Texas has a right to secede. But while the G.O.P. candidates have been obliging the president with their nuttiness, it has not helped Obama’s poll ratings.
Many Americans can see that most of these G.O.P. candidates are closer to professional wrestlers than politicians — with their fake body slams and anti-Obama bluster. All they are missing are the Tarzan outfits. This is the silly season. But I would not assume that Republicans won’t come up with more serious candidates when it counts, or that some of these candidates won’t move to the center. I would definitely assume that they’ll do better.
That’s why the last few months have been so worrying to Obama supporters. Obama surprised everyone by broaching the idea during the debt negotiations of a “Grand Bargain” — roughly $3 trillion in spending cuts over the next decade and $1 trillion in tax increases — as a signal to the markets that we’re getting our fiscal house in order. It was absolutely the right idea — as long as it is coupled with investments in infrastructure, education and research — but House Speaker John Boehner could not deliver his Tea Party-led G.O.P. caucus.
Yet rather than flesh out his Grand Bargain in detail and take it on the road — and let every American everywhere understand and hear every day that he had a plan but the Republicans wouldn’t rise to it — Obama dropped it. Did he ever try to explain the specifics of his Grand Bargain and why it was the only way to go? No.
This left his allies wondering whether he was committed to it — and really did have his own party on board for it. And it left his opponents thrilled and setting the agenda themselves. It is why Obama’s recent bus tour fell flat. People don’t want to cheer just the man anymore. They want to cheer the man and his plan — a real plan, not just generalities and tactics to get him re-elected with 50.0001 percent and no real mandate to do what’s needed to fix the country now.
Without his own Grand Bargain on the table — imprinted on the mind of every American — Obama has been left playing defense, playing to get the least-bad deal, or playing not to lose. That’s what’s producing all the “What happened to Obama?” talk and its silly variants. (He’s a loser; he’s not very bright; he’s Jimmy Carter.)
It’s all nonsense. Obama is smart, decent and tough, with exactly the right instincts about where the country needs to go. He has accomplished a lot more than he’s gotten credit for — with an opposition dedicated to making him fail. But lately he is seriously off his game. He’s not Jimmy Carter. He’s Tiger Woods — a natural who’s lost his swing. He has so many different swing thoughts in his head, so many people whispering in his ear about what the polls say and how he needs to position himself to get re-elected, that he has lost all his natural instincts for the game. He needs to get back to basics.
It’s crazy what’s happening in America today: We’re having an economic crisis and the politicians are having an election — and there is almost no overlap between the two. The president needs to bring them together. But that can only happen if he stops playing not to lose and goes for broke himself. Our problems are not insoluble. We need a Grand Bargain — where each side gives something on spending, taxes and new investments — and we’re on our way out of this.
Run on that, Mr. President: At best you’ll generate enough public pressure (now totally missing) to shame sane Republicans into joining you, and we’ll get a deal, and at worst you can run in 2012 on a platform, which, if you win, will actually give you a mandate for the change the country needs.
Meanwhile, Mr. President, on a rainy day, rent the movie “Tin Cup.” There is a great scene where Dr. Molly Griswold is trying to help Roy “Tin Cup” McAvoy, the golf pro, rediscover his swing — and himself. She finally tells him: “Roy ... don’t try to be cool or smooth or whatever; just be honest and take a risk. And you know what, whatever happens, if you act from the heart, you can’t make a mistake.”
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
What I Read Today - Tuesday August 23, 2011
From: The New York Times
The Rugged Altruists
By DAVID BROOKS
Nairobi, Kenya
Many Americans go to the developing world to serve others. A smaller percentage actually end up being useful. Those that do have often climbed a moral ladder. They start out with certain virtues but then develop more tenacious ones.
The first virtue they possess is courage, the willingness to go off to a strange place. For example, Blair Miller was a student at the University of Virginia who decided she wanted to teach abroad. She Googled “teach abroad” and found a woman who had been teaching English in a remote town in South Korea and was looking for a replacement.
Miller soon found herself on a plane and eventually at a small airport in southern South Korea. There was no one there to greet her. Eventually, the airport closed and no one came to pick her up. A monk was the only other person around and eventually he, too, left and Miller was alone.
Finally, a van with two men rolled in and scooped her up. After a few months of struggle, she had a fantastic year at a Korean fishing village, the only Westerner for miles and miles. Now she travels around Kenya, Pakistan and India for the Acumen Fund, a sort of venture capital fund that invests in socially productive enterprises, like affordable housing and ambulance services.
The second virtue they develop is deference, the willingness to listen and learn from the moral and intellectual storehouses of the people you are trying to help.
Rye Barcott was a student at the University of North Carolina who spent a summer sharing a 10-by-10 shack in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. One night he awoke with diarrhea and stumbled to the public outhouse. He slid onto the cement floor and vomited as his bare body hit puddles of human waste.
He left his soiled pants outside the hut, but when he went to find them later they were gone. He was directed to another hut where a stick-thin girl, with missing clumps of hair, had the pants, scrubbed and folded, in her lap. Barcott said softly, “I’m grateful,” and asked her why she had cleaned them. “Because I can,” she replied. A week later, she died of AIDS and her body was taken in a wheelbarrow to a communal grave.
Over the next several years, Barcott served as an officer in the Marines in places like Iraq and created an inspiring organization called Carolina for Kibera, which offers health services and serves as a sort of boys and girls club for children in the slum.
The greatest and most essential virtue is thanklessness, the ability to keep serving even when there are no evident rewards — no fame, no admiration, no gratitude.
Stephen Letchford is a doctor working in Kijabe, Kenya. One night, years ago, when he was working at a hospital in Zambia, a man stole a colleague’s computer. Letchford drove the police down the single road leading from town. The police found the man carrying the computer and, in the course of the arrest, shot him in the abdomen.
They put the man in the back of the car and rushed him back to the hospital to save his life. Letchford pressed his wounds to stem the bleeding, using tattered garbage bags as surgical gloves. He had scraped his hands gardening that day and was now covered by the man’s blood.
They saved the thief’s life and discovered he was infected with H.I.V. For several days, Letchford and his family were not sure whether he had been infected by the man who robbed them. Their faith was tested. (They later learned that he was not infected.) When the man recovered, he showed no remorse, no gratitude; he just folded in on himself, cold and uncommunicative.
This final virtue is what makes service in the developing world not just an adventure, a spiritual experience or a cinematic moment. It represents a noncontingent commitment to a specific place and purpose.
As you talk to people involved in the foreign aid business — on the giving and the receiving ends — you are struck by how much disillusionment there is.
Very few nongovernmental organizations or multilateral efforts do good, many Kenyans say. They come and go, spending largely on themselves, creating dependency not growth. The government-to-government aid workers spend time at summit meetings negotiating protocols with each other.
But in odd places, away from the fashionableness, one does find people willing to embrace the perspectives and do the jobs the locals define — in businesses, where Westerners are providing advice about boring things like accounting; in hospitals where doctors, among many aggravations, try to listen to the symptoms the patients describe.
Susan Albright, a nurse working with disabled children in Kijabe, says, “Everything I’ve ever learned I put to use here.” Her husband, Leland Albright, a prominent neurosurgeon, says simply, “This is where God wants us to be.”
The Rugged Altruists
By DAVID BROOKS
Nairobi, Kenya
Many Americans go to the developing world to serve others. A smaller percentage actually end up being useful. Those that do have often climbed a moral ladder. They start out with certain virtues but then develop more tenacious ones.
The first virtue they possess is courage, the willingness to go off to a strange place. For example, Blair Miller was a student at the University of Virginia who decided she wanted to teach abroad. She Googled “teach abroad” and found a woman who had been teaching English in a remote town in South Korea and was looking for a replacement.
Miller soon found herself on a plane and eventually at a small airport in southern South Korea. There was no one there to greet her. Eventually, the airport closed and no one came to pick her up. A monk was the only other person around and eventually he, too, left and Miller was alone.
Finally, a van with two men rolled in and scooped her up. After a few months of struggle, she had a fantastic year at a Korean fishing village, the only Westerner for miles and miles. Now she travels around Kenya, Pakistan and India for the Acumen Fund, a sort of venture capital fund that invests in socially productive enterprises, like affordable housing and ambulance services.
The second virtue they develop is deference, the willingness to listen and learn from the moral and intellectual storehouses of the people you are trying to help.
Rye Barcott was a student at the University of North Carolina who spent a summer sharing a 10-by-10 shack in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, Kenya. One night he awoke with diarrhea and stumbled to the public outhouse. He slid onto the cement floor and vomited as his bare body hit puddles of human waste.
He left his soiled pants outside the hut, but when he went to find them later they were gone. He was directed to another hut where a stick-thin girl, with missing clumps of hair, had the pants, scrubbed and folded, in her lap. Barcott said softly, “I’m grateful,” and asked her why she had cleaned them. “Because I can,” she replied. A week later, she died of AIDS and her body was taken in a wheelbarrow to a communal grave.
Over the next several years, Barcott served as an officer in the Marines in places like Iraq and created an inspiring organization called Carolina for Kibera, which offers health services and serves as a sort of boys and girls club for children in the slum.
The greatest and most essential virtue is thanklessness, the ability to keep serving even when there are no evident rewards — no fame, no admiration, no gratitude.
Stephen Letchford is a doctor working in Kijabe, Kenya. One night, years ago, when he was working at a hospital in Zambia, a man stole a colleague’s computer. Letchford drove the police down the single road leading from town. The police found the man carrying the computer and, in the course of the arrest, shot him in the abdomen.
They put the man in the back of the car and rushed him back to the hospital to save his life. Letchford pressed his wounds to stem the bleeding, using tattered garbage bags as surgical gloves. He had scraped his hands gardening that day and was now covered by the man’s blood.
They saved the thief’s life and discovered he was infected with H.I.V. For several days, Letchford and his family were not sure whether he had been infected by the man who robbed them. Their faith was tested. (They later learned that he was not infected.) When the man recovered, he showed no remorse, no gratitude; he just folded in on himself, cold and uncommunicative.
This final virtue is what makes service in the developing world not just an adventure, a spiritual experience or a cinematic moment. It represents a noncontingent commitment to a specific place and purpose.
As you talk to people involved in the foreign aid business — on the giving and the receiving ends — you are struck by how much disillusionment there is.
Very few nongovernmental organizations or multilateral efforts do good, many Kenyans say. They come and go, spending largely on themselves, creating dependency not growth. The government-to-government aid workers spend time at summit meetings negotiating protocols with each other.
But in odd places, away from the fashionableness, one does find people willing to embrace the perspectives and do the jobs the locals define — in businesses, where Westerners are providing advice about boring things like accounting; in hospitals where doctors, among many aggravations, try to listen to the symptoms the patients describe.
Susan Albright, a nurse working with disabled children in Kijabe, says, “Everything I’ve ever learned I put to use here.” Her husband, Leland Albright, a prominent neurosurgeon, says simply, “This is where God wants us to be.”
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