HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE? Higher education’s price-earnings ratio looks like Nevada housing circa 2007. “The financial data are making a college education tougher and tougher to defend. If we were to follow the lead of college marketing departments and treat tuition as an investment, what price-earnings ratio–or P/E–would we assign to it? Unlike a traditional stock, both the price and the earnings are fairly opaque (a warning signal in and of itself), but let’s make some ballpark assumptions. . . . And let’s keep something very important in mind: A college education contains a risk factor that no stock or bond does: zero liquidity. For good or for ill, you’re stuck with it. You can sell a security back to the market, but you can’t sell your degree back. Every college in the country hangs out the same invisible sign: No Refunds. And things are only going to get worse.”
Archive for 2010
December 18, 2010
CLAYTON CRAMER ON avoiding cold-induced asthma.
ROGER KIMBALL ON Lee Bollinger and Friedrich Hayek.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG? U.N. Plans Internet Regulation. Apparently, a lot of people who were embarrassed by WikiLeaks want to make sure nothing like that can happen again. But don’t worry: “The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for a ‘takeover’ of the internet.” Well, with free-speech stalwarts like China and Saudi Arabia involved in the push, who’d worry about that?
THE WAR ON FOR-PROFIT EDUCATION: Sweating Bullets At The GAO.
The authors of the Government Accountability Office’s for-profit secret shopper investigation pulled off a statistically impressive feat in August. Let’s set aside for the moment that on Nov. 30, the government watchdog quietly revealed that its influential testimony on for-profit colleges was riddled with errors, with 16 of the 28 findings requiring revisions. More interesting is the fact that all 16 of the errors run in the same direction — casting for-profits in the worst possible light. The odds of all 16 pointing in the same direction by chance? A cool 1 in 65,536. . . . The problem is that the “we were in a hurry” defense doesn’t explain why the errors all point in the same direction — one that happens to reflect the policy preferences of the chairman of the Senate HELP committee and of administration appointees at the Department of Education. Lanny Davis, the veteran Clinton hand who has now taken to the barricades for the for-profit providers, told us Wednesday that he thinks there is an obvious distinction between “gross incompetence” and “setting out to deceive” — and that the original GAO report crosses the line.
Is it a coincidence that the for-profit education sector isn’t very unionized? Plus, from the comments: “Public schools take as much tax payer money as for profits, they just take it from all of us, whether we are in school or not, AND we never see the waste. Let’s take that same hidden camera into some public schools, where some are more concerned about their break or day off than this so-called quality education.” Yes, the traditional education sector has its own problems, but it hasn’t been targeted the same way.
UPDATE: Reader Robert Crawford writes: “I’ve noticed NPR running hit pieces on for-profit colleges the last 6 months or so.” Messaging!
ACCOUNTABILITY IS FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: TSA Worker Avoids Prison After Stealing Travelers’ Laptops.
“He put the luggage through special machines to see whether there was any explosives or anything of concern in the luggage,” she told KYW Newsradio. “When he saw that there was something of value in the luggage, he took out the computers or the games.”
So at least those machines can spot valuable consumer goods.
A ONE-DAY-ONLY SALE on the Flip Mino HD video camera. Ubiquitous video cameras rule.
MOVING AHEAD WITH Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal.
UPDATE: Michael Nehring on Facebook: “Just think, this week Barack Obama adopted Bush’s signature economic policy and ‘refudiated’ Clinton’s signature military policy.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Nehring writes that the quote originated with DrewMTips, not himself. So noted!
THIS WAS ALL PRESCIENTLY PORTRAYED IN AIRPLANE: While TSA Was Groping Grandma… A Businessman With a Gun Slipped on the Plane. “Iranian-American Farid Seif was screened by Transport Security Administration officials at Houston airport in Texas. His hand luggage was also X-rayed before he took off on his international flight. It wasn’t until Mr Seif arrived at his hotel several hours later that he realised that he had forgotten to unpack a loaded snub nose Glock pistol from his luggage before he embarked on his journey.”
UPDATE: Various readers want to know what a “snub nose Glock” would be. Filtered through the press, I assume that’s a “Baby Glock” model 26 or somesuch.
JUST SAY NO TO NANNIES: Americans Don’t Like the Lunch Michelle Obama Packed For Them, Want to Trade It For Your Twizzlers. Plus this: “Most Americans across the demographic board don’t believe that childhood obesity is a national security issue.”
SENATE DREAM ACT VOTE fails. Manchin voted against, interestingly.
UPDATE: Correction: He didn’t vote.
IN THE MAIL: Back to the Moon.
BYRON YORK: DREAM Act Causes Ugly Breakup On Left.
VIRGINIA POSTREL: Still Gripped by the Ideal of the Princess. “Why, in a society without princesses, does this archetype remain so intensely glamorous to girls with all sorts of backgrounds and personalities?” I dunno, but my 4-year-old niece is getting a princess costume for Christmas, because that’s what she’s into these days.
NEW YORK POST: The Collapse Of The Obama Democrats. “What the hell happened? ObamaCare, for one thing.”
FROM RAND SIMBERG, thoughts on a California bankruptcy.
I like the thought in the comments of seeking a California ballot initiative dissolving the state and returning it to territory status. Hey, in California, who knows . . . .?
DOWNSIZING GOVERNMENT is a department-by-department guide to cutting the federal government’s budget.
UP TO 60% OFF on toys for boys.
Plus, kid-test reviews on the Plan Toy City Crane Set and the Power Wheels Barbie Jammin Jeep Wrangler — which, technically, isn’t a toy for boys. But when the Insta-Daughter had one of these at age 3, her male cousins seemed to enjoy it plenty, even though it was pink.
STEPHEN KRUISER: Frosty The Racist.
RANDY BARNETT HAS SOME THOUGHTS on the Columbia taking episode, in response to my New York Post column yesterday.
UPDATE: Reader J.T. Smith emails:
When Harry Reid pulls a trillion dollar pork-fest from the Senate floor because he doesn’t have the votes then we can truly say that we have got the wrong people doing the right thing. From Milton Friedman’s famous quote:
“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or if they try, they will shortly be out of office.”
Harry Reid defeated the right candidate…but it was Harry Reid that was ultimately forced to do the right thing.
Keep up the good work Glenn. You certainly deserve a large share of the credit for this through your Porkbusters exposure and your tireless promotion of the tea party movement
Now, though, to quote another great philosopher, “[we have to] keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done”.
Amen. The people should always have their boot on the politicians’ neck, because the political class is always either at your throat, or your feet. And thanks for the credit, but while I did the promotion, it was a lot of other people who did the actual work, and that’s what really counts.
MORE: Reader Bob Likes emails:
I just returned from an early Saturday meeting and sat down comfortably in front of my computer clicking on your site. Ahh! Like it used to be with coffee and the LA Times.
Then it did occur to me that your deal is like that of my parents before they threw in the towel as dairy farmers. Every day the work has to be done. What is fun for me has to be produced from work by you.
So thank you for your daily efforts. Don’t know how you do it but I am glad you do. And I hope you are getting paid handsomely for it!
I do okay, and it’s still fun. But, yeah, every morning the milking has to be done. So thanks! Nice to be appreciated.
TWO-EDGED SWORD: Stuxnet ‘virus’ could be altered to attack US facilities, report warns. For security purposes, we should probably be building less intelligence into these systems. And maybe all the software should be on ROM chips?