Higher Education

[Haggis@wk]

A sign of over-inflated prosecutorial budgets: Prosecution for truancy-related forgery.

Shannon Anderson 27, along with her husband, William Anderson, were arrested March 8 and March 9, respectively, on felony warrants charging them with forging a doctor’s note to excuse their third-grade son from school.

Really? Prosecutors have time for this kind of stuff? Apparently, yes:

A Corning woman is out on bail today, one day after she was arrested on a warrant charging eight felony counts of truancy-related forgery.

“This is a sad, sad case for the little kids who should have been in school,” Tehama County District Attorney Gregg Cohen said in a statement.

Kari Shannon Brandt, 38, was booked into the Tehama County Jail on Tuesday on six counts of preparing false documentary evidence and two counts of offering false evidence in the course of an investigation, Cohen said. . . . Prosecutors accuse Brandt of forging signatures and creating doctors’ notes on 12 occasions between December 2009 and April. The reported notes were written for three of Brandt’s children, ages 6, 7 and 8, in a reported effort to excuse them from West Street Elementary School in Corning, Cohen said.

This is the prosecutorial equivalent of the apocryphal Vietnam ‘we had to destroy the village in order to save it’ incident OT, a myth by the way). In this case he’s burning down the family. Apparently this idiot thinks the best thing he can do for these kids is give their parents felony convictions. I’m sure that will improve their chances of supporting them through college immeasurably.

[piqaboo]

his real goal is to prevent the school from getting money for the days those kids missed.
Any absence other than medical goes unpaid for the school.
he's a twit.

[Schmeelkie]

That's just annoying. I doubt I could come up with doctor's notes for all my kids absences. If they have a cold with a fever, I keep them home. If there stuff coming out either end that shouldn't, I keep them home. Don't need to see a doctor to know that rest, fluids, etc will do their job - kid is better off staying home, not being dragged to a doctor's office. Only do that for possible ear infections and the occaisional rash. Sheesh...

[Shapley]

I rarely send my son to the doctor if he has a common ailment. But the school doesn't want him there if he has a fever or other symptoms of a possibly-contagious condition. This was particularly true during the Swine-Flu scare. All that was needed was a note from the parent, not from a physician.

I thought they were students, not inmates...

[monkeymd2b]

Thanks for keeping your kids with their common colds away from me! I personally find it amusing that the babies/toddlers are not allowed to go to their daycare programs when they get sick when 9 times out of 10, they probably got their colds from the very same daycare in the first place! Or the panic over "pink eye." Almost all schools won't let the kids back with this one symptom when they don't seem to care that other kids are there with their sniffles and coughing. Most pink eye cases are viral and just another symptom of a cold but the schools (and parents) freak out. But I get it...it can be hard at first to differentiate viral vs bacterial vs allergic conjunctivitis and since the Willamette Valley is full of allergens, it's a matter of time to figure out what is going on. Oh well, I guess it's nice for me to have easy office visits amongst the people with complicated medical and psychosocial issues. Swine flu craziness was kind of funny at my office. Someone calls in and says they think they have the flu and we made them wear a mask and quarantined them to 2 exam rooms yet someone else calls in and says they think they have bronchitis and they sit in the waiting room coughing away...a few of those actually seemed more likely to have the flu than the ones we sequestered. And then all the people who needed notes from their doctors to go to work saying they didn't have the flu. Actually had to do that for adults more than the kids. Thankfully I made it through untouched.

[Schmeelkie]

monkey - long time, no hear! How's the doctoring going? Glad you missed the flu. My daycare will send you home for pink eye, but let you come in with sniffles and coughs. At least my kids tend to run around as energetic as usual even when they're sick, unless they have a fever, so I don't feel so bad about sending them to daycare/school. I only worry when their activity level crashes. btw, our doctor's office just had you put on a mask if you were coughing in the winter...no matter why you were in...

[monkeymd2b]

Doctoring is going fine...thanks to one of our part time providers being out on maternity leave and another full timer going to part time, I've been quite busy. Certainly nice for my bank account and paying off those loans! Yesterday I had a show down with a drug seeker which went better than I feared. For some reason he thought that if I said no the day before for a refill and he waited 12 hrs and saw me in person, I would change my mind....um the answer is still no buddy. Delivered a few babies this past month so that was fun...actually missed the last one since she went super fast. She was stuck at 4 cm then the next call I get is she's complete with a bulging bag and since it takes me 20 min to get to the hospital, I missed it. Another OB group keeps a doc on site since they have a large practice so that doc on call was grabbed to do the delivery. The nurses are able to do these simple quick deliveries (all you have to really do for those moms is keep the baby from falling off the delivery table) but then they have to do all this extra paperwork about why a doc wasn't there so they usually just grab any doc or midwife that happens to be there to avoid that. The nurses I worked with in residency said the paperwork is annoying so they much prefer having a stand in doc or midwife...even when that doc was just an intern and the nurses had to coach him through the process! This one other delivery that went too fast for me to get there, the dad says, "thank god the other doctor was at the hospital!" And I look over and see the nurse roll her eyes. LOL! So I told the dad that the nurses can actually do these deliveries too and their baby would have been just as safe, which is true. I think I probably got some of my better pointers from the nurses than my supervising docs.
As for the stupid policy my clinic had this flu season, I tried to tell them that it was incredibly stupid to do it the way we did but for some reason they felt their education in office management trumped my medical education when it came to preventing spread of disease. Oh well... I guess that's one way to drum up more business - make the healthy ones sick. Last time I joked about that one though I was the one who got sick.
Other than that, let's see...got married in September, moved to a new home closer to work in January (the commute and the stupid slow drivers were making me mad), and now going to buy a new refrigerator so the appliances all match in color. We have been trying to sell the house my parents bought in Milwaukie (SE Portland, OR) but the market sucks so now we're going to rent it out and figure that since the renters would need to provide their own washer/dryer, we would put the fridge back in. I was told by a friend who rents that usually when her family rented a house, they didn't have fridges but that doesn't seem nice to me. Okay, and I'm trying to justify buying a new fridge. I would also love to buy a new washer and dryer but I don't have that much extra cash laying around...yet! Since my husband and I don't really want to deal with the hassle of finding renters and managing the property, we now need to find a property management group that doesn't take too big of a percentage.

Yep, keeping busy! Our current task is weeding...blech. I don't mind yanking up ivy because once you get a good hold of the root, the whole thing pulls up pretty easily. It's those annoying individual small ones that take forever and seem to have a stronger hold on the ground. Today though we're going to have some fun and go paint pottery. Groupon had a 50% coupon deal so we grabbed that one. Most of their deals don't appeal to us but they certainly have good ones

[Haggis@wk]

The Democrats are forever challenging Republicans to explain where they would cut spending, as though that were a hopeless conundrum. It seems obvious to me that education is one area where we could cut spending at all levels (local, state and federal) without losing anything. In fact, if education budgets were cut, it might force school districts , educators and parents to re-think priorities in a manner that would actually improve results.

It is no secret that education in America has lagged, by international standards, for quite a few years. The liberals' answer is always the same: spend more money. I would argue that we have carried out a laboratory experiment, and have conclusively proved that more money is not the cure for whatever ails the education system. This chart, just produced by the Cato Institute, makes the point with beautiful simplicity:

[piqaboo]

I expect a fair bit of that increase is facilities staff.
There are schools that will not allow parent volunteers to do maintenance and repairs,
and the janitors have a kick-a$$ union.
Another fair bit of the cost may be property taxes on the schools. I dont know how that works.

Between OT and I, we're at Altoid's school a lot, and we're not seeing obvious waste,
except in the perennial (sp?) new editions of books bs.

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

A fair bit of that "cost of education" is the cost of the state and federal mandatory NCLB and similar tests, and the bureaucracy and industry that have built up for the sole purpose of providing, administering, scoring, reporting, and analyzing the tests and the resultant data. This adds no learning to any child.

Another part of the costs would be the remediation costs for kids that are not learning well. In the current mental climate, the kids expect the teachers to make them learn and if the kid doesn't do the homework or take lecture notes in class or study for the tests, it's the teacher's fault that the kid is not learning. Insane.

Oh, and by the way, all the kids are still required to be constantly improving, and all above average.

[Shapley]

There does not appear to be any significant shift in the direction of graphs following the implementation of NCLB. It would appear that NCLB merely maintained an existing upward climb. If anything, the employment chart seems to show a slight reduction in the rate of climb when compared to the years preceeding NCLB. Overall, however, it appears NCLB was just a different name for a continuation of what we had before: more money spent, more administrators hired, and no significant improvement in learning.

[Haggis@wk]

Is The College Debt Bubble Ready To Explode?

In some respects, the student loan crisis looks remarkably like the subprime mortgage crisis. First, outstanding student loan debt has ballooned: It grew roughly four-fold in the last decade to $833 billion as of June — surpassing outstanding credit card debt for the first time.

Secondly, defaults have soared amid the difficult job market. In 2008, the most recent year for which data are available, nearly 3.4 million borrowers began repayment, and more than 238,000 defaulted on their loans. The number of loans that went into forbearance or deferment (when borrowers receive temporary relief from payments) rose to 22 percent in 2007, from 10 percent a decade earlier, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Over a 15-year period, default rates range from 20 percent for federal loans to 40 percent on loans to students who attend for-profit schools, The Chronicle found.

Just as lenders offered easy no-money-down mortgages to unqualified borrowers, private student loan firms offered instant online approval for up to 100 percent of college costs to students. . . . While the housing collapse’s impact was wide-ranging — wreaking havoc on a multitude of industries and market participants — the primary losers in this debacle are the borrowers. Lenders can’t repossess a college degree, and changes to the bankruptcy law in 1984 and 2005 mean borrowers can’t charge off their obligations the way they can shed credit-card, mortgage or even gambling debt when they file for bankruptcy.

A relative with the same name as mine defaulted on his school loan years ago and dunning calls and letters have become a fact of life for me, unfortunately. He no longer has a fixed address and lives below the radar. I couldn't find him today if I wanted (and I don't) I inform the current company seeking repayment of the loan that my social security number ends in a different four numbers than his and they leave me alone until they re-sell the debt to another company and the calls start all over. The calls cycle began in 2004 about once or twice every six months or so. It's interesting (in a painful way) to contrast the styles of calls. Some are professional and straight forward and others, particularly one company in New Jersey, are threatening. The company in New Jersey has apparently re-bought this debt at least twice because I've gotten calls from them about two years apart. Unlike other debt you can’t get rid of it through bankruptcy so I expect I’ll be getting these calls for the rest of my life.

[Shapley]

Just as in the housing market, it appears the value of the product isnt' worth the price being paid. As the economy continues to 'correct' itself, I think wages will hold relatively flat, such that college graduates are not going to making the kind of money they expect to see as a return on their investment. The long term result will be that many of the more-expensive colleges may begin to see a decline in enrollment. I think parents will begin to push their children into field with a proven return on the money - such as engineering and technical fields and medicine, while steering them to lower-cost educational facilities - community colleges and smaller, more cost-conscious schools.

I think that, at some point, students (and their parents) are going to re-evaluate the idea of assuming massive levels of debt so they can learn nothing more then student activism and environmental claptrap. The result could be a very good thing - painful, yes, but good.

[dai bread]

Do American students go overseas to avoid repaying their loans? Some of ours do. They generally fail, unless they live abroad permanently. Our tax dept. now has an arrangement with the Australian tax dept. to collect loans from ex-students who flee to Australia. Many of our graduates go there anyway, fleeing or not.

[Schmeelkie]

I went to an 'expensive' college, but only because it was mostly paid by scholarships, not loans. I got out of 4 years of college with 'only' $13,000 in debt (less than a years total cost) - paid off within the 10 years (after being able to defer while in grad school). Husband's parents were able to cover what was left after scholarships for undergrad, but stacked up more than $30,000 in debt for grad school. I wouldn't have gone to grad school if I didn't get into a program that paid for itself and paid me to go there. I was living on like $12,000/year for 5 years, but walked out without any additional student loans.

Smart kids can go to an expensive school as the scholarships deals are good. My parents were in that sweet spot for sending kids to college - smart kids, very little cash/assets lying around, low income which = lots of scholarship money. I know I dropped at least one school I got accepted to because it's financial aid package wasn't nearly as good at the others. But a good friend of mine ended up with more debt than she really wanted - wanted the private not public school, but her parents made 'too much' to get better financial aid. Which was annoying, as, if they blew what they had on her, they wouldn't have anything to send younger sibs to college... financial aid folks (at least 20 yrs ago) didn't take into account that you might have younger sibs....

And I'm proud to say that even after taking a hit on their endowment, my alma mater is still doing needs-blind admission! As I might have been turned away if they had been more concerned about their pocketbook than caliber of student, I appreciate this and know what a good thing it is. Diversity is about more than color of your skin....

[Haggis@wk]

The Great College Degree Scam.

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) has unearthed what I think is the single most scandalous statistic in higher education. It reveals many current problems and ones that will grow enormously as policymakers mindlessly push enrollment expansion amidst what must become greater public-sector resource limits.

Here it is: approximately 60 percent of the increase in the number of college graduates from 1992 to 2008 worked in jobs that the BLS considers relatively low skilled—occupations where many participants have only high school diplomas and often even less. Only a minority of the increment in our nation’s stock of college graduates is filling jobs historically considered as requiring a bachelor’s degree or more.

I spent 20 yeas getting a degree by attending night school at at least four colleges off campus extension services. I don't think my degree ever got me a job after I retired from the USAF; it was just a prerequisite

[dai bread]

Managers like hiring degree-qualified people. It makes them feel superior when they boss those people around.

I have seen an advertisment for someone to mow council lawns: "A degree in Horticulture would be an advantage."

[Shapley]

The place my wife used to work put a lot of emphasis on college degrees and continuing education. But the pay was so low that most people, if they obtained a degree, went elsewhere. The only means they had of keeping qualified people was to hire 'underqualified' people (i.e., no degree) and then keep them underqualified.

[Haggis@wk]

Good news: Study confirms that college is pretty much a total waste of time

You don’t even need to read the article; just follow the link and check out the graph in the left-hand sidebar.

What’s tuition up to these days at private universities, parents? About $30-35,000?

Nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates show almost no gains in learning in their first two years of college, in large part because colleges don’t make academics a priority, a new report shows.

Instructors tend to be more focused on their own faculty research than teaching younger students, who in turn are more tuned in to their social lives, according to the report, based on a book titled Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. Findings are based on transcripts and surveys of more than 3,000 full-time traditional-age students on 29 campuses nationwide, along with their results on the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardized test that gauges students’ critical thinking, analytic reasoning and writing skills.

After two years in college, 45% of students showed no significant gains in learning; after four years, 36% showed little change.

Students also spent 50% less time studying compared with students a few decades ago, the research shows.

But GPA is 3.2; grade creep much?

[Shapley]

Yet, employers still place a lot of emphasis on having that sheepskin on the wall...