… The $1.5 million deficit is due to a carry-over from last year, when SDSU athletics was $2 million in the hole despite $15 million in subsidies from student fees, state funds and other university support.

… University Diaries wrote about a remarkable drug raid at San Diego State University. The New York Times reported:

A drug ring operating out of San Diego State University was broken up today after a five-month sting operation, resulting in the arrests of nearly 100 people, many of them college students accused of selling drugs to fellow classmates, the Drug Enforcement Administration said.

The ring apparently operated out of three different fraternity houses and distributed a wide variety of drugs to other students, the authorities said. They said the ring included 75 students and 21 non-students.

During a raid of the fraternity houses, investigators said they uncovered more than $100,000 worth of cocaine, ecstasy, prescription drugs and marijuana, and several weapons, including a shotgun and four handguns

Damon Mosler, the chief of the San Diego District Attorney’s Office’s narcotics division, called the operation the largest university-related drug bust in San Diego County history.

… The investigation began in May 2007, when a student died of a drug overdose on the San Diego State campus and police traced the drug back to the ring. The operation intensified when a second student died from a cocaine overdose in a fraternity house in February 2008. As part of the investigation, the authorities said they infiltrated the three campus fraternities and made over 100 drug purchases. They also said that most of the members of the fraternities were either directly involved or were aware that their fraternity brothers were selling drugs…

Two student overdose deaths in two years triggered the investigation and raid.

*************************************

A very similar story is unfolding at Reed College – a very different school, but in its small way just as druggy.

UD posted two years ago about the heroin death of Alejandro Callery Lluch, a Reed freshman.

A few weeks ago, another student, Sam Tepper, also died of a heroin overdose.

Now, as Scott Jaschik writes in USA Today, Reed’s president has been summoned to a federal courthouse, where “the U.S. attorney for Oregon, the chief of the narcotics section of the U.S. attorney’s office, the county district attorney and the county’s deputy district attorney” gave him a dressing down. They talked liability, writes a New York Times reporter:

Law enforcement officials raised an unusual theory of liability. Under a federal law intended to close crack houses, anyone who knowingly operates premises where drugs are used may be subject to serious criminal and civil penalties.

Education lawyers, however, said they were unaware of that law’s ever being contemplated, let alone used, in the context of higher education.

The officials also directed a remarkably literary letter about drugs to the Reed student body:

The illegal drug trade has changed radically since the days when giants like Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder ‘51 roamed campus here.

How many other countries have narcotics chiefs who can cite Ginsberg and Snyder ‘51?

But now undercover agents roam campus. They’ll be sniffing around at an upcoming outdoor festival…

Sometimes, indeed, UD thinks the American university is a piety. One big piety. One big piety-location in a country impious about most other locations.

You can see campus piety most vividly in athletics and in Greek life. These vast, troubled realms share the quality of the sacred that has to do with mysterious and intense fellowship and bonding over a lifetime, with convoluted and exclusive rituals, with the spilling of wine and the spilling of blood.

Even when hazing, player abuse, and other forms of destructive behavior corrupt these realms, universities tend to respond slowly, or not at all.

In justifying inaction or inadequate action, administrators often cite precisely the fervency, the devotion, students and alumni bring to teams and traditions.

****************************************

Campus piety can play out more quietly, but just as treacherously, in the realm of social justice.

To their credit, many universities regard themselves as more aware of and responsive to local and global inequality and violence than the rest of the country. They are rightly proud of their idealistic and engaged students. Yet again and again, these same campuses are exploited by cynics who understand how piety can play out.

From the time I began writing this blog – a time that coincided with the Kerri Dunn story at Pomona – I have chronicled sociopaths who set up shop on American campuses and make a good living until someone looks more closely at what they’re up to.

Here’s the most recent case, reported in the Sacramento Bee.

A former University of California, Davis, employee whom officials have accused of inflating crime statistics may have funneled university money into a private account and paid her mortgage with it, campus police said in a court document released this week.

As part of their embezzlement probe of Jennifer Beeman, investigators also raised the question of whether she had appropriately paid $540,000 to a Bay Area woman and her companies over a seven-year period.

… Police detailed their suspicions regarding Beeman, the former director of the UC Davis Campus Violence Prevention Program [She ran it for sixteen years.], in court papers filed as they sought a search warrant in early December.

… Beeman, 52, first came under scrutiny in September 2008 for overstating her travel expenses.

Further investigation showed that she had asked for reimbursement for airfare to San Diego when her ticket had already been paid for by an outside group. She had also submitted travel mileage for meetings she did not attend, Henoch wrote.

University officials requested an internal audit and placed Beeman on administrative leave.

In February 2009, the audit concluded that Beeman had improperly submitted travel expenses of more than $1,000.

In October, campus officials said she had repaid $1,372 and retired in June.

On the same day, they also revealed Beeman had grossly inflated the number of forcible sexual offenses in three years of mandatory reports to the federal government.

… Administrators also said in October that police were pursuing a second investigation into Beeman’s finances.

[I]nvestigators had learned in early 2009 that Beeman had a “secret” checking account for a campus program called Take Back the Night.

Beeman told a co-worker that she had paid her home mortgage from the account, he wrote.

The account was located in July at the USE Credit Union, with Beeman listed as the only signatory, the police sergeant said in his statement.

Auditors found that nearly $12,000 in university funds had been deposited into the account, and Beeman had withdrawn $5,400 for personal use between January 2002 to March 2009, Henoch wrote.

The auditors also found that Beeman had authorized $25,000 in payments of federal grant funds to a company run by a woman named Granate Sosnoff to produce a campus anti-violence guide that was never completed, he wrote.

In November, Henoch said he discovered that the Campus Violence Prevention Program had paid Sosnoff and various media and marketing firms that she controlled more than $540,000 between May 2000 and April 2007…

Beeman “fabricated a total of 108 sex offense reports over three years.” The Center for Public Integrity writes:

[We interviewed] several dozen victim advocates at campuses across the country. Many said they aimed to facilitate reporting of sexual assault in order to make students feel that they had options in pursuing justice, and to reduce the incidence of rape on campus. Some also said that higher rates of reporting helped them make the point that sexual assault deserved attention and funding.

“Administrators want to know where the problems are,” said Elie Axelroth, head of counseling at California Polytechnic State University, which reported zero forcible sex offenses in 2008. “If we can’t show that sexual assault is a problem, then we’re not going to get the resources. That’s just the practicality of it.”

A local blog provides details on Beeman’s statistics inflation. It first quotes from a 2007 Sacbee article praising Beeman:

For 2005, the most recent crime data available, UC Davis reported 50 sexual offenses on or near the Davis campus and its Sacramento medical center — three times greater than other UC schools.

Jennifer Beeman, who heads the sexual-assault prevention program at UC Davis, said at first glance, the statistics make the campus look like “the rape capital of the world.”

“What that tells me is those students on those (other) campuses don’t know where to go for help,” she said. “If people know where to go, your numbers are going to go up. We just have more people who come forward and more people who get help.”

The blog considers the numbers:

According to the university’s internal review and independent, outside review, UC Davis reported 48, 68 and 69 forcible sex offenses in 2005, 2006 and 2007, respectively. However, based on the two recent reviews, UC Davis has determined that the correct statistics for each of the years are less than half those numbers: 21 reported in 2005, 23 in 2006 and 33 in 2007.

How does this happen? Should those statistics have been a red flag to the university that something was amiss? After all the stats were used to tout the Campus Violence Prevention Program.

The blog writers are duly scandalized that Beeman had sole control over collection and reporting. They further note that “the numbers themselves never seemed to trigger any sort of suspicion. [Administrators] just sort of accepted them. The problem came forward only when a staff member began compiling… statistics for the 2008 calendar year and noticed a discrepancy between the verified total and the reported total.”

The blog quotes from UC Davis:

UC Davis first became aware of a possible problem with the program’s reporting of its caseload of forcible sex offenses in April 2009, when a staff member there began compiling Clery statistics for the 2008 calendar year. The staffer was able to verify a total of 17 forcible sex offenses — significantly fewer than the 57 cases that the program reported in 2007 and the 52 cases it reported in 2006.

When the staff member alerted UC Davis Police to those concerns, the department launched its own review of the program’s case files for 2005, 2006 and 2007. The internal review was able to validate only 10 forcible sex offenses reported exclusively to the program in 2005, only 4 in 2006 and only 16 in 2007. In addition, the police department review could not find in the program’s files the remaining cases reported by the then-director in 2005, 2006 and 2007 as being subject to Clery Act reporting requirements.

Grotesquely disproportionate numbers; only one staff person controlling the numbers, and that person not even bothering to alter the files. And now it turns out she was embezzling too.

***************************************

Most forms of campus piety produce mere embarrassment, as in the Aliza Shvarts thing at Yale. That was aesthetic piety.

But this is political piety, and it blinded a university – for years – to a sociopath in its midst.

Not just blinded. This woman was admired.

****************************************

Beeman’s good press:

This 2009 Chronicle of Higher Education article calls Beeman “meticulous,” and casts her as a model of responsible crime statistic reporting. Safer Campus, citing the Chronicle article, praises Beeman here.

Six million, sixty million, who cares? Kansas taxpayers don’t. As long as they get their football.

Accusing Kansas State of “wanton and malicious misconduct,” lawyers for former football coach Ron Prince asked for more than $6 million in damages Monday and said it was the school, not Prince, who wanted a controversial contract to be confidential.

In their written response to a lawsuit filed against Prince by Kansas State, Prince’s attorneys also indicated that former Kansas State President Jon Wefald may have known about the agreement calling for Prince to be paid $3.2 million in deferred compensation between 2015-2020.

Kansas State filed suit in U.S. District Court in Topeka, Kan., in May seeking to void the agreement, claiming it was made in secret between Prince and former athletic director Bob Krause and without the knowledge of other university officers, including Wefald.

In documents filed Monday, Prince’s attorneys said the university agreed to guarantee a $1.2 million buyout and that the school’s Intercollegiate Athletic Council, headed by Krause, subsequently agreed to fund the $3.2 million in deferred compensation.

Prince, unpopular with players and fans, was fired last November with a 17-20 record, three months after signing a new five-year contract. He was replaced by former coach Bill Snyder…

If you think Wefald didn’t know, you must also think Peter Madoff had no idea what his brother was up to.

So … yet another saga of greed, lying, litigation, expense to students, and expense to the state. What’s the matter with Kansas State University? Same thing that’s the matter with San Diego State, Florida State, and Auburn. They’re jockholes.

*********************

Update: Dave Stone, who’s in a much better position to know, says the taxpayers do care. Click on COMMENTS.

[A] controversial letter, written by [University of California San Diego] Sociology Professor Andrew Scull and endorsed by 22 other professors from various departments, said the state can not support a 10 campus system any longer.   [The newspaper article doesn't say to whom they sent the letter, but let's assume it went to the head of their university. ]

“It’s simply not the case that all campus entities are of equal value to our goals,” reads the letter.

UCSC officials said Monday they would not publicly comment about the letter because it “did not deserve to be dignified,” in any way.

One part of the letter, which gives other solutions to the UC budget issues, reads, “we propose that you urge the President and the Regents to acknowledge that UCSC, UC [Riverside] and UC Merced are insubstantial measure teaching institutions… whose funding levels and budgets should be reorganized to match that reality.”

Insubstantial measure teaching institutions. That’s gotta hurt.

Let me see if I can find the whole letter somewhere…

****************************************

Okay, so here’s a good deal more, from a Merced newspaper:

First, the letter.

Oh: “In substantial measure, teaching institutions…” Okay. That’s not so bad. Must admit the way the bad article up there had it confused me.

**************************************

Monsieur Scull has assembled an impressive array of department chairs. That’s something else the original article doesn’t say; all of the signatures are from chairs, with a good mix of hard and soft sciences. UD figured weenies from philosophy and history and music wouldn’t be there; only cruel cold engineering types… But there they are (English, however, doesn’t show up).

**************************************

Ready, set, populist boilerplate!

These sun-soaked, fish taco-eating egotists want to protect themselves by picking on the weakest links. … Rich folks in the cities love to load their gullets, but they can be downright snobby toward people and places producing anything that can’t be uncorked, decanted and poured. … A selfish and bad idea, rife with snobbery, arrogance and condescension by some pontifical, pretentious profs.

That campus they’ve got down there in tony La Jolla, where some two-bedroom condos — I kid you not — list for $2 million? Shutter the university, sell everything off and start all over in Brawley.

The hubris in Scull’s tone, to say nothing of his conclusions, are outrageous. … How dare Scull and his signatories deem this campus “less than equal?”

SOS says: It’s all crap. It’s crap writing. Why?

Could’ve been written by a machine.

Last one – worst one – first. The work of a woman who’s a grad student at UCSD and teaching at Merced. It’s got it all — out of control emotions, the taking of righteous umbrage … how dare… outrageous… deem… Flounce your skirts back to the nineteenth century, little lady. No one’s listening.

The first excerpt is also a stuttering load of crap, a chaos of working class hero cliches featuring taco-decanting professors.

The middle one is the least problematic. It’s concise and kind of nice, with its strong detail about the cost of condos in La Jolla. But tony? I kid you not? The facts on the ground are all you need. Just go with the condo price and lose the can-you-believe-this shit.

From CBS Sports:

… [College coaches and administrators tend to be] contemptuously dismissive … of everyone outside their industry as a general rule of behavior.

Or maybe you didn’t catch the Columbus Dispatch series on the systematic and deliberate misuse of the Buckley Amendment, which was designed to shield student report cards and transcripts but has now been extended by many schools to include gambling, accepted payoffs, cheating, cashing on an athlete’s notoriety, recruiting violations, academic fraud, rule-breaking boosters and even sexual abuse.

Or maybe you missed the news from so many schools where athletes promised scholarships have them taken away just because the coach recruited someone better.

Or Nick Saban getting a contract extension at Alabama that has no buyout clause, meaning that he can leave whenever he wants without any penalty whatsoever. Or San Diego State trying to figure out how to stiff the fired Chuck Long out of money they contractually owe him.

Ahh, the inspiration value of commitment … just makes you swell up with pride, doesn’t it?

This is all part and parcel of the wonderful world of college football, where emperors, dictators and, yes, even the Russian Presidium marvel at the powers granted to any even moderately successful program. The influence the industry wields without any mind to sensible oversight, or even any oversight at all, is breath-taking.

… [This is college] athletics’ essential stance to the outside world — one hand outstretched to hold the cash, one hand held aloft with the middle finger prominent. …

…at Florida State. It’s outed FSU as a dolt-dominated sports factory whose president is a madman.

Now that the state of Florida is aware of this, I’m sure we can expect serious changes.

Florida State is brainless.

*************
UPDATE: Sherman Dorn sends UD this marvelous Daniel Ruth column from the St. Petersburg Times.

Ruth, however, fails to mention Professor Dale Olsen, asshole supreme.

… is easy to recognize, a little more difficult to explain. But in this piece about the suicide of volleyball player Mike Whitmarsh, you can see some of the elements of appealing writing. In particular, note its modesty, honesty, and directness.

Mike Whitmarsh was funny and self-deprecating and among the most talented and most appealing athletes I’ve covered in the last 30 years.

He was ridiculously gifted, a great-looking guy who had women draped all over him, a multi-sport athlete who had the world at his feet.

I got to know him during the U.S. trials that preceded the first beach volleyball competition in the Olympics. The trials were in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in 1996, leading up to the Atlanta Olympics where Whitmarsh and teammate Mike Dodd would win the silver medal.

In beach volleyball, the athletes are from California except where noted, as they like to say. Whitmarsh and Dodd were the classics. Both had been basketball players at San Diego State (Dodd’s shooting guard was Tony Gwynn), and Whitmarsh had been drafted by the Trail Blazers (they kept Jerome Kersey instead) and he played three years in Germany. He came back, got a tryout with the Timberwolves and swapped collisions with the big boys before becoming Minnesota’s last cut. He treasured a picture of himself defending Magic Johnson in the paint during that exhibition season. [Pause for a moment and note two things: One, note what's missing. I was devastated to read of the tragic... No big words, and no wallowing in your own feelings. And two: Note how easily this writer packs each sentence with clauses instead of giving you - the way a lot sports writers do - runty little sentences with one subject and one object and goodbye. This is a fluent, relaxed writer.]

Whitmarsh, all 6-foot-7 of him, drifted quite naturally into beach volleyball and he was a star for more than a decade. He slammed over the top while Dodd dug the ball out of the sand and the two of them were a spectacular team for quite a while.

I can’t say I really knew Whitmarsh, but I can say that I envied him. He appeared to have it all, and that’s a good reminder right now that we never really know. [Modesty, honesty. And he ends this short paragraph appropriately: We just don't know. He doesn't go from there to pontification about the Meaning of this, because he doesn't have any idea what it means. Except that we understand very little about one another.]

Whitmarsh, at 46, committed suicide this week, inhaling carbon monoxide in the garage of a friend. He left behind a wife and two daughters.

It would be too easy to say that Whitmarsh, who retired five years ago from the professional volleyball tour, couldn’t adjust to the second act of his life. Maybe it is far more complicated than that. Maybe not.

But Mike Whitmarsh, one of the greatest U.S. athletes of the last 20 years — even if you never heard of him — is dead by his own hands. That makes no sense.

Figuring that someone up there at the podium, someone who looks like they have it all, and is definitely happier in his or her life… that makes no sense, either.

Because you can’t know. The most talented and most appealing among us can end up in a garage with an exhaust pipe. [Direct.  No sugar-coating.] Explain that. I can’t.

There’s a flat mode of address throughout this piece that manages to convey the writer’s shock and distress in an immediate and entirely believable way. It’s as if in the very act of writing he’s both trying to convince himself this horror really did occur, and to fit it into a world that makes some sort of sense.

It’s difficult to attain the self-control that enables you to write about mysteries and let them be mysteries. This writer has that ability.

… and the school system won’t chuck him, you have to fight.

Eventually, the parents of students humiliated every day by continued association with a diploma mill graduate will win the fight. But given corruption and inertia in their state, it’s taking a long time.

They’re doing what they have to do. They’re going after absolutely everything they can. And, again, they’ll win. He’ll be chucked. But it’s Jersey, and it’ll take time.

Some residents of towns comprising the Freehold Regional High School District oppose funding Superintendent H. James Wasser’s February trip to California for a national conference and Wasser’s use of a district-funded sport-utility vehicle for official business.

They say Wasser has already taken more than his fair share of job perks.

Residents cite Wasser’s apparent refusal to repay district money that funded his tuition at a so-called diploma-mill, Breyer State University, and bumped his salary an additional $2,500 a year for the doctorate obtained there. Wasser stopped receiving the $2,500 increase after relinquishing his doctoral title in September, but has not returned, and will not be asked to return, the raise prior to that date, board attorney Lawrence S. Schwartz said.

Last Monday, the Board of Education approved a $2,284 expenditure to send Wasser to San Francisco for an American Association of School Administrators national conference, despite calls to vote it down during the meeting at Manalapan High School.

Helen Hochberg of Marlboro recommended that the board not approve the trip’s funding, but Schwartz said that Wasser has a right to these district funds.

Hochberg quoted the AASA’s code of ethics posted on its Web site that she said violated Wasser’s terms of membership: “The educational leader . . . accepts academic degrees or professional certification only from accredited institutions.”

Barry Hochberg, Helen’s husband, said he has e-mailed the AASA to inform them of the superintendent’s degree debacle and apparent violation of their code of ethics.

Hochberg said he asked the organization to inform him whether it will allow Wasser to attend the conference.

The AASA will not be able to comment until a later date, a representative said.

In September, Wasser responded to criticism regarding a similar trip by stating that his contract entitles him to two national conferences a year paid for by the district. The board approved that trip to San Diego, but, weeks later the National School Boards Association revoked his invitation to speak at its 2009 conference. The controversy over Breyer State diplomas would distract from his presentation, the NSBA explained.

In previous school years, trips to national conferences were not questioned, but Wasser is facing new scrutiny.

“Nobody was aware of their tax dollars being squandered for bogus degrees,” said district critic James Sage of Marlboro, during a telephone interview. “Now people are putting this district, this administration, under the microscope.”

Barry Hochberg also criticized the district’s leasing of a 2008 Buick Enclave for superintendent business.

While Wasser’s contract requires a vehicle to be provided for him for official business, Hochberg said, the contract does not state what sort of car that must be.

He asked the board to “find a more cost-efficient vehicle.”

Below is an article in the Contra Costa Times about which UD blogged years ago here (scroll down to post titled Gandhian Ethics). Article is no longer available.

The article is by Matt Krupnick:

Fewer than half of UC Berkeley faculty members and other employees have completed a required ethics course that some professors say is irrelevant.

All 160,000 University of California employees were told last year to complete the online course after the institution was stung by newspaper accounts of a series of administrative missteps. Most managers, deans and other administrators statewide completed the training by January, but most UC Berkeley professors and other employees have not.

Berkeley employees must finish the course by Friday, but less than 40 percent of the faculty and about 44 percent of the remaining staff had completed the training by last week, administrators said. It was not clear how the Berkeley numbers compared to other campuses.

UC Berkeley faculty and administrative leaders said they had received several complaints about the ethics course. Journalism professor Susan Rasky said she finished about two-thirds of the training before giving up.

“If they really cared about this, they wouldn’t be doing it this way,” she said. “It just seems so Mickey Mouse, so simple-minded.”

The 15- to 30-minute course takes employees through a series of scenarios in which a business manager named Edna must decide how to respond to ethics questions.

“In each of the following scenarios, do your best to help Edna choose the path toward ethical fitness,” the program tells users.

For example, Edna must decide how to address an employee, Thuvan, who appears to be using her position to gain perks at luxury hotels. Another employee spends too much time fixing his old cars, and a department manager is spending university money on alcohol.

University leaders could not say what they would do — if anything — about employees who declined to finish the course. Although the test is mandatory, punishments have not been discussed, said Paul Schwartz, a spokesman for the 10-campus UC system.

“Completing the training is a priority, and it will be enforced if need be,” he said. “We’re hoping we don’t have to police this.”

Richard Blum, the board’s chairman, was not prepared Wednesday to say how the university should react.

“I’ll have to see what the attorneys say and what our options are,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it.”

The regents are scheduled to discuss the issue today and have the ultimate responsibility for regulating the policy.

Without a directive from systemwide leaders, campus administrators can do little else than remind employees about their responsibilities, said Berkeley’s chief academic officer, Provost George Breslauer, who completed the ethics course in November. The training has little relevance to a professor’s job, he said.

“They’re galled, and I can understand that gall,” Breslauer said. “The vast majority of people here, especially the faculty, probably cannot relate to the situations in the briefing. I didn’t feel galled, but I did feel cynical.”

Opposition to the quiz on other campuses did not appear to be widespread. At UC San Diego, faculty leaders said they had not received the same flood of complaints as had their Berkeley counterparts.

“A number of people have questioned it, but it hasn’t been as burdensome as some online training in the past,” said Henry Powell, a UC San Diego neuroscience professor who leads the campus Academic Senate. “These trainings are very valuable because they bring out certain issues.”

Online courses have become common tools for university leaders. State law required all employees to take a sexual-harassment quiz — which penalized employees who finished it too quickly — and UC officials this week launched conflict-of-interest training for all researchers.

For many employees, the courses are too time-consuming and repeat rules that people already understand, Rasky said.

“This was like a quiz you take when you go to traffic school and the answers are obvious,” she said.

Still, she said, “I certainly hope I don’t end up on someone’s bad faculty list.”

…at a disgracefully bad university with a majorly losing football team (“Wyoming …[has] lost to Air Force, BYU, Bowling Green, New Mexico, Utah and TCU this season by a combined 197 points…. [It's the] lowest-scoring team in major NCAA Division I football.”) makes the case for massive increases in athletics spending.

The editorial board of the Casper Star-Tribune is with the University of Wyoming all the way. After all:

UW football brings people from throughout the state together. Even people diametrically opposed on all other issues can agree on their support for the Cowboys.

What else is a university for? It’s like a Celine Dion concert — we can all agree we love her and will come out for her, however diametrically opposed we may be on other issues.

For instance, we might have different views from this editorial board about how logic operates. For this group of writers, the Cowboys enjoy both enormous popular support, and draw… uh…. let’s see… They draw this many fans to their games:

Drawing fewer than 12,000 people for the San Diego State contest shows that for the time being, the Cowboys’ losing record has caused interest in the program to wane.

UD knows Wyoming has a small population, but she’s thinking it’s a lot more than 12,000. And again, see, for her, if you state in sentence #1 that a team brings everyone together, and you state in sentence #2 that a team brings 12,000 people together, that doesn’t make sense. But it’s the kind of thinking you get in a state whose flagship university is terrible.

SDSU spokesman Mike May said an academic official who could comment on the rates was not available yesterday.

Yes we’re sorry! That particular academic official was right here a minute ago, and I know he’s eager to talk to you about graduation rates on our football team. Come back tomorrow!

California is the nerve center of world-class higher education in the U.S., according to a new survey from a British trade publication for academics.

Nine California campuses made the top 200 in rankings of world universities by London-based Times Higher Education and QS Quacquarelli Symonds, an independent research firm. That’s twice as many as France managed countrywide, according to the study. [And an incredibly impressive result. Of course, UD's been reading about universities for years, and she's not surprised. California's always done really well by its universities. Yes, I know, it's not been perfect. But look how it does on a comparative world scale... And speaking of comparative -- Compare California's sunny coastal wealthy Other, Florida. Because not enough people in Florida care about higher education, its university system is very weak. Only one Florida school, the University of Florida, appears on the list. From a recent St. Petersburg Times opinion piece: "A Chronicle of Higher Education study found that Florida, while among the largest states, ranks 44 out of 50 for state appropriations. Two years ago, Florida ranked No. 27." ]

Among the high scorers were Caltech (No. 5), Stanford University (No. 17) and UCLA (No. 30). The survey was one in a plethora of college rankings from various organizations that only sometimes agree.

But could a touch of Anglo bias have been at work in the new rankings? Caltech professor R. Preston McAfee approved of his own institution’s placement but was dubious of the 3-4 finish (behind Harvard and Yale) awarded to Oxford and Cambridge universities.

“None of the schools in the UK are better than Stanford or U of Chicago,” he said in an e-mail. “I don’t think Oxbridge makes the top 10 in the last 50 years.” [Ouch.]

McAfee also cast aside the survey’s finding that UCLA outpolled UC Berkeley, which came in at No. 36.

“Oxford, Cambridge and the California universities all ranked very well for the same reasons -– they received high scores across all our categories,” said Ann Mroz, editor of Times Higher Education magazine.

“Berkeley is better than UCLA in most fields,” McAfee said.

“Berkeley scored lower in our table because of its low staff-student ratio,” Mroz responded.

The other highly ranked California campuses were UC San Diego (No. 58), UC Davis (No. 89), UC Santa Barbara (No. 98), USC (No. 102) and UC Irvine (No. 132).

Times Higher Education, which recently spun off from the Times of London newspaper, said the rankings were based on peer academic reviews, recruiter reviews, international faculty ratios, international student ratios, student faculty ratios and citations to published work by faculty.

People have begun responding to the San Diego State drug bust.

From the comment thread at the blog Hit and Run:

… It just so happens that I’m a graduate from SDSU(2004), and the #1 featured fraternity in the news is my chapter of my fraternity. [H]appened to be wearing one of our t-shirts to grad school today. I know a [handful] of these guys and feel for them and their troubles.

It’s maddening for me because, despite my feelings about the drug war, I personally put many hours of work into getting the drug element out of the house to avoid the liability for the organization. The greek system comes with a large social network which attracts drug dealers and makes drug dealing more profitable/attractive to those considering. It’s very hard to keep clean.

Reason Magazine