Ah. With each clause, UD’s smile widens.
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Very good brief backgrounder here.
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The next big change, they say, came in 2006, when Congress passed legislation backed by the Bush administration that erased a requirement that colleges deliver at least half their courses on a campus.
The top regulator on higher education at the Education Department during this time was Sally Stroup, now general counsel for the for-profit’s chief lobbying arm, the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities.
“That’s when these guys took off,” said Tom Harkin, a former Democratic senator from Iowa who led a 2012 investigation into the for-profit industry. He said moving everything online made it easier for private investors to snap up failing schools and hide from regulators. Meanwhile, the schools invested heavily in lobbyists and making political connections that guaranteed access to federal student aid would be protected, he said.
“These schools went out and ran wild with government money,” Harkin said.
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A fed’ral official named Stroup
Did the ol’ gov-to-biz loop de loop:
She made our schools trash
And sucked in the cash
But now it is time to regroup.
A mid-summer reminder from UD that research fraud – whopping big research fraud – is a year-round phenom at American universities. Two representative cases that have recently hit (re-hit; these stories have been kicking around for years) the news come from med and business schools, the two great incubators of research fraud. (Engineering schools do financial fraud, as in professors taking grant money and setting up secret businesses into which they divert said grant money.) (And let’s not forget psychology and sociology – two departments with extremely impressive histories of fraud, if not as impressive as med and biz schools, and with less capacity to inflict serious damage on humanity.)
UD reported on Bentley University’s James Hunton this time last year; he’d been fired from Bentley back in 2012, when the school managed to overcome Hunton’s total refusal to cooperate with their investigation of one made-up research paper (the number of such papers has risen to 31) to can his ass. (Subject of Hunton’s research: fraud.)
The Washington Post provides an update:
One of the nation’s premier academic journals of accounting has retracted 25 articles co-authored by a once-renowned professor who specialized in corporate ethics but was later accused of “fabricating” data.
The American Association of Accounting, which publishes the Accounting Review, issued the retractions last week based on a “pattern of misconduct” by James E. Hunton, who resigned from his position at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., a business school with nearly 6,000 graduate and undergraduate students.
The hunt’s on for Hunton:
Hunton has made no public comment on the allegations against him. Neither The Post nor Retraction Watch has been able to locate him now or last year when The Post, the Boston Globe and other news outlets wrote about the results of Bentley’s investigation of Hunton.
For a guy like Hunton, who had the balls to make up vast swathes of accounting firm employees across the globe, to pretend to interview them, to create copious data about them, and to write it all up in probably hundreds of academic papers, the business of dropping out and changing his identity was probably a cinch. No doubt he’s living in Jamaica, having dyed his hair red, had facial surgery, and stolen the identity of some poor student he had twenty years ago. You ain’t gonna find Hunton.
Dong-Pyou Han not so much.
Dong-Pyou Han pleaded guilty in February to faking results in AIDS-vaccine experiments. Prosecutors say his actions led federal administrators to award an extra $7 million to $20 million in grants for the research, and they want him to serve prison time for his actions… [F]ederal research administrators were “flabbergasted” by the supposed success of [Han’s] experimental vaccine, which led them to increase the project’s financing. [Han’s fraud led his] research team to focus on the specific vaccine, when they could have been looking into more promising areas.
Faking results in the great pandemic of our time. Stand-up guy.
Anyway. Terrific blogs like Retraction Watch couldn’t exist without the steady stream of research fraud coming not just from the States, of course, but from all over the world.
The problem some have with all of the money coming in through Oregon athletics is every dime of it is spent on athletics.
“They have $98 million in revenue and, strangely, exactly $98 million in expenses,” [a former University of Oregon business school dean] explained. “If you look back year after year, you will find that revenue and expenses match up almost to a penny. … When they get extra TV revenue, they do what they just did in February. They go to the president and the Board of Trustees and the coaches and the athletic director get raises, so expenses go up.”
There is something to be said for a football program that is capable of being self-sufficient in its operations, and it is far better than operating in the red on an annual basis. But how much should Oregon’s athletics department be contributing to the academic side of things? There may be no perfect answer to this question.
1.) My fraternity brothers were preparing for finals at the University of Florida…
University of Florida! Are you kidding me? That university was just ranked number one in America for most athletes arrested!… Oh whoops. Let me concentrate on the matter at hand. Fraternities. Ok. Frat boys studying for finals…? Uh… ok….
2.)
when word echoed throughout Zeta Beta Tau that we were being blamed for unthinkable behavior: harassing combat-wounded veterans.
Linda Cope, the founder of the Warrior Beach Retreat, a local charity in Panama City Beach, appeared on Fox News and other media outlets alleging that we spit on veterans and urinated on the American flag.
Panama City Beach? Are you kidding me? The rankest town in America, where three men raped an unconscious woman on the beach midday and no one did a thing… It was only discovered when the police chief reviewed video in connection with a slew of other crimes. … But ahem. Let me once again concentrate on the matter at hand. Spring break, unspeakable acts…
3.)
We went from being anonymous college students to being the most hated fraternity in America over allegations that, to us, came completely out of left field.
Completely? Says here (see response from the national chapter at the bottom of the page) that “What was not pointed out was that at the time these events occurred, the chapter was already on probation imposed by the University of Florida.”
4.)
Many of us have family members who have proudly served in the military. My grandfather fought during D-Day. I have a photograph of my grandfather sitting on the wing of a captured German fighter plane.
The focal point of our chapter house’s living room was an American flag that we proudly displayed.
That’s all great. Great. But, you know, the male bonding that you love so much … too much… “Witnessing the tears and anguish of my brothers at the moment school officials clarified that our chapter had been officially closed was indescribably painful… [Nothing can adequately convey] the heartbreak and devastation that I and my fraternity brothers feel over losing an organization that we loved so dearly. Many of my brothers feel they have lost their collegiate identity.” … plus alcohol, can make you forget how much you love Old Glory…
5.)
Due process was conveniently cast aside to mollify an angry public that deemed the allegations indisputably factual in light of the stereotypical fraternity culture portrayed in the media.
Yes, it looks as though your fraternity didn’t behave as outrageously as initial reports suggested. Maybe you’re right to be upset that the resounding response from America to this clarification of your Panama City Beach behavior is So fucking what. But you go to the University of Florida, you’re a member of a fraternity already on probation, and your guys were part of ongoing, high-profile Panama City Beach foulness. Sorry.
6.)
With no means to defend ourselves, we had no choice but to watch our execution in the court of public opinion.
Soyez tranquille! Guns are on their way. Once you’re fully weaponized, no one will be able to shut you down.
[P]sychoanalyst Carl Sword recounted a conversation with [one of England’s top neurosurgeons, who said], “I have no compassion for those whom I operate on…. In the theater I am reborn: as a cold, heartless machine, totally at one with scalpel, drill and saw. When you’re cutting loose and cheating death high above the snowline of the brain, feelings aren’t fit for purpose. Emotion is entropy, and seriously bad for business. I’ve hunted it down to extinction over the years.”
This post’s title?
Here.
The wounded surgeon plies the steel
That questions the distempered part;
Beneath the bleeding hands we feel
The sharp compassion of the healer’s art
Resolving the enigma of the fever chart.
They go to these things, they pack their colons full of poorly-prepared meat products, they get cripplingly drunk, they slur along with the chorus of some moronic alcohol anthem, they get into their minivans and pick-ups, they drive home arguing the whole way and they hit a tree five blocks from their house and die instantly.
Straight out of Flannery O’Connor.
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But hey you can’t argue with this local commenter’s math.
If 53000 people attended and 300 were ejected that is less than 1% of the attendees. Which means 99% of the crowd behaved, were not drunk, were not making fools of themselves. Where is that story?
I love to look at your garden. It’s so … blissful.
A young woman said this to me yesterday. She was walking her dog by my house.
I was standing on my toes, trimming the ragged top of a … what? I don’t know. I’m bad on identification. A honeysuckle tree?
The loppers cut blindly; I couldn’t see up there. Every few moments I stood back to see whether I’d gotten the tallest shoots.
Over the years I’ve sculpted this unexciting bush/tree at the edge of my front lawn. It anchors one end of my split rail fence. I’ve flattened the top and let the sides spread, and it’s become a dense respectable looking something.
Why is my garden blissful? Because I do think she found the right word. The other word a lot of people use is peaceful.
Well, it’s a green garden. Not eco-green (though with my absolute lack of chemicals I guess I get eco points); all-green-plants green (with very occasional touches of non-green). For inspiration on green gardens and what they can be, scroll through these images. And these.
You possibly think of Japanese gardens when you think of all-green gardens. My garden has stuff in common with Japanese gardens, and the peaceful, blissful vibe passersby pick up on is I think probably similar to what you feel strolling around landscapes in Kyoto, etc. (This example, however, is in Portland Oregon.)
I’ve got lawn. It’s weedy, but it’s a rich smooth calm expanse because it’s well-established and I mow it regularly. Motionless baby rabbits currently spend all day on it, eating white clover. There’s a massing in front of the house of rhododendron, viburnum, korean spice bush, butterfly bush, hydrangea (I guess I can do some identification), maybe boxwood (not sure; three large very sculptable bushes were here when we bought the house from the sons of Munro and Margaret Leaf, and I’ve planted around them). Lower down there’s hosta and liriope and vinca and ferns and ivies.
Our lot is very wide. On the other side of the lawn I planted pachysandra five or so years ago, and it’s now thick and beautiful. Looks sort of like this. Halfway submerged in it are our topiary bulls – an homage to the author of Ferdinand the Bull, who lived in our house. They look sort of like this, since we stuff them with moss rather than plant things on them. Even so, the pachysandra always makes its way up into the bulls. I snip the plants off. I prefer the way the bulls look mossed.
Whenever I see the word sphagnum on my bag of moss, I think of Cecilia Bartoli singing Rossini’s “Canzonetta spagnuola” — in my fevered mind, there’s some connection between spagnuola and sphagnum.
What else? Out front again, black river stones lie beneath another edge of the fence. I planted some small light green grasses in among them a couple of years ago, and they’ve come up well.
I like the combination of black and green. I could look at kiwi fruit all day.
The bulls are not my only non-organic element. In the middle of the lawn sit two brown butterfly chairs (our house looks very ‘fifties modern, so this seemed the right way to go), and between them, on a black metal stand, there’s a luxuriant yellow coreopsis spilling out of its (yes) black container. The only negative here, I’ve discovered, is that our many birds enjoy the plant so much that they congregate, and shit copiously, on the butterfly canvas.
Speaking of birds and rabbits – Anyone who reads this blog knows that UD‘s garden attracts insane amounts and varieties of wildlife. I chronicle the more dramatic viewings (hawks, a mink, big effing snakes) in these pages, and I inevitably feature more than anything else the ongoing surreal drama of ever-increasing deer families everywhere. I mean, they live on our property, behind the house, high up in the woods, and they’re just always here. But there are also hooting owls and barking foxes at midnight, and an orange cat who tries to kill all the birds, and turtles and voles and once I found a dead rat. Racoons and opossums go without saying.
Hovering threateningly above all of this are the trees. Very old, very big, very everywhere trees. Parts of them are always falling, especially during the violent summer storms. Right now a haul-away job awaits UD in the very thick of her woods, where, two nights ago, a bunch of pretty big branches came crashing down.
But anyway. The point is blissful. The point is peaceful. In sun and calm weather the trees benignly shelter UD’s carefully clipped, carefully planted green swathe. From a low-hanging branch she’s hung wind chimes she got in Bali, so there’s the pleasant low click of the cylinders in counterpoint with the wood thrush.
I think the blissful peaceful feeling comes ultimately from the ‘total world’ effect of all this green. There’s very little traffic, so it’s quiet; and the houses in every direction are, like this one, swathed in green. The houses are small, so none competes with the natural setting. I think at the moment all those soft silent rabbits in particular account for the way-Henri Rousseau feel of the place.
“The smart people will never be on our side,” announced Rick Santorum in his last run for the presidency; he attacked Obama’s hope to see all Americans attend university as “snobbery.” Obama, Santorum’s side said again and again, was an “intellectual snob.”
Sarah Palin led the charge, but several candidates followed in relentlessly calling Obama “professor.” Another high-profile Republican, Scott Brown, “consistently addressed [Elizabeth] Warren as ‘professor’” in their debates and in his speeches. Palin, in her first speech after being named a candidate for vice-president, said “we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.”
Apparently a lot of voters (not enough – all of the people I’ve just cited lost) despise universities because that’s where the liberals and the atheists roam. The very words “professor” and “university” are red meat to them.
That’s why Donald Trump has some splainin to do. He not only taught at a university; he founded a university. He put his name on a university: Trump University. Here’s his Chairman’s Welcome – complete with a British voice-over (Trump’s uber-snobby Anglo thing reappears in the symbol of Trump University – a lion rampant, drawn from British heraldry) which praises him as an “educator,” a graduate of “prestigious schools,” and the “author of many books.” Trump says, “I like academic life.”
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On the positive side of the ledger, Trump has been sued for having opened Trump U. This allows him to tell his constituency that it was all a big mistake.
Whew! Just in time. UD was madly enjoying reading this story, and wanted to share it with you, but wasn’t finding any connection to universities until, toward the end of the piece, bingo!
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A medical ethicist at Northwestern University has a great comment:
[This was] a cheap excuse to have a laugh at a powerless person’s expense.
UD has long been interested in the theme of cruelty. This story seems to her a very pure instance of the phenomenon of cruelty.
Plagiarism stories, says UD (who has followed them for years), are dully redundant. They’re not even stories in most of the world, by which I mean that if you’re in Korea or Pakistan or many other countries, plagiarism in the arts and sciences is rampant. Rampant. Americans get shocked when Americans plagiarize, and it does seem much rarer here… Though even here there are entire fields of endeavor (commencement speeches; sermons) full of plagiarists.
What makes plagiarism stories even duller is their uniform plot line. Someone discovers you’ve plagiarized. You deny, deny, deny, deny. The very idea! You are outraged. You make lawsuit noises. You know what it’s like to be unjustly accused of plagiarism, because it’s happened to you before. It happens because you are a popular, controversial figure, and other people are jealous and seek to undermine you. Who are you supposed to have plagiarized? That guy?? You’ve never read a word of his work!
Other people now look at the evidence, which makes it obvious that you have indeed plagiarized, and which also makes it impossible for you to continue to pretend that it’s just about this one liar trying to damage your reputation.
The next step is, again, virtually unchanged from case to case. Never admit to having consciously taken language from someone else and put it in something to which you signed your own name. Never. Instead, reveal that without knowing you’re doing it, you routinely (almost all plagiarists are serial plagiarists**) identify fiction writers (let’s say you’re a fiction writer) who have already written scenes that will fit in to your own stories perfectly. No – go beyond that. If you’re Shin Kyung-sook, reveal that you unconsciously were clever enough to choose a Korean translation of a famous Japanese fiction writer and steal that. A lot of plagiarists do this sort of thing – UD calls it obscuring the source. You make sure the writer is dead. You make sure the source material was published a long, long time ago. You make sure it didn’t do too well in the marketplace. Or, like Shin Kyung-sook, you choose translated material, which makes it less likely that a reader of the original source is going to notice what you’ve done.
Yawn.
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… South Korean literature professor Hyun Tac-soo has alleged that Shin also partly plagiarised passages from German author Luise Rinser’s “The Middle of Life” in “Please Look After Mom.”
