… is just the sort of headline to make UD‘s heart leap up.
How good it is to know that “Revenues from big-time athletics at Clemson University have soared by more than $20 million since 2005, yet the program last year operated at a slight loss even as income from ticket sales jumped 59 percent.”
How comely in thy sight, O Lord, that “These figures come at a time when an analysis by USA TODAY shows that the nation’s top sports colleges are propping up their athletic departments to the tune of more than $800 million, while many are cutting faculty salaries and raising student fees and tuition.”
And amen to this: “At Clemson, nine assistant football coaches will earn a total of more than $1.8 million this year, and the board of trustees last week approved raises for them, bumping the total to $2.3 million. In addition to that, head coach Dabo Swinney got a $900,000 raise. That brings the total payroll for Clemson’s 10 football coaches to $4 million – up from $2.6 million in 2009.”
… is a most Nabokovian name. But rather than coming to us from Ada, or Ardor, this name comes to us from the Yale School of Management, where it belongs to a professor of management. Vroom’s name is preceded by his title: BearingPoint Professor of Management & Professor of Psychology.
Now for a spot of awkwardness.
The court-appointed official in charge of winding down BearingPoint Inc. is suing Yale University to recover $6 million the consulting firm paid to endow a chair in management and name facilities at the university.
The donations were part of a $30 million, seven-year deal between BearingPoint and Yale’s School of Management.
The consulting firm made three payments of $2 million each to the school in the two years before the firm sought bankruptcy-court protection in February 2009.
… [The official] is also seeking the return of $2.1 million BearingPoint paid to Yale three months before its Chapter 11 filing in a deal that allowed the firm’s employees to attend leadership classes and education programs at the school.
… Mr. [Victor H.] Vroom holds a chair endowed by BearingPoint under its deal with the university, which was stuck by the firm’s then chief executive, Harry L. You, a Yale graduate…
It looks as though Vroom will have to stop holding that chair.
Ali Ghalambor is an endowed chair in the Petroleum Engineering department at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
He is also a globe-trotting consultant who has figured out that if you charge your travel to your university as well as to the people for whom you’re consulting, you make double what you’d have made if… if you hadn’t done that.
Ghalambor has also figured out that for high-demand oilmen, a university is really just a business address, a launching pad, an office away from the office. “Ghalambor … often conducted outside consulting or contract work during his ULL working hours and responsibilities.”
You see the synergy here between the conflict of commitment and the double dipping. He didn’t tell the university that his travel was not scholarly but commercial. So the university gave him scholarly travel funds, and of course the commercial entity involved paid his consultancy and travel expenses.
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No, it’s not earth-shattering. Ghalambor is just a guy playing the angles. What could be exploited in his work setting he exploited. What corruption was possible, he engaged in. He didn’t do anything dramatic or anything out of whack with the basic principles of corruption. He was simply corrupt in the ways available given his situation.
… [H]undreds of invoices, letters, itineraries, travel requests and expense reports… indicate… tens of thousands of dollars were paid to Ghalambor for trips ranging from Wyoming to Kazakhstan [and] that he may have double-billed the university and the institutions or businesses he visited.
ULL administrators had questioned some of Ghalambor’s travel and expenses, especially to Ghalambor’s native country Iran, at least as far back as December 2004, according to letters received by The Advocate through former and current ULL petroleum engineering department employees.
The internal audit reported that from 2006 to 2009 Ghalambor received $42,280 from ULL “while conducting activities that appear to be outside of his working hours or responsibilities.”
He also claimed $84,117 from ULL for travel expenses while accepting travel reimbursements for possibly the same expenses “from companies and organizations he provided services to as part of his outside activities,” the report states.
He also sometimes converted state-contracted airfare to first class that was reimbursed by other companies or organizations, according to the report.
Moving this money here and that money there to shift from a shabby state-contracted seat to first-class… Again, nothing outside the rule book… Plain old vanilla graft.
… Above the Law, is UD‘s kind of guy. They don’t agree on everything (Mystal thinks laptopped classrooms are great), but I like his style, and I certainly agree with him on this one: Professors at law schools with poor placement rates shouldn’t pontificate about for-profit universities with poor placement rates.
Mystal first describes Seattle School of Law:
[It’s] ranked 77th by U.S. News, but the school charges $35K – plus for tuition. The cost per year exceeds $50,000 when you include books, board and other living expenses. But the school only sports a 67.9% “employed upon graduation” statistic.
Then, writing about this New York Times piece about for-profits, which basically rewrites the Business Week piece UD blogged about here, Mystal mocks a professor at Seattle interviewed for the NYT article who says this:
“If these programs keep growing, you’re going to wind up with more and more students who are graduating and can’t find meaningful employment,” said Rafael I. Pardo, a professor at Seattle University School of Law and an expert on educational finance. “They can’t generate income needed to pay back their loans, and they’re going to end up in financial distress.”
Mystal remarks:
How can you fix your mouth to criticize “trade schools” for setting up their students for financial ruin when you teach at Seattle School of Law? … I wonder why Professor Pardo exempts Seattle from the list of schools who graduate more and more students who “can’t find meaningful employment.” …
“… We went to the Café Maure de la
Mosquée de Paris and got lots of
peppermint tea and smoked a little
bit of hookah and we felt very authentic.
It was really fun. We just sat and talked
for two hours. We saw the Arc de Triomphe
last night which was awesome and tonight
we’re going to the Eiffel Tower and getting
dinner by Musée d’Orsay. We got a really
yummy dinner last night at a restaurant
called something Odéon and then we
just wandered around St Germain…”
New York Times:
This season, 19 percent of the [NCAA basketball] tournament teams have graduation rates below 40 percent, according to The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports at the University of Central Florida. Across all 36 sports monitored by the N.C.A.A., men’s basketball has the lowest graduation rates, with fewer than two-thirds of players earning degrees. The Central Florida study released Monday highlighted a vast disparity between white basketball players, with an 84 percent graduation rate, and African-American ones, with a 56 percent rate.
After the massive snow, a sudden and massive spring in Garrett Park.
As I walked my acre just now, picking up small limbs from yesterday’s windstorm and large limbs from last month’s snowstorm, I saw the son of friends of ours. They live at the bottom of Rokeby Avenue.
He was bent over in the forest adjacent to our place, examining white flowers. He’s La Kid’s age, studying to be a chef.
“Find any unusual plants?” he asked me. He held open in his hand a guidebook to edible plants. “I’m foraging.”
“Funny you should ask. These … crocuses? … look new to me. I’ve got plenty of smaller ones, lighter purple. These are different.”
“Those are Russian crocuses. They’re
darker. Kind of shimmery gray on the
outside when they open up.”
“How did they get here? Suddenly?
So many of them?”
“The wind maybe.”
“Squirrels.”
“Definitely squirrels.”
“But listen. I find all sorts of strange things in the back.” I motioned to the purple field behind me. “Feel free to forage my territory.”
A car horn beeped.
“That’s my mom. Thanks! I’d like that.”
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Another Snapshot from Home, if I may. This one also involves a plant.
A few months ago, Mr UD drove a neighbor – an older man, who no longer drives – around Silver Spring for a few hours as he did some errands. The man, John Wilpers, brought a flowering plant to our house as a gesture of thanks.
(I was very close friends with Terry, one of John’s children, when I was growing up in Garrett Park. She works in Baltimore now. We’re still friends.)
But that’s not the snapshot from home. Here’s the snapshot from home. I’ll give it this headline:
GARRETT PARKER WINS
BRONZE STAR
FOR SAVING TOJO’S LIFE
Washington Post:
More than six decades after the end of World War II, a retired U.S. Army colonel this week received the Bronze Star Medal for his part in the arrest in 1945 of Japan’s principal wartime prime minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo.
The medal, one of the highest honors conferred by the military for combat actions, was awarded to John J. Wilpers, now 90 and living in Garrett Park.
… In January 1947, Wilpers’s commanding officer at the time of the arrest recommended Wilpers for the Bronze Star Medal for his actions Sept. 10-11, 1945. The paperwork describes how Wilpers located Tojo’s Tokyo residence and broke in after hearing a gunshot.
Once inside, Wilpers found that Tojo — who knew his arrest was imminent — had shot himself in the chest. Wilpers reportedly secured Tojo’s weapons and found a Japanese physician who, “faced with Captain Wilpers’ .38 caliber revolver,” administered first aid until U.S. medical officers could arrive.
… What happened to the original recommendation is unknown; it apparently did not make it through the chain of command, or might have gotten lost, said Lt. Col. Mike Moose, a public affairs officer with the Army’s Human Resources Command.
… Wilpers’s family did not learn about his involvement in the arrest of Tojo, who was eventually tried and executed for war crimes, until his son Michael stumbled upon his name while studying at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Wilpers did not pursue the forgotten award until 2002, when he contacted the Awards Branch of the military. In a typewritten letter he wrote: “Dear sir, In the process of putting my military records in order (old geezers tend to do this when they suspect that they may be nearing the long slow slide to Forest Lawn), I came across the attached 1947 recommendation . . . for an award . . . If the recommendation was not approved, just a phone message would do. If it was approved, I would prefer the simplest notification possible… “
Last year it was Caltech. This year, Cornell University is experiencing a string of student suicides. The number is in dispute — between three and five in the last few months. Security people have been stationed at the bridges over the famous campus gorges. Most of the suicides jumped into the gorges.
Suicide is frighteningly contagious. Suicidal students are obviously watching one another for ideas as to method. In 2005, William and Mary had the same one-and-right-away-another-in-exactly-the-same-fashion pattern that Cornell is seeing. At Caltech, two of the students used the same method: helium inhalation. In the last few years, three students at NYU have jumped from the top of the library’s atrium.
… is now publishing her latest IHE post.
Title: Pathology of the Laptop.
A Bridgewater State College student describes a recent class.
… On the first day of class, my professor informed us that it was mandatory that we use a credit card to sign up for an online program that we would use throughout the semester. The program was equivalent to the price of an expensive textbook, but if it was going to help me, I was all for it. The program would have actually been quite helpful if it was used as a tool in the classroom. Unfortunately for me, the program was the class.
The professor actually informed [us] that everything we needed was in that program-that we need not ask him questions because they can be answered online. This was not a program that the professor created; it was just a generic one he was letting teach the class.
During class time, the professor would read the PowerPoint notes that came with the program. When asked if he could show students some examples, he refused. He claimed that there were plenty of examples they could view online and that it would be a waste of time to go over examples in class.
Ironically, what was a waste of time was this professor’s class. What is Bridgewater State College paying this professor to do – read off the internet? This professor never created a lesson plan and never put any effort in teaching the class. He simply used technology to teach the class for him.
It is truly unfortunate that Bridgewater State is wasting their money paying this professor, but what is most unfortunate is that hundreds of students each year suffer in cases similar to this, where they can only learn so much from technology without the help of their professor.
UD likes Chris Van Hollen, who represents her and all ‘thesdan peoples; but now that Murray Hill’s in the race, she’s conflicted.
The Washington Post reports:
Murray Hill might be the perfect candidate for this political moment: young, bold, media-savvy, a Washington outsider eager to reshape the way things are done in the nation’s capital. And if these are cynical times, well, then, it’s safe to say Murray Hill is by far the most cynical.
That’s because this little upstart is, in fact, a start-up. Murray Hill is actually Murray Hill Inc., a small, five-year-old Silver Spring public relations company that is seeking office to prove a point (and perhaps get a little attention).
After the Supreme Court declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to funding political campaigns, the self-described progressive firm took what it considers the next logical step: declaring for office.
“Until now, corporate interests had to rely on campaign contributions and influence-peddling to achieve their goals in Washington,” the candidate, who was unavailable for an interview, said in a statement. “But thanks to an enlightened Supreme Court, now we can eliminate the middle-man and run for office ourselves.” …
They’ve already got a pretty compelling ad out.
Here’s an interview with their Designated Human.
And here’s their website.
… has gotten so bad that newspapers are beginning to report just the tiniest, slightest bit of complaint from UO’s fan base.
Nothing to worry about, of course — there’s no such thing as too low for university football fans — but…
… [F]ans and [the] university community [are] exasperated by a head-spinning series of transgressions from the football team they usually pack Autzen Stadium to cheer on.
“I want to apologize to the fans of the University of Oregon,” [coach Chip] Kelly said. “I want to apologize to the faculty of the University of Oregon. This is not what our football program is all about. We feel that we’ve taken the steps necessary to make sure that this doesn’t happen with these young men again.”…
Sure it’s what it’s about! You recruited these guys!
There’s so much you can do with two million dollars in government grant money! This post’s headline is a partial list of some of the ideas Daniel Kwok, a Canadian engineering professor at the University of Calgary, and recipient of many grants from that country’s main technology funder, came up with.
It’s a long list because Canada is very, very slow. Very, very slowly that country gears up to … uh… what? Somebody reports something to someone… stuff is passed along to the police whose investigation … uh…
The documents point to major problems with oversight of Canada’s multibillion-dollar research system — holes so glaring that one leading ethics expert says he hopes the case will jolt federal politicians into giving “marching orders” to Canada’s research councils and universities to get their acts together.
“There is a public accountability here that is just missing,” says Michael McDonald, founding director of the centre for applied ethics at the University of British Columbia.
… [Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council] officials, four years after the investigations into Kwok’s conduct began, took the most drastic sanction at their disposal. In September 2009 they cut off all Kwok’s grants indefinitely, accusing him of plagiarism and misuse of funds in 2005 or before.
McDonald says it’s hard to fathom why it took NSERC so long to act.
“Four years is way too long for something of this kind,” he says. Buying stereos, TVs and car parts with science grants seems such an “egregious” breach of the rules that someone with a fifth-grade education can understand it, he says: “It’s obvious, a no-brainer.”
Canada’s slow, but Kwok is fast:
… Documents released by NSERC show that by 2005 the university had launched investigations into allegations of “financial misconduct” and “scientific misconduct” involving “plagiarism.”
Kwok did not wait around for the results of the investigations. In the spring of 2005, he … stunned his colleague[s] with the news that he was moving to the University of Calgary, leaving the Edmonton engineering department scrambling to pick up his teaching load and graduate students.
… More than half the money was awarded after his conduct in Edmonton had come under scrutiny and he had moved to Calgary.
The university kept it quiet. The NSERC passed the buck. The scientist pulled in more government money for his subwoofer.
[The University of Alberta] made a deal with the researcher: in the “event of timely repayment” of the money spent on car parts, phones, electronic gadgets and entertainment systems, the university would not pursue restitution for other questionable purchases made with research grants.
The researcher gave $24,676.33 to the University of Alberta’s lawyers in the fall of 2006, “subject to reaching agreement on suitable terms of a release and a confidentiality agreement.”
The University of Alberta returned $21,485.67 to NSERC and another $3,000 to other agencies that had financed the research.
In keeping with the federal policy for dealing with possible fraud, NSERC then turned the case over to the [police] in 2006 to investigate “the misuse of the $24,000 grant funds and also the possibility that more than this amount was misused.”
The documents show that NSERC officials initially decided no sanctions should be taken against the scientist or red flags put on his file until the [police] completed [their] investigation — a position that some found infuriating.
“This person is still receiving NSERC money, in spite of highly unethical behaviour,” one scientist wrote…
The long article is an hilarious compendium of no comments and it’ll take years for us even to begin investigating — all of this from universities, the police, the government… Meanwhile, Kwok remains at Calgary in good standing.
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While his university thinks he’s great, this man’s students seem to disagree. Kwok’s too busy with his subwoofer to teach…
But hey – the question of whether this guy can teach lies at the bottom of a very large stack of other questions. I’m sure Calgary will get to it eventually.
Can there be a university stupider than Texas Tech? It gives millions of dollars to that master of BDSM, Mike Leach, and then when his psycho coaching style becomes a national scandal and TTU fires him, Leach sues TTU – a lawsuit that will end up costing them millions and millions more.
And all for what?
So that Texas Tech can show the world what really goes on at this university.
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UD thanks Brad.
