Corporate denial consulting turns out to be a perfect career niche for Chad. Fortune 500 companies are calling him all the time. There’s a lot to deny and Chad is good at it.

Gregg Easterbrook’s immortal satire of a Christmas letter to friends includes this intriguing occupation: corporate denial consulting.

The corporate denialists are no doubt in full combat mode this morning, helping the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, the University of Miami, and Yale University deny suggestions that high-profile professors at their schools put their name on pharma-generated, ghostwritten, articles and books.

[Amanda Busch is] accused of stealing more than $70,000 in jewelry and currency from a [Cincinnati] home

… Busch, 27, also confessed to breaking into two other homes – one on Nov. 7 and the other on Nov. 12 – though police suspect she is involved in more area burglaries.

… Busch’s attorney Rich Vande Ryt said his client has just one more year to go before getting her college degree at University of Cincinnati.

… After members of the faculty voiced concerns regarding laptop use in their classrooms, [the Committee on Academic Technology] took the admirable first step of consulting with the student body before considering formal regulatory action.

… Professors should make clear where they stand on personal electronic device use in their classrooms. The syllabi that are given to each student at the beginning of the semester would be the ideal medium for professors to express their individual policies…

As students and faculty become increasingly frustrated by rude and destructive classroom laptop use, more and more universities are holding these discussions, debating the relative merits of across-the-board bans and case-by-case choice on the part of professors.

Longtime UD readers know what UD has predicted: In time, students will be allowed – nay, encouraged – to use laptops only in radically PowerPointed classrooms. If you’re a professor who wants to be left alone to read slides aloud for fifty minutes twice a week, what’s not to like about laptops? They’re your salvation.

In my experience, the pharmaceutical company would pay a communications/marketing company to write the manuscript, who would then go out and find academics who would be willing to become the “authors” of the manuscript and paid an honorarium. I’ve worked with some authors who do absolutely nothing on the manuscript, requiring an additional ghostwriter to be hired, and still demand an honorarium for their time. These academics are willing to enter into this relationship because of the importance of authorship to their careers. You can’t entirely blame the pharma company. Universities encourage academics to play this game.

A ghost writer betrays a little annoyance with some of UD’s fellow professors.

…. sentiment.

Unfortunately, the horse has been out of the barn on this campus for many years.

… universities, we should remind ourselves that there’s a whole other world of legitimate education out there, one which students are more and more ably defending.

Here, in an opinion piece titled Fordham Rightly Resists Offering Online Classes, a Fordham student gets it said. His writing’s a bit awkward, but he gets it said. Excerpts:

… The foundations on which Jesuit universities, particularly Fordham, have been built upon are not in accordance with online courses. Though it may be convenient for students, it does not provide the degree of education we are paying for. The realm of learning and studying is completely altered under these conditions, with a less hands on approach.

If Fordham were to offer online courses, its credibility in teaching would be strongly questioned. Even if a student was able to get beyond the idea of no personal interaction with professors and no thought-provoking ideas of classmates, there is still no guarantee that the quality of education in the online classes will be up to par with that which Fordham instills.

… Sure, online classes can reach a larger amount [should be number] of people, especially those looking to attend part time. This, however, compromises the integrity of the order devoted to education by lacking a creation of relationships and the true development of the whole person that cura personalis stands on…

Serious, legitimate education isn’t just for Jesuits.

Andy Hutchins congratulates the University of New Mexico.

Yes, yes, the woman in charge of spending EU money on Bulgarian farms claimed a university degree she didn’t have. The Agriculture Minister rails against her lying ways…

Yet, you know… You’re supposed to check credentials.

A Nashville paper writes a long, thoughtful piece on the corruption of American medical education and practice.

The reporter interviewed – or tried to interview – some highly paid pharma shills. One of them, a professor at Meharry, said

he would need to check with the school’s communications department before commenting, but did not respond by press time.

Poor man can’t open his mouth without permission — either from his university, or from Eli Lilly.

As if the University of New Mexico didn’t have enough embarrassments.

… UD‘s beloved Henry Purcell.

The former head of Duke University’s bariatric surgery program has been charged with embezzling $267,000 from the school.

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The cover of his book.

If you’ve been with me awhile, you know my kid performed with a gospel group at last year’s Kennedy Center Honors. (Here’s a YouTube of her group’s performance with Sting. La Kid‘s the blond in glasses who shows up at 1:43.)

She’ll do the same thing this year, in front of a new group of honorees. Including the cute Beatle.

UD will of course cover this event on her blog. (UD knows the spectacular singer her kid will accompany for this performance; she also knows the spectacular songs her group will sing. But she’s not allowed to tell you.)

FSU is another school that should put itself entirely online.

During my spring semester at Florida State University last year, I took an art history course that met at 10 a.m. in a lecture hall across campus — at a location prohibitively distant from my dormitory at that point in my life. Apart from quiz and test dates, I showed up to the class exactly three times that semester: the first day of syllabus overview, the second day when I realized the professor was reading directly from PowerPoint presentations posted online and the third day midway through the semester when I found an attendance policy in the syllabus.

Regular readers know that UD uses the phrase the mephitic factor to designate the intensity of bad smells in the air on this or that American campus at any given time.

Brown University, a fancy Ivy League institution, is an example of a High Mephitic Factor school — its gathering emanations of corruption and wrongdoing of late have an elite feel to them, coming from famous scientists on the faculty, and from sophisticated, wealthy trustees.

Auburn University, a school without academic or social distinction, represents the much more typical Low Mephitic Factor, where the shitty smell in the quads has to do with athletes and their associates who cheat — on the field, and in the classroom.

High or low, the mephitic factor is almost always about the same thing: greed. Pastor Newton pimped his son Cam to Mississippi State; now that same son is at Auburn, and it’s only a matter of time before the NCAA proves that the father pimped the son to Auburn too. Until then, Newton gets to play, and the campus gets to keep that smell.

[People at the NCAA] know (and believe they can prove) that Cecil Newton demanded money for Cam’s commitment, thanks to the Mississippi State evidence. They cannot prove that he made the same demand of Auburn, or that Cam was aware of his father’s pay-for-play schemes. This sounds as believable as a hooker not knowing she’s being pimped out, but it’s not about what probably happened. It’s about what can be proven, and as of this moment, it cannot be proven that Cam Newton or Auburn did anything against the rules.

Brown could clear some of the bad air; but that would mean acknowledging what’s going on there, not merely with one of its trustees, but, soon enough, in all likelihood, with another. The scientist, the trustees… After awhile, the campus smells, and schools that care about that, schools that have something to lose by way of integrity, need to act.