The University of Phoenix’s accreditation is under review. Also, Grand Canyon University is joining the Western Athletic Conference, becoming the first for-profit school in NCAA Division I sports.
EU’s privacy laws may put advertiser-supported web-services like Facebook and Gmail under.
At long last, Amazon is giving you free MP3’s of CD’s that you buy. PaidContent explains why they won’t do the same with books. Another factor, people who own a CD can more easily make them MP3’s on their own than they can a physical book. People who own a physical book may buy an ebook, but people who own a CD won’t buy MP3’s.
Our gun battles are without a doubt reflective of our larger cultural disconnect. Josh Marshall touches on this nicely. Pascal-Emmanuel Goby responds.
Japan is so hard core on its gun laws that if you are a cop who kills yourself with a gun, they will apparently charge you posthumously for improper firearm use.
The overwhelming likelihood is that the reason for the disparities between those whose parents pay for college and those who pay for it themselves (or borrow) is entirely a matter of external circumstances. You’re dealing with different kinds of circumstances. Still, though, you’d expect the externals to result in kids from households wealthy enough to bankroll college to have better externals than the other.
You won’t read this in the New York Times: How the mineral boom in North Dakota is improving higher education.
I found Dr Phi’s thoughts on sexual-social history and popular entertainment to be interesting.
Lion says some important and worthwhile stuff about economic class and gifted programs. On the one hand, I do understand the concerns about parallel programs based more on economics than actual giftedness. On the other hand, the most likely alternative is not that they will send their kids to the local public school, or often even that they will send them to private school. The most likely alternative is that they will relocate to the suburbs.
Gun owners in New York are invited to relocate to Texas.
The sad story of a man that helped save Newtown children who is now being harassed by conspiracy theorists for it.
Yes, Prime Minister is coming back! I actually preferred Yes, Minister… but I’ll take it.
Regarding the “parents paying for college leads to lower grades” thing: keep in mind that the external factors affect 2 different things. Not only do they affect college performance, but they also affect college admissions. So students with affluent parents will, on average, be attending higher tier institutions than equally talented students from poorer backgrounds. The fact that children with affluent parents are in more difficult programs could outweigh the beneficial external factors. Which, really, is exactly what you’d expect; college admissions decisions are evaluating the potential student’s performance while they’re still living with their parents, so it makes sense that the student’s parents would have a larger effect than once the student is on their own.
Comment by Fnord — January 22, 2013 @ 1:36 pm
PaidContent explains why they won’t do the same with books
Funny, I’ve just recently been considering making the jump to eReader. Do you have one, Will?
Comment by Samson J. — January 22, 2013 @ 8:40 pm
Fnord, I guess that’s right. I tend to associate elite colleges with being hard to fail out of. The place of “Gentlemen’s C’s” and such, while lots of people fail out of directional schools. What my analysis may be missing is the in between. Places like the University of Michigan or University of Texas, which have specific weed-out mechanisms but also are more likely to attract the sorts of students whose parents can pay their way.
Comment by trumwill — January 22, 2013 @ 8:50 pm
Samson, check out Friday’s post. The shorter version is… it’s great if you need/want the convenience (as we will be moving three times in the next two years, that’s a big bonus for us), are willing to be adventurous or read some inexpensive non-big-publisher stuff, and/or don’t mind paying $8-14 for a big publisher ebook (which I consider to be a ridiculous price).
Comment by trumwill — January 22, 2013 @ 8:53 pm
Oh, sheesh, I should’ve read that one first. Yeah, I haven’t been convinced, yet. Not until *all* the negatives are resolved.
Comment by Samson J. — January 22, 2013 @ 9:22 pm