Endgame
Nobody will ever be able to tell friends he’s hiking on the Appalachian Trail again:
— General McChrystal off to a promising start, saying that civilian casualty reduction will be the top tactical priority in Afghanistan.
— Paul Starr worries too much as a general matter, but he’s forgotten more about health care than just about anyone knows so pay some attention to his concerns about the details of public plan design.
— It’s not fancy amenities like climbing walls that are driving up college costs, it’s the fact that colleges refuse to quantify the effectiveness of their instruction that leaves them with no better way to signal quality.
— The CBO’s official Long-Term Budget Outlook is out; the outlook is grim.
— Victor Hugo’s letter to the London News on the subject of John Brown.
— John Carney attempts to revive the lie that the Community Reinvestment Act traveled through time to cause the financial crisis.
Song of the day, in honor of my arrival in my hometown, They Might Be Giant’s “New York City”.
68 Responses to “Endgame”
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June 25th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
“They Might Be Giant’s “…..what, exactly?
June 25th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
I have a hard time believing that students are using fancy amenities to signal quality of the institution; I remember going through this process a while ago and I’m pretty sure that it was more of a, “That would be a cool thing to live with!” Your living environment is important, right? That’s why people move to New York over Ohio.
Plus, that article doesn’t make much sense. The author complains that there’s no way to figure out how about the instruction. It sounds like he’s just lazy. Sure there’s no “consistent” score across college campuses – but would you really trust that? You might as well trust the rankings published, if you really believe that can be accurately measured across schools and systems.
You know what you can do? Look at the course catalogue. Most of those classes have websites – try to determine how challenging/interesting those classes are. Want to know how good the teachers are? Ask students from the school! Almost every school is more than happy to set you up with students who can answer your questions. Sure, they’re biased but they rarely straight up lie to you.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
pedophile dies, world mourns.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
MexicanGovern-
ment, blah blah blah blah blah blah,
Click the link. Soros. Hack.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Matt– you might want to let the tech support guy know that the last few words of your posts are being
June 25th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
“even old New York was once New Amsterdam”
June 25th, 2009 at 6:44 pm
— General McChrystal off to a promising start, saying that civilian casualty reduction will be the top tactical priority in Afghanistan.
War crimes suspect McChrystal off to a promising start in upholding the noble Pentagon tradition of truth-telling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/world/asia/24pstan.html
June 25th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
‘Cause everyone’s your friend in New York city?
June 25th, 2009 at 6:46 pm
Kid Destroyer is right on. It sounds like Quick and Ed wants a single measurement for effectiveness. That’s never going to happen, because at University, education is determined at the department level. When a school is accredited, the individual departments are examined by peers. The information you want is at the department level. This is where pedagogical research happens, and where effectiveness rates are measured.
The real problem is that you are never going to get information separating the good from the awesome. Right now, departments are still trying to understand the difference between the acceptable and the horrible. All educational research focuses on the “middle third”, the group where you can make much difference. This breaks his “sophisticated consumer” analogy. The people who care about the indicative research are never going to get it, because it isn’t for them.
In the end, the only thing you can do is talk to students. A perspective should always visit the school they are interested in and stay with another student. That is the only way you will ever learn anything.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
Michael Jackson is dead.
June 25th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
blah – already covered at #3
June 25th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Someone check MattY’s cubicle to make sure he didn’t suffer the same fate as this guy.
In other news, here’s a despicable smear from Amanda Terkel.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Lonewacko, it is pretty rich for a guy like you to accuse *anyone* of despicable smears.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Whether John Brown’s domestic terrorism was a justified response to slavery is debatable, but it should be noted that he was executed for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, a state of which he was not even a citizen. Even if you think the Harper’s Ferry raid was wrong, his trial and execution were by no means a victory for the rule of law.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
Continuing his transition into a party-line Obama Democrat, Specter has now come out in favor of the public option:
Specter on Public Option
June 25th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
By the way, Farah Fawcett also died today. It has been a bad day for pop culture from the late-70s/early-80s.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
“General McChrystal off to a promising start, saying that civilian casualty reduction will be the top tactical priority in Afghanistan.”
Right.
Email me when this happens, Matt.
Also, he said nothing about Pakistan where US drone strikes are killing civilians right and left with a minimal result in taking out actual Al Qaeda leaders, as illustrated by the Tuesday strike mentioned above.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Meanwhile on the pop music front:
Sharon Corr’s solo album nears completion (Watch the Electronic Press Kit Part 1 video here)
http://www.hotpress.com/news/5563792.html
And from Sharon’s official Web site:
http://www.sharoncorr.com/
And she really does Twitter a lot! She even replies to fans, including one to me.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Blowing up Taliban, then blowing up the Taliban who come to mourn the first group of Taliban, is awesome. I hope they do it again next week.
June 25th, 2009 at 7:56 pm
If blaming the US helps the Pakistani government get the political cover they need to keep blowing up Talibs, so be it. American Predators, Pakistani F-16s – just as long the Talibs are dead, it’s all good.
Yes! A trainer of suicide bombers! Nice work, guys.
I just hope his buddies turn out to bury him properly.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
“Ask students from the school! ”
The problem is that all students for reasons of cognitive dissonance will give you glowing reports about the education they’re getting at their school. No one wants to believe that they’re being poorly educated. Furthermore, many students aren’t in any position to evaluate the quality of their education. (And of course, you’re not just paying for the quality of education, you’re paying for the cachet of a name of the diploma.)
A good measure if you could get it: Would the faculty send their own children to that school? (The answer at my school would be a clear ‘no’.)
June 25th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
What happened? Did Matt say Candlejack’s name?
But enough about that. How about Michael Jac
June 25th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
A more recent article: joe will be very happy to know that 80 brown people were actually killed, not 60.
One critic for the humanitarian McChrystal: bigger bombs are needed, there were apparently 5000 hardcore Taliban Al-Qaeda jihadists fascists at this funeral.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
I see some of Hatter’s (#21) points. But, I believe students are in a position to evaluate the quality of their education, from a delivery standpoint. They know – we knew –
- which profs and TAs were phoning it in,
- where a prof stood on the unreasonably harsh/spell-your-name-correctly easy grading continuum,
- whether the faculty was in the midst of a cultural revolution/night of the long knives,
- if the counselors were on the clue train,
- if the graduation standards were being dialed up or down,
- etc
June 25th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
“The problem is that all students for reasons of cognitive dissonance will give you glowing reports about the education they’re getting at their school. No one wants to believe that they’re being poorly educated.”
When I was in college, I thought I was being poorly educated. I went to a very expensive university like Matt did. Now, with the distance of time and some life experience, I think I was being horribly educated. I think I got mostly brainwashing and picked up little or nothing of use in the rest of my life. Not sure where this leaves Matt.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
Do you really think that’s the appropriate distinction?
You do know that a lot of these strikes are from the Pakistani military, right? I hope that doesn’t mess up your lame cheap shot about brown people.
June 25th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
On the subject of the CRA, one of the responses to Felix’ John Carney critique made a key point:
Even if it were true that Clinton and his first term Democratic colleagues made it their life’s work to force banks to issue liar loans to swarthy people, the GOP had ten years, and GWB eight, to stop it.
But, they not only didn’t fight the CRA, in Oct ‘02, they wrapped their arms around the idea and jumped off a cliff:
June 25th, 2009 at 8:58 pm
I wonder if President Obama is happy because the targets are…what was your term again? Right, “brown people.”
I think your toy is broken.
June 25th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
@Ed: I suspect you’re the exception. Though really bright kids at prestigious schools probably are more likely to see through the facade than are kids at middle-of-the-road state schools.
@cmholm ” [Students can tell]
- which profs and TAs were phoning it in,
- where a prof stood on the unreasonably harsh/spell-your-name-correctly easy grading continuum,
- whether the faculty was in the midst of a cultural revolution/night of the long knives,
- if the counselors were on the clue train,
- if the graduation standards were being dialed up or down,
- etc”
I know many really incompetent untalented faculty who are loved by their students because they’re ‘cool.’ So students may be able to sense a lack of enthusiasm. But it’s not clear to me that the median college students knows that she’s learning anything.
Students are in a position to know about shifting goalposts, rising tuition, and the like. You’re right there.
My main claim is that students tend not to be in a position to know/don’t want to know that they’re not getting a good education. (And many of them aren’t. They come in ignorant and emerge ignoramuses.)
June 25th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
And that was whose fault?
June 25th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Joe, why do you caress yourself at the thought of “talibs” blood flowing? The person most responsible for 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is in a prison since 2003. He has not yet been convicted for his crimes because the fantasy of a War on Terror against a pyramidal Al-Qaeda responsible for all terrorist attacks in the world is very convenient for the War Lobby.
You realize the Taliban never attacked the US before we invaded their country, right? They only hosted Bin Laden, which was a good reason to invade at the time; that doesn’t mean killing every one of them makes sense. Given how many Afghans are Talibans, that would also be a war crime that would make McChrystal’s torture teams in Iraq look like Gandhi.
And nevermind that the top 2 targets of this strike apparently were not even there; but how many “number 2″, “top aide” or “regional leader” have been killed in the last 8 years? And how many of the 5,000 people at the funeral are now ready to take their place?
June 25th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Anthony: check your Neuticles and then give me an example of me smearing anyone.
P.S. I’ve got a corrections thread in case anyone spots anything false or misleading at my site. I’ve had it up there a month – linked from every page – and I haven’t received any correction requests.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
If raising tuition raises demand, why would a college consider finding a different way to signal quality? I’m not convinced that it does, but I think you have the implication backwards.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Anthony: check your Neuticles and then give me an example of me smearing anyone.
Um, I’m not sure what “neuticles” means, but if it means what I think it does, I think we just found example #1.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Personally I am glad Jackson’s dead. There will be stories on cable about this for a while but it is good to know that once this is over we won;t be subjected to Jackson news anymore. Think we could have been hearing occasional Micheal Jackson stories for another decade or two. To bad that this has basically overwhelmed news of Farah Fawcett’s death which I think is quite touching.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
@31:
Don’t bother talking to Joe. Like SLC, he’s too busy jerking off to dead civilians.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:35 pm
Thanks for the Hugo letter link—awesome. “The day of the Kings is over”! Would but it were so.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Agreed! The Hugo letter was fascinating.
June 25th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
MY says that colleges “refuse” to quantify their quality of instruction. Which would seem to imply there there is an effective, generally agreed upon way to do that, and the school just won’t. Well, OK. What’s the method you have in mind?
I know that US News and World Reports has a methodology. which is of course regularly trounced by everyone who reads it.
Quick: St. John’s in Annapolis MD has a Great Books program taught in really small lectures by people who aren’t even “professors” in the modern sense. People learning about Aristotle at Penn State do so in cavernous lecture halls filled with scads of undergraduates.
Which method, pray tell, is “better”? Let’s say we score St. John’s as an 89. Would Penn State be at a 42? Maybe a 112? Let’s say the guy teaching at Penn State publishes another book, but holds fewer office hours. Does that make the PSU score go up or down? Let’s say Penn State breaks the class into 20 smaller lectures, but they are taught by people without PhDs? Is does the score become a 94? A 28?
What if North Carolina structures it’s entire curriculum on Yale’s. A course is designed exactly the same. Only in the Yale class, the average SAT score is 20 percent higher? But the school in North Carolina has 30 percent more diversity?
Or, what if you take all that out of the mix. And it’s just about curriculum design and other educational methodologies. But one school has a really, really sharp dean who hires really talented teachers, and the other school, with the exact same policies, has a really sucky dean and a bunch of department heads who just so happen to be better at other stuff. How do you quantify that?
You, uh… don’t.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Song of the day possibilities:
Sun Is A Mass of Incandescent Gas
Don’t Let’s Start
June 26th, 2009 at 12:30 am
As I’ve mentioned before before, anyone who’s upset with the Pus-Encrusted Semen Pralines from AssForAHead’s Gourmet Confectioner is welcome to complain. No-one’s bought one yet, but to make an issue of that is a LogicalFallacy.
June 26th, 2009 at 3:03 am
New York City.
June 26th, 2009 at 4:23 am
Victor Hugo “A single State ought not to have the power to dishonor all the rest”
Message to Victor in his grave: don’t worry dude, times have changed, everything is fine now, all 50 states (yeah 50) work together in perfect harmony.
What? What was that you..Te..Te..Texas?
June 26th, 2009 at 5:42 am
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June 26th, 2009 at 5:44 am
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June 26th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Ah New York, New York — if you can make it to there, you can make it to anywhere
June 26th, 2009 at 8:19 am
I sit on a university-wide assessment committee and we decided not to join the Voluntary System of Accountability system after a careful, in-depth examination of their evaluation instruments. We decided that they did not capture quality nor learning. It is a very, very difficult methodological task, likely impossible to do so with accuracy, rigor, and meaning. Frankly, I think its a fool’s errand.
Students should choose schools after visiting them and sitting in on classes. They should get a sense of their reputation and culture. If they have a clear focus of study, concentrate on that area.
June 26th, 2009 at 8:46 am
The last few strikes in Pakistan are a puzzle. The policy of avoiding civilian casualties has been coming for months, has been publically announced, and we suddenly start pitching missiles at a funeral? Are the Christianist generals in Central Command deliberately trying to sabotage us? Are they going to target kindergartens, orphanages, hospitals, and battered women’s shelters next? Followed by strikes on the Pakistani parliment building and the Prime Minister’s house?
The alternate targets are supposed to be accordion factories and mime schools, not day care centers and nunneries.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Obviously, because they’re “brown people.”
What in the name of God would make you think I’d be interested in discussing serious ideas with somebody of your low character and intellectual depth?
Piss off.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:24 am
Midland,
The policy of avoiding civilian casualties has been coming for months, has been publically announced, and we suddenly start pitching missiles at a funeral?
Not just some random funeral – a funeral for several Taliban, which was known to be attended by several others.
A couple of other points that the self-righteous brigade with rather not let bother their beautiful minds: the locals reported “bombs,” not rockets, which suggests F-16s, not Predators. In other words, there’s a good chance this was the Pakistani military, since they’ve been going after the Taliban, too.
Also, the attacks happened after the funeral, as people were dispersing. It makes for better garment-rending narration to pretend that missiles were launched into a crowd of thousands, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:28 am
The other answer to your question, Midland, is that the primary change McChrystal is making to reduce civilian casualties is to shift work from air strikes to boots on the ground. Obviously, that’s only an option for Afghanistan, where we have ground troops, not Pakistan.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Don’t worry, Pakistanis.
There are foul-mouthed Americans volunteering to be outraged for you.
June 26th, 2009 at 9:57 am
There’s a French and Saunders video about the Corrs that’s required viewing.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:04 am
So joe, are you still overjoyed by this slaughter at a funeral (does even the Mafia do stuff like that?), or are you trying to blame it on the Pakistanis now?
Also, the attacks happened after the funeral, as people were dispersing. It makes for better garment-rending narration to pretend that missiles were launched into a crowd of thousands, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case.
Waiting a few minutes after a funeral to launch missiles on the mourning crowd is what civilized countries do and only “the self-righteous brigade” could have a problem with that.
I wonder if joe would show so much enthusiasm for state terrorism were Bush still in the White House.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:14 am
I guess those “brown people” just don’t understand what’s going on in their country as well as you, why of why.
Didn’t I tell you to piss off?
June 26th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I supported striking across the border when Obama mentioned it during the campaign, I supported them when Bush did them, and I support them now.
Believe it or not, some of us actually do want to win the Af-Pak War.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Pakistanis are silent, except of course the Pakistan Prime Minister.
Those Pakistanis, so ungrateful, it’s almost as if they were in league with Al Qaeda. McChrystal’s torture teams should parachute over Islamabad and find out.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:19 am
I’m fine with the Pakistanis saying what they need to say for public consumption.
Just as long as they keep letting us use bases on their territory to launch these strikes.
Are you so incredibly ignorant that you’ve managed not to know that Pakistan is at war with these people, and allowing these strikes to happen?
June 26th, 2009 at 10:23 am
I hear the Pakistanis who provide the intel for the strikes are…what was it again? Oh, right, ‘brown people.’
As for their masturbatory habits, I couldn’t say.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:29 am
I’m fine with the Pakistanis saying what they need to say for public consumption.
You mean it’s not true, unlike McChrystal’s humanitarian pledge?
Just as long as they keep letting us use bases on their territory to launch these strikes.
OK… What’s the purpose of our involvement there again? You haven’t answered: do you want to kill all Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and why?
Are you so incredibly ignorant that you’ve managed not to know that Pakistan is at war with these people, and allowing these strikes to happen?
As long as the US follow the lead of Pakistan regarding human rights, I guess we can do no wrong.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:54 am
I think they’ve got a tough tightrope act to walk. The Pakistanis, for obvious reasons, must have very mixed feelings. But it is beyond dispute that Pakistan is carrying out its own military operations, including airstrikes, in Pakistani territory, and allowing us to use bases in their territory for our own strikes. Still, I have no problem with them foisting the political heat onto us.
If I was trying to argue your case, I’d change the subject, too. Just a reminder, the subject you were trying to argue was about the Pakistanis’ response to these operations.
I really see no point in trying to have a substantive discussion about strategy with someone whose response will be to accuse me of racism and of masturbating to snuff porn. How are you coming with that pissing off?
I’d try to change the subject too, if I were in your place.
June 26th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Once upon a time, why oh why was all about the “brown people.”
Except when he discovers they don’t agree with him, at which point, we certainly shouldn’t let the opinions of that sort influence our behavior.
June 26th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Joe, you were indeed cheering on the deaths of 60-80 brown people. Why? You still haven’t explained.
My position is clear: we should get out of Afghanistan and Pakistan as soon as possible. What’s your plan, except killing brown people at funerals and shouting “Fuck yeah!”?
If I was trying to argue your case, I’d change the subject, too.
The subject was your claim that Pakistanis were silent. That’s not the case, and they want us to stop mindless slaughters. In your opinion, that’s just propaganga, yet you are eager to believe any of Stanley “Don’t ask me about torture in Iraq” McChrystal’s talking points.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
For the record, “New York City” is a song by the (late, lamented) Vancouver-based “cuddlecore” band Cub, which was covered by the (New York City-based) band They Might Be Giants.
YouTube’s got the swell, low budget video of the Cub version here.
The semi-obsessive fans at tmbg.org have a page devoted to the Giants’ version of the song here.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
That really is how you think of them, isn’t it?
It’s not “Taliban vs. non-Taliban” to you; it’s just an undifferentiated mass of “brown people.”
Shame on you.
Whatever ideas come from such an intellectual sewer are not worthy my time. Good day.
June 26th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
YOU COME BACK HERE WITH MY MORAL HIGH GROUND! I CALLED YOU A RACIST, AND NOW IT’S MINE!
Damn kids…
June 26th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Joe wildly cheers on the deaths of Afghans and Pakistanis, asks for more blood, then defends their dignity against racists.
Not surprised that you still can’t explain what’s the strategy in “AfPak” is, since even your idol Obama doesn’t know.
June 26th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Hey folks, sorry to break into this ever-so-productive flame war, but can we talk about college effectiveness some more? The part of the question that seems to be missing is, effectiveness at WHAT? Different people go to college to do lots of different things. That’s one of the raps against the US News and World Report rankings, they are (were?) set up so that there’s one overall WINNER!!!!1one. But no school is better at EVERYTHING that everybody else. A Mercedes S Class is an amazing vehicle. Unless the task at hand is transporting construction materials to a building site. At that, it pretty much would suck. So, if your passion is History, it’s ok to go to a school that has an adequate, but not exceptional Chemistry department. If your goal is Nursing, bless you, but Chemistry becomes more important, but the English department’s approach to contemporary criticism is vanishingly unimportant. And, of course, unless you are a varsity player, the quality of the football or basketball team has no effect on the quality of education. Quality of student life, maybe. I think the reason things like athletic facilities, dorms, and food service become (poor) proxies for institutional quality is that they are easy to point to, and theoretically can be part of any student’s experience. History majors and budding chemists can both enjoy good food in the dining hall, even if the quality of instruction in the two departments is radically different. That said, there are some department-level outcomes measures that are fairly easy to find. If it’s an undergraduate major that typically leads to graduate study, what were the average scores on the entrance tests (the Graduate Record Exam or a specialized one such as the MCAT)? And what grad schools did they attend? If it is a program that should lead to employment, what is the percentage of students getting job offers in the field? Harder to get, but important, how many are still working in that field in 5 years?
Bluestate’s comment on the linked article makes some excellent points on getting a handle on the overall quality – lower division class size, the number of full-time faculty who actually encounter a student now and then, and whether the place has a research orientation. That last one is a gem. Sure, it’s great that University X has a groundbreaking research program in particle physics or something, but that can actually hurt undergraduate education, since the Physics faculty may be more focused toward the research program and less engaged with students.
But people don’t make completely rational decisions, so there will always be English majors choosing where to go to college based on the football team, just as we have people who buy four-wheel drive crew cab pickup trucks with raised road clearance and a monster diesel engine to drive downtown to their job at the bank.