College Football Chaos

February 12, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Frank the Tank, an Illini attorney and sports blogger, lays out an index of expansion targets for the Big 10.

The Big 10, which has had 11 teams since the inclusion of Penn State, has started a cable network and is seeking to expand. Frank does an admirable job of looking at the real issues in such an expansion (mainly money, followed by academics as a distant second). Frank ranks the teams on the Big 10 hit list: Texas first, Notre Dame second. Everyone else ranks as a “meh” addition.

The PAC-10 has announced an interest in expanding as well. Currently, however, the Pac 10’s television contract is weaker than the Big 12 contract. Possible PAC-10 targets include Utah and Colorado. Colorado and Texas came close to joining the PAC 10 in the 1990s.

The Big 12 has been good to Texas. Texas generates more athletic revenue than any other school and has established itself as a national power in all the major sports. The status-quo isn’t bad. Having graduated in 1990, I still remember getting our heads handed to us by teams like Baylor and the University of Houston on a regular basis.

Texas must compete with the SEC and Big 10 schools, however, and currently receives less than half the Big 10 television take. If there are going to be super conferences (Big 10, SEC) then Texas must consider an invitation to join. What they cannot allow is for Colorado and Mizzou to bolt with the largest only tv markets in the Big-12 North to other conferences and languish in a diminished leftover conference.

Quite frankly, Notre Dame must either get a much more lucrative tv contract from someone, or they would be crazy not to join. Despite the deal with NBC, Notre Dame currently ranks third in the state of Indiana behind U of I and Perdue in tv revenue. If the Big 10 schools can’t figure out how to use $10 million in additional revenue per year for each school to leave the Domers behind from a competitive standpoint, ummm, let’s just say there would be some athletic directors who need to be fired. Notre Dame enjoys a unique national following, but no brand can endure the beating of losing indefinitely. Notre Dame may be able to keep their status as an independent, but it will not be by getting paid $9m per year by NBC. 

Speculation is already running rampant. Let the games begin…

1 Comment | college sports | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Lost for Life

February 12, 2010

This time I really think I’ve figured something out.  Really.  I mean it.

The Island has two particularly strange characteristics (among several others):  babies can’t be born on it (with important exceptions) and dead people walk around on it.  We know that one of those dead people, Locke, is actually Esau (Smokey).  I’m willing to bet that all dead people we have seen walking around on the Island are in fact Smokey, including Christian, Claire, Boone, Harper, Ecko’s brother, etc…  Smokey is death.

I’m also willing to bet that babies born on the Island, including Aaron and Alex, are somehow connected to Jacob or are Jacob.  Jacob represents life.

In the conversation on the beach between Jacob and Esau in the final episode of last season, Esau says that it always ends the same way.  I think he means that we all die.  He repeats this theme when he tells Ben that only Locke understood how pitiful his life was — perhaps all life is.  In Smokey’s view life is futile ending in death.

Jacob agrees that it always ends the same way (we all die) but there is progress.  Jacob believes in the purposefulness of life.

Remember that Ben brings Juliet to the Island so that they can have babies, perhaps expanding Team Jacob.  Widmore, on the other hand, wants to kill baby Alex and ultimately does through the mercenaries.  Widmore is part of Team Esau.

Also, the dead Alex appears to Ben under the Temple scaring him into doing whatever Locke says, but Locke is actually Smokey at that point.  Alex has to be dead so that Smokey can appear as her and trick Ben into following Locke’s orders to kill Jacob.

I don’t know what the “infected” people, Sayid, the new Claire, and Rousseau’s colleagues, really are.  Perhaps they are being drawn into Team Esau.  Remember that Rousseau’s colleagues went under the Temple, where Smokey attacked them, and Rousseau did not.  Perhaps Smokey infects people there, maybe because they went into a spring like Sayid did.

We also know that Ben summoned Smokey to kill the mercenaries by draining a spring, again suggesting that Smokey and the spring are connected.

I don’t have it all figure out — not by  a long stretch — but I’m pretty confident that this death/life theme will help tie the plot together.

3 Comments | Lost | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Sowell Points Out What Is, in Fact, Funny about Peace, Rawls and Understanding

February 11, 2010

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Over on NRO, Thomas Sowell lays out one of the many underlying problems with Rawlsianism: the information problem. The traditional rules of interpersonal justice, which Rawls called “formal fairness” – don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t defraud, fulfill contracts, etc. – are a feasible basis for policy because they only require knowledge of a limited number of discrete acts. Within reasonable limits we can usually get a pretty clear idea of who did what to whom. But Rawls’s desire for a more comprehensively “fair” society presupposes that we have information on the whole state of facts across all reality, and not just in a snapshot but dynamically over time, and not just in the actual course of events but also in all possible anticipated courses of events depending on what policies we enact. This fallacy was also identified by Hayek as “the fatal conceit.”

Required reading for those tempted by the Rawlsian fallacy.

14 Comments | politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster

RiShawn Biddle on the Coming Teacher Pension Crisis

February 11, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Speaking of things we can’t afford…check out this excellent piece from RiShawn Biddle.

Leave a Comment » | school funding | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Mismatching Students and Institutions is a luxury Arizona can no longer afford

February 11, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has been encouraging the universities to develop lower cost alternatives to getting a four-year degree. But, the state is bankrupt and will not be able to find additional money to help create such options.

I have an idea that would help, and it will not cost a dime.

A consulting firm recently presented a report to the Maricopa County Community College District Governing Board with disturbing information about completion rates. The report found that 82 percent of community college students aim to get a degree, but only **11 percent** of them have done so after three years. This completion rate puts MCCCD in the bottom 12 percent of all community college systems nationwide, the report says.

When we go to the university level, the results are little better. The Education Trust’s database of university statistics reveals the four-year graduation rates of Northern Arizona University, the University of Arizona, and Arizona State University to be 28.4 percent, 32.7 percent and 27.7 percent, respectively.

Arizona’s system of higher education is doing an extremely poor job in matching students with colleges. There is a fine line between giving students an opportunity to seek an education despite previous academic failure, and simply using students as financial cannon fodder. Arizona obviously went screaming past that fine line many years ago.

We are not doing students any favors by encouraging them to run up thousands of dollars in debt to pay for school, only to flunk out. In addition, taxpayers should not subsidize six-year odysseys of self-discovery that half of the time fail to result in a university diploma

Arizona’s community colleges and universities should raise their admission standards for new students. Some, perhaps most, of the students flunking out of ASU, UA and NAU ought to be attending community colleges. Community colleges traditionally focus on remediation and are less costly to students and taxpayers.

If we would properly match students to institutions, our higher education system would both save taxpayers money and serve students better.

Those in higher education often are quick to point an accusing finger at the K-12 system for not preparing enough teenagers for college, and rightly so, but no one is forcing them to admit utterly unprepared students.

While we are at it, we might want to do something about K-12 to lower the flood of unprepared students heading to failure in higher education. High-schools, community colleges and universities should all raise their standards.

3 Comments | higher education | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Charter Chatter

February 10, 2010

Readers of JPGB have already seen the working paper, but Education Next now has the peer-reviewed and published version of Booker, Sass, Gill, and Zimmer’s study of the effect of charter high school on graduation and college attendance.  Since you are way ahead of the curve you already knew that attending a charter high school increases the probability that a student will graduate high school and go to college.

The study is so clever because it focuses on students who attended charter middle schools.  Some went on to charter high school and some did not.  By comparing the two groups Booker, et al reduce the selection bias of choice, since all of the students chose charter schools at least for middle school.  But there may still be some selection bias in who chooses to continue in charter high school, so Booker, et al address that with a neato instrumental variable.  Some students don’t go on to charter high school because there isn’t one available nearby.  Their analysis predicts whether students continue to a charter high school based on the availability of nearby charter options.

Check out the highly readable Ed Next article for yourself.  Also watch the podcast interview with Brian Gill.

5 Comments | charter schools | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

The Sacred Cow Says MOOOOOO!!!!

February 10, 2010

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

When Arizona Governor Jan Brewer announced her proposed budget, she established a benchmark in calling for the termination of a state program that currently serves 17,400 seriously mentally ill adults to save $37 million, the Arizona Republic reported. The governor’s budget chief, John Arnold, said this spending reduction is especially hard for the governor because she has been a strong advocate for mental-health causes.

“That benchmark means that anyone who seeks more funding from the state must first make the case why the cause is more important than providing services to 17,400 mentally-ill adults,” Arnold told the Republic.

Arizona is spending far, far more money than it is bringing in and lawmakers must make difficult choices. The concept of a benchmark to justify any new spending is therefore a good one. But it cuts both ways. What about continuing to spend in areas that are nowhere near as worthy as services to the mentally ill?

Consider administrators in the K-12 public educational system. The National Center for Education Statistics reveals that of the 104,630 employees at Arizona school districts in 2007-08, only 54,032 of them were teachers. What is more worthy of funding: maintaining an almost 1-to-1 teacher to bureaucrat ratio or maintaining services for the mentally ill?

Here’s another example: community colleges. The Maricopa County Community College District has a current operating budget of more than $683 million. The total budget from all sources is almost $1.5 billion. The district will spend only $276 million on instruction, making it around only 40 percent of its operating budget and only 18.6 percent of its total budget. MCCCD spends more than three times as much for administration and academic support as the state spends on the mentally ill, and the district’s three-year student completion rate is 11 percent. It is not clear what MCCCD is doing with that additional $130 million, but it does not seem to involve quality administration or academic support.

Defenders of the education status-quo will be quick to point out the federal government’s “maintenance of effort” requirements for using stimulus funds. However, there are waivers for such requirements, and Governor Brewer should seek them immediately. When we are cutting services for the mentally ill, we can hardly afford to maintain wasteful spending as a sacred cow.

1 Comment | school funding | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

No one else will do it, but…Goldwater is Hiring!

February 9, 2010

 

(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)

We are looking to fill five openings at the Goldwater Institute: a vice president of finance and administration, a director of development, an administrative assistant, a development assistant and a staff attorney. We are seeking mid- to senior-level applicants and have some flexibility in responsibilities and salaries depending on the qualifications of the candidates. Information on the positions and how to apply are on our website at: http://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/jobopportunities

Or contact Berry Nelson at bnelson@goldwaterinstitute.org.

2 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner

Bad Politics

February 9, 2010

As I’ve written several times before, I don’t believe that the various federal government stimulus efforts did anything to help the economy.  In fact, they’ve done quite a lot of economic damage by distorting a more efficient allocation of capital and by encouraging the moral hazard where private actors who take unreasonable and large risks get to keep the profits if their bet works and get bailed out by taxpayers if it doesn’t. 

However, plenty of smart people, including a whole lot of folks at market-oriented think tanks, thought large-scale federal intervention in the economy was necessary to stave off an economic collapse. 

Whatever you think of the economic merits of federal stimulus efforts, one thing is very clear — giant federal stimulus efforts were bad politics for President Obama.  It may have made some political sense for an outgoing President Bush to do whatever he could to avoid being cast as the next Herbert Hoover.  But Obama’s political interests should have been different.  He entered office in the midst of a severe economic downturn that had started under his predecessor.  If he had followed the smart political example of Ronald Reagan he would have basically let the downturn run its course and then have rapid economic growth following.  Instead, Obama (and Bush’s) stimulus efforts essentially borrowed consumption from the recovery to soften the severity of the downturn.  The downturn may not have been as bad as it would have been, but the recovery is also much weaker than it would have been.

Reagan’s example may or may not be good policy, but it is certainly good politics.  As any student of Machiavelli learns, you should have all of the bad at the beginning and then let the benefits roll in over time.

3 Comments | economics, politics | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Lost Change

February 8, 2010

No, not that kind of change. 

I’m talking about whether the course of time has really been changed on Lost when they detonated a nuke on the Island.  In the first episode of this season we are led to believe that things have changed.  We see the Losties back on their Oceanic flight but this time it doesn’t crash.  Maybe it worked!

But we also see the Losties on the Island after Esau (Smokey) has killed Jacob and nothing has appeared to change.  Which one is the real timeline?

The answer, I suspect, is that they are still part of the same timeline and nothing was fundamentally changed by the nuke.  Yes, Oceanic landed safely in LA, but I’ll bet that all of the Losties will make their way back to the Island over the next few episodes and the two timelines will merge.  You can’t change time.

This seems to be the major dispute between Jacob and Esau.  When the two of them were sitting on the beach watching the ship, Esau said that it always ends the same way.  Jacob agrees but says that the process is always different and that is progress.  We’ll somehow learn that Jacob is right about this.  We’ll see that there has been progress even if the ending is the same.

Some evidence for this theory is that Juliet seems to be dangling between the two timelines as she is dying.  She talks about going to get coffee and wants to tell Sawyer that it worked.  Also, Desmond appears and disappears on the flight.  I bet things are changing in the alternate timeline to course-correct already.

Some other questions to ponder:  Where is home for Esau (Smokey)?  he tells us that he finally wants to go home and I’ll bet that is the Temple from which he has been banished and will now attempt to recapture. 

Also, is Jacob inside Sayed?  It seems like Jacob gave Hurley the guitar case as an insurance policy.  He knew that he could visit Hurley even after he was killed and deliver the message to his followers at the Temple.  The message may well have been to use the pool to transfer Jacob into Sayed so that Jacob could help defend the Temple against Esau.

Even though Jacob seems like the good guy and Essau as the bad one, I’ll bet that they are both actually mixed in character.  Each has done good and bad things.  We will somehow learn that both are correct — fate cannot be changed but there is still room for free will and human progress.

2 Comments | Lost | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

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