Religious happier than athiests?

And it apparently doesn't matter which religion . . . http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010672.

Men happier, women less so in modern society

Here's another one of those "happiness" stories. We've seen similar data at JBU where the female faculty members feel busier and less satisfied than the men. National survey data (HERI in particular) has shown similar results.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/26/business/26leonhardt.html?ex=1348459200&en=08b7d45b98eea4fd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Another example of the "Great Books" debate

Seems like some of this "Great Books" idea is making a comeback - http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/26/kronman.

Fitness training info

On a more personal level, my wife and I have done some fitness training off and on. Given my sabbatical free time, we're back "on" right now. Here's a summary of my latest reading on the topic by bodybuilder Tom Venuto, probably the most reasonable and insightful advice I've seen so far on these issues (and I've read or skimmed through about a dozen books related to fitness, nutrition, weight lifting, etc.). None of what Mr. Venuto has to say is revolutionary, but it's balanced, well-articulated, and compelling.

Basically, you set goals, you eat right, and you do aerobics and weight lifting, each for 3-7 times a week (6-14 times total depending on your fitness level), each for 30-60 minutes a session, and all of them at high intensity.

His top 8 list (the fundamentals) for nutrition are: eat fewer calories than you burn (count everything), properly balance your macronutrients (50/55-30-15/20 for carbs-proteins-fats), eat 5-6 meals a day (also balanced), eat lean protein with every meal, eat the right type of carbs (avoid refined sugars), eat the right type of fats (essential fatty acids), drink plenty of water, and eat natural foods as much as possible (skip the MREs and supplements).

Your main goal should be to reduce your percentage of body fat (weight loss is only an ancillary byproduct). Last time I checked, my body fat was 17%, and my VO2 was 48. Both are pretty good for a man my age, but my wife's results (17% and 43) put her in the "elite athlete" level for a woman, which would equate to about 9% and 60 for a man. To do that, I'd have to keep my lean mass the same and lose almost 20 pounds of fat while improving my conditioning by more than 20%! So that's my goal, catch up with my wife over the next few months as I try to put some of this into practice. Now that it's in writing for everyone to see, I've got to stay with it, huh?!

Wal-Mart's financial impact

The short version is that the average American saves almost $1000 a year because of the existence of Wal-Mart.

http://www.globalinsight.com/MultiClientStudy/MultiClientStudyDetail2438.htm

The rise of a Catholic CCCU?

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/25/catholic

Interesting trend in Christian higher education. This also sounds a lot like that "Education for our Time" book that I reviewed earlier.

Are Christians discriminated against in higher education?

http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i05/05b00601.htm

My experiences in higher education have been similar to the main tone in the piece. There's some inherent discrimination against Christians, but even more so against conservatives. And it's usually more covert than overt. The statistics I've seen would appear to bear out those perceptions as well.

The culture of economics

Intriguing summary of the writings of Galbraith and Schumpeter in which Schumpeter's emphasis on the "creative destruction" of the "aristocratic" entrepreneurial bourgeoisie wins out over the technocratic statism of Galbraith. But the author ultimately says that both great economists miss the point that economics swims in the sea of "culture" just as much as any other field does, so the emphasis on material production in some ways heads us down the wrong track and can ultimately undermine the very system that a Schumpeter is trying to promote.

http://reason.com/news/show/122024.html

World graduation rates

Interesting comparative statistics - http://economist.com/daily/chartgallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9823950.

Balanced Scorecards redux

Having skimmed through the standard book on Balanced Scorecards, only some of it would apply directly to higher education. One section I did find intriguing, however, was the summation of 12 items that typically go into a balanced scorecard in most businesses. That got me thinking about which of these would fit for a place like JBU.

1) ROI: Defined in business terms, that's net income divided by average stockholders equity. Given that TUG seldom has net income and that there isn't any stockholder's equity, this one doesn't make much sense for TUG. But for G&PS, this is a possibility. Since these programs make a profit and don't usually have much in the way of endowments, you could run them according to the standard formula.

The rest I'll deal with later, but here's the list.

2-4) Profitability, Revenue growth/mix, Cost reduction/productivity: Again, these are problematic for TUG because there is no net income to work from. But you could determine cost per credit hour generated and track that for the "productivity" number in all programs (potentially using Delaware Study data for TUG comparisons). For G&PS, profitability and revenue growth are easier to track and probably should be.

5) Market share: We know high school graduation numbers by state, so you could determine market share percentage for some aspect of TUG. For G&PS, you could also do some basic demographic data-mining to determine market share here as well. This would seem to me to be a key figure that most IHEs don't really track at this point.

6) Customer acquisition: TUG admissions keeps detailed "cost to recruit" data as do our competitors. This one's fairly easy to track.

7) Customer retention: We track retention and graduation rate data as well, and new models include comparison adjustments depending on the type of students we have (regression analyses based on ACT and Pell data as well as "frontier" analyses based on similar data). In short, we should be able to track this one for TUG. G&PS might be harder but it also doable.

8) Customer profitability: We currently track average net income from each student. But we could probably do a lot more here. Do we follow the typical business practice of determining which customers are likely to do what sorts of things (enroll at certain financial aid levels, persist to what stages of college, enter what fields, participate in which programs, spend money on which ancillary offerings such as on-campus housing and off-campus programs, etc.)? Not that I know of.

9) Customer satisfaction: Our alumni survey could be better, but we track a lot of this data via CIRP, SSI, NSSE, etc.

10) Employee satisfaction: We have faculty climate surveys and have occasionally participated in the Christianity Today employee satisfaction survey, but I'm not sure how helpful these processes are.

11) Employee retention: We have such low turnover, I'm not sure how helpful this would be, but perhaps it would be worth tracking.

12) Employee productivity: I'm not sure we do anything on this one, except perhaps if we calculated cost per credit hour generated.

To summarize, the list might have some relevance to an institution like JBU, but it might involve some significant effort to include all of these elements.

Summary of IT usage by college students

If you're interested in IT trends of college students, here's a recent study from Educause.

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS0706/ecm0706.pdf

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS0706/ekf0706.pdf

Is Alternative Certification for Education working?

Since we're in the middle of battling with the state on this question, I found this article to be a useful overview - http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/18/teacher.

The declining value of an MBA?

Since I'm in an MBA program, I found this article interesting. Those at the very top of their fields or already established in their businesses are seeing less and less value in attending an MBA program.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/business/16mba.html?pagewanted=1&_r=4&ref=business

More MBA reflections

As I read for my MBA courses, I occasionally reflect on how this data might apply to the JBU context. Here's an example.

For my MMBA work, we've been reading about balanced scorecards, which is sort of what cabinet has been doing as it determines its top 10 indicators to benchmark on an executive "dashboard." One of the benchmarks that all businesses use is market share because it doesn't really mean much if the numbers are going up when everyone else you're competing with is going up even faster. Is there any way that we can address that issue in our various assessments JBU?

For example, I've seen charts from you in the past that show how many high school grads there are by state. If we picked our top 5-6 six states and then tracked how many students we were getting from those states, would that give us a meaningful number for market share for our TUG recruiting? Could we get even more precise than that by tracking types of grads (ACT, types of schools, etc.)?

Similarly, Dick once sent me a comparison to LeTourneau in terms of their total potential recruiting population and how many students they actually have vs. what JBU was doing. That type of analysis could probably be expanded to include a few other key competitors to see how well we're doing in terms of market share in G&PS.

On a related note, I've been reading a bit about regression analyses applied to possible customers to determine which customers should get what sort of preferential treatment. I immediately thought of financial aid as an example. I know that Rich Sherry at Bethel does some of this analysis for his institution, and I assume that Noel-Lovitz runs many of their processes along these lines.

Do we and other CCCU institutions have similar regression analyses on past data that we use in determining which applicants are likely to matriculate, at what levels of financial support, and will likely persist and graduate at what sort of final GPA? I've chatted with some stats people in the past about such ideas, and they appeared to believe that such approaches would be doable at JBU (depending on the confidence intervals you're shooting for, of course), so maybe the idea's worth exploring?

U.S. saves more than any country in the world?

I had always suspected as much from my own personal experience (we now have a bigger retirement fund, better cars, and a nicer house than we did 15 years ago, despite our "official" savings rate being more or less static), but the figures presented here were even greater than I would have imagined.

http://american.com/archive/2007/september-october-magazine-contents/running-on-empty/

Work makes people happy?

I've always assumed that this was true, despite the supposed preference out there for more leisure time, but this article lays out the specifics.

http://www.american.com/

The conservative objections to NCLB

Typically, it's the liberals who reject NCLB, but here's why lots of conservatives dislike the bill as well, primarily because it puts the federal government in charge of education, not the states and localities, and also because it emphasizes equality of outcomes instead of equality of opportunity. Both are long-term recipes for disaster, however well intentioned the bill might be in the short run.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/118xfsjy.asp?pg=2

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/september-0907/defining-achievement-downward

Why France uses nuclear energy and we don't?

I've long wondered why nuclear energy never became "the answer" that we had one point thought it would be. The answer - Jane Fonda? http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/freakonomics-in-the-times-magazine-the-jane-fonda-effect/

How are we really doing in Iraq?

Interesting economist's analysis vs. all of the political analysis that I've read in the past, though the bottom line is still the same--things are mixed. http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/15/is-the-surge-working-ask-the-data-not-the-politicians/

Don't buy textbooks, rent them?

Interesting idea - http://www.textbookflix.com/.

Investing 101

In the accounting class I'm taking, there's lots of talk about "beating the market." I've always preferred the sort of advice included in this article (that trying to beat the market is typically futile, so just put your money in an index fund).

http://www.sanfran.com/archives/view_story/1507

Remove traffic signs, reduce traffic accidents?

This is the second or third time I've seen an article to this effect that removing traffic signs actually reduces traffic accidents because everyone pays more attention at intersections instead of just assuming that they have the right of way because of what a sign says. If I, for example, know that there might be someone coming the other direction at an unmarked intersection, I'll slow down, but if I think I have a green light at a marked intersection, I'll keep going full speed. But then, oops, I wasn't paying close attention and the light had changed to red, and I just sideswiped some poor fellow. That's how most accidents occur today. The new theory is that if you remove the signs, you get fewer of those types of accidents. I'm sure there's more to the story than this, and obviously some will disagree with the concept, but it's an interesting example of how more rules don't always lead to better results.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070911/od_nm/germany_traffic_odd_dc;_ylt=As_H0KzgtVq0Xk4T1Daw9q6s0NUE

The Practical Benefits of a College Education?

It starts with roughly $1 million in lifetime earnings and goes from there - http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/13/collegeboard.

The latest Business fad - Fun at Work?

I just can't see this making inroads with college profs - http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/081tidkp.asp?pg=1.

Balanced Scorecards?

We've been talking about versions of this at JBU more and more in recent years. Richard Light, of "College Success" fame, helped create such an instrument for Wheaton (Mass.) that appears quite helpful. Other IHEs appear to have developed similar methodologies. Here are some sites for "balanced scorecard" information.

The basic conclusion that I drew from these conversations is that this balanced scorecard idea has more relevance to IHEs than do the Six Sigma, Quality Improvement, Lean Thinking, Toyota Way and other business engineering processes, largely because of the emphasis on the word "balance." The Balanced Scorecard doesn't have a great track record of improving business performance, most likely because the attempt to balance lots of competing interests diverts the company from its main focus. This is why, perhaps, the third generation of these balanced scorecards has emphasized the need to define the ultimate goal first before creating the scorecard itself.

Higher Education, however, has lots of competing concerns that are legitimate and therefore need to be kept in balance. Do we emphasize the development of critical thinking, new knowledge, service to the local community, professional training for the marketplace, citizenship for the country, moral guidance for our churches? We want it all, and the balanced scorecard is better at trying to keep all of these various pieces in view than would be something like "The Toyota Way."

http://www.balancedscorecard.org/basics/bsc1.html

http://www.camagazine.com/index.cfm/ci_id/26179/la_id/1

http://www.camagazine.com/index.cfm/ci_id/16066/la_id/1

http://www.odl.rutgers.edu/resources/pdf/score.pdf

http://he-cda.wiley.com/WileyCDA/HigherEdTitle/productCd-0471423289.html

http://www.schneiderman.com/Concepts/Scorecard/scorecard.htm

www.businessintelligence.com/fwp/Designing_Exec_Dashboards.pdf

Admissions at elite liberal arts universities

My uncle is the librarian at Hamilton, so I was interested in this review of a book about their admissions process - http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/09/07/class.

Novel merit pay idea?

Here's one I haven't heard before - http://insidehighered.com/views/2007/09/07/miller.

Privacy laws out of hand?

Here's a generally sensible response to the Virginia Tech tragedy that points out a problem we deal with in higher education more and more, our fanaticism about privacy laws, in this case via FERPA.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/01/AR2007090101233.html

Carbon offsetting: The new "Indulgences"?

I was initially supportive of the whole cap-and-trade approach to "sustainability," but the way it's working out in practice (rich Westerners buying off their guilt by encouraging third-worlders to continue living in unmechanized squalor) reminds this former Western Civ teacher much too much of the Reformation-era abuses of Indulgences. I realize I'm not the first person to come up with that analogy, but it seems increasingly apt. Still haven't figured out where that leaves me in terms of my own preferred "sustainability" solution, but cap-and-trade doesn't seem to be the answer.

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/3788/

Of cartels and teachers

Another example of how our teacher certification processes are increasingly out of touch. We're struggling with exactly this sort of situation at JBU with the state telling us that we can't offer our non-traditional teacher education program because we're not following the standard (and I would say outmoded) contact time rules, regardless of whether those rules make any sense in preparing qualified teachers.

http://www.american.com/archive/2007/september-0907/suing-to-shut-down-2018teach-for-america2019

Do teacher credentials matter to student achievement?

I've read conflicting articles on this issue with most saying "not much." This abstract contends that they do, especially for math teaching - http://papers.nber.org/papers/W12828. This article is less positive, contending that licensure typically correlates to student achievement, especially in math, only when the "bar" is being set high, which most licensure tests do not do - http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/EWPA/Research/Teacher_Quality/1798.html.