Outside the Beltway

Some Tabs for Monday

Steven L. Taylor
28

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A few stories of possible interest:

The suit claims that the election was corrupted in Maricopa County and that she should be declared the winner. The 70-page filing relies on a hodgepodge of allegations, ranging from voter and poll worker accounts to poll numbers claiming that voters agreed with Ms. Lake on the election’s mismanagement. Some of what is cited comes not from last month’s election but from the 2020 contest. Other allegations accuse officials of wrongdoing for 

Fox News and other conservative outlets were fixtures of internal news roundups, scripts and broadcasts. Producers circulated a clip of a Fox News commentator discussing Russia’s “sanction-proof” economy and a Breitbart article about the effect on oil prices.

Mr. Carlson’s broadcasts were passed around V.G.T.R.K., according to emails.

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28 responses to “Some Tabs for Monday”

  1. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    The tuition slashing is long overdue. Many, if not most of these smaller private schools don’t offer a better education than can be had in a state’s university system.

    1
  2. Michael Cain Avatar
    Michael Cain

    I keep hoping for a counter-suit of some sort against the bar association(s), on the grounds that they are not adequately policing their members over frivolous filings.

    1
  3. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Sleeping Dog:

    It’s quite true that many of these small private colleges don’t provide good educations.

    BUT…you’re forgetting the prestige factor of attending an expensive private school.

    1
  4. daryl and his brother darryl Avatar
    daryl and his brother darryl

    Lot’s of tabs from the NY Times which are behind a paywall I refuse to pay.

    1
  5. Steven L. Taylor Avatar
    Steven L. Taylor

    @daryl and his brother darryl: On the one hand, I understand,. On the other hand, are you suggesting I need to only post unpaywalled links?

    1
  6. daryl and his brother darryl Avatar
    daryl and his brother darryl

    @Steven L. Taylor:
    Not at all – merely expressing my frustration at paywalls and the lack of options available to the public…or more accurately the lack of ingenuity on the part of content producers.

  7. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    @CSK:

    Yes prestige, but did you notice the comment from the president of Colby-Sawyer that implied that small private schools have reached the point of diminishing returns on “prestige.”

    There was another article this week on employment of adjunct faculty and small private schools. Pointing out that in too many of those schools the faculty doesn’t stand up to scrutiny for quality.

  8. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Sleeping Dog: I would say that it’s hard to outdo most state education systems for quality, but part of the first-wave feminism was attacking the Ivies because of the old-boys network (which may be far more valuable than the curriculum content) they introduced students to. Part of the selling point of private colleges (including elite evangelical ones) is that the give students an inside track for success.

    And the fact that some schools are able to cut tuition by 50%, according to the headline, causes one to ask why the tuition is so high in the first place and what does the school do with the surplus?

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  9. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Sleeping Dog:
    Unfortunately, I couldn’t access the article. I would like to have read it. What did the Colby-Sawyer prez say?

    The benefit to all colleges and universities in hiring adjunct faculty is an economic one. All they have to pay the part-timer for is teaching some courses. No benefits whatsoever. It’s a heck of a saving: $15,000 compared to $100,000 plus bennies for a full-timer.

  10. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @just nutha: Reading the sub-head answered my second-paragraph questions to some degree. If some number students don’t pay “list price” because of certain types of grants and scholarships that are more in the line of discounts on tuition, that probably accounts for something, but I’m skeptical that it totals 50%.

  11. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    @CSK:

    The reset is part marketing move and part reality check. It is frank recognition among some lesser-known colleges that their prices are something of a feint. They are high in part to mimic the price tag of the most elite colleges and universities — suggesting that this is an education worth paying for — but, in reality, the prices are not based in fact. At Colby-Sawyer, every student gets a discount.

    “I don’t want to call it a game, because it’s not a game,” said Susan D. Stuebner, the president of Colby-Sawyer. “But this phenomenon in higher education of a high sticker price, high discount is so confusing to families.”

    Many potential applicants, she said, balked at the sticker price, and did not investigate further.

    Many private colleges are feeling pressure to fill their classes. They are competing for a dwindling number of college-age students, and face a growing skepticism about whether the degree — and its debt — is worth it.

    Nearly a third of parents and students believe that a college education is overpriced compared with its value, according to a recent Sallie Mae and Ipsos study. The same study found that 81 percent of families had crossed a school off their list at some point because of its high cost.

    “The conversation nationally has really become, why is the price of college so high?” Dr. Stuebner said. “How many families are we not in conversation with because they see the sticker price and say, ‘Not for me’?”

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  12. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @CSK: I dunno how many private schools are paying in the $100k plus bennies range, and I can’t do then versus now, but I DO know that my $5.75/hr. wage as a part-time warehouseman back in the mid 70’s was high enough to induce one of my professors at Seattle Pacific to quit professoring for a public school job. I know this because I visited him at his high school for advice about returning for my teaching credential, and he told me that what I made working part-time was a strong factor in deciding to leave the ivy crusted halls.

  13. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @just nutha:

    Well, at present, a full-time associate professor at Boston University gets $174,000.

  14. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @Sleeping Dog: “Nearly a third of parents and students believe that a college education is overpriced compared with its value, according to a recent Sallie Mae and Ipsos study.”

    A study I found in the Oregonian (I think) back when I was heading back to school/just recently graduated was saying that even back in the late 80s early 90s, Oregon’s universities were already graduating several thousand more degree holders than the state had employment for in professions requiring degrees. Given that factoid, sometimes I wonder how it took so long for parents/students to get up to speed. Still, the “with no college degree, your kid will end up living under a bridge [with the liberal arts grads], strung out on meth” message is pervasive, and fear is a strong motivator.

  15. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @CSK: Wow! That’s a LOT more than I ever made, even including Korea. And even a bunch more than most professors at my alma mater make even now. Then again Seattle Pacific isn’t recognized as a research university, either.

    According to Zippia (whatever that is): “How Much Does Seattle Pacific University Pay? Seattle Pacific University pays an average salary of $46,370 per year or $22.29 per hour. Seattle Pacific University pays those in the bottom 10 percent $33,000 a year, and the top 10 percent over $65,000.” I pay taxes on, roughly $40-50k most years and I know for sure that I wouldn’t be able to live in Seattle on that kind of money–even if I could convert it all to cash year on year.

  16. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @Sleeping Dog:

    Thanks very much.

  17. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @just nutha: And for the record, $22.29/hr. is less than I make substitute teaching in Longview/Kelso (I lose my ground against the average from the 6-hour days and not working 192/year). I guess my professor was right in leaving.

  18. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @just nutha:

    It’s possible that the lower salaries are paid to “staff,” not professors. Staff at B.U. are paid considerably less than professors.

    Adjunct faculty at B.U. get $8500 per course.

  19. MarkedMan Avatar
    MarkedMan

    @just nutha:

    And the fact that some schools are able to cut tuition by 50%, according to the headline, causes one to ask why the tuition is so high in the first place and what does the school do with the surplus?

    Because almost no one pays full freight in the first place, except foreign students. When my son was looking at colleges, my alma mater offered him a “scholarship” equal to the entire tuition for the school he eventually attended, McGill University in Montreal. It was still more expensive than McGill. And my son is an American so he was going in as a foreign student.

  20. Sleeping Dog Avatar
    Sleeping Dog

    @just nutha:

    A HUGE part of the problem is that students/parents don’t get or won’t accept information about the realistic prospects for graduates and when they do get the message that there are always room for unicorns.

    To make matters worse, we are point where AI will be taking a lot of the jobs that has been absorbing those graduates. And society isn’t prepared for that.

  21. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @CSK: Even so, the top 10% are starting at $65k. I am innumerate, but I don’t think you can get that low of an average with the floor of the top decile at $65k.

  22. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @MarkedMan: Which is what I noted in my follow-up comment. Thank you for the real world example.

  23. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @just nutha:
    Not sure what you mean by the top 10%. Faculty in general? Staff?

  24. just nutha Avatar
    just nutha

    @CSK: I’m quoting the Zippia item, so I assume they are talking about the top 10% of salaries in aggregate. Additionally, I will note that Seattle Pacific has an enrollment of a touch under 4000 students and BU lists roughly 10 times that many for 2022. My point is that I find it hard to believe that a school the size of SPU is going to have enough total staffing to lower the average salary to $46,000 if significant numbers of associate faculty are making $175k and the starting point of the top 10% for aggregate salaries is $65k. There simply aren’t enough data points to make that kind of a range. To draw an additional comparison point, Zip Recruiter gives BU average salary as just under $61k, or roughly $15,000 more than SPU.

    I suspect SPU employees are simply paid less across the board. To some degree, this is not particularly unexpected. Evangelicals, until the Jim and Tammy and megachurch era anyway, have lived by the model of assisting God in keeping his servants humble by keeping them poor.

  25. CSK Avatar
    CSK

    @just nutha:

    The thing about the B.U. average is that it covers everyone who works in the school, including the janitors and custodians.

    I was speaking solely of the professoriate.

    I don’t doubt that the professoriate at Seattle Pacific make less than those at B.U.

  26. Neil Hudelson Avatar
    Neil Hudelson

    @daryl and his brother darryl:

    Go to your local library’s website (or check out some neighboring towns, not too hard to get an acct #). There’s a better than even chance now they offer NYTimes for free. And, its a pretty painless process: you click on a link to verify you have a library account, and you get access for 24 hours. Repeat as many times as you want. I’ll give props to the NYTimes–they and the WSJ have, to my knowledge, made themselves more widely available to public library account holders than most other papers. The WSJ’s program is only for their archives, so articles are at least 24 hours old. NYTimes is free access, no asterisks.

  27. mister bluster Avatar
    mister bluster

    I live outside the local library district. The last time I checked the out of district cost it was $80/year. Up from the $20 a year that I had paid just 6 years earlier. That was in 1985. I shudder to think what it costs today.

  28. Flat Earth Luddite Avatar
    Flat Earth Luddite

    @CSK:
    According to Bing/Indeed, adjunct at BU are making $3600/month. Not much if you’re living in Boston area, is it?

    @Sleeping Dog:
    When I was teaching paralegal students in the mid-2000’s, a common complaint from “management” was that I laughed at students who all thought they were going to get a 75k job as a paralegal, as promised by the school. In Portland, at the time, starting salaries were $22-28k). AFAIK, $$ has improved, but not that much.

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