A Victory Media Friendly School

In the comments to my post on The Best Colleges ranking, I received a heads-up from jhicks23 about another questionable accolade which The Penn State Propaganda Portal has recently pimped:

G.I. Jobs magazine has designated Penn State a military friendly school for 2012. It is the third straight time the  Pittsburgh-based publication has recognized the University's programs and services designed specifically to help active-duty military  service members and veterans pursue an education online through Penn State's World Campus.

I decided to take a closer look at how  G.I. Jobs magazine's military friendly school list works.  

According to the Military Friendly Schools website, G.I. Jobs starts with a list of 7000 colleges, universities and trade schools nationwide and narrows these down to around 1000 schools.  The explanation  of how this is done is a bit vague. It supposedly involves "exhaustive research" by the G.I. Jobs Military Friendly Schools Team. And that research "includes government agencies and private entities which administer education benefits and a comprehensive survey administered by G.I. Jobs. A Military Friendly Schools Academic Advisory Panel, consisting of five higher education administrators, helps determine survey questions and weightings."   What does it mean for the research to include government agencies and private entities? Does it mean that the data used in the research comes from these source?  No mention of to whom the survey is administered. Anyway, once they somewhat mysteriously assemble the data they use a set of criteria to winnow the  list down to about 1000 schools.   It is worth noting that the schools on the list are not ranked. Here is the nominal  reason for that

We purposely do not use a numerical ranking system as we encourage student to use our resources as a starting point for seeking education. School choice is not a one-size fits all process, so we built the Matchmaker tool to help narrow down the field.

Up to this point everything seems on the up and up. If we take G. I. Jobs at their word the collect and analyze data to come up with a list of schools for vets to select from by purely objective means.

It is the next step in the process where things get dicey. Once the list of military friendly schools is assembled G. I. Jobs sends out a  media kit to the schools on the list soliciting advertizing from them. Here's the pitch from that kit

Through its many established brands, long experience, deep relationships and unparalleled rating system, Victory Media’s print and web media products serve as the foundation for any school serious about recruiting the military and veteran student. If you’re one of the 20% of all schools nationwide which made the Military Friendly Schools® list, congratulations on such an elite achievement. Our media products, which start at only $990 per year, stand ready to carry your recruiting message to the enormous and valuable military student market. Only Military Friendly Schools® can run advertising in the print version of the Guide
to Military Friendly Schools® and www.militaryfriendlyschools.com. All other media are open to all schools.

[...]

In September 2011, the Military Friendly Schools® list will be released nationally to the press. Your school is encouraged to issue its
own press release to promote your inclusion.

That's Penn State's press release that I linked to back in  the first paragraph.

Here's the  menu of advertizing options from the kit.

From Drop Box

We see here the real reason that G. I. Jobs doesn't assign ranks to the schools. They want to give schools that advertize with them an advantage over those that don't advertize with them.  So even if one is generous in assuming no manipulations are involved in compiling the list,  we see that the manipulation comes in at this stage.   And how big of an advantage do schools that pay for advertizing have over those that don't?  Well, here's what the folks at G. I. Jobs provides a partial answer in their media kit.

From Drop Box

How much does this all cost? Other than the reference to $990 per year in the above quote from the kit, all  prices have been redacted from the publicly available media kit.

But apparently no one at G. I. Jobs had a background in military intelligence, they redacted the prices by pasting opaque images over them which I was able to edit out with a PDF editor. The uncensored kit is here and here are the price lists from that uncensored kit.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

So has the Penn State World Campus spent any money on advertizing with the nice folks at G.I. Jobs? You betcha

From Drop Box

Note the "add to my school list" button. Schools that don't advertize don't get one of those which make it harder for vets to compare the schools that don't pay to those that do.

How much has Penn State spent on these ads? Once more I turn to the Snyder Reports which, unfortunately, do not give a definitive answer to the question. Penn State has been on the list three years running 2009-2010, 2010--2011 and this year, 2011-2012. This years payments will show up in a future Snyder Report, either the 2011-2012 report or the 2012-2013 depending on if the check for his went out before or after July 1^rst this summer. 

What about past years? According to the reports, Victory Media, the publisher of G.I. Jobs, was paid $24,235 in fiscal year 2007-2008 (p. 471). If the military friendly list came out during the summer of 2009-2010, then this payment predated the World Campus' first appearance on the list.  If this  is the case, one must wonder how Penn State's prior advertizing with G.I. Jobs influenced its first appearance on the list.  And the payment of $17,226 in fiscal year 2008-2009 (p. 551) could be for either of the first two years on the list. 

No matter how you slice this, Penn State  World Campus is certainly a Victory Media Friendly School.

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The Best Ranking Money Can Buy

In early April, the lead story in the Penn State Faculty and Staff Newswire, a product of The Old Main Propaganda Shop,  was about a top ranking awarded to the Penn State World Campus by Best Colleges.

The same day the Collegian also ran a story about the World Campus and Best Colleges  and  the reporter got Graham to weigh-in on the ranking.

Penn State President Graham Spanier wrote in an email that World Campus has been a great success and established itself as a premier online program since its launch.
“We have already served tens of thousands of students with high-quality courses,” Spanier wrote. “I’m pleased to see that it has been recognized for its achievements.”

I had never heard of Best Colleges and neither had Don Heller, Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Penn State. While I was digging around to see what I could find out about Best Colleges, he was emailing Lisa Powers,  Director of Public Information Bullshit, at  The Old Main Propaganda Shop with a warning:

Last week, Penn State issued a press release touting its World Campus' selection as the "the No. 1 online institution for 2011." This designation was conferred by the website, TheBestColleges.org, which I had never heard of before - and I've seen lots of different rankings over the years. So I spent a little bit of time going through the website, and after about 30 minutes or so, I sent this message to Penn State's Director of Public Information:

I read your press release, and not having heard of Best Colleges, took a look at the website. Unless you have some information establishing the validity and/or reputation of the website, I d be a little cautious about how much you want to promote the WC and other rankings from this site. While they say We do not accept paid placements for our school rankings, it appears to me that this is a site supported entirely by advertising fees from universities. When you do a search for any of the degrees they show there (not the rankings, but a degree search), no matter what the degree, you get a list of for the most part for-profit and online universities, and very few of what most of us would consider more traditional universities whose quality and rankings are more universally recognized.

Here are the criteria they say they use to calculate the rankings for the 25 best online universities:

We ve relied on the following criteria to generate our online colleges and universities rankings: student satisfaction (as measured by graduation and retention rates), peer and instructional quality (as measured by acceptance rate and student-teacher ratio), affordability (as measured by tuition costs and availability of financial aid), and credibility (as measured by years of accreditation, reputation and awards).

To be blunt, this is garbage. Graduation and retention rates are not measures of student satisfaction, any more than acceptance rates and student-teacher ratios are measures of peer and instructional quality.
We can all agree there are problems with the U.S. News & World Report rankings, but they are at least considered reputable by most parties. I would be cautious about trumpeting rankings from Best Colleges externally unless you know more about this organization (which I d be interested in hearing).

Don Heller

One can imagine that  Lisa responded to Don with  Old Main's fallback position whenever they are faced with a ranking problem...."Oh, pshaw...we don't take theses things seriously," and she might have even tossed in a we're so glad you brought the error of our ways to our attention. But apparently no one set Graham set straight or he refused to see the error of his ways, because at the last Board of Trustees meeting in May he bragged to the Trustees that

Students also have embraced Penn State s World Campus, which was named the No. 1 online institution in 2011 by the Best Colleges.

My research into Best Colleges confirms Don's suspicion that these rankings are paid for by the universities being ranked,or at least some of the universities being ranked.  .

Only the 109th University in the World, But the Third Party School in the Country

The Times Higher Education World University Rankings were published today. Here is how the the Big Ten schools  finished overall.

• 15. University of Michigan
• 25 Northwestern University
• 33 University of Illinois Urban-Campaign
• 43 University of Wisconsin
  
• 52 University of  Minnesota
• 66 Ohio State University
  
• 106 Purdue
• 109 Penn State
• 122 Michigan State
• 132 University of Iowa
  
• 156 Indiana U

The Big Ten's newest addition, the University of Nebraska, didn't make the top 200 schools.

I will have more to say about this on Friday and I'll also weigh in on the recent WSJ corporate recruiter rankings of universities.

And latter this month the long awaited  NRC graduate program rankings are scheduled to be released. How will Penn State do? Old Main already knows since the data was released to univerisities earlier this week. My guess is that The Old Main Propaganda Shop is working overtime getting ready to brag and spin as needed  once the public gets a look.

Something is Rank

I've been meaning to update you on the reaction from The Old Main Propaganda Shop on Penn State plummeting from 7^th place last year to 35^th place this year in the Washington Monthly National University Ranking.

First, let's go back to 2007 when Penn State finished fifth in the ranking due to the erroneously high Pell Grant percentage used by the magazine for Penn State. Here's the reaction.

"It's something that Penn Staters should be proud of," Penn State [Bullshit Artist] Geoff Rushton said. "It uses scientific criteria that measures how universities impact the nation, and Penn State has done very well. "

Geoff had to know that the Pell Grant percentage was off by just shy of a factor of two , yet he was counseling pride on the part of Penn Staters. I'll cut him some slack since empty pride is the Penn State way and even empty pride can be used to separate gullible alumni from their money.

Now, let's compare this to the reaction this year.

"I have to say that rankings as a whole are something that we don't take too seriously," [Penn State Bullshit Artist Annemarie] Mountz said. "We don't look for ways to rise in the rankings."

Not too seriously, Annemarie? Why does Penn State maintain a Web site Where We Stand:Current Rankings?  The site,which  was updated last month,  still has the 2009 Washington Monthly ranking and not the 2010 ranking. Why is that? You and Graham  have to know that the 2009 ranking, like all of that magazine rankings before this year, is based on a too high Pell Grant percentage for  Penn State. It's a lie to leave it up.

By the way, a couple of  years ago I pointed out that Penn State slams the Princeton Review rankings as not being scientific whenever its party school ranking draws unwelcome attention to the University (Rushton's quote above is a not too subtle dig at Princeton Review), yet Penn State listed other Princeton Review rankings on the site which made the University look good. Shortly thereafter, The Old Main Propaganda Shop scrubbed the Princeton Review rankings from the site. Guess what?  Princeton Review is listed again this year. I guess they figured no one was paying attention anymore....don't even begin to think about erasing anything this time, Annemarie, I've notarized the site.

The fascinating claim by Annemarie is, "We don't look for ways to rise in the rankings."  No, of course not, Annemarie.

Dickinson School of Law (DSL) is being offered a $60-plus million new home on the Penn State campus in State College if the university's board of governors agrees to forsake Carlisle.
Board approval is the only thing that stands in the way of the proposed relocation by fall 2008.
An agreement made when the law school and the state-affiliated university were merged in 1997 says the 169-year-old school will remain in the Carlisle in perpetuity unless the governors vote to go to another site.
In a 28-page memo marked "Confidential For DSL Board Members Only" in preparation for a Nov. 21-22 board meeting, law school Dean Phil McConnaughay tells the board that the university "is prepared to assume the entire cost of a new facility without any repayment" if the law school "completes the design of a new facility within the next 12 months."
The crux of the dean's argument favoring an exodus from the borough is strongly rooted in U.S. News and World Report magazine's third-tier ranking of the school and "a languishing reputation" that caused "DSL grads" in one firm to inform McConnaughay about "their law firm's decision not to hire any longer from our law school because of our low rank."

Penn State was willing to spend $60 million to boost DSL's US News and World Report ranking and ultimately it spent an unknown amount in a legal fees and a pr campaign to abrogate the original merger agreement and to win the right to build a second campus at University Park at the cost of having to renovate the Carlisle facility. That construction cost $100 million.

What's a little fiddling with the way it reports its Pell Grant percentage to boost its Washington Monthly ranking in comparison to that?

It's Beginning to Look Like Penn State Exists Solely For THON

Today's Collegian has a half-assed story  on Penn State's precipitous drop in the Washington Monthly National University Ranking.  The reporter, Micah Wintner, makes no effort to explain why the University dropped like a rock from 7^th to 35^th place.  Basically the story is Penn State drops in Washington Monthly ranking....hey, look over there THON....economic impact...wait!... is that Graham playing the washboard?

You would think that explaining the drop would be the obvious angle on this story.   Let's review, this is from my post last year on the ranking.

This brings me to Social Mobility which clearly is what drives Penn State in to the top ten schools on the overall ranking and something ain't right here. Anyone who has spent any time in Happy Valley over the past fifteen years knows that the Main Campus of Penn State is increasingly populated by upper middle class and upper class students. It's gotten so bad that the University Faculty Senate issued a report a couple years ago on Access and Affordability. It did not paint a pretty picture.

Then there is the 2006 report from Education Trust, Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equality in the Nation's Premier Public Universities, which I blogged about at the time. Penn State received and overall grade of an F and an F on low income access. The Old Main Propaganda Shop wasn't happy.

The grade on low income access was based on the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at the University Park campus in 2004 which stood at 18.0%, according to the report, compared to 33.6the% of all college students in Pennsylvania with Pell Grant that year. The report also noted a trend toward less access at the Main Campus of Penn State. In 1992, the percentage of students with Pell Grants at the flagship campus was 22.2% compared to 27.7% overall in Pennsylvania.

Washington Monthly has the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at Penn State in 2008 as 25%. Has the University dramatically improved low income access to the Main Campus in the last four years? It is highly unlikely.

The Education Department keeps track of this statistic. For 2008, the total number of recipients of Pell Grants at all campuses of Penn State stood at 16,707 or roughly 25% of system-wide enrollment. (You can download the Excel file here.) That percentage is very likely to be lower at University Park and higher at the branch campuses.

Unfortunately, the most recent data on Pell Grant with a campus breakdown from the National Center for Educational Statistics is 2006. It shows substantial inequality amongst the campuses from a high of 63% at the Shenango campus in northwestern Pennsylvania to a low of 14% at the University Park, the flagship campus. However, the percentage of students with Pell Grants at the University Park campus has been very stable around 15% from 1999 through 2006, hence it is likely that the current percentage is significantly lower than the 25% system-wide number used by the Washington Monthly.

You can find a comparison to the other Big Ten schools plus Berkeley for 2006 here.

I think that it is reasonable to concluded that the Washington Monthly over estimated the percentage of Penn State University Park students on Pell Grants...

So this year Washington Monthly got the Pell Grant percent right and Penn State plunged in the ranking.  How hard was that?

Next question, what does that low Pell Grant percentage  tell us about Penn State fulfilling its mission under Graham?....hands....anyone....com'on people....did anyone do the assigned reading?

Drat! Spoiled Again by Veblen

For the past five years, Washington Monthly has ranked universities according to their purported contribution to  society. Penn State has done very well in the ranking: 2005, 6^th  place ;2006, 3^rd place; 2007, 5^th place; 2008, a presidential election year, the ranking was not done; 2009, 7^th place. 

Penn State has been very proud of finishing in the top ten every year. The headline at The Penn State Propaganda Portal the first year that the ranking came out was, "Penn State ranks near the top of magazine's rankings." The next year the headline was more specific , "Penn State third in Washington Monthly national rankings." In 2007, Graham figured that there's money to be made from Penn State's high finish in this sweepstakes.  His spiel to fat cat donors included this,

...the University has improved the lives of countless citizens of the Commonwealth and beyond. In fact, Washington Monthly has ranked Penn State third among all American universities and colleges for fostering social mobility, public service, and economic growth.

Last year The Penn State Propaganda Portal returned to declaring that "Penn State seventh in Washington Monthly national rankings"

I've discussed the faulty nature of this  ranking in the past on several occasions. The biggest problem with the ranking is on it social mobility scale which uses the percentage of students on Pell Grants in  both components which which make up the scale. There have been some problems with the percentages used by the Washington Monthly. The Pell Grant percentage reported for Penn State, 25%, was for the entire school. The actual percentage for University Park has been closer to 15%. You can read my critiques here,  here and  here.

This year Washington Monthly made an effort to get the Pell Grant percentages right and......drum roll, please............Penn State's Pell Grant percentage, as reported this year, is 13% and Penn State drops like a stone in the ranking to 35^th  place.

Here's your challenge. Help out The Old Main Propaganda Shop by writing a headline for this year's press release announcing Penn State's finish in the Washington Monthly ranking or help out Graham directly by suggesting how this 37^th place  ranking can be used to separate the filthy rich from their money.The title of this post is my headline suggestion, leave your suggestions in the comments. 

By the Numbers

I've finally found the number I've been looking for and it's exactly the number I guessed it would be.

I've written a bit about the problems with the Washington Monthly University Rankings. (Here, here and here.) A big problem is that they report an almost certainly inflated percentage of Pell Grant recipients at Penn State University Park . The number which they give, 25%,  is the system-wide number.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the correct number for this academic years. All of the federal databases either report old numbers for University Park or system-wide numbers. The historically the percentage of Pell Grant recipients at the main campus has hovered around 15%. The most recent year for which this data is available is 2006. 

Well, as luck would have it, I've discovered a place where Penn State has reported the actual number for University Park for the 2007-2008  academic year. Not quite the most up-to-date number, but it moves the ball a bit closer to the goal line.  And the number is.........15%.

I'll have another post up shortly about the source of this most recent number.

Technorati Tags: Washington Monthly University Rankings, Penn State, Pell Grant Percentage

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One More Time, The Washington Monthly College Rankings are Shoddy!!!!!!!

Near the end of a discussion in today's New York Times of a new book on college graduation rates and the failure of schools to graduate low income students in a reasonable time David Leonhardt writes

Washington Monthly magazine has published a new college ranking based in part on graduation rates. (Kudos to Penn State, among others.)

This is very frustrating because the book, Crossing the Finish Line, by William Bowen ,an economist and former Princeton president, Michael McPherson ,an economist and former Macalester College president, and Matthew Chingos, a doctoral candidate, by all appearances is based on careful data analysis, while the Washington Monthly rankings are clearly a shoddily executed marketing devices.

So it bears going over one more time how shoddy the Washington Monthly ranking is.

We Cleaned Their Clocks On a Worthless Ranking...And We Couldn't Be Prouder

As I promised in an earlier post, I do have more to say about the Washington Monthly National University Rankings, although it is getting increasingly difficult for me to get worked up over rankings such as the these which most likely don't drive policy at universities. But when The Old Main Propaganda Shop issues a boastful and immature response like this one, it gets a little bit easier to get worked up.

The rest of the Big Ten also fared well in Washington Monthly's rankings. Following Penn State were University of Michigan, ranked No. 18; Ohio State University, No. 20; University of Illinois, No. 24; University of Wisconsin, No. 30; Michigan State University, No. 34; Northwestern University, No. 39; Purdue University, No. 48; University of Minnesota, No. 50; University of Iowa, No. 64; and Indiana University, No. 83.

Nine other Pennsylvania schools also made the list, although only four made the top 100: University of Pittsburgh, ranked No. 43; University of Pennsylvania, No. 59; Carnegie Mellon University, No. 75; and Widener University, No. 85.

The Bullshit Artists in the Propaganda Shop wanted everyone to know that Dear Ole State cleaned the clocks of its rivals, so they decided to "praise" the solid, but not as good showing, of these other schools. If you doubt this was their motivation, consider that a couple of years ago Penn State Hershey Medical Center was ranked thirty out of 50 hospitals by USN&WR in one category of pediatric care. UPenn and UPMC cleaned Hershey's clock, but The Old Main Propaganda Shop didn't see fit to congratulate these schools for their fine showing.

Anyway, back to the Washington Monthly. These rankings are supposed to measure the schools contributions to the public good. The overall ranking is based on three composite measures of public good, Social Mobility, Research, and Service. The ranking on Social Mobility is based on two factors, the percentage of students with Pell Grants and the differential between predicted six year graduation rate and actual six year graduation rate. The predicted rate is based on a model which takes into account the percentage of students on Pell Grants and average SAT scores. The ranking on Research is based on five factors, the total number of research dollars; the number of graduates with bachelors degrees that go on to received Ph. D.'s , this year corrected for school size; the number of STEM Ph.D.'s awarded, percentage of faculty with significant awards and percentage of faculty in the National Academies. The ranking on Service is based on three factors, the number of alumni who serve in the Peace Corp, the percentage of students in ROTC and the percentage of funds in federal work-study money that goes to community service.

Whether these rankings are a valid measure of public good is worthy debate to be have, but is not the one that I want to have here. You can go over to the Washington Monthly's Political Animal blog to engage in that debate. The question that interests me is why does Penn State rank so high?

Penn State Falls Four Places...

...in the Washington Monthly's Annual College ranking. I've been critical of their rankings in past because of flaws which I thought inflated Penn State rank. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this year's results latter.

Technorati Tags: Washington Monthly's College ranking, Penn State

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Scrubbed

Well, that was quick.

In an earlier post, I noted that Penn State selectively cites Princeton Review rankings. When it comes to the party ranking the Old Main propaganda shop criticizes the Princeton Review rankings as "unscientific and frivolous because they are done through an online survey," and calls them a "silly marketing ploy", while promoting two Princeton Review rankings that it likes on its Web site.

This evening I checked the PSU ranking list and found that the propaganda shop has scrubbed the Princeton Review rankings. Once again Google Cache comes through. Here is the page from earlier this morning.

The Unclean - Upload a Document to Scribd

Read this document on Scribd: The Unclean

I know that this blog is a daily read for the folks in the propaganda shop. I guess that after I accidentally deleted the earlier post they figured they could clean up their tracks and no one would be the wiser. What a bunch of integrity impaired twits.

Well, This Was Predictable

[Ed. I accidentally deleted this post, but I had a back up copy. It was originally posted at 10:07 am this morning]

It's that time of year again. Princeton Review is out with its annual rankings of colleges and universities and Penn State is once more ranked high as a party school. This year it made the list at number three. That can mean only one thing: a Penn State flack has to explain why the these rankings are flawed. I give you ...

Geoff Rushton, a university spokesman, said the rankings are unscientific and frivolous because they are done through an online survey.

"Most students considering a school like Penn State, which is tremendous academically, give more consideration to practical things than a ranking in the Princeton Review," he said.

[...]

Students who are looking to attend Penn State should think about more serious aspects of the university, rather than a "silly marketing ploy, which is what the Princeton Review party rankings are," Rushton said.

"We want students to enjoy the college experience -- it's a fun place with a lot for the students, but the ranking is a morphing trick to sell Princeton Review," he said.

You've got to respect Geoff's judgment about the Princeton Review being a "silly marketing ploy", because the folks in Old Main have a great deal of familiarity with silly marketing ploys.

Geoff thinks the that Princeton Review rankings are " unscientific and frivolous because they are done through an online survey." I guess Geoff and the others in the Old Main propaganda shop wouldn't touch a Princeton Review ranking with a ten foot pole.

What?.... No?...You don't say!



Well, it seems that I'm wrong. Penn State pimps [Ed. The page has been scrubbed. Checkout this post for details.] its high placing in various rankings and two showings in the Princeton Review makes the list. It looks like "unscientific and frivolous" means the results don't fit with with Graham's vision of how to sell the school.

Speaking of selling the school, Geoff has to walk a fine line while condemning the party ranking, because Penn State tacitly relies on its party image to maintain enrollment. However, too explicit a party image will make it hard to recruit faculty and graduate students. Here is his solution to the dilemma he faces: "We want students to enjoy the college experience -- it's a fun place with a lot for the students, but the ranking is a morphing trick to sell Princeton Review." So Geoff tells us that Penn State is kinda a party school-so kids keep on coming and bring your beer-pong tables-, but Princeton Review exaggerates it-don't worry potential faculty and grad students very few kids show up to class drunk.

The Collegian also trots out students to tell everyone that sure we like to have a good time, but Penn State is academically elite. That's funny. I know many faculty that will tell you-maybe not on the record-that Penn State students are, for the most part, mediocre.

Penn State the Griffin of Higher Education

I received a comment today on my post about Spanier's salary from someone calling himself psu grad. I am very glad to see that the blog has generated its first significant feedback. What follows is my response to psu grad.



I am not sure what point you intended to make with your history lesson. It is true that Penn State is an odd beast, not entirely public nor entirely private. However, it is typically grouped with public universities for the sake of comparison and ranking. Even Spanier, who you can be sure understands the public/private ambiguity, considers Penn State primarily a public university when it comes to rankings. Consider these remarks to the Board of Trustees this past Semptember,

The U.S. News rankings are perhaps the most cited of all the rankings, and they too raise a lot of hackles within higher education because of the odd weighting that they give to measures that significantly favor private universities. Traditionally, there are never any public universities in the top 20, despite objective data that would clearly suggest there should be. Penn State was tied for 13th among the nation's public institutions in the U.S. News ranking.

It behooves Spanier to consider Penn State as a public school for the sake of the US News rankings, because it doesn't stack up very well against privates schools. In facts, Spanier doesn't even mention Penn State's overall ranking, because it is at the bottom of the top fifty. The rule here is that Penn State is public. We should not change the rule when we try to place his salary in perspective; it too should be compared to the salaries of other public universities presidents.



Now, Penn State is not above playing games with it status. For example, when it comes to revealing the salaries of its employees it will claim that it is private. This sort on intellectual dishonesty is abhorrent to me. Does it not bother you?





Technorati Tags: Penn State, Spanier, ranking, salary

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He Should Have Gone with My Script

Earlier today I speculated tongue-in-cheek about how Penn State University flack Bill Mahon would spin the spanking Penn State received in the Education Trust report Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equality in the Nation's Premier Public Universities. Well, there is no longer any need for speculation. Inside Higher Ed has Mahon's response to the report. It is his standard angry denial which he employs so often when the University is placed in a bad light or criticized. Just click on the Mahon label over in the right hand column to see other examples of this. Here is his emailed response to Inside Higher Ed.

Some officials bristled. Bill Mahon, a spokesman for Pennsylvania State University, which was among the universities that received an overall grade of F, said in an e-mail that he was “not impressed with the superficial analysis of the statistics [Education Trust] gathered.” Penn State’s F for minority access is ironic, he wrote, given that “we have increased minority enrollment every year for at least the past decade, even though located in a part of a state with an extremely small minority population.” He noted that black enrollment has grown to 4,481 this year from 2,864 in 1996, and that “Penn State (Grade ‘F’) has more than twice the number of minority students enrolled than the entire student body of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Grade ‘A’).

“Penn State has been on the right track for more than a decade and will continue to move forward on minority enrollment and access issues in the future,” Mahon added. “We are proud of what we have done and where the institution is going.”

The worst part of Mahon's response is how bad it makes Penn State look when compared to how other officials responded. Here is a compendium of the other responses. You be the judge.

• “The inference of this report and the basis for the grading of flagships is that their responsibility is to reflect the demographics of the state,” said Shirley A. Ort, associate provost and director of scholarships and student aid at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which received an overall D grade in the report despite its recent efforts at expanding access for low income students. “I say that it’s not, not based upon our charter, anyhow. It’s to make sure that excellence remains the hallmark of a flagship, and that we are welcoming and inclusive of those students who have demonstrated the aptitude and preparation to meet our admissions standards.”



• William E. (Brit) Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, whose flagship campus, the University of Maryland at College Park, received an overall grade of D, said he hoped the Education Trust’s “important” report would “help to bring attention to what I think is really becoming a crisis in our country: the underrepresentation of low income students, many of whom are minorities, at our colleges and universities.” Like officials at several other institutions, he said the report’s several-year-old data may fail to account for steps that College Park and other universities have taken in the last two years to bolster access for low income and minority students.
  
  
  
  And “no one should fault flagship campuses or any other university for aspiring to improve its quality, and to become recognized as a very high quality institution,” Kirwan said. But he added that he agreed at least partially with the report’s contention “that in that pursuit of excellence, certain things have become distorted,” including the push toward merit-based rather than need-based aid. “That is something that we have to address on our campuses,” Kirwan said. “It cannot continue along this path."
  
  
  
  
• “The flagship public universities strongly believe in their social and economic mobility role and they will want to review the study carefully,” said Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. “We have some methodology questions about the survey and some of the data is dated. We do recognize there is an imbalance in the distribution of need vs. merit-based aid. The input-oriented ranking systems are probably the driving factor here. Universities, however, do have an important responsibility in this area.”





• And Robert Berdahl, president of the Association of American Universities, added: “All of the AAU flagship campuses and the other selective public universities with which I am familiar take seriously their mission of providing opportunity for minorities and those from low-income backgrounds. To the degree their state laws permit, they work hard to increase the number of students from these backgrounds who attend and succeed at their institutions. While we might question the report’s methodology, its recommendations make sense, and our universities are already doing most of these things. But clearly there is more to be done to achieve the goal of full equality of opportunity.

Technorati Tags: Penn State, Mahon, Spin, Inside Higher Ed, Education Trust

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Penn State Recognized as One of the Nation's Premier Public Universities

The Education Trust has released a report entitled Engines of Inequality: Diminishing Equality in the Nation's Premier Public Universities. When asked about the report Penn State spokesman Bill Mahon, speaking on behalf of Penn State president Graham Spanier, said, "President Spanier is very happy to see than Penn State is receiving the recognition it deserves as premier public university." He went on to note that. "every Penn Stater should be proud to be included on list which includes such well respected schools as Berkeley and theUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison."

Fine, Mahon didn't really say that. I was just trying to imagine how the Old Mainpropaganda machine was going to spin the dismal news that Penn State received so many F grades and an overall grade of an F on this report card which gauges how well Flagship schools fulfill an important aspect of their mission:access to higher education by the disadvantaged.

One measure used in this study was the ratio of the percentage of Pell Grant awarded at a school to overall percentage of Pell Grant awarded in the home state of the school. Schools for which this ratio was less than or equal to .69 were deemed to have flunked this test. Penn State flunked. Compare this to the fact that Spanier makes a big deal out of Penn State's mission as Land-Grant University. For example, here is what he had to say on the occasion of Penn State one hundred fiftieth anniversary.

The Farmer’s High School, which you now know as Penn State,
became the national model for the land-grant university –created by
an act of Congress in 1862.

Before the establishment of land-grant schools, a college education
was out of reach to all but the children of the well heeled. Many
of you in this Rotunda, including many of you whose names are on
the House and Senate resolutions to my left and right, are, like me,
children of immigrants who would not have been able to benefit
from higher education if not for the creation of public colleges that
have grown out of the land-grant movement.

While the term ‘land-grant’ may be a throw back to an earlier time,
its place today in American higher education is anything but
archaic. The fundamental concept is to provide a diverse program of studies that is financially accessible to a broad segment of the population, and to make new knowledge available for the public good. That concept is as pertinent today as it was in 1855.

Under Spanier's leadership Penn State has failed to serve this aspect of its mission.





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The Big Game Weekend at the Nation's Number Two Party School

Penn State played Michigan at home this weekend and proved why it is deserving of the Princeton Review number two party school rank. Here is a compilation of events from the Collegian and CDT.

• I made my voyage to Happy Valley this weekend, intending to see a great game between Big Ten foes at a campus that I remember being very friendly in 2001. My, how times have changed. I had all kinds of objects hurled at me throughout the weekend, including full beers and cupcakes.

• Stephen Rosenhurd, class of 2002, said he and his friends rushed from the stadium to get in line at the Gingerbread Man, 130 Hiester St., to "drown our sorrows."

  "The feeling of a victory is at the bottom of the bottle," Mike Turns, class of 2005, said.

• Penn State student Allan Rothrock was cited for disorderly conduct and public drunkenness early yesterday morning for slapping the rear end of a police horse on the 200 block of Calder Way, according to the State College Police Department.



• The young woman is barely conscious when the medics find her sitting curbside along East Beaver Avenue.It's just before 2 a.m. Sunday. Emergency medical crews at Beaver Stadium have already fielded some 30 to 40 alcohol-related calls and requests -- probably more than that -- since daybreak Saturday.

  
  

  But now the booze calls are shifting heavily, and predictably, into the downtown. Medics are girding for a hectic night, thanks to the nighttime Penn State football game against the University of Michigan.[...]

  The young woman is barely conscious when the medics find her sitting curbside along East Beaver Avenue.

  
  

  The woman on East Beaver, however, has turned white. Friends are with her, and someone was concerned enough to summon an ambulance.

  The woman doesn't want to go to the hospital. She won't tell the responders her name until they call in the police.

  
  

  Within 15 minutes, she's bound for Mount Nittany Medical Center. She's flatulent in the back of a Centre LifeLink ambulance.

  She tells her hosts -- paramedic Tracy Reagan and emergency medical technician Nichole Garrity -- that she's smarter than them.

  
  

  She is, she says, working toward a master's degree. Another smell -- alcohol -- drifts through the vehicle.

  Reagan and Garrity hold back. Later, they congratulate each other for not giving the woman any lip.

  "They'll never realize," Garrity says, "what you're doing for them."




• At about 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Robert J. Voelker, of Tannersville, was charged with aggravated assault and resisting arrest after University police said he threw a can of beer at a state trooper and fought with officers attempting to arrest him. He was arraigned and sent to the Centre County Correctional Facility in lieu of $10,000 bail.

  
  

• [...]Philip G. DeCastro, of Ocean Township, N.J., was cited on disorderly conduct charges after he was allegedly observed throwing marshmallows at law enforcement near Section EA of Beaver Stadium at about 11:30 p.m, according to University police.

  
  

• Two males, one of whom was a Penn State alumnus, were apprehended for being publicly drunk in the State College Municipal Building courtyard about 3:30 p.m. Friday, according to police.

  
  

  State College police Sgt. Chris Fishel said the alumnus seemed unaware of his surroundings as he urinated in front of the police department's large windows.

  
  

  Numerous secretaries with a clear view of the male reported the incident to police.

• State College police said a Penn State student bit the owner of the Shandygaff, 212 E. Calder Way, after being denied entry to the bar around midnight Friday. Laurence Cheng, 21, allegedly stormed into the bar and was confronted by the owner. Cheng allegedly slapped the man and bit him on the hand. He was arrested and will likely be charged with simple assault according to State College Police.

• A University police officer was assaulted while attempting to arrest someone who was selling a football ticket. Charges have yet to be filed.

• At least two drunk pedestrians were injured after running into moving vehicles.

  Police said 22-year-old Raj Sahijwani, of State College, suffered minor injuries after he stepped into the path of a 1997 Honda Accord on East College Avenue at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday. He was cited for “intoxicated pedestrian.”

  While John Roy was “highly intoxicated,” State College police allege the 21-year-old from State College staggered off a North Atherton Street sidewalk onto the roadway, where he hit the rear of a 1990 Toyota Corolla. He suffered left hip pain, the police report said.

• Police also responded to an array of simple assaults and fights.

  At about 2 a.m. Sunday at the 500 block of East College Avenue, an unknown male punched James Zenex and broke his nose.

  Andrew Pascucci and Michael Peler were charged with disorderly conduct after State College police said they were fighting on East Beaver Avenue.

• A 43-year-old from Schwenksville was accused of being drunk and driving the wrong way on Interstate 80 after the Penn State-Michigan game Saturday night.

  According to state police at Lamar, Daniel Charles Preston told troopers he was heading to Bloomsburg from Beaver Stadium and did not know he was traveling west in the eastbound lane. State troopers stopped him just before midnight in Lamar Township, Clinton County.

  Preston, who was driving a 2003 Nissan Murano, was transported to Lock Haven Hospital. He will be charged with DUI, according to police.

The good news in all of this?

At the sole night game in 2005, drunks kept the medics busy. Forty people landed in Mount Nittany Medical Center that weekend for alcohol overdoses, and dozens more were treated for alcohol-related cuts and scrapes. The Nittany Lions won.

So far, this night has been relatively tame, probably because the Lions lost, medics say.

UPDATE: I spoke too soon. There wasn't any good news this past weekend. The CDT reports today that Mt. Nittany Medical Center treated 48 alcohol overdoses over the weekend which is eight more than during the big game weekend last year. The paper also reports that there were numerous-no numbers given- other injuries seen at the hospital which were likely alcohol use related.

Looking for a Good Reason to Drink?

The Collegian is working overtime to rationalize Penn State's drinking problem. This morning's Collegian reports on a study published by the Reason Foundation which attempts to explain the positive correlation between social drinking and income level. The report explains this association as follows. Our business culture is organized around the principle of it's who you know, not what you know. Drinking makes you popular. Therefore drinking helps you in the business world. The report actually dresses this up in serious academic language:"We hypothesize that drinking enhances social capital, which leads to superior market outcomes."

An alternative explanation for this association was given in a 2005 publication.

We conclude that most likely the positive association between drinking and earnings is the result of the fact that ethanol is a normal commodity, the consumption of which increases with income, rather than an elixer that enhances productivity.

Increased income leads to more social drinking not the other way around.

The 2005 study was publish by the National Bureau of Economic Research which according to their web site is a "non-partisan research organization" which disseminates "unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." The other study was published by the libertarian Reason Foundation which is an anti-tax group. The Reason Foundation uses the study to argue against excise taxes on alcohol. Without making a detailed comparison of the two studies which one has would have more credibility for you? I can tell that for me it is 2005 study.

Now there is a funny thing about the two studies, Bethany L. Peters is an author on both of them. Despite this fact, the Reason Foundation report, which was written after the 2005 paper, does not reference the 2005 paper. This illustrates how scholars can alter their research findings to fit the ideas of their patrons and why the commercialization of academic research is so problematic. However, that is a topic for another post.

In closing, I would like to say to Graham, you reap what you sow. You spin, lie, boast, rationalize, and take anti-intellectual postures, soon enough Penn State students are following along.

The Graham Spanier Award for Most Outrageous Spin Goes to...

The Collegian today has a truly stupid editorial in which they try their hand at turd polishing. Mount Nittany Medical Centre received 353 blood-alcohol emergency room visits during the 2005-2006 school year. How do you put a positive spin on this?

In a twisted sort of way, the numbers at Mount Nittany Medical Center probably represent a good thing. It just might mean that students are learning to err on the side of caution when it comes to possible alcohol poisoning.

The appallingly high number of students treated for alcohol related problems is an indication of more responsible behavior on the part of the students. That is bullshit worthy of Spanier. See what happens Graham when you set a bad example. The Collegian also breaks out this old saw to defend the party hearty crowd.

It is part of our culture. Penn State students study hard during the week and party hard during the weekend. We maintain a balance of work and fun that, overall, contributes to our lives.

Of course, here in Happy Valley the weekend starts on Thursday.

The truth is that most Penn State students are not challenged academically. Remember that in 2002 nearly 40% of all grades awarded at Penn State were A's and the University is ninth this year on the Princeton Review list of schools where you don't have to study. I think Penn State student Joel Gilchrest said it better in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,"We have a motto here: Party hard, drink hard ... I mean, party hard, study hard. "

Spanier Speaks: He Doesn't Like Princeton Review.

Adam Smeltz at CentreSquawker noted on Monday that at last week’s Trustees meeting, Spanier addressed the Princeton Review ranking of Penn State as the number two party school in the nation. I think Adam was too generous to Spanier on his blog. Here is what Spanier said and my analysis of it.

The fall is also a time when college rankings come out. Some of them use meaningful measures to gauge a university's progress and some of them are, frankly, pretty silly.

On the silly side is the Princeton Review party school ranking, in which Penn State placed second.

I mention this only because of all the media attention it got. This particular "review" is little more than a publicity stunt to help them sell their guide, and involves people going to a Web site and voting for the school they want to name the winner. It could actually be more reflective of a school's overall popularity, but it has no legitimate basis for its conclusion.

As I have said to many people, we want students who come to Penn State to enjoy their college experience, and we think this is a fun and engaging environment, with lots for students to do. But the ranking is nothing more than a clever marketing trick to get attention to their guide, and the media naively buy into it every year.

There is just so much crap here it is hard to know where to begin in pulling it apart.

I guess the best place is with the sentence I’ve emphasized. This is a rather weak attempt put a positive spin on a ranking that places Penn State in a light which Spanier clearly thinks is negative. His denial that “it has [..] a legitimate basis for its conclusion,” is at best disingenuous. As I have noted elsewhere, Penn State flack Bill Mahon acknowledged the obvious to the CDT the day after the rankings were released: Penn State has an alcohol problem.

...[W]ith the amount of marketing of alcohol, he [Bill Mahon] is surprised the university isn't number one. He said 353 Penn State students were taken to the emergency room for alcohol overdoses last year.

Mahon follows Spanier’s public relations strategy for dealing with this problem by placing the blame for this problem outside the University. The fact that the ranking focuses the light back on Penn State is what has Spanier upset.

Let’s take the magnifying glass to a bit more of Spanier’s prepared remark.

As I have said to many people, we want students who come to Penn State to enjoy their college experience, and we think this is a fun and engaging environment, with lots for students to do. But the ranking is nothing more than a clever marketing trick to get attention to their guide, and the media naively buy into it every year

The fact is that Spanier’s response to the ranking, the banning of alcohol at tailgates while games are in progress, is nothing more than a clever marketing trick to shift attention away from the ranking and the media has naively bought into it. This ban does little to address the the overall alcohol problem at Penn State but, as I have noted, it has generated misleading and false headlines which give the impression that there is a total alcohol ban at tailgates. Perhaps Spanier is venting some professional jealousy about the success of a rival bullshit artist.

If Penn State were serious about addressing the alcohol problem, which the Princeton Review has brought to national attention, it might consider raising its academic standards. As I have previously discussed, grade inflation is a real problem at Penn State. In 2002, nearly 40% of all grades awarded at the University were A’s. There is time to party when an A is that easy to come-by. This is reflected in the little noted fact that Penn State ranked ninth on Princeton Review’s list of schools where you don’t have to study. Contrast Spanier’s public relations response with the response at the University of Colorado after it ranked number one on the Princeton Review party list in 2004. Dean Todd Gleason of the College of Arts and Sciences wrote in a memo to his faculty,

As we enter the 2004-2005 academic year, I would like to raise a topic for formal discussion in the College and in your unit. The past academic year brought us a number of events that threatened the reputation of the institution that many of us have labored most of our careers to enhance. One of these was Princeton Review¹s evaluation of CU Boulder as a party school.
The Princeton Review ranking is subject to methodological challenge. However, it raised questions and stimulated discussion in many quarters about whether or not our undergraduate population was being sufficiently challenged in their studies.

Recently, Hank Brown the president of the University of Colorado announced he would seek to place class rank on transcripts as a way of combating grade inflation. There is room to debate if this is the appropriate way to raise academic standards, but there is no debating that Colorado is attempting to deal with the core issue. On the other hand, Penn State has only dealt with the marketing problem.

Let’s revisit Spanier’s statement one last time.

. This particular "review" is little more than a publicity stunt to help them sell their guide, and involves people going to a Web site and voting for the school they want to name the winner.

Last year Penn State football was enjoying a resurgence and Penn State fans were competing for the title of Ultimate Tailgate Venue, in a contest run by Sports Illustrated. The Penn State propaganda portal Penn State Live encouraged fans to vote online for the University as the Ultimate Tailgate Venue and celebrated the Penn State victory. I have never heard anyone from Old Main complaining about the methodology involved in this ranking. The difference is that this was thought to be good for Penn State’s image, despite the fact that the role of alcohol at tailgates was emphasized by SI. For Spanier a ranking has bad methodology if he doesn’t like the ranking. Flawed methodology will go unnoticed if the thinks a ranking will help him market Penn State.

This is all part of the Penn State Way.

How PSU PR Works.

The Penn State pr counterattack on the Princeton Review ranking is meeting with some success. The partial ban on alcohol at football games is garnering misleading headlines which make it appear that Penn State has put a total ban into place. Here is the headline from MSNBC.

New rule forbids drinking at tailgates during Penn State games

That one is technically accurate, but most people who glance at it will still think that the ban is total. Here is how the San Francisco Gate played the story.

Drinking Banned at Penn State Tailgates.

That one is just false.

For the most part these are reprints of the AP story which does by the second paragraph give the correct information.

Hoping to cut down on underage drinking and create a safer post-game environment, Penn State is banning alcohol at parking lot tailgate parties during football games inside Beaver Stadium.

Imbibing before kickoff and after the final whistle, though is still OK.

Nonetheless, it is the headlines which most people will note and Old Main knows this.