January 2, 2010, 8:00 a.m.
And Why We Shouldn't Care;
Reconceptualizing the UI for the 21st Century
(brought to you by FromDC2Iowa.blogspot.com*)
Quiz: "Is the University of Iowa 'world class'?"
(a) Yes
(b) No
(c) Because that is an inherently unanswerable question, efforts to "answer" it inevitably will be as frustrating as they will be futile.
As you may have guessed, I think the best answer is "c."
Asking answerable questions.
General semanticists warn us about the consequences of attempting to answer unanswerable -- or what they call "non-sense" -- questions (that is, questions for which there are neither external referents nor sensory apparatus for finding answers). Useful, constructive questions are those that contain a suggestion as to how one might go about finding an answer -- such as, "which college football teams won every game during their 2009 season?" or "is this generic statin as effective in lowering cholesterol as this proprietary, heavily advertised drug?"
Indeed, they warn that asking unanswerable questions regarding our personal lives that involve non-sense (i.e., vague, immeasurable, and therefore unattainable) ideals, can lead to the repeated frustration that results in demoralization, or depression -- the I (ideals) F (frustration) D (demoralization) characterized as the "IFD "disease." Examples might be the pre-teen girl who agonizes over whether she is "popular" or "pretty," or the young businessman who is driven to run ever faster in his personal squirrel cage in the hopes of capturing the mirage of "success" that always seems to lie just beyond his grasp. (Or, one might add, politicians' insistence that we "win" in Afghanistan.)
The folly of the pursuit of "world class."
(1) So it is, I believe, with educational institutions' efforts to become "world class." How would they know if they were ever to arrive at that destination? If an educational administrator asserted that her institution was "world class," and was then challenged on that assertion, how could the dispute ever be resolved?
(2) How might a somewhat related answerable question be framed? How about: "Is there any ranking of the world's "best" universities on which the university in question is listed as one of the top 10 -- or top 100 -- universities in the world?" That question can be answered by looking for such rankings to see if there is any in which the university is listed -- once you'd agreed on how high in the ranking a school needs to be in order to be considered "world class."
(3) But the fact that a question is answerable does not automatically make the effort to answer it either sensible or worthwhile.
In "Random Thoughts on Law School Rankings," April 29, 2008 (one of this blog's most continuously popular entries), I address a number of the problems associated with reliance on US News' rankings of law schools. Here is a tiny sampling of them: (1) there is no agreement regarding the most appropriate criteria for evaluating law schools, (2) the choice of which to use can make enormous differences in where a school is located in the "rankings"; and (3) it is very easy to "game the system," (4) which a number of law schools try to do. For example, if one of the criteria is the percentage of your school's recent law school graduates who are "employed" (which one would assume means "have jobs in law firms"), that number can be manipulated by a law school's choice (which some have made) to "employ" every graduate who hasn't found a job in a law firm (or to count as "employed" those who are working at McDonald's, or driving cabs). The range of opportunities to manipulate one's ranking is limited only by the inadequacies of the human imagination.
(4) Even if there was an agreement on an operational definition of "world class," and the criteria to be used in comparative evaluations of universities, and the accuracy of the data could be closely audited, my own view (which I would imagine few share) is that a focus on "competition" and "rankings" could well detract rather than contribute to the attainment of a university's mission. (Similar concerns have emerged from the "no child left behind" test-score-driven effort to improve the American K-12 educational system.) Quality may more likely result from concentrating on how well you are doing what you've set out to do (on the assumption you've clearly set out, with metrics, exactly what it is you think you have set out to do). Conceptualizing your mission as a competitive race, in which you are constantly looking over your shoulder to see where you are in the pack, is more likely to result in a trip-and-fall than reducing your time to the goal.
What's a "state university" in the 21st Century?
There is some question as to whether the notion of a "state university," educating the children of residents of a given state, makes much sense in the 21st Century. (a) Many such schools are open to all, providing education to citizens of 100 or more countries, not to mention many of the 50 states, receiving federal government research grants, and can more accurately be thought of as "national" rather than "state" universities. (b) They are increasingly shifting their focus from educating students to becoming major research institutions. (c) State legislatures' support of their "state schools" is declining, as the financing comes more and more from grants for that "research." (d) Far from "free," or the minimal tuition originally envisioned, students at "public" schools are now paying tuition, and incurring debt loads, formally only associated with "private" schools.
Soon to be even more significant, in what Tom Friedman has characterized as a "flat" world, are universities (or at least educational opportunities) without walls. Of course, the educational establishment is slow to change. Prior to the printing press it was necessary to "lecture" to students -- what some have described as a process whereby the notes of the professor become the notes of the student without passing through the minds of either. Now, well over 500 years later, we're still lecturing -- just in larger lecture halls -- as if the news of the invention of books had yet to reach our college campuses. More recently, as someone has observed, it took us 30 years to get the overhead projector out of the bowling alleys and into the classrooms. Today there are "universities" (not to mention an enormous array of "training" programs) that exist only online; most conventional universities offer some online "distance education" courses; and the ubiquitous Internet and Web have a dizzying offering of text, audio and video "educational" material free for the taking (including online lectures and other material from MIT and other universities).
Nonetheless, a "state university" still has obligations to its home state that are not shared by a national, or global, private college or university. It needs to admit a disproportionate number of students from its home state (over half of the UI's students are from Iowa). It needs to document that it is making a contribution to that state; supplying doctors to rural areas, a workforce for its major industries, community outreach and service by its faculty and students, and incubators for promoting entrepreneurial efforts and the jobs they can create. (The UI supplies roughly half of the state's doctors and pharmacists, 80% of its dentists, and teachers and administrators in 80% of Iowa's K-12 school districts.)
Thus, it's a little silly and counter productive for a school like the University of Iowa to be comparing itself with, say, universities such as England's Cambridge and Oxford -- which is not to say that those schools are "better" than Iowa (or that they're not), only that they are clearly different in their mission.
[On a related theme, i.e., parents' and students' focus on the payback in jobs from ever-higher tuition and why employers are still looking for graduates with solid liberal arts skills, see Kate Zernike, "Career U: Making College 'Relevant,'" New York Times, January 3, 2009, p. ED16.]
Putting the rankings of world universities in context.
While I think it is foolish for a state university (or a student looking for a "college education") to look to the various rankings that are available for world universities (let alone seek the nonexistent, ephemeral "world class" status), it may be useful to demonstrate why not.
So let's take a look at the world rankings that do exist.
I've not endeavored to do thorough research; this is, after all, a blog entry not a doctoral dissertation. But I did discover one paper that actually takes seriously, and attempts to define, "world class."
To repeat: I'm not suggesting that "world class" can't be defined, or that schools cannot be ranked. Of course, it can and they can, and in any one of hundreds of ways; but no one of those ways has yet been accepted by all. Because there are such a variety of ways of ranking and defining, the criteria selected can make such a significant difference in the outcome, once those criteria are known they can be manipulated by those being ranked, and I'm not convinced the game is worth the candle even if all these concerns could be satisfied, I fear the focus is misplaced.
The paper is Henry M. Levin and Donshu Ou, "What is a World Class University?" prepared for presentation at the 2006 Conference of the Comparative & International Education Society, Honolulu, Hawaii, March16, 2006.
Four approaches to ranking world universities.
The authors make reference to two rankings, those of the Shanghai Jiaotong University (SJU) and the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES), and in their Table Four list the top 40 universities on each list's 2005 rankings. pp. 37-38.
Of course, US News has its own rankings of the world's top 200 universities.
And I also found the listing of 6000 world universities by the Cybermetrics Lab (a research group belonging to the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones CientÃficas (CSIC), the largest public research body in Spain), "Webometrics Ranking of World Universities."
The CSIC rankings.
The CSIC discloses its methodology, and describes itself as "attached to the Ministry of Education and its main objective is to promote scientific research as to improve the progress of the scientific and technological level of the country which will contribute to increase the welfare of the citizens."
As it happens its list actually includes both the University of Iowa (76th) and Iowa State (66th). Its top 23 are all from the U.S.; as are, all in all, 65 of the CSIC's top 100 (55 of which are ranked above Iowa). The schools from other nations between 24 and Iowa's 76 are:
University of Tokyo (24), National Taiwan University (26), University of Toronto (28), Universidade de Sao Paulo (38), University of British Columbia (41), University of Oxford (42), Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (44), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zurich (46), Kyoto University (49), University College London (51), University of Helsinki (52), Norwegian University of Science & Technology (54), University of Oslo (55) and Simon Fraser University (57).
Thus, the nations with schools that the CSIC ranks above Iowa include Austria, Brazil, Canada, England, Finland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan.
The US News' rankings.
US News' "World's Best Universities" includes less than half the percentage of U.S. schools in its top 100 (32 of 100) as does the CSIC (65 of 100). However, the University of Iowa is nowhere to be found among the total of 200 "world's best" that it ranks.
Although we can't know where Iowa would have ranked if the list were long enough for it to have been included, given the US News' inclusion of proportionately more schools from other countries than the CSIC, even if Iowa were ranked 201 there would still be 31 countries with schools ranked above Iowa (compared with the CSIC's 13): Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Rusia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Thailand.
Here are US News' top ten, six of which are U.S. universities: Harvard University (1), University of Cambridge (2), Yale University (3), University College London (4), Imperial College London (5; a tie), University of Oxford (5; a tie), University of Chicago (7), Princeton University (8), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (9), and California Institutes of Technology (10).
The SJU and THES rankings.
The SJU's and Times' 2005 rankings are relatively consistent with regard to their top ten, respectively: Harvard University (1, 1), Cambridge University (2, 3), Stanford University (3, 5), University of California, Berkeley (4, 6), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (5, 2), California Institute of Technology (6, 8), Columbia University (7, 20), Princeton University (8, 9), and Oxford University (10, 4) -- although Ecole Polytech, which the Times' list has at number 10 does not appear anywhere among SJU's top 39.
US News' top 10 also includes Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, MIT and CalTech. But it does not have Stanford, UCB, Columbia, or Ecole Polytech; and it does list University College London, Imperial College London, and Chicago, which the other two lists do not give top 10 status.
The CSIC's top 10 (of 6000 schools!) shows quite a bit of variation from these three lists: MIT (1), Harvard (2), Stanford (3), UCB (4), Cornell (5), University of Wisconsin, Madison (6), University of Minnesota (7), CalTech (8), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (9), and University of Michigan (10).
World rankings conclusions.
As this brief overview of four rankings systems demonstrates, (a) there is no general agreement as to the most appropriate criteria for making comparative evaluations of universities, and therefore (b) the variations in lists can be considerable (and can be manipulated by those being ranked as well as those doing the rankings) -- and increasingly so as one moves down the lists beyond their "top 10" or so.
And there are some conclusions regarding American universities. (c) A disproportionate number of the universities listed are in the United States (that is, disproportionate when compared with the U.S. population as a percentage of global population). Thus, (d) although the competition is tougher among American schools than it may be for those in other countries, (e) so far as global perceptions go, any school that is ranked well among American universities (as is the UI) is going to be perceived as of good quality by world standards. (f) But equally clearly, from the perspective of those doing these world rankings Americans have no basis for complacency, given the number of countries with universities represented on these lists, including many that they choose to rank well above some American universities.
Putting the State of Iowa in Context.
To the extent that the University of Iowa is a "state university" the state for which it is the university is Iowa. Of course, great institutions (of all kinds; not just educational) can be found in small places; geographical area and population need not be a constrant. At the same time, the population one can draw upon, and the economic resources a state legislature can make available, are relevant in fashioning reasonable aspirations.
So where does Iowa fit among the 50 states?
Half of the U.S. population is in the eight largest states (California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan); one-quarter is in the 17 smallest states (Iowa, with roughly three million inhabitants, is 31st of the 50 states). [Wikipedia's Pie Chart and List of States.]
Roughly half of America's land area is in 10 states (Alaska, Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Oregon and Wyoming). Iowa ranks 26th of the 50 states in land area (56,272 of the U.S.' 3,794,083 square miles).
As for the State's economy, Robert Atkinson [President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation], The 2008 State New Economy Index: Benchmarking Economic Transformation in the States, Kauffman Foundation, 2008, gives Iowa an "overall score" of 42nd of the 50 states, p. 10; although on its "indicators" Iowa is 6th in "Manufacturing Value-Added" and 22nd in "Immigration of Knowledge Workers," p. 12.
Putting the University of Iowa in Context.
The University of Iowa is a major educational and research institution by any measure.
It is large: with a budget well in excess of $2 billion, 30,000 students from over 100 countries, on a 1900-acre campus with 120 major buildings, operated with 13,000 staff and 1700 faculty, offering over 100 areas of study including seven professional degree programs, and an array of intellectual, cultural and athletic events that attract more than a million visitors a year.
Although it offers no ocean beaches or spectacular mountains, it's located among rolling hills, the meandering Iowa River, large bodies of water, a surrounding population of 100,000, in a town (Iowa City) that can easily be navigated on foot or by bicycle and is frequently mentioned on national "best-place-to-live" lists. It was recently designated by UNESCO as one of three world "Cities of Literature" (due in part, no doubt, to the international reputation of its "Iowa Writers' Workshop" and international writing program).
The University has been around since 1847, was the first public university to admit men and women on an equal basis, and the first to accept creative work in literature and the arts for advanced degrees. West of the Mississippi it was the first to create a law school, educational broadcasting station, and college paper. (As early as the 1870s it was one of the first public law schools in the country to grant degrees to women and African Americans.) It had the nation's first female editor of a college paper.
For what it's worth as "rankings," over 20 of Iowa's graduate programs are ranked among the top 10 for their category among the nation's public universities. (For a complete list see "University of Iowa Facts at a Glance/University of Iowa Rankings.") The overall ranking of its professional schools among US News' "America's Best Graduate Schools," includes Law (26), Medical (research; 31), College of Education (32), Business (44), and Engineering (58).
University of Iowa Healthcare is "an integrated academic medical center under one executive leadership team, consisting of UI Hospitals and Clinics, the UI Carver College of Medicine, and UI Physicians, Iowa’s largest multi-specialty medical and surgical group practice." Its predecessors have been offering patient services since 1873. Recognized as one of the best hospitals in the U.S., with nearly 10,000 employees (making it one of the state's largest employers), research grants in the $100s of millions (the 11th largest NIH recipient), some 200 specialties and programs, a number of which are considered among the nation's top 10 in their field, rather than being described as "the nation's largest university-owned hospital" the phrase is sometimes turned on its head, making the UI "one of the nation's largest hospital-owned universities."
The UI's main library is among the top 25 public academic research libraries. The law library is second in the nation.
One could go on and on with such facts. All major U.S. educational institutions have their "brags": numbers of books and other publications, honors and memberships of faculty, quality of libraries, scientific inventions and cultural contributions, celebrity alums, new buildings and other facilities, athletic championships, or the size of endowments. Each institution has its strengths, its strongest colleges and departments, its "famous" faculty -- but also its weaknesses and its infamous faculty members. Iowa is no exception.
What does seem rather clear is that, by whatever standards and measures one may apply, Iowa is clearly one of America's quality, public, research universities, and the full equal of its peers. Amongst those schools it makes even less sense to distinguish among them on the basis of a few positions one way or another in an arbitrary "ranking" than to decide who gets the gold and who gets the bronze on the basis of a 1/100th of a second difference in how fast they can ski down a hill. (At least there is agreement on the Olympics' criteria for such evaluations.) As I see it, anyone who can ski down a long hill at 90 mph and live to tell about it is a great athlete; and I feel the equivalent about our major research universities.
Reconceptualizing a State University for the 21st Century.
Can the University of Iowa improve? Of course. But not, in my judgment, by focusing on how it can become "world class," or move up in the rankings (whether substantively and ethically, or unethically by gaming the system), in a national or international Olympic competition amongst educational institutions.
Of course, so long as legislators, parents, students, potential faculty hires, and others think rankings are important -- and so long as tuition revenue is a significant part of the the University's budget -- it cannot afford to totally ignore rankings. (Nor, sadly, can it apparently afford to fully support the idea of having all students spend their first two years in community colleges, or lose the tuition revenue provided by those students who come more for the binge drinking than the book learning.) I just think it a mistake to have those considerations disproportionately drive decisions.
(1) As Maritime Administrator, with a budget and number of employees somewhat similar to that of the UI today, I had regular meetings with my office chiefs, as a university president has with his or her vice presidents, or deans. What radically improved things at the agency was when I established metrics for what I identified as the agency's top 100 projects, and moved those office chief meetings into an auditorium and invited all the employees to attend what I called a "monthly MARAD review." Suddenly every employee could see "the big picture," the importance of their job, and where it fit in the overall mission. That (plus my making an effort to meet every employee, and adopt many of their suggestions) made a big difference.
Although there's always more to do, Provost Wallace Loh (and President Dave Skorton and Provost Mike Hogan before him, see The Iowa Promise: A Strategic Plan for the University of Iowa 2005-2010, and especially its "Appendices: Indicators of Progress") have made great strides in the first (metrics for UI goals).
It may just be that I haven't been paying attention, but I don't get a sense that there's much of the second; that is, (1) a monthly report, (2) utilizing a management information reporting system, (3) based on those metrics for goals, (4) that reflect meaningful input from all stakeholders, that is (5) shared openly, with all, as a way of not just communicating to the entire community what is going on, but the significance and relationship of each individual's contribution to the overall mission.
It's not that none of this is out there in the form of news releases, a "state of the university" address, or an occasional award ceremony, but it's not presented (so far as I'm aware) as an integrated, recurring package in a sufficiently arresting form that the community would want to participate.
(2) I have written before of what I perceive as a need for a better (or perhaps one should say "any") system of governance for the University, Regents, and their relationship. See, "An Open Letter to Regents on Governance," April 17, 2007; and generally, Nicholas Johnson, "Board Governance: Theory and Practice," 2001. I won't repeat that here, except to note that it is related to (amongst other things) the creation of the goals, metrics, and management information reporting system discussed above. The absence of a clearly thought through, articulated, and agreed-upon set of relationships between the Regents (as individuals and as a Board) and the University (in the person of its president and other administrators, and in turn their relationships with staff and faculty) simply creates problems that could otherwise easily have been avoided (as has been obvious over the past few years).
(3) In the process of doing both of the above, there are an almost endless list of issues and options to be addressed regarding the University of Iowa's future mission and goals. As of October 7, 2009, Provost Loh had identified and clustered many of them into some six "Strategic Initiatives Task Forces" for Strategic Budgeting, Undergraduate Education and Success, Graduate Education: Selective Excellence, Research and Creative Excellence, Internationalization and Diversity, and Public Outreach and Civic Engagement.
Of course, there are others. For example, there are such things as "universities without students," such as, for example, the Brookings Institution, in Washington, the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica (although Brookings has "fellows," and RAND has its affiliated Pardee Rand Graduate School), and numerous other "think tanks" (both for-profit and non-profit) around the country. As the UI puts increasing emphasis on research, and more of what was formerly its educational mission and budget gets transferred to research efforts, might there be lessons from the Brookings and RAND models -- or, on the other hand, reason to rethink this trend and redirection?
Whatever the answer to those questions might be, to what extent do we want to abandon "basic research" for what the NIH calls "transformative" (or "transformational") research (ultimately, "practical," or "applied" research)? See, National Science Foundation, Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide, effective January 4, 2010. And even if it is a practical necessity that we do so in applying for NIH funds, is it also a useful model for other than medical and scientific research, a standard that should be applied in judging every professor's research?
And I've already discussed, above, a bit of what I see coming with online higher education from "universities without walls."
There's much more, but this blog entry already runs too long.
Bottom line: the University of Iowa can be proud of its past, its present quality, and what will be its innovative, responsive, yet unpredictable future.
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* Why do I put this blog ID at the top of the entry, when you know full well what blog you're reading? Because there are a number of Internet sites that, for whatever reason, simply take the blog entries of others and reproduce them as their own without crediting the source. I don't mind the flattering attention, but would appreciate acknowledgment as the source, even if I have to embed it myself. -- Nicholas Johnson
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April 29, 2008, 9:00 a.m.
Note: If you are a present or potential law student who finds this blog entry of interest, you would probably also enjoy (and perhaps even benefit from) Nicholas Johnson, "So You Want to Be a Lawyer: A Play in Four Acts."
How to Pick Your Law School:
Random Thoughts on U.S. News' Law School Rankings
When the U.S. News' college rankings came out a couple of weeks ago some of our law students expressed concern to the Dean that the University of Iowa College of Law had dropped a couple of places.
Now that some time and temporary panic has passed, here are some random observations about the issue.
A couple of caveats: Obviously, these thoughts are mine alone; I know less about these matters than most of my colleagues, and I certainly don't speak for the UI or law school administration or faculty (none of whom has seen these comments before they appeared here). Moreover, I'm going to break from my usual practice and not even try to make the effort this morning to footnote (i.e., for a blog, "link" to) sources and data for all of the assertions and opinions that follow. (If you want more, a little bit of Google searching will bring up lots of material.) [For a consistent, 2010, analysis, see Jack Crittenden and Karen Dybis, "How Important is a School's Ranking," Back to School 2010, PreLaw Magazine].
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Altogether too much is made of these U.S. News' rankings. For reasons discussed below, while the rankings can't be dismissed entirely -- largely merely because others give them disproportionate attention -- they really don't tell you much of value.
U.S. News' monopoly (of law school ranking systems) contributes to its disproportionate weight. For example, there are many sources of rankings of business schools. As a result, there are always some sources that any given business school can look to that will position it higher than other sources. Therefore, there is no single ranking that carries the public relations impact for business schools that U.S. News' does for law schools.
Iowa was a good law school, is a good law school and will continue to be a good law school. (a) Iowa's law school is doing just fine. While we're always agonizing over how we can improve, as individual faculty members and as an institution, there's no need to be defensive or apologetic for what we are -- in terms of the quality of our graduates, teaching, writing program, library, faculty research and writing, contribution to the global, national, state and local community, and so forth. (b) Iowa's overall ranking has fluctuated over the years, up and down -- as have the rankings of other good law schools. A single year's change is no cause for a law school's either dismay or cheering. (c) More significant, perhaps, is that Iowa's rank among public law schools has remained relatively consistently at number 7 over a number of years. (In other words, changes in Iowa's ranking is not so much a result of its comparative position among public law schools as it is the improved ranking of private law schools.)
The weight accorded various factors makes a dramatic difference in ranking. There's a Web site somewhere that dramatizes the impact on rankings of even slight shifts in the weighting of various U.S. News' factors. So (a) this enables anyone to find the schools with the best rankings on the factors they think most important, and (b) demonstrates how relatively irrational the composite rankings are.
The rankings have distorted law schools' decisions, and led to "gaming" the system -- and therefore unreliable and misleading results. (a) Because a law school's ranking is, in part, a function of its general and vague "reputation" among those included in the U.S. News' survey, money is diverted -- often in the $100,000 to $1,000,000 range -- to "marketing" the school, money that might be better used elsewhere.
(b) Data reported by law schools can be (has been and is) manipulated -- sometimes from outright misrepresentation, and sometimes from gaming the system. (None of the following, so far as I know, is being done at Iowa.)
[1] Average GPA/LSAT score numbers can be raised by only admitting the top half of the applicants normally admitted, reporting those scores, and then accepting lower-scoring transfer students (whose scores need not be reported) to fill up the seats -- and the tuition coffers. If night law school students don't count in the GPA/LSAT numbers, a school can admit lower GPA/LSAT students into their night law school program while the counting is going on, and then "transfer" them into the day program when they will no longer drag down the averages.
[2] A similar, but more unfortunate, strategy involves diverting scholarship money from quality students who genuinely need it to afford school, to those "merit" students with the highest GPA/LSAT numbers -- regardless of their need -- in a kind of bidding war.
[3] What percentage of a law school's graduates have jobs when they graduate? Virtually all of them -- if the school "hires" every graduate who doesn't yet have a job elsewhere at that time -- and then counts them as employed (as some do). Or the school can redefine what is a "job" -- counting waiters and taxi drivers as well as those employed as lawyers.
[4] How can a school improve its faculty-student ratio? Simply require all faculty to take their semesters of leave in the spring semester rather than the fall; count and report them in the fall, thereby improving the school's reported faculty-student ratio numbers, and let them go on leave in the spring when nobody's watching or counting.
[5] "Resources per student" can be manipulated by including the "free" access to Westlaw provided by the company for law students -- not at the amount of the blanket license charged the law school, but at what would have been the commercial value of the service if purchased by a law firm.
[6] Once "grade creep" learns to walk, and then run, all of a law school graduates' grades are "above average." See Catherine Rampell, "In Law Schools, Grades Go Up, Just Like That," New York Times, June 22, 2010, p. A1.
Given that the only limit on such manipulations are those imposed by the limits of the human imagination, the results obtained from the data used (as the old computer programmers' "GIGO" had it: "garbage in, garbage out") can be very misleading.
So what's a student to do when choosing a law school?
Distinguish between the "superficial" and the "substantive." Education, indeed life itself, can be measured by both the substantive and the superficial. I don't use the word "superficial" in a pejorative sense. What's on your resume, the schools you attended, the grades you made, the work experience you've had, all have their impact -- in getting that first interview. But how you do in that interview -- and, more significantly, on the job and throughout your career -- are a function of "what you know, not whom you know," your knowledge, your skills, your work habits, your performance -- in short, "substance," not "superficiality."
Substance: You have to "teach yourself the law" -- and you can. Coming away from a legal education with knowledge and skills, like coming away from poetry with a sense of its meaning, is 90% a matter of what you bring to it and how hard you work at it. An architect I know says he was told by his drawing teacher, "I can't teach you how to draw. I can try to teach you how to see. But you're going to have to teach yourselves how to draw." Or, as President Johnson used to say, "They call me 'Lucky Lyndon,' but I always found the harder I worked the luckier I got."
There was a time when some of our nation's best judges and lawyers "read law" in a lawyer's office, rather than going to "a law school," before entering the bar.
There's not that much difference between casebooks, and most any law school library will have access to the basic statutory material and other sources -- even if the school doesn't give you access to Westlaw and Lexis.
You can go to one of "the best" law schools on the U.S. News' rankings, and if you don't go to class, read the assignments, take notes, make your own outlines, learn to "think like a lawyer," write persuasively, argue, know cold the basic stuff and be able to figure out the rest -- you can tell everyone you graduated from whatever school it is, but you won't be able to function very successfully as a lawyer. (Not incidentally, you learn legal skills by making outlines, not by reading those of fellow students or commercial firms.)
On the other hand, if you do all those things, take your legal education seriously, and really put in the hours (President Richard Nixon once said that what it takes to get through law school is the "iron butt" one develops sitting for hours in the library), you'll do just fine as a lawyer. Wherever you went to school you'll know more law, and have more skills, than most of the 19th Century lawyers who "read law" -- and probably most of the graduates of other law schools.
Superficiality: How to pick the best law school for you. (a) If you have your heart set on getting a U.S. Court of Appeals (or Supreme Court) clerkship, or a job with one of the nation's largest and most prestigious law firms, you might want to give more attention to the top, say, half dozen law schools on the U.S. News' ranking -- if that goal is realistic for you, given your GPA/LSAT scores and the school's admission standards. But you might also want to keep a number of things in mind. [1] Your odds of getting a Supreme Court clerkship are about as good as your being picked to play basketball with an NBA team just because you were an OK basketball player in high school. [2] Your odds of graduating number one in your class (or even in the top 10 percent) are not terrific either -- regardless of your law school -- remember, all your classmates arrived at law school with about the same credentials you did. [3] And, in that connection, at least consider (I haven't figured this one out, and therefore don't have a recommendation) whether you would be better off (superficially, in getting that first job interview) to have graduated in the top 10% of a school ranked 15th to 30th -- or in the bottom 20% of a school ranked among the top six -- when you go out looking for a job. (You can't predict your ultimate class standing with precision, but how you rank among your classmates going in (where your GPA/LSAT places you relative to the others; your percentile ranking) can give you a very imprecise notion of where you may rank coming out.)
(b) If you don't have the GPA/LSAT to get into one of the top half-dozen or so schools -- or you have the scores, but you're neither a "trustafarian" nor the offspring of wealthy parents -- or you genuinely prefer smaller firms and towns -- what do the rankings mean to you? Not much. For all the reasons outlined above, while there may be at least a superficial difference between the top half-dozen or so and those ranked, say, 15-30, there is little if any meaningful difference between a school ranked 16th and one ranked 27th. There is certainly no reason to pick the former over the latter because of the difference in their rankings. Most of the top 30 schools would be considered "national" law schools, fully capable of giving you a legal education with both the substantive and superficial qualities you seek.
(c) In addition to changing jobs, most of us change careers a half-dozen times during our lifetime. So picking a state you're going to live in all of your life when you're just in your twenties is problematical. But, for example, if you can say with certainty that you know you're going to live in Montana the rest of your life, taking care of the ranch and other family businesses, there might very well be a point to attending the law school in Missoula. (And no, I have no guess as to how it's ranked.) There may be an occasional Montana quirk in the law you'll pick up. More important, your classmates will be the lawyers, judges and business people you'll be working with during your professional career.
(d) If you're choosing from among national law schools, you might also want to consider such things as the size of the student body and the town where the law school is located. At least I think when you get more than 600 or so students you begin to lose a valuable sense of community; and being in a major metropolitan area can offer more distractions, not to mention the sheer stress of getting about, than is most compatible with law study.
(e) Don't be blinded by factors that contribute to a school's superficial reputation, but may add little to the substantive quality of your education. To avoid the suspicion this is "sour grapes" on my part because Iowa scores poorly, I'll use a couple examples where it is (or has been) near top in the nation.
A few years ago the Iowa faculty was ranked (in an independent study run by neither U.S. News nor the Iowa law school) the most productive in research and writing of all public law schools, and second only to Yale among all law schools. (Needless to say, that ranking, were it done annually, also would go up and down over the years; and Iowa probably would not be ranked that high today.) Our law library is by any measure -- number of volumes, number of titles, and especially focus of the collection -- number one, two or three in the nation (depending on whom you ask) -- thanks largely to Professor Arthur Bonfield. Both the faculty's scholarship, and the library -- and other things Iowa could claim -- are nice "Iowa brags" of both substantive and superficial significance. They are important to the overall mission and contribution of the law school. Both contribute something to the faculty's teaching and law students' learning; I'm just not sure how much.
You may be attracted to a law school because of a superstar professor you've seen on TV, only to find once you get there that he or she is devoting so much time to television appearances, book writing, congressional testimony, litigation, and public lecturing that you will seldom if ever see him or her. Indeed, by the time you get to that law school he or she may have died, retired or moved on to a school or other position elsewhere.
What about the "quality" of the student body? At the outset, for the reasons detailed above, reports of average GPA/LSAT scores may be unreliable. To the extent they're accurate, and vary significantly, there's probably a marginal value to being surrounded by bright colleagues. There's some value to having a fellow student who always comes up with the right answers in class. But I'm not so sure that's more valuable to you than your coming up with the wrong answer, and working your way through, with a professor, to the right answer. You may benefit from a "study group" of fellow students. But my experience as a law student was that I learned more, better and faster studying alone.
So those are some random morning thoughts about law school rankings.
Bottom line: chill. Law school rankings don't tell you much, and can be and are manipulated. Rankings are of very little significance in terms of the substantive quality of the legal education you'll get, especially because you're going to have to teach yourself the law anyway. Superficially, rankings in the top half-dozen may make some difference -- if you're set on getting into the places where they can help open doors -- but even by that standard you may be better off with a higher class rank from a lower ranked school than a much lower class rank from a higher ranked school. And between schools ranked, say, 15th to 30th, there really isn't much basis for choosing one school over another.
Good luck -- and don't forget to apply at Iowa!
For consistent counsel regarding the rational selection of colleges for undergraduate education, see,
[F]or too many parents and their children, acceptance by an elite institution isn’t just another challenge, just another goal. A yes or no from Amherst or the University of Virginia or the University of Chicago is seen as the conclusive measure of a young person’s worth, an uncontestable harbinger
of the accomplishments or disappointments to come. Winner or loser: This is when the judgment is made. This is the great, brutal culling.
What madness. And what nonsense.
For one thing, the admissions game is too flawed to be given so much credit. For another, the nature of a student’s college experience — the work that he or she puts into it, the selfexamination that’s undertaken, the resourcefulness that’s honed — matters more than the name of the institution attended. In fact students at institutions with less hallowed names sometimes demand more of those places and of themselves. Freed from a focus on the packaging of their education, they get to the meat of it. . . . Education happens across a spectrum of settings and in infinite ways, and college has no monopoly on the ingredients for professional achievement or a life well lived.
Midway through last year, I looked up the undergraduate alma maters of the chief executives of the top 10 corporations in the Fortune 500. These were the schools: the University of Arkansas; the University of Texas; the University of California, Davis; the University of Nebraska; Auburn; Texas A & M; the General Motors Institute (now called Kettering University); the University of Kansas; the University of Missouri, St. Louis; and Dartmouth College.
Frank Bruni, "How to Survive the College Admissioins Madness," New York Times, March 15, 2015, p. SR1
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August 17, 2007, 8:15, 10:40 a.m.; 9:20 p.m.
Stories Worth a Read, a Comment -- And Keeping an Eye On
All's Fair in Athletics and Cable Television
Negotiations continue between the "Big Ten Network" (BTN) and Mediacom. Andy Hamilton, "BTN Increases Pressure on Mediacom for Deal; UI Officials Urge Hawk Fans to Push for Network," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 17, 2007, p. A1.
At the outset, recognize that "there's no such thing as a 'free cable channel.'" When cable program suppliers raise their prices to cable distribution companies, or when a new channel is added the cable company must pay for, that additional cost is going to find its way into every cable subscriber's monthly bill -- unless it's a "pay channel" for which the cable company recoups its cost by charging those cable subscribers who choose to pay extra for it each month.
Also recognize -- as if it could have escaped anyone's attention -- that collegiate athletics are now a classic example of the corporatization of the academy. They are in the profit maximizing business as much as any Fortune 500 corporation. They're paying coaches multi-million-dollar salaries, undertaking $100 million refurbishing projects with their venues, selling off both skyboxes and advertising on scoreboards to the highest corporate bidders, and entering into partnerships with organized gambling. So that's the context in which this BTN was created and is engaging in negotiations with the cable industry -- over our money. They will continue to stick it to their fans with everything from compulsory "contributions" to their program as a requirement before one is entitled to buy tickets, to overpriced hot dogs as well as ticket prices, to raising our cable bills -- up to the point that their overreaching so irritates fans that it produces a decline in the athletics programs' revenue.
From my perspective the controversial choice -- make every cable subscriber pay for a channel many don't want (BTN) so those who do can have it for "free" (i.e., at a disproportionately small increased cost for expanded basic paid by all cable subscribers) ,or make those who want it pay the entire cost as a "pay channel" (like HBO) -- is but a sub-set of much larger issues.
If I had my way, cable would operate as a common carrier. That would still allow the cable company owners to continue to attain riches beyond their wildest dreams of avarice -- by sucking money out of both ends of the straw: charging both those who want the cable company to distribute their programming and those who wish to receive it. (Once you get a cable system built the money just keeps on rolling in every month and the primary capital investment is for the wheelbarrows to carry it all to the bank.)
Like the AT&T of old, cable companies would be required to run a cable past everyone's home, and to expand their cable carrying capacity as necessary so as to be able to handle the programming of every program suppliers who was willing to pay their carriage fees.
The cable customers would then pay on the basis of individual channels chosen. The cost per channel would vary, depending on the number of subscribers and what the cable company and program supplier wanted to charge -- in short, it would be set by the market (presumably to optimize profit, taking into account alternative sources of supply). (And I'm assuming, for purposes of this discussion, that the average, total monthly cost per subscriber would be the same, or less, than it is now; in other words, that the companies' total costs and profits would remain the same.)
This system would eliminate the self-dealing (cable companies that own cable programming suppliers tend to favor them) and censorship. It would create more opportunities and make for a more competitive economic marketplace for those in the program production business. It would create a much wider range of choice, a much more diverse "marketplace of ideas," for the audience. And it would also more fairly allocate costs with benefits and individuals' choice.
Sorry for the long introduction, but it helps put the BTN in perspective.
I short, in my ideal world there would be no need for negotiations. BTN, as a matter of legal right, could have its programming distributed by Mediacom. It would be available for anyone who wanted to pay the fixed price for it. But no one who did not think it worth the price would be required to subscribe.
An analogy? Go to Time, Inc.'s, magazine Web site. It provides links to 18 of Time's magazines. Requiring you to pay for the BTN -- which is what putting it on "expanded basic" does -- would be like Time saying in order to get Time, the news magazine, you have to subscribe to (and pay for) all 18.
Another? Imagine going to one of those cineplexes with 12 theaters and having to pay a flat fee based on the assumption you're going to watch all 12 movies when you only wanted to watch (and pay for) one.
Bottom line -- since we're not going to be re-organizing the cable industry and its regulation anytime soon? I think BTN should be a pay channel.
What is it About the UI and "24th"?
The reactions of colleges and universities to the U.S. News & World Report annual ranking of all of them would be amusing if it weren't so serious.
Anyhow, in this morning's story (the rankings are online this morning and will be in the magazine Monday) we discover that the university Sally Mason recently left is tied for 24th (among public universities), the university to which Mike Hogan will soon be departing is tied for 24th, and the university to which President Mason came is also tied for 24th.
Iowa often works from a benchmark of 25th (among the 50 states) -- e.g., we want to bring our teachers' salaries up to "average." I'm reminded of the lyrics:
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.
"Stuck in the Middle With You."
Brian Morelli, "UI Moves Up One Spot in Annual Rankings," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 17, 2007, p. A1.
Desperately Trying to Put a Good Face on TIFs
One of Coralville's more prominent TIFs, the Coralville City Council-Marriott Hotel is celebrating its first birthday. It was cause enough for the Press-Citizen to devote an editorial and page-three story to the accomplishment. Editorial, "So Far, City's Gamble Seems to be Paying Off," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 17, 2007, p. A11; Kathryn Fiegen, "Coralville Marriott Celebrates 1 Year; Hotel Looks to Its Future Growth," Iowa City Press-Citizen, August 17, 2007, p. A3.
In fairness, the editorial did acknowledge some of the downside of this venture:
Many local residents had -- and continue to have -- some ideological and pragmatic concerns about the venture. Some local hoteliers, arguing that city governments never should be involved in economic development projects that compete with other businesses already in the marketplace, brought a suit against the city to block the construction. . . . Others saw -- and continue to see -- the project as another example of Coralville officials overusing Tax Increment Financing districts as a means to boost economic development.
It's true that the hotel is not expected to hit full stride -- more than 70 percent occupancy and nearly $17 million in annual sales -- until 2010. And the project itself won't be paid off until sometime in the next 20 to 35 years.
Before this section of this blog entry was even written and uploaded there was a comment taking issue with what the author presumed I was going to write if ever I got around to it. Talk about prescience; he was right.
Here's the comment:
Ben Richards said...
I will defend the use of TIF. In many cases, TIF goes to build a specific piece of infrastructure such as a road with storm sewer. It does not "take away" funding from other entities because the tax base in question was not there to begin with. Not only that, cities are able to access the tax base right away for their debt service levy, which means lowering the cost of police and fire vehicles and any other projects using that levy. TIF was also used to revitalize the Sycamore Mall area. It is an indespensible tool for cities in economic development.
I see a lot of ignorance over what TIF is and the economic development scene in general.
8/17/2007 09:01:00 AM
Well, I've often acknowledged my own ignorance when it comes to TIFs. All I've had to draw and rely upon are common sense, intuition -- and the analysis by economists who do understand TIFs and other forms of corporate welfare. Because I've already written here at such length about TIFs, I'll just provide links to some of what has gone before, rather than just repeat it. I doubt that it will persuade Ben Richards and other advocates (and beneficiaries) of TIFs, but for any who are curious it will tell you probably more than you care to know about the basis for my own positions on the practice.
Nicholas Johnson, "TIF-ing My Toolshed," September 2, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "Supervisor Sullivan Says TIF, TIF, Tsk, Tsk," September 16, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "Press-Citizen Says 'Tough TIF,'" September 22, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "Why Do They Hate America?" October 2, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "Understanding TIFs (Revised 10/06/06)," October 5, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "Call the Cops: $3.755 Million Robbery in Progress," October 18, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "More on Corporate Welfare from 'Hat's Off' Winner," October 22, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "It's Not About 'Taxes,'" October 24, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "Riverside's Deeper Gambling Debt," November 11, 2006.
Nicholas Johnson, "UI Held Hostage Day 490 - Search & Taxes," May 26, 2007.
Nicholas Johnson, "The Terrible TIFs," July 26, 2007.
- Continuing Saga of CEO Responsibility: Coal Mines, Shuttle Flights and Retirement Homes
- Johnson County's "Affordable Housing": Consultant Proposes 450-Bed Jail
. . . more to come
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