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Today's Topics:
1. Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public Universities
(George Antunes)
2. Innovation From the Top Down (George Antunes)
3. Love Him or (He Prefers) Hate Him (Monty Solomon)
4. When KAOS Threatens, Talk to the Shoe (Monty Solomon)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:27:39 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public
Universities
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
July 29, 2007
Certain Degrees Now Cost More at Public Universities
By JONATHAN D. GLATER
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/education/29tuition.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print
Should an undergraduate studying business pay more than one studying
psychology? Should a journalism degree cost more than one in literature?
More and more public universities, confronting rising costs and lagging
state support, have decided that the answers may be yes and yes.
Starting this fall, juniors and seniors pursuing an undergraduate major in
the business school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will pay $500
more each semester than classmates. The University of Nebraska last year
began charging engineering students a $40 premium for each hour of class
credit.
And Arizona State University this fall will phase in for upperclassmen in
the journalism school a $250 per semester charge above the basic $2,411
tuition for in-state students.
Such moves are being driven by the high salaries commanded by professors in
certain fields, the expense of specialized equipment and the difficulties
of getting state legislatures to approve general tuition increases,
university officials say.
?It is something of a trend,? said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive
director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and
Admissions Officers.
Even as they embrace such pricing, many officials acknowledge they are
queasy about a practice that appears to value one discipline over another
or that could result in lower-income students clustering in less expensive
fields.
?This is not the preferred way to do this,? said Patrick V. Farrell,
provost at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. ?If we were able to raise
resources uniformly across the campus, that would be a preferred move. But
with our current situation, it doesn?t seem to us that that?s possible.?
At the University of Kansas, which started charging different prices in the
early 1990s, there are signs that the higher cost of majoring in certain
subjects is affecting the choices of poorer students.
?We are seeing at this point purely anecdotal evidence,? said Richard W.
Lariviere, provost and executive vice chancellor at the university. ?The
price sensitivity of poor students is causing them to forgo majoring, for
example, in business or engineering, and rather sticking with something
like history.?
Private universities do not face the same tuition constraints and for the
most part are avoiding the practice, educators say, holding to the
traditional idea that college students should be encouraged to get a
well-rounded education.
Richard Fass, vice president for planning at Pomona, a private liberal arts
college in California, said educators there considered it fundamental for
students to feel part of the larger college, not segmented by differential
costs. ?The entire curriculum is by design available to all students,? he said.
Some public university officials say they worry that students who are
charged more for their major will stick to the courses in their field to
feel that they are getting their money?s worth.
?I want students in the College of Engineering at Iowa State to take
courses in the humanities and to take courses in the social sciences,? said
Mark J. Kushner, the dean of that college. To address problems like climate
change, Mr. Kushner said, graduates will need to understand much more than
technology. ?That?s sociology, that?s economics, that?s politics, that?s
public policy.?
Undergraduate juniors and seniors in the engineering school at Iowa State
last year began paying about $500 more annually, he said, and the size of
that additional payment is scheduled to rise by $500 a year for at least
the next two years.
Mr. Kushner said he thought society was no longer looking at higher
education as a common good but rather as a way for individuals to increase
their earning power.
?There was a time, not that long ago, 10 to 15 years ago, that the vast
majority of the cost of education at public universities was borne by the
state, and that was why tuition was so low,? he said. ?That was based on
the premise that the education of an individual is a public good, that
individuals go out and become schoolteachers and businessmen and doctors
and lawyers, that makes society better. That?s no longer the perception.?
Neither the State University of New York nor the Connecticut State
University System use differential pricing, officials say. New Jersey,
however, has done so for years, according to a spokesman, Greg Trevor. In
the new school year, in-state undergraduates in the general program will
pay tuition of $8,541, but engineering and pharmacy students will pay
$9,484.80 and business students will pay $8,716.
Various universities have adopted different versions of differential
pricing to try to fight the unintended consequences it may create. Colleges
that charge higher tuition for a major like business, engineering or
journalism generally allow students outside the field to take some courses
in the subject without paying more.
?We do try to encourage crossing disciplines, to get a feel for the world,?
said Randy Kangas, assistant vice president for planning and budgeting at
the University of Illinois, where students studying business, chemistry and
the life sciences pay higher tuition.
Most universities with differential tuition use some of the money ? 20 to
25 percent ? for additional financial aid to offset some of the impact.
Officials at universities that have recently implemented higher tuition for
specific majors say students have supported the move.
Students in the business school at the University of Wisconsin, for
example, got behind the program because they believed that it would support
things like a top-notch faculty. ?It?s very important to all the students
in the business school to sustain our reputation,? said Jesse C. Siegelman,
21, who expects to graduate in December 2008.
Mr. Siegelman said representatives of 26 of 28 student groups that belong
to the school?s Undergraduate Student Leadership Council, of which he was
president last year, voted to support the tuition proposal.
In engineering programs, the additional money often goes toward costly
laboratory equipment, because students and the companies that will employ
them expect graduates to be able to go to work immediately using state of
the art tools, said Mr. Lariviere of the University of Kansas.
?In many instances,? he said, ?industry itself is demanding this.?
And in business schools, professors? salaries have risen, with some schools
paying starting professors $130,000 or more, said G. Dan Parker III,
associate executive vice president of Texas A&M, which he said was
considering whether to charge higher tuition to undergraduate students
studying business.
?The salaries we pay for entering assistant professors on average is
probably larger than the average salary for full professors at the
university,? Mr. Parker said of business professors. ?That?s how far the
pendulum has swung at the business schools, and I sure wish they?d fix it.?
While several university officials said students in majors that carried
higher costs could bear the burden because they would be better paid after
graduation, Mr. Lariviere said he was skeptical of that rationale. He
pointed out that many people change jobs several times over a career and
that a major is a poor predictor of lifetime income.
?Where we have gone astray culturally,? he said, ?is that we have focused
almost exclusively on starting salary as an indicator of life earnings and
also of the value of the particular major.?
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2007 12:31:15 -0500
From: George Antunes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Innovation From the Top Down
To: [email protected]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed
July 29, 2007
In a Highly Complex World, Innovation From the Top Down
By G. PASCAL ZACHARY
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/business/yourmoney/29ping.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print
USER-GENERATED content ? from Wikipedia to YouTube to open-source software
? is generating waves of excitement. But the opening of innovation to wider
numbers of people obscures another trend: many of the most popular new
products, like the iPod, are dominated by a top-down, elite innovation
model that doesn?t allow for customization.
?New technologies are becoming so complex that many are beyond the
possibility of democracy playing a role in their development,? said Thomas
P. Hughes, a science and technology professor at the University of
Pennsylvania.
Consider: Electronic implants into human bodies; gene-splicing as common as
cosmetic surgery; computer networks mining vast databases to discern
consumer preferences. All of these innovations are the result of corporate
or government initiatives overseen by elites.
?The process of innovation leaves out a huge proportion of the population,?
said Daniel Sarewitz, director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and
Outcomes at Arizona State University.
To be sure, experts like Eric von Hippel, a management professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the proliferation of
?user-generated? designs signals the ?democratizing? of innovation. Armed
with inexpensive digital tools and networks, ordinary people, he says, can
band together to push their own innovations. They also can hijack existing
technologies, taking them in directions only dimly envisioned by the
original creators.
One example is an electronic community called Instructables whose
participants share methods for customizing standard products in
unpredictable ways. The chief of Instructables, Eric J. Wilhelm, who earned
his doctorate at M.I.T., where he was inspired by Mr. von Hippel, has
posted a clever means of turning a white Asics Gel-Foundation 7 running
shoe into a purple model. (The $90 official version comes only in a
white-black-and-blue combination.)
Today?s Web-savvy consumers ?expect innovations to meet their needs,? Mr.
Wilhelm says. ?If innovation isn?t tailored to them, they expect to be able
to tailor it to themselves. That is a big change.?
But does this really mean that elites no longer sit at the top of the
innovation food chain?
?Elites have a lot of leverage but less than they used to,? says Peter
Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute in San Francisco. ?More
people are getting their voices heard.? Mr. Leyden sees an emergent
American ?republic of innovation,? where growing numbers of people
influence what innovations are made and when.
Skeptics, however, say that the rosy scenario is exaggerated and that
user-generated innovation is merely a kind of ?democracy lite,? emphasizing
high-end consumer products and services rather than innovations that
broadly benefit society.
?Difficult questions are going unasked about who is participating in
innovation and on what terms,? says James Wilsdon, director of the
innovation program at Demos, a think tank in London.
In that scenario, needed innovations can be overlooked. For example, huge
amounts of money are spent on improving Web search engines or MP3 players,
while scant attention is given to alternative energy sources. Battling
diseases like AIDS or Alzheimer?s ? efforts that lobbying groups in wealthy
countries help highlight ? attract legions of well-financed innovators,
while big global killers, like childhood diarrhea and sleeping sickness,
are ignored.
Popular pressure to pursue certain innovations sometimes gets results, of
course. In 2004, voters in California passed a law lavishly funding a
stem-cell research institute ? in a rebuke to the Bush administration,
which has banned federal funding for such research. ?This was a great
example of a democratic adjudication of an innovation issue,? Mr. Sarewitz
of Arizona State said. Even so, bureaucratic and legal delays have meant a
slow start for the San Francisco lab, which has not yet received approval
to spend any of the $3 billion in promised taxpayer funds.
The California example suggests that the balance between expert leadership
and mass influence is hard to achieve. The underlying complexity of many
innovations demands an ever-rising technological literacy from the public,
and yet such an outcome ?is a dream that will not likely come to pass,?
insists Mr. Hughes, a visiting professor at M.I.T.
For all the hoopla over the power and promise of user-generated content,
consumer-directed design and other hallmarks of our new golden era of
democratized innovation, one of the iconic products of our times ? the iPod
? can?t be customized (no, I?m not counting putting on different-colored
protective jackets). There is an unbroken line between Henry Ford (with his
Model T) and Steve Jobs. The new iPhone similarly reflects the elite,
corporate innovator?s drive to find one size that fits many.
The clich? that committees can?t create great ideas, or art, still seems to
be true ? though whether or not that is the best way to innovate remains an
open question. Who knows how much longer?
---------------
G. Pascal Zachary teaches journalism at Stanford and writes about
technology and economic development.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:05:16 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] Love Him or (He Prefers) Hate Him
To: undisclosed-recipient:;
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Love Him or (He Prefers) Hate Him
By MIREYA NAVARRO
The New York Times
July 29, 2007
LOS ANGELES
MARIO ARMANDO LAVANDEIRA JR., better known as Perez Hilton, the
self-proclaimed "Queen of All Media," clearly operates by media rules
of his own.
Take a recent week from his July datebook: On a Friday morning, he
was sparring with Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on "The View"
about the not-so-nice dish on his celebrity gossip blog,
Perezhilton.com. The next Monday, he made a cameo appearance on
Victoria Beckham's reality special on NBC, followed by Kathy
Griffin's reality show on Bravo on Tuesday. Then he wrapped up the
week with a "Nightline" profile on Friday.
After all that dignified mainstream exposure, he challenged a rival
to a hot-dog eating contest on a paparazzi-patrolled block of Los
Angeles, and the next day exposed himself to a camera crew from the
celebrity news Web site TMZ.com, which merrily posted the footage.
At present, sitting at a Cuban restaurant for an interview and
picking at his ropa vieja (which he promptly dismissed as
inauthentic), Mr. Lavandeira said that even he himself, who has seen
his share of the baffling and surreal since coming to Hollywood, is
surprised at his own rapid ascent.
"I'm doing things on my own terms," he said. "I don't have to answer
to anyone but me."
In barely three years, Mr. Lavandeira, 29, has risen from the
blogosphere to reap some of the same fame and notoriety as the
entertainers he celebrates and humiliates daily on his Web site.
With his shameless self-promotion and buffoonish appearance, Mr.
Lavandeira, a childlike bear of a man, has become a hard-to-ignore
Hollywood player.
But what game he is playing is hard to define.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/fashion/29perez.html?ex=1343361600&en=674f112b803c5694&ei=5090
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 01:05:27 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [Medianews] When KAOS Threatens, Talk to the Shoe
To: Media News <[email protected]>
Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
DVD
When KAOS Threatens, Talk to the Shoe
By VINCENT COSGROVE
The New York Times
July 29, 2007
A SYMPHONY orchestra plays before a hushed audience. Suddenly, the
shrill ring of a telephone cuts across the concert hall. People turn
to stare at the source of the annoying sound. A dark-haired man rises
and walks to the lobby, where he seeks refuge in a broom closet.
There, he removes a shoe - and answers the phone hidden under the
sole and heel. He also accidentally locks himself in the closet. Thus
is the bungling secret agent Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) introduced in
the 1965 pilot of the classic spy spoof "Get Smart."
"That was actually the first time that phones went off in an audience
- we were prescient," says Mel Brooks, who created the series with
Buck Henry. Mr. Brooks's observation is part of a 25-DVD collection
from HBO Video that includes all 138 episodes, lovingly restored and
remastered, and a slew of features (including commentaries, outtakes
and a "Get Smart" reunion seminar from 2003).
Employing a strident, know-it-all voice inspired by the actor William
Powell, Mr. Adams makes Max, a k a Agent 86 of CONTROL, a likable,
dapper doofus who saves the day, usually by accident. Like a clueless
James Bond crossed with Inspector Clouseau and armed with an array of
silly gadgets, Max regularly matches half-wits with KAOS, an
international ring of bad guys as inept as Max.
On Max's side are Agent 99 (a beguiling Barbara Feldon) and the Chief
(Edward Platt, the straightest of comic straight men).
No matter how ridiculous the plot - and every episode is ridiculous -
the writers loonily tie together the story in the end. They also get
to poke fun at government ineptitude, movie genres, classic mystery
novels and other television shows. In a "Mission: Impossible" parody
Max opens a folder with photos of secret agents. Included are Tiny
Tim, the Mona Lisa and Mad magazine's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman.
Then there's Siegfried, a former Nazi turned KAOS agent (Bernie
Kopell, who would have been great in another of Mr. Brooks's
creations, "The Producers"). In one of many appearances Siegfried
threatens the United States with global cooling. Blizzards smother
the nation because Siegfried has installed a giant electric fan at
the North Pole, and it's blowing snow south.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/arts/television/29cosg.html?ex=1343361600&en=7859dc5c69872e46&ei=5090
------------------------------
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