(no subject)

[mindstalk]

* Judge strikes down DOMA

* Movie popcorn ,a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/19/popcorn/">really fatty. Exercise and fat loss. Your brain on exercise

NYTimes:
* Conservative unemployment and recession. Smart squirrels with deceptive caching. The biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich. (Remember, shame about bankruptcy is middle class -- businesses and the rich know it's just a financial decision.) Guide to social networking sites for that person under a rock. The more noble Israel. Colleges spending more on recreation, and the US spending $19,000 per post-secondary student, vs. $8,400 across other developed countries.

* Jury compensation by state. In only one case does it rise to the level of minimum wage.

* D&D 3.5 art galleries

* Guide to being lazy GM (RPGs, not the company)

* What if copyright were only 20 years? Genre works that would be public now. Calculating optimal copyright (PDF)

* Hawaii GOP governor, divorced twice, vetoes civil unions bill. Google further expands gay employee benefits.

* Sociology and porn, sociology as parallel universe. Chomsky on postmodernism

* Why are modern movies all teal and orange?

Comments

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Your penultimate and antepenultimate links are identical; was that intentional?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Nope, thanks for the catch! Fixed.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

US spending $19,000 per post-secondary student, vs. $8,400 across other developed countries.

Obviously, the US has some astoundingly expensive private universities that spend vast amounts on their students (who are typically from exceedingly wealthy families), as well as state schools that spend almost equally vast amounts on their athletic departments, and both of these factors skew the US figures. The first case seems to clearly be a marker of how much higher the Gini coefficient is in the US vs. the rest of the first world and the 2nd is a marker of the importance of college athletics in the US. However, even if you eliminate those two, you are still left with the surprising figure that US community college spend on average $10,000 per student, vs. overall spending of $8,400 per student in the rest of the first world. That's very puzzling indeed. Community colleges are not throwing vast sums of money around, and my only conclusion is that like healthcare, US post-secondary education is simply far less efficient than post-secondary education elsewhere. In short, once again, the US suffers badly in comparison to other nations.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Possibly, though from what I've heard the US post-secondary system is pretty good. That might be more the research universities than the community colleges, though.

Healthcare might feed into higher costs elsewhere, e.g. insurance for staff.

Hmm, wonder if those numbers were per student's total attendance, or per student-year. I think we spend longer in college, not so much inefficiency as a rather different system and goals.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Hmm, wonder if those numbers were per student's total attendance, or per student-year. I think we spend longer in college, not so much inefficiency as a rather different system and goals.

That's an excellent point. I assumed per year, but if it isn't then the data looks somewhat different. Also, obviously healthcare is a factor, I wonder if it's the major one.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Looking over the original report, the answer to whether or not the data is per student (total) or per student per year is not clear, but both the amounts of money involved and the way the report is worded looks like the data is per year, but I'm not certain.

Edit: The article also has data on cost per completed degree, and they are 4 x higher than the other figures, so we're definitely talking about cost per year.

[lyceum-arabica.livejournal.com]

Actually, about the athletic thing...I'm not sure how it works in smaller schools, but I went to OSU and I know that the athletics department was self-supporting. They made enough by merchandising, tickets, licensing, etc... to take care of themselves with surplus. And I imagine the same is true of any school with a program big enough to sound familiar. The smaller schools, like OU or case western, are probably the ones losing money to athletics.

[heron61.livejournal.com]

That's likely common. However, it also looks like the study figured the money spent on athletics into the total money spent on students, which would raise the seeming amount spent per student significantly.