The cloud hid the moon, and as Mowgli wondered what would come next he heard Bagheera’s light feet on the terrace. The Black Panther had raced up the slope almost without a sound, and was striking—he knew better than to waste time in biting—right and left among the monkeys, who were seated round Mowgli in circles fifty and sixty deep. There was a howl of fright and rage, and then as Bagheera tripped on the rolling, kicking bodies beneath him, a monkey shouted: “There is only one here! Kill him! Kill!” A scuffling mass of monkeys, biting, scratching, tearing, and pulling, closed over Bagheera, while five or six laid hold of Mowgli, dragged him up the wall of the summer-house, and pushed him through the hole of the broken dome. A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good ten feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed light.

“Stay there,” shouted the monkeys, “till we have killed thy friend. Later we will play with thee, if the Poison People leave thee alive.”

“We be of one blood, ye and I,” said Mowgli, quickly giving the Snake’s Call. He could hear rustling and hissing in the rubbish all round him, and gave the Call a second time to make sure.

“Down hoods all,” said half a dozen low voices. Every old ruin in India becomes sooner or later a dwelling-place of snakes, and the old summer-house was alive with cobras. “Stand still, Little Brother, lest thy feet do us harm.”

Mowgli stood as quietly as he could, peering through the openwork and listening to the furious din of the fight round the Black Panther—the yells and chatterings and scufflings, and Bagheera’s deep, hoarse cough as he backed and bucked and twisted and plunged under the heaps of his enemies. For the first time since he was born, Bagheera was fighting for his life.

…

“I am not sure that they have not pulled me into a hundred little bearlings,” said Baloo, gravely shaking one leg after the other. “Wow! I am sore. Kaa, we owe thee, I think, our lives—Bagheera and I.”

“No matter. Where is the manling?”

“Here, in a trap. I cannot climb out,” cried Mowgli. The curve of the broken dome was above his head.

“Take him away. He dances like Mao, the Peacock. He will crush our young,” said the cobras inside.

“Hah!” said Kaa, with a chuckle, “he has friends everywhere, this manling. Stand back, Manling; and hide you, O Poison People. I break down the wall.”

…

“So this is the manling,” said Kaa. “Very soft is his skin, and he is not so unlike the Bandar-log. Have a care, Manling, that I do not mistake thee for a monkey some twilight when I have newly changed my coat.”

“We be of one blood, thou and I,” Mowgli answered. “I take my life from thee, to-night. My kill shall be thy kill if ever thou art hungry, O Kaa.”

“All thanks, Little Brother,” said Kaa, though his eyes twinkled. “And what may so bold a hunter kill? I ask that I may follow when next he goes abroad.”

“I kill nothing,—I am too little,—but I drive goats toward such as can use them. When thou art empty come to me and see if I speak the truth. I have some skill in these [he held out his hands], and if ever thou art in a trap, I may pay the debt which I owe to thee, to Bagheera, and to Baloo, here. Good hunting to ye all, my masters.”

“Well said,” growled Baloo, for Mowgli had returned thanks very prettily. The python dropped his head lightly for a minute on Mowgli’s shoulder. “A brave heart and a courteous tongue,” said he. “They shall carry thee far through the jungle, Manling. But now go hence quickly with thy friends. Go and sleep, for the moon sets, and what follows it is not well that thou shouldst see.”

…

“True; it is true,” said Mowgli, sorrowfully. “I am an evil man-cub, and my stomach is sad in me.”

“Mf! What says the Law of the Jungle, Baloo?”

Baloo did not wish to bring Mowgli into any more trouble, but he could not tamper with the Law, so he mumbled, “Sorrow never stays punishment. But remember, Bagheera, he is very little.”

“I will remember; but he has done mischief; and blows must be dealt now. Mowgli, hast thou anything to say?”

“Nothing. I did wrong. Baloo and thou art wounded. It is just.”

Bagheera gave him half a dozen love-taps; from a panther’s point of view they would hardly have waked one of his own cubs, but for a seven year-old boy they amounted to as severe a beating as you could wish to avoid. When it was all over Mowgli sneezed, and picked himself up without a word.

“Now,” said Bagheera, “jump on my back, Little Brother, and we will go home.”

One of the beauties of Jungle Law is that punishment settles all scores. There is no nagging afterward.

-Rudyard Kipling, The First Jungle Book, “Kaa’s Hunting”

From: Edwards, Alan (SCHEV)

Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 12:38 PM

To: Hix, Dan (SCHEV); ExecStaff (SCHEV)

Subject: RE: College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one. – The Washington Post

Jeff Selingo at WaPo agrees with Tod; it’s colleges’ fault if/that higher ed is seen as a commodity:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/06/16/higher-ed-as-a-commodity-colleges-have-only-themselves-to-blame/?wpisrc=nl_highered&wpmm=1

—–Original Message—–

From: Massa, Tod (SCHEV)

Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 9:56 AM

To: Hix, Dan (SCHEV); ExecStaff (SCHEV)

Subject: RE: College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one. – The Washington Post

Perhaps if colleges stopped advertising as if it were a commodity things might change. Colleges, and their associations, make the comparison of student debt of graduates to a new car and they have been doing this for years before graduate wage reports were done.  Also, many institutions have used graduate outcomes as selling points for decades, to blame it on governors and legislators is just a bit misleading.

On the AAU website is a link for “Economic Impacts AAU Universities.” I guess it is appropriate to talk about the economic impacts of institutions broadly at the macro level, but not specifically about students on the micro level? I disagree.

Great idealism combined with mixed-messaging is why American higher ed is in trouble. It is not the result of measurement.

Tod R. Massa

Director, Policy Research and Data Warehousing

State Council of Higher Education for Virginia

“Someone Cares for Higher Education in Virginia”

________________________________________

From: Hix, Dan (SCHEV)

Sent: Tuesday, June 09, 2015 9:14 AM

To: ExecStaff (SCHEV)

Subject: College is not a commodity. Stop treating it like one. – The Washington Post

FYI…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/09/college-is-not-a-commodity-stop-treating-it-like-one/?hpid=z11

When I first encountered the term “ablist” I was taken aback. I didn’t like it and felt it was an effort to intentionally create difference and dischord.

I was wrong.

Spending the last year helping my wife navigate life with a variety of mobility devices I continue to be amazed how inaccessible certain places are.

Such as nursing homes.

Just for reference, or as a pro-tip, if you are going to have a kick-off meeting to plan a patient’s rehab, and you  have invited the patient, and you KNOW the patient is is non-ambulatory (after all you have her file in front of you) it seems common sense that the conference room be accessible.

You know:

A clear space at the table for a wheelchair.

A 36″ wide (or greater) pathway to that space.

It seems a no-brainer to me…especially when you have dozens of such patients.

Of course, making the patient rooms easily accessible might be a greater priority. But for goshsakes just do at least one of these things!

At least this place is not the warehouse of death I was afraid it might be. Closer to a fulfillment center, I think.

A friend took great offense at yesterday’s Dilbert strip.

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-05-11

The idea that someone would turn down a job paying $34,000/year was offensive in that it was “a lot of money.” Of course, the amount of money considered to be “a lot” varies greatly where you live. In the San Francisco Bay area, $34,000/year might not be enough to afford housing. In Joplin, MO it may be enough to live quite comfortably.

In the strip, the job applicant complains he would have to live under a bridge for that salary because he has $200,000 in student loans. Here’s the problem.

I don’t know how much Adams knows about student loans. Maybe he has bought into the hype based on extremes that are reported. Maybe he just doesn’t care because, after all, this is a daily comic strip. But, let’s talk about it anyway because, after all, student debt posts get the most clicks.

Do students actually graduate with this much debt?

Undergraduates? Very, very few. I haven’t seen any quite that high so far. The highest I have seen is about $171,000. Nationwide I am sure there are some, and if so, the debt likely includes private loans.

Graduate students, with degrees or not, rack up this much debt. MDs do on a regular basis.

Should we be concerned or feel bad for this DIlbert character? Certainly not if he is a conscienceless sociopath writing for the New York Times in which case living under a bridge and foraging for food is better than he deserves. All the news fit to print and all the op-eds to line a bird cage. The fact is that if these are all federal loans he probably qualifies for some kind of income-based repayment his payments could be well under $200/month. If these are all private loans, his situation is not good as his payments might well exceed $2000/month.

Life is rough and one really needs to think long and hard about signing on the bottom line. Are the things you have been promised? Or more appropriately, the examples of students that went before you and were successful, just how much like them are you?

For the record, $34k out of college is not bad. It is about the median in unemployment insurance covered jobs for recent college graduates in Virginia. Of course, that means half of graduates earn less than that. This bears repeating since I don’t think a lot of people understand: Half of college graduates earn less than the median wage for college graduates. In fact, half of those graduates earn MUCH less.

Much less.

A college degree is a great investment for a lot of people. But it is not a guarantee of a high-paying job, it is also still up to the individual and a fair amount of luck.

Advice is available though:

We are making progress in the house. All the repairs, reconstruction, and remodeling are done that were necessitated by the failure of the water lines. We’ve gone a bit further, including making the upstairs bathrooms more accessible. Soon we start the project of making the first-floor bathroom accessible.  This has the potential of spiraling out of control. We have at least learned from replumbing the upstairs bathrooms that additional water lines come into play that will have to be moved in order to install a pocket door, and probably even just to widen door to 36 inches. We’ll see what happens. But we can’t/won’t start that project until everything is in place, including a stair lift, to move back upstairs and there are a few things that have to happen first, such as carpeting the stairway. Do things in the wrong order and costs and headaches increase dramatically.

The paragraph above was written some weeks ago. I just was never able to find the time, or voice, to work further on this. Time is precious and it is increasingly difficult take a few minutes to do things that don’t fall into the categories of: for her, work, required, and urgent. Probably it is just as well as I have little to say of real value.

The stair lift we hope will arrive to be installed this week. The timing is close as her knee replacement is a week from today, although she will spend at least a few days in the hospital, and perhaps weeks in a rehab center or nursing facility. Her body is still very week, but she has made incredible efforts to be more active and deal with the pain of walking. The project to make the downstairs bathroom accessible has taken on new dimensions as we have decided on a new approach and offering a different closet as the needed sacrifice. There are a lot of reasons to like this new design. I think.

Gildor: “That Gandalf should be late, does not bode well. But it is said: “Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.” The choice is yours: to go or wait.”

Frodo: “And it is also said, ‘Go not to the elves for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.'”—The Fellowship of the Ring, ” Three is Company“

I offer free advice to leaders, and those purporting to be, in (or of) higher education.

1) The legislative remedy you receive will most likely not be the one you requested. The result’s semblance to the request is strongly related to the number of people involved. Unfortunately, the direction of the correlation varies based on a multitude of factors. For example, a bill to give greater autonomy is all too likely to end up with greater intrusion than you imagine and much less autonomy than desired.

2) In a similar vein, be careful in your data requests. Such requests to public agencies are often subject to “Sunshine” or Freedom of Information laws, or more importantly, the data provider may wish to treat all institutions fairly and publish the data for everyone. This may not be your intent. It also may not be in your best interests, especially if the data are contrary to your expectations.

3) Unless you are an undergraduate working at three o’clock in the morning to write a research paper at the last moment for an eight a.m. class, research does not consist of running queries to generate cherry-picked data points that support your opinion of a proposal you haven’t actually read. In any event, you should have left that behavior in middle school.

4) Despite their imperfections, movies like Heavy Metal, Hooper, and Speed Racer provide excellent aural and video wallpaper for complex analytics and probably add more value than a weekly cabinet meeting.

5) If you haven’t read enough William Gibson, you probably have no idea how data reveals who you are and what you have done, even when you think the data are not about you.

6) The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act is not the authorizing law for institutional privacy.

7) Every time one of your own suggests that some institutions might intentionally underperform on one measure rather than improve on its companion measure, sad laughter rings out and is muffled in the cubicle farm as another check-mark is made.

8) Any sentence beginning, “You might consider…” is either a direct hint or plot element to allow the (alert) hero to escape in the final scene. It is almost never  just “advice.”

9) If you were offended by the comparison I made here, congratulations on your ability to read for comprehension.

10) If you are wondering how much of this is meant as honest advice instead of snarky sarcasm, I’m sorry that I can’t help you more.

Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he put out on the air. “Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down the gag, the snap ending.”

“Snap ending.” Mildred nodded.

“Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as ten- or twelve- line dictionary resume. I exaggerate of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag), whose sole knowledge, as I say, was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at last you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. ([Or a show called Sons of Anarchy.] Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there’s your intellectual for the past five centuries or more.”

Mildred arose and began to move the room, picking things up and putting them down. Beatty  ignored her and continued:

“Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, Uh! Bang! Smack Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!

…

“School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fixing nuts and bolts?”

Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451

I’m not sure what else there is to say. The edtech dream is real, it’s coming, but it is not new. Only the specifics are new, some of which are pretty amazing, but there is risk. We are still in the nursery of edtech, and there are lions in the veldt. And there are tygers. Here.

But the Harlequin was told to repent, and he did. But three minutes were lost.

Friend and colleague Carlo Salerno (@edanalyst) calls for eliminating FAFSA instead of simplifying it. I agree. Let’s do that. Let’s rely solely on the tax return for calculating the Estimated Family Contribution (EFC), Pell grant eligibility, and student loan eligibility. I see no reason for one agency to create and manage a complex form/endeavor with a black box calculation for EFC that relies on data that another agency collects, calculates, holds, and enforces. It is would be more efficient to do things this way, save money, and eliminate  the need for some applications to be verified.

It also eliminates families sending detailed financial information to colleges before they can be told their price.

I have a dog in this fight. I have build a fair amount of reporting based on family income, including graduation rates. For example, we have published for two years now, graduation rates of students from families with incomes of $150,000 and above that pretty much demonstrate that the Pell Institute report that stimulated this blog post by Matt Chingos and Susan Dynarski was wrong on the face of it as the data could only be assumed to be irrelevant if Va was so unrepresentative. In fact, Virginia has just about the highest four-graduation rates of public institutions in the country.

I would be willing to give up access to these income data in pursuit of greater efficiency and less burden.

How would we calculate Pell eligibility?

Perhaps like this:

Pell Value – Total tuition and Fees, plus cost of text books, for most expensive public community college in nation.

0 to 200% of Federal Poverty Level – 100% (No income cut-offs, based on family size, 100% Pell for each family member in college).

EFC = 5% of family income above 150% of poverty level divided by number of family members in college.

201% to 400% of Federal Poverty Level – 50% of Pell for each family member enrolled in college, eligible for 100% of remaining need to covered by subsidized loans covered by PAYE.

EFC = 10% of family income above 150% of poverty level divided by number of family members in college.