The Curmudgeon Speaks

I am starting to worry that the government is incapable of addressing long-term problems. Political will is both heavily polarized and dominated by the problem of the week. Issues that are more abstract and that will emerge gradually just don’t energize most citizens and hence offer little leverage for politicians taking one position or another. I would hope our politicians would act on principle, but most seem more followers of public opinion than leaders.

Climate change and the reaction of politicians makes a great example of this type of problem. The United Nations just released a study showing that while climate change is too often regarded as a “future problem” we are now within a 20-year window to prevent major impact. Politicians may have positions on this issue, but understanding what such positions might require that voters have deep insight into individual candidates. Consider the ads that appear in this election season. So many are negative and I bet the 30-second spots informing the choices you and I must make makes mention of the issue of climate change. Will this candidate raise your taxes? Does this candidate embody the “state name” values that you supposedly endorse? Will this candidate encourage economic growth by removing government protections?

Trump’s promotion of coal industry jobs, questioning established science, and attacking multi-nation organizations such as the U.N. shows how easy it is to attack long-term goals. It is like the famous “marshmallow” test – it is easy to be tempted by an immediate benefit that commitment to a long-term advantage. If only the outcome of many important issues were simply the number of marshmallows we could consume.

Educators and parents take notice. I think you are our only hope. Where else will the leadership promoting principles and long-term values come from. It appears we cannot count on politicians or commercial interests to look beyond the next election or the next quarterly report.

I admit to being a stubborn idealist. Some of us have to do it. My latest idealistic commitment is to the Brave browser and the micropayment system it encourages users to employ.

First, you don’t have to buy in (literally) to the micropayment system to use the Brave browser. I will explain a little about this opportunity after a few introductory comments about the browser.

It makes sense to me that believing you use the Internet for free is naive. Of course, you must pay for access to the Internet. This is not what I am describing here, but because of the end of net neutrality, it is another topic worth thinking carefully about. Most use of the Internet and the companies that host content (mostly written by users) is supported by ads and by the collection of personal information which can be used to target ads. Some of this targeting makes sense. If I have to view ads, I want to view ads relevant to my interests and needs. However, one of the things the election of 2016 taught us was that this same personal information offering you ads relevant to things you may be interested in purchasing can also be used to manipulate opinions regarding political candidates.

Some are aware of such issues and have responded by searching for ways to anonymize their Internet activity and block the collection of ads and personal information. Brave will do this for you.

However, when you think about this ad blocking is really not fair to those supporting themselves as content producers by posting ads along with their content. You probably know that most newspapers and magazines do the same thing and as a consequence your cost to purchase these resources is far lower than it would be without the ads. The “free” content takes this same principle to an extreme requiring nothing to view content and attempting to sustain the content producers with ads. By blocking ads, you circumvent the intentions of the producers offering the content. Most don’t think twice about doing so mostly because they are unaware of the consequences, but the behavior is pretty much unethical. If an ad exists, the provider assumes you will see it and perhaps even click on it. This is the implied contract in the arrangement.

Brave will block ads, but encourages users of the browser to make a contribution that will be distributed across the owners of the content you use based on the frequency of your use. This system is presently a little complicated to set up. You must create a cryptocurrency account and transfer money into this account for Brave to access. I figured it out, but I hope Brave can make the process simpler. Folks with a little tech experience should have no problem working their way through the requirements.

While I am idealist, there is a limit to how far I will pursue my commitment to supporting content producers. I terminated my Apple music account and I intend to use this money to support the Brave strategy. I decided it was silly to pay $10 a month when I also pay for two other music subscriptions and I pay Apple $25 a year to hold my 7000 song music collection. So, my financial liability is limited, but if everyone did this ….

Educators and most parents caution students that they must treat the online record they create as open to the public. This is probably not entirely accurate, but these young people are told to be concerned about what future employers might think of the content they post.

We all probably need to heed this guidance. When I was still employed as a faculty member, we were told that the email we sent through the University email system was considered available should this content be requested. This was not a matter of access should there be some legal issue, but a matter of the public record. It would not be up to any one of us to provide this content should it be requested, but the university would have to provide this content. I assume the cost of generating this content would be born by the party making the request.

I often think current politicians do not appreciate this reality. Despite constant charges of fake news, news agencies can produce video/audio of statements politicians made at two different times to demonstrate how they have flip-flopped or outright lied. With President Trump, this time delay may be a matter of just a couple of days. I believe the audio/video has a much larger impact than the words a journalist might offer to describe the same inconsistency.

The present dispute regarding the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh offers a great example of this type of inconsistency. There is an issue of whether the FBI can be requested to make an inquiry into the accusations made against Judge Kavanaugh. Two prominent Republicans, Grassley and Hatch, play important roles on the judiciary committee. Mr. Grassley chairs the committee. Both Senators served on the same committee when a similar accusation was brought against now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. At that time, both Grassley and Hatch supported in glowing terms the role the FBI served in collecting information on that dispute. Today, these same two individuals have spoken out to say an FBI investigation is not only not needed, but that it cannot be conducted. The news media could describe this inconsistency in words, but it is far more damning to hear the words spoken to praise the role of the FBI in one situation and to say such an investigation is not needed or possible in another. We use the word hypocrisy far too frequently in the past few months, but I don’t know what else to call what I and you can witness for yourself.

One of the issues that has always seemed strange to me about state institutions of higher education is just how much power the politicians of the state have over the “state’s” institutions given the limited funding the states tend to provide to keep these institutions functioning. This is vastly different from the state and local funding that dominates K12 funding. Unlike K12, those who enroll in higher education pay for the education they receive. The Institutions themselves are also responsible for raising money from other sources e.g., research grants, contributions from interested parties.

For example, why does the state have anything to say about tuition? Institutions of higher education must function within a higher education environment, receive limited funding from their state, and yet cannot set tuition as they see fit. They obviously have to deal with the consequences of overcharging if such a decision would price them out of the range of potential students.

I happened across this article from Inside Higher Education which focuses on higher education in North Dakota. This is the system I worked in for 39 years. Higher education in North Dakota gets little national attention so I pay attention when an article is featured at this level. The article uses the situation in North Dakota to comment on “public governance” of state institutions.

For example, the situation in North Dakota involves:

Making any major changes to the governance structure would require a constitutional amendment. The task force would approve a recommendation, and the state Legislature would have to agree to put it on the ballot. Voters would then decide whether to change the Constitution. A majority of voters would have to approve of the change.

This situation creates a very strange environment in which local state legislators tend to vote based on local interests (11 institutions in a state with a very small population) rather than on what would allow the development of the best institutions given what the state is willing to spend. The many institutions have a tendency to be perceived as a way to support the local economy rather than a collective asset that is best for the state as a whole. While I agree that bigger is not always better, the small size of all of the institutions and the limited state funding create serious problems of what I would describe as critical mass. At some level of size and state funding, it is impossible to compete at a national level.

Taking the grandkids to the donut shop has become a weekend tradition and like all good things now it is gone. We showed up at Danbury Cares this morning like so many other weekend mornings and the shop was gone. No more donuts.

I owe these folks some kind of thank you. This was not an ordinary donut shop, this was special. The owners make these great donuts as a way to donate to the small town of Danbury. They even made the effort to move their shop from its original location and  created a nice business that most tourists probably did not realize was all a charity.

I first wrote about Danbury Cares in 2015 and that post tells the story of the retired couple responsible for the venture. Today we found a short post in the local paper noting the end of the venture. There was not as much information as I would have wanted, but these folks probably wanted it this way.

Goodbye Danbury Cares and thanks for the goodies. I happened to take a picture of some of the donuts from what turned out to be our last visit. Not shown are the key lime donuts which were taken during the first choice round we have had to enforce to give everyone a fair chance.

I am a proud emeritus professor of the University of North Dakota. I spent 39 years on that campus and more than 40 years of service if you count my online courses since retiring. I spent a good portion of this time as the chair of one of the larger departments on campus and perhaps because of this role and because I played a role in multiple programs on campus, I continue to follow campus and state politics.

I see today that UND is down 500 students in Fall enrollment. The institution is down nearly 2000 students since its max size in 2012. Higher ed enrollments are down nationwide, but declines at UND are large as a percentage of total (now about 13,500) and problematic because small, state institutions struggle to reach the critical mass in the first place. Many institutions label themselves universities. I am not certain what is required to satisfy this label, but I am would think in terms of institutions that are large enough and with sufficient funds to sustain multiple Ph.D. and professional programs (law, medicine, etc.). Smaller institutions certainly meet these requirements, but they have revenue sources that UND does not have.

I believe critical mass must be achieved to survive. You need sufficient resources to prevent programs involved from cannibalizing each other. You need sufficient resources to attract competitive students and faculty. Quality attracts quality. Quality attracts external funding from sources that trusts the institution can deliver on the promises individual faculty members make in applying for competitive grants. You need multiple programs of quality to allow for the cross-fertilization so necessary for creativity and innovation. If you are unwilling or unable to meet these standards, a long slide into mediocrity will occur. I have begun to think of it via a business example. I call it the Sears effect. You begin by cutting back on staff. You try to stock less merchandise. My local store even seemed to reduce the lighting. Each compromise with quality reduced the attractiveness of the experience to customers further reducing revenue. You don’t compete by backing by trying to be cheap.

Financial conditions in North Dakota have not been good. Revenue from oil is down drastically, although now it may be recovering a bit. Farm commodity prices have been low and with the tariff, situation may be going lower. Canadian business has been challenged by an unfavorable currency conversion and no by the trade war with Canada.

North Dakota is a very Republican state and as such has always avoiding collecting funds from citizens. The oil boom allowed the case to be made for tax reductions and the move toward lower taxes were not reversed when oil revenue took a drastic dip. Higher education took a tremendous hit. Multiple years of real money allocations roughly 10% a year.

So, you have a decline in state support. You have a substantial decline in tuition revenue. You have a small size, state institution trying to compete. The combination has been significant. You reduce faculty numbers. You hire non-tenure track folks. You try alternative measures such as increased marketing and prioritization of programs. You increase the proportion of administrators to working faculty members (I admit this is counter-intuitive and I would be hard pressed to explain how this would help.). You expect faculty members to generate more external funds assuming they will be able somehow to compete with all of the other institutions who have the same idea.

The slide has begun. Actually, it has probably been underway for several years.

I agree this is a very pessimistic analysis. Unfortunately, I see it as honest. I am not certain what I see as a reasonable response from the U. With the exception of the thing with increasing administrators, it seems to be making the moves it can to slow the slide. My real concern for North Dakota institutions is that it will reach the point at which the enrollment of students from Minnesota changes (a very large portion of UND students are from Minnesota). A change in the way these students and their tuition dollars prop up the larger ND institutions would push the institutions over the cliff.

This is the point at which the state needs to step up. The U needs the funding that has been cut by the state and probably a little more. The other variables I can identify are unlikely to improve or even stabilize without this commitment. How will the state do this? This is really for the politicians to decide, but the cutting tax thing must be reversed. Consolidating the number of campuses may not save much money, but it would be a way to at least address the decline in numbers. I describe the present situation as having the number of institutions within a state with a population the size of Omaha.

People like to talk about the importance of talking and walking particularly when it comes to the lack of coordination between the two. Educators I read online seem fascinated by this expression. Why not say something more direct – your actions need to support your statement of values.

I see again today that Melania Trump has given another speech expressing her concern for inappropriate online behavior

I find this disturbing and not because I don’t think cyberbullying is an important issue. There is just something really wrong with speaking out against cyberbullying and ignoring the online description of a woman as a dog. This is pretty much what one might use as a classic example of cyberbullying. Of course, this is but one example among many. What kind of disconnect from reality does one have to experience to not understand how others would react to this inconsistency? If you feel a need to take on a cause in public at least select something that your behavior indicates you have a serious commitment.