THE JOYS OF PROCTORING AN EXAM. University Diaries posts (regularly? reluctantly?) on this. Today was the first of a predicted string of warm days to be succeeded by a string of cold days, thus the classroom was a bit on the stuffy side, summer garb for the students notwithstanding (and it certainly does not run to black.) To add some excitement, the noon class slot was the one the master computer decided to shut off all the digital clocks to make the transition to Daylight Saving Time. You'd think that we'd be able to make the transition more expeditiously today than we did in the Age of Steam, with the sequence of telegraph clicks counting down to noon. But nooooo ... as if the students don't have enough to be anxious about, there's a blank clock and my time update every 10 minutes or so.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. Blogs for Industry has more thoughts on Max Boot's misplaced analogies between industry and the academy.

Contrary to the rantings of pundits and sports fans, mistakes are a normal part of life, and firing those who make mistakes is only rational if the benefit of replacing a fallible worker with another fallible worker (As Stephen Colbert pointed out on the Daily Show last night - now that we are without a pope, we don't have anyone who is infallible until they elect a new one) outweighs the loss of institutional memory and the cost of replacement and training. Moreover, loyalty to employees is seen as a benefit that makes some jobs more attractive than others - in the case of academia, the prospect of tenure is a benefit that weighs against the opportunity costs of years of training and odds against getting to tenure.

Not only that, but the longer the odds against tenure, the more expensive the research superstars will become. (I'm working from memory of a 1989 article in Journal of Political Economy: would that my existence were cushy enough to put that definitive post together.) Is it really the case that the reformers of the university would have NBA-style free agency with similarly short careers for star academicians?

THANK GOD FOR MY ENEMIES. Michael Berube links to this essay by this guy who was displeased with this, and numerous curious readers who explore the essayist's site have been by (albeit without leaving suggestions or trackbacks ...) in the last few days. Agree or disagree, come back again.

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN. I have been spared both Connecticut and Tennessee in the women's final. Baylor came from way back to avenge an earlier loss to Louisiana State in the opener; Michigan State came from even further back with less time to excuse Tennessee in the nightcap. A Baptist college plays a Big Ten team: that's my idea of a Good Problem picking a favorite for Tuesday night. (Both teams rank quite high for hotness, as did Tennessee.)

MORE MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT TENURE. Stephen at Vodka Pundit has yet to make up his mind.

I'm still agnostic on the issue. Now that we have 24/7 news and a growing blogosphere to help keep it honest, I worry less and less about entrenched institutions. Universities can keep tenure if they so choose - but they can no longer avoid close public scrutiny and loud public derision.

Max Boot is less reserved.

The rigid ideological intolerance of American universities makes a mockery of tenure's primary justification: It is supposed to allow scholars to pursue their work without outside pressure. Professors like Churchill are all too happy to take advantage of this freedom to mock off-campus pieties. But few dare to disagree with the received wisdom of the faculty club, where the political spectrum runs all the way from left to far left.

That's a common, yet erroneous, conflation. John Silber, in Straight Shooting, provides a history lesson at p. 145.

The transformation of tenure into near sinecure was not the original intention of the [American Association of University Professors] but, rather, the inadvertent result of a number of maladroit efforts to defend and protect academic freedom. The history of the transformation of academic tenure into near-sinecure is ... worthy of study by our best historians ... a sketch must suffice. At a time when the public was hostile to and intolerant of evolutionists, secularists, economists, psychoanalysts, sociologists, or indeed of any professor whose views differed from local public opinion, the [Association] perhaps decided that the successful defense of all members of the academic community from capricious dismissal was impossible.

Plus ca change. (There's an entirely different story about the consequences of not protecting some members on biases in research and temptations to become a Big Red Subway university.) Tenure is neither necessary nor sufficient for academic freedom. As long as people continue conflate the two things, I shall continue to point out the conflation. Back to Mr Boot.

This helps to explain some of the dysfunctions that mar big-time universities, such as the overemphasis on publishing unintelligible articles and the under-emphasis on teaching undergraduates.

Oh, that explains my problem. I do research on real world problems and I teach undergraduates. Such a lousy existence I lead at this bowl-winning mid-major ...

Armies of junior faculty and graduate-student drudges have been enlisted to assume the bulk of the teaching load because most of the tenured grandees think that instructing budding stockbrokers and middle managers is beneath them.

So below my dignity that I've been named a remorseless Academic Ninja, presumably for expecting those stockbrokers and middle managers to be able to think clearly. Might be a few of the C students who'd rather have one of those drudges they could mau-mau into handing out inflated grades. Sorry. That dog won't hunt.

Abolish tenure. Subject professors to the discipline of the marketplace like almost everyone else. But of course this is an idea too radical to be seriously entertained on campus.

Bad analogy. Silber, pp. 140-41:

We also know that in every business minor and major failings are tolerated at all levels, from executives to janitors. Except in times of severe financial strain, corporations and family businesses retain their employees -- particularly high-placed employees -- by overlooking or resigning themselves to their various shortcomings. ... When a man [c.q.] is fired, we can assume either that he had been with the firm a short time, that he had been detected in flagrant wrongdoing, or that his firing will be seen as irresponsible or unjust. [Superintendent's note: don't bring that right-sizing stuff around here, as I have plenty of evidence that such companies have hived off valuable institutional memory.] Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is, in part, an indictment of the callow inheritor of a family business who met none of the obligations his father owed to older employees. ...

So much for the myth that in business "a man like Professor X would be fired." ...

Properly understood, tenure is a relevant aspect of all human relationships -- an expression of the human need for order and certainty, and a condition of the fulfillment of responsibilities reasonably expected, not only of institutions, but of individuals.

That's the reasoned argument. I've also found a good Fisking of Mr Boot's column at Blogs For Industry, a site making a case to become Company Mail.

NO OVERPRODUCTION HERE. Alas, no Malthusian cycles of demand outstripping production, either. Market Power provides a link to an annual Survey of the Labor Market for New Ph.D.s in Economics by the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Arkansas. It's a survey, with the usual low response rate for such things, but responding institutions in the 2005-2006 survey (as .pdf) reported that 91.7 % of their Ph.Ds found employment, with about two-thirds of them landing academic jobs. About three-fourths of the academic departments will stop the tenure clock for new mothers; half the departments have a similar policy for adoptions.

RESPECT THE BOX. Another expression that aggravates me no end is "think outside the box." Perhaps that box is there for a reason. I've turned up yet more reflections on the Terri Schiavo litigation that have economic content, both of which address the evolutionary stability of social institutions.

Start with Ira Chernus taking issue with the "culture of life" argument.

For the right-wingers, though, the idea that “anything is possible” is terrifying. Their “culture of life” is really a culture of fear. They believe that human nature is basically selfish, competitive, and aggressive, If anything is possible, who can predict what crime or evil will happen next? How can anyone feel safe? The world would be spinning out of control. We need fixed rules that come from unquestionable authority. That’s the only way to keep us all from running amok.

Talk about setting up a straw man. Why not start with some more sensible observations Professor Chernus makes later in his column?

We believe that a nation built on freedom has to free the mind to discover moral values for itself. That means moral values will indeed be different at different times and in different places. People will disagree. There will be conflicts. That is unavoidable.

So why not make a virtue out of necessity? Why not embrace the conflict as a sign of a healthy, creative diversity in society? We trust that people who have their basic human needs met can learn to get along reasonably. The problem is not human nature. It’s a society with skewed priorities that denies so many people their basic needs.

Let's put it slightly differently. There is no such thing as human nature. Thus, people do in fact do things differently. But let us also consider this. An analysis of human behavior will not go far wrong starting from the premise that people act in what they perceive to be their best interests. Conflict, then, is a conflict between those perceptions, often heightened by the scarcity of resources, or of rewards. And rules that emerge in such a way as to channel that self interest constructively are more likely to be evolutionarily stable. Put another way, perhaps in 4,000 years of wrestling with some of these cultural problems, we're here because we've gotten more things right than wrong, and although values may be different, there might be some values that have greater survival value. Thus, it cannot be the case that "anything is possible." Sorry. In the middle of a lengthy Asymmetrical Information post comes this caution:

But as a matter of principle, it is probably a bad idea to let someone go mucking around with social arrangements, such as the way we treat unwed parenthood, if their idea about that institution is that "it just growed". You don't have to be a rock-ribbed conservative to recognise that there is something of an evolutionary process in society: institutional features are not necessarily the best possible arrangement, but they have been selected for a certain amount of fitness.

And there's a reference to Chesterton, with a gate serving as a metaphor for an established rule:

The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable. It is extremely probable that we have overlooked some whole aspect of the question, if something set up by human beings like ourselves seems to be entirely meaningless and mysterious. There are reformers who get over this difficulty by assuming that all their fathers were fools; but if that be so, we can only say that folly appears to be a hereditary disease. But the truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served. But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has somehow sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion.

Respect the box.

After that, Thom Hartmann's constructivist argument about the incidence of eating disorders is anti-climactic.

Terry Schiavo gives us, at the end of her life, a gift - a chance to use her case to share with other young girls and women the outcome of anorexia and bulimia. In a larger and more important context, it provides us with an opportunity to open a culture-wide discussion of the psychological and - ultimately - physical dangers of exposure to personal-image-based advertising and marketing, as well as the dangers of simply "treating" this largely advertising-driven problem with SSRI drugs, which can also devastate young people's lives.

Mr Hartmann is retired from the advertising business; certainly he has to understand that there are limits to what advertising can do. I doubt that the most persuasive advertising, with the most appealing of pitch men and pitch women, would induce kids to beg their parents for more broccoli. Look for the evolutionary stability in attractiveness, or in the so-called junk foods.

WHY I STAY ON THIS MESSAGE.

"If you set the bar high, people will rise to the occasion," notes Katie at A Constrained Vision, with a link to Today's Big Surprise, Not: Public High School Grads Unprepared for College, Work.

The harshest assessment of recent graduates' preparation came from college instructors. Only 18 percent of professors polled felt students came to college "extremely" or "very well prepared," while a quarter reported students are "not too well prepared" or "not well prepared at all."

That leaves 57% of the sample otherwise classified, which means I still have a lot of work to do pointing out the "access" fiction and the "retention" hustle.

Instructors estimated half of all students who arrive at their schools are inadequately prepared for college-level math and college-level writing. In addition, large percentages of instructors felt the public high schools are failing to adequately develop students' abilities to do such things as "read and comprehend complex materials" (70 percent), "think analytically" (66 percent), and "do research" (59 percent).

Ayup. But it calls for an administrator with some stones to announce, "Upward Bound University will hereafter not teach any high school courses under the rubric of 'remediation,' or to foster 'access.'" To do so would be to risk an immediate outcry from the not insubstantial membership of the faculty and support staff earning a modest living by teaching such courses or by shuffling paper in the Diversity Boondoggle, let alone from the bursar who is counting on the churn to make the interest payments on the administration's monuments.

Such intestinal fortitude, however, is likely to be appreciated by the students.

Large percentages of students, employers, and college instructors alike agreed students need more challenging course work in high school, translating into widespread support for raising standards. Eighty-two percent of college students, and 80 percent of working graduates, reported they would have worked harder in high school had their schools demanded more of them.

Per corollary to Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the available time) the high schoolers are likely to find the time to make the extra effort should they properly recognize the stakes. Katie notes of the high schools (this would be true of not a few professors as well),

They are often content not only to ask the minimum of students but also to ask it half-heartedly, passing students through classes when they don't deserve it. When students, professors, and employers alike are calling for higher expectations, it's time for a change.

Under the existing dispensation, the kids who have strong self-motivation, or noodgy (is there an adjectival form of noodge?) parents are the ones more likely to prosper, which ought to put some of Centerfield's reflections (via Dean's World) on social mobility in perspective.

I personally am a case of meritocratic advancement. I grew up in a working class family. I'll tell you straight out that my late father, who I loved, was not particularly bright or hard-working. He was a high school dropout who did not take advantage of the GI Bill after WWII. I am convinced my intellectual abilities come from my mother, who was a housewife. Because of the American system, I was able to go to MIT, marry a similarly educated working woman, and live a fairly affluent lifestyle.
I believe in meritocracy, but I also think that over generations, meritocracy could calcify into a class system. I think we should keep this in mind when we consider proposals to abolish the inheritance tax, privatize schools, and other proposals which might be justifiable on narrow policy grounds, but could contribute to an overall climate which limits social mobility.

Research project: to what extent has the recent evidence (such as it is) on social stratification, or intergenerational heritability of status, coincided with the Softening of the common schools?

SECOND SECTION: Here we go again with the Softening, yet again of those red marking pens.

"It's not an argument we want to have at this point because what we need is the parents' understanding," [Connecticut elementary school principal Gail] Karwoski said. "The color of the message should not be the issue."
In many other schools, it's black and white when it comes to red. The color has become so symbolic of negativity that some principals and teachers will not touch it.

What rot.

The disillusionment with red is part of broader shift in grading, said Vanessa Powell, a fifth-grade teacher at Snowshoe Elementary School in Wasilla, Alaska.
"It's taken a turn from 'Here's what you need to improve on' to 'Here's what you've done right,'" Powell said. "It's not that we're not pointing out mistakes, it's just that the method in which it's delivered is more positive."

What rot. Do you feel better because I changed the color?

That is a sound approach, said Leatrice Eiseman, a color specialist with a background in psychology who has written several books on the ties between colors and communication.
"The human eye is notoriously fickle and is always searching for something new to look at it," she said. "If you use a color that has long been used in a traditional way, you can lose people's attention, especially if they have a history of a lot of red marks on their papers."

You think the problem might be with a failure to pay attention, giving rise to that history?

In Charles County, Md., reading and writing specialist Janet Jones helps other teachers lead their lessons. The students at Berry Elementary School in Waldorf, Md., use colored pencils to edit each other's papers. By the time teachers get to grading, Jones said, the color they use isn't that important.
"I don't think changing to purple or green will make a huge difference if the teaching
doesn't go along with it," Jones said. "If you're just looking at avoiding the color red, the students might not be as frightened, but they won't be better writers."

At last, somebody gets to the heart of the matter.

RUNNING EXTRA. Education Wonk also sees what counts.

I can understand that parents are concerned about the self-esteem of their kids. We all want students to have a positive outlook when it comes to school. But perhaps in this case the parents' concern is misplaced. Shouldn't they be more concerned about the poor performance of their child rather than wasting their energies on such nonsense as criticizing some teacher's choice of ink color?

Hear! Hear!

REQUIEM FOR A LIBERATOR. The passing of Pope John Paul II got me thinking about one of the anthems at President Eisenhower's funeral. (We're talking about two different kinds of liberators, thus the connection.) I was unable to find a setting of The Palms online, although I did find this sermon on the meaning of Palm Sunday that provides many of the words to that hymn, as well as an apt comment.

And yet, here is Jesus, at the very end of his life, with every human joy stripped away, going to the cross for the sake of the joy that was set before him.

Dear friends, in the midst of a world which gradually squeezes the future out of our lives, there is a God who plants joy before you! In fact, right now, in this very moment, there is divine joy set in the future of each and every person here. You may be so caught up in the pursuit of your own joys that you don't see it. You may be so overwhelmed by your losses that you're unable to lift your eyes high enough to perceive it.

In departing this life, the Pope preached this sermon without words. The Anchoress has an impressive post of the events leading to his departure, with occasional sermonettes. Jay at Accidental Verbosity has the secular tribute.

But, when he took on the role of Pope…

Communism.

Go. Read. Both. In Their Entirety.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editors offer a balanced assessment of his papacy, concluding with the Easter message.

The church and the world are poorer now that heaven has reclaimed its gift.

But those who mourn the pope's passing and fear for the future of the church should take heart in words he once wrote: "Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song."

This Pope has been an inspiration to people with Polish roots, whether Catholic or not. Jeff at Quid nomen illius? has a recollection.

I hope someone pauses to memorialize what the man meant to Polish Americans, including those of us who are great-grandchildren of the Polish diaspora.

I was seven years old when Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II. I don't remember the announcement, but I will never forget the reaction among the old ladies in our family: amazement, disbelief, and tearful, joyful phone calls in which those second-generation Americans, born to Polish immigrants and raised in Polish slums, proclaimed the event as nothing short of a miracle. One member of my family not known for showy religiosity began to keep a discreet photograph of John Paul II in his briefcase.

For those stories, look for articles reporting visits to St. Ladislaus in Hamtramck, Michigan, or Five Holy Martyrs in Chicago. I can think of no better venue for such a story, however, than St. Josaphat's in Milwaukee.

Dominus vobiscum.

RUNNING EXTRA: Faithful flock to local churches to mourn death.

On the south side, Father Bill Callahan welcomed grieving parishioners at the Basilica of St. Josaphat, which was built by Polish Americans. Some had come with a need to share their sense of loss of a great religious leader and fellow Pole.

Reporters also visit Milwaukee's St. John Cathedral and Gesu Church, an impressive gateway to the Marquette campus.

As church bells tolled at 4:30 p.m., young people flocked to church in jeans, hooded jackets and T-shirts to honor him.

Young Catholics have only known one pope, said Kyle Krombach, 20, and they looked to John Paul II as an example because the pope taught youth how to be good Catholics and good humans.

The flock has lost its shepherd, he said.

Marquette Warrior notes that the shape of the Roman Church to come remains open for discussion.

THE RETURN OF AN ANCIENT RITUAL. Long before people knew of brackets, let alone of filling them in, the College of Cardinals in conclave assembled to elect a Pope. I have heard but not found independent corroboration that the conclave served as a prototype for the Electoral College the Framers set up, albeit with a more transparent method of determining the size of the College. (Readers who can confirm or rebut this are invited to use the Suggestion Box.) One ritual the conclave will observe is the ceremonial burning of the ballots. Black smoke signifies an indecisive vote, white smoke means Habemus Papam. Sometimes, as in the 2000 Florida recounts, a smoke signal would be useful here. But the heat of that vote could have been worse.

SIXTY YEARS AGO. Sgt. Karlson sends home some impressions of German infrastructure, heading east out of Braubach toward Villmar.

As you know, things happened pretty fast after the Rhine crossing and the next two days we travelled fast and for some of the distance on one of the "Autobahns," super highways. They aren't bad -- no grade crossings, double lane, etc. -- better than Highway 41 between Milwaukee and Chicago only because 41 has quite a few grade crossings.

Photos from that stage of the campaign show the U.S. military using both the eastbound and westbound lanes as eastbound lanes, with trudging columns of German prisoners hiking westbound in the median strip.

After crossing France and Belgium on numerous roads of questionable quality, and some which couldn't even be called roads, the super highways were a great pleasure.

Off the Super Slab, the Herrenvolk still don't get it.

Germany had better roads and more of them than either France or Belgium, but even so they can't hold a candle to the roads in the U.S. Ours are wider, straighter, smoother and much better thru towns and cities. Europe doesn't have farm houses along the highways as we do, but the farmers live in numerous little settlements dotting the country-side and each of these little towns with crooked, narrow streets slow up travel a lot.

The Germans had other plans for internal improvements, including a three-meter-gauge super railroad, the Breitspurbahn. None of that was built.

On the other side of the world, the Marines are coming to grips with a piece of real estate called Okinawa. Mitch at Shot in the Dark has his own Sixty Years Ago going.

PLAYING THROUGH THE BIG TEN. North Carolina has now qualified for the finals of the Big Ten tournament, eliminating Wisconsin and Michigan State. Now comes Illinois, with the win over Louisville noted here, illuminated here, and live-blogged here.

DEALING WITH THE FOURTH ESTATE. The Northern Star published some information about University faculty and staff earning more than $100,000 per year, and a reporter is working on a followup story. Herewith her questions and my answers.

1. In 1998, there were 51 employees who made $100,000 or more. Now there are 80. What do you think of this change? From an economic perspective, is this an alarming change?

Start with some information in the article.

Of the 80 top-paid employees, 13 are professors, including accountancy, finance, mathematics and physics professors. The majority of the six-figure positions are reserved for administrators and college deans, according to the fiscal year 2004 working papers.

Isn't the accounting program well known for student success on the CPA exam, and didn't the department chairman recently leave? Mightn't finance professors have opportunities to make even larger salaries on LaSalle Street? Didn't several members of the Physics faculty participate in the discovery of the top quark?

The University has enjoyed some success in recent years in improving the reputation of its academic programs, and the visibility the football program has earned only helps people discover those programs. It ought not come as a surprise that some of the administrators and deans might have received outside offers, leading either to pay raises to keep them here, or to higher salaries to attract their replacements. Nothing alarming there.

On the other hand, slightly over half the students who enroll at Northern Illinois University graduate within six years. Several of the athletic programs fall short of the minimum academic performance the National Collegiate Athletic Association is seeking. I would be alarmed if the people responsible for these failures to perform adequately are among the most highly paid administrators.

Note also these paragraphs in the article.

Sandra Flood, president of the NIU Instructors Union, said the faculty has been shorted since administrators have very high salaries. Instructors make $32,000 on average, she said. The union, which has 200 members, has "absolutely" fought for salary increases for instructors. In 1992, Flood made $16,000 as a full-time instructor; now, $30,000 is the minimum starting salary.

"The numbers of administrators and support staff have ballooned over the past few years," Flood said. "The personnel dollars cannot keep up with the numbers, and the faculty have reduced in number and the work has increased."

The use of instructors -- faculty members who enjoy no opportunity to earn academic tenure and who are -- as the quote notes -- hired very cheaply and often treated as contingent labor is one dimension of what I refer to as Big Red Subway quality education. To the extent that resources are going for additional administrators rather than additional faculty (and we haven't even begun to talk about the lack of paper in the computer labs and on occasion the dry-erase markers in the so-called smart classrooms) I actively raise the alarm.

2. What factors in the economy may have produced this changed?

There are several factors. State government operates under the misconception that university faculty are overpaid and underworked. If that is the case, why are the graduate programs a great opportunity to meet people from all over the world? You'd think local students would be in on the gravy train. The administration operates under a further misconception that "productivity" equates to "dollars per student credit hour," a temptation to hire cheap labor to teach large classes, learning be d***ed.

To their credit, senior administrators recognize that their teaching faculty ought also be rewarded.

In the last 20 years, professors have lost ground with regard to salary, and NIU is working to improve salaries, [president John] Peters [formerly Pat Summitt's boss] said. For example, when NIU receives an increase from the state, the funds are directed to salaries, he said.

"I will fight for pay increases [for professors] whenever I can," Peters said. "I’m not in favor of decreasing salaries."

3. What were economic conditions like in the late ‘90s? What are they like now?

Macroeconomic conditions were similar, although the dot.com stock market bubble was fooling a lot of people. We did not yet know we were in a war. The mind-set at the university was one of downsizing and retrenchment, some of that in response to pressures from Springfield, some of it mistaken. (I did not make myself very popular in those days pouring scorn on some of the university's attempts to boost enrollment and retention, noting that the middle schools and high schools in the area were overcrowded and we'd have to deal with that problem in a few years.) Perhaps the administrators are taking a closer look at middle and high school enrollments today. The more alert among them will be paying particularly close attention to the mounting evidence that the very expensive brand name universities such as Harvard, Colorado, and USC do no better by their students than does Northern Illinois University. Perhaps (dream on?) some of the individuals earning those large salaries are working on strategies to get that message to potential students.

INSTITUTIONS EVOLVE TO ECONOMIZE ON TRANSACTION COSTS. At Number 2 Pencil, thoughts on bad language and bad manners, linking to one Briton's assessment.

The middle class learned a long time ago that even their least intellectually able children can still get on in the world armed with please, thank you, and a winning smile, whereas the children of the offensive and coarse, to whom pleasantries are a foreign language, are fodder only for sullenly pushing burgers out drive-through windows.

If that.

RIDING THE GRAND TRUNK RAILROAD. A new tourist train connecting Montreal with Portland, Maine? Without public moneys? Read on. In other rail news, National Corridors are not impressed with Transportation Secretary Mineta's plans to implement some sort of Network Rail in the Northeast Corridor.

THE YOUNG MAN. The Chicago Tribune offers a photo gallery of the young Karol Wojytla, who we honor as Pope John Paul II.

I imagine it must have been very frustrating for a man who once enjoyed athletic outings to have lost those abilities while retaining his full mental faculties, including the ability to remember those days.

IN DEFENSE OF THE TENURE COMMITTEE. Nailed to Newmark's Door is a thesis by Virginia Postrel envisioning improved teaching in the common schools.

If you want teachers to be judged on subjective qualities like their ability to inspire students, you have to let schools hire, fire, promote, and demote their teachers accordingly. That means paying not by objective criteria like degrees and seniority but by a boss's professional evaluation. It means allowing into the classroom great teachers who have subject knowledge but not a lot of idiotic education courses on their transcripts.

Of course, teachers as a group don't want to give their bosses the power to evaluate them. Certainly, the teachers' unions don't want that. So to create any connection between classroom performance and professional evaluations, we're stuck with objective criteria, notably test scores. The alternative, beloved by teachers' advocates, is to have objective measures of teacher "quality," including seniority and acadmic credentials, and no measures of teaching quality. Standardized tests and prescribed curricula are far from perfect, but they're better than no accountability at all.

I'll leave aside for the moment the "Of course" stuff heading up the second paragraph. Focus on that "professional evaluation," which is precisely what tenure committees exist to provide in the university.

CARNIVAL CALL. Carnival of Education N^o. 10 (my numbering scheme is a tribute to Tom Lehrer) returns to Education Wonks.

THERE ARE TOPICS MORE CHALLENGING THAN CONCENTRATION AND MONOPOLY. The students in the public policy class are coming to grips with the full implications of "it depends," most recently on whether a particular industry structure is more or less conducive to the exercise of market power; and many of them are (understandably) anxious about an upcoming exam.

Difficult as those ideas may be, they pale compared to some recent problems in medical ethics, or is it family law? Eugene Volokh has some pertinent thoughts about whether or not one ought get involved in a debate outside one's area of expertise; see in particular points 4, 5, and 6.

That is not to say the Terri Schiavo litigation is not of interest to economists. Eclectic Econoclast offers some Coasian musings, focusing on the assignment of guardianship rights; Tyler at Marginal Revolution evaluates the tradeoffs involved in keeping the current assignments, or modifying them. Both link to Steven Landsburg's Slate column.

ROWDY KIDS? A McDonald's not far from the University of Chicago sets aside some of its seating area for local high school kids. One of the kids sits outside the designated area, gets arrested, then gets exonerated. There will be a protest anyway.

The rally is intended to highlight how the McDonald's and other Hyde Park businesses have instituted policies that seem to criminalize young people in the neighborhood instead of embracing them, said Melissa Harris-Lacewell, [Catherine] Smith's aunt and a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

The legalities are interesting.

Jesse Choper, a constitutional law professor at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, said students are not a protected class of people; thus, he does not see how having a restricted seating area in a private business is unconstitutional.

"One, constitutional rights almost always limit the government, not a private restaurant," Choper said. "It would be a steep uphill fight to find that unconstitutional."

Or to find the creation of protected classes unconstitutional. There is equal protection. But some protection is more equal than others.