THE TRAGIC VISION, IN ONE SENTENCE. It's a question from the dean at Anonymous Community.

Is there a way to reward colleges for improving graduation rates without inadvertently rewarding stupidity?

The context for the question is Texas's new disclosure requirements, which inter alia condition state funding for its universities, colleges, and junior colleges on completion rates. The tradeoff, which the dean's post and the bull session participants confront, is that being more selective in admissions increases the proportion of students who satisfy the completion criteria, but there are fewer students. At Cold Spring Shops, that's a feature, not a tradeoff, although we probably take a harder line on second, third, ..., n^th chances than some.

The Texas disclosure requirements go so far as to require universities to report the profit or loss generated by each department, and within each department, the faculty member. James Joyner at Outside the Beltway concurs in part and dissents in part.

Many if not most states have too many universities, too many overlapping programs and departments, and are generally run as if it were still the 1940s. Certainly, this was the case in the state of Alabama, where I earned my three degrees. Fifteen public four-year universities is about ten too many for a relatively small state with only 4.3 million people. And that actually understates the number, since many of these schools have satellite campuses in other parts of the state. Troy University, where I used to teach and Steven Taylor still does, has major campuses in Troy, Dothan, and Montgomery. Which means that Montgomery alone has three four-year campuses funded by the public. Twenty-six public two-year colleges is likely too many as well. (There are also numerous private institutions which compete against these, but they’re at least not as heavily subsidized.)

Even aside from the macro picture, there are doubtless plenty of professors who are dead weight. Either they’ve long stopped being effective teachers or researchers but hang on due to tenure, or they were hired in a different demand climate and now don’t have enough students to justify their salaries.

The problem, however, is that the metrics the educrats are likely to use won’t address these problems and, indeed, will exacerbate them. At TAMU, they’re reportedly “weighing annual salary against students taught, tuition generated, and research grants obtained.”

The kicker is in those metrics.

“Students taught” is a useful floor metric. If a professor is mostly teaching sections of three to five students and not doing much in the way of research, they’re likely not pulling their weight. (I qualify only because there may be disciplines and circumstances where those low numbers would be justified.) But the obvious educrat response to this metric is to jam more people into each section of introductory classes and to cancel lower demand specialty courses required for majors, making it very difficult for students to tailor their degree.

Because the educrats also have the silly idea that anybody can teach an introductory class (imagine The Marine Corps without those 20-year veteran drill sergeants), further down that road comes the Rent-A-Prof reading slides to those members of the class that showed up to update their social networks once they'd downloaded the slides. As one of the commenters in the Anonymous Community bull session notes, "It is easy to teach down to a specific set of narrow outcomes and produce students who are unprepared for anything after graduation. How long before Texas employers complain about college grads like they complain about HS grads?" I'm beginning to see the effects of so-called high-stakes testing in my classes. The notion that university students can engage in, in fact are encouraged to engage in, indeed might be recognized for excellence in, original thought, terrifies some people. But wait, there's more ...

“Tuition generated” is not a metric with which I’m familiar. Indeed, aside from a handful of superstars here and there, I can’t conjure how it is that a faculty member will “generate” tuition. Students come to institutions, not to study with individual professors.

In any event, tuition generation is an exercise in cost allocation, and cost allocation is an exercise in arbitrariness. Is the tuition generated adjusted on a per-student basis for the costs of the Office of Retaining Students Who Probably Shouldn't Have Been Admitted in the First Place, or is the revenue of the mathematics department reduced because the sub-numerates place a larger burden on the tutoring service, or the revenue of the communications department reduced because that's where the athletes go, or increased to the extent that ticket sales contribute to the position of the university?

Then there's the issue of how to reward scholarship.

“Research grants obtained” is a very useful metric in a handful of disciplines, notably in the hard sciences. But most research in most disciplines don’t and shouldn’t require research grants. Regardless, the amusing thing about this measure is that it’s contrary to the others. That is, it encourages professors to spend their time and energy chasing grants and writing up research proposals in order to generate revenues that they bring in to the school . . . most of which is spent pursuing the research in question. Aside from PhD-granting institutions, where graduate students can join in on the project and enhance their prospects for future employment, this process will have the effect of taking professors away from their core function of teaching students.

Yes, but remember that the mentality is one of running departments as profit centers. (Never mind that in some disciplines, obtaining a consultantship without running any proposals through the government and foundation mill is simpler, and permissible subject to conflict of interest regulations). The requirement, however, might induce some administrators to emulate the institutions that are at the top of the U.S. News league tables, and draw the obvious inferences about access-assessment-remediation-retention. And Randy Moss will be a perfect gentleman in the locker room.

I'm overanalyzing. Professor Bainbridge is ticked off.

There was a highly annoying article in today's WSJ about the way state governments are trying to turn universities into factories stamping out job ready proles. Not surprisingly, the charge is being lead by my fellow conservatives, who in the last 20 years have gone from prizing the life of the mind to prizing anti-intellectual morons.

Just go there and enjoy.

THE TRENCHANT OBSERVATION OF THE DAY. Southern Indiana's Jason Fertig correctly sees the consequence of expanding college enrollment.

The push from our elected officials to increase the amount of college degrees will only ratchet up the enrollment of unmotivated students on campus. While the apathy train left the station a long time ago, now is the time to apply to brakes before it picks up any more speed.

The push produces an expensive signal of degraded value.

A CHAMPION PASSES. Maurice Lucas, who earned rings with the Marquette Warriors and Portland Trail Blazers, 1952 - 2010. Seashells and balloons.

WHERE ARE THE FORMULAS AND THE GRAPHS? Some years ago, in one of the periodic restructurings university administrators seem bent on doing (and each time adding evidence to my claim that the supposedly rising college degree premium is the labor market signalling "give us people of ability") I was tasked with teaching several sections of introductory economics. (The department chairman at the time lowered the cost of the graduate program by moving some people specifically hired for various graduate courses to larger sections, while assigning cheaper people not necessarily best qualified to the graduate courses. Tool.)

The question came up when a student in one of my sections asked an economics major for advice on a problem set. I had attended some conference sessions on The Error of Teaching Principles As If Students Are Prepping for Prelims (Paul Samuelson actually bragged about the use of his best-seller for precisely that) and my questions were more along the lines of "If you had the power, what forms of competition would you prohibit?" Somehow we got through the first three weeks without a graph, and through the course with only five diagrams: a one person production possibility frontier, a generalized production possibility frontier, a Marshallian Cross, a simplified price-taker diagram, and a price-searcher diagram. (I'll sell you the course pack if you're interested).

There have been any number of conference sessions on Teaching Principles As If the Big Ideas Matter. The effort is still going on.

[Kelly] Markson [of Wake Tech] started her talk with some lighthearted research that she conducted one evening at a cocktail party (and recorded on video). She asked forty-somethings whether they had liked economics in school. Nearly everyone had hated it and they had forgotten what they learned—if they had learned anything important at all.

The potential for disliking the survey course is probably even greater because it has been traditionally taught from standard textbooks, as if the students are economics majors and are going on to study additional economics. Yet most students are in a two-year terminal degree in business administration and this will be their only economics course. Furthermore, many students who take it are weak in math. (Those with stronger math skills are likely to take the two-semester micro- and macro- sequence.)

Traditionally, students had to plunge into math, calculating elasticities and figuring out how to depict complex activities such as production functions graphically. When Markson taught the course that way (for one year), she found that those chores took so much effort that students failed to learn the underlying principles—the ones worth remembering, such as the role of incentives, opportunity costs, and the value of trade.

By removing the mathematics (except for supply and demand curves), she can now devote weeks to the basics (which standard texts breeze through in the first two chapters). Markson draws on everything from class debates, videos such as John Stossel’s “20/20” clips (which are available for classroom use), and current events to make the course relevant. She gives extra credit to students who discover videos that illustrate economic concepts.

Incentives Matter. Everything Has An Opportunity Cost. Opportunity Costs Differ. People Trade for Mutual Gain. There's probably more intellectual challenge in presenting these well than there is in exploring the finer wrongs of Viner-Wong.

IN THE SPIRIT OF BILTY AND NYSTROM. The national government spends $3.7 million on internal improvements in the Cold Spring Shops neighborhood.

“That money will be used to replace two railroad bridges, which the U.S. Department of Transportation said would lay the groundwork for eventually raising the speed on the route to 110 mph. Earlier this year, the federal government granted the state $810 million in stimulus money to extend the Hiawatha from Milwaukee to Madison, a 110-mph leg that could one day be part of a Chicago-to-Twin Cities route and a larger Midwestern network of fast, frequent trains,” wrote Sandler.

It's more accurate to say that the infrastructure improvement might be a step toward restoring 110 mph speeds on the line, however regular readers have seen my "give them their head to 110" campaign for some time, and infrastructure improvements that allow Hiawathas, whether powered by butt-ugly P-series diesels or by the world's fastest steam locomotives, to mingle with freight trains the way The Milwaukee Road did it during World War II has a benefit-cost ratio that merits the small addition to the national debt it incurs.

The comments to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel article include the observation that the current 89 minute trains get people from Milwaukee into Chicago much faster than drive time, and a tribute to the gentleman who offers the trolley service of beverages and snacks on selected trains. (It is a shame, however, that Amtrak can't roll out a Super Dome with downstairs bar, or a buffeteria car, or a Skytop Lounge, let alone a seventh car when loadings are high.)

In related news, the current Wisconsin government has reached an agreement with the national government to commit the entire capital budget for upgrading the tracks from Milwaukee to Watertown and building passenger-capable trackage from Watertown to Madison. One candidate for governor has pledged to stop the Milwaukee to Madison train project. Neither the opponents nor the proponents of the Madison service in Wisconsin have thought things through. The opponents suggest that the money might be better spent on patches to the interstate highways; the proponents fail to stress the usefulness of a Madison to Chicago train that would enable Brookfield residents to get to Chicago without driving to the Airport station, Sturtevant residents to view the antiques and the fall colors in Watertown, or, horrible dictu, north suburban flatlanders to get to college in Madison.

The news tends to speak of Passenger Rail improvements in isolation. Chicago is a logical hub for a midwestern train network, heir to the Rockets and Zephyrs and Hiawathas and Arrows, provided the resulting trains are scheduled with a view toward connectivity.

NOVEMBER IS MODEL RAILROAD MONTH. Some projects will take longer. These International Hobbies electric locomotives are early etched brass kits from Japan. Each type is a reasonable facsimile of a motor-generator locomotive General Electric built for the New Haven.

One switcher with a baggage car to give scale.


Two freight locomotives, bought at two different swap meets. One owner attempted to change the end platforms, but the seller had the original end platforms to permit a backward conversion to a matched set.


Each will require insulation, a gearbox, a drivetrain, and a motor before painting.

SIGN OF THE TIMES? Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel business columnist Tom Saler asks readers to Stay tuned for 'America's Next Top Economist'.

It's a little sad - and probably a bit revealing - that more people could identify Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian than William Dudley and Thomas Hoenig.

Hilton and Kardashian are famous for being, well, famous.

Dudley and Hoenig have résumés of considerable distinction. Each holds a doctorate degree in economics; serves as president of a Federal Reserve regional bank; and assists Chairman Ben Bernanke in making decisions that affect millions of lives worldwide.

On the one hand, the passage reeks of elitist smug. That rabble, how dare they go through life unaware who the people are who are making the important decisions? On the other, in a division of labor society, each of us depends on others, and the very measure of a successful division of labor is in the important decisions that happen in relative obscurity. From that perspective, the fact that, despite an economic recovery looking more like a seven-year recession, a few people can still bring home large rewards for making a train wreck of their lives is itself a measure of prosperity.

With Uncle Sam out of fiscal ammunition, monetary policy is the last line of defense against history's seemingly preordained sentence of seven years' penance for nations allowing massive credit bubbles to inflate and burst.

Fiscal policy soon will turn into a headwind, though it's debatable if any candidate for public office could be elected by forthrightly detailing the specific spending cuts and tax increases necessary just to balance the federal budget given an aging population, much less pay off the national debt.

But in an entertainment-driven culture in which realistic and critical thinking is too often in short supply, fantasy is a big seller.

Meanwhile, there will be no television cameras trained upon the 27-foot mahogany table at Fed headquarters around which Dudley, Hoenig, Bernanke and other policy-makers will gather Tuesday and Wednesday to chart the nation's economic course.

That's also a little sad, because if their deliberations were beamed into American living rooms, it would make for reality TV that really mattered.

Perhaps so, but, like a faculty meeting and unlike the over-the-top aggression portrayed in Mad Men, the deliberations would be marginally more interesting than a golf broadcast with the sound off.

The deliberations in China's central bank would be much more interesting even without translation. Dear reader, every time you hear somebody complain about China artificially undervaluing its currency, take the time to understand the monetary policy its bank must be involved in to arm-wrestle the invisible hand, and educate yourself in strategies to profit from the day the invisible hand wins.

HOW'S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKING? Tenured Radical follows up on last week's cost-cutting roundup with the latest economy measure at her employer.

Many of us at Zenith were stunned when our administrative staff received an e-mail from Human Resources telling them that the cost of their health insurance is going up dramatically: our Admin expects to pay twice what she paid last fiscal year. As their Union Steward wrote, less than a week before the election, "I was informed today by (Big HR Dude) about the Health Insurance Premiums for 2011. As you know, in our contract, our insurance is scheduled to go up 18.5% to be at a level playing field with Administration which pays 33% of the premium. BHRD informed me that the increase for the Health Insurance Premium (that goes up every year around 3-5%) will be going up 14% mostly due to the Obama Health Care Reform Act. Therefore, we will not just have an increase of 18.5% but an additional 14% increase which will be rounded off to a total of 33% increase starting January 1, 2011."

That announcement proves to be inaccurate.

As we know, the actual name of the bill is the Affordable Care Act, and the "Obama Health Care Reform Act" is a phrase disseminated by right-wingers who spread untruths about the bill to try to make vulnerable people afraid of liberal reform agendas. Having been called on this by a storm of angry emails by staff and faculty, a message arrived today saying that this was a mistake made by the Union Steward (who, as of this morning, was not responding to emails.) Big HR Dude is shocked, shocked! by this misunderstanding, and writes, "The Healthcare Reform Act" (still not the right name!) "is a factor in the cost, but a very small one.

When university professors stop drinking the Democratic Kool-Aid, we might begin to see quips such as "it is neither affordable, nor care, nor an Act," and we might see Atlas Shrugged beginning to accompany The Invisible Man or The Color Purple on the reading lists.

HOLDING THAT LINE. Packers shut out Jets, take lead in the Black and Blue. Reserve defensive unit looks impressive. Ray Nitschke is assisting with Trick or Treat at Cold Spring Shops.

THIRTY PILLAGING DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS. General Sherman's Christmas, that is. Previous Cold Spring Shops reviews of books focusing on the suppression of secession have focused on the analytics, such as the fruitful collaboration of Grant and Sherman, or the campaigning of the Army of the Tennessee. Author Stanley Weintraub gives us something different, a collection of point-of-view letters from soldiers, civilians, and correspondents illustrated with period woodcuts from Harper's Weekly. There are no spoilers in Book Review N^o. 25; the work provides, in one place, highlights of history as it happened. (I suppose a curious reader could find a microfilm reader in a well-equipped library and spend weeks uncovering additional nuggets: there's probably no profit by it.) We begin with the 1864 presidential election, itself historic in that no other republic with a rebellion in progress previously had held one, with the Army of the Tennessee having invested Atlanta and preparing to live off the land until it reaches the coast and links up with the Navy. We end with Savannah liberated and the Army preparing to march into South Carolina. In addition to Gen^l Sherman's famous present of the City of Savannah to President Lincoln, we learn that the guard forces left in Tennessee under Gen^l Thomas also make a present, which some wag describes as a worsted Hood.

The sources used reveal the fear of the remaining civilians as the smoke clouds on the horizon draw nearer, the contempt the Army has for the living habits of what we'd later refer to as white trash, and the ambivalence of many about both the practice of slavery and the prospects of freed blacks. Sometimes the absence of foresight is a source of whimsey: how might any of the people caught up in the march have handled knowledge that within a century a son would be born to a Kenyan and a Kansan in an offshore state, and two score and seven years later he would take the oath of office as the twenty-eighth successor to President Lincoln?

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

THEY PRETEND TO PAY US, WE PRETEND TO WORK. Historiann evaluates the reaction of her colleagues to the assorted cost-cutting measures at her university.

I’ve noticed the growth of a kind of resignation in my department among the tenured faculty: why rush to get that second book out and go up for promotion–there’s no money in it? We’re all turning into Alfred E. Neumans captioned by “What–me bother?” We’re not inclined to line up for volunteer work, friends–not in a world where there are no raises, and the workload for regular faculty has increased because we can’t hire new colleagues. That’s Baa Ram U.’s fix for our budget troubles: no raises since ‘08, the caps on our classes have been raised (from 40 to 44 in upper-divsion undergraduate classes), and the service burden is heavier because we keep losing faculty to retirement and other unis, so the same workload just gets shifted around to fewer people.

The ambitious people and the risk-takers are willing to jump through the tenure hoops elsewhere; the people who develop institution-specific human capital are subject to hold-up, although they're capable of pushing back by opting out.

The conversation continues, elsewhere.

Interestingly, back in 2008 Tenured Radical and Dr. Crazy were at odds, but now they’re singing from the same hymnal. (Keep reading the long comments thread–Dr. Crazy has more to say, and many of you are represented there, I’m sure!)

I used a Soviet description of what worker solidarity became as the evil empire imploded, Historiann invoked Mad, no doubt somewhere John Galt is chuckling.

MORE SADNESS. Freshman aspiring artist Antinette Keller went to the Prairie Park on October 14 to do some sketching. She has not returned. Searchers found what turned out to be human remains in the park on October 16. A vigil that turned into a memorial has taken place at the Ellington Ballroom.

Her favorite song was "Here Comes the Sun."

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION EMPLOYED IN THE AMERICAS. Today was Economic Education Day, and I wanted something to read on the train to the meeting in Chicago. Kenneth C. Davis's America's Hidden History: Untold Tales of the First Pilgrims, Fighting Women, and Forgotten Founders Who Shaped a Nation got the nod, and it earned an enthusiastic Book Review N^o. 24. You've got to like a book that offers chapters titled "Isabella's Pigs" or "Warren's Toga" or "Arnold's Boot". It gets you from 1492 to the ratification of the Constitution, but it argues that the path was neither as predetermined nor as uplifting as more cheerful versions of that history would have you believe. The professionals might quibble that the incidents and people selected were cherry-picked, or their importance exaggerated, or the explanations or the parallels to today reductive or simplistic. Never mind all that, it's great entertainment. Write the critical review or the incisive and detailed evaluation some other time. I won't spill too much information, but there were Protestant dissenters with a commission to set up a colony in the New World long before 1607, and those pigs were very useful, both at identifying Jews and Moslems, and at bringing the pox and the swine flu to the colonies.

(Cross-posted to 50 Book Challenge.)

RESTORING IT WILL COST MORE. Here's the trackplan of Boston's South Station as built.


A Trains report on federal grants for various high-speed rail projects includes a rendering of the proposed restoration of Boston's South Station.


Whether trains will ever be able to pass through Boston enroute from New York, Washington, or Richmond to Portland, Brunswick or Bangor remains to be seen.

NOTHING SO INTRIGUING AS A LOST CAUSE. A few weeks ago, the sitemeter found a British weblogger who, in the course of asking if Britain scrapped steam too soon, pointed readers to a Cold Spring Shops post on the state of the steam art. There have been such discussions in the United States; in fact a Chesapeake and Ohio 4-8-4 was steamed to use on coal trains to develop performance targets for a new-style freight steam locomotive. (The subsequent implosion of OPEC made such projects less urgent, and the ability to trick an induction motor into seeing multiple frequencies took away some of steam's advantage in being able to move anything it started.)

The British discussion tends to focus on passenger power. It is true that the New York Central was unable to find much advantage in a pair of E-7 diesels over one of their super 4-8-4s. In North America, however, that's not the governing factor. No steam locomotive, not the Norfolk and Western A, neither the Union Pacific Challenger nor the Big Boy, not even the Boston and Maine R-1, could resist the power of four portholes.

Raimund Whynal photograph courtesy Trains Online

The interesting counterfactual is, what if the British had asked Electro-Motive or Nohab to scale the F-7 down to fit their loading gauge?

INFLICTING CHEMICAL BURNS IS NOT PART OF THE RECIPE. A recent lawsuit alleges use of a weapon of mass destruction at a Cleveland, Tennessee Steak 'n Shake.

Restaurants are often sued for serving customers with contaminated food or food adulterated with “foreign objects” ranging from cockroaches to condoms. But the lawsuit filed last month against a Steak 'n Shake restaurant in Cleveland, Tenn., may be the first to allege a hot-sauce injury.

While dining with his parents on Oct. 9, 2009, the suit says, Timothy Caleb Gann (who goes by Caleb) suffered a “severe physical reaction” to an order of chili mixed with what a waiter had only identified as “hot sauce.” After he was rushed to the hospital, his father called the restaurant manager who told him “the deleterious substance given to Timothy Caleb Gann had been identified as 'Mega Death Hot Sauce.'”

The product's manufacturer has claimed it “contains ingredients 500 times hotter than a jalapeño chile” and that it is "not recommended for use without dilution.” The ingredients include habañero, cayenne and chipotle chiles and one user has reported that “Just one tiny drop is fiery beyond belief.”

Blair's are a provisioner of the Cold Spring Shops commissary. Their mango-habanero Heat is pretty good, and by the Superintendent's standards, not dangerous. The Death series are somewhat more potent, and yes, one drop can inflict pain. A couple of drops on the taco filling, with some lettuce on top, can go a long way. And the skull keychain that comes with the bottle now identifies the Superintendent's jump drive.

On the other hand, a couple of drops are unlikely to improve Steak 'n Shake's chili, which is pretty tame stuff. The waiter ought be sued for adding insult to injury.

ONTOLOGY BEGETS TAXONOMY.

The populist uprising that might have begun with Rick Santelli's mad-as-hell moment on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange floor has surely inspired a lot of chin-pulling. We shall see next week whether the national government will be sufficiently gridlocked or sufficiently transformed. Before that, though, comes the instant analysis. For the moment, the topic of a political class keeps the pixels jumping. Here's Elizabeth Scalia's assessment.

The ineducable masses begrudge the hectoring about their taste for “gas guzzlers,” from people who ride in limos. They dislike being dismissed as “provincial” or “parochial” by people who only associate with others of the same neighborhood and mindset. They are weary of being portrayed as less compassionate, less well-meaning, gosh darn it just lesser people because they believe in giving an equal-opportunity hand-up, rather than an impossible-to-sustain equal-hand-out.

That's a theme from Angelo Codevilla's The Ruling Class, reviewed here; his attempt to distinguish elites from masses is perhaps overbroad.

Charles Murray tills similar ground, arguing that there's an element of self-reinforcement of the political class.

Far from spending their college years in a meritocratic melting pot, the New Elite spend school with people who are mostly just like them -- which might not be so bad, except that so many of them have been ensconced in affluent suburbs from birth and have never been outside the bubble of privilege. Few of them grew up in the small cities, towns or rural areas where more than a third of all Americans still live.
When they leave college, the New Elite remain in the bubble. Harvard seniors surveyed in 2007 were headed toward a small number of elite graduate schools (Harvard and Cambridge in the lead) and a small number of elite professional fields (finance and consulting were tied for top choice). Jobs in businesses that provide bread-and-butter goods and services to individual Americans, which make up the overwhelming majority of entry-level openings for aspiring managers, attracted just 1.7 percent of the Harvard students who went to work right after graduation.

The column provokes an instructive response from Betsy Newmark.

They live in similar suburbs, go to similar schools, marry each other and then raise children to repeat their pattern. And the result is two different groups of people. And from Murray's description, I'm one of the New Elite.

Which doesn't deter her from regularly challenging the commonplaces of that political class.

And thus the difficulties with Mad As Hell: How the Tea Party Movement is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System, by Scott Rasmussen and Douglas Schoen. (Anybody else wonder if Mr Schoen is really Clarence "Lumpy" Rutherford? He sure resembles Lumpy's father.) Book Review N^o. 23 suggests that, while the pollsters have made a serious attempt to understand the fault lines in politics, ultimately a stratification based on polling data will be inconclusive. The book makes some use of Mr Rasmussen's Political Class Index, described on p. 85 as the responses to three questions.

1. Generally speaking, when it comes to important national issues, whose judgement do you trust more, the American people or America's political leaders.
   Those in the mainstream say the American people; those in the political elite say political leaders.
2. Some people believe that the federal government has become a special-interest group that looks out primarily for its own interests. Has the federal government become a special interest group?
   Mainstreamers say yes; the political elite says no.
3. Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors?
   Mainstreamers say yes; the political elite says no.

The problem with this taxonomy is that, without further information about the intellectual background of the responders, it's incomplete. I could survey the current graduate students at the New School for Social Research and get a leaders, no, yes pattern; I could survey graduate students in public choice at George Mason and elicit a people, yes, yes pattern; I could survey members of a government employees' union and elicit a leaders, no, no pattern. The first two populations might provide technocrats for the state; the third population is supposed to pay its dues and vote for the technocrats.

TURNING JAPANESE?

Years ago, I read some stories about how the Japanese college party scene made U.S. collegians look like overachievers. The stories antedate the World Wide Web, and I didn't want to scroll through pages of x-rated links to find some obscure article someone archived. The gist of those stories was that students who qualified for admission to Japan's best universities had worked hard from pre-school to high school, and admission validated their potential for the best jobs at the leading zaibatsu. College, then, is a three- or four-year rumspringa.

MAYBE NOBODY KNEW WHERE IT WAS. President Clinton was the main act at a Sunday political rally in Detroit's Renaissance High, where the turnout was not standing room only. Michigan's public policies have encouraged human capital flight for a long time, with the skilled workers responding predictably. Eric at Classical Values notes the outmigration of jobs and of people and suggests Michigan might look for pallbearers, not doctors.

RECLAIMING THE TRADITION. Milwaukee Hamilton's football team finishes second in the City Conference. Their last City Conference title was in 1982 (was the one-third of the title in 1969 the only other one) and the footballers have to look up to Ham United for repeated excellence.