TOO LARGE TO PUT UNDER A TREE, TOO SMALL FOR THE C.P. The local news is not all bad weather and threats to students. The Waterman and Western Railroad is running its own Holiday Train, and, as is the case with the Canadian Pacific's Holiday Train, it's on a donation basis.

In the first year of the holiday train, he charged riders $2, the same rate as the rest of the year, [locomotive owner Pete] Robinson said. But when he saw a woman with only $4 negotiating with her four children over who would ride and who would watch, he decided to make the ride free. There is a donation jar for anyone who cares to give money, he said.

“No parent should be in that situation at Christmastime,” he said. “If you can make a donation, and you want to, that's great. If you can't, that's OK. Just come have fun.”

This weekend, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings.

Next weekend, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings.

WHY IT MATTERS.

I'm not sure who first observed, "be careful what you ask for, you just might get it."At Inside Higher Ed, William Durden contemplates the consequences of changing the methods of higher education.

Nonprofit colleges and universities could adopt, for example, the business model of the rapidly proliferating for-profit universities. Colleges and universities could go totally online — no buildings or accompanying campuses. Athletics would be eliminated as would student life. Gone would be those pesky sources of purported extravagance in American higher education.

There would also be no expectation of original research by faculty or students — ironically the essential source of content for the for-profits to use in instruction. The course of study would be narrowed to include only those subjects that are more applied than those in a liberal arts curriculum and match more closely specific occupational needs — business, nursing, social work, health technology, information technology, and so on. The curriculum would eliminate those courses without immediate applicability to the workforce — English literature, poetry, art and art history, music, dance and theater. There would be no need to engage in “silly” research that deviates from what “someone” has determined a priori as essential topics of inquiry for a productive life. There would be no reason to invest in costly scientific equipment or the laboratories in which to house it.

He goes on to note that product variety can be efficient.

Numerous for-profit universities have taken these steps. This model is most appealing to busy adults who are both working and trying to advance themselves through education in the most convenient way possible. It fulfills an important “in-time” professional need. For-profits compete with other for-profits and non-profits solely on the competitive basis of tuition and still accomplish their mission fully. Their business model works because they forgo all the “extras” delineated above that non-profits must support through a combination of tuition, public support, private fundraising and cost efficiencies.

But can American higher education — indeed, can America as an enterprising, entrepreneurial nation — afford to have all its colleges and universities so defined? Is the for-profit business model more widely acceptable to the American public — especially for the undergraduate education of its 18-21 year olds? Wouldn’t some valuable defining elements of a distinctively American higher education — a global market asset — be lost in this brutal confrontation between cost and accountability?

He argues that some people are willing to pay a premium for a summer camp with a bit of education thrown in.

Would we as a nation accept no college sports? Would we accept the total absence of our effort, albeit sometimes frustrating (and understandably highly inefficient) to advance students in the practice of citizenship within a 24/7 residential community? Would we accept the total absence of student life — fraternities and sororities, club life and other extracurricular activities? Would our “consumer-students” accept residence halls, student centers and science complexes that were lacking in contemporary amenities and instrumentation?

He suggests that even the most careerist, or disengaged, of the consumer-students benefit from the exposure to Big Ideas.

Would we as a nation accept a curriculum that offered only those courses that translated directly to current workforce needs and neglected the arts and humanities — defiantly unaccountable courses of study? Would we accept a college or university that restricted its faculty from engaging in research, thereby keeping them one step removed from what they teach in the classroom?

I think not. To do so would completely undermine the global market distinction that has come to define American higher education. It is no coincidence that countries such as Germany and Britain are currently seeking ways to “Americanize” their universities. As central governments cut their considerable subsidies, they are finding it necessary to increase tuition — and along with it, the types of “amenities” that 21st century students demand. They are coming to rapidly understand that the American college experience in its totality creates an emotional identity among the student body, an identity that translates into a lifelong sense of ownership and a willingness to “give back” to their alma mater. This is an extremely powerful source of support for American higher education and it is necessary component of our business model.

There's also the possibility that the price premium such universities command reflects a flight to perceived quality: the last thing the land-grants and regional comprehensives and mid-majors ought be doing is emulating the online for-profits.

NO FIRE, LESS ICE. Headquarters has a new threat assessment, and examination week is back on.

Northern Illinois University will re-open and resume its final exam schedule tomorrow (Tuesday, Dec. 11) following today’s security closure.

While an investigation into the weekend posting of threats in a residence hall restroom continues, university police are satisfied that the anonymous message no longer represents an imminent threat to students, faculty or staff. University, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies have identified several leads and remain hopeful about timely resolution of the case.

The excitement is not over, as an ice storm is due to arrive around 2 am Tuesday, and the safety committee will have to do another risk assessment.

President John Peters met with students who were understandably frightened by the content of the message.

A racially charged bathroom message caused many black students on campus to fear going to their finals this week.

The concerns caused the NAACP and the Black Student Union to ask for a meeting with NIU President John Peters at 11 a.m. Monday at the New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, 1201 Twombly Road. The university shut down Monday and students’ fears moved the meeting off campus.

Several TV stations from Chicago and Rockford traveled to the church to hear the exchange between Peters and students.Peters spoke to the crowd of about 200 people, mostly made up of NIU students.

After giving a statement, Peters took questions from several students. Media was not allowed into the chapel to hear the exchanges between Peters and the students.

Thus far, the crisis management has been measured.

NORTHERN ILLINOIS HELD HOSTAGE. The evening news includes more stress for exam week.

NIU officials are investigating a threat posted late Saturday evening in a campus residence hall which included a racial slur and references to the Virginia Tech shootings.

Written in black ink on a restroom wall in the Grant Towers D complex were two separate entries claiming that “things will change most hastily” in the final days of the current semester.

“Tell those n---ers to go home,” the first entry reads. “ME / OUT … Die Sem Burr 10th … Hmz Sdn Cr.” Officials believe the text message-style shorthand refers to “December 10” and “Holmes Student Center.” Underlined letters within the first entry spell out the word “WATCH.”

Following the initial entry is a second set of comments reading “What time? The VA tech shooters messed up w/ having only one shooter …”

University leaders notified all students, faculty and staff about the threats through postings on the NIU website, all-campus email, voicemail, fliers and area news media. Security in and around the residence halls, student center and other campus buildings has also been increased, and the campus remains under a security alert through the end of the semester.

The weather forecast includes ice storms for Tuesday and snow later in the week and now one, or a few, malcontents have to make our life even more difficult.

“My primary concern is for the safety of all members of our campus community, and to that end, we will err on the side of caution in all our actions,” said NIU President John Peters. “We will not tolerate threats against individuals or groups,” Peters said, “nor will we tolerate ‘hate speech’ of any type on this campus.”

Final exams will proceed as scheduled, and university officials said students and staff should remain “calm but vigilant.” Anyone with information about the threats are urged to contact the NIU Tipline at (815) 753-TIPS, or their local Crimestoppers or law enforcement agency.

Developing.

SECOND SECTION (UPDATED AND BUMPED TO THE TOP).

Continuing concern over icy streets and sidewalks and poor travel conditions, coupled with concerns and questions related to the previously-released campus alert, has resulted in a decision to close the university on Monday, December 10th. Final exams scheduled for Monday will be rescheduled for Friday, December 14th.

Only essential service personnel should report to work on Monday. Students who must drive should continue to monitor weather conditions and exercise caution with respect to travel decisions.

I've discovered another source that is also following these announcements.

THIRD SECTION. First, a clarification for students and faculty at the satellite campuses.

Final exams scheduled for today at all NIU locations have been rescheduled for Friday, December 14th. This includes NIU-Hoffman Estates, NIU-Naperville and NIU-Rockford.

The threat response team also has a less-than-cheerful weather forecast to consider.

The Crisis Team is continuing to meet at this hour regarding the previously issued campus alert. Discussions continue regarding the status of classes/exams tomorrow (Tuesday, Dec.11). An announcement on tomorrow's university status will be made by mid-afternoon.

There will be no other new posts today until possibly late this evening, but if there are additional developments in the weather or the investigation there will be additional sections of this post.

IF YOU HAVEN'T GOT A HA'PENNY. The Canadian Pacific Holiday Train has raised much more than a ha'pen'orth of food for lineside pantries. Saturday offered a break in the weather systems and an opportunity to view the train. It was also a busy day for Metra. In the Chicago area, "Silver Bells" has to have a stanza about "Silver Scoots" by which the shoppers rush home with their treasures. Heavy loadings in both directions, and it didn't help the inbound shoppers that the Shopper Specials were running on the middle road account trackwork on the normal up line.

Santa Claus was also riding the scoots, and he paused to audit his list with the kids of Villa Park.


In Chicago, I was a bit apprehensive about a replay of the adventures from two years ago when the equipment for the 1.05 Hiawatha (which some announcers refer to as the "afternoon Hiawatha", the departure time is almost right) arrived at the station about 30 minutes late. Boarding commenced at 1 pm, and the train was in motion as soon as the last passenger was up the steps.

Amtrak Hiawatha Service 335, Chicago - Milwaukee: P42 diesel 184, Horizon coaches 54509-54540-54537-54522-54507, cabbage car 90221. Leave Chicago 1.07, Glenview 1.27:49 - 1.29:00, held at signal north of Wadsworth, Sturtevant for Racine 2.16:28-2.17:27, Airport 2.32:07-2.33:35, arrive Milwaukee 2.43:48, 9 late. 18 degrees (F) at Milwaukee. Plenty of time for a walk to Real Chili and an assault on the credit card at a bookstore.

Yes, there used to be a train station back there, where the Electric Company offices now stand. The dump truck unloading toys in the background is in proper Milwaukee Department of Public Works yellow. I wonder how many older residents are having an E.T.T.S. moment about the D.P.W.'s recent failure to clear the side streets as effectively as they did during the mayorships of the two Zeidlers and Henry Maier.


To the south is the current train station, which has been redeveloped to include the interurban bus station. The concourse area has been expanded with additional seating, including tables for the food court that has not yet been provided.

There is not yet a public address system (tannoy, if you prefer). On the bus end of the station, somebody with a good pair of lungs announces the bus. On the train end, the door is opened and people are free to board.

In a niche not far from the Amtrak ticket counter, the one piece of decoration that has anything to do with transportation is the Hiawatha portrait. The placement reminds me of the positioning of icons and reliquaries in niches of a cathedral. Those, however, come with a bit of religious instruction.

THIS TRAIN REACHED CHICAGO 75 MINUTES AFTER LEAVING MILWAUKEE.
IT WAS CAPABLE OF GETTING THERE IN 60 MINUTES.

Perhaps I should get the above rendered in Latin and send the Wisconsin Department of Transportation a brass plaque of it. Et expecto Hiawatham.

Next, a quick trip to Sturtevant for the Holiday Train. Give Wisconsin kids a snowbank and some playtime and they'll figure out what to do.


The railroad doesn't shut down for the Holiday Train. Hiawatha 339 makes its appearance in the snow.


Some things are timeless: whether it's a rake of Horizon cars or a pair of Silverliners, the collector has to keep the steps safe for the passengers. (Note coach 54522: this is the 1.05 rake making another round trip to Milwaukee.)


Shortly thereafter, the Holiday Train showed up. The extravagant-looking pedestrian overbridge (complete with ADA-compliant elevators) still strikes me as a bit much even for an emerging corridor, but one of the landings offers a good view of the train.


The train stopped with the title cars (those boxcars sure look like somebody has wrapped some Lionel products for Christmas) on the Highway 20 overpass, where it might have brought in more spectators. The local authorities required spectators arriving by car to park at some distance from the station, and they provided shuttle buses. After the show, some people walked back. I wonder if the local Googolplex (the only retail activity nearby is a movie house) got a piece of the action.


Most of the cars are along for the braking effort, but they've been prettied up, including a trio showing a miniature sleigh and eight jumping reindeer. Digital cameras are wonderful, I just kept pressing the trigger until I got the jump effect to register. The ones that failed ... gone to free space, every one, no negatives to throw away.


Most of the spectators stayed close to the stage car. Much of the music was as it was last year. I'm informed that the train has now inspired in several million pounds (it's still an impressive weight in kilograms) of in-kind contributions to food pantries and several million dollars of cash contributions raised across the Southern Tier of Canada and the Great Lakes.


On the markers, a proper open-platform observation car with a proper campaigner. I never did get to see the trolley Christmas parade in Milwaukee or its successor that had parade floats powered from the trolleybus wires, but I do enjoy this effort by Canadian Pacific.


It's worth recalling that Canadian Pacific built some 4-4-4 Jubilee locomotives (not to be confused with Stanier's hybrid of a Hall with a Gresley drive) and some lightweight coaches for its Montreal-Toronto corridor. They'd be a worthy operator of the Hiawatha line in the manner that Bilty and Nystrom intended. Consider 342 back to Chicago, off Sturtevant at 7.55, into the south side of Union Station at 8.55. My watch was not synchronized with a railroad standard clock, but I'm estimating 84 minutes Milwaukee to a stop on the south tracks. We weren't impeded by the usual signal check at Canal Street when our train shows up a little early and there are scoots to be moved. Perhaps the added discipline of getting our train to the south tracks expedited the lining of the switches.

There was one sour note on the corridor. Seven was already an hour late at Milwaukee, apparently because of freight train interference, and Eight, due at 3 pm, was expected at 3 am Sunday.

A POSITIVE END TO A ROUGH ROAD TRIP. The women's basketball squad had rough trips to Cancun, Chicago, Green Bay, and Iowa City yet ended the odyssey on a positive note.

For the first time this season, the Huskies had more assists than turnovers. The Huskies had 20 assists to 19 turnovers. The bench came up big for NIU. The Huskies had 34 points off the bench to 11 for St. Joseph's. The Huskies shot a season-high 60 percent from the field, 70 percent from beyond the arc and 79 percent from the free throw line.

Welcome home, kids.

THANKS FOR THE SHOUT-OUT. On Friday evening's Extension 720, host Milton Rosenberg acknowledged Dan Drezner and Erin O'Connor, who showed him how easy it was to convert Milt's File to a weblog, and his list of good reads included these pages. Thanks, and thanks to any listeners who looked in and opted to come back for more.

REVEALED PREFERENCES. Where they are to strengthen the already well-respected football program at the same time they are to raise Florida State's prestige profile on the cheap, they do little for faculty morale.

The single most important factor in the quality of a university education is the faculty. Offering these kinds of raises to coaches when there are no raises for most faculty and staff sends a series of bad messages to students, faculty and the broader community. They tell the students that academic achievement is secondary to sports and celebrity. They also affirm to the world that FSU is committed most clearly to football, despite claims that it aspires to join the AAU (American Association ofUniversities) and other grandstanding about becoming a nationally recognized research university.

This year, FSU has asked departments to cut their budgets by 4 percent, with a possible second cut this spring. This translates into a significant portion of each unit's discretionary spending. Students are working on old computers and outdated equipment in labs. Deans have limited research and travel money for faculty, yet still expect research output and national and international scholarly participation. Staff members are burdened with added tasks with no new help.

The column, which is the work of a Florida State faculty member, notes

[Football coach Bobby] Bowden's agent says the new salary is competitive in the "market" of NCAA coaches. As faculty members, we wish the administration would apply a similar market value to our work. The FSU market equity study confirms the average FSU faculty member is below market by about $10,000 per year. Despite this deficit, FSU has no plan to use any of the expected $1.4 million revenue from tuition increases to bring faculty salaries in line with national market rates.

So while Bowden gets a $600,000 raise, [another coach, Jimbo] Fisher gets a $200,000 raise, and [university president T. K.] Wetherell enjoys a "top 10 in the nation" salary, FSU's ranking remains stagnant, and the faculty and staff who have exceeded the university's goals for graduate student recruitment, produced numerous books, articles and creative projects, and brought in millions of dollars in grants (recent statistics show that the amount the FSU faculty brings into the state in grants for their work exceeds the total amount of FSU faculty salaries) are rewarded with an insulting "bonus."

It's an incomplete comparison, because faculty have tenure, which coaches and many of the current crop of presidents do not, and because faculty do have the opportunity to move to other universities. There's probably some economic hysteresis at work, such that faculty do not often move to other institutions, even with the prospect of immediate tenure and no hassles getting the grants transferred, in response to the administration's slights.

The harder question is whether it's evolutionarily stable for the administrators to engage in rent-seeking and to support the positional arms races in sports, but not, say, in industrial economics (shameless plug) or applied mathematics. Perhaps the Florida State faculty stay put because working conditions (increased helpings of access-assessment-remediation-retention, eligibility studies, grantsmanship, and larger class sizes with less support) are pretty bad everywhere else, and there's more certainty about the local conditions than those that will come with the one-time pay increase. But again, why is that behavior the equilibrium? (It can't be a conspiracy of the failed scholars and the jock sniffers: by definition, a conspiracy carries with it an incentive to defect.)

This is the real message FSU is sending with these contracts, and this is why FSU is shooting itself in the foot in its efforts to attract, develop and retain the top tier scholars needed to join the AAU. When academics are rewarded in the same way as athletic coaches and top administrators, FSU will begin to move out of the parochial backwaters of higher education.

Florida State's efforts, however, do undermine individual faculty members' efforts to negotiate pay raises elsewhere. A department chairman communicates to a tightwad dean or provost that a promising colleague has an offer from Florida State. The dean or provost is in a better position to call that bluff.

(Via University Diaries, who also provides a link to additional observations from Florida State.)

THE WORLD'S GREATEST WATERPARK. Where many policy wonks like to speak of "problems" that have "solutions" or "crises" that can be "managed," economists think about tradeoffs. A USA Today article notes that, in the Rust Belt, there are environmental consequences to preserving manufacturing.

In all, the eight Great Lakes states have lost 1.2 million manufacturing jobs since 2001. During that time, the hospitality industry added 300,000 jobs. The trend is even more extreme close to the water.

State legislators worry more today about invasive aquatic species in the ballast water of cargo ships than about dredging harbors to keep the freighters running full. Oceangoing vessels are blamed for bringing more than 140 non-native species into the Great Lakes, wreaking havoc on the ecosystem.

"We used to treat the lakes as a resource to make beer in Milwaukee and steel in Gary (Ind.)," says John Austin of the Great Lakes Economic Initiative at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "We've evolved into thinking it's a scarce resource that can't be touched."

The future, he adds, should lie between those extremes.

People who love the Great Lakes complain that they are the nation's neglected treasure, ignored in Congress and overshadowed by the East and West coasts. The Florida Everglades, for example, are a sensitive subject in the region.

"The Everglades are a wonderful place, but it's a minor ecosystem compared to the Great Lakes," says Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle. "Yet the federal government stepped in to help the state of Florida. The Great Lakes need the same kind of national attention."

Some of that is the public choice dynamic at work, and it probably doesn't hurt to have a bit of brotherly love in the White House, but there's serious thinking behind the special pleading.

The Great Lakes need $25 billion to restore the ecosystem from its days as a waste dump, the Brookings Institution estimates. Even today, many cities dump raw sewage into the lakes after heavy rains.

That would include Chicago and Milwaukee, both of which have intercepting sewers that intercept about as effectively as the Panthers' secondary.

Last month, the Council of Great Lakes Governors challenged the presidential candidates to say how they would protect the lakes. The most notable response came from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who committed a Great Lakes faux pas by suggesting that their water be shipped to the arid Southwest.

That idea would violate an agreement the governors and Canada negotiated in 2005 to keep all water inside the region. The water compact, which still needs approval by Congress and state legislatures, is designed to help the economically struggling region by locking in Great Lakes water — 95% of the USA's surface
freshwater.

"Freshwater is becoming the most valuable resource in this country and planet," says Doyle, chairman of the governors council. "We're trying to get the presidential candidates to better understand what we need."

The compact originated in the Great Lakes states, particularly when some Michiganders thought exporting water to the Southwest (where they don't price the subsidized water efficiently) could make up for the loss of the automobile business (a corrupt bargain in which the state was residual claimant on monopoly rents divided among the Big Three and the United Auto Workers if ever there was one). The existence of such a large water resource is going to tempt people outside the watershed, and in my gloomier moments I suggest to students that the next Civil War could break out along the Des Plaines River, which rises almost in view of Lake Michigan yet drains to the Illinois River. I'm also contemplating investing in real estate in the Wolf River watershed west of Green Bay. Read a map.

But contemplate the tradeoffs.

The Waukegan waterfront, for example, includes two Superfund environmental cleanup sites, the former headquarters of asbestos manufacturer Johns Manville and Outboard Marine Corp., which left 1 million pounds of cancer-causing PCBs in the harbor.

Industry promises to spend what's required to be environmentally sensitive. Oil giant BP proposes spending $3.8 billion to expand a Whiting, Ind., refinery on Lake Michigan — originally built in 1889 by John D. Rockefeller — so it can refine heavy crude from Alberta, Canada. Murphy Oil wants to spend $6 billion on a refinery on Lake Superior in Superior, Wis. The refinery expansions face uphill battles to win regulatory approval from state and federal governments, even in a time of $3-a-gallon gasoline.

Superior Mayor Dave Ross wants the refinery. It would bring in $25 million a year in property tax revenue to his community of 27,000. His support, however, hinges on the company polluting far less than the law allows.

In Indiana, BP promises to dump no extra pollution into Lake Michigan if it's allowed to increase capacity by 115,000 barrels per day. About $1.4 billion of BP's $3.8 billion construction cost would go to environmental controls, BP spokesman Scott Dean says.

However, the plant would produce more air pollution than it does now and continue to discharge 1,000 pounds of ammonia into the lake daily. "It's ironic people complain about $3-a-gallon gasoline," Dean says, "when we've got crude oil next door in Canada but can't refine it."

Higher living standards involve many things, and sometimes that means balancing one gain against another.

"People forget that the Great Lakes were the superhighway of North America for 150 years," says historian Christopher Gillcrist, executive director of the Great Lakes Historical Society in Vermilion, Ohio. In the early 1900s, the Great Lakes transformed America through the development of steel mills and related industries.

Don't forget the timber and the cement.

But foreign competition and technology started driving big factories out of business, a trend that accelerated in the 1970s and 1980s. The abandonment of toxic industrial sites coincided with the rise of environmentalism.

We also had containerization and railroad deregulation. The ore and cement carriers that are confined to the Upper Lakes have their use but the international shipping works out to fewer carloads a day than the North Shore Line handled in the years immediately before it was abandoned. Environmental awareness is a minor force.

Longtime conservation activist Lee Botts, 80, of Gary, Ind., says environmental laws in the 1960s and 1970s changed everything. The public won the right to challenge pollution before it occurred. "Before that, you couldn't take legal action until the damage had been done, and only then if you were personally harmed," she says. "Industry … didn't understand that things would never be the same."

Again, a tradeoff. Coasian bargaining may imply neutrality as to assignment of rights, but reassignments of rights do have income effects.

Today, mayors in Milwaukee, Manistee, Mich., and beyond want to remake Great Lakes waterfronts into upscale developments. Few plans have succeeded so far, despite government subsidies.

Suggest a more accurate conjunction than "despite."

The region's troubled economy and the legacy of toxic waste are big hurdles, too. So are disastrous urban-planning decisions made during earlier times.

A common problem: shorelines separated from downtowns by highways and railroad tracks, a remnant of a time when industry occupied the waterfront and people lived downtown.

In Waukegan, for example, a four-lane highway runs along the harbor. The highway doesn't go much of anywhere because the state never finished it. The road makes it nearly impossible to walk or bike to the 1,400-acre waterfront, which includes a public beach and the Superfund sites.

A hint for that "despite": Federal matching funds for superhighways. That, and a fundamental proposition from economics, a corollary of which was "If an expressway along the lakeshore were desirable, someone would already have built it." Sometimes that someone is the despised developer.

THE LIGHTBULB HAS TO WANT TO CHANGE. Don't work harder than the clients. Read and understand.

MAGIC(G.B.) = 0. The Packers clinch the Black and Blue, with some excellent special teams efforts turning what was a close game at the half into a runaway. Now if Detroit had managed to hold the Cowboys off at the end ...

ANTICIPATING A WHITE CHRISTMAS. The first trains are running at Northampton Grange.


I inherited some Depression-era Lionel large O Gauge pieces from my dad, acquired some additional pieces from neighbors, and this train includes some of the MTH Tinplate Tradition line that echoes those vintage pieces.

The weather forecasters are calling for additional snowstorms over the next week or so.

QUOTE OF THE DAY. In the midst of a smackdown of some latter-day vanguardism at Harvard, Margaret Soltan extends the notion of vocationalism.

Harvard-style vocationalism, in which you graduate with a brilliant degree in economics and become a hedge fund manager, is not at all the vocationalism of lesser institutions.

Study calculus.

EXPAND YOUR HORIZONS. Inside Higher Ed offers an unscientific yet quirky list of academic weblogs that might be of interest.

ALL-WEATHER MODES. The State Line has become the Main Line for Alberta Clippers:

Mitchell International Airport is back open after a runway closure that lasted four hours.

"We are officially back open and running," said airport spokesman Ryan McAdams at 10:20am Wednesday morning.

The constant lake effect snow that fell over Milwaukee, Racine, and Kenosha counties kept crews from keeping the runways clear.

Today's Hiawathas into Milwaukee: 331 41 late (at 10:41, in the aftermath of the snow), 333 7 late, 335 6 late, 337 9 late, 339 expected 2 late. Seven was 8 early into Milwaukee. Another pedestrian opted to get in the way of a train this evening.

WHERE THE BOYS AREN'T? George Leef suggests feminized schools alienate boys.

The ratio of men to women in college is not a problem in and of itself. The fact that fewer men are choosing college is largely explained by the fact that the labor market has more attractive jobs for young men without college degrees than for young women. A young man can earn rather good money doing construction work, auto mechanics, carpentry, truck driving and similar jobs that don't demand academic credentials.

For young women, there are fewer attractive options that don't call for any formal education after high school. Many women choose to continue with formal education instead of the vocational training that more men might choose.

What, no possibility of female auto technicians or throttle jockeys? But I digress. I think Mr Leef is challenging vulgar feminist pedagogies.

Under this approach, schools are replacing reading material that might appeal more to boys (for example, stories with adventure and conflict) with stories having "better" messages. They're also trying to reduce or eliminate competition.

The result is that school becomes less interesting for boys. Of course, many do well anyway, but this approach causes some to lose interest at an early age. Far more boys than girls get bored and drop out, in part because of the feminization of schooling.

So the dominance of women on campus may be alerting us to a real problem -- the fact that early education is turning many boys off, keeping them from making the most of opportunities to develop their minds.

I'm not persuaded. In my view, the greater problem is the failure of the common schools to properly prepare youngsters to develop their minds. The fads of the Colleges of Deaducation dull the female and the male mind alike.

THE SANCTION OF THE VICTIM. That's Atlas Shrugged language for "achievers have to consent to be looted and mooched in order for the looters and moochers to exert their power." It leads to a curious form of vanguardism in which the emergent order of a self-organizing society has to be organized by John Galt. The analogous argument in cultural studies is "false consciousness" in which people go along with existing systems of oppression until the vanguard does some consciousness-raising. The problem with both visions is that people subject to mooching, or to oppression, as you wish, do have the option of finding something else to do.

Where I go to graduate school, the senior faculty members have an abysmal publishing record, yet advise the graduate students to ‘publish or perish.’ They take a year’s worth of sabbaticals, while graduate students teach three first year composition classes and attempt to write a dissertation in their ‘sparetime.’ My alcoholic dissertation advisor lives in another state, and I've been left without any sort of faculty mentorship.

In previous posts, I've suggested that faculty members are complicit in the erosion of higher education. The graduate student lament suggests the complicity doesn't end there. I could start with "why enroll in a graduate program where the senior faculty aren't keeping current?"

The reality is this: perhaps at other Universities, graduate students are brought in to actually be trained as scholars. However, my people (the defeated, the disillusioned) know that we are cheap labor, period, doing the jobs no one else wants to do. I’d be far less defeated if I felt I received an actual education: just one-quarter of what I give to my students.

So opt out.

Graduate school, at least in my experience, is not about the quality of one’s research: it’s about efficiency. I was even advised, in one of those rare moments in which I received something that vaguely approximated mentorship, that I should switch my dissertation to multicultural studies because it’s 'hot right now.'

That's probably the best reason to opt out. I've spent many a day in the interview suite, speaking with aspiring colleagues, and I'm not alone in thinking that too many of the job candidates look the same (perhaps it's "representative agents" or "unit roots and cointegration" rather than multicultural studies) and their willingness to investigate the latest academic fad signals something other than the inquisitiveness and initiative of a successful scholar.

We are defeated because we came in the door, with the love of our discipline fully intact. We are then told to ‘give up the individuality thing and package yourself, because it’s a corporate world, baby.’ It’s the corporate world and we graduate students are the bottom feeders. In my discipline, there are very few jobs available and in all likelihood, I will be working at Sears next year. I’m defeated, because I’m a devoted, good teacher. I’m defeated because I see faculty members with twenty-times my income spend a year on sabbatical, while I write countless letters of recommendation on behalf of my students. I ask one student, “why aren’t you asking an actual PhD for this recommendation to law school,” to which he responds: “I don’t know them, they don’t know my name, they’re never around.

So yes, the faculty are complicit in abandoning the students, but I don't see the point in pursuing a meaningless degree in a field (is it one of the evergreen disciplines) with no job prospects, especially where the faculty have apparently given up on their Ph.D. students.

CONTEMPLATING SPEED. I purchased a recent print edition of Popular Mechanics to read, once again, about supertrains. There's the usual heavy breathing about magnetic levitation and high speed electric trains.




There's also contemplation of accelerated diesel train service, where the hypothetical is a 400 mile trip, which the magazine treats as the equivalent of Baltimore to Boston, with a running time of 7 hours 5 minutes, which works out to 425 minutes.

Time, once again, for a look at the June 1954 Official Guide. We begin tonight's lesson on page 987 with the Afternoon Hiawatha leaving St. Paul at 1 pm, reaching LaCrosse (129 miles) at 2.58 pm, after a four minute stop reaching New Lisbon (189 miles) at 3.52 pm to board passengers from Up North, Milwaukee (325 miles) at 5.50 pm and Chicago (410 miles) at 7.15 pm. That's 375 minutes inclusive of stops, and that's not the fastest timing for the service.

(It pains me to contrast the Olympian Hiawatha listed on the same page with today's Empire Builder. Olympian off St. Paul 7.10 am, Winona 8.40, LaCrosse 9.15, Tomah 9.51, Portage 10.42, Milwaukee 12.20 pm, Chicago 1.45. Builder off Midway Station 7.50 am, Winona 10.11, LaCrosse 10.47, Tomah 11.28, Portage 12.27 pm, Milwaukee 2.07, Chicago 3.55 including a 30 minute recovery margin Glenview-Chicago.)

Or perhaps the Afternoon Zephyr listed at page 1030 is better suited to a business trip. Leave St. Paul at 4 pm, reaching LaCrosse (130 miles) at 5.48, Savanna (282 miles) at 8.02, and Chicago (427 miles) at 10.15 pm. (There's a weekday Acela Express off Baltimore at 4.30 into New York (185 miles) at 6.45, departing at 7 and into Boston (416 miles) at 10.35. The Acela achieves speeds of 150 mph on some stretches of track in rural Rhode Island and Massachusetts but has to take it easy on the curvy tracks in Connecticut. Elsewhere in the country, are souped up electric trains really necessary to achieve such running times? Not in my experience.)

Our Madison readers might be interested in the Twin Cities - Dakota 400 listing on page 814. Leave St. Paul at 12.30 pm, change at Wyeville (162 miles) at 3.07 pm and arrive Madison (255 miles) at 5.10 pm. The Wyeville to Madison portion is a twisty railroad through the driftless area (great bike trail potential ...) and some very scenic country but the scheduled time is still 280 minutes for the 255 miles, and there's some very fast running between Eau Claire and Wyeville.

Popular Mechanics notes,

Building high-speed train routes in the U.S. would not be easy or cheap. Almost every proposed route faces some sort of political fight, and, depending on who you ask and what technology you’re considering, the cost per mile of high-speed rail is anywhere from $5 million to $100 million. However, more and more transportation engineers and city planners are starting to see high-speed rail as the only rational way to ease the strain that booming populations are placing on their already overwhelmed infrastructure.

I submit that faster trains, in much of the country, are possible at much lower outlays than those feared.

MORE ON FACULTY COMPLICITY.

Welcome, visitors from Minding The Campus. Donald Downs of the University of Wisconsin extends a previous essay.

At so-called major universities, tenure-track faculty members are rewarded primarily for their research efforts, and they are often just too busy to worry about agendas pushed by various administrators and students. (To be sure, research should not be disparaged. Society needs the best research, and somebody has to produce what others teach.) Minding the campus takes time and effort, and it is seldom rewarded financially.

He goes on with a cross-reference.

Stephen Karlson of Northern Illinois University raises a further point in responding to my last essay on his blog. Universities are divided between senior faculty members with tenure and faculty members without tenure (most of whom are not even on the tenure track at all). These are the people who usually teach large courses, as many senior faculty disdain reaching out to large numbers of students - another problem of citizenship. Without the protection of tenure, they are more vulnerable if they resist the pressures of staff and others who promote politically correct agendas. At Wisconsin, for example, teaching assistants - perhaps the most vulnerable of all campus citizens - are exposed to sensitivity training that even my most liberal graduate students find exceedingly insulting and bullying. They complain to one another and to associates, but are reluctant to speak too loudly. (Alas, this is an area academic freedom advocates have not dealt with at Wisconsin or elsewhere.)

Supervising professors have a responsibility to protect the time of their graduate assistants. I'm not in a position to suggest much, however, as the Northern Illinois economics department doesn't offer any of the large lecture classes with armies of graduate assistants to protect the professors' time.

AN ELECTION UNLIKE MANY OTHERS. I'm not pleased with a Presidential campaign that seems to have begun immediately after the votes were counted in November, 2004, but perhaps the nominees are less clearly defined going into the primary season than has recently been the case. Last Thursday, I attended a Cato Policy Perspectives presentation and lunch in Chicago that included Robert Novak parsing the presidential races. He noted that by this time in almost all of the previous campaigns, the Republican Party establishment had reached consensus on a nominee to be offered to the primaries and caucuses in such a way that The People could ratify the Bull Elephants' selection, whether that selection was electable (Ronald Reagan) or sacrificial (Bob Dole). In this cycle, there is no such selection, in part because the most likely selectee, Senator McCain, has been too willing to taunt the Bull Elephants. Mr Novak also noted that the Republicans are in a position long familiar to the Democrats: the coalition includes individuals unlikely to vote for the opposing candidate but who cannot be allowed to put their own candidate forward. He suggests that Arkansas's Governor Huckabee, with appeal to the Religious Right, has the potential to be a Republican George McGovern.

There are other signs of fracture in the Republican coalition. Ferroequinologist and long-time guru of traditional conservatism Paul Weyrich observes,

"We have dissipated our influence," he says in the run-up to the first nominating contest in Iowa on Jan. 3.

Activists have gone every which way in a field that lacks an unblemished consensus conservative, and at a time when debate over the future of conservatism is in full roar.

Weyrich's is a familiar and distinctive voice in that debate, a voice of pronounced cultural traditionalism, old-fashioned aversion to internationalism, and deep ambivalence about the Bush presidency now nearing its end.

"President Bush has essentially split the conservative movement," says Weyrich, referring in particular to the war in Iraq and Bush's expansive, democracy-promoting foreign policy vision, anathema to that perhaps dormant segment of the right that remains rooted in what Weyrich calls a "traditional (Robert) Taft conservatism" that frowns on imperial "adventurism" and foreign entanglements.

Add that to other conservative complaints with Bush over immigration and federal spending, and you have a movement debating its future along fault lines old and new: Audacious "big government" conservatism vs. Jeffersonian small government conservatism. Neo-conservatives vs. noninterventionists. Libertarians vs. moralists. Wall Street vs. Main Street.

Mr Weyrich appears to view those fractures as undesirable, in that they impede the realization of his vision. At the conference, Mr Novak noted that the Framers' design was for government to be fractured, so that no faction, no matter how sensible its proposals might seem, can secure lasting power, no doubt to the relief of those in factions who would not see those proposals as sensible.