Bill Kristol wants David French to run for president against Trump and Hillary: Don't bring a knife to a gun fight

Bill Kristol, Editor of Weekly Standard, is promoting David French, a National Review writer, to run for president as an independent against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

What a terrible thing to do to Mr. French. It's like throwing a puppy into a nest of crocodiles.  And isn't Donald having enough fun already? Do we really need to give him another person to belittle and ridicule?

On the other hand, French is a Presbyterian as is Trump; and Hillary is a Methodist. I would love to see these candidates debate theology.

St. Catharine College and Dowling College are closing: "After us, the deluge."

After us, the deluge.  I care not what happens when I am dead and gone.

Marquise de Pompadour

Just this week, two small colleges announced they are closing: St. Catharine College, a Catholic institution in Kentucky; and Dowling College, a private school on Long Island.  

Clearly, a lot of small private colleges are in trouble. Last autumn, Moody's Investor Service predicted a sharp increase in the number of college closures, forecasting that 15 would close in 2017. I think Moody's is far too optimistic. By 2017, I think we will see three or four colleges shutting down every month.

What's going on? Several things.

Small colleges have priced themselves out of their markets. First, many small non-elite colleges have priced themselves out of their markets. Tuition has been rising every year for the past 20 years, and even obscure little colleges now charge students from $30,000 to $35,000 a year, just for tuition. For years, students and their parents passively submitted to yearly tuition hikes; but no more. Mom and Pop aren't willing to pay $100,000 for Suzie or Johnny to get a bachelor's degree from an undistinguished private college.

It's true that small private colleges are heavily discounting their tuition--almost 50 percent for first-time freshmen. And it is true that students can take out student loans to pay for their college tuition. But families are not sure whether they will get a tuition discount big enough to fit their budgets or whether they are getting as good a discount as another family gets. They've lost trust in the integrity of the admission process.

And young people have finally begun reading the newspapers and are waking up to the fact that student-loan debt can be a financial death sentence for graduates who don't quickly find good jobs. They have become wary about enrolling at a little college named after a saint they've never heard of. Who in the hell is Saint Scholastica  anyway?

Onerous federal regulations have raised operating costs. So price is a factor.  But there is another reason why small colleges are closing. Federal regulation have become too onerous for small schools to manage. They simply cannot afford to comply with ever more burdensome regulations that spew out of the Department of Education.  The Department's 2011 "Dear Colleague" letter on sexual harassment triggered a flurry of new college regulations, policies, and training programs to meet DOE's heightened standards for complying with Title IX. DOE's new transgender restroom rules will cost colleges money, and the rules will be a real headache for the little religious colleges that pride themselves on their traditional moral values.

Here's an example of how colleges are being subject to more and more federal regulation. Virginia Tech suffered a horrible tragedy when a deranged gunman massacred more than thirty students in 2007. The University was sued for negligence after the incident, but the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that Virginia Tech was not liable under Virginia tort law.

But the Department of Education concluded that Virginia Tech violated the Clery Act in the way it alerted students about an ongoing threat and assessed a fine against the University. The fine wasn't large compared to Virginia Tech's overall budget, but the University spent a lot of money defending against DOE's charge, and it will spend even more trying to make sure it does not run afoul of the Clery Act again.

Virginia Tech is big enough and rich enough to deal with DOE's mandates, but hundreds of small colleges don't have the resources for dealing with the ever growing complexity of the federal regulatory environment.

St. Catharine College is a case in point. It got squeezed by DOE, which held up its federal student aid money based on some technical issue. The college sued but apparently didn't get relief. This week it announced its closure, which it said was triggered by DOE sanctions.

Small liberal arts colleges are headed for extinction and there is no way to revive them.  Small colleges have implemented all sorts of strategies to keep their enrollments up and maintain their revenues. Many have tried to reinvent themselves by hiring marketing firms to enhance their images and juice their enrollments.

By and large, this strategy has failed. Let's face it: hiring a marketing firm to design an edgy college logo or a catchy slogan is no remedy for the massive problems facing the nation's small liberal arts colleges.

I don't see any way to revive the small liberal arts college. Their tuition rates are too high, and offering heavy discounts has not lured middle class students into small-college classrooms.

Moreover, the Department of Education does not care whether it is regulating small colleges out of business. The DOE minions probably gave each other high fives when they heard St. Catherine is closing its doors.

Nor is there any way for colleges to walk away from their total dependence on federal student aid and the federal regulations that come with it. The colleges drank the Kool Aid of federal student-loan money, and their is no antidote.

If you are an administrator or a professor at a small college and you are nearing retirement, perhaps you don't care about the demise of liberal arts colleges. As Marquise de Pompadour put it: "After us the deluge.  I care not what happens when I am dead and gone." But a young person with a new Ph.D. would be a fool to try to build a career by taking a job at a small liberal arts college. 

References

Another Small Private Closes Its Doors. Inside Higher Ed, June 1, 2016. Accesible at https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/06/01/another-small-private-closes-its-doors-dowling-college?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=a0fafeb056-DNU20160601&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-a0fafeb056-198564813

Paul Fain. The Department and St. Catharine.  Inside Higher Ed, June 2, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/06/02/small-private-college-closes-blames-education-department-sanction?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3d1c6eed79-DNU20160602&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3d1c6eed79-198565653

Lyndsey Layton. Virginia Tech pays fine for failure to warn campus during 2007 massacre. Washington Post, April 16, 2014. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/virginia-tech-pays-fine-for-failure-to-warn-during-massacre/2014/04/16/45fe051a-c5a6-11e3-8b9a-8e0977a24aeb_story.html

Kellie Woodhouse. Closures to Triple. Inside Higher Education, September 28, 2015. Accessile at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/28/moodys-predicts-college-closures-triple-2017

Jerry Brown endorses Clinton: Governor Moonbeam takes a fall for Crooked Hillary

I've long been a fan of Jerry Brown, Governor of California. He is 78 years old now, but he was 36 years old when he was elected Governor of California back in 1974--the youngest governor of the state in over a hundred years. Brown was a progressive politician then--Governor Moonbeam they called him. I admired his politics when I was a youth, and I would have voted for him if I'd been given an opportunity back when he ran for President in 1976.  He once dated Linda Ronstadt, and I gave him a lot of points for that.

But like the movie character Peter Pan, played by Robin Williams, Jerry grew up, and he started listening to what the grownups say. Now, one week before the California primary election, Jerry comes out for Crooked Hillary.

I feel sorry for Jerry Brown. He had a chance to make an important moral statement but he choked. He did what the Democratic political bosses wanted him to do.

Surely Jerry knows the old world is passing away. The status quo won't last forever. Jerry could have joined the Sanders revolution and remained true to the ideals of his younger days.

But Jerry Brown lost his nerve. At this crisis point in American history, Jerry turned out to be just an old man.

Jerry Brown: Unfortunately, Peter Pan grew up

Jerry and Linda Ronstadt: Those were the days

References

Jerry Brown. Open Letter to California Democrats and Independents, May 31, 2016. http://www.jerrybrown.org/an_open_letter_to_california_democrats_and_independents

Barney Frank, World Class Sleaze, Accuses Bernie Sanders of McCarthyism

Barney Frank, former Congressman from Massachusetts, will be one of Hillary Clinton's Super Delegates at the Democratic Convention. Indeed, Frank is on the Convention's Platform  Committee. That fact that Barney Frank is a Hillary partisan is reason enough to be a Bernie Sanders supporter.

Most people have forgotten that Barney Frank paid for sex with a male prostitute, hired the guy to be a personal assistant and then turned a blind eye while the prostitute ran a prostitution ring out of Frank's apartment.  (Frank claimed he did not know his apartment was being used for prostitution, and he may have been telling the truth.) And all of this while Frank represented the state of Massachusetts in Congress. The House of Representatives reprimanded Frank, not for hiring a prostitute, but for writing a misleading letter to the prostitute's probation officer. Oh yes. And Frank used his congressional privilege to fix more than 30 of the prostitute's parking tickets

You don't have to believe me.  Read about it in the New York Times and other respected newspapers.

Frank was on the House Financial Services Committee in 2005, when he downplayed concerns about the bubble in the housing industry. Millions of Americans suffered losses in the financial downturn of 2008, but not Frank. As  Liz Peak  reported in 2011, Frank did quite well during the financial crisis and retired from Congress comfortably fixed: 

As a steward of the nation’s purse during the financial crisis Mr. Frank may not have succeeded, but he did quite well personally. Unusually, Mr. Frank’s personal finances sailed right through the downturn. In 2006 he reported assets valued between $525,020 and $1.6 million; by 2010 Mr. Franks’ net worth had soared to between $1.9 million and $4.6 million, with nary a down year in between. No wonder he can afford to retire. 

 And now Frank, speaking as a Super Delegate for Hillary Clinton, has the effrontery to accuse Bernie Sanders--the only decent person left in the presidential race--of McCarthyism!

Barney Frank is one of roughly 400 Democratic Party insiders who have profited from politics while the American economy spirals downward. And Frank's vote as a Super Delegate is worth more than a coal miner's vote in the West Virginia primary or a Walmart clerk's vote in the Oklahoma primary.

The media elites--all self-proclaimed progressives--have closed their eyes to Hillary's cronyism and self-dealing and have thrown their support to Bernie's opponent.

But I have a message for all Hillary's media lap dogs who are disparaging Bernie Sanders--Frank Bruni, Froma Harrop, Cokie and Steve Roberts, etc. etc. etc. Hillary Clinton will not be the next president of the United States.  And the public will remember the journalists who were confronted with a choice between sleaze and decency during the 2016 presidential campaign and who chose to support sleaze.

Barney Frank, a Hillary Super Delegate, Accuses Bernie Sanders of McCarthyism

  
References

 Allan Gold. Frank Acknowledges Hiring Male Prostitute as Personal Aide. New York Times, August 25, 1989. Accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/26/us/rep-frank-acknowledges-hiring-male-prostitute-as-personal-aide.html?pagewanted=all

Mark Finkelstein. Hillary Fan Barney Frank Accuses of Bernie Sanders of 'McCarthyism."MRC Newsbusters, April 6, 2016. Accessible at http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/mark-finkelstein/2016/04/06/hillary-fan-barney-frank-accuses-bernie-sanders-mccarthyism

Froma Harrop, Bernie Sanders and Racism Lite. Seattle Times, May 19, 2016. Accessible at http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/bernie-sanders-and-racism-lite/

Frances Romero. Sinful Statesman Barney Frank. Time Magazine, June 8, 2011. Accessible at http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1721111_1721210_1883878,00.html

A Timeline of Politicians and Prostitutes. U.S. News & World Report, March 11, 2008. http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/03/11/a-timeline-of-politicians-and-prostitutes

Liz Peek. Barney Frank Won't Have To Worry About Money In Retirement. Fox News, December 2, 2011. Accessible at http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/12/02/barney-frank-wont-have-to-worry-about-money-in-retirement.html

Cokie and Steve Roberts. Bernie Sanders plays a dangerous game. Baton Rouge Advocate, May 30, 2016, p. 5B.  Also accessible at  http://kpcnews.com/opinions/other_columnists/kpcnews/article_ac1c34ff-ce96-5376-89c8-26841b44436a.html

Navient Solutions and Student Assistance Corporation stung for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act: 727 automated phone calls to student debtor's mother!

Navient Solutions, Inc. and Student Assistance Corporation (SAC) got stung last month by a federal district court for violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Navient made 249 automated collection calls to Willie McCaskill, a student debtor's mother.  Co-Defendant Student Assistance Corporation made another 478 automated calls to McCaskill's phone number.

As explained by the court, McCaskill is entitled to $500 for each violation, which adds up to $363,500.  In addition, the court will hold a trial to determine whether the defendants violations were wilful, which would entitle to McCaskill to treble damages. Let's hope she wins.

Navient and SAC asserted a goofy defense, which the court rejected. They argued that McCaskill "gave express consent" to being called about her daughter's debt. The court pointed out that Navient presented no evidence showing that McCaskill knowingly released her phone number to the debt collectors or that she had had any contact with them before they started calling. As if any mom would agree to getting bombarded with hundreds of phone calls from her daughter's creditors.

SAC and Navient also argued that McCaskill and her daughter were in an agency relationship, and that the daughter had legal authority to consent to the phone calls on her mother's behalf. But this is what the daughter testified:

You don't give out my mom's number, which is her business. I handle my own business, she handles her own business .. . .She stay over there, and I stay over here.

The court ruled that the defendants identified no evidence that questioned the daughter's testimony. Accordingly, the court granted McCaskill summary judgment on her TCPA claims.

Who is Navient Solutions anyway? Here's how it introduces itself on the web:

Although our name is new, our business is not. For more than 40 years we learned, evolved, and led in loan management, servicing and asset recovery as Sallie Mae^®. And now, we continue to lead as Navient, a company dedicated to helping our clients and the people we serve along the path to financial success.

Navient also says "it is committed to fulfilling our role as an active corporate citizen with integrity and transparency." And oh yes. Navient is big into philanthropy, boasting that "[w]e recognize the importance of corporate philanthropy by giving back to our own communities and encouraging employees to volunteer."

Navient sounds like a model corporate citizen.  But if all Navient says about itself is true, why did it make 249 harassing telephone calls to a student debtor's mother?

References

McCaskill v. Navient Solutions, Inc., No. 8:15-cv-1559-T-33TBM (M.D. Fla. April 6, 2016).

Free tuition for first-time freshmen at good private liberal arts colleges: Why the hell not?

Small liberal arts colleges are in trouble all over the United States. They're having a heck of a time attracting students, as families respond more and more negatively to outrageous tuition prices. Let's face it: not many people want to pay $100,000 to obtain a degree from a nondescript liberal arts college in Nowhereville, Indiana,

In a desperate effort to attract warm bodies, liberal arts colleges have been discounting their tuition drastically for first-time freshmen, behaving more and more like rug sellers in an Arab bazaar.  (I apologize if I made a politically incorrect observation.) For the past several years, the discount rate has gone ever upward; and last year, private liberal arts colleges discounted tuition for first-time freshman by nearly 50 percent! And they discounted tuition for undergraduates as a whole by more than 40 percent.

All commentators agree: this trend can't go on forever.  And colleges can't reverse course by simply lowering their tuition rates because they would be admitting that they've been overbilling their clients. As one observer noted, if you've been selling Toyotas for $30,000 apiece, how can you explain why you now only charge $20,000?

But what about this? Why don't small private liberal arts colleges--the ones that still have good reputations--offer applicants free tuition for the first year to everyone who enrolls?

Think about it. Colleges have already cut tuition by 50 percent on average for freshmen, and they're still having trouble meeting their enrollment targets. And once they get the little rascals in the door, they still have to discount tuition by more than 40 percent.

If a college offered free tuition for freshman, there would be two good consequences. First, the college would get more applicants and a higher percentage of applicants who are accepted would actually enroll. And second, the college could be more selective because the overall quality of the applicant pool would improve.

Of course, such a move would have to be planned carefully. Here's how I would do it:

1) The college making the  offer would promise to admit students based on published academic criteria--without regard to race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. Applicants would know that their credentials were being judged transparently based solely on academic considerations.

2) Students who accept the offer would agree to attend the college a second year and pay the full tuition price if the college didn't offer a sophomore-year discount.

3) Colleges making this offer would assign their best faculty members to teach freshmen so that students who enrolled would have a top-notch freshman year and thus would be more likely return as sophomores. No more crowding a couple of hundred freshmen into theatre-style classrooms to be taught by an inexperienced graduate assistant or a burned-out gas bag who should have never gotten tenure.

This is a risky strategy I know. But colleges are already charging freshmen half price, and many are still seeing their enrollments decline. If offering a free year led to a 50 percent bump in freshman enrollment, that would absorb a good deal of the cost of this strategy if those students could be retained as sophomores, juniors and seniors.

One thing for sure--college administrators are playing a losing game right now. They can't go on giving big tuition discounts to favored students using secret criteria that families don't understand. They can't rely on public relations firms, perky recruiters, and billboard advertising to juice their enrollments.

The public has figured out that a liberal arts degree from an obscure private college is overpriced. To bring back the paying customers, the colleges must offer value. What better way to communicate value than by giving new students a year of free tuition and then offering a first-class educational experience?

Or is that too simplistic?

References

Rick Seltzer. Discount rates rise yet again at private colleges and universities. Inside Higher Ed, May 16, 2016. Accessible at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/05/16/discount-rates-rise-yet-again-private-colleges-and-universities.

University of Phoenix is eliminating mandatory arbitration clauses in its student agreements. Hmmm. When a for-profit does the right thing, it's probably in trouble

On May 19th, Apollo Education Group, which owns University of Phoenix, announced that it is eliminating mandatory arbitration clauses in its student contracts. This is good news and is in harmony with the Department of Education's desire to do away with arbitration clauses in for-profit universities' student agreements.

Arbitration clauses, as many commentators have noted, tend to favor corporate entities over individuals. Students who signed arbitration agreements can't sue the institution they attended in court even if they have a fraud claim. Arbitration clauses generally prohibit class action suits, which would be a useful way for a group of defrauded students to band together to get relief. And arbitration decisions are generally secret. Thus, even if a university loses an arbitration dispute with a student who was victimized, other injured students are unlikely to learn about it.

Please forgive my cynicism about the for-profit industry, but here's my first reaction. When a for-profit college does the right thing, it's probably in trouble. And University of Phoenix is in big trouble.

Enrollments are down by more than half from Phoenix's peak enrollments. Its stock price, once as high as $90 a share, is now selling for a little more than nine bucks. The key senior executives have negotiated a deal with three private equity groups to buy the Apollo Education Group and Phoenix, and all the big boys will get golden parachutes.

The key player in the buyout partnership is Martin Nesbitt, literally Barack Obama's best friend. And the guy in charge (if the deal goes through) will be Tony Miller, former Deputy Secretary of Education in the Obama administration.  Such a cozy arrangement.

So what the heck--why not eliminate mandatory arbitration clauses now, especially since that is what the Department of Education wants the for-profits to do.

But--as I've said before--DOE's push against mandatory arbitration clauses is tardy. President Obama has been in office seven and half years, and DOE is just now getting around to addressing this serious problem. And new rules will be going through a negotiated rulemaking process that the for-profit industry knows well. There is a very good chance that any new rule restricting mandatory arbitration clauses in student enrollment agreements will be watered down.

Nevertheless, Apollo Education Group's announcement is a good start, and higher-education reformers should take heart. Not that there are any higher-education reformers. Just you and me; that's just about everybody.

References

U.S. Department of Education. U.S. Department of Education Takes Further Steps to Protect Students from Predatory Higher Education Institutions. March 11, 2016. Accessible at http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-takes-further-steps-protect-students-predatory-higher-education-institutions?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term=

News Release. Apollo Education Group to Eliminate Mandatory Arbitration Clauses. May 19, 2016.
Accessible at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=79624&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=2169809

Ronald Hansen. Apollo Education sale 'golden parachute' could be worth $22 million to executives. Arizona Republic, March 8, 2016. Accessible at http://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/2016/03/08/apollo-education-sale-executives-payout-22-million/81483912/

Sarah Jones. Top Apollo Education Investor Urges Board to Resist Takeover. Bloomberg News, January 29, 2016. Accessible at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-29/top-apollo-education-investor-urges-board-to-resist-takeover

Patria Cohen and Chad Bray. University of Phoenix Owner, Apollo Education Group, Will Be Taken Private. New York Times, February 8, 2016. Accessible at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/09/business/dealbook/apollo-education-group-university-of-phoenix-owner-to-be-taken-private.html

Soyong Kim. Apollo teams with Washington insider for education deal. Reuters, January 12, 2016. Accessible at http://www.reuters.com/article/us-apollo-education-m-a-apollo-global-idUSKCN0UQ23W20160112

Dan Primack. Obama's 'best friend' raises millions for private equity fund. Fortune Magazine, August 11, 2014. Accessible at http://fortune.com/2014/08/11/obamas-best-friend-raises-millions-for-private-equity-fund/