Six on "our" Economy: these grandparents became America’s unofficial social safety net; Pearson and Google Partner to Steal t
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panaritisp
Mar 25, 2019, 3:51:18 PM3/25/19
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Six on "our" Economy: these grandparents became America’s unofficial social safety net; Pearson and Google Partner to Steal the Minds of Children; the Long History of Elites Gaming the College Admissions System; Bribery is just the cost of doing business; Failure to Increase the Gas Tax Signals American Decline; A bigger scandal at colleges — underpaid professors
How these grandparents became America’s unofficial social safety net
"American grandparents have long raised their grandkids when their children are unfit or unable to do so. They took over child care during the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s, especially among African American families.
Now grandparents are stepping up again, Census Bureau data shows. This time, the burden is largely shifting to low-income white families."
How these grandparents became America’s unofficial social safety net
How these grandparents became America’s unofficial social safety net
A force that's quietly upending the work and retirement of millions of older Americans.
Pearson and Google Partner to Steal the Minds of Children
Pearson and Google Partner to Steal the Minds of Children – Alan Singer on Daily Kos
Pearson and Google Partner to Steal the Minds of Children
Parents and teachers worry about how much time young children and adolescents spend in front of hypnotizing computer, phone, and television screens and its impact on brain, emotional and intellectual development. In 2018, the average age for American...
A Sociology Professor on the Long History of Elites Gaming the College Admissions System
Bribery is just the cost of doing business
"Take the example of Rolls-Royce, known for its prestigious automobiles and aircraft engines. Between 1987 and 2016, the company’s revenue exploded from £2.8-billion ($4.9-billion) to £76-billion, according to The Financial Times. Its success was initially credited to a dynamic combination of superior technology and brilliant corporate management. But a recent criminal investigation by U.S. and British authorities flipped that narrative on its head: Between 1989 and 2013, law enforcement found, the key to success at Rolls-Royce was a global system of bribery. It hired middlemen in at least eight countries, who in turn used shell companies to pay off government officials in India, China, Russia and many other countries. The company’s bribes reaped at least £250-million in profits. But then, in 2017, the company’s fortunes came crashing down: After it agreed to settle charges with U.S. and British authorities, Rolls-Royce paid more than US$800-million in fines, one of the largest such bribery fines on record. Today, its reputation for class is also synonymous with unparalleled corruption.
What was truly striking about that corruption was not just the scale, but that this otherwise highly innovative company chose to compete in a manner that was, well, so un-innovative. Rolls-Royce did not devise a cutting-edge sales strategy to promote its products, coupled with a sustainable business model that included opting out of corrupt markets. It used the same sales method – hiring middlemen, funnelling bribes through offshore shell companies – that unscrupulous corporations have been using since after the Second World War (after Watergate, the Chairman of Gulf Oil testified before the U.S. Congress that his firm had used the system of funnelling bribes through offshore companies beginning in 1958). And because those bribes reaped rewards in the short term, Rolls-Royce opted not to innovate. But, as it learned the hard way, bribes are not only crude and illegal; they are also highly inefficient (studies show that firms waste precious resources arranging and hiding bribery schemes, and that this subterfuge undermines employee morale), often unsustainable (bribes are already illegal in dozens of countries, and global enforcement of anti-bribery laws is at an all-time high) and outdated."
It’s inefficient and illegal, but companies don’t want to be left behind
"Yet, this may be a symptom of national decline rather than a cause. The U.S. often starts out full of energy and vigor when it comes to new and daunting tasks -- and has been willing to spend lots of cold hard cash. But these days we lose enthusiasm about halfway through. The Marshall Plan and the Apollo moon mission stand out as examples of huge projects that took years of follow through. Or how about the Eisenhower-era Interstate Highway System, which is deteriorating even as we write because of lack of funding from the gas tax? But it's harder to name recent bold projects of comparable scope that have been undertaken and seen through to completion.
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Marshall Plan
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Now, if you want to see a country that does take on those big, bold projects, look no further than China. If we were to determine which nation is on the rise based on investment in infrastructure, which country looks to be rising and which looks like a nation in retreat?
I would like nothing better than for Congress to prove me wrong. Pass a gas tax and bring America's bridges, tunnels and roads fully up to date with smart-traffic controls and embedded signals ready for the next generation of autonomous vehicles. Rebuild the nation's dismal sea and airports, harden our electrical and data grid, make the nation's infrastructure again the world’s best.
But more likely than not, I'm going to be disappointed one more time. We should be better than this, but it's getting harder to escape the conclusion that we're not."
Failure to Increase the Gas Tax Signals American Decline
Failure to Increase the Gas Tax Signals American Decline
Barry Ritholtz
The country’s roads and bridges are in dismal shape. Finding the money to fix them shouldn’t be this hard.
A bigger scandal at colleges — underpaid professors
"As shocking as this scandal may be, I can’t help but entertain what is also shocking: What these folks did is not the worst thing happening in our educational system. Another scandal is not what is done illegally in the name of higher education, but what is done legally.
Despite the $500,000 bribes and $2.5 million donations (looking at you, Jared Kushner), our whole university system runs on severely underpaid adjuncts and nontenured faculty. Many of our colleges are veritable intellectual sweatshops. One study found that only about 17 percent of college professors are tenured; contingent faculty compose the majority. A 2015 survey
Survey: The State of Adjunct Professors
Bettina Chang
In our new survey, 62 percent of adjuncts say they make less than $20,000 a year from teaching, and 88 percent s...
found that 62 percent of adjuncts earned less than $20,000 a year. Their median pay per course, as of 2014, was roughly $2,700. This army of educators often lacks health insurance as well.
Instead of praying at the altar of the colleges that have been dubbed desirable, parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids might do us all a favor and scan the (usually low) percentage of courses taught by tenured or tenure-track professors and choose to complain about it. They might then choose another university for their kid to attend.
The University of Southern California — the college that was the object of desire for Lori Loughlin and her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, who paid a startling amount to get her Instagram-“famous” daughter into it — leans heavily on its underpaid adjuncts. According College Factual, a startling 40 percent of their professors are adjuncts. The rise in nontenured faculty has been accompanied by an astronomical rise in the number of administrative positions at USC. And the adjuncts are paid poorly. As one former adjunct wrote, “I taught as an adjunct instructor at the University of Southern California for six years. At one point, I did the math on my pay and the average USC tuition and figured out that my pay for teaching a course was less than the tuition that just one student was being charged for just that one course.”
How colleges are using adjunct instructors to rip off their students
With colleges using low-paid adjunct instructors, tuition paid by struggling families is now subsidizing wealthy...
While the college admissions scandal is being sorted out in a court of law, the cruelty and sloppiness of rich colleges’ overreliance on underpaid adjuncts has clear solutions as well. One of them is what I call the Fair Labor Seal, which is the equivalent to LEED certification. If colleges adopted the seal and it was given to a particular institution, the seal could serve as proof that the colleges paid their adjuncts at least $7,000 per course, provided them health insurance at some juncture, and let them participate in department decision-making with their colleagues. Other fixes include the admission of adjuncts into academic unions and limits on the number of new administrators that are hired.
Today, as we all gloat over the new lows that stars with beautiful ash blonde hair and a weakness for name-brand — albeit sometimes second-tier — universities have fallen to, we should also question why we are so horrified by their acts. Why are we not distraught by the ordinary scandal of adjunct mania at universities?"
Related
Full coverage of the college bribery scheme
Alissa Quart is the author of “Squeezed: Why Our Families Can’t Afford America,’’ and the executive director of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.
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