Higher Ed
The dubious mania for more college graduates

According to the new conventional wisdom, more and more jobs will require more skill in the future, so increasing the number of college graduates must be a national priority. A little critical thought, however, demolishes this dogma.

By George Leef
John William Pope Center
for Higher Education Policy

Fifty years ago, college education was sold to students as a way of broadening their intellectual horizons. The curriculum was filled with courses in literature, philosophy, history and so on. If you were looking for job training, that was mostly found in the job market itself, or at technical institutes and community colleges.

Strangely, the situation has changed almost 180 degrees. Today most people look to higher education for job training (or at least preparation) and great numbers of students believe that without a college degree, they will be unemployable in all but menial labor. At the same time, the old idea that the purpose of a college education is to broaden one's intellectual horizons has been largely relegated to the broom closet. True, quite a few institutions still pay lip service to the importance of a liberal education, but in fact it is quite easy for students at most of them to earn a BA without taking any of the kind of courses that used to be the pillars of the curriculum. Students who want to learn about, say, philosophy or history would be better off looking for a good lecture series on tape than looking through the course catalogue..

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Phone Service
Sprint’s spin-off of Nevada operation to become sell-off?

Company filed with state utilities commission in August for a spin-off that would occur in 2006.

By Valerie Miller
Business Press

Sprint Nextel's recently announced decision to spin off its traditional land-line operations into a separate company could be the first step in the division's eventual sale. Millions of people—especially consumers younger than 30—now turn to wireless phones rather than the century-old phone-to-wall technology, say industry experts.

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Regulation
A less sticky
brand of red tape

Any regulation can be abusive, annoying, or ridiculous. But for many small businesses, local rules still fit better than the federal kind.

By Cait Murphy
Fortune Small Business

Provide an extra six weeks of job-protected family leave. A written accident-prevention plan for even the teeniest business. The most lavish unemployment-compensation benefits in the country.

If you run a small business in Washington State, those are just some of the mandates you face—well beyond what the federal government or other states require. "It's like the frog in the pan. The state government turns the heat up a little each year," says John Heaton, president of Pay Plus Benefits in Kennewick, which administers payroll and benefit functions for other small companies. "I think small businesses are beginning to feel burned."

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Costs
Utility rates likely to surge

Natural gas prices are cited in requests

By Kevin Rademacher
InBusinessLasVegas

A pair of Southern Nevada utility rate increase requests are swelling in the face of soaring natural gas prices. "It's a very important issue," said Swami Venkataraman, a utilities analyst for Standard & Poor's. "People are going to be paying more money."

In May, Las Vegas-based Southwest Gas Corp. asked the state Public Utilities Commission for a 2.8 percent residential rate increase to recover $11.3 million in past gas costs. That increase would push the average customer's winter bill higher by about $1.37 a month.

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Gas Prices
Katrina reinvigorates Alaska debate

By Brian McGuire
The New York Sun

WASHINGTON - With gasoline prices nearing an all-time high this week, lawmakers and environmentalists here are rejoining with increased vigor a decade-long battle over proposed drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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Research
The law that
screwed Up science

Twenty-five years ago a law known as Bayh-Dole spawned the biotech industry. It made lots of university scientists fabulously rich. It was also supposed to usher in a new era of innovation. So why are medical miracles in such short supply?

By Clifton Leaf
Fortune

Even in the mute efficiency of international wire transfers, $540 million makes a noise when it lands in your bank account.

To Kent Alexander, that sound was a thud—and in this case "not one single thud, but a lot of different thuds." All afternoon on July 21, 2005, Alexander, who is Emory University's general counsel, president Jim Wagner, and other senior members of the school's administration were receiving e-mailed reports from the finance de- partment: "121 million just hit!" And then, 50 minutes later, "183 million just hit!" Half an hour after that, an even richer stash arrived. Thud.

"It was an out-of-body experience," says Alexander, 46. "By any definition, it's a huge deal. As one of our trustees was saying, 'It doesn't get any bigger than this on Wall Street.' "

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Security
Extortion.com

When a small firm got hit with a campaign of cyberextortion, it tightened up computer security. Its biggest problem, however, lay in its open dumpster.

By Alec Foege
Fortune Small Business

Dan Videtto shivers as he recalls his first e-mail messages from someone using the name Bryan Ryan.

It was a wintry January day, about six months after Videtto had become president of Micropatent, an East Haven, Conn., company that manages the electronic delivery of patent documents. The 13 messages from Ryan had all been sent from the same Yahoo account. They included photos of Micropatent’s branch offices in Alexandria, Va., as well as copies of e-mail messages and other confidential documents relating to the company’s customers.

The e-mails suggested that Ryan had access to even more privileged data and might forward it to Videtto’s clients. 

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