Rent seeking
Ignoring 'best practices'

Nevada's System of Higher Education positions itself for ever-greater waste

By Steven Miller
BusinessNevada

Is Nevada’s higher education system making the same mistake that its chancellor has identified in the Clark County School District?

News stories recently revealed that a business group led by Chancellor Jim Rogers had retained a nationally known management expert to screen candidates for the school district job.

Working with the business group is Dr. William G. Ouchi, professor of management at UCLA and an important critic of centralized government school systems. In 2001-2002, Ouchi led a massive, landmark study that found that decentralized school systems were not only more economically efficient but also better at producing achieving students.

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Tax control
Bob Beers, Ann O'Connell
talk on TV about TASC

Face to Face with Jon Ralston
KLAS-TV.com

Colorado voters chose to take a 5-year holiday from their constitutional Taxpayer Bill of Rights last week. Is that a bad omen for fiscal conservatives who want to implement a similar measure here? On November 2 Jon Ralston asks taxpayer advocates State Senator Bob Beers and Ann O'Connell.

Streaming video:

Part One; Part Two; 

Part Three; Part Four

School reform
Education money 
being lost in red tape

Study: Sharing services could 
save schools $9 billion

Los Angeles — U.S. public schools could save an estimated $9 billion — the equivalent of funding for 900 new schools or more than 150,000 new teachers — by combining just a quarter of their non-instructional service costs with other school districts, according to a new study by Reason Foundation and Deloitte Research.

In many school districts 40 to 50 percent of education funding never makes it into the classroom because it goes to administration and business operations like transportation, food services, building maintenance, and other support functions. 

To put this number in perspective, it is equivalent to 900 new schools or more than 150,000 additional teachers. "School funding and per pupil spending are always hot-button issues," said Lisa Snell, co-author of the report. 

"Sharing services gives schools and districts a great opportunity to send a lot more money straight to classrooms, where it belongs. With much of the education world facing tough budget decisions, sharing services is a dramatically under-used option that can yield significant results."

[the study]

Globalization
India becoming online hub for tutoring U.S. students

By Vaishali Honawar
Edweek

Kochi, India -- It is 8 a.m., and the city of Kochi is beginning a new day. The aroma of boiling rice wafts through the open windows of apartments on side streets, and children in uniform haul backpacks heavy with books to school. 

But inside the third floor of a gray and white building, tutors have been at work for nearly four hours, sitting at their computers inside small, partitioned cubicles. A sign outside the door reads, "Growing Stars Infotech Limited: A subsidiary of Growing Stars Inc., California, U.S.A."

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Demagoguery
Oil company execs
defend profits

By H. Josef Hebert
Associated Press

WASHINGTON—The chiefs of five major oil companies defended the industry's huge profits Wednesday at a Senate hearing where lawmakers said they should explain prices and assure people they're not being gouged. 

There is a "growing suspicion that oil companies are taking unfair advantage," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said as the hearing opened in a packed Senate committee room. 

"The oil companies owe the country an explanation," he said.

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Innovation
Microsoft plays catch-up

Bill Gates finally admits 
software as a service is a big deal

By David Kirkpatrick
Fortune

Microsoft has gotten seriously behind. And on Tuesday Bill Gates finally admitted it. 

In a wide-ranging set of announcements of future products and a group of sometimes-fumbled demonstrations, Gates and his newest lieutenant Ray Ozzie, one of Microsoft's chief technology officers, unveiled an entirely new strategy for software's titan. They promised to deliver a variety of services over the Internet, many for free and supported by advertising. 

While Microsoft has been taking baby steps in this direction for some time, this is a big leap away from the company's longstanding commitment to software on a customer's desktop that is sold for a license fee. 

"Every five years or so we look at our strategy and make one of these big bets," said Gates at the San Francisco announcement. He compared it to the company's move from DOS to Windows in the early 1990s, its embrace of the Internet in December 1995, and its launch of the .Net strategy for web services in 2000.

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Sleepwalking
Voters nix 
Arnold's reforms

Spending cap, redistricting and teacher tenure measures fail, and a bid to curb use of union dues trails. A proposal to restrict abortions is close.

By Michael Finnegan 
and Robert Salladay
Los Angeles Times

In a sharp repudiation of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, voters rejected his most sweeping ballot proposals on Tuesday in an election that shattered his image as an agent of the popular will. 

Voters turned down his proposals to curb state spending, redraw California's political map and lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure.

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