About this time a year ago, Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, lamented the nation’s lackluster performance results in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study. Every three years, PISA measures reading, math, and scientific literacy among 15-year-old students around the world. According to Duncan, PISA “is fast becoming the measuring rod by which countries track trends in national performance and assess college and career-readiness of students as they near the end of their compulsory education and prepare to participate in the global economy.”
Duncan eagerly awaited the results, but was sorely disappointed when they came in. It turns out that the U.S. is not among any of the top performing countries in any subject areas tested by PISA. U.S. students lag behind kids in Canada, Finland, South Korea, Estonia, Japan, Australia, Singapore, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, and other countries. In reading, a category where U.S. students performed their best, they are tied with Poland (insert Polish joke here). The U.S. reading scores are closer to those of Latvia and Slovenia than neighboring Canada, where their students are better readers and more adept in math and science. That data is quite revealing: Students in the U.S. are less capable in accessing and retrieving data than those in some developing countries, and U.S. students struggle in interpreting and integrating information.
Some commentators immediately suggested that socio-economics pulled down the U.S. scores. In other words, poor kids from under-performing schools created an imbalance, which hurt the overall U.S. outcome. Some of this is racialized (i.e. pundits claim “poor black kids can’t read well and under-perform in math and science”). In part, that’s true, though clearly such generalities are over-inclusive and ignore what contributes to low student performance. Social promotion, including graduating students from high school without a 6th grade reading capacity, moving students along because they’re too old to be in elementary or middle school, high rates of mobility, and low verbal capacity upon entering first grade, are among the pitfalls and challenges in public education that undermine student success as well as the academic health of school districts. Typically there’s the debate as to who’s at fault—parents or teachers. Blame can be leveled at both groups, but let’s not overlook politicians who want to cut funding for education.
That said, pundits who blame poor, black public-school kids for these results miss the mark. Results from a different study conducted by an independent research firm debunk the notion that it’s the U.S. poor (alone) who drag down education. The 2009 Raytheon study sheds some insight on student behavior. For example, “seventy‐two percent of U.S. middle school students spend more than three hours each day outside of school in front of a TV, mobile phone or computer screen rather than doing homework or other academic‐related activities.” The study noted, “by contrast, just 10 percent of students spend the same amount of time on their homework each day, and 67 percent spend less than one hour on their math homework.”
Indeed, nearly 30 percent of the students surveyed could not name a career that requires math skills. This was not an inner-city survey. This is the state of “middle” America.
The US is in an academic crisis, but parents and their children don’t seem to know this. US students had more self-confidence in their knowledge and academic skills than nearly all other students in all the other countries included in the PISA study (about 64 nations and territories). The inflated notion of self is despite the fact that more U.S. students performed at a level “considered to be below the baseline level of reading proficiency needed to participate effectively and productively in life” than at the highest level. Urgent change is needed, but the problems will likely persist.
Indeed, what we witness in high-school performance now seeps into collegiate and graduate school aptitude and attitude. For example, universities seem as ill-equipped to address these issues as K-12 schools. Here, I’m not speaking of providing academic support centers. The students at the very bottom of the class likely realize their struggles with reading and math proficiency. It’s the middle group that poses the biggest challenge, particularly as they have been nurtured to believe that they are the best and the brightest.
This toxic mixture of overconfidence and under-performance has contributed to “limited learning” at college, according to Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. In their book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, the authors found that “in the first two years of school, 45 percent of college students had no significant improvement in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing.”
On examination, it becomes clear that American students don’t buckle up when coming to college; instead, poor study habits follow—or perhaps worsen post-high school. In the Arum and Roksa study of more than 2,300 students, they found that U.S. students study about 12 hours per week, which is less than half of the hours college students devoted to studying in 1961. Graduate and professional schools are headed in the same direction, trading high academic standards and sometimes uncomfortable truths for appeasing students who pay high tuition.
This entry was posted in Higher Education, teaching, Uncategorized.
Monday, January 2, 2012
Friday, December 9, 2011
An SEO Playbook for 2012
http://searchengineland.com/an-seo-playbook-for-2012-103906
Search Engine Optimization is growing up. I am not ready to say the Wild West SEO days are completely eradicated, but in 2011 good search engine optimization is less about trickery and more about engaging content and audience development than ever before.
Over the years, quality optimizers have become more prone to avoid technical tricks like using CSS image replacement to inject keyword text or controlling the flow of PageRank by hiding links from search engines.
Search engines keep getting better at crawling and indexing. If you are unwilling to burn your website or risk your career, you follow the search engines’ terms of service.
During 2011 the conservative attitude toward code crossed chasm to apply to content. For years, websites churned-out poorly written, generic articles in the name of long-tail keyword optimization. It worked so well some people turned crappy content into startups.
Now, thanks to Panda, Google’s site-wide penalty for having too much low quality content, people are asking why anyone would put pages on a website that no one wants to read, share or link to? Without taking potshots at the past, most of those articles look juvenile and antiquated.
Made in Japan went from signifying cheap to marvelous. Made for the Web is growing-up too. It is this evolution which guides my SEO highlights for 2012. I separate things to keep in mind by code, design and content.
Code – Keep It Simple
While Google likes to tell us they are very good at crawling and understanding imperfect code, I prefer to assume search engines are dumb and help them every way I can. Simple code is honest code. It’s also easy to parse and analyze. Just because you can AJAX-up a page with accordions and fly-outs does not mean you should. The more code on a page, the more things that can go wrong from spider access to browser compatibility.
Follow standards and get as close to validated markup as reasonably possible. Make it easy for search engines to spider your site. Validating HTML and CSS does not automagically raise your rankings, but it will prevent crawl errors.
At the same time, don’t insist on validation since some perfectly good code will never validate. Follow search engine recommendations to Make AJAX, XML and Other Code Crawl able.
Make your CSS class and ID names obvious, especially for section div tags. Again, Google tells us they have gotten good at identifying headers, sidebars and footers. Part of that is almost assuredly knowing the most common div names.
Make it easy on Google and Bing by naming your header div header.
Name the CSS ID of your right sidebar div right-sidebar.
Why would you name a CSS Class xbr_001 when you can name it navigation? At the very least, it will make life a lot easier on your SEO team. They have enough work without the need to translate ambiguous naming structures.
Reserve h# tags for outlining principal content. I am amazed at the number of big brand websites that still use h# tags for font design. Tell your designers that h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6 are off-limits and reserved for content writers and editors.
The only exception to this should be if your content management system uses h1 tags to create a proper headline. Embargo h# tags out of your headers, navigation, sidebars and footers too. They don’t belong there.
Web Design – Less Navigation Is More
Look at the Zen like efficiency of any Apple product. Steve Jobs was ruthless about eliminating the unnecessary and achieving clean Bauhaus efficiency.
By contrast, too many websites, especially enterprise sites, try to be all things to all people. Their administrators or managers fear they might miss out on a conversion for lack of a link.
Websites should have clean vertical internal linking. Every page should not link to every page. You do not need a site-wide menu three levels deep. As long as people feel that they are progressing toward their goal or the useful information they seek, they will click on two, three or four links to get there.
Look at your website analytics. Which pages receive the fewest visits? Are any in your navigation? If no one uses a link, why does it to be there?
A website’s most widely visited pages tend to be close to the homepage. Review your categories and sub-categories. Can you eliminate whole categories by merging or reassigning content? For example, does the management team need its own category or can you move it into the About section?
This is not just about eliminating distraction. It is a way to increase the internal flow of authority (PageRank, link juice, etc.) to SEO hub pages.
Content – Engagement & Agility
Emphasize Community and Conversation. If your business depends on the Internet and you have the budget to hire one more person, consider employing a community evangelist. High rankings require authority. Authority comes from off-site links and, to an extent, brand mentions.
Earning enough links to make a dent in your SEO requires a continuous stream of link worthy content combined with forging and fostering relationships with people who create links or influence lots of others through online conversation. This requires a large commitment of time to work with writers and designers and to network. Even when decentralized, this rarely works without a strong empowered leader.
Get out of the sales funnel. The people you want to buy your products or services are not going to blog about your company or mention it on Twitter. More likely, they are peers.
A good exercise to undertake is ask each employee, if they could pick one professional conference to attend, what would it be? Then look for the session speakers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Find which ones are active online and gauge their influence. Are people in your company qualified to write authoritatively about these topics or speak at conferences?
This is how to find content topics for the post-Panda Web, things people want to converse about and link to. For example, if you have a cutting-edge API team, an API development blog could be the key to higher domain authority.
Understand Social Technographics. It will help you to find influencers and create content that people will want to link to and talk about.
Embrace Agility
Realign your content generation and approval process so you can create near-daily web content and, if necessary, respond publically to something within an hour.
With Query Deserves Freshness, trending topics, news search and simply because of how social media conversations come and go, agility is important for getting noticed and getting links.
Update Your Content
If your website has older articles that read like Wikipedia or a hardcover World Book Encyclopedia, swap out old content for new. In the future, Panda will not get leaner, it will get meaner. If you have reason to worry, start fixing it now. Do not wait and hope Panda will not see your low quality content. I want to be very clear here:
If you have decent quality content that provides real value, keep it whether it is SEO optimized or not. Yes, get to work optimizing older content doing things like selecting hub pages, optimizing text and cross-linking. But do not delete your old content.
If you have content that seems overtly advertorial, is cheesy or reads robotic because it is so stuffed with keywords, begin the process of writing one-for-one replacements and update your old content over time. For the old-time SEOs out there, this brings new meaning to a page a day.
If you have been hit by Panda already, I suggest removing your poor quality content, set-up 301 redirects to salvage the link authority, then begin rebuilding with high quality, link worthy content. Panda is a site-wide penalty. It is not going to go away until the offending content is removed or replaced.
Those are my 2012 SEO playbook highlights. In the past, content creation and link building were too separated. We had writers covering every long-tail key phrase possible while, in another room, link ninjas emailed and telephoned soliciting for individual links.
That model is becoming less and less sustainable. The Web is too big. Too many people contribute content. Social media offers an entirely new world of context. Today, SEO means finding an audience you can connect with, become a part of the community, give them insanely awesome content and reciprocate. This is the new SEO arms race.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Related Entries
SEOnomics: A New Way Of Thinking About SEO For Business
Employing Microformats & Structured Data For Enhanced Search Engine Visibility
From Garbage To Gourmet: Fixing SEO Content Strategies
Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data
Search Engine Optimization is growing up. I am not ready to say the Wild West SEO days are completely eradicated, but in 2011 good search engine optimization is less about trickery and more about engaging content and audience development than ever before.
Over the years, quality optimizers have become more prone to avoid technical tricks like using CSS image replacement to inject keyword text or controlling the flow of PageRank by hiding links from search engines.
Search engines keep getting better at crawling and indexing. If you are unwilling to burn your website or risk your career, you follow the search engines’ terms of service.
During 2011 the conservative attitude toward code crossed chasm to apply to content. For years, websites churned-out poorly written, generic articles in the name of long-tail keyword optimization. It worked so well some people turned crappy content into startups.
Now, thanks to Panda, Google’s site-wide penalty for having too much low quality content, people are asking why anyone would put pages on a website that no one wants to read, share or link to? Without taking potshots at the past, most of those articles look juvenile and antiquated.
Made in Japan went from signifying cheap to marvelous. Made for the Web is growing-up too. It is this evolution which guides my SEO highlights for 2012. I separate things to keep in mind by code, design and content.
Code – Keep It Simple
While Google likes to tell us they are very good at crawling and understanding imperfect code, I prefer to assume search engines are dumb and help them every way I can. Simple code is honest code. It’s also easy to parse and analyze. Just because you can AJAX-up a page with accordions and fly-outs does not mean you should. The more code on a page, the more things that can go wrong from spider access to browser compatibility.
Follow standards and get as close to validated markup as reasonably possible. Make it easy for search engines to spider your site. Validating HTML and CSS does not automagically raise your rankings, but it will prevent crawl errors.
At the same time, don’t insist on validation since some perfectly good code will never validate. Follow search engine recommendations to Make AJAX, XML and Other Code Crawl able.
Make your CSS class and ID names obvious, especially for section div tags. Again, Google tells us they have gotten good at identifying headers, sidebars and footers. Part of that is almost assuredly knowing the most common div names.
Make it easy on Google and Bing by naming your header div header.
Name the CSS ID of your right sidebar div right-sidebar.
Why would you name a CSS Class xbr_001 when you can name it navigation? At the very least, it will make life a lot easier on your SEO team. They have enough work without the need to translate ambiguous naming structures.
Reserve h# tags for outlining principal content. I am amazed at the number of big brand websites that still use h# tags for font design. Tell your designers that h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 and h6 are off-limits and reserved for content writers and editors.
The only exception to this should be if your content management system uses h1 tags to create a proper headline. Embargo h# tags out of your headers, navigation, sidebars and footers too. They don’t belong there.
Web Design – Less Navigation Is More
Look at the Zen like efficiency of any Apple product. Steve Jobs was ruthless about eliminating the unnecessary and achieving clean Bauhaus efficiency.
By contrast, too many websites, especially enterprise sites, try to be all things to all people. Their administrators or managers fear they might miss out on a conversion for lack of a link.
Websites should have clean vertical internal linking. Every page should not link to every page. You do not need a site-wide menu three levels deep. As long as people feel that they are progressing toward their goal or the useful information they seek, they will click on two, three or four links to get there.
Look at your website analytics. Which pages receive the fewest visits? Are any in your navigation? If no one uses a link, why does it to be there?
A website’s most widely visited pages tend to be close to the homepage. Review your categories and sub-categories. Can you eliminate whole categories by merging or reassigning content? For example, does the management team need its own category or can you move it into the About section?
This is not just about eliminating distraction. It is a way to increase the internal flow of authority (PageRank, link juice, etc.) to SEO hub pages.
Content – Engagement & Agility
Emphasize Community and Conversation. If your business depends on the Internet and you have the budget to hire one more person, consider employing a community evangelist. High rankings require authority. Authority comes from off-site links and, to an extent, brand mentions.
Earning enough links to make a dent in your SEO requires a continuous stream of link worthy content combined with forging and fostering relationships with people who create links or influence lots of others through online conversation. This requires a large commitment of time to work with writers and designers and to network. Even when decentralized, this rarely works without a strong empowered leader.
Get out of the sales funnel. The people you want to buy your products or services are not going to blog about your company or mention it on Twitter. More likely, they are peers.
A good exercise to undertake is ask each employee, if they could pick one professional conference to attend, what would it be? Then look for the session speakers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Find which ones are active online and gauge their influence. Are people in your company qualified to write authoritatively about these topics or speak at conferences?
This is how to find content topics for the post-Panda Web, things people want to converse about and link to. For example, if you have a cutting-edge API team, an API development blog could be the key to higher domain authority.
Understand Social Technographics. It will help you to find influencers and create content that people will want to link to and talk about.
Embrace Agility
Realign your content generation and approval process so you can create near-daily web content and, if necessary, respond publically to something within an hour.
With Query Deserves Freshness, trending topics, news search and simply because of how social media conversations come and go, agility is important for getting noticed and getting links.
Update Your Content
If your website has older articles that read like Wikipedia or a hardcover World Book Encyclopedia, swap out old content for new. In the future, Panda will not get leaner, it will get meaner. If you have reason to worry, start fixing it now. Do not wait and hope Panda will not see your low quality content. I want to be very clear here:
If you have decent quality content that provides real value, keep it whether it is SEO optimized or not. Yes, get to work optimizing older content doing things like selecting hub pages, optimizing text and cross-linking. But do not delete your old content.
If you have content that seems overtly advertorial, is cheesy or reads robotic because it is so stuffed with keywords, begin the process of writing one-for-one replacements and update your old content over time. For the old-time SEOs out there, this brings new meaning to a page a day.
If you have been hit by Panda already, I suggest removing your poor quality content, set-up 301 redirects to salvage the link authority, then begin rebuilding with high quality, link worthy content. Panda is a site-wide penalty. It is not going to go away until the offending content is removed or replaced.
Those are my 2012 SEO playbook highlights. In the past, content creation and link building were too separated. We had writers covering every long-tail key phrase possible while, in another room, link ninjas emailed and telephoned soliciting for individual links.
That model is becoming less and less sustainable. The Web is too big. Too many people contribute content. Social media offers an entirely new world of context. Today, SEO means finding an audience you can connect with, become a part of the community, give them insanely awesome content and reciprocate. This is the new SEO arms race.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Related Entries
SEOnomics: A New Way Of Thinking About SEO For Business
Employing Microformats & Structured Data For Enhanced Search Engine Visibility
From Garbage To Gourmet: Fixing SEO Content Strategies
Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Private equity still strong, despite market challenges
Despite widespread pessimism over the global economic outlook, almost a quarter of private equity investors believe private equity has become more attractive in light of recent volatility in financial markets.
A further 64 per cent of investors do not view private equity any differently as a result of the current financial climate and 14 per cent find it less attractive, Preqin research has found.
Many investors feel that private equity has become increasingly attractive as public markets have become more volatile, with some identifying opportunities in times of economic distress and others planning to look to emerging markets for new investments.
More than three-quarters, 76 per cent, of a sample of 300 investors interviewed in October and November 2011 plan to make new fund commitments over the coming 12 months, while 92 per cent expect to maintain or increase their allocations over the longer term, further illustrating their confidence in the asset class. Just 8% intend to decrease their exposure to private equity over the next three to five years.
Emma Dineen, manager – private equity investor data, said, “The global financial crisis undoubtedly prompted many LPs to re-evaluate their private equity strategies. Many have become more cautious and selective when choosing fund managers to invest with. However, despite recent volatility in the wider financial markets, investors generally remain positive about the private equity asset class, and many believe that there are good investment opportunities ahead.
“While investor appetite is there, the crowded fundraising market means that investors are well positioned to be selective about the funds they choose to commit to, so the challenge remains for fund managers to market their funds in the best possible way and to ensure that they target the right investors if they are to enjoy success in this competitive market,” she added.
http://www.altassets.net/knowledge-bank/leading-edge/private-equity-still-strong-despite-market-challenges.html
A further 64 per cent of investors do not view private equity any differently as a result of the current financial climate and 14 per cent find it less attractive, Preqin research has found.
Many investors feel that private equity has become increasingly attractive as public markets have become more volatile, with some identifying opportunities in times of economic distress and others planning to look to emerging markets for new investments.
More than three-quarters, 76 per cent, of a sample of 300 investors interviewed in October and November 2011 plan to make new fund commitments over the coming 12 months, while 92 per cent expect to maintain or increase their allocations over the longer term, further illustrating their confidence in the asset class. Just 8% intend to decrease their exposure to private equity over the next three to five years.
Emma Dineen, manager – private equity investor data, said, “The global financial crisis undoubtedly prompted many LPs to re-evaluate their private equity strategies. Many have become more cautious and selective when choosing fund managers to invest with. However, despite recent volatility in the wider financial markets, investors generally remain positive about the private equity asset class, and many believe that there are good investment opportunities ahead.
“While investor appetite is there, the crowded fundraising market means that investors are well positioned to be selective about the funds they choose to commit to, so the challenge remains for fund managers to market their funds in the best possible way and to ensure that they target the right investors if they are to enjoy success in this competitive market,” she added.
http://www.altassets.net/knowledge-bank/leading-edge/private-equity-still-strong-despite-market-challenges.html
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Slow (to No) Hiring Activity Expected for October 2011
Slow (to No) Hiring Activity Expected for October 2011
10/6/2011 By Theresa Minton-Eversole
Though this is the time of year that U.S. employers begin shoring up their staffs for the holiday shopping season, job growth is not expected to rebound much in October 2011, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) survey for October 2011.
Hiring expectations are anemic in October 2011, with the rate of job creation expected to be virtually unchanged from that of October 2010 in manufacturing. Job creation is expected to fall moderately in services in October 2011, compared with October 2010.
“HR professionals are reporting that hiring is basically at a standstill for October [2011],” said Jennifer Schramm, GPHR, SHRM’s manager of workplace trends and forecasting. “Manufacturing firms are adding jobs at the same rate as at this time last year, while private service-sector firms are reporting a small downturn in hiring compared to October [2010].”
The LINE report examines four key areas: employers’ hiring expectations, job vacancies, difficulty in recruiting top-level talent and new-hire compensation. It is based on a monthly survey of private-sector human resource professionals at more than 500 manufacturing and 500 service-sector companies. Employment Expectations Manufacturing Service.
In October 2011, hiring activity will rise slightly in manufacturing and will drop moderately in services compared with October 2010.
+1.1
-10.4
Recruiting Difficulty
In September 2011, the index for recruiting difficulty rose slightly in both sectors compared with September 2010.
+4.9
+4.6
New-Hire Compensation
The rate of increase for new-hire compensation in September 2011 rose in both sectors compared with September 2010.
+6.7
+2.9
Source: SHRM Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE), www.shrm.org/line
Employment Expectations
The manufacturing hiring index will rise in October 2011 on a year-over-year basis by a net of just 1.1 points (a net of 30.4 percent of companies will hire in October 2011, compared with a net of 29.3 percent that added jobs in October 2010). Service-sector hiring, however, will decrease in October 2011 by a net of 10.4 points (a net of 29.0 percent will add jobs, compared with a net of 39.4 percent that added jobs in October 2010), according to LINE data.
The LINE results for October 2011 reflect a trend of subpar growth in job creation, in accord with recent federal data. Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged in August 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the manufacturing sector, which has been one of the economy’s strongest performers for job growth, lost a net of 3,000 jobs during the month.
Exempt, Nonexempt Position Vacancies
LINE data cover exempt vacancies, which are primarily salaried positions, and nonexempt vacancies, which are mostly hourly employees. Changes in the number of job vacancies can be one of the earliest indicators of a shift in the balance between labor supply and demand.
In the manufacturing sector, a net total of 10.4 percent of respondents reported increases in exempt vacancies in September 2011, which represents a 3.0-point decrease from September 2010. A net total of 11.2 percent of manufacturing respondents reported that nonexempt vacancies increased in September 2011, representing a net 0.1-point decrease from September 2010. There were 257,000 job openings in manufacturing in July 2011, up slightly from June 2011, according to the BLS.
Service-sector job creation is expected to be even less impressive. In its annual holiday hiring forecast, global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., predicted in September 2011 that seasonal job gains in the retail sector would be about the same or possibly lower than in September 2010.
“The retail environment has improved significantly since 2008, when the recession was at its worst,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “However, retailers are seeing several signs that consumer spending is dipping just as they are beginning to make decisions about how many workers to add for the upcoming holidays. It would be surprising if holiday hiring exceeded last year’s level.”
Even if retailers foresee strong sales, it might not result in increased hiring, according to Challenger. A survey of major U.S. retailers by management consultants at the Hay Group found that 68 percent expect sales to be higher than in 2010. Yet the same percentage plans to hire the same number of seasonal workers as were hired in 2010. About one-fourth of respondents said they plan to reduce the number of seasonal hires.
The dismal forecast is reflected in the most recent LINE data, too. In the service sector, a net total of 7.4 percent of respondents reported increases in exempt vacancies in September 2011—a 2.5-point increase from September 2010. For nonexempt service positions, a net total of 18.0 percent of respondents reported increased vacancies in September 2011, marking a 3.5-point increase from September 2010.
Recruiting Difficulty
“Even with subdued hiring rates and elevated unemployment, once again we are seeing the recruiting difficulty index rise in both sectors,” said Schramm. “This suggests that employers are having difficulty connecting with job seekers who possess the skills they are looking for.”
For example, a net of 9.7 percent of manufacturing respondents had more difficulty with recruiting in September 2011—a net increase of 4.9 points from September 2010 and the highest net of recruiting difficulty for the month of September in four years.
A net of 11.6 percent of service-sector HR professionals had more difficulty recruiting in September 2011—an increase of 4.6 points from September 2010 and also the highest net in four years. The recruiting difficulty data suggest that the labor market is suffering from structural issues along with decreased demand.
Considering that millions of people are seeking work and cannot obtain employment in their industries, the rise in recruiting difficulty might be attributed to new or enhanced skill requirements for new high-level jobs, noted Schramm. “With the exception of March 2011, recruiting difficulty has risen on an annual basis in both sectors for every month since December 2009,” she noted.
New-Hire Compensation
During the recession, a high rate of unemployment and a large pool of job seekers in the market gave many companies the option of holding down the wages and benefits they offered new hires in the effort to control costs. New-hire compensation is now beginning to rise, albeit only slightly.
In the manufacturing sector, a net total of 8.7 percent of respondents reported increasing new-hire compensation in September 2011—an increase of 6.7 points from September 2010. In the service sector, a net total of 7.9 percent of companies increased new-hire compensation in September 2011, representing a 2.9-point increase from a year ago. With the exception of September 2010, the rate of new-hire compensation has risen in small increments on an annual basis in both sectors for every month since February 2010.
“Skills shortages may be why we are seeing some increases in the new-hire compensation indices,” said Schramm. “For the 12th consecutive month, the rate of increase for wages and benefits rose on an annual basis in both sectors. This does not mean that everyone is seeing their wages increase; overall most employers are keeping new-hire compensation flat. But the percentage reporting increases continues to rise incrementally, indicating that the need to find talent is pushing some employers to boost their starting wages and compensation.”
Theresa Minton-Eversole is an online editor/manager for SHRM.
10/6/2011 By Theresa Minton-Eversole
Though this is the time of year that U.S. employers begin shoring up their staffs for the holiday shopping season, job growth is not expected to rebound much in October 2011, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE) survey for October 2011.
Hiring expectations are anemic in October 2011, with the rate of job creation expected to be virtually unchanged from that of October 2010 in manufacturing. Job creation is expected to fall moderately in services in October 2011, compared with October 2010.
“HR professionals are reporting that hiring is basically at a standstill for October [2011],” said Jennifer Schramm, GPHR, SHRM’s manager of workplace trends and forecasting. “Manufacturing firms are adding jobs at the same rate as at this time last year, while private service-sector firms are reporting a small downturn in hiring compared to October [2010].”
The LINE report examines four key areas: employers’ hiring expectations, job vacancies, difficulty in recruiting top-level talent and new-hire compensation. It is based on a monthly survey of private-sector human resource professionals at more than 500 manufacturing and 500 service-sector companies. Employment Expectations Manufacturing Service.
In October 2011, hiring activity will rise slightly in manufacturing and will drop moderately in services compared with October 2010.
+1.1
-10.4
Recruiting Difficulty
In September 2011, the index for recruiting difficulty rose slightly in both sectors compared with September 2010.
+4.9
+4.6
New-Hire Compensation
The rate of increase for new-hire compensation in September 2011 rose in both sectors compared with September 2010.
+6.7
+2.9
Source: SHRM Leading Indicators of National Employment (LINE), www.shrm.org/line
Employment Expectations
The manufacturing hiring index will rise in October 2011 on a year-over-year basis by a net of just 1.1 points (a net of 30.4 percent of companies will hire in October 2011, compared with a net of 29.3 percent that added jobs in October 2010). Service-sector hiring, however, will decrease in October 2011 by a net of 10.4 points (a net of 29.0 percent will add jobs, compared with a net of 39.4 percent that added jobs in October 2010), according to LINE data.
The LINE results for October 2011 reflect a trend of subpar growth in job creation, in accord with recent federal data. Nonfarm payrolls were unchanged in August 2011, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and the manufacturing sector, which has been one of the economy’s strongest performers for job growth, lost a net of 3,000 jobs during the month.
Exempt, Nonexempt Position Vacancies
LINE data cover exempt vacancies, which are primarily salaried positions, and nonexempt vacancies, which are mostly hourly employees. Changes in the number of job vacancies can be one of the earliest indicators of a shift in the balance between labor supply and demand.
In the manufacturing sector, a net total of 10.4 percent of respondents reported increases in exempt vacancies in September 2011, which represents a 3.0-point decrease from September 2010. A net total of 11.2 percent of manufacturing respondents reported that nonexempt vacancies increased in September 2011, representing a net 0.1-point decrease from September 2010. There were 257,000 job openings in manufacturing in July 2011, up slightly from June 2011, according to the BLS.
Service-sector job creation is expected to be even less impressive. In its annual holiday hiring forecast, global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., predicted in September 2011 that seasonal job gains in the retail sector would be about the same or possibly lower than in September 2010.
“The retail environment has improved significantly since 2008, when the recession was at its worst,” said John A. Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “However, retailers are seeing several signs that consumer spending is dipping just as they are beginning to make decisions about how many workers to add for the upcoming holidays. It would be surprising if holiday hiring exceeded last year’s level.”
Even if retailers foresee strong sales, it might not result in increased hiring, according to Challenger. A survey of major U.S. retailers by management consultants at the Hay Group found that 68 percent expect sales to be higher than in 2010. Yet the same percentage plans to hire the same number of seasonal workers as were hired in 2010. About one-fourth of respondents said they plan to reduce the number of seasonal hires.
The dismal forecast is reflected in the most recent LINE data, too. In the service sector, a net total of 7.4 percent of respondents reported increases in exempt vacancies in September 2011—a 2.5-point increase from September 2010. For nonexempt service positions, a net total of 18.0 percent of respondents reported increased vacancies in September 2011, marking a 3.5-point increase from September 2010.
Recruiting Difficulty
“Even with subdued hiring rates and elevated unemployment, once again we are seeing the recruiting difficulty index rise in both sectors,” said Schramm. “This suggests that employers are having difficulty connecting with job seekers who possess the skills they are looking for.”
For example, a net of 9.7 percent of manufacturing respondents had more difficulty with recruiting in September 2011—a net increase of 4.9 points from September 2010 and the highest net of recruiting difficulty for the month of September in four years.
A net of 11.6 percent of service-sector HR professionals had more difficulty recruiting in September 2011—an increase of 4.6 points from September 2010 and also the highest net in four years. The recruiting difficulty data suggest that the labor market is suffering from structural issues along with decreased demand.
Considering that millions of people are seeking work and cannot obtain employment in their industries, the rise in recruiting difficulty might be attributed to new or enhanced skill requirements for new high-level jobs, noted Schramm. “With the exception of March 2011, recruiting difficulty has risen on an annual basis in both sectors for every month since December 2009,” she noted.
New-Hire Compensation
During the recession, a high rate of unemployment and a large pool of job seekers in the market gave many companies the option of holding down the wages and benefits they offered new hires in the effort to control costs. New-hire compensation is now beginning to rise, albeit only slightly.
In the manufacturing sector, a net total of 8.7 percent of respondents reported increasing new-hire compensation in September 2011—an increase of 6.7 points from September 2010. In the service sector, a net total of 7.9 percent of companies increased new-hire compensation in September 2011, representing a 2.9-point increase from a year ago. With the exception of September 2010, the rate of new-hire compensation has risen in small increments on an annual basis in both sectors for every month since February 2010.
“Skills shortages may be why we are seeing some increases in the new-hire compensation indices,” said Schramm. “For the 12th consecutive month, the rate of increase for wages and benefits rose on an annual basis in both sectors. This does not mean that everyone is seeing their wages increase; overall most employers are keeping new-hire compensation flat. But the percentage reporting increases continues to rise incrementally, indicating that the need to find talent is pushing some employers to boost their starting wages and compensation.”
Theresa Minton-Eversole is an online editor/manager for SHRM.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
For-Profit College Lobbying Group Sues Obama Administration Over Regulations
More than a month after the Obama administration issued weaker-than-expected regulations aimed at reining in abuses at some for-profit colleges, a trade association for the industry filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to strike down the new rules governing excessive student debt.
The lawsuit is a perplexing move for the for-profit college industry, which aggressively fought the Obama administration’s crackdown for more than a year, and ultimately succeeded in getting final regulations last month that were universally regarded as being substantially weakened from those proposed a year earlier.
The market has signaled that investors approved of the measures: Since the Obama administration issued the “gainful employment” regulations in early June, the stocks at many publicly traded for-profit college companies have soared. Executives at for-profit college corporations, including University of Phoenix founder John G. Sperling, have cashed in on the rise by selling millions of dollars worth of stocks since the rules were issued.
Yet despite the apparent victory by the industry’s multi-million dollar lobbying and campaign finance efforts over the past year, the lawsuit from the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities calls out the Obama administration’s Department of Education for writing “fatally flawed” regulations that will result in “massive disincentives on private sector schools that currently seek to educate low-income, minority, and other traditionally underserved student populations.”
A spokesman for the association said he was unable to comment on why the lawsuit was filed despite the positive reception of the regulations from the stock market.
Department of Education spokesman Justin Hamilton said in a statement, “Our regulations offer students and taxpayers the protection they deserve. These student safeguards rest on a sound legal foundation.”
Critics of the industry said they were surprised that the trade group would come out swinging after the markets signaled a total victory.
"I’m kind of taken aback by this total rejectionist position," said Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, who has followed regulations on for-profit higher education for years. “They’ve decided that total war is the way to go.”
The lawsuit argues the administration does not have the authority to move forward with the “gainful employment” regulations, which test programs at for-profit colleges and other vocational schools based on the percentage of students who are able to repay student loans and the amount of overall student loan debt compared to students’ income.
“This lawsuit is necessary in order to protect 3.8 million students who attend private sector colleges and universities today and those who will attend our schools in the future,” Brian Moran, the group’s interim president and chief executive, said in a statement.
Supporters of stricter accountability for for-profit colleges -- which have taken in a disproportionate amount of federal student aid dollars over the past decade and contribute to nearly half of all federal student loan defaults -- see the issue of protecting students in a different light.
The “gainful employment” measures were conceived by the administration as both an accountability test for the federal student loan program and as a consumer protection measure for students who are often reeled in by aggressive recruiting tactics. Under the administration’s original proposal last summer, programs could immediately lose access to lucrative federal student aid dollars that fuel the bulk of profits if too many students had unsustainable debts.
After a relentless lobbying and public relations campaign by the industry, programs were given an additional three years to come into compliance with the rules. Instead of potentially losing access to federal student loan and Pell grant dollars after failing debt tests for one year, programs must now fail tests three out of four years in order to be deemed ineligible.
The Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities has filed litigation against most of the major regulations imposed on their industry since the beginning of the Obama administration. A federal judge ruled earlier this month on a lawsuit by the group that disputed additional regulations on the for-profit higher education industry: rules meant to hold schools accountable for recruiters who make misleading statements to prospective students, and rules meant to crack down on bonuses and raises given to recruiters based on the number of students enrolled.
The judge ruled in favor of the Department of Education on those rules, but found fault with an administration rule that required schools to get separate state authorizations for students attending online.
The industry group has appealed the judge’s decision on the misrepresentation and student recruitment rules
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/20/for-profit-college-lobbyi_n_905176.html
For-profit colleges respond to increased scrutiny
ST. LOUIS (AP) — They gather in a generic suburban office park, working-class students chasing a fast track to success: a college degree.
But the message at the University of Phoenix orientation is not quite what these secretaries, mental health aides, working moms and single dads expect.
"We want you to decide if this is right for you," says Sam Fitzgerald, director of academic affairs at the school's four St. Louis campuses. "We're here to help you figure it out."
That candor would have been anathema not too long ago in the lucrative world of for-profit colleges, where recruiters received hefty bonuses and often oversold career prospects.
Yet these are new times for the industry that now accommodates one in every eight American college students, either in class or online. Lawmakers in Congress are probing its excesses, from high loan default rates to reports of exploitative sales pitches to wounded veterans.
The Obama administration in June unveiled new rules that could cut off government aid for programs where too few students repay their loans or acquire decent-paying jobs. Disenchantment — and lawsuits — continue among both former students and skittish investors.
"They have a huge bulls-eye on them," said Kevin Kinser, an associate professor at the State University of New York at Albany who studies the industry. "They can't risk business as usual anymore."
The for-profit industry, which prefers the term "career colleges" or "proprietary" schools, grew rapidly over the last decade amid renewed calls to increase the nation's college graduation rate and a need to help laid-off workers find new careers. The private sector's slice of federal aid money grew from $4.6 billion to more than $26 billion between 2000 and 2010.
Now, the industry will see if it can still make healthy profits from its challenging demographic __ low income workers, older students and those with spotty academic backgrounds— while being much more accountable for its results.
The changes are most apparent at the University of Phoenix and its corporate parent, Apollo Group Inc., which, with nearly 400,000 students, ranks atop the industry.
The school has created its own social network, PhoenixConnect, to better link its far-flung students as well as 600,000 alumni who could help those students and graduates find jobs. It boasts of new alumni association chapters, hundreds of student clubs and mentorship programs.
The three-week orientation program is now required of all prospective students with fewer than 24 college credits. The program is free, but those who don't pass can't continue. The company scrapped its financial incentive program for enrollment counselors and there's less reliance on outside sales companies to generate leads, and more emphasis on finding corporate partners willing to help pay for their employees' education.
The results have been dramatic. New student enrollment has declined by nearly half, and the company reported $159 million less in net revenue after the first three quarters of fiscal year 2011 compared to the previous year.
Officials expect further enrollment declines and more short-term financial pain but insist the approach will pay off with fewer dropouts, higher graduation rates and lower federal loan default rates.
"We have made a conscious decision to make sure the students coming through the door are more likely to be successful," said Mark Brenner, senior vice president for external affairs.
Change is also afoot at Kaplan University, which is owned by The Washington Post Co. and serves about 62,000 students. Another 50,000 students study at Kaplan Higher Education career colleges, which focus more on specific trades.
Stung by a series of whistleblower lawsuits by former employees and a Florida attorney general's investigation, Kaplan created a program that allows new students to attend classes for four or five weeks at no cost before deciding whether to continue. Kaplan also stopped paying incentives to recruiters.
The company reported a 48 percent decline in new enrollments as of April and an attrition rate of 25 percent. Of the latter group, 60 percent are dismissed by Kaplan for lack of academic progress.
The for-profit industry's staunchest defenders include Donald Graham, chief executive officer of The Washington Post Co.
"If we are to be guided only by those factors — student graduation rates and how much debt they incur — we would probably close down all, or almost all, of the institutions of higher education — whomever they may be run by — that serve poor students," Graham said at the company's annual meeting in May.
A committee led by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has held multiple hearings on for-profit colleges over the past year — most recently in early July, after the Obama administration issued its new "gainful employment" rules. Those rules require schools to meet at least one of three conditions to continue receiving Pell Grants and other federal paid-tuition: a loan repayment rate by former students of least 35 percent; annual loan payments of no more than 30 percent of an average student's discretionary income; or annual loan payments that don't exceed 12 percent of a typical graduate's salary.
Regulators say those conditions are needed to ensure that for-profit graduates won't face crippling debts, which combined with low-paying jobs could lead to more loan defaults.
The Senate committee found an average dropout rate of 57 percent within two years of enrollment at 16 unnamed for-profit schools. More than 95 percent of students at two-year proprietary schools, and 93 percent at four-year schools, took out student loans in 2007, the committee found. That compares to fewer than 17 percent of community college students and 44.3 percent of students at four-year public schools. Students at for-profit schools also account for nearly half of all student loan defaults, the committee found.
"Some for-profit schools are efficient government subsidy collectors first and educational institutions second," the committee concluded in its report.
In contrast to most nonprofit colleges, proprietary colleges have emphasized expanding their student rolls, regardless of the academic prospects of those enrolled.
"State institutions might like to grow, but they can't afford to. Elite schools define themselves by the fact they don't grow," said industry analyst Trace Urdan, the managing director of Signal Hill Capital Group. "This is a place where growth is the essence of the institution."
Harkin, the industry's most vocal critic, recently compared the high default rates to the subprime mortgage loan meltdown. He remains skeptical that the sector has mended its ways.
"For-profit education must work for students, not shareholders," he said.
Eric Schmitt, 36, earned an associate's degree from Kaplan University's campus in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then a bachelor's degree from its online school three years ago The aspiring paralegal said he has been unable to find a job in the field. He owes nearly $45,000 in student loans and is working a temporary warehouse job to help support his wife and two children.
Schmitt, who testified before Harkin's committee in June, called the Kaplan Commitment and other industry initiatives "a step in the right direction" but said the gap between education costs and real job prospects could mean "you're going to keep seeing students thrown under the bus."
In a statement issued by Kaplan after Schmitt's testimony, the company said he turned down a paralegal job it helped him line up.
The conversations in Washington and Wall Street mean little to Carl Tabb, a 36-year-old father of 10 who hopes to earn a bachelor's degree in information technology from the University of Phoenix while continuing to work full-time for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and moonlighting repairing home computers.
"I really was not the best student when I was in school," he said. "I always thought I wouldn't make it to college."
Fitzgerald, a former Price Waterhouse consultant, said nontraditional students such as Tabb deserve just a chance to earn a degree and a shot at better future.
"Yeah, we're a for-profit. But that doesn't mean we're in it for the wrong reasons," she said. "We want to set up our students for success."
___
Alan Scher Zagier can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/azagier
But the message at the University of Phoenix orientation is not quite what these secretaries, mental health aides, working moms and single dads expect.
"We want you to decide if this is right for you," says Sam Fitzgerald, director of academic affairs at the school's four St. Louis campuses. "We're here to help you figure it out."
That candor would have been anathema not too long ago in the lucrative world of for-profit colleges, where recruiters received hefty bonuses and often oversold career prospects.
Yet these are new times for the industry that now accommodates one in every eight American college students, either in class or online. Lawmakers in Congress are probing its excesses, from high loan default rates to reports of exploitative sales pitches to wounded veterans.
The Obama administration in June unveiled new rules that could cut off government aid for programs where too few students repay their loans or acquire decent-paying jobs. Disenchantment — and lawsuits — continue among both former students and skittish investors.
"They have a huge bulls-eye on them," said Kevin Kinser, an associate professor at the State University of New York at Albany who studies the industry. "They can't risk business as usual anymore."
The for-profit industry, which prefers the term "career colleges" or "proprietary" schools, grew rapidly over the last decade amid renewed calls to increase the nation's college graduation rate and a need to help laid-off workers find new careers. The private sector's slice of federal aid money grew from $4.6 billion to more than $26 billion between 2000 and 2010.
Now, the industry will see if it can still make healthy profits from its challenging demographic __ low income workers, older students and those with spotty academic backgrounds— while being much more accountable for its results.
The changes are most apparent at the University of Phoenix and its corporate parent, Apollo Group Inc., which, with nearly 400,000 students, ranks atop the industry.
The school has created its own social network, PhoenixConnect, to better link its far-flung students as well as 600,000 alumni who could help those students and graduates find jobs. It boasts of new alumni association chapters, hundreds of student clubs and mentorship programs.
The three-week orientation program is now required of all prospective students with fewer than 24 college credits. The program is free, but those who don't pass can't continue. The company scrapped its financial incentive program for enrollment counselors and there's less reliance on outside sales companies to generate leads, and more emphasis on finding corporate partners willing to help pay for their employees' education.
The results have been dramatic. New student enrollment has declined by nearly half, and the company reported $159 million less in net revenue after the first three quarters of fiscal year 2011 compared to the previous year.
Officials expect further enrollment declines and more short-term financial pain but insist the approach will pay off with fewer dropouts, higher graduation rates and lower federal loan default rates.
"We have made a conscious decision to make sure the students coming through the door are more likely to be successful," said Mark Brenner, senior vice president for external affairs.
Change is also afoot at Kaplan University, which is owned by The Washington Post Co. and serves about 62,000 students. Another 50,000 students study at Kaplan Higher Education career colleges, which focus more on specific trades.
Stung by a series of whistleblower lawsuits by former employees and a Florida attorney general's investigation, Kaplan created a program that allows new students to attend classes for four or five weeks at no cost before deciding whether to continue. Kaplan also stopped paying incentives to recruiters.
The company reported a 48 percent decline in new enrollments as of April and an attrition rate of 25 percent. Of the latter group, 60 percent are dismissed by Kaplan for lack of academic progress.
The for-profit industry's staunchest defenders include Donald Graham, chief executive officer of The Washington Post Co.
"If we are to be guided only by those factors — student graduation rates and how much debt they incur — we would probably close down all, or almost all, of the institutions of higher education — whomever they may be run by — that serve poor students," Graham said at the company's annual meeting in May.
A committee led by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has held multiple hearings on for-profit colleges over the past year — most recently in early July, after the Obama administration issued its new "gainful employment" rules. Those rules require schools to meet at least one of three conditions to continue receiving Pell Grants and other federal paid-tuition: a loan repayment rate by former students of least 35 percent; annual loan payments of no more than 30 percent of an average student's discretionary income; or annual loan payments that don't exceed 12 percent of a typical graduate's salary.
Regulators say those conditions are needed to ensure that for-profit graduates won't face crippling debts, which combined with low-paying jobs could lead to more loan defaults.
The Senate committee found an average dropout rate of 57 percent within two years of enrollment at 16 unnamed for-profit schools. More than 95 percent of students at two-year proprietary schools, and 93 percent at four-year schools, took out student loans in 2007, the committee found. That compares to fewer than 17 percent of community college students and 44.3 percent of students at four-year public schools. Students at for-profit schools also account for nearly half of all student loan defaults, the committee found.
"Some for-profit schools are efficient government subsidy collectors first and educational institutions second," the committee concluded in its report.
In contrast to most nonprofit colleges, proprietary colleges have emphasized expanding their student rolls, regardless of the academic prospects of those enrolled.
"State institutions might like to grow, but they can't afford to. Elite schools define themselves by the fact they don't grow," said industry analyst Trace Urdan, the managing director of Signal Hill Capital Group. "This is a place where growth is the essence of the institution."
Harkin, the industry's most vocal critic, recently compared the high default rates to the subprime mortgage loan meltdown. He remains skeptical that the sector has mended its ways.
"For-profit education must work for students, not shareholders," he said.
Eric Schmitt, 36, earned an associate's degree from Kaplan University's campus in Cedar Falls, Iowa, and then a bachelor's degree from its online school three years ago The aspiring paralegal said he has been unable to find a job in the field. He owes nearly $45,000 in student loans and is working a temporary warehouse job to help support his wife and two children.
Schmitt, who testified before Harkin's committee in June, called the Kaplan Commitment and other industry initiatives "a step in the right direction" but said the gap between education costs and real job prospects could mean "you're going to keep seeing students thrown under the bus."
In a statement issued by Kaplan after Schmitt's testimony, the company said he turned down a paralegal job it helped him line up.
The conversations in Washington and Wall Street mean little to Carl Tabb, a 36-year-old father of 10 who hopes to earn a bachelor's degree in information technology from the University of Phoenix while continuing to work full-time for the Missouri Department of Mental Health and moonlighting repairing home computers.
"I really was not the best student when I was in school," he said. "I always thought I wouldn't make it to college."
Fitzgerald, a former Price Waterhouse consultant, said nontraditional students such as Tabb deserve just a chance to earn a degree and a shot at better future.
"Yeah, we're a for-profit. But that doesn't mean we're in it for the wrong reasons," she said. "We want to set up our students for success."
___
Alan Scher Zagier can be reached on Twitter at http://twitter.com/azagier
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Questions on Legislator on Board of For-Profit University
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/07/18/qt
Connecticut State Representative Selim Noujaim, a Republican, was a key player in amending a bill in June so that some state scholarship funds that would have been restricted to students at public and private nonprofit institutions would also be available to those at for-profit institutions. The Hartford Courant reported that Noujaim is a trustee of Post University, for which the for-profit institution pays him $4,500 a year. Connecticut law bars public officials from taking any action that creates a "direct monetary gain" to a business with which the official is associated. Noujaim said he would have recused himself if the bill helped only Post, but said that there was no need to do so since it helped other for-profit institutions. He also said he was not involved in Post for the money, telling the Courant that "I'm in it for the kids."
Connecticut State Representative Selim Noujaim, a Republican, was a key player in amending a bill in June so that some state scholarship funds that would have been restricted to students at public and private nonprofit institutions would also be available to those at for-profit institutions. The Hartford Courant reported that Noujaim is a trustee of Post University, for which the for-profit institution pays him $4,500 a year. Connecticut law bars public officials from taking any action that creates a "direct monetary gain" to a business with which the official is associated. Noujaim said he would have recused himself if the bill helped only Post, but said that there was no need to do so since it helped other for-profit institutions. He also said he was not involved in Post for the money, telling the Courant that "I'm in it for the kids."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
