Another reason to hate lawyers...

NYT has an article about how law schools are automatically inflating grades to make their students appear smarter to prospective employers. I do not even know where to begin. The article quotes Deans of some well-known schools as saying a wholesale grade inflation is warranted because their students are disadvantaged against other schools who do the same thing. Basically, it's ok for us to lose any sense of ethical standards because we are doing it to combat all of our competitors' low(ering) ethical standards.

One schools is even removing "C"s from the grading scale. To be fair, law schools have always tried to maintain a bell curve for grading, which put a lot of students in the "average" or middle. There's a shocker, mediocre attorneys.

The momentum for this move? Law school grads are not getting jobs! Another shocker. It's not like we have a surplus, or anything. Every college grad with a diploma can get into some kind of law school (which is not true for other professions, btw). Mount this on top of the ideas that students have about law jobs (mostly through media, Boston Legal, etc) and the idea that it pays a lot of money, and BAAM everyone wants to be a lawyer.

The Chronicle of Higher Ed has had a recurring theme of articles about PhD graduates in the humanities (esp. English). The authors argue about the ethics of encouraging students to get a PhD in English because there is a surplus. English PhDs have a difficult time finding a tenure-track position and many staff adjunct positions for years until a position opens. At my small college we had 120 applicants for an open English position. In the Business Department, we get about 25 resumes for open positions.

Will lawyers become like English PhDs? Working for  peanuts and foraging for long-term work? Let's hope so. Honestly, if you believe in a [reasonably] free market, then all labor gluts eventually get worked out. The pain endured by manual laborers as we transitioned to a knowledge (and outsourced) economy has been great. The idea of the "life of the mind" for English PhDs must now being reconciled with the reality of "have no positions in your field". My dream of slowing the open faucet of new JDs might come from the market itself. Whether staunching the flow of law grads ever changes our litigious society is another question. Until we do reduce the numbers of lawyers, please understand, that they DESERVE higher grades. If anyone can make an argument for it sound ethical...it's lawyers.

Cost of Higher Ed...

I follow the discussion on Higher Ed costs partly because I am an academic and partly because the costs of sharing need to be factored into any knowlede sharing model. Since Higher Ed is a primary knowledge sharing entitity, its cost structure should be interesting to knowledge folks.

Michael Feldstein, an Oracle employee and education blogger has a blog article about the cost of education and its relation to earning. He raises some great points and concludes the cost of an college degree might be in a bubble that could burst. I disagree.

I think the cost of college has risen dramatically compared to median income (check out Feldsteins graphs for some sobering illustrations). But I do not think many of the people that argue Higher Ed is at a tipping point are factoring in some significant variables. Some breif thoughts on the costs of Higher Ed:

• Feldstein argues that an Associates Degree would take until age 29 to pay off. This is bad math. I think he's taking the average cost of a Bachelor's and halving it to get an A.S. degree. Most people get their A.S. degrees at technical and community colleges. The non-profit versions of these schools are some of the most cost-effective options available in the whole world.

• Few pay MSRP. Very few students pay the stated tuition price for their education. A lot of analysts for college costs simply look at the stated price for tuition at at college and use this number. Each school has a discount rate. Many private schools have average discount rates in the 30-40% range. Knock off 35% from tuition rates and the equation changes.

• Some of college cost is self-induced. Students want better/bigger dorm rooms, lounges, pools, organized activities, athletic programs for all levels (e.g. clubs), coffe bars, and fast Internet. These ammenities cost schools a lot of money. If you do not provide these features, students respond by not choosing your school.

• Administration costs have skyrocketed. In Derek Bok's book Underachieving Colleges... he notes how the numbers of faculty has stayed consistent per capita over the decades but administrative positions have exploded. Dirty secret that no one in academia will address. Businesses add people when they can demonstrate the people add value (e.g. revenue) to the system. Not so with Higher Ed.

I do not think we can lay blame on one area. But we do need to examine the costs of Higher Education. We need models that reflect the complexity of the Higher Ed ecosystem. Maybe providing a range of cost options would work. It sure works for consumer products. Feldstein's off to a good start. But we need to factor all the variables before we can make simplistic assumptions about whether college still pays off...not to mention the fact that a better educated public is something that no one seems to be factoring.

Does Academic Writing Style Prevent Knowledge Application

Rachel Toor has an excellent article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (online) which discusses the writing style of academics. This article explores some of the problems with academic writing and prescribes some solutions from Orwell, who evidently recognized the pompous and unclear nature of academic writing during his day.

While this subject might initially seem tangential to KM, I think it is central to the gap between practitioners and academics. I am not advocating we turn complex research or ideas into bulleted lists. But the passive and obfuscating writing style that academics use is not conducive to knowledge sharing. Fellow academics will admit to not reading journals as thoroughly as they should (and they are the primary audience!). It is rare to find practitioners who read academic articles.

The solution? Reward the idea and the application of the idea, not how complex we can make the idea sound. This might actually be possible as journals lose their print foothold (read dominance) and are forced to consider alternative audiences, channels, and revenue models. However, if we stripped away some of the complexity behind the description of academic ideas, maybe many of the ideas would look a little silly and underdeveloped. But that's ok. Because we could widen the audience and succeed in building upon and applying ideas across disciplines. The comments to Ms. Toor's article seem to support the idea that even academics understand the problems with their writing. But I really don't see change coming. Many people have gotten tenure with silly or underdeveloped ideas cloaked in pretentious sounding language.

Steve Jobs...one advisor Obama missed at landing...

The iPad and nationalized Health Insurance seem to have some strong similarities. Primarily, no one knows how useful or functional the thing will be. Both should have users asking the question "do I really need this thing?" Opinions over the iPad, like Washington, seems to be highly polarized.

Of course, this is where similarity ends. One was poorly packaged and sold to the public and one seems to be a hit already. Steve Jobs used a great marketing and hype machine to convince people that the iPad is something special. iPad specialness remains to be seen. But Obama could have taken a page from Steve Jobs' playbook: make it attractive, advertise it as functional, and make people think it is the best thing on the market.

The largest difference in my compare and contrast is the non-believers. iPad critics will write a few blogs, sigh how Apple is a cult of brainwashed people, and ultimately not buy the iPad (until ver. 3.0 comes out). Critics of healthcare recognize the importance of this bill to all users. So they are drawn to action for getting it right and getting input from all parts of healthcare.

Two important products. A huge set of important users. After the debut of the healthcare bill it seems to have fallen off the news cycle. Meanwhile, iPad stories are everywhere. Maybe we should change our coins...In Apple We Trust.

Stored Knowledge vs. Stream Knowledge

A lot of new KM systems are built around microblog functionality. What I term streaming KM. A stream of information flows from all the people to whom you are connected in the system. Much like Twitter, you can send specific messages or mass distributed messages.

My issue with this functionality surrounds collection and long-term storage. What happens to these streamed messages? How to they get integrated into the collective knowledge (if there is such a thing) of the organization? Furthermore, how does context get applied to the meaning and content of the messages if you search?

Let me propose an example. Assume scientists at ABC company use Yammer within their large pharmaceutical company. One scientist sends a message to the group regarding the threshold level of chemical X permitted in the diffusion process for creating chemical Y. Several scientists respond with things like "it should be no more than 2"...or "research shows anything above 2.5 is ineffective..." How does this K get stored in the organization? First, the audience understands certain aspects of the message which a lay person may not. Possibly the 2 or 2.5 is micrograms per liter or whatever the amount might be. Without labels, the quantity might be useless to a search engine. Also, consider the whole stream is necessary to understand the meaning of the exchange, not just the reply. Finally, where does this information get stored so that it adds value to the company's KMS? Can the info make it's way to a database or KMS?

I really like the functionality of stream KM. I have been using Google Wave for research and for some consulting. But the lack of these modified social network systems to connect to corporate enterprise KM is a bit troubling...or might need a solution.

This might be why I like academia...

On Tuesday I heard a presentation with Douglas Rushkoff and then I had lunch with him in a small group at my college. There are some fundamental areas about corporations and banks where I disagree with Rushkoff. But I found him to be a very unassuming and thoughtful guy. His thesis that life has become corporate and large corporations have ruined the fabric of life has traction with many people during the recession. His solution to work and produce value in your community (locally) has some true benefit, however, I think some of the conclusions are overly simplistic.

Tuesday evening I watched the movie "Helvetica" with my night class at another event and then had a discussion about printing with some Society of Design members. My work with KM, interactive design, and usability is somewhat tangential to the field of design, but my early days as a doc designer and technical communicator made me fascinated by this movie and subsequent discussion.

After coming home, I realized that I was tired. Not physically, but intellectually. Which is a great feeling. I do not typically feel this way after teaching, certainly not after mudane tasks like grading, and rarely while consulting. This is one of those days where the concepts, thoughts, and interesting dialogue overflows your capacity to comprehend (or at least contemplate and categorize) it all. Very satisfying.

Google claims MS is helping antitrust lawsuits...

...or I could have entitled this "Search Your Own Algorithm for the term Naiveté."

InformationWeek reports that Google claims MS is waging a proxy war over antitrust litigation. MS appears to be providing legal assistance to small lawsuits that companies are filing against Google. These lawsuits appear to be legitimate and not frivolous. If they are legitimate, Google needs to stop complaining and get better lawyers. Stop ranting about how many PhDs you have and get some good attorneys (cannot believe I write this).

Seriously, the rhetoric on this subject is very interesting. We should be consistent in the way we apply criticism and argument. When MS was being sued by Netscape there were many in the IT/Business community who piled-on the antitrust rhetoric in an effort to keep MS in check. And this issue was over browsers which were being distributed for no cost.

Now, Google cries foul when the same thing is done to them. People, esp. open sourcerers, call MS the "Evil Empire". Somehow, MS is evil but Google, who has completely monopolized the ad search field, is "good". Is this because they have a trust statement that claims to be ethical? Personally, I like both companies. But the open sourcerers need a clue. Google is not OS. Just because they give a bunch of apps away for free does not make them OS. They can give away apps and products because they have a monopoly on search. Someone (e.g. advertisers) are paying to subsidize Voice, Docs, Webmaster, etc.

Competition is good. It makes products better, keeps costs down, and helps corporations remain user-centered. This is what Google Docs has done to MS Office. So why should reversed roles - MS vs. Google in the search advertising space - be any different?