Apparently, Just as Many Congresspeople attended UGA as Stanford

While legitimately pursuing Huffington Post (for a work assignment, I promise), I came across this little nugget.  According to research and data collection from a company called FindtheBest.com, just as many members of Congress attended the public universities of University of Virginia and the University of Georgia as members attended Stanford University.  Not quite sure whether that elevates those public universities, pulls down Stanford, or says something far less provocative, but I found it interesting -- in a I-might-need-this-as-a-trivia-answer kind of way.  Even more, The University of Texas - Austin has more than any of those schools.  Only Harvard (duh), Yale, and Georgetown have more members of Congress counted as alum.

What about the method?  Well, without a full statistical analysis, it seems that these differentials may even be underestimates.  For example, says FindtheBest.com, the study only counted a member's school once -- so if the member attended undergrad at particular university and then also attended some other graduate or post-secondary program at the same school, the study only counted the school once.  I suspect, if each program were independently counted, Harvard's numbers might be far and away above the others.  But, then again, so could fun public universities.  Thoughts?

-E

New Study says a college degree continues to be more valuable

An article published in the New York Times today shows that the value of having a college degree has risen dramatically since 1980 (for the 80's babies like me), and has even risen since 2010.

Here's a bit of the scoop of what David Leonhardt writes:

The pay of people with a four-year college degree has risen compared to that of those with a high school degree but no college credit. The relative pay of people who attended college without earning a four-year degree has stayed flat.

Importantly, the article also notes:

a bachelor’s degree does not guarantee success. But of course it doesn’t. Nothing guarantees success . . .

The article even goes on to criticize the discussions aimed to depress people from going to college.

The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014.

To read the whole thing yourself, see here:

Is College Worth It? Clearly, New Data Say

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/27/upshot/is-college-worth-it-clearly-new-data-say.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Affirmative Action still not "decided"

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court released its Opinion of the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin et al. case, also known as our time's Affirmative Action case.

For the non-lawyers, my reading is that the Supreme Court held that a university gets deference in deciding and determining its diversity mission...but University does not get deference in deciding how to go about achieving diversity. Judicial review (strict scrutiny) is required. The case now goes back to lower courts to review whether the university went about achieving their mission in a "narrowly-tailored" (as race-neutral as possible) way.

So, the Court did not do much "deciding" today on the merits on the case (which means they did not get into whether "diversity" is actually a compelling interest, except Justice Thomas who long ago decided his stance that no use of race is acceptable to him) but rather did some clarifying on what the judicial standard is for college admissions cases. The initial Plaintiff, Fisher, did not ask the Court to decide whether past cases on college admissions (Grutter, especially) needed overturning -- a point which Scalia writes separately to justify as his reason for joining the Court's decision on this case. 

I did find some of the Court's point particularly interesting.  First, the Court actually said that universities are not required to exhaust all the race-neutral means of admissions processes that they can think of.  Instead, the Court said that universities are required to have serious, good faith consideration of race-neutral means of admissions and then justify why those alternative admissions process would not work.  570 U.S. ___ at 10 (2013).  Further, the Court reemphasized that the university's decision must be a workable decision, and tipped its hat that an administratively viable solution might be a consideration in the narrowly-tailored analysis that will follow once the lower courts sort out the judicial review.  570 U.S. ___ at 11 (2013).  Finally, the Court also restated that the judicial standard of strict scrutiny not be "fatal in fact"--which means that it cannot be the case that each time a court reviews a program by which the state has taken action or made some type of determination, a court later strikes it down and says that it was not good enough to muster the constitutional protections of the 14th Amendment.  In fairness, the Court also stated that the strict scrutiny analysis cannot also be "feeble" such that state action gets deference or an easy pass in its process.  570 U.S. ___ at 13 (2013).  

For me, I'm kinda happy that the deciding did not come today (dunno if my heart could take it), but in line with many of my colleagues' sentiments, I don't know whether the odds are going to be better years from now... And, I certainly would have loved to hear Justice Ginsburg on the merits of this case another, wonderful time.


As always, I'm providing the actual Opinion:  http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-345_l5gm.pdf