College costs, data slants, conflicts of interest, and "research"...

[Csubstance@aol.com]

7/26/07

Just one more addition to my recent note about how Andy Stern, the University 
of Chicago, and Eli Broad team up to bash Chicago high schools. 

That "study" that claimed that only six percent of Chicago high school 
students ever graduated from reputable four-year colleges also left out a major 
factor that hinders the ability of most Chicago teenagers (and virtually all of 
the families who pay union dues to SEIU) from going to "quality" four-year 
colleges is the most simple:

The cost of a college education.

1. The University of Chicago completely ignored the underlying economic 
inequities as a possible explanation of why a smaller percentage of Chicago kids 
finish college quickly as compared with, say, Chicago's more affluent suburbs.

2. The president of the Service Employees International Union failed to 
notice a fundamental class inequity in the distribution of access to "quality" 
college because he was too busy hanging out with corporate "reform" guys like Eli 
Broad and citing the kinds of data and studies that are funded by guys like 
Eli Broad.

Just one other small piece of interest.

There are few major people in the "Consortium" who have avoided major 
financial and other conflicts of interest. From Tony Bryk to John Easton and Melissa 
Roderick, they are all conflicted massively. At the least, such biases should 
be included in the footnotes to the studies they produce -- and whenever 
anyone cites those studies.

George N. Schmidt
Editor, Substance

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