with Auren
Hoffman
Month of May,
2001
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Summation Push Auren Hoffman's Summation Push for
May, 2001 This issue:
* Heard at the World Economic Forum
* Top Ten Movies of All Time
* Reader Responses
* Friends of Auren: Bob Saldich, Retired CEO, Raychem
* Summation Push Pick Links
* Hoffman Reading List -------------------------------- IS ATHLETICS IN EDUCATION A GOOD THING?
Adam Pollock, the VP of Business Development at BridgePath, recently passed me a very thought-provoking article from the New Yorker discussing the book "The Game of Life" by James Shulman and William Bowen. Shulman and Bowen, both with the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, did a comprehensive study of collegiate athletics.
The article points to something very disturbing -- athletics at some colleges and universities take precedence over just about everything else. While you might expect that from schools like Ohio and Florida, this actually holds truer at smaller schools like Williams and Swarthmore.
For colleges with competitive admissions, being recruited as an athlete is one of the best ways to get in. According to the article which sited one particular college (which did not offer athletic scholarships): "Among men, if you were black you had an eighteen-per-cent better chance of getting into this college than a white student with the same SAT scores had. If you were what is known in admissions talk as a 'legacy' -- that is, the child of an alumnus -- you had a twenty-five-per-cent better chance. But if you were an athlete you had a forty-eight-per-cent better chance. If you were a female athlete, your advantage was fifty-three-per-cent." And athletics is not a money-maker. At Michigan, one of the most successful athletic programs in the country, "in 1998-99, the … football team had an average home attendance of 110,965 (a national record) and won the Citrus Bowl; the men's hockey team made it to the second round of the NCAA tournament, which it had won the year before; the men's gymnastics team won the national championship; and at the end of the year the athletic department had a $3.8 -million shortfall."
However, it is the smaller schools that really get hurt. The article goes on to state that "Michigan can make room for 150 athletes in each class and still have more than 5000 places left. At Williams, which admits 500 students a year, more than a third of the places are taken by athletes."
This creates a problem because these colleges are excluding great musicians, writers, actors, debaters, entrepreneurs, volunteers, and others in favor of athletes. Being a superb athlete should give some sort of preferential treatment to help a school to field good sports teams. But, schools should also try to win the national championship for debate, drama, band, cheerleading, chorus, the math team, and more.
Why should a student with just one superb extracurricular talent receive better treatment than a more well-rounded student involved in multiple organizations?
Summation: Athletics can often dumb-down a university.
(What are your thoughts?
Write auren@summation.net) -------------------------------- Share
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the smartest people you know. -------------------------------- HEARD AT THE WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM
In early April, 2001 I attended the US meeting of the World Economic Forum. Here is a snippet of some of my thoughts that were influenced by the meeting:
* Wealth concentration in the U.S.: 10% of the people own 90% of the public stock. The top 1% own 50% of the stock. * We need a world standard for accounting. GAAP rules do not apply overseas. On April 1 Japan made a major positive step moving closer to world accounting standards. This is important so global investors can more easily compare apples to apples. * Corporate subsidies are one of the biggest barriers to REAL campaign finance reform. As long as big corporate subsidies (like ethanol, sugar, textiles, etc.) exist, major corporate money will find its way into the political system. These subsidies lead to higher consumer prices (essentially another tax) and hurts the prospects of real free trade. * Will our labor shortage hamper economic growth? * Moore's Law, where the power of computing doubles every 18 months, is not a law of physics. Moore's Law is not inevitable. It was made true through the hard work of Intel, Microsoft, and others. Do we expect Moore's Law to apply to bandwidth? What are the biggest barriers to making Moore's Law a reality in bandwidth? * There is a wholesale market for real-time buying and selling of excess bandwidth. Enron did this in the energy business -- now they are also in the bandwidth business. * Should we standardize dates? The rest of the world does day/month/year. Shouldn't we do that? * The future: The most valuable real estate in the world will be your belt and what devices that hang on it. * Fast-track trade authority is extremely important to promote more open, freer trade. * As international financial trading becomes more widespread, how will we regulate it? Will there be a global version of the SEC that has global jurisdiction? * The United States has a $5.6 billion surplus. We want to do a $1.8 billion tax cut. The conventional wisdom is that we will have $3.8 billion (5.6 - 1.8 = 3.8) left over. My counter-thought: we'd have a lot more left over because tax cuts spur the economy and the faster we grow the more revenues government gets. * "Never make predictions ... especially those about the future." * Indonesia: Will it be Wahid or Megawati? Will Megawati even want to assume power under these circumstances? If there is a transition, I hope for a slow, peaceful one. * California power crisis could be worsethan we think. 25% of California's power comes from hydro electricity which comes from the Pacific Northwest. But this year snowfall is down 45%. The decreased snowfall could translate into really big shortages this summer -- less work days and more black-outs. (Thoughts on any of these? Write auren@summation.net) -------------------------------- Send Summation Push to a colleague. Did you know that one out of every million Americans is a billionaire? -------------------------------- The objective of Summation is to TOP TEN BEST MOVIES (IN ENGLISH) OF ALL TIME:
10. Vertigo (You agree? Write auren@summation.net) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Send Summation Push to that intelligent someone. -------------------------------------------------------------------- READER RESPONSES: Regarding the commentary on school choice, Zack Stein writes: "I find it very interesting that you make a grammatical error as you talk about literacy. as the product of a public school education, are you subtly proving your own point? nice subliminal work, mr. hoffman..." --> of course, I meant to do that. And from Jim Coombes: "I'm glad people are starting to acknowledge the benefits of vouchers. The Economist 3/10 issue indicates that 57% of all blacks support vouchers, including 75% of those under 35 and 74% of those with children. (p. 27). Tough to swallow for Democrats and liberals who like to think they have a choke-hold on minority rights issues. They don't. Union money and support clearly has a strong influence on the Democrats, and they will gradually pay the price for that. Good stuff. Keep it coming." On the smart marketing tactics of Sprint PCS, Andy Choy writes: "Speaking of cell phones, I heard the CEO of Nokia talk the other day. Did you realize they have 2/3 of the cell phone market worldwide? Now lets think about this for a minute. In the US, a TON of people have other brands (e.g. Motorola's StarTac, Qualcomm's "brick", [I'm personally sporting a Samsung]) which tells me that overseas, Nokia must have close to 100% market share across many different countries, all with different languages, taxes, and laws. I think the statistic is something close to shipping 1 million cell phones a day! Pretty awesome from an operations standpoint alone." -------------------------------- Send Summation Push to a colleague. -------------------------------- FRIENDS OF AUREN [this section updates you an interesting person
that is a member of Auren Inc]
Bob Saldich, Retired CEO, Raychem
Bob was at Raychem for 32 years and served his last six of them as CEO. Bob has also been the past chair of AEA. Since Bob retired, he has become more involved in politics and policy. Bob has become active in the Outreach Advisory Board for the University of California where he has been working to enhance California students' preparation for college and implement the recommendations. Bob even spent time supporting an organization that promotes a world government democracy. I've known Bob through his active participation in the Silicon Forum.
-------------------------------- Send Summation Push to a colleague. -------------------------------- THIS WEEK'S SUMMATION PUSH PICK LINKS:
* How to Dance Properly
(http://home.earthlink.net/~zefrank/invite/swfs/navigation.html/) -- hilarious site NOTE: Auren Hoffman works for BridgePath.com but the opinions expressed
herein are solely those of Mr. Hoffman. NOTE: You may reprint in full or in part (for
free) with permission from author. Auren Hoffman's bio can be found at:
(http://www.bridgepath.com/about/management.html/)
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