Allegedly, the scheme involved setting up dummy accounts at three different banks to obtain refund anticipation loans, then using UCI student information to file bogus returns to get the tax return money.

The federal indictment follows on the heels of an earlier arrest of one suspect by Texas police.

Here’s the UCI identity theft indictment

Here’s my earlier story on the arrest of one suspect 

U.S. News & World Report publishes scores for each of the hundred or so schools that it ranks highest, and offers some of the data that goes into calculating those scores. To really understand how each of those schools fared relative to its peers, however, you need to know its z-score in each category of data that USN&WR measures. My model of the rankings aims to recreate those z-scores, and thus the rankings themselves, by duplicating both the data and the methodology that USN&WR uses.

As I did in 2005, 2006, and 2007, I here offer the z-scores used in my model of the USN&WR law school rankings. (Please see those earlier posts for fuller explanations of z-scores and why they matter.) This year, though, I’m offering the z-scores in weighted form. In other words, I multiplied the z-scores in each category of data by the percentage that they influence a school’s overall score. That method of presenting the z-scores has the virtue of highlighting just which scores matter the most. My observations follow; first, the weighted z-scores used in my model of the 2009 law school rankings:

Unsurprisingly, you’ll find the largest numbers in the upper, left-hand corner of the chart. There lie the most heavily-weighted z-scores of the law schools that scored the highest in USN&WR’s rankings. Consider, for instance, the .70 weighted z-scores enjoyed by Yale and Harvard under the “reputation among legal academics” category; those numbers nearly swamp the effect of other measures of those schools’ performances, and have twice the impact of the peer reputation scores of schools ranked as close as 20th from the top.

This presentation of the data shows how very little influence many of the things that USN&WR measures have on its rankings. The weighted z-scores for Bar pass rates, for instance, vary between only .05 and -.03, with a whole lot of zeros filling that span. Bar passage rates evidently do not matter much to any school’s USN&WR score.

One more observation: Compare the weighted z-scores of Yale and Harvard, the two top-ranked schools. They run nearly neck-in-neck in all but one category: overhead expenditures/student. In that category, Yale enjoys a crushing advantage. Thanks largely to Yale’s .66, the scores shown under “overhead expenditures/student” span .74 points—a greater range than in every category but “reputation among legal academics.” Given that the former counts for only 9.75% of a school’s score, while the latter counts for 25%, Yale’s great wealth plainly buys it a great score in USN&WR’s law school rankings.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw, and College Life O.C.]

Here’s a mention from our Register political columnist Frank Mickadeit about South Orange County Community College District trustee Tom Fuentes, better known to most as a functionary of the Republican Party.

I was discussing the need for these sites with a colleague of mine recently He scoffed at the idea that more and more students are using sites like RATE MY PROFESSOR and WHO TO TAKE to check into an instructor’s class before they register. I was surprised that he felt that these sited were a bad thing. I thought, obviously he has had some negative comments in his time.

Personally, I think theses sites are a great idea. I wished they were around when I was an undergrad. It would have helped save me some of the agony of enduring less-than-great instructors in some of the general education classes. Back then teacher ratings were usually through word of mouth, and word often got to me too late. “You’re taking her?!? Good luck!” And “Don’t take him!”

The word of mouth evaluations still happen, but with advancements in technology, the word of mouth evaluations have expanded tenfold! Students are able to check out a class and a professor way beyond just the “She’s boring” comment. They can see the easiness of the class, helpfulness of the teacher and clarity for his or her lecture. There is even the popular “chili pepper” to rate how “hot” a professor is (whatever it takes I guess). Sites like PICK A PROF even allow students to see what letter grades the instructor awarded for that class in a given term. (more…)

I would have recommended this text anyway, but this morning’s news report adding magpies (yes, the birds) to the list of creatures who, like humans (some, anyway) can recognize themselves in a mirror further inspired my book report.  Some of the best moments in American Empire arrive with Buhle’s retelling of Zinn’s own life story:  working class kid, son of immigrants, WWII bombardier, Spellman College anti-racist activist.  (Many high schools use A People’s History of the United States and if our students know one historian, it’s Howard Zinn!)  In the chapter titled “Street Smarts” young Howard learns class consciousness.  After helping out his waiter father serving tables to rich people, Zinn of Bushwick Avenue, Brooklyn joins an anti-fascist rally.  A police billy club upside the head teaches him about demonstrations and dissent.  “I woke up perhaps a half hour later with a painful lump on my head.  From that moment on I was no longer a liberal — a believer in the self-correcting character of democracy,” he recalls.  “I was a radical, believing something was fundamentally wrong with this country.”

It turns out that magpies, like dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants and humans (age two and older), pass the “mark” test — a crude but definitive mirror experiment of self-recognition — “an example of convergent evolution, the development of similiar traits in organisms with very different ancestries,” i.e. birds, mammals.   

Importantly, Zinn recognizes his country for what it is.  And he sees himself in the mirror that is Empire, USA.  Maybe it’s not easy for some teachers to offer students the obvious and easily documented history of their own country as an imperialist force.  Or is it?  The rest of the world knows it.   This new comic book helps.   Go to YouTube to watch the movie.

Here’s the local news story about Coach Mike Mayne, who also coached his own son, major leaguer Brent Mayne, at OCC.

By the way, it was 32 degrees at dawn in West Yellowstone, Montana last week. My daughter was very excited to see her first frost, after I explained to her what it was.

Unfortunately, SOCCCD’s propensity for a micromanaging and interfering board and/or administration is all too common among other community colleges.  This last spring, we had an accreditation visit at Cerritos College.  As a result, we, too, are now on the “Warning” list.  Among the shortcomings that the visiting committee found was a failure to resolve issues from the previous 2002 visitation, which included the recommendation that the “leadership of the college governance groups, including the Board of Trustees, work together to clarify, document, and communicate the processes used for campus decision-making, especially in such areas as planning and the allocation of resources.” (more…)

Here’s the top paragraphs from the AP story that followed the Chronicle:

BC-CA–Cal State Contract,0214 CSU no-bid contract questioned

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that a Georgia-based labor consultant earned $4,000 a day while working for the California State University system under a no-bid contract that violated state procurement laws. 1 4

Three CSU employees, including two labor lawyers for the system, say they were fired this year for questioning the deal with C. Robert Barnes, a former director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Barnes has been paid nearly $2.5 million since November 2005 representing the university in labor negotiations, the newspaper said.

State agencies are allowed to award contracts without putting them out to bid only when in emergencies, when the hired contractor provides services that can’t be obtained elsewhere and when a contract’s value is less than $50,000.

For details about how and why I modeled USN&WR’s law school rankings, as well as for similar snap-shots of the results, see these posts from 2005, 2006, and 2007.

I’ll offer further reflections on this year’s results in later posts. For now, I’ll just observe that the close fit between USN&WR’s scores and the model’s scores should strike you as good news. Why? Because it suggests that law schools did not try game the rankings by telling USN&WR one thing and the ABA (the source of most of the data used in the model) another. Even if you don’t care very much for USN&WR’s law school rankings, you’ll surely agree that they ought not rely on gross misrepresentations.

[Crossposted at Agoraphilia, MoneyLaw, and College Life O.C.]