I read a piece today in which Mike Gorbachev referred to Parkinson’s Law. This is simply the idea that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. The reality of this is the extraordinary time needed when a bureaucracy is involved. Court cases, patent applications, hearings before the FCC, can all take years…

In his Quality Points Dr. Deming tells us that consumers do not complain, they switch. Hmm, maybe not all the time Dr.  Check out this story on how passengers refused to disembark from an airplane when the flight was cancelled. In fact they stayed on the plane throughout the night, a sit in reminiscent of…

Dear Ben Bernake Mr. Ben Bernake, Chairman Federal Reserve Washington, DC Dear Ben It didn’t work. I know that’s a ‘cut to the chase, right to the gut’ summary but, the time for hope is past. Yesterday the Dow Industrials blew right through the January ‘panic low’ and the March ‘rescue Bear Stearns and everything…

The long awaited  audit report from Deloitte on DISD has been presented, and it is not pretty.  Clearly the report was delayed until after the $1 B + bond election, which passed.  Click to read the DMN article.  Numerous control failures were cited by the new audit firm which replaced KPMG, another of the big…

I know I know you have been waiting anxiously but did you know it was already here. Yes the team that has won three WORLD championships and is now well on its way to a fourth. They smashed Miami 49-0 just last week. Yep what the world needs now, Women’s Football. No no not women’s…

About 100 sailors were left behind when the USS Ronald Reagan lifted anchor and sailed out of Hong Kong to avoid an incoming typhoon. Considering that there are 6,000 sailors on the carrier a statistcian would say that is an acceptable error rate (1.6%).  But perhaps not for the 100 that are now homeless in…

Yep like Freddie Krueger he is back.  Perotcharts.com  looks at how we spend money and what we get for it. He is concerned about the federal deficit and rightly so. However I doubt there is a way to make this a front burner issue. Fact is that politician use public money to buy votes for…

The move to spread the wealth (read research funds) heat up. In this link the Dallas Morning News supports the three in North Texas, interestingly the other four are not mentioned. IN addition to UNT, UT Dallas and UTA, I would guess Univ of Houston, Texas Tech, UTSA, and UTEP. Too bad Texas State.

In business classes we attempt to assess real or projected costs to projects. Educators do the same thing.  Here is an article from the Houston Chronicle  deploring the Higher Ed  tuition increase in Texas. I will show you the UT response in class today. In addition we will look at the actual report of the…

In Education Communication we focus this week on Vision Mission Outcomes. Many administrators make the common mistake of  substituting inputs as a measure of their school's success. For example, I once read the description of a campus by its President in which he paraded the appraised value of the buildings!  What pray tell does that…