Podcast New Year’s Eve
This week, Dr. Luckey will be speaking with Dr. Bishirjian on the History of Economic Thought: why it’s taught and how important an understanding of economics is for good citizenship.
Dr. William R. Luckey is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Political Science and Economics at Christendom College where he has taught since 1984. Born in the south Bronx, New York City, Dr. Luckey received his B. A. from St, John’s University, New York and served in the United States Marine Corps. He received an M. A. and Ph.D. in political philosophy from Fordham University, and was an Earhart Foundation Fellow and a Robert Boone Stewart Fellow. He taught at St. John’s University, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, and Cardinal Newman College in St. Louis prior to coming to Christendom College. The 1990’s saw Dr. Luckey return to school for an M.B.A. from Shenandoah University and an M.A. in Economics from George Mason University where he was a student of Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan.
He has published in Faith and Reason, the Journal of Markets and Morality and published “John Courtney Murray: A Catholic Appreciation” in John Courtney Murray and the American Civil Conversation, edited by Grasso and Hunt.
He has given scholarly papers at Franciscan University of Steubenville, Calvin College, Auburn University, the Eric Voegelin Society and the American Political Science Association, and is on the advisory board of the Center for Economic Personalism.
This year he will have been married for 29 years and has four children.
You’ll be able to listen here by clicking on the player below. If you’d like to join in the chats, you’ll need to register for a Blog Talk Radio listener account. If you are a Blog Talk Radio member, be sure to add Yorktown-University to your favorites.
LASC Online: What are America’s History Professors Talking About?
The Lehrman American Studies Center is a website for professors of American history, politics and culture, but students can review what American history profs are saying to one another by visiting LASC.
Check it out, here.
46% Failure Rate: Are Government Student Loans a Good Investment?
Zac Bissonette, a sophomore at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and editor for AOL Money & Finance thinks maybe not:
“…Government figures show that of students who entered four-year colleges in 1997, just 54% had earned a degree six years later. A professor wrote about this issue in The Atlantic earlier this year, arguing that it’s immoral to tell all students they can go to college, then crush their dreams by failing half of them. But the problem has deeper effects than hurt feelings: the 54% graduation rate means that around 46% of all money used to finance college tuition results in no degree.
“Which means that financially speaking, the spectacularly high dropout rate boils down to a spectacularly bad investment. Though there’s no specific data, one can imagine the countless millions that are wasted financing educations that never come to fruition. We could try to predict which students would be part of the 46% who don’t finish, then encourage those students not to go to college. But to do this would mean a lot of students who might graduate never get to give it a shot. That wouldn’t be fair. So what we can do instead is identify the 5% or 10% of students who are the least likely to graduate, and not send them to college…(Why College is a Waste of Money – The Daily Beast)”
Resource: Uncommon Knowledge
The Hoover Institution’s video series, Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Peter Robinson engages some of America’s top intellectuals in discussions about important topics:
Uncommon Knowledge™ is now an exclusive on the web, giving viewers immediate access to all the videos and transcripts from the Uncommon Knowledge television series (1997 – 2005) as well as the current Webcasts (2006 – present). The series features Hoover fellow Peter Robinson interviewing political leaders, distinguished scholars, and leading journalists.
The unedited Webcasts, which go upon the website promptly after the interview, feature exchanges of ideas and informed discussions about important issues of the day. Choose any Uncommon Knowledge video below to get fresh ideas and up-to-date commentary about contemporary issues…Continue reading on the Hoover Institution >>
Podcast 12/10/08: Dr. Thomas H. Landess on Writing as a Small Business
This week, Dr. Thomas H. Landess of Yorktown University will be talking with Dr. Bishirjian about Writing as a Small Business.
Thomas H. Landess taught literature and creative writing in colleges and universities for twenty-four years–Vanderbilt University, Converse College, Furman University, and the University of Dallas–where he was a full professor and also served as Academic Dean. During this period, he published three books and over 100 articles, poems, and reviews for such scholarly publications as the Sewanee Review, the Southern Review, and the Georgia Review. He has a B.A., an M.A. and a Ph.D.
Dr. Landess’s philosophical approach to literature is evidenced by his 1979 essay James Joyce and Aesthetic Gnosticism.
One of his mentors was Andrew Lytle, an educator and well-known champion of the “Agrarian movement” of the 1930’s. Thomas Landess wrote a moving eulogy about Lytle’s long and illustrious career titled simply, “Andrew Lytle, RIP.”
In 1982, he left academia, and moved his family to Edisto Island in South Carolina to devote his full energies to writing. He remained on Edisto Island for five years, then moved to northern Virginia, where he continued to write and publish books, articles, and op-ed pieces.
While living in the Washington, D.C. area, he began to serve as a ghost writer for major political figures and organizations. Since then, he has ghost-written over twenty books. One was a national best seller, three more were book-club selections, and the others were published by commercial publishing houses. In addition to political topics, he has written first-person accounts of the Vietnam War, World War II, the civil rights movement, the inner workings of the FBI, forensic medicine, life in a prison for women, and aviation. During a single week, two of his works were discussed on CNN’s Crossfire.
Dr. Landess receives more requests for ghost-writing than he has time to write. All come to him by referral, and he chooses the ones that seem most interesting or most likely to appeal to a broad readership. He now lives in Columbia, South Carolina, where he continues his work as a ghost writer and is working on a novel. He has been married for thirty-nine years and has three children and one grandchild.
You’ll be able to listen here by clicking on the player below. If you’d like to join in the chats, you’ll need to register for a Blog Talk Radio listener account. If you are a Blog Talk Radio member, be sure to add Yorktown-University to your favorites.
Podcast: Steve Entin on Supply-Side Economics (Wednesday, 12/10 4pm Mountain Time)
This week, Dr. Steve Entin will talk with Dr. Bishirjian about supply-side economics.
Stephen J. Entin is a graduate of Dartmouth College and received his graduate training in economics at the University of Chicago, majoring in macroeconomics, monetary policy, and international economics. Mr. Entin is President and Executive Director of the Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation (IRET), a pro-free market economic public policy research organization based in Washington DC. He advised the National Commission on Economic Growth and Tax Reform (the Kemp Commission), assisted in the drafting of the Commission’s report, and was the author of several of its support documents. Mr. Entin is a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Policy at the Department of the Treasury. He joined the Treasury Department in 1981 with the incoming Reagan Administration. He participated in the preparation of economic forecasts for the President’s budgets, and the development of the 1981 tax cuts, including the “tax indexing” provision that keeps tax rates from rising due to inflation.
Mr. Entin represented the Treasury Department in the preparation of the Annual Reports of the Board of Trustees of the Social Security System, and conducted research into the long run outlook for the system. In his work in eight annual reports of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance Trust Funds, Mr. Entin was instrumental in revamping the reports to make their economic and demographic assumptions more realistic and to present their information in a more informative and understandable format. This information triggered several proposals in the Congress to adjust the formulas determining social security benefits in order to avoid future payroll tax increases.
Prior to joining Treasury, Mr. Entin was a staff economist with the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress, where he developed legislation for tax rate reduction and incentives to encourage saving.
You’ll be able to listen here by clicking on the player below. If you’d like to join in the chats, you’ll need to register for a Blog Talk Radio listener account. If you are a Blog Talk Radio member, be sure to add Yorktown-University to your favorites.
Economy Gives College Leaders Impetus to Explore Longer-Range
The current state of the economy, and the increasing unaffordability of college tuition for American families may encourage institutions of higher learning to make some long-term changes, according to Katheryn Masterson at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
For more information, see: Economy Gives College Leaders Impetus to Explore Longer-Range by Kathryn Masterson.
CCAP’s ‘Chart of the Week’ 12/03/08
From the Center for College Affordability and Productivity:
This chart shows that the average cost to attend college (2008 dollars) in one’s home state has risen while the student to faculty ratio has remained relatively constant. This indicates that instruction is not a driver of ever higher costs, or alternatively, that additional funds are not going towards instruction….For additional charts of the week, visit the CCAP Blog >>
Podcast December 3rd: European Politics
Thanks to everyone who joined us for our first Blog Talk Radio Podcast – on The Meaning of Thanksgiving. If you missed it, be sure to check it out, and don’t forget to “rate” the show, if you’re a Blog Talk Radio member.
On Wednesday, December 3rd, and each Wednesday thereafter, we will be hosting podcasts on various topics. On the next one, Dr. David Corbin and Dick Bishirjian will be discussing the conditions in European politics, changes in the demographics of Europe, and the threat to freedom from the European Union.
You’ll be able to listen here by clicking on the player below. If you’d like to join in the chats, you’ll need to register for a Blog Talk Radio listener account. If you are a Blog Talk Radio member, be sure to add Yorktown-University to your favorites.
Will College Soon be Unaffordable for most Americans?
Tamar Lewin is reporting in the New York Times that the cost of college tuition and fees has risen at a rate three times as fast as the average family income in the last 25 years. And this was before the recession began to affect the average American:
The rising cost of college — even before the recession — threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans, according to the biennial report from the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education.
Over all, the report found, published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.
“If we go on this way for another 25 years, we won’t have an affordable system of higher education,” said Patrick M. Callan, president of the center, a nonpartisan organization that promotes access to higher education…Continue reading on the New York Times >>
