Wednesday.....Culture.....Best Blog Called "Special Dog's Conservative Bark".....I win!!!

Has anyone ever considered compiling a list of the Best Prisons in America? What criteria would they use? One statistic might be Prisoner Satisfaction, another Sentence Completion Rate and yet another Number of Criminals Who Were on the Most Wanted List. One more could be taken from RateMyWarden.com. Forbes magazine came out with its 250 Best Colleges For our Money list, yet another attempt to feign academic respectability, and increase circulation in the process, while rewarding many colleges and universities where this criteria has supplanted actually educating its students, and doing a great disservice to schools who actually want to strengthen the mind and could care less about cable television in every dorm room. I have a little bit of experience on this topic. I went back to school at 51 years old to a Masters program in Higher Education primarily to learn more about Higher Education in America before our son matriculated to it. I completed the class curriculum and stopped short on other requirements but had I gone on to receive the degree my interest would have been in seeking a position as a college recruiter, not a high paying job but one that would have fulfilled a passion in advising young people on their future. When considering this I had given myself one requirement, that being, to work for a school that would give students a great and true education. Forbes gave 27.5% of the calculations to Student Satisfaction including 17.5% of that using ratemyprofessors.com. One category was How Happy Are You At The School, another Faculty Salaries and yet another Alumni In Who's Who, and I can't forget that indispensable statistic Alumni On Forbes Corporation Office List (only 5%?). What is this fascination we have with Best Lists? Every year our local newspaper gives us the results of their The Best Hoagie, The Best Chinese Restaurant, The Best Port-a-Johns  surveys....well maybe not that but we no longer can take the time to do our own research, we just look for someone's Top Ten List. Oblivious to those doing the Best Schools lists is what is actually being taught or pre-1968 dorm life. Notre Dame didn't make Forbes 250 Best Colleges list. Maybe they didn't provide the information. If so, good for them for ignoring this nonsense.