Subprime Education: For-Profit Colleges and the Problem with Title IV Federal Student Aid

Federal student-aid policy is designed with the goal of expanding access to higher education for all students. It has been enormously successful in achieving that goal. Yet, for many students, federal student aid has served only to burden them with oppressive student-debt obligations. These obligations are a particular problem with respect to the for-profit higher-education sector, which receives a large and ever-growing proportion of federal aid. This Note examines the interaction between federal student-aid policy and for-profit institutions, arguing that the noble goals of modern federal student-aid policy enable the very practices that lead to negative outcomes for many students by creating a lucrative market for subprime education. This Note analyzes a continuum of approaches to reducing the negative student outcomes caused by many for-profit institutions, concluding that the blame lies not with for-profit institutions but with federal student-aid policy. Ultimately, the modern federal student-aid regime requires regulators to choose between abetting negative student outcomes and reducing access to higher education. This dilemma can be avoided only by deemphasizing the student-oriented aid model in favor of an institution-centered model that is focused on reducing the price of education

Dialect in Contemporary Scottish and Irish Fiction

There has to date been no attempt at a detailed comparative study of contemporary Irish and Scottish literature: this thesis constitutes an attempt to do so. Specifically, it looks at the significance of the dialect novel in writing after 1979. My claim is that the dialect novel must be read in terms of the crisis facing working-class communities at the end of the twentieth century. Despite certain attempts to declare class a redundant critical category, I argue that it is fundamental to our understanding of contemporary Irish and Scottish culture.Chapter one traces the emergence of Irish-Scottish studies as an interdisciplinary field within the humanities. It also outlines the political and theoretical challenges confronting Marxism at the end of the twentieth century. Here I will introduce the work of Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. Throughout this thesis Gramsci's ideas will underpin the discussion of specific literary texts. Chapter two looks at Scotland and the work of James Kelman. It examines attempts by nationalist critics to locate Kelman's work within the so-called 'Renaissance' of contemporary Scottish literature. Against this, I argue that Kelman's use of dialect belongs fundamentally to a class based politics, one that compels us to reconsider questions of nationalism. Chapter three looks at the Republic of Ireland and the work of Roddy Doyle. Focusing in The Commitments (1987) it examines the novel's contentious claim that the working-class are the niggers of Ireland. The conflation of class and race will be examined in detail. This is particularly relevant in light of James Kelman's coincidental insistence that his own work is part of a literature of de-colonisation. This issue forms a conduit to re-considering the Irish postcolonial debate that arose during the 1990s. Chapter four examines the wholly neglected issue of class within the post '69 conflict in Northern Ireland. It focuses on the role of dialect in Frances Molloy's No Mate for the Magpie (1985) and John Boyd's Out ofmy Class (1985). I argue that socio-economic roots of the Troubles have been systematically elided from mainstream perceptions of the North. Chapter five considers all three regions in a more concentrated form of analysis. It focuses on the critical endorsement of Richard Kearney's concept of postnationalism and the postmodern theory upon which it is predicated. Although popular among both Scottish and Irish critics, I contend that this is essentially a misguided critical enterprise. Postmodernism is read in terms of the enthronement of late capitalist values, producing a cultural discourse that reconfigures rather than redresses underlying issues of social inequality

Spatial Dichotomies: Research into the Development of 3D Representation

Abstract Matthew McGuire, for the Masters of Science degree in Professional Media & Media Management, presented on Friday, November 14th 2014, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Spatial Dichotomies: Research into the Development of 3D Representation Chair of Committee: Robert Spahr This research paper covers how 3D technology influences different industries over time. Key points within the research find that over time humans consistently gravitate toward increasing their ability to recreate depth, texture and image. Industry leaders in education, film, medical, television, and the Web will find literature and discussion of how to adjust their modes of production and manufacturing in the future. Each of these industries will be reviewed throughout the report. The data in the report identifies 3D technology in two sections: object and screen-based technology. Each chapter contains social and financial elements that assist and react to new technology in the market. Additionally, to help show the effects on the different industries there are trends and time lines to show how individual industries develop. In each industry, there are multiple ways that 3D technology can be effective and ineffective. The research goes over transitions in early media to compare to transitions in modern mediums of art and science. After covering a short history on the transformation that society has had with the image, the paper covers public demand for new virtual settings in education and entertainment. Image-based research indicates that users will on average continuously desire more depth and interactivity in content

The Internet, Personal Jurisdiction, and DAOs

Global connectivity is at an all-time high, and sovereign state law has not fully caught up with the technological innovations enabling that connectivity. TCP/IP—the communications protocol allowing computers on different networks to speak with each other—wasn’t adopted by ARPANET and the Defense Data Network until January 1983. That’s only forty years ago. And the World Wide Web wasn’t released to the general public until August 1991, less than thirty-five years ago. The first Bitcoin block was mined on January 3, 2009, less than fifteen years ago. Legal doctrine doesn’t develop that fast, especially in legal systems heavily based around judicial precedent like the United States. The disconnect between the global, instant connectivity that internet-based technology makes possible and traditional legal and State regulatory actors has never been more apparent. In the past year, the United States, through its administrative agencies controlled by the Executive branch, has brought numerous enforcement actions against Web3 and crypto projects. Some of these projects and their members have been based in the United States, and others have, at best, limited connections to the United States’s territorial borders. This Essay calls attention to the way the Internet, and Web3 in particular, has raised constitutional concerns about how United States agencies approach personal jurisdiction. Understanding these constitutional limits is critical for anyone considering forming or participating in a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (“DAO”). Intentional, thoughtful consideration of the issues presented here will ensure that DAOs and their members take on legal obligations in the United States knowingly and responsibly. A corollary is also true: DAOs and their members should fully consider their possible defenses and rights when confronted with the next overreaching enforcement action

Street slang and schizophrenia

We report the case of a 26 year old streetwise young postman who presented with a six month history of reduced occupational and social function, low mood, and lack of motivation. He complained of feeling less sociable and less interested in his friends and of being clumsy and finding it harder to think. He was otherwise fit and healthy, with no physical abnormalities, neurological signs, or objective cognitive impairments. There was no history of a recent stressor that might have precipitated his symptoms. He was referred to a specialist service for patients in the prodromal phase of psychotic illness for further assessment after he had seen his general practitioner and the local community mental health team. The differential diagnosis at this stage was depression, the prodrome of schizophrenia, or no formal clinical disorder. His premorbid occupational and social function had been good. There was no history of abnormal . social, language, and motor development and he left school with two A levels. After three years of service at the post office he had been promoted to a supervisory role. He had a good relationship with his family and had six or so good friends. There has been a number of previous heterosexual relationships, although none in the past year. Aside from smoking cannabis on two occasions when he was 19, there was no history of illicit substance use. Detailed and repeated assessment of his mental state found a normal affect, no delusions, hallucinations, or catatonia, and no cognitive dysfunction. His speech, however, was peppered with what seemed (to his middle class and older psychiatrist) to be an unusual use of words, although he said they were street slang (table).Go It was thus unclear whether he was displaying subtle signs of formal thought disorder (manifest as disorganised speech, including the use of unusual words or phrases, and neologisms) or using a "street" argot. This was a crucial diagnostic distinction as thought disorder is a feature of psychotic illnesses and can indicate a diagnosis of schizophrenia. We sought to verify his explanations using an online dictionary of slang (urbandictionary.com). To our surprise, many of the words he used were listed and the definitions accorded with those he gave (see table). We further investigated whether his speech showed evidence of thought disorder by examining recordings of his speech as he described a series of ambiguous pictures from the thematic apperception test, a procedure that elicits thought disordered speech. His speech was transcribed and rated with the thought and language index, a standardised scale for assessing thought disorder. Slang used in a linguistically appropriate way is not scored as abnormal on this scale. His score was 5.25, primarily reflecting a mild loosening of associations. For example, he described a picture of a boat on a lake thus: "There’s a boat and a tree. There seems to be a reflection. There are no beds, and I wonder why there are no beds. There’s a breeze going through the branches of the tree." His score was outside the normal range (mean for normal controls 0.88, SD 1.15) and indicates subtle thought disorder, equivalent to that evident in remitted patients with schizophrenia (mean in remitted patients 3.89, SD 2.56) but lower than that in patients with formal thought disorder (mean 27.4, SD 8.3). Over the following year his social and occupational functioning deteriorated further, and he developed frank formal thought disorder as well as grandiose and persecutory delusions to the extent that he met DSM-IV criteria for schizophrenia. His speech was assessed as before, and the thought and language index score had increased to 11.75. This mainly reflected abnormalities on items comprising "positive" thought disorder, particularly the use of neologisms such as "chronocolising" and non-sequiturs. To our knowledge this is the first case report to describe difficulties in distinguishing "street" argots from formal thought disorder. It is perhaps not surprising that slang can complicate the assessment of disorganised speech as psychotic illnesses usually develop in young adults, whereas the assessing clinician is often from an older generation (and different sociocultural background) less familiar with contemporary urban slang. Online resources offer a means of distinguishing street argot from neologisms or a peculiar use of words, and linguistic rating scales may be a useful adjunct to clinical assessment when thought disorder is subtle. Differentiating thought disorder from slang can be especially difficult in the context of "prodromal" signs of psychosis, when speech abnormalities, if present, are usually subtle. Nevertheless, accurate speech assessment is important as subtle thought disorder can, as in this case, predate the subsequent onset of schizophrenia, and early detection and treatment of psychosis might be associated with a better long term clinical outcome