Bailout University.

Yale joins Harvard.

Math teacher tests advertising.

A math teacher in a California school district has taken to placing ads on his tests in order to raise money for newly-introduced photocopying fees. This is simultaneously hilarious and troubling.

Not troubling because ads on tests are inherently wrong somehow (though some might argue they are). At least not so simply.

No, it's troubling because teachers in poorer districts have long faced the prospect of shelling out their own cash for photocopies and school supplies. Would a teacher in such a school be able to raise $1000 by asking parents to pay to put inspirational quotes on their kids' exams? Not likely.

Now, I'm not blaming the teacher. He found a creative solution to a difficult problem. But his solution, as he recognizes, simply emphasizes the dismal state of public education funding in this country. And moreover, as might be less apparent, it is a jerry-rigged extension of our public schools' property tax-driven, sociological crisis.

Poor Harvard.

In 4 months, Harvard has lost more money (at least $8 billion) from its endowment than most other universities had to begin with. (Only Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT have endowments over $8 billion.)

Context from about 15 months ago, for those interested: a one-year gain of about $5.5 billion.



(Image: A Harvard University money clip, plated in gold...on sale.)

"They kept shopping."

Well...this was terribly foreseeable, wasn't it?

Bargain-hungry shoppers stepped on a fallen Wal-Mart worker, who died Friday morning, after the crowd knocked down the store's front doors -- and the worker -- during the "utter chaos" of a Black Friday shopping melee, Nassau County police said...

[Nassau Police Det. Lt. Michael] Fleming said an estimated 2,000 people had gathered in line around 5 a.m. as the store was preparing to open...

People in the rear of the line began pushing, cascading the people in the front into the doors, which were knocked off their hinges, Fleming said.

Hundreds of shoppers who then streamed in literally stepped on the worker who later died, Fleming said...

Shoppers who surged past the fallen Wal-Mart worker into the store were asked to leave by other store workers, some of them crying and visibly upset, said one shopper, Kimberly Cribbs, of Far Rockaway.

Though rumors circulated among the shoppers that someone had been badly injured, people ignored the Wal-Mart workers' requests that they stop shopping, move to the front of the store and exit, Cribbs said.

"They kept shopping. It's not right. They're savages," Cribbs said.

What is happening to us?