Brian Gongol
Iowa Regents over-estimate the difficulty of running a state university
Being a university president is like being in charge of any other large organization -- it depends upon one's ability to manage people. A fine article points out that greatness is the result of sustained, deliberate practice -- nothing else. The Regents' apparent insistence upon finding someone with specific experience running a university with a major research hospital attached to it is a completely unnecessary limiting factor. There are probably 50,000 people in Iowa alone who would be capable of running the University of Iowa: Just pick anyone who's willing to work hard, learn quickly, and let capable people do what they do best. (We did just elect a Governor who had no managerial experience whatsoever before getting elected to statewide office, didn't we? Isn't running a state considerably more complicated than running a state university?) We elect people to Congress with considerably less knowledge of health care than the qualifications the Regents appear to be demanding of a prospective university president -- and yet the university president won't be voting on Medicare reform, now will he or she?
Vatican may be considering a revision to the contraceptives rule
Containing the spread of HIV could outweigh theology
"Slide-rule celebrities"
This site is featured alongside others in a Los Angeles Times article about economics and the Internet. It's a tremendous honor to be noted alongside the authors of Freakonomics and your own freshman economics textbooks.