Some Speculations about the Geo-Political Landscape in the Trump Administration

Asia-based freelance journalist Francesco Sisci points out in this article that the 15-year distraction of the so-called War on Terror has diverted US attention from China, which is America's most significant rival.  The Peoples Republic has consistently gained ground in the nonce.

As I have repeatedly argued,  terrorism is principally a policing problem.  When we think of it otherwise, we risk our civil rights and civil liberties in the name of a false notion of national security. (Consider how many police departments are armed and armored these days.)  Only our energy dependence upon the Middle East has any legitimate claim upon a strategic geo-political status for that region.

Now comes a president who is likely to promote exploitation of America's own carbon energy resources.  We have an historic opportunity for energy independence: a combination of clean carbon energy and infrastructure development that includes developing green energy alternatives.

Finally breaking the oil dependency that has chained us to the Middle East will enable Washington to focus on China in a meaningful way for the first time in a decade and a half.

I highly recommend a close reading of Sisci's analysis, linked above.

And to my academic-admin colleagues: if you are investing in political science faculty, it's time to reorient your programs to Sinologists.  (A Russia specialist or two sprinkled in for leavening might not be a bad HR investment, too.)

Do robots take manufacturing jobs?

     I have suggested as much on a number of occasions in this blog and elsewhere.  This morning I read a blog entitled " Don't blame the robots for lost manufacturing jobs."  Going straight to the bottom line, the authors conclude, "Industrial robots are a disruptive technology, and as disruptive technologies take hold some workers benefit while others are hurt. But to suggest, as some in popular media have, that the use of robots is a causal factor in the decline of American manufacturing employment is factually wrong and misses a broader point. As the productivity figures suggest, robots are increasingly essential to the competitiveness of a country’s manufacturing sector. The fact that countries like Germany, Sweden, and Korea are deploying automation technology at a much faster rate than the United States points to serious competitive challenges—and further debate about the use and impacts of automation."

       Of course, like their headline, these Brookings brainees' conclusion is exactly the over-simplification they critique in the body of their blog.  Neither they nor I nor any other thinking observers dispute the existence of multiple causes of lost  manufacturing jobs.  These guys list globalization and off-shoring (is there a difference?) and skills gaps.   No doubt they --- and robots --- are contributing causes of lost manufacturing jobs.  And, since it's pretty hard to control for all other causes and tease out the impact of any single cause is probably impossible, we might best be satisfied with knowing that all these factors combine to erode what once was the economic sector serving as the gateway to middle-class status for average working stiffs.

     Their mention of skills gaps brings to my mind an interesting assumption that we here in the US have embraced as an article of faith.  The Bush-era "No Child Left Behind" Law is the federal embodiment of this secular Ism.  There's a pretty good summary of the NCLB Act in Wikipedia.  The law, combined with other conservative policies on K-12 education have placed many public schools in a double bind:

Schools are expected to bring 95% of their student populations up to standards, whether or not students' low IQs and/or disabilities, eg, autism, make this goal a practical impossibility.

Meanwhile, wealthy conservatives --- such as billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump's choice for Education Secretary --- favor charter schools and vouchers.  The effect is to siphon the best and brightest away from these same disadvantaged public schools.

Thus, as the NCLB bar keeps rising, the quality of the student body keeps declining.  Do you detect a fixed game here?  A self-fulfilling prophecy?  See, say the Betsy DeVos's of education, the public schools and their unionized teachers can't measure up to free enterprise, aka, charter schools.

These same folks, who profit from robotics, will tell you that robots help workers.  And perhaps it's true that those workers who have jobs controlling robots enjoy a cleaner, safer, more comfortable work place than those who labored on the assembly lines of old.  But, just as common sense says you can't siphon off the best students and expect under-funded public schools to meet NCLB standards, it also says to me every day that you can't keep automating and also create sufficient good jobs for everyone as well.

First of all, which of the kids who are mentally incapable of meeting NCLB standards will be mentally capable of taking the more sophisticated tasks that come with managing robotics?

Second, just look around you.  My wife and I drove to a Christmas party two days ago.  We took the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  When we got off, we used Easy-Pass.  Only a couple of the toll booths were set up for cash with a toll taker on duty.  Convenient for us?  To be sure.  But every automated booth was a tombstone for a toll taker no longer needed in that once well-paid government job.  That's just a quick example of automation all around us.

Mr. Trump criticized monthly job stats on the ground that many Americans have simply given up and dropped out of the quest for employment.  I don't think he's wrong.  The alarming increase in heroin overdoses would seem to reflect this loss of faith in the middle-class dream.

As with the loss of manufacturing jobs, drug overdoses have many causes, and teasing out loss of faith or hope probably can't be done.

America's problems are multiple and many-layered.  And this presents a big problem for Donald Trump, the first president to try to reduce every issue to a 100-word Tweet.  Most who voted Democratic or Green this year will never accept him as their legitimate president, especially since Clinton won the popular vote by such a wide margin.  Meanwhile, many who voted for him inevitably must be disappointed because he can't possibly deliver on his promises... due in no small part because of robotics. In other words, if he does fulfill his promise to bring back manufacturing jobs, who will get them... his supporters or robots?

And here comes the really scary part:  What does a demigod give the people when he's caught in this kind of dilemma?

Answer: War.

War usually has the "beneficial" effects of creating many jobs while dramatically reducing the workforce.  Unless of course it's fought using only robots, while sparing the population centers.  But I wouldn't count on either of those two things.

I think Mr. Trump is already positioning himself for the likely shortfall of his economic program by the saber-rattling that has already begun.  We were darned lucky to get through the Cold War without a nuclear exchange between or among the so-call Great Powers.  We might not be so lucky this time around.

Perhaps the robots will take over after we are gone, ala the Terminator saga.  If that happens, then I will agree with the Brookings article's headline (at least in part):  "Don't blame the robots."

The pot calling the kettle black: Tweets in lieu of truth in a new Dark Age

     Even overshadowing the  killing of the Berlin Christmas Market terrorist in Italy, this morning the big news was Trump's Tweet, threatening Russia with a new nuclear arms race.

      And, so, on this morning's Today Show, Matt Lauer dusted off his journalist's cap and interviewed Trump's future press secretary.  Lauer tried to get him to admit that such Tweets might be dangerous.  Never mind that some might see a tweeting president as a somewhat frivolous and undignified personna on a world stage.

      But why would this trouble Lauer?  My wife and I can remember when the first hour of the Today Show was devoted to reporting real news and Lauer thought of himself as a real newscaster... maybe even a real journalist.  But the Today Show, like so much else on TV, has sold out to infotainment.  That he, a once serious reporter, is reduced to interviewing the future president's future press secretary about a Tweet is emblematic of the depths to which political discourse has sunk in 21st century America.  It would all be hilarious if it weren't for those thousands of nuclear warheads.

      And, yet again, the so-called news media and the so-called politicians prove the point I have been repeating since the turn of the new century:  it falls to higher education to seek and disseminate the truth.  Universities must be the guardians of civil rights and civil liberties.  Most of the news media have abrogated this role, like Lauer, for the bigger ratings and paychecks that infotainment has to offer, while Trump and his Twitter account have taken lying by politicians to an all-time low.

      Our campuses must be the monasteries of the new Dark Age.

Despite all the hand-wringing in higher ed about Trump's election, administrators may find a lot to like about the new administration.

Here's what the Chronicle of Higher Education has to say on this subject this morning:

"If you’re a college leader who feels micromanaged by federal regulations, a university trustee who thinks that the U.S. Department of Education has been overly intrusive in overseeing colleges’ handling of sexual-assault and discrimination cases, or a would-be education provider that is not a traditionally accredited college, you may well like some of the approaches of the coming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress."

A New Website will Counteract Fake News

        The great thing about the Internet is that everyone who can access a computer can have access and exercise the right of free speech.

        The worst thing about the Internet is that everyone who can access a computer can have access and exercise the right of free speech.

        Everyone who teaches knows the pitfalls of Google:  students doing research will grab the first ten hits and those will be their research sources.

       Worse yet, the ignorant and the malicious are equally able to initiate and propagate false news.

       Now a professor, who was himself victimized, has started a website intended to identify and deflate phony news, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

        Hoaxy is the brainchild of Filippo Menczer of Indiana University, who uses key words to help users track how fake news stories spread across the social networks.

       I tried it out with "New Air Force One will cost four billion."  I selected "Recent" over "Relevant" and got a long list of stories, most of them --- though not all --- on point.  The most recent story was dated December 8th: "Donald Trump Says He Will Personally Negotiate Price of Air Force One Price with Boeing." I was told there are 37 Tweets and 209 Facebook posts... not a lot, really.  A related December 5th story, by contrast, boasted nearly 3,000 Facebook posts.  Neither was at the top of the list, which was dominated by a a September story, "How the US Became ISIS's Air Force," which seems to miss the mark.

      So maybe there's room for improvement?

      Anyway, I'm not entirely sure how helpful Hoaxy will be.  Will it really help identify false news stories?  And if, so will use it.  Probably not our students... but it's a start.

For -Profit Higher Education remains on the Obama bull's eye, even as Trump names a pro-profit secretary to the DOE

             As Jill Stein demanded recounts and as Change.org circulated its quixotic petition to subvert/convert the Electoral College for Hilary Clinton… and as President-elect Trump names his cabinet members… the biggest story of all may get submerged in a sea of babble.  On December 12th, U.S. Secretary of Education John King announced that his Department has denied the appeal of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools.

            Back in September the DOE decided to strip the organization, which accredits some 250 for-profit colleges and universities, of its powers.  The ACICS  appealed. Yesterday’s denial of that appeal would seem to be its death knell.  If so, what would this mean for the for-profit sector of the higher ed industry?  Quite simply, it means that the schools currently accredited by ACICS will no longer be qualified to partake of the $150 billion federal student grant-and-loan cornucopia.  And, since such federal funding is the lifeblood of most of these organizations, they are likely to go bankrupt, as did two major for-profit players, Corinthian Colleges and ITT, earlier this year.

        The ACICS came under fire two years ago, when it continued accreditation of Corinthian Colleges.  At the time, despite having numerous campuses and thousands of students, Corinthian was under investigation by some 20 federal and state entities regarding allegations of defrauding its students.  When the DOE cut Corinthian off from the federal student-loan spigot, the company quickly collapsed, leaving thousands of active students scrambling to pay off loans and find berths at alternative institutions.  Earlier this year the DOE provided many of them with relief, such as deferred-payment options.

        Meanwhile, the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, reportedly at the instigation of the DOE, voted back in June to yank ACICS’s authority.  The DOE acted on that recommendation in the early fall.  In denying the appeal, Secretary King cited “a profound lack of compliance with the most basic Title IV (student loan) responsibilities of a nationally recognized accreditor,” such as assessing student achievement, determining licensure standards, and monitoring troubled schools.

       For his part, ACICS Interim President Roger Williams decried the decision, warning it will “result in immediate and meaningful harm to hundreds of thousands of students currently enrolled in ACICS-accredited institutions.”

       Will it indeed?  Under the decision, schools will be eligible for “provisional” status up to 18 months, during which time they can still take in grant and loan dollars.  Meanwhile, Mr. Trump has announced his choice of billionaire Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education in his cabinet.  DeVos is an avid advocate of privatizing the K-12 education system via vouchers and charter schools, as is Trump himself.

        And, while DeVos has literally no track record in the higher ed environment, her strong commitment to private, for-profit players in the public school realm strongly suggests sympathy for similar for-profit participants in post-secondary education.

        Thus, some reasonable assumptions: first, if we assume that the Electoral College won’t go rogue and Stein’s recounts don’t alter the November election’s outcome --- both eminently reasonable assumptions --- then Donald Trump will be the President on January 20^th.  Second, if we assume prompt Senate confirmation of the Trump cabinet, then it follows that Secretary King’s action of yesterday will be reversed or nullified post haste following DeVos’s swearing in.

         On the other hand, nothing about the presidential election and its aftermath has been kind to reasonable assumptions.  So, perhaps, we shouldn’t assume anything about the ultimate impact of this unprecedented bureaucratic initiative, made quite literally at 11:59 PM on the Obama Administration’s clock.

Purdue University,under President Mitch Daniels, leads in offering ISAs.

What's an ISA, you ask.  Income-Share Agreement.  According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, conservatives really like the idea.  Former Indiana Governor, now university president, Daniels started offering such agreements to Purdue's students this year.  Under such an arrangement, an investor helps pay a student's college costs in return for which s/he gets a percentage of the graduate's earnings later.

Earlier this month the Purdue Foundation signed a letter of intent with Vemo, an outfit that specializes in designing ISA programs.

Liberals reportedly don't think much of the idea.  But conservatives do, since it uses free-market forces to finance higher education.  The concept looks a lot like a plan that Jeb Bush rolled out during the presidential primaries last year.

While liberals don't much like this notion, some support a similar arrangement under which the states would become the investors.

Under Purdue's program, students will get a $50,000 line of credit.  Repayment after graduation will be tied to the alumna's earnings.  The investor presumably shares the grad's risk.  If one prospers, both prosper.  If the grad falters, so does the return on investment.

Some conservatives call this model "elegant."  The student invests in her/himself.  It acknowledges the right's view that college is mainly about making more money later in life.

For liberals the objections may be more philosophical than economic.  First, some say that education is about more than money.  Second, many believe that the obligation of paying for college is not the student's.  Rather, they argue, society should shoulder the burden of educating its citizens... thus Hillary Clinton's campaign promise of free college.

As political scientists at major universities are being quizzed about the Trumpian threat to liberal democracy, we might think about the role higher ed should play in the next four years.

     This afternoon the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that poli sci profs are 

being asked by journalists if Trump poses a threat to our democracy.

The article references a Harvard prof:  

"Political scientists are in the midst of an important moment, he said. As people outside academe look to scholars for answers, it’s more important than ever for political scientists to rethink what questions their research seeks to answer. Questions that offer solutions to saving and understanding Western democracies, the type of work Mr. Mounk does, may become more valuable in the world of academe than they were before, he said."

This article begs the question of the role of American higher education over the next 4-8 years.  Here, then, are a few of my thoughts on this question.r what they may be worth, are my some of own thoughts.

      The first decade and a half of the new millennium, by and large, has been a harrowing time for American higher education.  A leading culprit is the Internet.  This was by no means immediately apparent.  While most faculty members probably found online learning to be an inconvenience at best and a threat at worst, many administrators embraced online education as an opportunity to reach a whole new (national, and even international) market.

          It took Professor Clay Christensen of the Harvard Business School, the prophet of disruption theory, to explain that, for only the first time in higher education’s history, has a technology appeared that is capable of disrupting the established business model.  Prior to the Worldwide Web and distance education, would-be entrants into the higher ed industry confronted a high bar.  The physical-plant requirements alone barred many competitors.  Well-paid, inefficient faculty, who came with expectations of lifelong employment, drove the cost of instruction still higher.  Tuition increases outran inflation rates by a cross-country mile.  Enter the Internet.  Voila: disruption of the paradigm of a college education that had prevailed since the turn of the last century. (Christensen)

     Some effects of the disruption include the shift from 65 percent of the faculty on the tenure track in the 1970s to 35 percent or fewer today; the financial crisis besetting literally hundreds of tuition-driven private colleges; the rise of major for-profit players, such as the University of Phoenix Online, and the erasing of geographic barriers to aggressive competition (e.g., the University of Arizona Online).

     But increased competition is not the only, or even the most serious, challenge posed by the Internet to traditional higher education.  If the higher-education enterprise consists of more than merely vocational training… if it also includes the search for truth…, then the challenge of the net runs to the very heart and soul of the university.

     And at no time has this been clearer than in 2016, the year in which a television personality with no political, military or diplomatic experience… an entrepreneur who recognized an opportunity in the disarray of the Republican Party… a brash flim-flam man with no regard for the facts tweeted his way into the White House.

      It seems no exaggeration to suggest that, during the Trump presidency, America’s college campuses will be called upon to play the role of the monasteries in the Dark Ages.

        How serious is this situation in this second decade of the new century?  Consider that a Pew Research Center Survey released in mid-December 2016, a month after America’s most bizarre national election, revealed that 64 percent of Americans polled felt that fake news story cause “a great deal” of confusion about the actual facts regarding current events and issues.  Only about one respondent in 10 say they don’t feel a sense of confusion.  Perhaps more encouragingly, nearly one in four claim they are capable of detecting phony news; of course, it’s entirely possible that some or many of these folks overestimate the efficacy of their B.S. detectors.  Perhaps most discouraging was the admission of nearly a quarter of respondents that they themselves have knowingly shared false news stories.     
      “When it comes to how to prevent the spread of fake news, many Americans 

expect social networking sites, politicians and the public itself to do their share. Fully

 45% of U.S. adults say government, politicians and elected officials bear a great deal

 of responsibility for preventing made-up stories from gaining attention, on par with

 the 43% that say this of the public and the 42% who say this of social networking

 sites and search engines. Although the overall portion of Americans who place 

responsibility on each is about equal, individuals have different perspectives on how 

that responsibility should be distributed. Just 15% of Americans place a great deal of

responsibility on all three of these groups, while a majority (58%) feels instead that

one or two of them bear a great deal of responsibility.” (Pew)

       If higher education must differentiate itself from business and government in 

order to serve as a counterweight to them, one of the fundamental ways it must do so

 is in adhering to a strict code of truth-seeking and truth-telling. Even if particular

institutions of higher learning are unwilling to take unpopular stands on controversial

 issues, they must share consensus on this code or run the risk of abrogating their 

claims to being genuine educational institutions. Are we not entitled to expect a 

higher level of integrity from our universities than we anticipate when we turn on our

TVs?

Forty percent of private colleges, 30 percent of publics missed their enrollment goals this year.

This according to the Chronicle of Higher Education from its 4th annual survey of some 1000 institutions.  In a nutshell:

"As the number of high-school graduates dwindles, and their demographics shift, many colleges are struggling to attract enough students and cover expenses. More than four in 10 private colleges and almost three in 10 public ones missed their goals for enrollment and tuition revenue this year, according to the fourth annual Chronicle survey of small colleges and midsize public universities. In cooperation with the Council of Independent Colleges and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, The Chronicle polled 1,063 colleges, of which 447 responded: 315 private and 132 public campuses."

The story uses as its example, Drew University, a semi-prestigious liberal arts college in north New Jersey.  Drew shot for 385 freshmen and wound up with 350.  And this was at an average tuition discount rate of 58 percent.

Can this be called a crisis?  To some extent, this is a relative concept.  Ten or more years ago I wrote a magazine article on Hiwassee College, a tiny southern Christian college that the Southern Accrediting Commission (SAC) was seeking to un-accredit.  Hiwassee took SAC to court.  The upshot?  Well, Hiwasee appears to be alive and (sort of) well, if one judges from its website.

Last year Sweet Briar College in Virginia tried its best to shut down but got blocked by alumni and friends in court.  In fact, this year the women's college got a record number of applicants.  

Bottom line: It's remarkably hard to kill a college. Still, some schools do close.  In the for-profit realm, Corinthian Colleges and ITT went bust and closed their doors after the Department of Education cut off their federal grant-and-loan cash streams.  According to Moody's, the average for the past decade has been five closures per year.  Six closed in 2014.  Beginning next year, predicts Moody's, the average will climb to 15 per year.  Private schools with revenues below $100 million per year, and publics with gross annual income below $200 million are the most vulnerable.

With tuition being the lifeblood of most of these small schools, an average discount rate of 48 percent --- according to NACUBA --- is probably an unsustainable business model for many of them.  This average reduction from the sticker price has been steadily rising, and as the Drew data indicates, the bottom hasn't yet been plumbed.

Of course, the base is 2300 non-profit colleges and universities.  So, if one isn't chewed up in this gradual decline, then the loss of even 15 schools per year is hardly a crisis for this sector of the higher education industry as a whole.  One might go so far as to characterize it as a natural response to shifting demographics and the weeding out of the weak members of the herd.  As I say, it all depends on your perspective.

The Hottest Story in Higher Education: The Leading Accreditor of For-Profit Colleges Loses Its Appeal

With little more than a month until the Trump Administration takes power, the Department of Education has stood by its September decision to withdraw recognition of the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, according to this morning's news reports.

What does this mean?  Most significantly it means that for-profit universities must either find another accrediting agency that is recognized by the DOE or give up on federal student-loan money... essentially a death knell, as the demise of Corinthian Colleges and ITT demonstrated recently.

No doubt the for-profit sector of higher ed is expecting billionaire Betsy DeVos, Trump's choice for Education Secretary --- noted for her advocacy of privatization in the K-12 environment --- to be their salvation.

This is the story to watch in the weeks and months ahead.

President Donald Trump: Precursor or Potential Dictator?

        First and foremost, Donald Trump is a consummate entrepreneur.  Of the entrepreneur, the economist Joseph Schumpeter explained, “We shall understand… that we do not observe… the emergence of all those affective traits which are the glory of all other kinds of social leadership.  Add to this the precariousness of the economic position… of the individual entrepreneur…, and the fact that when his economic success raises him up socially he has no cultural tradition or attitude to fall back on, but moves about in society as an upstart, whose ways are readily laughed at….”

        Doesn’t Schumpeter in this brief description anticipate Mr. Trump to a “T”?  Consider the President-elect’s multiple bankruptcies, his lack not only of good taste, but also of intellectual ideas and moral underpinnings.  Consider how his opponents and the media laughed at him from the announcement of his candidacy until the evening of November 8^th.  He is indeed the epitome of the entrepreneur.

       Now let’s turn to political philosopher Paul Berman’s best known book, Terror and Liberalism (2004).  Reflecting upon Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin, he writes, “The Leader was a superman.  He was a genius beyond all geniuses.  He was the man on horseback who, in his madness, incarnated the deepest of all the anti-liberal impulses, which was the revolt against rationality.”

     Continues Berman, “And because this person exercised a power that was more than human, he was exempt from the rules of moral behavior, and he showed his exemption, therefore his divine quality, precisely by acting in ways that were shocking.”

       Doesn’t Berman in this brief description anticipate Mr.Trump the politician to a “T”?  Consider the President-elect’s mocking of a disabled journalist, the video of his locker room admission of sexual assaults, his defense of bankruptcy and tax avoidance as “good business,” and his threat to lock up his opponent.  Nearly half the voters in the national election found their candidate’s behavior acceptable, perhaps even laudable, and certainly not shocking. And they swallowed his irrational promises, his revolt against rationality, whole.

        A colleague of mine, an American expat working in investment banking in Hamburg, commented to me after the election, “Trump is like all the European populists, who of course can not deliver on their promises.  The real danger is what could follow Trump if his voters are disappointed and turn to an even more radical alternative.”

       This European perspective on Mr. Trump raises an interesting conundrum, no resolution of which is comforting for the larger half of the electorate who voted for Mrs. Clinton and the liberal status quo. 

       On one hand, Trump may aspire to the stature of “Leader,” ala Berman’s characterization.  Such an aspiration demands ruthlessness.  The wall must be built, the undocumented expelled, the Chinese sanctioned.  Or failing these daunting challenges, he must give us war.

       On the other hand, he may revert to his entrepreneurial instincts.  Having launched this newest ‘Trump Enterprise,’ he may prefer touring his 17 golf courses, leaving a vacuum in Washington to be filled by a new and more vicious Dick Cheney.

       Donald Trump, consummate entrepreneur and potential demigod, has unleashed the whirlwind.  Whether he chooses to ride it or cede the seat to someone much worse remains to be seen, starting in 2017.

        We will be wise to enjoy this Christmas season.  We may not see its like again for a while.

Does Germany know something Mr. Trump doesn't?

True... Germany has accepted so many refugees in part at least because of the nation's guilty past.  But there seems to be a payoff for Deutschland's "penance."  Witness this article from the December 2nd issue of "This Week in Germany":

Dear TWIG Readers,

Germany's influx of refugees has many people wondering about the country's future. A new study shows that 44 percent of new businesses founded last year in Germany were launched by persons of non-German descent, which demonstrates the potential impact that Germany's migrant community can have on the economy.

The study, which was commissioned

by the Economic Affairs Ministry, found that the number of business owners with foreign roots rose by 30 percent between 2005 and 2015 (in comparison: the number of business owners with German heritage declined only slightly, by 3 percent).

Business owners with an immigrant background most often opened businesses in construction, science and technology. Between 2003 and 2015, the portion of new businesses founded by immigrants rose from 13 percent to 44 percent. The Bertelsmann Stiftung previously called Germany's employers with immigrant backgrounds the "job-engine of Germany", creating 1.3 million new jobs in 2014.

"People with a migrant background in Germany do not take away jobs from anyone - quite the opposite," Aart de Geus, chairman of the Bertelsmann Foundation, told Deutsche Welle. "People with a migrant background are not only working as self-employed persons, but they also create jobs and allow many people the chance to participate in the job market."

What makes these figures even more impressive is that Germany's immigrant community only increased by 9 percent between 2005 and 2015 - and it still managed to open so many new businesses.

Germany is still addressing questions related to integration of newcomers, but this data is particularly promising for those concerned about the job market.

Nicole Glass

Editor, The Week in Germany

Webteam, Germany.info

Should your college become a "sanctuary campus"?

In the immediate aftermath of the Trump triumph, the students most vocally upset by the November surprise were LGBTQ members of our campus communities.  On many campuses, students, faculty an administrators held various kinds of support sessions.  These led on many campuses to a Safety Zone campaign characterized by the wearing of safety pins.

Starting more quietly, but now assuming the more prominent position, is the "Sanctuary Campus" movement.  In my stomping ground,  the University of Pennsylvania has stepped out in front with an email:

"The University of Pennsylvania will not allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) / Customs and Border Protection (CBP) / U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) on our campus unless required by warrant.  Further, the university will not share any information about any undocumented student with these agencies unless presented with valid legal process."

Further:

"The University of Pennsylvania will continue to advocate passionately for comprehensive immigration reform.   [President Gutmann] has repeatedly communicated to our nation's leaders her support for undocumented students, the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, and the continuation and expansion of DACA, President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, [and] will continue to forcefully speak out in support of these critical issues."

Interestingly, President-elect Trump holds an MBA from Penn.  Last night in Cincinnati he held a rally in which he proclaimed that only people who "love us" will be admitted into the US from now on, and "not those who hate us."

The first paragraph of the Penn missive, quoted above is key: ICE officers will only be allowed on campus if they have a warrant.  This points up the fact that the Sanctuary Campus movement may be pushing the envelope of immigration laws.  At least one website claims, "

Lawyers for the “sanctuary campus” movement are warning that schools could lose federal funding if they try to block the deportation of illegal immigrants.

Only one current funding program has immigration-related conditions, but the attorneys warn that the incoming Trump administration could add new programs or revise existing ones to require compliance with immigration enforcement efforts.