INSTRUCTIONS:

Answer any four out of the five questions shown below.

If you have any questions about the exam questions or the instructions, please feel free to contact me at home or at work—wherever you can catch me.  I expect to be at home this weekend writing a paper.  If my line is constantly busy, that probably means I'm connected with the computer;  in that case, send me an email.  Still, contacting me is your responsibility.

I have found that the greatest single source of problems in tests is that the students don't answer the question I ask.  If, for example, I ask you to compare and contrast two articles, it is not sufficient to simply write what each of the articles say.

In the past I've found grading some of the exams difficult because of their formats and their writing mechanics.  Please observe the following:

• Format:  Type your exam using a standard 12-point font (e.g., Times New Roman or Courier New) on 8.5" x 11" paper, double-spaced, with 1" margins all around.  Exams not meeting these standards will be returned ungraded and penalized as late when received in proper form.  If for some reason you cannot meet these standards, please work it out with me before you turn in your exam.
• Writing mechanics:  Remember that I have to grade many pages of the class's writing.  I thus require good writing mechanics so as to reduce my burden as much as possible.  The harder I have to work to understand you, the more your grades go down.  (In addition, I will take points off for bad mechanics.)  Things that obscure your meanings:  misspellings, missing words, improper use of apostrophes, incomplete sentences.  (This is not an exhaustive list.)

Limit your answers to the length indicated at the end of each question.  These limits are for your protection, so you won't feel driven to write a dissertation for each one.  You need not reach the stated length in order to provide an excellent answer.

I have also posted this exam on the web at the URL shown at the bottom.  You an also access it through the syllabus or course web site.

1. In class I mentioned a number of ways program administrators try to justify increases in their budgets.  The text also mentions several of these.  Apply these to the following, homespun example:

"Betty is a UMD junior living with her parents and sister off-campus. Although she does receive wages from occasional odd jobs, she is primarily supported by her parents.  Her father has a new job in Apple Valley and has bought a house there, planning to move within the next month.  Betty's sister Martha, a high school junior, wants to finish high school in Duluth. Their parents agree, as long as Martha shares an apartment with Betty.  Betty wants her allowance from her family increased.  (This desire is quite independent of Martha's moving in, of course, but Martha will make her budget even more strained than it is currently.)"

a. Using the program/budget justifications/games mentioned in class and the text, make up three ways Betty might appeal to her parents.  [1 page max]

b. If her parents were in straitened circumstances themselves (what with the expenses of moving) and wanted to resist any increase, what might be their responses to each of those three appeals?  [1 page max]

[I will give extra credit both to the student who comes up with the most creative (persuasive and realistic) of Betty's appeals and to the student who comes up with the best reply to an appeal by her parents.]

The biggest problem with these answers were that

• they didn't use the budget justifications / games / stragegies mentioned in the class and the text (and also in the web page on budgeting)
• they adduced some factor not in the original story, e.g., that a rich uncle died and left her money
• the parents' replies in part (b) didn't address the arguments given for Betty in the earlier answer to part (a).

Otherwise, I gave credit for most answers.

The extra credit for the parents' reply goes to Eric Schmoll, who suggested that Betty's parents arrange a blind date for her in hopes that a new boyfriend will take care of her entertainment needs.

2.  Imagine the following (unlikely) set of circumstances:  Someone brings suit against you in civil court, alleging that you caused them some harm.  Through a bizarre miscarriage of justice (we'll assume you are totally innocent) you are sentenced to pay $300/month to an escrow account that the court has set up for the plaintiff.  These payments are to continue until the court determines that the effects of the damage you supposedly did are at last overcome. From your point of view, this means that you will be paying for the foreseeable future. Unfortunately, you are unable to get any loans to pay this, even from your parents or other relatives, nor can you appeal the judge's decision.  You go to a credit counselor at Lutheran Social Services [LSS] for help in constructing a way to pay this, and the counselor suggests that you return with answers to the following questions:

a. First, you are to return to LSS with a draft plan for the next twelve months.  (She explains that the planning will be for only twelve months because it's too hard to project beyond that.  However, she cautions you that the budget must be restricted to those twelve months.  For example, it would be unrealistic to say, "I'll pay it off with the money I've saved for next year's tuition" unless you are actually planning to quit school.  To put this another way, you can't assume that these fines will only last for a year;  they might go on for ten years;  you just don't know.)  What expenses will you eliminate?  What expenses will you reduce?  What expenses will you not cut?  What would you change? (Give specific answers instead of vague, ingenuous, or unrealistic answers, e.g., "I'll just stop buying pizza.")  [1 page max]


b. After making your cuts, answer the following question [1 page max]:  what does this exercise tell me about my base, that is, my primary self-conception?  Who am I, at root?   [In answering this question, you might think about the following:  THESE ARE NOT QUESTIONS TO ANSWER, HOWEVER;  THEY ARE JUST THINGS TO THINK ABOUT IN PREPARATION FOR ANSWERING THE ABOVE.]

Has your living arrangement changed?
Have your eating habits changed?
Has your employment changed?
Has your savings account and stock portfolio changed?
Has your social and/or romantic life changed?
Are you still going to UMD?  Taking the same classes (or the same number of classes)?
Has your transportation pattern changed?  Still getting around by the same method?  Still going the same distances with the same frequency?
Have your overall life plans changed?

There were lots of interesting answers here.  The biggest problems I found were as follows:

• Lack of specific figures.  It's very easy to wave one's hands and say, vaguely, that by "cutting down" on "all those dinners out" one can save bundles of money.  It's another thing to find out how much one actually spends.
• Unrealism in what one will reasonably be able to do.  To take the above example (which is hypothetical), one would have to ask oneself whether one actually would stop eating out entirely.
• Using gross savings instead of net savings.  For example, a popular savings measure was to stop buying food at UMD and to pack a lunch instead -- but this means you have to buy extra food to make the lunches.  Most people didn't notice that.
• Some of the solutions were short-term only, i.e., they would work this year but not further.  Not buying clothes, for example -- you might be able to get by for a while, but after a year the old ones may be falling off your body!

3. You are Snidely Whiplash, a member of the Duluth City Council.  Jay Wilson, a well-known and well-respected local Native American activist, is complaining publicly about being rejected for the new position of guide / interpreter / docent at a newly created forest preserve / nature center, saying that the position's requirement of a B.A. degree discriminates against Native Americans from this area, who go to college at a lower rate than others (and yet, he claims, would be just as capable guides / interpreters / docents as others because of their particular knowledge of the area).   He is not threatening to bring suit, because he believes that he would lose:  the test is sufficiently job-related to pass court scrutiny, and there is no "smoking gun" saying that the test is deliberately used to discriminate against Native Americans.  He is arguing, rather, that the issue is a political and moral one, and he is pressing the Mayor and City Council to change the criterion.  State what you believe are the best arguments pro and con the city's continuing to use the B.A. degree as a criterion for this and similar positions.  A vote is scheduled soon on this issue;  what will you do?  [2 pages max]

I looked for an understanding of the variety of considerations pro and con;  this is not a simple issue.  Your answer should have revealed an understanding that there are reasonable claims on both sides, regardless of what your final choice would be.  I was not concerned with which way you would vote—this was not an exercise in political correctness.  I asked for you to say what you would do in order to focus your attention and to allow me another chance to understand your thinking.  I especially favored answers that looked beyond the narrow issue of a B.A. and tried to accommodate both perspectives in a political settlement.  There are rarely fixed, forced choices in human affairs;  conversely, there are almost always opportunities to come to reasonable accommodations with others or at least to decide things in a way that does not destroy the relationship.  Jay Wilson will not vanish after the vote, nor will your colleagues on the city council, nor will the difficulties of Native Americans in U.S. society, out of which this problem arose as only one of many similar, potential problems.  Regardless of what one decides here, the need to get along with each other will continue.

Remember that the question is not solely about whether the B.A. requirement is good in some abstract sense as a requirement for this position;  rather, the question is about whether it should be kept.  There may be good reasons to abandon it even if it could be a good requirement.

Arguments in favor of retaining the B.A. requirement:

• Skills possessed by a B.A. (presumably):
  • effective communication
  • work with others, including people of different cultures
  • ability to learn
  • knowledge
  • ability to write reports
  • ability to speak publicly
  • ability to complete long-term tasks
• Avoid the legal problem
• Avoid the political problem
• Narrows the field of applicants;  allows an easy assessment of skills
• Changing the requirement sets a bad precedent
• The issue isn't about skills appropriate for this one park but rather about skills that will help the candidate in a career in the city Parks & Recreation Department
• Shortens the training period required

Arguments against retaining the B.A. requirement:

• It is fairer to test for particular skills instead of assuming that a B.A. means the candidate possesses them
• Avoid the political problem of indifference to an organized, mobilized community
• ... and related to the previous item, we want Native American support for the center
• If no specific field is required, then it isn't a specialized position.
• Allows the city to take advantage of Native American knowledge
• Brings in a larger pool of applicants
• People who don't have B.A.s can be hired for less money

Some potential political accommodations:  [Some are more likely to succeed than others and some are more ethical than others, but I'm just presenting them all in a lump.]

• Retain the requirement but appoint a committee to study the question (with or without the intention of paying any attention to what the committee recommends -- if, indeed, it ever gets that far).  Buy off Wilson by appointing him to the committee.
• Buy off Wilson by finding him another job somewhere in city government.
• Make the B.A. preferred instead of mandatory

4. It appears likely that the University of Minnesota (including UMD) will be experiencing major budget cutbacks over the next few years.  In this kind of environment, issues of the performance and appropriateness of the U's programs are particularly important.  You are Greg Fox, UMD's Vice-Chancellor for Finance and Operations, and you have been assigned the task of coming up with a performance budget for Chancellor Martin's use in her presentations to President Bruininks, to the University Board of Regents, and to various state legislators and committees.  Suggest what you consider the three most important measures to use in a performance budget to show how well UMD is doing its job—measures that can be used to compare us with other campuses to show how efficiently we are doing our work?  These measures need not be numeric, but they need to be objective enough to be believed by your various audiences.  [1 page max]

• Note that while the measures used in a performance budget need not be numeric, they do have to be precisely stated and measurable.
• Furthermore, even if they aren't numeric, we do have to be able to compare our measures to those of other schools.
• The measures must have face validity, at least.  People ought to be able to look at what you propose as a measure and pretty much agree that it represents something we do want a school like UMD to be good at.
• We need to recognize that use of any measure runs the risk of people performing to the measure, not to what is really important.  For example, good researchers publish papers in professional journals, but if we merely count publications, researchers may come to concentrate more on the frequency of publication than the profundity of their research.  So our measures should either measure directly what we want or else they should measure things that can't be easily manipulated.

5. [This question is based on the same situation as described in the previous question.]  Chancellor Martin has also asked you to come up with a program budget for UMD.  Program budgets are not concerned with how efficiently UMD does its work but rather whether it is doing the work it ought to be doing in the first place.  As a student answering this exam you are not in a position to do much in the way of a program budget, but you can at least give a list of the categories you would look at in developing a program budget.  In other words, what are the primary functions of a university generally and UMD in particular?  Your categories should be clear enough for people to understand and broad enough that all legitimate activities can be related to one or more of those categories.  [Think of the question this way:  You go into a legislator's office, and the legislator says, "I never went to college, I don't know very much about colleges, and frankly, I don't see why the State should continue to support them."  You need to be able to say, "Well, Representative [whoever], this is what the University is trying to accomplish ... (etc., listing the various program budget categories)."   If you think of a program budget in these terms, you should be able to see that "fielding a good football team" wouldn't be part of one, because "fielding a football team" is clearly not a central purpose of UMD—it's too specific a purpose, but beyond that, it just isn't central to our mission—not something we want to defend.  "Providing a good undergraduate experience", on the other hand, is too vague to be useful in a program budget.  "Good" is subjective, and "undergraduate experience" could include almost anything.]  [1 page max]

Many people were confused by this question.  If you look in the text, you will find definitions of the various kinds of budgets.  Program budgets are those broken down according to the fundamental reasons an institution (e.g., UMD) exists.  For example, UMD and other universities exist to produce original knowledge through research, so "research" ought to be one of the budget categories.  In contrast, "custodial service" would not be an appropriate category, because even though research requires good custodial service, UMD doesn't exist for the purpose of having custodians clean labs.  Student housing may be necesssary for teaching to occur, but UMD doesn't exist for the purpose of housing students.