Word: mattering
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...Because in the race for consumers - er, students- few colleges, no matter how well endowed, are willing to risk their prestige by dropping out of what has become a hugely influential beauty contest, U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings. Like many magazines - this one included - U.S. News compiles lists because, well, readers buy them, but lists can invite gamesmanship. This year, however, a small but growing number of schools are starting to fight back. Or preparing to fight back. O.K., contemplating fighting back. The heads of a dozen private colleges are waiting for the final draft...
...matter how many institutions join forces to take on the rankings, the question is, What can they offer as an alternative? As U.S. News can attest, more meaningful metrics are hard to come by. Says Kelly: "Whenever we can get better data, we use it." One way to compare educational quality would be if more colleges published the results of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which is administered by Indiana University and is already used internally by hundreds of schools to gauge such things as how much students feel challenged by the curriculum. Yes, student opinion is an imperfect...
...friend in Texas named Patrick Oxford, managing partner of an old Houston law firm called Bracewell & Patterson. And Oxford had a problem. He could see that the future was bleak for regional law firms in a globalizing economy. Expanding the firm, especially into Manhattan, had become a matter of life and death, Oxford later recalled...
...Only a game? Sports fans like to ridicule such phrases."Football is not just a matter of life and death," was how Bill Shankly, legendary coach of the English club Liverpool, once put it. "It's much more important than that." Shankly had a point. Who hasn't mourned their team's loss as if a loved one had died? Who hasn't celebrated a win with an outpouring of jubilation normally reserved for a birth or a marriage? To non-fans, the passion of sports lovers is often unfathomable, because it seems driven by things so trivial...
...down that their team and its fate are simultaneously both important and meaningless. It's this contradiction that is part of the agony, the ecstasy, the religious-like joy of being a fan. The leap of faith in unison with thousands of others that what you're all watching matters profoundly. Healthy sports lovers care passionately not because they truly think sport is a matter of life and death, but despite the fact they know it's not. When fanaticism starts hurting people, killing them, even, that contradiction vanishes and so does all the joy. It's OK to live...