Montgomery School

Matchups against perennial national powers North Carolina, UCLA and Temple highlight the 2011-12 University of Texas basketball non-conference schedule, which was released today.

The Longhorns also will make an appearance in the Legends Classic and play nine of their 13 non-conference dates in the friendly confines of the Frank Erwin Center.

The Longhorns open the 2011-12 season with consecutive home games against Boston University (Nov. 13) and Rhode Island (Nov. 15). Both will be in conjunction with the Legends Classic. As one of the four regional host sites for the tournament, Texas automatically advances to the Championship Rounds at Izod Center in East Rutherford, N.J. on Nov. 19 and 21. UT will join North Carolina State, Oregon State and Vanderbilt for the semifinals and championship/consolation games.

Texas returns home to play two in-state schools in Sam Houston State (Nov. 26) and North Texas (Nov. 29).

They’ll then travel to Los Angeles to play UCLA (Dec. 3).

UT returns to the Erwin Center for a four-game homestand, featuring contests against Texas-Arlington (Dec. 6), Texas State (Dec. 10), Nicholls State (Dec. 13) and Temple (Dec. 17).

The Longhorns will go to Chapel Hill, N.C., to face North Carolina (Dec. 21) at the Smith Center. Texas will conclude its non-conference slate with a home game against Rice on New Year’s Eve.

PISCATAWAY – Rutgers will play Notre Dame, Seton Hall and West Virginia twice as part of its 18-game Big East Conference schedule in 2011-12.

The league announced the schedule on Thursday. This marks the fifth consecutive campaign since expansion to 16 members that each team will play 18 conference games, including a format featuring 12 opponents once and three teams twice.

Coached by Mike Rice, the Scarlet Knights will play Cincinnati, Connecticut, DePaul, Notre Dame, St. John’s, Seton Hall, Syracuse, Villanova and West Virginia at the Rutgers Athletic Center.

Their road games will be at Georgetown, Louisville, Marquette, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, Providence, Seton Hall, South Florida and West Virginia.

Universities offering cheap courses will be allowed to expand, the Government said today, sparking fears the plan would “drive down standards” of higher education in England. Critics claim that plans to expand cheaper universities will harm the quality of higher education. 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

7:11PM BST 28 Jun 2011

A White Paper published by the Coalition said existing controls over the number of state-funded students each university can recruit would be relaxed.

From next year, universities will be required to bid for up to a quarter of student places – 85,000 – in a move designed to promote competition and drive up standards.

Of these, top institutions are expected to compete for around 65,000 students who currently leave school with three decent A-levels – two As and a B.

Each university will be able to admit as many of these students as they wish. The change is unlikely to cost the taxpayer any more money as almost all of these sixth-formers already go on to university, but it will create a “new elite” as the best institutions take more top students at the expense of competitors.

At the same time, another 20,000 student places will be taken off the main quota and placed in an “auction”.

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The cheapest universities with tuition fees of £7,500 or under – well below the £9,000 cap – will be able to bid for these places.

Ministers insisted they would only be awarded to universities or colleges offering “good quality [and] value for money”.

It is hoped that move will help keep the student loans bill at sustainable levels amid fears too many universities are attempting to charge maximum £9,000 a year fees.

But critics claimed the move would lead to declining standards as cheap institutions would effectively be allowed to expand at the expense of elite rivals.

Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, which represents 20 institutions, including Oxford and Cambridge, said: “We are not convinced that re-distributing those student places to institutions charging lower fees will necessarily drive up quality or improve student choice.”

Paul Wellings, vice-chancellor of Lancaster University, and chairman of the 1994 Group of smaller research institutions, said: “The Government also needs to avoid driving down standards by auctioning students to low cost institutions. Student places must be awarded where there is clear evidence of good value.

“We should not encourage higher education providers to short change students by cutting corners. We will look at the details of student places with interest. “

David Willetts, the Universities Minister, suggested the number of “contestable” places may grow in coming years.

“We have tried in the first year to get the balance right between significantly opening up the system – it’s about one in four places contestable – without imposing too much turbulence in the system,” he said. “For the future we want go further, year on year.”

A recent survey of 2007 MBA graduates by The Financial Times suggests that changing jobs is not necessarily a bad thing.  In fact, a bit of change is good. Very good.

The survey, which polled alumni of business schools across the world from the graduating class of 2007, shows that MBA graduates who were on the lookout for higher paying jobs in the past few years actually earn more than if they had stayed at their first jobs.

Although this fact is surprising in light of the recent recession, The Financial Times, in its article “It Really Does Pay to Change Jobs,” believes that this data really proves the value of an MBA because it shows the degree’s usefulness even during a recession.

But there’s a catch. MBA graduates who changed jobs were more successful only if they changed jobs just once. Those lucky individuals earned an average of $135,600 within three years of graduating—$1,600 more than their classmates who stayed at the same jobs.

The bottom line is that change is good – just not too much change. The most unfortunate MBA graduates were those who switched jobs multiple times and ended up earning an average salary of $106,300.

Federal prosecutors say multiple new defendants will be swept up in the wide-ranging investigation into Scott Rothstein’s Ponzi scheme.

Their timeline for bringing the new suspects before a federal judge: Six months.

Lawyers close to the Rothstein case have speculated that a dozen to two dozen people could ultimately face criminal charges.

Prosecutors revealed for the first time in a Friday court filing that they are moving to indict the next round of Rothstein’s co-conspirators, an indication that they have struck deals with some, but not all, of the people cooperating with FBI and IRS agents at the 20-month mark of the investigation.

They outlined that the new criminal charges could form a laundry list of white-collar violations, including “mail and wire fraud, campaign finance fraud, tax fraud, extortion, payments of unlawful gratuities, bank fraud, and money laundering, among other crimes,” according to the court filing.

The revelation comes as prosecutors seek to block Rothstein, who is in prison, from giving a deposition in bankruptcy proceedings. They said that if Rothstein were to sit down under oath and tell all, his co-conspirators could gain clear advantages, including learning prosecution strategy and grand jury secrets that would enable them to obstruct justice as the investigation moves forward.

Rothstein needs to be kept under wraps, at least until the additional defendants are charged, prosecutors said. They emphasized that they have reached a crucial, sensitive stage in the investigation.

“Rothstein’s deposition would provide a detailed explanation of the criminal activities of co-conspirators,” prosecutors wrote. “Such information would alert targets of the investigation as to the specifics concerning their potential criminal liability and would potentially reveal to them the identities of other witnesses against them.”

So far, five Rothstein associates have been charged in the investigation, and all appear to be cooperating. They include Debra Villegas, the former chief operating officer of the Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler law firm, and four men charged last month with helping Rothstein carry out various aspects of his complex scheme.

Rothstein, 49, has been cooperating with FBI and IRS agents since the former Fort Lauderdale lawyer’s $1.4 billion fraud collapsed in fall 2009. He is serving a 50-year prison sentence in an undisclosed location, but hopes to get the sentence reduced by helping bring criminal cases against others.

Bankruptcy attorneys marshaling assets for creditors of his now-defunct law firm want Rothstein to answer questions that could help them pursue clawback lawsuits. They petitioned U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Raymond Ray for permission to depose Rothstein, and the judge recommended that the questioning of Rothstein go forward. Investors who lost money to Rothstein also want to question him.

The issue is now before the federal judge who oversaw Rothstein’s criminal case, U.S. District James Cohn. Other parties to the bankruptcy case are likely to weigh in with their own court motions. Cohn is scheduled to take up the matter at a July 1 court hearing.

In their motion to block the deposition, prosecutors said that they still need to corroborate information Rothstein has given them. For example, they are still reviewing the contents of more than 850,000 emails that contain potential incriminating evidence, as well as hundreds of thousands of other documents.

“They need more time to make the rest of these indictments. It’s perfectly understandable,” said Fort Lauderdale attorney Bill Scherer, who represents a group of investors who allegedly lost more than $100 million. “Every time they charge or indict someone and get a guilty plea, they move on to the next person on up the ladder. Every time they get a guilty plea, they get a lot of information.”

Additionally, prosecutors said some of the participants in the bankruptcy case — which include banks, financial advisors, investors, hedge funds and other Rothstein associates — are targets of the criminal investigation.

The bankruptcy trustee for Rothstein’s law firm is approaching the two-year deadline to file clawback lawsuits against entities and individuals that benefitted from the fraud. Prosecutors said in their court filing that they are willing to provide the trustee’s attorneys the information they need to go forward with those cases, absent allowing a deposition by Rothstein himself.