Well, It Is South Of Us

During one of the waste-of-time meetings I was forced to attend yesterday we were reviewing a report summarizing the demographics of our student body. The report is required by a variety of government and regulatory agencies for God knows what purposes, so it is somewhat important that the information be somewhat accurate (close enough for government work...).

Anyway, the person presenting the report broke down the student body by global regions (North America, Europe, Asia, etc.). For some reason the numbers seemed a little off so we asked her to drill down into the data. When we got to 'students by country' we found the problem. Seems the report's author considered North America to consist of only Canada and the U.S. - Mexico was included in South America.

This was especially embarrassing since our university is on the Texas-Mexico border, we brand ourselves as an international university, we have a large number of students and faculty from Mexico, and we have joint academic programs with a couple of Mexican universities.

Did I mention that the person who prepared the report is not a Ph.D., but a lawyer (she teaches Business Law) (pardon the elitist snobbery, but those of us who hold a Ph.D. look down our noses at those with 'other' degrees such as a J.D. or Ed.D.).

Sigh...