LOOKING IN ON: HIGHER EDUCATION

Saturday, Nov. 24, 2007 | 7:27 a.m.

Higher education funding in Nevada is so complex that even high-ranking officials such as UNLV President David Ashley can't always get it straight.

In coming up with a formula for funding higher education, Nevada takes into account several factors, one of the most important being enrollment.

Ashley said in recent interviews that he thought the funding formula for UNLV and other institutions was based on how much money similar institutions receive.

But according to the Nevada System of Higher Education, though the committee that established the state's funding formula looked at how much money similar schools received, the committee did not incorporate that data.

Ashley is not alone in his mistake. In fact, this newspaper reported in the past that the funding formula for Nevada institutions was based on funding at comparable schools.

The Black Mountain Institute, a literary think tank at UNLV, is hosting its first three fellows this fall.

We asked Donna Hemans, Josip Novakovich and Tom Bissell - all of whom are working on books - to share three of their favorite books.

Hemans' list: "Beloved" by Toni Morrison, "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy and "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys.

Novakovich's list: "The Histories" by Herodotus, "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky and "The Marquise of O - and Other Stories" by Heinrich von Kleist.

Bissell responded to the request for three favorites with a list of nine: "Middlemarch" by George Eliot, "London Fields" by Martin Amis, "The Executioner's Song" by Norman Mailer, "Shah of Shahs" by Ryszard Kapuscinski, "On Beauty" by Zadie Smith, "The Quiet American" by Graham Greene, "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy, "Bend Sinister" by Vladimir Nabokov and "The Bushwhacked Piano" by Thomas McGuane.

To the media, experts are indispensable.

Flip open the paper or turn on the tube any day and you'll find academics, think tank gurus and other authority figures chattering away about everything from presidential politics to Chinese toys.

Whiz lists are everywhere.

ProfNet, an online service, gives journalists and other maven-seekers access to a database of thousands.

And close to home, UNLV has a catalog of faculty experts.

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, runs policyexperts.org, which touts itself as "your single-source directory for locating knowledgeable authorities and leading policy institutes actively involved in a broad range of public policy issues." And a closer look at how the foundation drafts its list shows why researchers might want to use several sources.

This guide of more than 2,000 experts includes a whopping two in Nevada - Helene Denney, coordinator for Keystone Corp., a political action organization for state conservatives, and Gerald O'Driscoll Jr., senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute. The Nevada Policy Research Institute, a free-market think tank, is listed as an expert organization.

Bridgett Wagner, the Heritage Foundation's director of coalition relations, explained how her group compiles its expert list.

It turns out the process isn't all that scientific.

The foundation's guide is, in essence, a network of individuals with whom Heritage has connections. The list includes people who have spoken at its events or collaborated with its thinkers on projects, Wagner said. Foundation experts can recommend other experts for inclusion. People foundation members meet regularly at conferences are considered.

The guide includes only "like-minded individuals," people who promote free enterprise, limited government and other foundation beliefs, Wagner said.

And the list, though long, isn't comprehensive.

"We're always looking," Wagner said. "In fact, somebody was recommended to me this morning."