Anyone know the rule on building codes for this? My town has adopted a version of the International Building Codes. I've found places to buy it online, but no free version. It seems ludicrous to me that I have to pay money to find out how to follow the codes.

You don't get rich by paying your taxes and you don't get elected for spending money on something now that can be put off til later at three times the price.

That would require the bosses to be able to accurately grade performance in a field they don't understand.

I have no problems with anything you say, but you need to understand that academia is working with a different set of value system than you are. Obviously you think yours is better. They aren't interested in advancing your career just in advancing knowledge. How much money something will make is not what they really care about. Universities do not see it as their job to prepare you for your future job. They also don't see you as a "customer". The fact that you think they should shows a deep misunderstanding of the role Universities see themselves in. Arguing that they should conform to your value system makes no more sense then you conforming to theirs. Except that they have what you want, the diploma that will increase your salary.

You start from the false premise the education is meant to prepare you for a job. It's not. Academia rightfully doesn't give a sh** about weather it's preparing you to shuffle work around or not. That's not it's goal, and I don't think it should be. It's goal is for you to learn things, and perhaps eventually further the field for the few that choose to continue. Learning for learning's sake is their goal and an admirable one.

IANAT but why would you narrow the band at all? Let's say questions have a difficulty rating one to ten. I'd start with a five, if it's correct, ask a six if not ask a four. Whenever they get a question wrong drop a one point of difficulty, when correct raise it one. In theory a person would end up bouncing around their proper area of difficulty. Figure out how long it takes a person to reach their optimal range and average their scores after that point. It'll take at least five questions even if you're perfect, so maybe it takes ten. In a twenty question test only the last ten would be counted in the average while the first ten would be making sure you had enough time to get in the proper range.

IANAK (I am not a Kiwi.) but as I recall hearing on our vacation there, NZ had the highest WW2 death toll as measured by percentage of population. Of course I have no citation for that though...

If we had a secretary in this department, I would be writing code

Wow, you can get the secretary to surf /. for you too?