Category: Education
Sentences to ponder
The president of Caltech, Jean-Lou Chameau, announced Tuesday that he would step down from the leadership of the prestigious science- and math-oriented campus in Pasadena at the end of the current school year and become head of a new and well-endowed university in Saudi Arabia.
Here is more. The school is:
…the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. The graduate-level school enrolled its first students in 2009 and, in English, educates men and women together, to the dismay of some Islamic fundamentalists. It was founded with a $10-billion endowment from the oil-rich Saudi royal family.
The current endowment of Caltech is about $1.9 billion. It is believed that Chameau will be receiving a raise in pay. By the way, KAUST seems to have no social sciences or humanities.
From my email, about the deadweight loss of Valentine’s Day
Consider:
Single people report feelings of inadequacy, anxiety.
People in relationships suffer from the tyranny of expectations. Good experiences are met with hedonic adaptation, bad experiences can be, I’m reliably informed, remembered for decades.
Florists, restaurateurs, etc., demand – and receive – excess producer surplus for their services.For years, my solution has been to randomly select a surprise Valentine’s day substitute. Our private utility is well served (the wife loves the arrangement), and as a bonus I think I am minimizing the negative consumption externality.
In my estimation, 1 and 2 outweigh 3, resulting in a deadweight loss. I’m not a naive utilitarian; yes, I understand there is value in signaling, and, believe it or not, I’m a romantic. I just think that by coordinating this behavior in holiday form we suffer on both demand side (expectations, zero-sum positional goods) and supply (constraints in providing flowers, restaurant tables).
That is from Shiraz Allidina, MR reader.
High School Safety in Northern Virginia
Here is a letter I wrote to the principal of my son’s high school:
Dear Principal _____,
Thank you for requesting feedback about the installation of interior cameras at the high school. I am against the use of cameras. I visited the school recently to pick up my son and it was like visiting a prison. A police car often sits outside the school and upon entry a security guard directs visitors to the main office where the visitor’s drivers license is scanned and information including date of birth is collected (is this information checked against other records and kept in a database for future reference? It’s unclear). The visitor is then photographed and issued a photo pass. I found the experience oppressive. Adding cameras will only add to the prison-like atmosphere. The response, of course, will be that these measures are necessary for “safety.” As with security measures at the airports I doubt that these measures increase actual safety, instead they are security theater, a play that we put on that looks like security but really is not.
Moreover, the truth is that American children have never been safer than they are today. Overall youth mortality (ages 5-14) has fallen from 60 per 100,000 in 1950 to 13.1 per 100,000 today (CDC, Vital Statistics). Yet we hide in gated communities, homes and schools as never before.
When we surround our students with security we are implicitly telling them that the world is dangerous; we are whispering in their ear, ‘be afraid, do not venture out, take no risks.’ When going to school requires police, security guards and cameras how can I encourage my child to travel to foreign countries, to seek new experiences, to meet people of different faiths, beliefs and backgrounds? When my child leaves school how will the atmosphere of fear that he has grown up in affect his view of the world and the choices he will make as a citizen in our democracy? School teaches more than words in books.
Yours sincerely,
Alex Tabarrok
Interview with James Heckman
More than just the usual, this is a real interview, recommended. Excerpt:
James Heckman: Well, the reason why I’m skeptical is that the most salient work on Head Start is this new evaluation which came out last October. It actually came out later than I responded to Deming. I am skeptical for the following reason. It’s really heterogeneous, and I’m sure there are some very high quality programs and some very weak ones. The latest study showed very weak effects. That was a short-term followup. Head Start has never had a long-term followup.
I was surprised by the extent to which he defends Head Start, and to the extent he sees part of that program as Perry follow-ups.
TANSTAAFL?
Love actually rings in at $43,842.08, according to RateSupermarket.ca, which has calculated the price tag of the typical modern relationship – from a one-year courtship, followed by a one-year engagement to the wedding day.
And it is itemized:
The Toronto-based independent financial products comparison website pegs the price of courtship at $6,936.74. That includes a dozen “fancy dates” (nice restaurants and theatre tickets), a dozen movie dates, 36 “casual dates” (take-out food, coffee and movie rentals), weekend getaways, a beach vacation plus random other expenses for things such as “apology flowers,” treats and new clothes.
The engagement period rings in at $9,944.34, which includes more dates, an engagement party with a price tag of $2,000 and the big ticket item, a ring with an average estimated cost of $3,500. (The popular wedding website TheKnot.com estimates that cost at around $5,000, but RateSupermarket.ca pointed that that it doesn’t consider rings purchased from lower-end retailers such as Walmart.)
Oh, and the wedding? Well that’s another $26,961.
Here is more, with the pointer from Chad R.
What do I think of Obama’s universal pre-school proposal?
Of course there are no significant details yet, but here are a few points.
1. The evidence that this can be done effectively in a scalable manner is basically zero. Aren’t massive policies (possibly universal?) supposed to be based on evidence? (How about running a large-scale RCT first, a’la the Rand health insurance experiment? And by the way, here is a quick look at the evidence we have on pre-school, and here, not nearly skeptical enough in my view. And think in terms of lasting results, not getting kids to read nine months earlier, etc. You can find evidence for persistent math gains in Tulsa, OK, but no CBA.)
2. That doesn’t mean we should do nothing.
3. Let’s say we have “the political will” to do something effective (debatable, of course). Is adding on another layer of education, and building that up more or less from scratch in many cases, better than fixing the often quite broken systems we have now? I know well all the claims about “needing to get kids early,” but is current kindergarten so late in life? Why not have much better kindergartens and first and second grade experiences in the ailing school districts? Or is the claim that by kindergarten “it is too late,” yet a well-executed government early education could fix the relevant problems if applied at ages three to four? Would such a claim mean that we are currently writing off many millions of American children, as it stands now?
4. This is what federalism is for. Let’s have an experiment emanating from the state and/or local level.
5. What should we infer from the fact that no such truly broad-based state-level experiment has happened yet? (Georgia and Oklahoma have come closest.) That the states are lacking in vision, relative to the Presidency? Or that a workable version of the idea is hard to come up with, execute, and sell to voters?
6. In Finland government education doesn’t really touch the kids until they are six years old. Don’t they have a very good system? Some call it the world’s best. Maybe the early years are very important, but perhaps pre-schooling is not the key missing piece of the puzzle. (NB: See the comments for dissenting views on Finland.)
Addendum: Here are good comments from Reihan. See also this Brookings study: “This thin empirical gruel will not satisfy policymakers who want to practice evidence-based education.”
Sentences about France
…nearly 40 percent of French 15-year-olds have repeated at least one grade — three times the O.E.C.D. average.
And:
“This is the only country I know where the adults work 35 hours a week, but they expect their kids to work more,” said Peter Gumbel…
The story is here, interesting throughout.
Bruce Caldwell emails me
The Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University will be hosting another Summer Institute on the History of Economics this summer, June 2-21. The three week program is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and is designed primarily for faculty members in economics, other social sciences, and the humanities, though three of the twenty-five slots are reserved for graduate students. Participants will be competitively selected and successful applicants will receive a $2700 stipend for attending, out of which they will pay for their own room and board. Our line-up of discussion leaders is pretty impressive, and includes scholars from economics, political science, and history. The deadline for applying is March 4. More information on the Summer Institute is available at our website, http://hope.econ.duke.edu
This is a superb program and I recommend it heartily.
Andrew Gelman revises Ron Unz
I am afraid that any excerpt would be misleading, so I will simply tell you to read the whole thing.
How much does graduate school matter for being an economics professor?
There is a new paper, by Zhengye Chen, an enterprising undergraduate from the University of Chicago:
Of the 138 Ph.D. economics programs in the United States, the top fifteen Ph.D. programs in economics produce a substantial share of successful economics research scholars. These fifteen Ph.D. programs in turn get 59% of their faculty from only the top six schools with 39% coming from only two schools, Harvard and MIT. Those two schools are also the PhD origins for half of John Bates Clark Medal recipients. Details for assistant professors, young stars today, American Economics Association Distinguished Fellows, Nobel Laureates, and top overseas economics departments are also discussed.
There is much more here, and for the pointer I thank Lee Benham. I’ll add three points:
1. It has been evident for a while that the former “top six” is in some ways collapsing into a “top two,” namely Harvard and MIT.
2. I was surprised that NYU beats out Stanford for the #6 slot.
3. Two Nobel Laureates, John Hicks and James Meade, did not have a Ph.d at all.
And first they came for the law professors…
Last week, it was reported that law school applications were on pace to hit a 30-year low, a dramatic turn of events that could leave campuses with about 24 percent fewer students than in 2010. Young adults, it seems, have fully absorbed the wretched state of the legal job market.
Average earnings of young college graduates are still falling
Alas, take a look:
Diana G. Carew, who works with Michael Mandel, reports:
The latest Census figures show real earnings for young college grads fell again in 2011. This makes the sixth straight year of declining real earnings for young college grads, defined as full-time workers aged 25-34 with a bachelor’s only. All told, real average earnings for young grads have fallen by over 15% since 2000, or by about $10,000 in constant 2011 dollars.
That picture is the single biggest reason why higher education in this country is in economic trouble as a sector. And yes, I do understand that the “education premium” is robust, but that means wages for non-college workers have been hurting as well. At some margin, when it comes to determining how much you will pay for college, the absolute return matters too. The full article is here.
True, false, or uncertain?
Let’s start with a measurement, namely that the current rate of unemployment for individuals with a college degree is about 3.7 percent.
Therefore if we cut government spending on the jobs of those individuals, they will be reemployed reasonably rapidly. We should not assign much weight to the aggregate rate of unemployment in making this judgment. True, false, or uncertain?
Variant: If we increase government spending to hire these individuals, it will not much lower the rate of unemployment. True, false, or uncertain?
Additional exercise: What percentage of the money spent on the labor of government military contractors is spent on individuals with a college degree?
I find it remarkable how infrequently these simple considerations are mentioned, much less analyzed.
New Editors at The Independent Review
After 17 years of tireless work, Bob Higgs the founder and editor of The Independent Review, is stepping down. I’ve been fortunate to work with Bob at TIR both as an author and as an assistant editor for many years. As I wrote in 2006 Bob is one of the great editors, he has improved every paper in TIR. No one can replace Bob which is why he is handing over the task of editorship to an excellent new team, Robert Whaples, Chris Coyne and Michael Munger. Here is the announcement
The Independent Review is a scholarly interdisciplinary journal devoted to the study of political economy and the critical analysis of government policy. It publishes carefully researched, peer-reviewed scholarship and seeks to be provocative, lucid, and written in an engaging style. Ranging across the fields of economics, political science, law, history, philosophy, and sociology, The Independent Review takes a classical liberal approach and reaches a wide readership among academics, advanced students, policy analysts, journalists, and serious generalists.
Economic historian Robert Higgs, the journal’s founding editor will soon become its editor-at-large and is handing off editorial tasks to Robert Whaples (Wake Forest University), Christopher Coyne (George Mason) and Michael Munger (Duke).
The new editorial team welcomes high-quality article submissions. Please email your submissions (as a Word document) to [email protected].
Observations on meeting Bill Gates
I am pleased to have been invited to a small group session in New York City to meet Gates and hear him present his new letter. My observations are these:
1. Gates has a command of data and analytics in development economics better than that of most development economists, or for that matter aid professionals. He also expects everyone at the meeting to know everything about what he is talking about, or at least is willing to proceed on that basis. That said, when it comes to answering questions he sometimes assumes a stupider version of the question than what is actually being asked.
2. He is smart enough, and health-savvy enough, not to waste time with handshakes at the beginning of meetings. People as productive as Gates should not be required to shake hands, and the same can be said for people less productive than Gates.
3. He does not go on and on. His opening remarks were about two minutes long, with no notes, and all of his answers were to the point.
4. We were served water, at exactly the right cool temperature, yet without ice cubes. No cookies.
5. Unlike Gates, I am not convinced that “health” is the key breakthrough area for economic development, but there is enough low-hanging fruit out there that it doesn’t have to be. That said, when questioned on this his answers were closer to tautology than they needed to be. Much of their emphasis on measurement seemed to me to track absolute movement toward goals, rather than relative efficacies of different project investments.
6. Gates suggested that if he had been more careful tracking and organizing his AP credits, he might have been able to receive his undergraduate degree. That is one sense, in his words, in which he is barely a college drop out. In another sense, it makes him a very extreme college drop out.
7. He mentioned that he is an extremely eager consumer (and not just funder) of on-line education and The Teaching Company. And this is a man who could receive free (or paid) lectures from almost anyone he wants.
8. Empellon Tacqueria, in the West Village, has an excellent mackerel ceviche and I recommend also the quail eggs.
9. I have now run into Reihan Salam twice in the last two years, in random public places in Manhattan, without any reason for expecting to see him there. This should cause me to revise my prior on something or other, but I am not sure what. When changing/surfing the channels, which I do occasionally to “keep in touch,” I also run into him on TV a lot.
10. Gates understands the very high returns from better governance, but also sees it is not trivial to reap them.
11. In the context of U.S. education, he does not worry that teacher cheating will bias test results very much at the macro level.
12. He is more optimistic about charter schools than I am (though I favor them), and more optimistic about the results from giving teachers feedback about their performance. In my view, bad teachers don’t very much want to improve and it is not so much a matter of knowledge. Undergraduate college teachers are evaluated all the time, and it does help, but it hardly brings the rotten apples up to par and I don’t see it as the key to moving the system forward at lower levels.
Here is Jason Kottke’s account. Here is Dana Goldstein’s account.
Gates’s annual letter, which was released earlier this week, is here.