Category: Education
Henrik Jordahl on Swedish education and its privatization
Not long ago I linked to an article suggesting there were some burgeoning problems with the Swedish educational privatization model. Henrik wrote me this email:
Dan, Tyler and others!
As the article claims there are really serious problems in Swedish schools – and it does not help that the minister of education from the liberal party does not seem to understand or be willing to admit what is going on.
Importantly, there is no evidence of the private (so called independent) schools or of the introduction of school choice contributing to worse performance. The two most relevant studies establishing this are:
1. Böhlmark, Anders & Lindahl, Mikael, 2013. “Independent Schools and Long-Run Educational Outcomes Evidence from Sweden´s Large Scale Voucher Reform,” Working Paper Series 6/2013, Swedish Institute for Social Research.
http://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:675521/FULLTEXT01.pdf Finds that an increase in the share of independent-school students improves average performance at the end of compulsory school as well as long-run educational outcomes. Also finds that international test results (TIMSS) deteriorated less in Swedish regions with a higher proportion of independent school students.2. Wondratschek, Verena, Karin Edmark and Markus Frölich (2013). “The Short- and Long-term Effects of School Choice on Student Outcomes – Evidence from a School Choice Reform in Sweden”, IFN Working Paper No. 981. Forthcoming in Annals of Economics and Statistics. http://www.ifn.se/eng/publications/wp/2013/981 . Finds that increased school choice had very small, but positive, effects on marks at the end of compulsory schooling, but virtually zero effects on longer term outcomes.
Hope this is useful and not too late.
Friedrich A. Hayek class on MRUniversity
MRUniversity.com has a new class on Hayek’s Individualism and Economic Order, free on-line pdf version of the book is here. The class is based around my reread of the book — often considered the single best introduction to Hayek — and what I learned from each chapter., whether positively or negatively.
The MRUniversity videos are now available on the homepage of MRU at the end of the Great Economists section. There is also a landing page for all of the Hayek videos at once.
Overall the book held up very well upon my reread. The most interesting chapters — at least given my initial margins — were Hayek’s liberaltarian take on economic policy and Hayek on the likely evolution of European federalism. Hayek makes the very interesting argument that EU-like institutions will be classical liberal by default, as non-intervention tends to be the focal default point when conflicting nations cannot agree on very much. He thus thinks that supranational institutions, while often motivated by peace at first, over time become an instrument of economic freedom.
We invite you to check out the class, and of course there is more to come.
Chinese translation of *Modern Principles*
There is now a Chinese translation out of Modern Principles, our Principles text.
Information (in Chinese) on the macro text is here. Information about the micro text is here. You will note that China is a key example in our discussion of catch-up Solow growth, a topic neglected by many other leading Principles textbooks.
For basic information on the English language version of the book, see here.
From the comments, on lotteries and education
John S. wrote:
States don’t use lottery proceeds to *increase* funding to schools. They tie the lottery to education as a marketing gimmick, both to sell it to the voters initially, and then to deflect criticism (what do you mean you don’t like the lottery — are you anti-education?) See http://goo.gl/f5b55R
We’re told we need lotteries because people would gamble anyway, and yet a large fraction of lottery revenues go toward advertising, presumably so that people don’t lose interest in it.
I also liked the remarks from ant1900:
This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racino) suggests that the appeal of racinos is being able to bring in slot machines to an existing race track. After reading only a few pages of ‘Addiction by Design’ I can see why. The smart machines are now subsidizing the humans and the horses. The horses are probably the hook that convinces voters to allow horse tracks to expand into slot machines (‘we have had the hose track for many years and that has worked out ok, and they are already regulated and already in the gambling business, so let’s let them expand into slot machines, which is not a huge leap from betting on horses’).
Assorted Thoughts on the Market for New Econ PhDs
Here’s the good news. There were 1,243 new econ PhDs in 2012 and the AEA has 2,790 job listings. Compared to other fields where quantity supplied far outstrips quantity demanded, econ is doing very well.
Why are there fewer PhDs than jobs? One factor may be that women are underrepresented in economics. Women earn 34% of the PhDs in economics which is below the 46% of doctoral degrees earned by women overall. (On the other hand, economics is more gender-balanced than psychology where 72 percent of all degrees are earned by women). If women earned more degrees in economics would total degrees increase? Perhaps, although that hasn’t happened in medicine where the cartel has limited total physician supply.
What about the bad news? The number of new jobs for econ PhDs fell by 4.3%. The fall was especially pronounced in academia where the number of new jobs fell by 6.6%. New jobs tumbled in 2008 and since that time there has been some recovery but no catch-up. Are we seeing the transition to a new equilibrium?
On the university side, Clay Christensen’s prediction that half of all universities may go bankrupt in the next 15 years is not yet showing up in the data. Should I file that under good news or bad news?
China/Hong Kong markets in everything
Rich mainland parents are paying thousands of Hong Kong dollars to private investigators to spy on their children studying in Hong Kong, including PhD students and kindergarteners.
Four detective agencies said they handled on average “a few” to “a dozen” week-long investigations for mainland parents every month.
“The number has more than doubled compared to a few years ago,” said Kar Liu, a private eye at Wan King On Investigations.
Philic Man Hin-nam, founder and director of Global Investigation and Security Consultancy, an all-woman detective agency, said that mainland student cases accounted for about 40 per cent of the more than 100 requests made by parents last summer for information on their children.
The majority of family cases were instigated by Hong Kong parents who had reason to fear their children were involved with drugs or being led astray.
“Many mainland students studying in Hong Kong are single children from rich families,” Liu of Wan King On Investigations said. “Those parents attach great importance to their children’s behaviour.”
…Typically, a team of three agents monitor a student, taking photos and reporting back to parents daily.
There is more here, via Mark Thorson.
Academic boycotts of Israel
One of them is gathering steam (and more detail here):
The National Council of the American Studies Association announced Wednesday that it has unanimously endorsed a boycott of Israeli universities and other Israeli institutions — and urged its members to vote to make the boycott official policy of the association.
The move by the council, even if awaiting approval by the membership, is seen as a major victory for the movement for an academic boycott of Israel.
And yet I have a better idea. If one is going to boycott institutions of Israel, should one not also boycott strong, powerful nations which have supported much of what Israel has done, especially strong, powerful nations which stole a lot of land from the original inhabitants, refuse to give it back, and have recently practiced torture, aggressive military intervention, and the murder of innocent civilians, and which spy upon much of the world, mostly without apology?
That’s right, they might consider boycotting the United States, starting with their very own name, which now would read “Council of the Studies Association.” Cynical advocates of “self-deportation” (I am not one of them) might suggest a more general boycott of the nation as it relates to their choices of residence and employment, but I will settle for the group boycotting academic conferences in America.
I am in in Tel Aviv — albeit briefly — and happy to be here. I am reminded of David Brooks’s recent column on the creeping politicization of life. That is one trend we all ought to oppose.
Addendum: Here is a good dissent from the boycott.
Which characteristics of economics departments predict productivity of publications?
In some recent work, Bosquet and Combes look at French data (only) and correlate the quality of economics departments with some of their underlying features. Why did they chose France?: “The most frequent way of becoming a full professor is via a national contest that allocates winners to departments in a largely random way.”
So what do we learn? First, large departments are in per capita terms not so much more productive and not at all doing better in terms of quality. Proximity to other economics departments also does not matter.
And then:
Heterogeneity among researchers in terms of publication performance has a large, negative explanatory power.
I suspect some of this is causal. It is good for departments to get rid of their dead wood and good when departments insist that everyone produce.
There is also this:
The second department characteristic that has the highest explanatory power of individual publication performance is the diversity of the department in terms of research fields (within economics).
I wonder there how much the allocation of researchers is truly random. I find the reverse causality story more plausible, namely that the strongest departments have the resources and heft to cover a larger number of fields, as it is less likely that having people scattered across many fields makes the department as a whole more productive.
In your spare time, you might also ponder this:
Finally, other department characteristics have interesting properties.
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Contrary to common intuition, more students per academic do not reduce publication performance.
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Women, older academics, stars in the department and co-authors in foreign institutions all have a positive externality impact on each academic’s individual outcome.
For the pointer I thank Mills Kelly.
Assorted links
The Great Reset, education edition (hi future)
Arlington-based Strayer Education Inc., hoping to curb declining enrollment, will cut tuition for new undergraduate students by as much as 40 percent.
Strayer will give all new students 20 percent off tuition at enrollment, and is offering a program called Tuition Awards, which will cover the cost of one class for every three a student successfully completes.
…Total enrollment at Strayer University for the fall term fell 17 percent, while new enrollments were down 23 percent.
Strayer (NASDAQ: STRA) is also reducing its workforce by 20 percent and closing 20 physical campuses within the next six months.
It is no surprise for many of these changes to start at the lower end of the market, just as the financial crisis started with subprime. Here is more, and for the pointer I thank Carrie Conko.
The mover’s advantage: The superior performance of migrant scientists
That is a new paper by Chiara Franzoni, Giuseppe Scellato and Paula Stephan, and the abstract is this:
Migrant scientists outperform domestic scientists. The result persists after instrumenting migration for reasons of work or study with migration in childhood to minimize the effect of selection. The results are consistent with theories of knowledge recombination and specialty matching.
The university-gated version is here. There are more new immigration papers here, via Kevin Lewis.
By the way, over sixty percent of the scientists and engineers of Silicon Valley were born outside of the United States. By the way, here is a new Swiss paper (pdf) on attitudes toward immigrant foreigners.
MRUniversity class on International Finance
We will be complementing our classes on Development Economics, Mexico’s Economy, The Eurozone Crisis, and International Trade with a class on International Finance. What topics would you like to see us cover?
A future service sector job?
Jason Kottke suggests:
I could imagine Glass Concierge becoming a future job title, basically a personal assistant who looks in on your Google Glass video feed to make helpful suggestions and advice, basically a rally co-driver for your life.
Most of the post is about using Google Glass to cheat at poker. In response to inquiries, I will review the product once I can get one.
A new RCT study of preschool
From Grover J. “Russ” Whitehurst:
I see these findings as devastating for advocates of the expansion of state pre-k programs. This is the first large scale randomized trial of a present-day state pre-k program. Its methodology soundly trumps the quasi-experimental approaches that have heretofore been the only source of data on which to infer the impact of these programs. And its results align almost perfectly with those of the Head Start Impact Study, the only other large randomized trial that examines the longitudinal effects of having attended a public pre-k program. Based on what we have learned from these studies, the most defensible conclusion is that these statewide programs are not working to meaningfully increase the academic achievement or social/emotional skills and dispositions of children from low-income families.
There is much more at the link at the Brookings blog, including the major details of the Vanderbilt study, with some very useful pictures. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.
England fact of the day
From Sarah O’Connor and Chris Giles, this one is a bruiser:
The earnings of recent English graduates have deteriorated so rapidly since the financial crisis that the latest class is earning 12 per cent less than their pre-crash counterparts at the same stage in their careers. They also owe about 60 per cent more in student debt.
As Britain starts to emerge from the downturn, a Financial Times analysis of student loan data exposes the damage done to a generation of graduates, for whom a degree has all but ceased to be a golden ticket to a decent job. Tuition fees in England almost tripled last year to a maximum £9,000 a year.
…Each cohort of graduates since the financial crisis is earning less than the one before. New graduates who earned £15,000 or more in 2011-12 – enough to start repaying their loans – were paid on average 12 per cent less in real terms than graduates at the same stage of their careers in 2007-08.
This real terms fall is three times as deep as the decline in average pay for all full-time workers over the same period.
From the FT there is more here.