Category: Education
Still the No Brainer Issue of the Year
In The No Brainer Issue of the Year I wrote:
Behind Door #1 are people of extraordinary ability: scientists, artists, educators, business people and athletes. Behind Door #2 stand a random assortment of people. Which door should the United States open?
Once again, as the NYTimes reports, our dysfunctional political system has opted for Door #2:
A Republican bill to provide permanent resident visas for foreigners who graduate from American universities with advanced degrees in science and technology failed to pass the House on Thursday, a setback for technology companies that had strongly supported it.
…[The bill] would have eliminated an annual lottery and instead allocated 55,000 visas for legal permanent residency, known as green cards, each year to foreigners who have completed master’s and doctoral degrees from American universities in the STEM fields: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Sentences to ponder
Real earnings for young college grads have fallen by over 15% since 2000, or by about $10,000 in 2011 dollars
Michael Mandel’s tweet is here, and link to the underlying material is here.
Don’t be misled by claims of a “high” or “rising” college premium, that is indeed true relative to high school (or less), but many of those wages are down even more. In absolute terms the return to college is not doing well.
Dan Searle fellowships in economics
The Dan Searle Fellowships in Economics offer the opportunity for newly minted PhDs to spend two years pursuing research as postdoctoral fellows before entering the academic job market. Before applying, applicants must identify an appropriate mentor in a highly ranked economics department and reach a tentative arrangement to spend two years at the prospective host department.
There is more information here. I know a fair number of people who have benefited greatly from this program.
Fox and Mitchum on the Flynn Effect and how it works
James R. Flynn recommends this paper, by Fox and Mitchum, in his new book:
Secular gains in intelligence test scores have perplexed researchers since they were documented by Flynn (1984, 1987). Gains are most pronounced on abstract, so-called culture-free tests, prompting Flynn (2007) to attribute them to problem solving skills availed by scientifically advanced cultures. We propose that recent-born individuals have adopted an approach to analogy that enables them to infer higher-level relations requiring roles that are not intrinsic to the objects that constitute initial representations of items. This proposal is translated into item-specific predictions about differences between cohorts in pass rates and item-response patterns on the Raven’s Matrices, a seemingly culture-free test that registers the largest Flynn effect. Consistent with predictions, archival data reveal that individuals born around 1940 are less able to map objects at higher levels of relational abstraction than individuals born around 1990. Polytomous Rasch models verify predicted violations of measurement invariance as raw scores are found to underestimate the number of analogical rules inferred by members of the earlier cohort relative to members of the later cohort who achieve the same overall score. The work provides a plausible cognitive account of the Flynn effect, furthers understanding of the cognition of matrix reasoning, and underscores the need to consider how test-takers select item responses.
The paper is here (pdf).
From a loyal MR reader
I read through the Heckman debate. He does what he always does. One response is terrible (quality of early intervention doesn’t matter, just do a lot of it) but most of them make decent points. Carol Dweck hints at the problem of writing people off.
No one considers neurodiversity. No one considers that many successful people take big risks, follow their impulses, fail to comply, have bad habits, and otherwise misbehave. Heckman himself may be an example.
Update from Emory University — no more economics Ph.d?
The university will suspend admissions to Spanish and economics graduate programs so leaders there can redefine the missions, Forman said. Emory also will suspend admissions to the Institute for Liberal Arts so it can be restructured.
The changes will begin at the end of this academic year and finish by the end of the 2016-17 academic year. About 20 staff positions will be cut over the next five years, officials said.
Savings from the changes will be re-invested into existing programs and growing areas, such as neurosciences, contemporary China studies and digital and new media studies, Emory officials said.
Here is more. By one account, Emory had moved into the top 50 in economics. For the pointer I thank Michael Hammock.
Get your Arnold Kling fix here
Here is Arnold on on-line education. Excerpt:
I am optimistic about tablets in large part because I believe that a magic bullet in educational technology is the adaptive textbook. By that, I mean an electronic textbook that adjusts to the cognitive ability and learning style of the student. Adaptive textbooks will query students in order to make sure that they understand what they have been studying. They will also respond to student queries. Adaptive textbooks will implement the many-to-one teaching model.
A glimpse of what lies in store can be found at the Inquire Project, which describes “an iPad app that combines the popular Campbell Biology textbook with a knowledge representation and reasoning system that answers students’ questions about the material.”
The Flynn Effect in East Germany
Economic, Educational, and IQ Gains in Eastern Germany 1990-2006 (gated), Eka Roivainen, Intelligence, Nov/Dec 2012
Abstract: Lynn and Vanhanen (2012) have convincingly established that national IQs correlate positively with GDP, education, and many other social and economic factors. The direction of causality remains debatable. The present study re-examines data from military psychological assessments of the German federal army that show strong IQ gains of 0.5 IQ point per annum for East German conscripts in the 1990s, after the reunification of the country. An analysis of IQ, GDP, and educational gains in 16 German federal states between 1990 and 1998 shows that IQ gains had a .89 correlation with GDP gains and a .78 correlation with educational gains. The short time frame excludes significant effects of biological or genetic factors on IQ gains. These observations suggest a causal direction from GDP and education to IQ.
For the pointers I thank Michelle Dawson and Ron Unz.
MRUniversity will have a course unit especially on India
This will be a special part of our opening course on Development Economics. The topics we will cover will include:
History of the East India Company
The economics of Gandhi’s attack on the salt monopoly
Was British rule good for India?
Private education in India
Economic research on the caste system in India
The timing of Indian economic reforms and the boost in Indian economic growth, as discussed by Rodrik, DeLong, and others.
The contributions of the most famous and most important Indian economists.
Why does Kerala have such a good record when it comes to public health?
RCTs in India by Poverty Action Lab.
And much more.
Today I have a request for you. If you have any connection with India, please spread the word of this material to other people you may know who have a connection to India.
The motto of MRU is “Learn, Teach, and Share.” You can register for the course to come here. Background on MRU is here. Background on the development economics class is here.
The equilibrium (with apologies to Daniel Klein)
On September 5, the first Sleeping Beauty in Polataiko’s exhibition awoke to a kiss from another woman. Both of them were surprised. Polataiko shot photos of them laughing and looking at each other. Then he posted the images to his Facebook profile, where he has been live-blogging the entire event. Now the Sleeping Beauty must wed her “prince,” thus queering the historically heteronormative fairtytale. Gay marriage is not allowed in the Ukraine, however, so these two women will have to wed in a European country that does allow for same-sex marriage.
Here is more. I believe that none of you had solved for this equilibrium. For the pointer I thank Eapen.
There is no great stagnation (remote-controlled cockroach edition)
Built-in power supply? Check. Ability to survive anything? Check. Easy to control? Okay, anyone who’s had a cockroach as an uninvited houseguest knows that’s not the case. So, rather than re-inventing the biological wheel with a robotic version, North Carolina State university researchers have figured out a way to remotely control a real Madagascar hissing cockroach. They used an off-the-shelf microcontroller to tap in to the roach’s antennae and abdomen, then sent commands that fooled the insect into thinking danger was near, or that an object was blocking it. That let the scientists wirelessly prod the insect into action, then guide it precisely along a curved path, as shown in the video below the break. The addition of a sensor could allow the insects to one day perform tasks, liking searching for trapped disaster victims — something to think about the next time you put a shoe to one.
What’s it like trying to climb the IQ gradient with this device? There are videos at the link, and for the pointer I thank magilson.
Who will on-line education help?
Matt Yglesias has an analysis and a hypothesis:
Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, proprietors of one of the finest economics blogs on the Internet, are launching a cool new venture that they’re calling Marginal Revolution University aimed at doing online economics education and launching with a course on development economics.
It’s pretty clear that big change is coming to the higher education space through digital technology, but it’s also worth asking who’s going to really benefit from this kind of change. The key winner, it seems to me, is someone who’s intelligent, focused, and motivated but whose parents don’t happen to have much money.
There is more analysis at the link. Matt makes this very good point:
Last but by no means least, some of the biggest winners here will be people living in poor countries where the basic logistical barriers to accessing quality higher education are often very high. I suspect it’s no coincidence that development economics—a subject likely to be of particular interest to that demographic—is where MRU is starting.
MR University is announced at the World Bank
As our blog posts went up (here and here), our plans for MR University were presented to an audience of World Bank economists, researchers, and practitioners, courtesy of PREM.
You can find the presentation here. The segment on MRUniversity starts at about 29:30, with the earlier part of the talk covering ideas related to The Great Stagnation.
You can sign up at www.MRUniversity.com. Our class on development economics starts October 1, and we are pleased to have been able to present it at the World Bank, and to you all, to start it off.
Introducing MRUniversity (spread the word)
That’s Marginal Revolution University, MRU, or I suppose to some “Mister” University.
We think education should be better, cheaper, and easier to access. So we decided to take matters into our own hands and create a new online education platform toward those ends. We have decided to do more to communicate our personal vision of economics to you and to the broader world.
You can visit www.MRUniversity.com here. There you can sign up for information about our first course, Development Economics, which is described by Alex below.
Here are a few of the principles behind MR University:
1. The product is free (like this blog), and we offer more material in less time.
2. Most of our videos are short, so you can view and listen between tasks, rather than needing to schedule time for them. The average video is five minutes, twenty-eight seconds long. When needed, more videos are used to explain complex topics.
3. No talking heads and no long, boring lectures. We have tried to reconceptualize every aspect of the educational experience to be friendly to the on-line world.
4. It is low bandwidth and mobile-friendly. No ads.
5. We offer tests and quizzes.
6. We have plans to subtitle the videos in major languages. Our reach will be global, and in doing so we are building upon the global emphasis of our home institution, George Mason University.
7. We invite users to submit content.
8. It is a flexible learning module. It is not a “MOOC” per se, although it can be used to create a MOOC, namely a massive, open on-line course.
9. It is designed to grow rapidly and flexibly, absorbing new content in modular fashion — note the beehive structure to our logo. But we are starting with plenty of material.
10. We are pleased to announce that our first course will begin on October 1.
Please help spread the word via tweet, facebook and post and of course please join us at MRU.
MRU’s First Course: Development Economics
The first course from Marginal Revolution University is Development Economics and it will be taught by Tyler Cowen and myself. Development Economics will cover the sources of economic growth including geography, education, finance, and institutions. We will cover theories like the Solow and O-ring models and we will cover the empirical data on development and trade, foreign aid, industrial policy, and corruption. Development Economics will include not just theory but a wealth of historical and factual information on specific countries and topics, everything from watermelon scale economies and the clove monopoly to water privatization in Buenos Aires and cholera in Haiti. A special section in this round will examine India. There are no prerequisites for this course but neither is it dumbed down. We think there will be material in Development Economics that will be of interest to high school students in the United States and Bangladesh and also to PhDs in economics, even to those who specialize in this field.
Development Economics covers all the major topics of a sit-down class but because we have built it to be on online course from the ground up–no videos of us talking to a classroom–it will take less than half of the time of a sit-down class, plus no need to search for parking!
Our motto at MRU is “Learn, Teach, Share” so we will be inviting the world not just to learn but also to teach and share their knowledge. GMU is a very entrepreneurial university and we think we can be a world leader in online education.
Please do go to MRU and submit your email to be notified about our start date and registration which will allow you to contribute in our forums and online events. Development Economics is free to the world.
Stay tuned for more!