Category: Education
From the comments, on local employment of teachers
The scaling in the chart makes a big difference. Here’s the data behind the chart, which can by found by following a link on the site that Tyler links to: http://1.usa.gov/oOQXeO. For the local government column only and April figures. (May would be better but the series runs out at April 2011.) April 2011 was at 8.3 million, about 160K less than the peak two Aprils earlier. That’s about 1.5% difference.
That is from RZO, the link and context is here. In the same comment thread, Frank Howland notes that:
K-12 enrollments fell by 0.85% from 2007 to 2009
That’s not exactly the same years and the data go only to 2009 but could it be a general trend across 2009-2011? Given that context, there is still some decline in per capita local teacher employment. Note this is a sector where there is a growing realization that quite a few of the workers should, for non-cyclical reasons, be fired anyway.
Addendum: Karl Smith has a useful graph with seasonal adjustment, coming up with somewhat different numbers.
How many unemployed teachers are there?
This bit from Bruce Yandle challenges the conventional wisdom:
As to hiring teachers, total employment in local government education is already up by one million workers since August 2010. Teacher employment in state government nationwide is up 300,000 workers. The unemployment rate in education and health services at 6.3% is one of the nation’s lowest unemployment rates. While the president implied that teachers were being cut from payrolls at a heavy pace, the data say otherwise. The president’s efforts are seen as misguided if the goal is to ease some of the pain in high unemployment sectors.
Here is another source:
As Figure 1 shows, state government education employment is up by 2.1 percent since the start of the recession while all other state government employment is down 1.9 percent — a substantially larger decline than in other parts of the state-local sector. State government non-education employment began falling less than a year into the recession, and fell below its pre-recession level about a year and a half after the start of the recession.
Do you wish to see more, including on local government education employment?
This BLS graph (look under “And which industries show declining employment over the summer?”) shows a strong seasonal trend which may confound some month-specific citations, but still the number seems to be back to where it had been in earlier years (admittedly the scaling and visuals are not what I would wish for) and more importantly it is hard to spot much effect of the recession at all:
So what exactly is the case here for stimulus of this sector? Is this really a sector to target? I would gladly see and consider alternate numbers and interpretations, but so far I file this under: “Yet another example of something the press should have reported about a President’s speech but didn’t.” Once again, it is the disaggregated demand which matters.
Turnitin: Arming both sides in the Plagiarism War
The internet has made plagiarism much easier and by most accounts plagiarism is increasing rapidly. As a result, over a million instructors now use services like Turnitin, a plagiarism detector that compares submitted manuscripts against a large database of material, including previously submitted manuscripts. What is less well appreciated is that Turnitin also sells its services to students. In fact, students whose professors use Turnitin are encouraged to pre-submit their work to Writecheck which will analyze and “verify” for the students that their paper has “properly quoted, summarized or paraphrased” previous work and it will also relieve students from “worrying that their paper will be recycled without their knowledge.” Uh huh.
In other words, WriteCheck will tell students if their essays will pass Turnitin! David Harrington summarizes nicely:
Turnitin is playing both sides of the fence, helping instructors identify plagiarists while helping plagiarists avoid detection. It is akin to selling security systems to stores while allowing shoplifters to test whether putting tagged goods into bags lined with aluminum thwart the detectors.
New working paper on the impact of economics blogs
This is from the blog Development Impact, but with much more added, the paper can be found here.
Robin Hanson is forming a forecasting team, Kling and Schulz have a new edition
In response to the Philip Tetlock forecasting challenge, Robin is responding:
Today I can announce that GMU hosts one of the five teams, please join us! Active participants will earn $50 a month, for about two hours of forecasting work. You can sign up here, and start forecasting as soon as you are accepted.
There is more detail at the link. Let’s see if he turns away the zero marginal product workers.
There is also a new paperback edition out of the excellent Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz book out, now entitled Invisible Wealth: The Hidden Story of How Markets Work. The book has new forecasts…
Ouch!, yet sometimes markets work
For-profit colleges are facing a tough test: getting new students to enroll.
New-student enrollments have plunged—in some cases by more than 45%—in recent months, reflecting two factors: Companies have pulled back on aggressive recruiting practices amid criticism over their high student-loan default rates. And many would-be students are questioning the potential pay-off for degrees that can cost considerably more than what’s available at local community colleges.
There is more detail here. The graphic on the paper version of the article (not on-line) shows that new University of Phoenix enrollment is down over 40 percent from last year, 47 percent from Kaplan.
Shanghai ranking of world universities in the social sciences
I can’t vouch for the method, but the top ten are quite plausible: Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Berkeley, Columbia, Stanford, Princeton, Yale, U. Penn, and NYU. The top twenty and thirty are plausible too. GMU, by the way, turns up at #41. Economics/Business rankings are here, with a nearly similar top ten.
For the pointer I thank Dan Houser.
Childrens Books With Economics Lessons
NYTimes: Justin Wolfers, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, cited “Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type” by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin, a book about cows that withhold milk from a farmer until he provides electric blankets. Mr. Wolfers read the book to his 1-year-old daughter, Matilda, during the Wisconsin protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on union rights.
Me? I read my kids The Little Red Hen–sort of like Atlas Shrugged for children.
Sentences to ponder
I am coming more and more to think that with the government essentially paralyzed for the foreseeable future, the only way we’re going to get jobs is by turning to actual job creators: business itself.
That is from yesterday’s NYT.
What is the causal impact of researchers reading blogs?
Again from the World Bank, here is a study of that question, with the blog in question being Development Impact. Summary excerpt:
There are large impacts on dissemination of research; significant benefits in terms of the bloggers becoming better known and more respected within the profession; positive spillover effects for the bloggers’ institutions; and some evidence from our experiment that they may influence attitudes and knowledge among their readers. Blogs potentially have many impacts, and we are only measuring some of them, but the evidence we have suggests economics blogs are playing an important role in the profession.
The culture that is Germany why the eurozone will fail
A society in Germany which advises on etiquette and social behaviour has called for kissing to be banned in the workplace.
The Knigge Society says the practice of greeting colleagues and business partners with a kiss on the cheek is uncomfortable for many Germans.
The society’s chairman, Hans-Michael Klein, says he has received concerned emails from workers on the issue.
He advises people in the workplace to stick to the traditional handshake.
Speaking to the BBC, he admitted it would be impossible to ban kissing in the workplace outright.
“But we have to protect people who don’t want to be kissed,” Mr Klein added.
“So we are suggesting that if people don’t mind it, they announce it with a little paper message placed on their desk.”
Mr Klein said he had received 50 emails this year alone on the rise of kissing on the cheek – sometimes both cheeks – as a greeting at work.
“People say this is not typical German behaviour,” he said.
“It has come from places like Italy, France and South America, and belongs in a specific cultural context. We don’t like it, they say.”
The society held a meeting on the issue, and carried out a survey of people both on the street and at their seminars, he said.
“Most people said they didn’t like it. They feel there is somehow an erotic aspect to it – a form of body contact which can be used by men to get close to a woman.”
He said there is, in Europe, a “social distance zone” of 60cm (23in) which should be observed.
The Knigge Society, named after the German term for a guide to good manners, is based in a castle 80km from Dortmund in western Germany.
It has reportedly previously ruled on the correct way to end a relationship via text message, and how to deal with a runny nose in public.
The link is here and for the pointer I thank Jacob Levy on Twitter. When the Knigge Society issues its proclamation on the Eurobond idea, I will be sure to let you know.
In German, here are some other Knigge rules, including for soup. Here is their home page. Here is a Knigge quiz: “Wie höflich lieben Sie?” [How politely do you love?] And more tips, including “Wie viel Kinderlärm ist erlaubt?”, buffet rules, and “Dos und Don’ts bei der Baby-Visite.” Here are rules for behaving yourself in 13 different countries, again all in German. For the USA, don’t respond with an elogy to “How are you?”, compliment people on their achievement and teamwork rather than their looks, and “Bedanken Sie sich ständig!”
The status of scientists
When asked to name a scientist, Americans are stumped. In one recent survey, the top choice, at 47 percent, was Einstein, who has been dead since 1955, and the next, at 23 percent, was “I don’t know.” In another survey, only 4 percent of respondents could name a living scientist.
Here is more.
The Coming Education Revolution
From Metafilter:
Stanford’s ‘Introduction to Artificial Intelligence’ course will be offered free to anyone online this fall. The course will be taught by SebastianThrun (Stanford) and PeterNorvig (Google, Director of Research), who expect to deal with the historically large course size using tools like Google Moderator.
There will two 75 min lectures per week, weekly graded homework assignments and quizzes, and the course is expected to require roughly 10 hours per week. Over 10,000 students have already signed up.
In 2003, I argued that professors were becoming obsolete, giving a 10 to 20 year time for a big move to online education. Later, I pointed out that the market was moving towards superstar teachers, who teach hundreds at a time or even thousands online. Today, we have the Khan Academy, a huge increase in online education, electronic textbooks and peer grading systems and highly successful superstar teachers with Michael Sandel and his popular course Justice, serving as example number one.
One of the last remaining items holding back online education is a credible system to credential and compare student achievement across universities. Arnold Kling has that covered with a new business model.
For superstars and strong researchers, life in the ivory tower remains good. But for most teachers the cushy life is gone; tenure is just a dream for a majority of university teachers, salaries are low and teaching requirements have risen.
As in other fields what we are seeing is an increase in teaching inequality, at the top are high-salary superstars surrounded by apprentices who work long hours at low pay for a lottery ticket that for most will not payoff and at the bottom are lots of mid-skill adjuncts who do the drudge work of teaching remedial English and math.
Addendum: Tim Worstall points to the UK’s University of London as a model for the future.
Keynes v. Hayek Debate
The Keynes v. Hayek BBC debate at the LSE which pits Lord Robert Skidelsky and Duncan Weldon arguing for Keynes against George Selgin and Jamie Whyte arguing for Hayek is now available in an online podcast.
Do exogenous increases in the # of children lower child quality?
Maybe not (in which I channel Bryan Caplan):
So what does it mean for an older brother when Mom and Dad come home for the hospital with twins? What’s it like to be the younger sister of twins?
First, you get less computer time. Frenette finds that, even after controlling for family income, education, and myriad other factors, having twin siblings reduces the number of computers per child by 14.1 percentage points.
Second, you are less likely to be enrolled in private school — youth are 4 percentage points less likely to in private school when there are twins in the family, all else being equal.
Third, parents are less likely to save money for their children’s post-secondary education in families with twins.
And the impact of fewer computers, less private school, and less saving for post-secondary education on children’s academic performance is…not much.
Fifteen year olds from families with twins do no worse than other children in international standardized assessments of reading achievement. If anything, they appear to do slightly better — but there are too few families with twins in Frenette’s sample to know whether the difference is statistically significant.
As a parent, I find these results encouraging. Even if your resources are stretched, and you can’t do everything you’ve planned for your kids, they might turn out just fine anyways.
The possibly gated paper is here and here. For the pointer I thank Michelle Dawson.