19.11.02
DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS II. Informed commentary on the proper training of a lawyer, from Volokh Conspiracy.
THROWN FOR A LOOP? There's more about Chicago's Metra suburban train service at UK Transport. Here's Patrick Crozier's take on loop lines: "Ah, loop lines. Except very close to the centre eg London's Circle Line, I fear they're doomed. Railways need density and while that exists for radial journeys it rarely does so for tangental journeys." In fact, the Chicago Loop only serves as a bidirectional loop line during the rush hours. The Ravenswood runs counterclockwise (as Charles Yerkes and Samuel Insull intended) all day, but the Evanston Express runs clockwise only during rush hours. Evanston passengers must otherwise use the State Street Subway L and transfer at Howard Street.
At one time, both tracks of the Chicago Loop operated counterclockwise.
At one time, both tracks of the Chicago Loop operated counterclockwise.
DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS UPDATE I: Critical Mass sees a pattern of projection in the form of sensitivity training favored by university administrators: "What Harvard and UT Knoxville and other schools who play the sensitivity game have in common is a solid, increasingly entrenched record of treating new students as proven offenders, of using the "insensitivity" of others as an excuse to try to shape--intrusively, unapologetically--the sensibilities of others."
RESTRICTED SPEECH ZONES. Jesse Walker discovers that the plague of misnamed "free-speech zones" infecting Northern Illinois University and other universities has now spread to cities, usually as a way of keeping potential picketers and hecklers away from candidates for political office. So much for a future William Howard Taft, upon having a cabbage thrown at him, quipping, "I see one of my critics has lost his head."
One of the cities named in the report is Green Bay, Wisconsin. Free speech or not, this is not a week to ask "how 'bout those Vikings?"
One of the cities named in the report is Green Bay, Wisconsin. Free speech or not, this is not a week to ask "how 'bout those Vikings?"
ARBITRAGE OPPORTUNITY. Reason's November 18 Brickbat reports the arrest of fourteen men. Their crime? Buying bottles and cans in Mexico and states that don't charge a deposit and bringing them to California to collect money. Discarded aluminum cans can be had elsewhere for about $950 a ton and then sold in California for about $2,490 a ton. Plastic bottles sold for $90 a ton out of state brought $910 in California. The real crime is that California taxpayers are making up the difference on each ton of aluminum or plastic sold by the state to the manufacturers of recycled products.
ACADEMIC FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE. The conclusion of l'affaire Kirstein, as reported by Best of the Web.
GAINS FROM TRADE Tim Blair has some information on the benefits of building those Hogwarts Expresses (and some decent New Haven Zeppelins) in China.
SHIFTING PEAKS. Staggered working hours diminish traffic jams. That's a bad thing. Tim Blair is not making that up.
HOW MANY WEST-SIDE INTELLECTUALS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A LIGHTBULB? What's a lightbulb? I am not making much of this up. (Via InstaPundit, who knows lightbulbs from microphones.)
GAINS FROM TRADE: Atlantic Blog teases that the recovery of British model train manufacturer Hornby prompts "Joy at Cold Spring Shop." Yes, for more than one reason. The Telegraph report on Hornby's resurgence reports that the products have improved now that they're being built in China.
There is a precedent for Hornby's recovery. In the 1930s, U.S. train manufacturer Lionel obtained a license from the Disney organization to make a handcar with Mickey Mouse pumping the handles. As a consequence, Depression era families had a cheap trainset to put under the Christmas tree, and the company was saved. Hornby's current offering includes Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and the Hogwarts Express. And for all those purists who would object that a Great Western Hall would never fit into any platform at King's Cross, even on the Widened Lines, I offer this:
It's a Triang-Hornby bodyshell, and I'm going to name it Bear, just like Thomas's colleague.
There is a precedent for Hornby's recovery. In the 1930s, U.S. train manufacturer Lionel obtained a license from the Disney organization to make a handcar with Mickey Mouse pumping the handles. As a consequence, Depression era families had a cheap trainset to put under the Christmas tree, and the company was saved. Hornby's current offering includes Thomas the Tank Engine trains, and the Hogwarts Express. And for all those purists who would object that a Great Western Hall would never fit into any platform at King's Cross, even on the Widened Lines, I offer this:
MANAGING DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS. The concept of "shrouding" clueless 1-Ls is probably verboten at Harvard Law, according to Dorothy Rabinowitz.
BENEFIT PRINCIPLE. Atlantic Blog notes, "All the squawking the British have done for years about the horrors of a student finishing school in debt are finally being faced down by the government." Meanwhile, the Charles Clarke column he cites offers, "As far as possible, government should offer universities the opportunity to define their own mission and carry that through with minimum interference. That said, we must ensure that access is based on merit, not the ability to pay." Clarke does not appear to have ruled out allowing matriculants to borrow against their future earnings, however. "The second beneficiary is the individual student. The case has been incontrovertibly made that an undergraduate receives major benefits in comparison with the 18-year-old worker who pays taxes but receives too little educational benefits through the rest of their life... Fear of debt is a real issue, which is why repayment must be related to the ability to pay. The level of contribution is important and it should be collected in a way that is manageable, and which seeks to minimise any disincentive to study. Yet many young people do not think twice about taking out a loan or credit to buy a car or holiday (in a 2002 study half of all young people accepted they would be in debt for most of their lives). But a holiday or a car are depreciating assets, unlike education which gives you a start that lasts for life."
Atlantic Blog's discussion of adverse selection resulting from loan repayments being dependent on salary also merits close reading.
Atlantic Blog's discussion of adverse selection resulting from loan repayments being dependent on salary also merits close reading.
PROTECTED SPEECH? Critical Mass offers a rewrite of a Germaine Greer column that has also drawn fire from Atlantic Blog. The rewrite is a substitution of a different set of nouns for the nouns Greer uses, a device whose effectiveness is sometimes in the eye of the beholder (Douglas Hofstadter did something similar with a William Safire language column years ago: it appears in Metamagical Themas starting at p. 159.)
Perhaps the real secret to Greer's column, as well as the reason for the breakdown of her brief marriage, is here: "Liberated women could change their own light bulbs and tap washers and engine oil, so men felt unwanted." Evidently Greer never figured out the honey-do list.
Perhaps the real secret to Greer's column, as well as the reason for the breakdown of her brief marriage, is here: "Liberated women could change their own light bulbs and tap washers and engine oil, so men felt unwanted." Evidently Greer never figured out the honey-do list.
15.11.02
WELCOME NO. 2 PENCIL READERS. Thanks, Kim, for those kind comments on the Complex Proposition. Visitors will find education stuff, and political commentary, and current events, and stick around for things that run on rails. Speaking of which, time to make dinner, and then go work on the Illinois and St. Louis.
SIGNAL-JAMMING? Jane Galt has some comments on Hope Scholarships (as long as a student maintains a B average, your tax dollars go to keep that student enrolled in college), in reaction to a call for comments at the end of this post. Galt's fear: "I suspect that granting a full ride to everyone who has a B average would mean that effectively, almost no one would ever get less than a B. It's common to refer to this as grade inflation, but what it really is is grade compression: all the grades are forced into a narrow band between B and A."
Provided all the professors could be bought off in some way, I suppose.
"Compressing the grades people get into an ever-narrower band isn't good for the students, who lose feedback on how they're doing and incentive to excel, and it isn't good for their prospective employers, who lose valuable information about the students."
Or "academic probation" could kick in at any grade point average below 3.5. I'm sure there are ways to keep the federal moneys flowing while preserving some of the value of the signal.
Did I say signal? Indeed I did. That's Galt's perception: "College does not provide one the tools to make a living. For most people it is what economists call a signalling mechanism: something not intrinsically valuable, but only as a signal that the applicant has something else employers value. Which is to say, employers do not value your college degree because they value what you learned; they value it because it shows that you have sufficiently internalized middle class values to get through four years at school, whether through being born into the middle class, or having sufficient gumption to get yourself through college."
Perhaps. The signalling hypothesis is one of at least two competing hypotheses proposing to make sense of the value of a college degree. In fact, Galt undoes the signalling hypothesis in her next paragraph:
"But sending everyone to college will not avail them all of the benefits of the signalling mechanism; rather, it will render the signalling mechanism useless. You're not going to magically transform every extra person you send to college into someone who earns college wages; college is the gatekeeper to a limited number of such jobs, not a producers of said jobs. While normally I am skeptical of people who claim that there is a limited number of good jobs to go around, and therefore we need to redistribute them so that no class gets to hog more than their fair share, in this case I am hard pressed to explain how sending someone to study Medieval Philosophy or Lesser Poets of the 19th Century is going to magically produce a high paying job for them. The areas where jobs are going begging are the areas we don't expect to get a lot of extra students, such as engineering. I have no doubt that there are, somewhere on the American continent, some potentially gifted engineers with the requisite math preparation who are not attending college because they can't afford it. But I can't imagine there are many." Here is a particularly Complex Proposition. Is the degree a signal, or not? If it is a signal, the Philosophy degree is just as good a signal as any other degree, unless the Philosophy signal is more easily acquired. It might be equally accurate to say that the incentive to acquire the human capital aggregated as "engineering degree" is not strong enough, Hope Scholarships or not.
Galt, rather, fears that universal access will cement existing class barriers: "Since the fact of the college diploma will mean less, and grade compression is likely to remove the other valuable signal that a college education can provide, won't employers be more likely to look only at children from relatively privileged backgrounds? For one thing, employers are likely to rely more heavily on referrals from people they know, which is to say, from privileged parents finding opportunities for their privileged kids. And for another, privileged kids are more likely to have internships and such to signal that they are capable of the work that employers want them to perform. If you're a poor kid who had to work at the Stop and Shop for rent, you may be hard-working, but an accounting firm has no way of knowing whether you can build a balance sheet -- and since we've taken your degree and grades out of the equation, no way of finding out." It isn't clear that access per se destroys the value of a degree. The kid who had to work at the Stop and Shop has the opportunity to state "Responsibilities included filling in the monthly financial statements and productivity reports." And perhaps the purpose of the scholarship is to give such a kid more time to study rather than compel him to earn more money at the Stop and Shop. My fear is that the Hope Scholarships would give kids a new opportunity to guilt trip professors. "[Despite my missing all of the Friday classes because there were some really bitchin' Thursday parties] I really need the B in this course to keep my Hope Scholarship." Focusing on the perverse incentives in the proposal is probably more productive than worrying about the signal jamming.
Similarly, this passage calls into question the signalling hypothesis: "More interestingly, as the value of the college degree as a signalling mechanism has declined, business schools have come to require more work experience from applicants -- from no years in the 60's, to 5+ years today -- in order to better differentiate those likely to succeed. Business school itself is an enormous signalling mechanism, as most people's coursework bears little resemblance to what they do in their careers. But the mere fact that you survived an arduous application process and two years of school gives employers greater confidence in hiring you.."
On the other hand, this requirement is consistent with a human capital argument. The MBA (for that is what Galt is referring to) is a business-specific human capital investment (the return on which, apart from a few very selective colleges, is very low) for which general knowledge (good grades, strong GMAT scores) and specific skills (business experience) both matter. The value of the MBA might be as a human capital investment, rather than as a signal, seemingly irrelevant coursework notwithstanding. (Has anybody who took calculus ever encountered a related rate problem that starts "An ocean liner is 889 feet long at the waterline, with a beam of 75 feet, and displaces 55,000 tons. Water flows into it at a rate of ...." Probably not, but you all remember the sand falling onto a conical pile. No matter. The naval architecht given the information from the first story problem could use the methods from the second story problem to tell you that the ship would sink in about 2 1/2 hours, without going to the movie.)
Provided all the professors could be bought off in some way, I suppose.
"Compressing the grades people get into an ever-narrower band isn't good for the students, who lose feedback on how they're doing and incentive to excel, and it isn't good for their prospective employers, who lose valuable information about the students."
Or "academic probation" could kick in at any grade point average below 3.5. I'm sure there are ways to keep the federal moneys flowing while preserving some of the value of the signal.
Did I say signal? Indeed I did. That's Galt's perception: "College does not provide one the tools to make a living. For most people it is what economists call a signalling mechanism: something not intrinsically valuable, but only as a signal that the applicant has something else employers value. Which is to say, employers do not value your college degree because they value what you learned; they value it because it shows that you have sufficiently internalized middle class values to get through four years at school, whether through being born into the middle class, or having sufficient gumption to get yourself through college."
Perhaps. The signalling hypothesis is one of at least two competing hypotheses proposing to make sense of the value of a college degree. In fact, Galt undoes the signalling hypothesis in her next paragraph:
"But sending everyone to college will not avail them all of the benefits of the signalling mechanism; rather, it will render the signalling mechanism useless. You're not going to magically transform every extra person you send to college into someone who earns college wages; college is the gatekeeper to a limited number of such jobs, not a producers of said jobs. While normally I am skeptical of people who claim that there is a limited number of good jobs to go around, and therefore we need to redistribute them so that no class gets to hog more than their fair share, in this case I am hard pressed to explain how sending someone to study Medieval Philosophy or Lesser Poets of the 19th Century is going to magically produce a high paying job for them. The areas where jobs are going begging are the areas we don't expect to get a lot of extra students, such as engineering. I have no doubt that there are, somewhere on the American continent, some potentially gifted engineers with the requisite math preparation who are not attending college because they can't afford it. But I can't imagine there are many." Here is a particularly Complex Proposition. Is the degree a signal, or not? If it is a signal, the Philosophy degree is just as good a signal as any other degree, unless the Philosophy signal is more easily acquired. It might be equally accurate to say that the incentive to acquire the human capital aggregated as "engineering degree" is not strong enough, Hope Scholarships or not.
Galt, rather, fears that universal access will cement existing class barriers: "Since the fact of the college diploma will mean less, and grade compression is likely to remove the other valuable signal that a college education can provide, won't employers be more likely to look only at children from relatively privileged backgrounds? For one thing, employers are likely to rely more heavily on referrals from people they know, which is to say, from privileged parents finding opportunities for their privileged kids. And for another, privileged kids are more likely to have internships and such to signal that they are capable of the work that employers want them to perform. If you're a poor kid who had to work at the Stop and Shop for rent, you may be hard-working, but an accounting firm has no way of knowing whether you can build a balance sheet -- and since we've taken your degree and grades out of the equation, no way of finding out." It isn't clear that access per se destroys the value of a degree. The kid who had to work at the Stop and Shop has the opportunity to state "Responsibilities included filling in the monthly financial statements and productivity reports." And perhaps the purpose of the scholarship is to give such a kid more time to study rather than compel him to earn more money at the Stop and Shop. My fear is that the Hope Scholarships would give kids a new opportunity to guilt trip professors. "[Despite my missing all of the Friday classes because there were some really bitchin' Thursday parties] I really need the B in this course to keep my Hope Scholarship." Focusing on the perverse incentives in the proposal is probably more productive than worrying about the signal jamming.
Similarly, this passage calls into question the signalling hypothesis: "More interestingly, as the value of the college degree as a signalling mechanism has declined, business schools have come to require more work experience from applicants -- from no years in the 60's, to 5+ years today -- in order to better differentiate those likely to succeed. Business school itself is an enormous signalling mechanism, as most people's coursework bears little resemblance to what they do in their careers. But the mere fact that you survived an arduous application process and two years of school gives employers greater confidence in hiring you.."
On the other hand, this requirement is consistent with a human capital argument. The MBA (for that is what Galt is referring to) is a business-specific human capital investment (the return on which, apart from a few very selective colleges, is very low) for which general knowledge (good grades, strong GMAT scores) and specific skills (business experience) both matter. The value of the MBA might be as a human capital investment, rather than as a signal, seemingly irrelevant coursework notwithstanding. (Has anybody who took calculus ever encountered a related rate problem that starts "An ocean liner is 889 feet long at the waterline, with a beam of 75 feet, and displaces 55,000 tons. Water flows into it at a rate of ...." Probably not, but you all remember the sand falling onto a conical pile. No matter. The naval architecht given the information from the first story problem could use the methods from the second story problem to tell you that the ship would sink in about 2 1/2 hours, without going to the movie.)
CHEAP TALK? Little Green Footballs reports that the detailed al-Qaeda battle plans alluded to here are a hoax. The Asia Times has published a retraction.
ANTI-SEMITISM ON CAMPUS. James Lileks has a takedown of some museum curator who retreats behind the beanbags of mushy relativism:
"Let us now return to the words of the Art Center’s mouthpiece:
'Art is subjective,' she said. 'Used as a metaphor or presented as the artist's personal statement, every opinion is valid and every viewer is entitled to his or her own interpretation.'
Yes, every opinion is valid - but as a famous pig once remarked, some are more valid than others. It’s amazing how much validity you get on campus when you make Jew-killing sexy.
Hamas solidarity AND hot obliques - now that’s progressive."
In today's mail is a newsletter from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni with an article on anti-Semitism, with special reference to President Larry Summers at Harvard. The concluding paragraphs: "While some professors accused him of violating their academic freedom, Summers points out that while 'academic freedom ... to take any position' should be respected, 'academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism.'
It is ironic -- and intolerable -- that, on campuses where the slightest 'insensitivity' to some groups is punished with draconian severity [relatively speaking -- how many tanks does Loren Crabtree have? - Sup't], anti-Semitism is tolerated with little comment or criticism. ACTA is fighting this dangerous trend."
"Let us now return to the words of the Art Center’s mouthpiece:
'Art is subjective,' she said. 'Used as a metaphor or presented as the artist's personal statement, every opinion is valid and every viewer is entitled to his or her own interpretation.'
Yes, every opinion is valid - but as a famous pig once remarked, some are more valid than others. It’s amazing how much validity you get on campus when you make Jew-killing sexy.
Hamas solidarity AND hot obliques - now that’s progressive."
In today's mail is a newsletter from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni with an article on anti-Semitism, with special reference to President Larry Summers at Harvard. The concluding paragraphs: "While some professors accused him of violating their academic freedom, Summers points out that while 'academic freedom ... to take any position' should be respected, 'academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism.'
It is ironic -- and intolerable -- that, on campuses where the slightest 'insensitivity' to some groups is punished with draconian severity [relatively speaking -- how many tanks does Loren Crabtree have? - Sup't], anti-Semitism is tolerated with little comment or criticism. ACTA is fighting this dangerous trend."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
