I want to identify specifically two that provided me with much inspiration (in addition to PoliBlog): Stephen Karlson's Cold Spring Shops and Tom Grant's Arms and Influence. These are true model blogs.That's very kind. The other sources do a much better job of concentrating on topics of substance than I do. Or perhaps by "model blog" he's referring to what's immediately below???
One income should support one family.She's reacting to a New York Times article suggesting that houses are really cheaper than they were 20 years ago and a reaction by Elizabeth Warren, one author of The Two Income Trap (did I really read that two years ago???), who has a condensed version of her argument at a bankruptcy symposium.
In other words, it now takes two earners to pay a mortgage rather than one. A generation ago, a typical wage-earner could buy a typical house; today, it takes two incomes to buy an average home in fully 75 percent of America's cities. And that means housing is just as affordable as it used to be?Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Say Aggregation Principle (hey, that's not a bad item to be ranked #1 in Google searches!) Economics is about tradeoffs. The economic emancipation of women is a good thing, as some people see it. Additional buying power from two-income families is a good thing, as many people see it. No-fault or unilateral divorce may be a good thing, but that's why we have Culture Wars. Culture Wars or no, it is policy. Ah, but then we get the Gary Becker question, "what is the effect of no-fault divorce on the labor force participation rates of married women?" If either partner is able at any time to end the marriage, attachment to the labor force may be cheaper insurance than salting away some of the allowance money. But with more labor force participation, our old friend Value of Output = Wages + Interest + Rent + Profit kicks in.
I was pleasantly surprised at how well the elections went in Afghanistan, but I fear that won't be the case in Iraq. I certainly hope I'm wrong. I hope I am right, however, about my prediction for 2005: we are going to capture Bin Laden and privatize Social Security.That's why I won't make predictions.
This picture suggests the yard at Port Baikal has become a bit of a railroad museum (note the pantograph beneath a catenaryless Siberian sky.) These kids are climbing on yet another Lend-Lease Decapod from the 1940s.
I submit that the U.S. News and similar league tables do not so much put a spotlight on weaknesses as they identify the best places for well-to-do families to buy prestige, content be hanged. I submit further that, although higher education still runs a trade surplus, that surplus is driven by graduate programs less affected by the access, assessment, and retention follies plaguing the undergraduate enterprise.The US system of higher education is the best in the world, and regulating it should not be done lightly, especially because the causes for these literacy declines may be quite fixable: Many public universities have lowered their standards in accepting students, and a huge influx of Latino immigrants in the 1990s led to many more nonnative English speakers in schools.
The ranking of colleges, such as those done yearly by US News and World Report, has already put a spotlight on weaknesses in higher education. (US News may now want to add literacy rates to its criteria.) But federal and state taxpayers, too, should be entitled to know which colleges efficiently and effectively use government aid to achieve the best results.
“This seems like another piece of hard evidence, a fairly clear indication, that the ‘value added’ that higher education gave to students didn’t improve, and maybe declined, over this period,” said Charles Miller, the former University of Texas regent who is heading the U.S. education secretary’s Commission on the Future of Higher Education. “You have the possibility of people going through schools, getting a piece of paper for sitting in class a certain amount, and we don’t know whether they’re getting what they need. This is a fair sign that there are some problems here.”I'll work on a tactful way of communicating this information should anyone with a stronger command of entitlement than of economics stop by to negotiate a grade increase.
Applying the Dixieland style to Christmas music is not sacrilegious. In fact, when the music was played to a minister, he suggested that the River City Ragtime Band was fulfilling the Biblical edict: "Make a Joyful Noise Until the Lord, All Ye Lands." The River City Ragtime Band interprets the word "Lands" to include "Bands."True enough. That said, Go Tell it on the Mountain adapts to jazz combo better than, say, Good King Wenceslas.
Socially stratified societies, including modern American and European society, consist of farmers who produce food, plus non-farmers such as bureaucrats and soldiers who do not produce food but merely consume the food grown by the farmers and are in effect parasites on the farmers. ... In the United States today, with its highly efficient agriculture, farmers make up only 2% of our population, and each farmer can feed on average 125 other people.Let's try a substitution here.
Socially stratified societies consist of health care professionals who produce longevity, plus non-health-care-professionals who do not produce health care but merely consume the health care produced and are in effect parasites ...The substitution works. With primitive life expectancies of 30-40 years, on average each of us who has attained middle age or greater is parasitic on the health care industry. It's called division of labor. It's structured by mutually beneficial trades. And if resources are properly priced (something that doesn't hold up in some of Professor Diamond's tragedy of the commons situations) it leaves all concerned, farmer and non-farmer, doctor and patient, poet and politician, better off.
For example: if the steam engine could be made into a locomotive, why not put a coal-fired power plant on the rails?Result: the Chesapeake and Ohio and Norfolk and Western turbo-electric locomotives (and a later Union Pacific attempt to use pulverized coal as the turbine fuel -- NOT as boiler fuel the way stationary power companies do.)
The British are far more rigorous in separating automotive and pedestrian traffic from railroad rights of way, and yet there is more the public would like the authorities to do.At the rail station in Elsenham, Essex, where the girls were to catch the train, they probably rushed over the level crossing to buy their tickets on the far platform. Like many village stations, Elsenham has only one ticket machine and no footbridge.
Then, when they could see passengers boarding the Cambridge train, the girls probably hurried back over the crossing where the pedestrian gates remained unlocked. But by now there was a red light and a klaxon bell warning of an express train from Birmingham to Stansted.
Did the girls imagine that these warning signals were related to the Cambridge train already in the station? Possibly. They either ignored — or failed to see — the express train, which was travelling at 80mph.
Despite the cynicism, the columnist concludes with a bit of solid advice.Translation Guide for Students
When a student says: Will that be on the test?
The professor hears: I could care less about learning. Grades are my sole concern.
When a student says: I missed the exam because I had to go to my grandmother’s funeral.
The professor hears: I was too busy partying to study, so at the last minute I panicked and skipped the test.
When the student says: I have to miss class next week. What will be covered?
The professor hears: It’s easier to ask teachers for special treatment than to read the syllabus.
When a student says: May I have an extension?
The professor hears: That ridiculous class rule that late papers get reduced grades shouldn’t apply to me. After all,I’m the center of the solar system.
When the student says: I was sick last week. Did we cover anything important?
The professor hears: When I skipped class last week, did you cover anything I need to know for the final? It’s too much trouble to ask my nerdy classmates, and my friends don’t pay attention.
When the student says: Can I still get a B?
The professor hears: I just realized that not doing any work all semester and getting a C minus on the mid-term paper might mean a low grade.
When the student says: What are your office hours?
The professor hears: I haven’t even bothered to read your syllabus but I still want you to spoon feed me private tips that will get me a higher grade.
When a student says: There are personal reasons I haven’t been doing well in your class this semester.
The professor hears: Maybe if I concoct a dramatic sob story for this dupe, I’ll get special treatment.
When a student says: Can I do something for extra credit?
The professor hears: Even though I haven’t cracked a book all semester I still deserve special dispensation and extra effort from my professors.
When a student says: I can’t take the final exam when it is scheduled. Could I take it in January?
The professor hears: I talked my parents into leaving early for our ski trip to Aspen, and if I postpone the test until after the break, my friends will tell me what to study.
When a student says: Plagiarism? But I promise that I hadn’t even seen the Web site when I wrote my paper. It’s a totally random coincidence. I promise.
The professor hears: Busted! And I can’t believe that this dinosaur knows how to do a Google search.
When a student says: Cheat? Me? But I swear I didn’t do it. You’re not going to give me a zero are you?
The professor hears: Even when I’m busted, normal punishments should be rescinded because I’m the center of the universe. Better try to lie my way out of this one.
Let me add only this: each of the special requests deconstructed infra is a request that the professor be inconsiderate of those students who did play by the rules. There are tactful ways to remind the special pleaders that equal treatment under the rules presupposes equal performance subject to the rules.I believe that we serve our students well when we respectfully remind them of — or teach them — manners: especially through our own actions and interactions. It is ideal, I believe, if we impart these lessons in etiquette with grace, kindness and good humor. It is not always easy to maintain composure and respond with generosity when faced with bad-mannered students — but we can try.
As authority figures, we automatically are role models — and models not just of intellectual prowess, but also of attitudes and habits. We are — like it or not — in positions of authority vis a vis our students. Given that, the stance of a benevolent dictator is a reasonable posture to assume. An “eye for an eye” is an inappropriate strategy for those who wield power.
Part of our mission, I believe, is to demonstrate maturity, respect and empathy. Hopefully, students will internalize and assume a similar mien over time. Politeness rules. Despite my sardonic translation sheet, I do believe that we teach most effectively when we are consistently considerate of our students I believe that we can profess most powerfully when we keep in mind that students may be learning far more from us than the scholarly content of our class lessons..
When we start to lose our tempers and respond snidely to Oy-vey students, perhaps this quote by Albert Schweitzer is apt: “Only those who respect others can be of real use to them.”
Many state universities, [U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics Mark Schneider] said, now have open admissions policies that accept almost all high school graduates, including those who might not be as well prepared as their peers were decades earlier. In addition, colleges and universities are taking in a more diverse population that might have language or cultural challenges. Or, he said, colleges "may not be doing the job as effectively as they could be."You think?
It's time to apply the same "get tough" approach to outcomes in education that we've begun to apply to secondary schools to colleges. Perhaps, if these colleges knew that future employers would know that they are graduating large numbers of students who are not proficient readers, those schools might decide to toughen up their standards. I suspect that these large numbers failing the test come from a certain tier of colleges and prospective students might like to know that information. How many of these colleges are public colleges? Are taxpayers supporting institutions that are failing to make sure that their graduates can read complex material?What was I writing about market tests?
Changing demands in the economy are forcing employers to pay increasing sums to remedy deficiencies in the writing and computational skills of the college graduates they hire. In addition, more and more work normally performed by college graduates is now being outsourced to other countries.University Diaries suggests sloppiness elsewhere in the curriculum might be crowding out the learning that used to go on in college.
Yet some professors teach primitive relativism; and even if they don’t, it’s encoded in the DNA of the cultural competence and diversity training fundamental to the environment of most American universities that even elementary acts of judgment and reasoned preference are abominations. Add to these influences the gelatinous mass that makes up the curriculum of many of our colleges, and you see why the reigning moral philosophy of some of our 21-year-olds is playdoh relativism.To go, all too often, with playdoh spelling and figuring.
Maybe America does not want to rebuild New Orleans. Maybe we have decided that the deficits are too large and the money too scarce, and that it is better just to look the other way until the city withers and disappears. If that is truly the case, then it is incumbent on President Bush and Congress to admit it, and organize a real plan to help the dislocated residents resettle into new homes. The communities that opened their hearts to the Katrina refugees need to know that their short-term act of charity has turned into a permanent commitment.Their interpretation.
If the rest of the nation has decided it is too expensive to give the people of New Orleans a chance at renewal, we have to tell them so. We must tell them we spent our rainy-day fund on a costly stalemate in Iraq, that we gave it away in tax cuts for wealthy families and shareholders. We must tell them America is too broke and too weak to rebuild one of its great cities.For another interpretation, read this.
Today, most central cities feature horrific educational deficiences, crumbling infrastructure, and stultifying regulations that drive commerce ever more into the suburban periphery. Yet most city leaders—not to mention productive citizens in the rest of the nation—avert their eyes from these problems until a trauma like Katrina forces the products of our urban maladministration into view. Rather than re-examine their bankrupt social and economic premises, urban elites prefer to channel money into sports stadia and convention centers, hip lofts and restaurants, hoping somehow this will suck talent and wealth into their cities. As if today’s urban underclass will just fade away, and leave the cool hipsters unbothered to enjoy their entertainment districts.The common theme: corporate welfare, whether it be no-bid contracts in Iraq or entertainment-industry subsidies in the States? (At least nobody mentioned the streetcars?)
This collapse of responsibility and discipline goes against the entire grain of urban history. From republican Rome to the golden ages of Venice, Amsterdam, London, and New York, cities have flourished most when they have served as places of aspiration and upward mobility, of hard work and individual accountability. By becoming mass dispensers of welfare for the unskilled, playpens for the well-heeled and fashionable, easy marks for special interests, and bunglers at maintaining public safety and dispensing efficient services to residents and businesses, many cities have become useless to the middle class, and toxic for the disorganized poor. Today’s liberal urban leadership across America needs to see the New Orleans storm not as just a tragedy, but also as a dispeller of illusions, a revealer of awful truths, and a potential harbinger of things to come in their own backyards.
I would add only that, sometimes, knowledge of the calculus tricks does aid the understanding. But the math is the servant; it adds precision to stories that can be explained in other ways.And just because you can take derivatives and integrals doesn't mean you understand economics. If you can't explain opportunity cost, consumer surplus, deadweight loss, elasticity, etc. in plain English--which is what this class is supposedly teaching you--then you're just doing math problems.
If this guy could do that before taking the intro micro class, then he may be right that the class was a waste of his time. But most people can't. In fact, since I was a TA for this class for four semesters, I can tell you that a lot people can't do that even after taking the class. To tell them to skip ahead to micro with calculus is a terrible idea that would hurt, not improve, economic education.
Reputation is, at best, a trailing indicator.Exactly. Put more precisely, a good reputation is the undepreciated accumulation of past market tests. Without more information about the source he uses to obtain a performance measure for a non-profit organization, some of what follows is speculative, but here goes.
The academic prestige hierarchy (a version of Collins’ ‘reputation’) is almost purely based on inputs, rather than outputs. Pour lots of research money and some high-SAT undergrads into a university, add a good football team, and voila! Selectivity of admissions correlates very strongly with academic prestige, regardless of what the teachers in the classrooms actually do. As a former professor of mine put it, “we don’t often turn a silk purse into a sow’s ear.” Give me a college full of valedictorians, and I’ll give you a great job placement record, even if the undergrads spend all four years majoring in beer.That last sentence sounds almost exactly like life in the major Japanese universities, which at one time offered a four-year respite between competing to get in, and graduating to a stressed-out life sleeping in the tube-hotels as an entering salaryman. But we haven't heard much about Japanese methods in the past ten years, have we? To quote John S. McGee, "Open markets are institutions in which powerful and appraising evolutionary forces are at work." Japan, Inc. is not exempt. Neither are the name-brand universities. In previous posts, I have noted the phenomenon (Blogger tech support, please fix the new search feature or let us have the old one back, my memory is a bit overloaded at the moment) of employers, frustrated with the noisy signal a prestige university transcript laden with inflated grades sends, asking applicants to provide SAT scores. Freefall of the American University, a work I recall referring to once or twice, introduces similar anecdotes about employers giving up on the name universities and recruiting at what the dean refers to as "So-So State" instead.
Every professor seems to complain that most high-school graduates are not really prepared for college, either academically or emotionally. More and more, our energies are devoted to remedial teaching and therapeutic counseling. Most believe that something is wrong in public education, or the larger culture, that can only be dealt with, in part, by selective withdrawal.That rethinking the therapeutic model might be constructive hasn't occurred?? That the therapeutic model is generating that inefficient self-segregation isn't open for discussion?
The reputation of our particular program is well-received in the field although students toward the end of the program (as they enter more 'professional practice' related classes) complain that we are expecting way too much. Only later when they themselves graduate do they thank us for preparing them for the real world. And since those evaluations come after the university's official student measurement instrument, the numbers don't correlate with any of this.Let me reinforce that with something I learned as part of a now-abandoned Liberal Arts initiative, set up to induce more students to take their first two years at Northern Illinois rather than at a community college, by offering an additional certificate for completing a thematic cluster in general education. That was the enrollment motive. The pedagogical motive: a liberal arts cluster that enables students to make connections develops higher-order thinking skills useful higher up the corporate (or non-profit, or government) ladder. We received several different empirical confirmations of that assertion. Is that something a university could assess, in some systematic way? Outside my pay grade. Is that a market test at work? Yup. Is it telling the So-So States and Enormous States to expect more of their charges? I suspect so.
They have negative memories of their own education. Although it takes some probing, nearly every professor with home-schooled children mentions traumatic childhood experiences in school. Professors, as a group, tend to have been sensitive, intelligent children who were picked on and ostracized. They foresee the same treatment for their own children, and they want to do everything they can to prevent the children from experiencing the traumas they experienced. Professors recognize how many of our most brilliant students have been emotionally or physically terrorized for a dozen years before they arrive at college. School sometimes teaches otherwise happy and intelligent children to become sullen and secretive and contemptuous of learning.What's that line in Emerson about society everywhere at war against the individuality of its members? Professors aren't the only nails to be hammered down.
No doubt, my spouse and I have had to forgo some career options for our present way of life. Home schooling our children means we have to live on an assistant professor's salary. It also means living in a small town in the Midwest instead of an expensive city on one of the coasts. It means living in an old farmhouse that I am, more or less, renovating by myself. It means not eating out or going on vacations very often. It means driving older American cars instead of shiny new Volvos. But the big reward is the time we get to spend with our children.Give. Me. A. Break. (Laura, fire away!)
I suppose, on some level, my spouse and I are rebelling against an academic culture that tells us we should both be working at demanding professional jobs while our children are raised by someone else. But we value this time with our children more than career advancement for its own sake. We don't regard ourselves as conservatives. We feel like we're swimming against the
mainstream of a culture that has sacrificed the family for economic productivity and personal ambition.
Read it all.1. Tracy spends a lot of time on her schoolwork and works hard at her schoolwork.
2. Tracy has a 4.0 grade point average.
3. Tracy has a 4.0 grade point average because she spends a lot of time on her schoolwork and works hard at her schoolwork.
This is what is known as a logical fallacy.
The commenters on this post agree that the observatory is worthy of preservation, provided somebody else pays for it.Historic, beautiful and obsolete, the observatory sits on 77 lakeside acres in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, and is a reminder of technology's inevitable replacement. Now more recreational site than center of science, the building is up for grabs in a deal that has some worried its historic importance may be compromised by the wrong buyer.
The former powerhouse of American astronomy, finished in 1897, has fallen out of the limelight since 1960 because of atmospheric pollution and new technological devlopments. A single full-time faculty member serves at Yerkes, doing mostly educational outreach.
Missouri State University was, until last year, Southwest Missouri State University at Springfield. Its name-change was part of a plan--hatched in close conjunction with Missouri's Republic [c.q.]political leadership, most of which is from Springfield--to "upgrade" the institution, start doctoral and professional programs, and seize tens of millions in state funds from the state's actual land grant institution, the University of Missouri. If Missouri State wants to do all this, and replace the University of MIssouri [c.q.] as the leading public institution of higher education in the state (conveniently located in a Republican stronghold, rather than the liberal college town of Columbia, where the University of Missouri is) it will need a Division I-A football team.Public choice at work?
Today, the institution is a multipurpose, metropolitan university providing diverse instructional, research, and service programs. On August 28, 2005, the institution's name changed to Missouri State University.The history is a bit eerie. We have a state teachers' college that evolves into a compass-point state college and then into a compass-point state university and, on its centennial, into Missouri State. At the 1995 centennial of Northern Illinois University, some senior administrators pushed to rename our former state teachers' college the University of Northern Illinois, as if transposing a few words takes away the stigma of the compass point. So far, that hasn't happened. Judge us by what we do, not by what we are allowed to call ourselves.
The current intercollegiate athletics budget is approximately $11.1 million, with about $5.1 million coming as the transfer from the university’s general fund. Included in the $11.1 total is approximately $3.9 million in athletic scholarships. Nietzel says the Missouri State athletics program should not be expected to be totally self-sufficient, but he also says it needs to come closer than it is now.Again, some eerie similarities. (I'll leave aside the problems of self-sufficiency in a multiproduct enterprise. Too much heavy economics for a Friday afternoon.) Anybody remember Cut Five, Cap Two, the Wisconsin dodge to free up more resources and get some Rose Bowl wins for the Badgers?
