Truck and Barter

Yes, this is pre-judging. *UPDATED*

But when the introductory material is so poor, I find it hard not to do so.

From the Phantom Prof's site I read this synopsis of a PBS special currently airing.

The upshot of the show, from what I can tell, is not only to point out that college is not perfect at preparing kids for a professional life, but also to suggest that part of the problem is that a lack of state and federal funding is largely to blame, since the kids are showing up at college unprepared.

"Declining by Degrees" also highlights the impact of market forces in higher education today. The reality of the college experience today often depends on the bottom line: money. As one university president described it, "The state taxpayer support for public universities is eroding. That creates financial stress that we all understand and we just manage it. We just deal with it the best we can."

The two-hour documentary examines the public and government's decreasing financial commitment to higher education. Sixty years ago our country entered into what amounted to a social contract to ensure access to college for all despite family income. States supported public colleges and the federal government helped with money for the poor. Today, the funds and the support for the social contract are diminishing.

As Pat Callan, President of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, explains, "The federal Pell Grant program is the nation's largest program that focuses on the lowest income students who actually get to go to college. In the early 80's, that program had about 3 or 4 billion dollars in it, and it covered over 95 percent of the average tuition at a 4-year public college or university." Today it's about 57%.

I'm not sure who they've got looking into that "impact of market forces", but it doesn't seem, from the synopsis, that they bothered to talk with too many people who might be able to expound on the full range of those forces. One need only open the pages of Forbes to find a good discussion of the correlation between funding and educational attainment (measured in part by the number of people going on to college).

There are additional issues, however, that arise when we consider high levels of public funding: there will be more people going to college that shouldn't be. For a good number of people the traditional cobblestone-lined walkways of a four-year college is simply not necessary. Some because their talents lie elsewhere, some because the time isn't right, and some just because they could make more money than by being in school. With increases in public funding for any host of characteristics, it becomes more likely that schools will let in people who do not meet the minimum standards for doing well at college, simply because the financial burden of carrying them is reduced (or, in terms of grants to schools with a student body composition that meets certain criteria, it could be a net gain). College is certainly getting more expensive, but that's simply compared to what it used to cost, and doesn't approach anything like what it "ought" to cost -- not that such a thing is easily definable. But those students who are prepared, or for whom academic pursuits come most easily (as in the kid from the synopsis who does little work in college but still does well) could and would still attend even if college were more expensive, since there are extensive merit-based scholarships, and I daresay schools might be more willing to funnel money back into things like undergraduate teaching if the level of work coming from students improved. Bringing in people less prepared simply increases the variance in abilities that a professor faces when staring at a class; a fact that I'm certain results in massive headaches when the poor students complain that things are too hard and show up for office hours two days before a test to ask remedial questions, or when the kids who get it are less than engaged, don't attend to avoid the others, and barely particpate only to float through.

While I have some symptathy for the notion that high expectations result in better performance, I still view with mild skepticism programs that have only college as the ultimate goal. (In the case mentioned on Newmark the Younger's site, I appreciate that it's a goal parents are keen enough on that they work with their kids to make happen. The attitude that numbers of people making it into college marks some important degree of success for a school, on the other hand, bothers me more generally.)

In a position I would ascribe to the likes of Matt Yglesias, I think some people simply want more kids to attend college because it makes them feel better about...well, themselves, society at large, the future of humanity, who knows. This is akin, in my mind, to those people who talk more about covering people with insurance than worrying about better health outcomes. Sending people to college, or giving them health insurance, isn't going to make the end result -- a roomful of people Yglesias would be happier talking to or lean, healthy people getting a full ration of fruit a day -- a certainty.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, it was as poor as I expected. The two hours were spent, essentially, lambasting the "general public" for not understanding how important it is to have massive taxpayer-supported funding for higher education. Continued reference was made to a "social contract" being broken -- as far as I could grasp, this contract includes some sort of declaration that higher education should be as close to free as possible for everyone. The evidence for this? The GI Bill which, oddly, the documentary supports with the (in my opinion correct) commentary that this was little more than a pleasantly-wrapped but crass way to deal with the influx of millions of able-bodied men back into the workforce, that is, by keeping them out of it and training for a wider range of jobs. While talking repeatedly about the "benefits" (read: spillovers) of higher education, the commentaries in the doc repeatedly admit that not only are people unsure of what "happens" at college (calling it -- no joke -- "magic", at one point) to make people more productive or better equipped for the work world, but there are also no good measures of how much it makes a difference (no level to judge how much "magic" happened). No one talks about the maturation that occurs naturally between the ages of roughly 17 and 22. Additionally, though I've not got time to find the data, there was much talk about the nature of the US middle class, and college being the only way to reach it and thus be able to support a decent lifestyle and family. That would be surprising, I think, to the numerous plumbers, electricians, contractors, mechanics, and plethora of small business owners I know who make a good deal more than I do (not that I'm wealthy, but do fall squarely into the "middle class" range), all without having attended "college" (though plenty of them took technical training outside the academy).

Possibly the most objectionable part of the document was the twin condescenion and paternalism expressed towards community colleges. They were depicted as "last resorts" for some, while the narrator/interviewer highlighted financial pressures that meant some community colleges had to turn some people away. Could greater demand from, say, immigrants be putting pressure on these schools? Would greater demand for qualified professors at these colleges that are turning students away mean that the teacher profiled in the doc was in a position of strength for bargaining on his salary? (And, frankly, after 30 years of teaching in multiple places and never getting a permanent position, shouldn't the teacher from the movie have either reconsidered his choices or couldn't we assume he is at least decently satisfied with the non-monetary reward of teaching and discussing his favorite subjects?) The entire tone when discussing the community colleges was "look what some people have to resort to" and "gee, shouldn't we all pitch in so something like this doesn't have to keep happening to good people?"

I've always viewed the profusion of small and technical schools as a good thing, as the spread of specialization in education. People can head towards training that would be more useful to them in the long run. Not everyone needs to sit through college lectures to end up a productive member of society.

Teach Econ In Prison

For those people looking for a teaching position in Econ, I spotted one you might be interested in:

Economics (Adjunct — Fort Dix Prison)

So, what do you suppose the effects would be of teaching those people with a far higher-than-average propensity to commit crimes the optimal strategy for the...ah....Prisoner's Dilemma?

Public Education

Conservatives are often accused of wanting to destroy public education, but most don't; libertarians are much more forthright in their desire for government to get out of the education business. Being a libertarain conservative, I'm open to a compromise that at least breaks the monoploy. An article in the New York Times points to Dayton, Ohio where my dream is coming to a reality(Thanks to Joanne Jacobs):

Forty charter schools have opened in Dayton, and nine more have received preliminary approval for next fall. That would give this city of 166,000 people about as many charter schools as are in New Jersey, which has a population 50 times larger.

Today 26 percent of Dayton's public school students are enrolled in the taxpayer-financed but privately operated schools, a rate far higher than in any other American city.

Academically, few of the charter schools have proved to be any better than Dayton's public schools, which are among Ohio's worst. Now the authorities are warning that the flow of state money to the charters, $41 million this year, is further undermining the traditional school system.

The article says that the competition has sparked reform, but charters don't outperform the government run school system. If a charter isn't performing to a certain level, that school should be closed or at the very least have its funding removed. The same should be said for school district schools.

If I Promise to Try Real Hard, Can I Be A Brain Surgeon?

I'm not good at chemistry. And biology bores me, so I don't really do well at the memorization. But if I try -- you know, do the homework all the time and go to class -- can I still be brain surgeon? No? Then what's the use of the grading policy at Benedict?

That policy, known as Success Equals Effort, or SEE, requires faculty to take into account the efforts of freshman and sophomores in calculating grades.

So, I'm guessing this isn't the same thing as having "class participation" as part of the grade? Merely trying hard is enough?

But Stacey Jones, dean of the science, technology, engineering and mathematics departments, said it is imperative that faculty and students get on board to make the SEE effort work.

“It’s a transition; it’s a paradigm shift,” Jones said. “They (the students) are coming from high school, and it’s a whole different way of thinking. We’re hoping that the connection between excellence and effort correlate with the connection between excellence and knowledge.”

I'm all for the notion that effort is correlated with excellence (as measured by being competent in a subject). But if it were working for some students, wouldn't we see their grades going up anyway? Effort that doesn't result in higher grades means that the marginal return on, say, an hour of studying is relatively low compared to seeing grades go up for an hour of studying in another class. It's essentially wasted effort since it produces little to no return. Why should wasted effort be rewarded as a meritorious thing in its own right? If the returns to studying are low in one subject, the student should find another subject where the returns are higher. If no such subject can be found, perhaps the student isn't ready for college.

Rewarding effort as useful absent an improvement in grades might be a nice sounding idea, but it essentially masks the problem by reducing the amount of information transmitted by low grades. This information is useful to both students and those who need to objectively evaluate grades. A potential result: Your B+, achieved through little work since you happen to be an ace physicist, is to an outside observer the same as my B+ achieved through hard work though I scored far lower on practical tests. Taken further: your physics degree will appear the same as mine, despite your being far more adept and appropriately trained. Which person would you rather have continuing on to take more physics classes, or to have work at your lab? The student isn't able to fairly judge their progress, and evaluators aren't able to discern differences of ability.

The love of a subject is not reason to excuse low abilities. If effort is so closely correlated with "excellence", and if a student is truly interested in a subject then the improved performance should be enough of a reward to motivate the effort. I'm sitting through math classes I avoided earlier in life not because I think the professor will say "Hey, that guy's worked hard, so lets give him an A for effort and weight that in with his test scores", but because I think this time my effort will result in a facility with tools that I can then apply to something I'd love to do. Getting higher grades without a commensurate growth in functional ability would be a disservice to me, as I think it is to the Benedict students.

Graduate Student Responsibility

In some circles, the philosophy of self-reliance and self-instruction has momentarily resurfaced; the idea is that the actions and attitudes of students are more important than those of their teachers.

My dissertation adviser, Richard E. Wagner, has made a strikingly relevant philosophical note regarding the self-restraint (by instructors) and self-reliance (by students) required for successful graduate student education:

I do not think that it is my task to transfer material from my mind onto your minds, much as someone might seek to transfer software from one computer to another. In my classes I do not go directly over material that has already been written. I assume that you can read whatever has been written. You don’t need me to read it for you, or at least you shouldn’t... [Y]ou may have to spend many hours in reading material so as to gain a good understanding of the material. In any event, I do not directly go over what has already been written, for I assume that you can with effort understand that material, and I see no reason to substitute my effort for yours in this regard.

What then does he teach?

Both in my assignments and in the conduct of my classes, I seek to cultivate an orientation toward the articulation of what has not yet been articulated.

Translation: He wants you to get used to producing new stuff.

As a student of his Macroeconomics and Institutional Economics classes, as well several directed readings, I can tell you that he's not kidding. In his classes, he'll provide you with several maps of the same terrain, and set you up to explore using those maps. He wants you to read, talk, think, and write; this method favors open, eager, dedicated, bold, and confident minds. Students expecting lectures can easily be thrown off course; with this method, you can fail even if you try hard. Many adventures end in not-so-glorious failure.

I can tell you that in his classes, and researching for a dissertation, I spent many hours discovering that I'd best leave the exploration of some many most topics to others who have more interest and endurance.... which is a valuable lesson to learn.

Universal College Education

Directly below, Ian goes through the pro and con arguments for government subsidized universal college education, and his post should probably be read before this one.

But let me start by exclaiming LOUDLY that if this is about getting more people to study "soft" subjects in a college, I think that it is a terrible idea.

However, if we're going to socialize college, let's do it the sure Soviet way--without the idolatry of Marx and Lenin: cram in the math, engineering, and science. In fact, even if "soft" studies in undergraduate school become an entitlement in the US, the size, scope, and impact of the program will far outstrip the oft-lauded post-secondary educational aims of the Soviets:

As the country's major scientific and cultural centers, universities produced the leading researchers and teachers in the natural and mathematical sciences, social and political sciences, and humanities, e.g., literature and languages. They also developed textbooks and study guides for disciplines in all institutions of higher learning and for university courses in the natural sciences and humanities.

On the whole, Soviet society considered universities the most prestigious of all institutions of higher learning. Applicants considerably exceeded openings, and competition for entrance was stiff. Officially, acceptance was based on academic merit. In addition to successful completion of secondary schooling, prospective entrants had to pass extremely competitive oral and written examinations, given only once a year, in their area of specialization, as well as in Russian and a foreign language.

More important to note is the share of the adult Soviet populace with a university education:

Of the population aged 15 or older in 1989, 49 percent had graduated from a secondary or vocational school and 11 percent had completed a higher education. The narrow proficiency typically acquired, however, dampened creativity and was often out of step with the labor market.

I know 15 is young, but comparable numbers are available from this table. (35327+12259+2821+2215)=52622 and 52622/225250=23%. So current US higher educational attainment is roughly twice that of the Soviet Union. Also, in the US today 17% of blacks over age 25--28% of whites--have at least a Bachelors degree.

This leads me to believe that we should be looking at supply and demand in terms of type, quality, and quantity of human capital. One argument for universal college is that an increased supply of human capital will create its own demand. However, will supply really match that demand? In other words, how many more speech, education, and communications majors do we need versus how many will we get under government financed undergraduate education?

Right now, the most demanded u-grad majors are somewhat out of synch with the most supplied majors. Will universalization help this? I really, really doubt it. Let's take a look:

Top 10 Demand (2004): accounting, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, business administration, economics/finance, computer science, computer engineering, marketing or marketing management, chemical engineering, and information sciences and systems

Top 10 Supply (2001): Business, social science, education, psychology, health, performing arts, biology, engineering, communications, English...

IMHO, if the federal government imposed a college standard, i.e. required for, or paid for every adult to graduate from college, I think we'd get exactly what we paid for--a "tertiary level" of education. We would not get the technical degrees that are in most demand, and that I think are most useful for critical thinking and 21st century production.

Query: If imposed, how long before current 12th grade standards are expected of 16th graders?

----

Actually, the whole idea demonstrates to me that socialism really has won the battle of ideas. I understand why we expect the government to do this; it certainly will be "easier" to impose our will on the rich people. But another way of looking at is, given the budget shortfalls of almost all governments, shouldn't we be talking about a massive means-tested private charity?

I say, go to the top 10,000 wealthiest Americans and/or the top 10,000 highest income earners and tell them your objective is to give everyone a college education. (Line up the biggest names and bank accounts--Gates Sr. and Jr., Buffett--first).

If you find that a majority won't donate voluntarily to the post-secondary fund, would you still tax them to do what you want? However, if they will donate voluntarily, you've already gotten most of the money you would have through taxation. And you could do a hell of a lot of good....

Educational Costs: School Can Be Good Because It Is Expensive

Should everyone get a college education? Apparently David Adesnik, Matt Yglesias and others think it's a good idea. Radly Balko eloquently dissents.

Count me in as dissenting, as well.

First, I don't think the question is well framed. Is it that the people who think this is a good idea want everyone to go to college, or is it that they believe the access to college should be universal? The first strikes me as a sort of elitist way of saying "People don't know enough about things I'd prefer they know, so here's a way to get them up to my level." I'm guessing this isn't -- entirely -- the point of their support for the idea of a universal college education.

The second option, if I read them correctly, implies creating an essentially costless entry and support mechanism (ignoring for the moment transaction costs of getting to the school), whether through massive grants to people looking to go to school, subsdizing schools so they don't charge tuition, etc. To which I would say that the cost of the education is a useful indicator in and of itself, and removing it would harm both the educational system and the people who could have afforded to get in before the cost reduction.

Fundamentally, the costs of an education over several years include not only the money to pay for tuition, but the opportunity costs of spending your time pursuing the education itself. The reason to do so is that you believe (understanding better than anyone else your potential and ability) future returns make this expenditure worthwhile. That is, the increase in income stream from spending four years and however many dollars on college is enough to make the investment make sense. A good portion of this is determined by natural ability, though we do have to consider educational attainment of the parents, economic status, health, and more. These, broadly, are the returns to education that people receive. For very smart and hardworking people, scholarships make it worthwhile even when they plan for low-income careers. Immediate costs are defrayed, so the long term income stream is still high enough, in relative terms, to make schooling "worth it" because personal returns are so high.

The returns are not, however, homogeneous. No matter what caliber of school you talk about, people at the instiution all get varying amounts out of it. The best you can say, I think, is that the people who are there are getting enough, at least, to pay them back for the cost to get in. This includes lazy kids of wealthy parents as much as it does brilliant children of impoverished parents. The lazy kid may get little out of education, but spent little to get there and foregoes little by being there, since the wealth of the parents will help ensure future worth. The brilliant child may also spend little in direct costs though for very different reasons (due to scholarships, grants, loans, etc.), and will most likely do well enough later in life to cover loans or make up for the hard work in high school and the time away from the labor force.

On the margin, then, lowering these costs lets in a student for whom the returns may not be as high and for whom other activities might be of greater value. If you don't have to cover tuition, and don't mind eating the cafeteria food, school is a relatively cheap and fun way to live. This doesn't mean it's the most productive thing for that person, however. It's not that I know what would be more productive, either, but making it easier for them to attend college by spending more federal money isn't exactly doing them some great service and the little it might or might not do is done at the cost of everyone else. Additionally, it negatively impacts the people who would have attended even when the costs are high. Increasing the cohort that graduates at a certain time with similar degrees increases the labor force for a certain category of work. A couple things happen, such as people taking jobs for which they are overqualified (as mentioned in some of the posts linked to above), or wages may drop for that pool since labor is then potentially in larger supply relative to the demand (ok, so some of both of this happens, plus some people go back to school, some people leave the labor force altogether...but I'm limiting the scope here).

Not all colleges are made equal. And so there are variations in the costs of entry and the costs to remain, including differing levels of effort, money, social connections, and more. Our system, then, already provides -- in my opinion -- a pretty good method to allow people of varying abilities (returns) to sort themselves into levels of education that they can gain the most from: tuition. There is, then, some inherent value in having varying levels of costs for entry and continuance. People are pretty good at figuring out for themselves how best to spend their time. How many of the US' most wealthy people are Ivy Leaguers with post-grad degrees? Not as many as you'd think. But to make these personal decision, the presence of some sort of measure is very useful -- a measure such as tuition costs for education. Plenty of people leave school, having decided that they're not getting as much out of the process as they could by working. But again, this is based on a comparison against some sort cost for remaining.

Plus, lets not forget the much higher costs of administration that the public would have to absorb, including the process of keeping track of all the people entering and exiting that weren't before. And, obviously, the impacts of class size on the ability of professors must be considered, along with the division of professorial attention among many more students. Certainly, the numbers of teachers would increase to meet the new demand, but to get the teachers either schools would have to be able to increase pay to attract top profs (a tough thing if suddenly the funding of higher education were driven by the government -- an institution rarely known for its ability to respond quickly and effectively to changes in demand), or they would have to lower standards to get more professors willing to accept the lower pay. Lowering teaching ability will thus affect the returns students get on education (since a good student with a bad professor is little better than a bad student with a good professor) and negatively affect whole classes of people.

It seems to me that dropping the costs to getting an education to zero may do little to help the new entrants, and would end up harming those who would go at the higher cost.

Update: Edited for readability.

Liberal Academia II

Stephen Bainbridge sums up more evidence of the lack of intellectual diversity in education today.

I too will testify that I feel I must keep my political views to myself to prevent discrimination and earn a fair grade. Funny that liberal "tolerance" is a one way street.

Will this trend reverse? Normally I might seek for ways to avoid doing business with a company that tries to oppress my political views, but I will not cut off my own nose by avoiding the completion of my academic career. Hopefully in 20 or 30 years by the time my children are starting college they will not feel they have to keep quiet in class just to earn a fair grade.

Wow II

I don't know what to say about this:

An extra $5.6 billion must be spent on New York City schoolchildren every year to give them the opportunity for a sound, basic education, which they are guaranteed under the state constitution, a court-appointed panel has found.

Beyond that, $9.2 billion worth of new classrooms, laboratories, libraries and other facilities must be built and maintained to relieve overcrowding, reduce class sizes and provide the city's 1.1 million schoolchildren with an adequate place to learn, the panel said.

But how much of that should come from the state or from the city itself the panel did not say, leaving unanswered one of the most daunting and contentious questions facing the lawmakers responsible for coming up with the money.

"Now we needed to roll up our sleeves and make sure the Legislature enacts this reform so that the children can get what they need," said Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the plaintiffs in the case.

O.K., a few thoughts come to mind. This is a direct assualt upon our democracy when judges can make such decisions. Nothing shows more how a certain segment of this country will use any means necessary to achieve their agenda. Unable to win elections, they simply find sympathetic judges to do their bidding.

I'll post the whole article in the extension.

Update: This post at Redstate.org suggests the recent vote against stripping racist language from the state constitution in Alabama may have do with an add on giving a right to an education. I originally cringed when I read about the vote, but if it is to stop the above nonsense then I don't blame them.

Update II: Here is a New York Sun article from a few months ago talking about this. It gives current spending as $11,122 per pupil. The district has more 1.1 million students.

An extra $5.6 billion must be spent on New York City schoolchildren every year to give them the opportunity for a sound, basic education, which they are guaranteed under the state constitution, a court-appointed panel has found.

Beyond that, $9.2 billion worth of new classrooms, laboratories, libraries and other facilities must be built and maintained to relieve overcrowding, reduce class sizes and provide the city's 1.1 million schoolchildren with an adequate place to learn, the panel said.

But how much of that should come from the state or from the city itself the panel did not say, leaving unanswered one of the most daunting and contentious questions facing the lawmakers responsible for coming up with the money.

"Now we needed to roll up our sleeves and make sure the Legislature enacts this reform so that the children can get what they need," said Michael A. Rebell, executive director of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity, the plaintiffs in the case.

The report marks a major turning point in a case that educators, advocates and politicians are counting on to transform the city's schools. Nearly every state has battled over school spending in court, but the case in New York is one of the biggest - both in terms of dollars and the number of children involved - and most closely watched school financing lawsuits in the nation.

Four months have passed since lawmakers in Albany missed the deadline imposed by the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, to begin fixing the "systemic failure" it found in the city's schools. And while the courts have refrained from holding legislators in contempt for failing to act, the report is a significant step toward a court takeover of what has traditionally been a legislative role: deciding exactly how much money should be spent on schools.

Throughout the 11 years that the case has wended through the state's courts, judges have taken pains not to step in and dictate exactly how much extra money should be spent on the city's schoolchildren. But the Legislature essentially forfeited that prerogative by its own inaction, the panel said.

"It therefore falls, by default, to the judiciary to fashion an appropriate remedy to ensure that the sound basic education constitutional mandate is honored," wrote the panel of referees. Its members were E. Leo Milonas, a former state appellate judge and past president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York; William C. Thompson, a former member of the New York City Council, state senator and appellate judge who is the father of the city's comptroller; and John D. Feerick, the former dean of Fordham University's School of Law who was also a president of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

Though it is technically a recommendation, the report is likely to carry a great deal of weight in court. Justice Leland DeGrasse, the state judge in the case who must now decide how much of the report will be turned into a legal order, created the panel for the sole purpose of helping him decide how to rule on the thorny questions it tackled. Beyond that, Justice DeGrasse handpicked some of the best-known names in local legal circles to sit on the panel, ignoring nominees from the parties.

In its report, the panel called for an aggressive timetable, suggesting that the state have no more than 90 days to come up with and enact a plan to put the extra $5.6 billion toward running the city's schools. Once that begins, it gave the state four years to reach the full amount. The panel then gave the state the same amount of time to figure out how to put $9.2 billion toward school construction and repairs, but allowed that money could be phased in over five years, instead of four.

Is Academia Liberal?

The final word: Here. Thanks to the VC for pointing out this research.

The most conservative academic department? Economics at only 3 Democrats to each Republican.

Was there ever any doubt?

Bin Laden Studied Economics

I was going through some of essays from the university days and came across the following which I thought was relevant today. I wrote it in the year 1999 long before 9/11.

….it might be worthwhile to consider bin Laden's ideological roots, and how someone who studied economics and management in King Abdul Aziz University turned out to be America's most wanted terrorist.

Some have argued that Laden is an outgrowth of America's misguided cold war policies when America aided the Afghan mujahiden fighting the Soviet-backed communist regime. Laden, a wealthy Saudi, participated in the war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan and was also involved in establishing a base for Arab mujahiden fighting in Afghanistan. Masoud (1998) suggests Laden is a product of Saudi Arabia's commitment to Wahabism, a strict and puritanical interpretation of Islam founded in mid-eighteenth century. Some of the views Laden expressed in an interview with Nida'ul Islam magazine seems to support Masoud's view.

The claim to legitimacy of the ruling regime of Saudi Arabia, the House of Saud, derives from its commitment to uphold the ideas of Wahabism. It is part of a deal struck between the founder of Wahabism, Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahab and ancestor of Saud family, Muhammad Ibn Saud: if Wahab's followers support him build a nation, Saud would make it a defender of Wahabism. Islam's two holiest cities are within the Saudi Arabia; the Saudi regime extended the holiness given to Mecca and Medina to all the land within the 60 year old boundaries of Saudi Arabia.

In school the young Laden was taught to refer to Saudi Arabia as the 'Land of the Two Holy Places' and the King was referred to as the 'Custodian of Two Holy Mosques' which the monarch encouraged so as to lend an air of divine right to the rule. Not surpassingly, Laden refers frequently to the presence of American troops in the 'country of two sacred mosques' (Nida'ul Islam 1996).

The troops are more than 600 miles away from Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina and the land where the troops are stationed were never considered holy. But to Ladin it is as if the American troops are in Mecca and Medina--hence, the need to start a jihad against the 'American occupation of the Land of Two Sacred Mosques'.

The influence of Wahabism does not explain the 'popularity' of Bin Laden in some Muslim countries. He has become something of a cult figure and in Pakistan and Afghanistan; many couples have named their newborn sons after Bin Laden. Some of the issues raised by Bin Laden, like western support for undemocratic governments in Islamic countries, Israeli treatment of Palestinian people, the issue of Kashmir and the UN sanctions against Iraq are genuine concerns of ordinary Muslims in such far away countries as Morocco, Indonesia, and Maldives.

The western world should not be surprised that the Muslim masses see their policy as hypocrisy since the West is selective in its choice of enemies as well as the UN resolutions it wishes to see implemented.

No doubt blowing up embassies and killing innocent people is terrorism. Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawy, the grand imam of Al Azhar University in Egypt, the oldest university in the Muslim World has unequivocally condemned the embassy attacks as terrorism committed by a savage (Los Angeles Times 1998). Such terrorist acts runs counter to the Qur'anic tradition which says that if you save one life it is as if you saved all of humanity. But if the media is to be believed Bin Laden is the embodiment of Islam and what it stands for….

Please remember that I wrote it in the year 1999. I think the media coverage has improved a lot since then like this excellent series from the Chicago Tribune ( thanks to Chapati Mystery). I still don’t understand why a group with such extremist views like Nida’ul Islam are based in a country like Australia- fellow Aussie bloggers ‘please explain’.

Finally, here is a free-read from the Hoover institution on fighting terrorism.

Rational Ignorance

Picking up on some of the recent discussions concerning education, I would like to offer up one of my pet peeves about the subject. The Orange County Register reports that students, in the place for which the paper named, did well on the new test needed to graduate. However, right in the middle of the article, it qoutes a student saying something which drives me up the wall:

"You're probably not going to be using ... something like geometry for the rest of your life," he said. "Common sense, that's what you're going to use the rest of your life. So make it simple, and make sure the teachers are doing their jobs."

Excuse me, how the hell does he know what he'll need for the rest of his life? I have heard this a lot from high school students. "My older sister says that you don't need X in the real world." Well, do you want to be a stripper like your sister who flies off to Vegas every weekend? Perhaps a few weeks ago I should have posed the question "don't you wish you studied a little harder back in school?" to the woman, in said town, at the end of her career of "dancing" while she was lamenting going to cosmetology school.

Few people in high school actually know what employment they'll pursue later on in life. I always thought I would go into politics or government up until my last semester in college. I wound up in finance where all that math from an early academic stint as a computer science major paid off. Many of the people I worked with lacked any math ability and it showed.

The problem lies in the fact that students have the view that geometry and calculus takes a lot work, yet, they don't see the rewards that competence in the math and science fields gives, hence, rational ignorance. I have no problem with students going into vocational school rather than calculus, but most students don't go into this training. By allowing students to avoid challenging subject matter, their later careers are limited.

Echo Chamber Post: Education and Growth

Boy, do I wish Marginal Revolution had comments enabled. Since they don't, I'll just take advantage of the whole Trackback thingy -- ain't technology grand?

Tyler Cowen raises some points in service to a skeptic's take on whether or not education is actually a significant contributing factor to economic growth. Rightly, he focuses on the tenuous relationship inherent in the word "cause".

But what interested me enough here was the argument from the Spiked essay here. The article goes to great lengths to highlight the problems with the notion that education causes growth.

I see a general problem in the whole debate, however. Comparisons across education systems aren't entirely useful. The issue is more about who is being educated, rather than how much is being spent by the state on education. Highlighting South Korea as compared to Egypt doesn't account for the fact that the kind of spending was massively different.

Spending that simply increases the number of people in school (whatever grade it might be, though I think primary education like reading and writing a native language has been proven incredibly useful so this tends to focus on education beyond basic life functions) will invariably draw people for whom more education is useless. Making school cheaper (and more beneficial through the benefits of being in school, like meals or health care) pulls people out of pursuits they may have been more suited for, simply because school becomes the easier alternative.

Perhaps better would be a review of requirements to move on to each grade, entry requirements to higher education, or the amounts of "academic" versus trade schooling that is available. Naturally, some people will be better at economics, while others really ought to be mechanics. Massive spending by the state in an attempt to fatten the school rolls will obviously distort the distribution of abilities in school.

Spiked doesn't take its use of human capital theory far enough. The article mentions the "individual", but seems to skip by the implications it brings up. Yes, in simplification human capital is a measure of worker skill, but its also largely concerned with returns on various personal investments. There is a return on education that may increase skills, but this is certainly not uniform across all people. (Also, depreciation of capital is considered in human capital theory, so the fact that skills are lost is accounted for.)

You could put me in a chemistry class, with all the tutors I could ask for, access to the world's best laboratory equipment, and a stockpile of money to do what I like with it, and you'll never get a chemist walking out the door at the end of the day. I'm bad at it, and I don't particularly care for it. But a friend of mine went to bed at night dreaming of molecular chains and fluid dynamics. More power to her, I say. While we were free to pursue our own paths, indiscriminate state spending will have a hard time sorting the two of us out.

Which is precisely the problem with using Britain as an example. That country's high spending on education is in an effort to make sure native Britons don't face high tuition costs. Trouble is, it is those high costs that tend to weed out those people who will see a high enough return on the time and effort in education to mitigate them. Lower the entry costs a bit, and the marginal person is likely to be induced into attending University, rather than entering the work force right away. (NB: This effect tends also to have a negative impact on the population for whom higher costs would be no deterrent. Classes become overlarge, perhaps, or are changed to accomodate less competent students, making the experience less useful for those who would naturally get a higher return. Ironically, keeping tuition low or free has been a way to fight the flight of students to other countries, when in fact it may well be a factor causing those students to leave.) The number of years in schooling will the be inflated, since it makes more sense to stay in school than to leave it for that marginal person, despite the individual having gotten very little out of it.

There's another issue to be considered with more people in school: it dilutes the value of the signal attained in whatever education was completed. If more people are graduating from a program, the value of the diploma is that much decreased since it loses some prestige (the resource is far less scarce and thus less valuable). Then there's the negative reputational effect of having people with a certain degree underperforming as compared to someone else with the same degree. Since entry was easy, there will be much greater variance in skill level upon graduation. A company might like that you have a University of Chicago degree, but since they recently hired me, and I've performed barely above the level of a drunk monkey even with my very own University of Chicago degree, the value of your achievement is thus dragged down, no matter how well you might perform. More practically, the problem is this: it means nothing to have more people graduating from high school in Egypt if those people have little skill to show for it, and could have been better off in some other pursuit.

I suppose I have to agree that the causal link between education and growth is murky; but I do so because I think the question is over simplified. Mixtures of educational opportunities (vocational schools, competitive academic institutions, part time education, etc.) might indicate an ability for people to find the level of education that is most usefu to them. In the aggregate, then, higher levels of education may contribute to growth much as more efficient allocation of productive resources contributes to the health of a company.

UPDATE: Merits of pay schooling versus free schooling in Ireland is over at AtlanticBlog.

While I'm On The Subject...

Just got back from a little jaunt to the Teleologic Blog, and saw something that I wanted to respond to here, since it hints at a more general issue.

(Fair Warning: statistics is going to be mentioned again....ok, now, for those of you haven't rightly moved on to Kevin's more gripping posts...)

Rakhiir makes mention of this article, describing the results of a large study that evaluated a comparison between the effects of "talk therapy" (Freudian Cognitive Behavior Therapy) and Prozac, one of the current supposed wonder-drugs many parents use to counter-act the effects of leaving the kids in front TV or not disturbing their death-grips on video game controllers...oops, did I let my bias out? (Please note, I really do believe there are good reasons to proscribe Prozac and a number of other emotional-problem oriented drugs. But certainly the problem either correlates with something about modern parenting to demand such a spike in medicated children, or the drive to get the stuff by parents is causing any number of misdiagnoses or forced prescriptions.)

The study apparently indicates that there is no difference between the effect of talk therapy and a placebo drug. (can anyone find a link? I got tired of looking as a way to put off studying for my econometrics final tomorrow...) That is to say, the effects of both the therapy and the placebo were both not statistically different from zero. Interesting in its own right, and might require a review of the structure of the program. But that's not my main concern here. Rakhiir's reaction is:

One professor of psychiatry was quoted today as saying "It was very close to a significant effect". The more honest way of saying this is that the effect was statistically non-existant! The professor, Dr. Thase went on to say that good psychotherapies sometimes did not work in big studies. Talk about a capacity for self-delusion. The best you can say for talk therapy is that it doesn't actively hurt its subjects - its not worse than the placebo. By contrast, Prozac really does work and helped 75% of the patients.

(Emphasis in the original.)

Not so fast there, sparky. There's a big difference between not being statistically different from zero and being "non-existant." This mistaken view is a problem that arises in a lot of evaluations of programs and is worth noting. Without bogging down in the numbers, the idea of being statistically similar to zero is this: the value estimated for the effect of the treatment isn't -- because of measurment problems, calculation issues, and more -- a single point value. It's actually the middle of a range of values, among which difference can't really be determined. It's called the "confidence interval" for the estimated value. (Apologies to those who sat through that years ago in undergrad stats -- my hope is to appeal to a broad audience, and, frankly, I'm not that smart, so I like simple definitions and those fun "scare quotes.") Which means, of course, that being statistically equivalent to zero, the estimated value for the effect of the treatment on the treated includes zero. But it also includes a number larger than the point-estimate value possibly reported by the study. In other words, the effect could well be greater than even the report says. A lack of precision, however, keeps the researchers from saying "Hey, the effect is actually really huge!!! We think..."

The program may well be effective, and may well hold some benefit for those engaged in it. A lack of precision in the estimation might not be a good reason to toss something out the window since precision is often out of the hands of the researcher (it's not just that they decided to be lazy about rounding or something).

And the claim that the value was close to being significant? Is that just charlatanism running rampant? Not really. Every estimate is going to have some factor that determines the size of the confidence interval; a significance level. These are chosen, for good reasons, by the researcher. Being "close to significant" could indicate that if the researcher chose a more generous significance level, the effect might have been read as "significantly different from zero", in which case talk therapy would suddely be proven as effective in the study! (The magic of numbers!)

The overall point here is, when we all read reports about how this, that, or the other program is clearly useless because a study said the effect was "statistically insignificant", we should dig a bit deeper to see what they're talking about.

Quote of the Day

So what was lacking in my MBA program? Unconventional thinking. Variety. Substance. Sure I learned how to keep the books, how to evaluate risk and return, how to motivate employees, and all about the four P's of marketing. But a lot of that is bullshit. It is not what running a business is all about. It is really about making good fast decisions with limited information. They don't teach you that in business school (not at mine anyway). They act like you always have the information you need to make a decision.

--The one and only Businesspundit

Is it really that important to graduate?

It's a question I find myself asking more and more as the projects pile up right before the end of the year...

In that vein, here's an interesting article in today's NYT: Many Collegians Do Not Graduate in 6 Years, Report Says


The article goes through a good deal of hand-wringing about the rates of graduation at colleges, as well as the differences in graduation rates between minorities:

Only 63 percent of full-time students at four-year colleges graduate within six years - a common yardstick for measuring graduation rates - the report says. And these rates have remained flat for more than 20 years.

Graduation rates are especially low for minority students and those from low-income families, the report says. Only 46 percent of black students, 47 percent of Latino students and 54 percent of low-income students graduate within six years.

20 years, you say? Sounds like a fairly stable equilibrium, to me. Without the data for the report, of course my reading will be off, but might I suggest a different interpretation? Perhaps we're simply seeing a long-standing effect of choice making by individuals weighing their value in the market versus the opportunity costs of continuing in school.

What the article fails to do, though such failures aren't surprising in our journalism corps, is to consider possible variation in graduation rates between various types of majors. An unpublished paper I read recently (yeah, that's a terrible thing to do, I know -- but I'm having a hard time finding any good economic reports that aren't blocked the way JStor and Ebscohost are. I promise to update when I come across some...) indicates that there are vast differences in the effect on future wages based on the quantitative substance of the classes a person might take. The more quantitative, the higher the wages (hourly wages, in the case of the study). It also indicates that there are varying effects based on the actual graduation of an individual. This is often referred to as a "sheepskin effect." That is, the difference in wages between a person with enough credits to graduate, and a similar person with the actual diploma, is nontrivial in the case of quantitatively heavy degrees.

This could indicate that we'd expect to see more "die-off" of students in the softer majors (English, History, Sociology, etc.) than elsewhere, since the process of skill acquisition might be different and perceivable to students. The price of an English major in their third year of school is little different than after graduation. Staying longer adds little to the future value of that person's work.

What prompts these people to leave? Certainly some people experience considerable financial or personal shocks, though I don't expect it to be at the levels that would prompt only 63% of entrants to remain. A seperate possibility is that the person got a job. That is, they found a way to earn money that seemed to be worth leaving school (making money instead of living on loans, possibly). By nature, then, those people who have left are those who are endowed with a natural motivation or ability to find work. Similar students (same major and other demographics, say), on the other hand, may lack a certain something that prompts them to find work. In which case, the people who remain to graduate with a less quantitative degree may not, in fact, be better off than those who left.

Also of importance is the difference in ability between the 4-year graduates, the 6-year graduates, and the 6+ year non-graduates. The curriculum at the vast majority of schools still allows for graduation in 4 years for a Bachelor's degree. Controlling for those students who work as well as attend school, it might be plausible to posit a difference in ability between those who graduate at 4 years, 6 years, and those who do not graduate at all. Again, controlling for those people who work, or who have possibly switched majors to a more technically challenging field, each successive year is worth less and less, but the student remains because 1) he is unable to complete the coursework, or 2) is unable to find a better option (such as a job), and chooses to remain in order to be doing something (potentially finding new skills that are in more demand, though continuing undergrad classes is often simply more variations of subject matter like Deontological Nature of the Victorian Novel, Small Wars of the 1400s, etc.).

This is especially telling:

Two campuses that have shown substantial improvement in recent years, the report says, were Louisiana Tech University (55 percent in 2002, up from 35 percent in 1997) and the University of Florida (77 percent in 2002, up from 64 percent in 1997). The University of Florida has worked to monitor its students better, improve advisory offices and provide more classes that students need.

In the first case, the degree is a technical one, and in the growth of the technologically-dependent economy such degrees are a certification process that could be highly lucrative. In the second, the school has a recognized "name" that could be improving in value over time. (This might also work as a postive correlation between school name and graduation rates in the negative direction, as the "name value" declines.) The difference in institution's rates could well be explained by the interest in graduating from a particular school. What's the value of having the name "Harvard" on a degree versus "Chicago State"? The quality of skills learned isn't the question then (and I certainly don't mean that Harvard grads are necessarily better skilled than Chicago State grads), only the value to a potential employer.

Programs at schools designed to make sure more kids graduate would seem to have little use, save for on the marginal student that is faltering between leave and stay. In that case, we'd expect the value of more school and work to be slight anyway, so the "sheepskin effect" probably wouldn't be large. Indeed, if the program starts building in extra incentives to stay (loans, lower prices, etc), it could be that the schools will only succeed in expanding the pool of lesser-skilled (in relation to school) students that exhibit less motivation.

And worse, regulation by States that link school process to loans simply induces greater entrance and retention of those people who don't have more lucrative outlets elsewhere or lacked the motivation for school absent the financial incentives. This exposes more motivated and higher skilled students to externalities such as larger class size, less access to professors, more thinly-spread campus resources -- and in the long run, a graduating cohort that is larger than the market would otherwise demand (since supply was stimulated by a State rather than the job market). Too many people in a cohort (say, the flood of recent college grads that happens every summer) entering the work force, as anyone can tell you, puts a downward pressure on wages. That's just not good for anyone, graduates and non-graduates alike.

[Editorial Update: Some changes made to clarify points I hurried through, some spelling mistakes, etc.]

The Difference a Word Makes

For those who aren't yet hip to the whole XML feed aggregation thing, I'd recommend getting yourself a copy of FeedDemon. Aside from the joy of consolidating numerous news feeds, it sometimes provides a perspective you might not get from surfing lots of sites.

Case in point, these two articles from USA Today that we situated next to each other on my screen:

Schools embrace innovation (USATODAY.com)

Struggling schools forgo innovation for familiar fare (USATODAY.com)

From the first article:

In addition, 49 states have developed new performance standards, and most are on their way to developing assessment systems, tougher definitions for teacher quality, a framework that will disclose more student-performance data than ever before and provisions for communities to hold their schools and policymakers accountable. How much more innovation can we ask public schools to undertake?

From the second:

While such creative solutions initiated by outside groups have raised students' academic achievement, superintendents and school boards tend to stick with familiar academic methods, even when they aren't working well.

There's a lot of information conveyed in that word, "struggling".

Is the distribution of "innovation" in schools correlated with those that are succeeding? The implication could be that new methods are available only to those who already find themselves in the upper half of the distribution. Then again, these are just newspaper stories. And the USA Today at that.