Posts
April 09, 2013
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2:25 PM | Pushback from the Elites
A reform can sound very reasonable, but when it comes up against the interests of powerful people, there can be a lot of resistance.For example, in recent years there’s been a lot of talk about affirmative action for based on social class, to reserve some fraction of college admissions for people from low-income families, or kids who are the first in their family to go to college, or that sort of thing. It sounds like a good idea (potential difficulties of implementation aside), but as
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Greenwashing Thatcher's history does an injustice both to her and to science and technology policyWe've been running a series of essays on scientific advice recently (e.g. yesterday's piece by Shelia Jasanoff). It's on a break today, but here's something on a related issue. Margaret Thatcher is often celebrated for her leadership on the issue of climate change. Read, if you haven't already, her 1989 speech to the UN for example. Or the 1988 one to the Royal Society. Or to the 2nd World Climate
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Thatcher's early work in industrial chemistry may have influenced her conversion to free market economics years laterSometimes, in dark corners of laboratories, you can hear the following complaint. The problem with politics and science is that not enough of the politicians are scientists, or even have a passing knowledge of science. Out of the 650 current Members of Parliament, as Mark Henderson in his Geek Manifesto reminds us, only three have a science PhD and only one has worked in
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April 08, 2013
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The popular New York Times columnist writes:
The best part of the rise of online education is that it forces us to ask: What is a university for? . . .
My own stab at an answer would be that universities are places where young people acquire two sorts of knowledge, what the philosopher Michael Oakeshott called technical knowledge and practical knowledge. Technical knowledge is the sort of knowledge you need to understand a task — the statistical knowledge you need to understand what
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In the fourth of our series, Sheila Jasanoff asks who holds science advisers accountable for the integrity of their advice?Institutions that play a watchdog role in society offer a persistent challenge for democracy: who shall watch the watchers? We shrink at the thought of unlimited police power or judges who place themselves above the law. Scientific advice is not immune to such concerns. Its role is to keep politicians and policymakers honest by holding them to high standards of evidence and
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April 05, 2013
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A common line used by academic administrators and policymakers when colleges hike tuition is that there’s no real need to worry: scholarships will be available for the poor. That really high published price will apply only to the rich.
As former George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg said of GW’s high tuition, “[Only] 40 percent of students pay list price. These are people from wealthy families; I have no compunction about charging them list price. […]
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I guess it was bound to happen soon or later, wasn’t it? The Associated Press:
A technical college in northeastern Wisconsin is teaching a class on how to deal with a mass shooting scenario.
Michael Molnar is public safety training coordinator at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. Molnar says the training at its Sturgeon Bay campus is open to the public, but geared for business owners. He says the class in May was scheduled after training was requested.
The college’s decision […]
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Most of my research deals with the economics of cities, but I have a smattering of knowledge in the minor field of spouse-meeting at Princeton. There is usually little demand for such arcana -- the American Economic Association has never held a symposium on the topic -- but the blogospheric explosion after an alumna's letter to the Daily Princetonian advising female students to “find a husband on campus before you graduate” led my editor to urge me to weigh in. While I don't feel I
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The idea of giving a clever man a desk in Whitehall is outdated, argues Geoff Mulgan in the third of our series on scientific advice. We need to take seriously the evidence about evidenceGovernments should want and even crave the best possible scientific advice. With reliable knowledge come better decisions, fewer mistakes and more results achieved for each pound spent. In many respects it's remarkable that only now are governments setting up and funding centres dedicated to assessing and
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April 04, 2013
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8:25 PM | Not Too Much Testing, Just Bad Testing
On Tuesday the former superintendent of the Atlanta Public schools, Beverly Hall, along with 26 other Georgia educators, turned herself in at the Fulton County Jail to face charges “including racketeering, theft by taking and making false statements” connected to systemic cheating on standardized tests between 2005 and 2009, according to CNN. Hall, according to the indictment, "protected and rewarded those who achieved targets by cheating" and "ignored suspicious" increases in test […]
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In the second of our series on scientific advice, the outgoing UK chief scientific adviser reflects on progress and lessons learnedThere are times when a government knows it needs science or engineering advice. Perhaps most clearly when the physical world asserts itself in dramatic ways: the crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the emergence of the swine flu pandemic, and the volcanic eruption in Iceland being recent examples.Although the issues can be complex, such events are among the
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April 03, 2013
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The most important determinant of educational quality is teacher quality. Yet, as a recent study of school principals’ permissiveness in teacher evaluations and a cheating scandal in Atlanta show, this performance is difficult to measure. The best way forward is to move the evaluation of teachers outside the schools entirely, with standardized tests administered by an independent agency. This would be supplemented by classroom assessments based on unobtrusive videotaping, also judged by
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All of my instincts call for competition in public services rather than monopoly bureaucratic supply, and for measuring results rather than relying on professionals organized in guilds to tell us that their traditional practices are just fine and that therefore we should pay them a lot of money and let them alone. With respect to public K-12 education in particular, the drastic decline in the quality of the labor pool must surely be part of the problem. That said, No Child Left Behind (like
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As Sir Mark Walport starts work as the UK's chief scientist, we launch a series on the priorities and dilemmas of scientific adviceIt's all change at the top of UK science policy. Yesterday, Sir Mark Walport took the reins as the government's chief scientific adviser, the eleventh scientist (all of them men) to occupy that post since it was created by Harold Wilson in 1964. In a seamless Doctor Who-style transition (another early-60s institution which has lived through eleven incarnations)
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12:47 AM | Can We Really Pay College Athletes?
A class action lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association alleges that college athletes should be paid because they’re currently being denied revenues that accrue to top schools due to athletic programs.
This looks like a potentially big deal, but how much would this really change college sports? How many athletic programs are really making money? Not many, it turns out.
There is, in theory, a lot of cash here. According to Brian Montopoli at CBS News
Football and
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April 02, 2013
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According to a new poll, Americans wish they’d spent more time studying in college, and less time, you know, drinking and partying and all of those other things students do.
Reuters:
Americans wish they had studied more in college…. Nearly half of the adults questioned in the survey said they wished had made more of an effort… while another 40 percent said they should have done more networking, which is more typically associated with the professional world.
But only four
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Should more scientists follow James Hansen's example and unleash their inner activist?Leading climate scientist James Hansen is to retire from Nasa this week, leaving him more time to spend working on political advocacy at state, federal and international levels. It's clearly a move made with political advocacy in mind. As the New York Times puts it: "At 72, he said, he feels a moral obligation to step up his activism in his remaining years." Hansen has long been a problem for those who believe
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April 01, 2013
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The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania today confirmed the closing of its previously announced merger with the Tuck School at Dartmouth.
The surviving entity, Whatontuckedyou, will be headquartered in New Hampshire and continue to train business leaders under the symbol TUCK, at least until Wharton has time to repaint all of the signs. An application for a new academic logo will be filed imminently.
In accordance with the terms of the merger agreement, each Tuck degree will […]
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The University of Massachusetts system, responding to a state audit that found its adjunct professors were becoming too expensive due to health insurance requirements imposed by Obamacare, has announced a new plan to eliminate all adjuncts.
From now on, according to UMass President Robert Garet, juniors and seniors will teach introductory lecture classes designed for freshmen. The plan, known as “Teach Yourself College,” will save the system $30 million a year. TYC can work, […]
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California Governor Jerry Brown today announced a major reform plan for the state’s corrections system. “An online prison system,” he explained, “will save the state billions and reduce recidivism.”
Under the program, called Massive Open Online Prisons (or MOOPs), incarcerated Californians will be imprisoned from the comfort of their own homes. They will log on every hour to check in with state corrections and enjoy one hour each day to walk around their own […]
March 30, 2013
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5:32 AM | Michelle Rhee, Public School Parent?
Michelle Rhee is a controversial figure. The former District of Columbia superintendent is now trying to spread her take-no-prisoners-more-standardized-tests-and-bust-the-unions education reform plans across the nation.
This lead to an interesting question. The Los Angeles Times recently asked Rhee where her own two children went to school. Did they attend public or private schools? Rhee’s still having trouble answering this one. According to The Times:
The... Times asked her
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March 29, 2013
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Boston College has apparently decided that students will no longer be allowed to provide condoms in dormitories. According to the Boston Globe:
BC officials sent a letter to students on March 15 demanding an end to student-run Safe Sites, a network of dorm rooms and other locations where free contraceptives and safe-sex information are available.
The college says that if it discovers that Safe Sites continues to distribute condoms on campus “the matter would be referred to the […]
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If Congress doesn’t act soon, the interest rate on student loans could increase dramatically. Yes, this is happening yet again. Back in June the president proposed extending 3.4 percent student loan interest rate for Subsidized Stafford Loans for another year. Eventually, after much partisan wrangling, it happened, and Congress agreed to extend the interest rate.
This may result in some great partisan debate, but it's actually not that important for real college students.
It looks […]
March 28, 2013
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6:56 PM | Too Many Tests in Texas?
So now businesses in Texas apparently think students are spending too much time on bubble tests. The lone star state has focused on standardized tests for years as part of its effort to institute accountability in the state’s public elementary and secondary schools. The state emphasized that strict standards meant ''failure is not an option." But it’s not working out so well.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek:
A coalition of 22 industry trade organizations said Monday it
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Of all the sciences to be subject to congressional restrictions on what research can and can’t be funded by the National Science Foundation, congress, with its
recent decision to defund political science research at the NSF, may have chosen the worst possible science to pick on. It turns out we’ve dedicated significant research attention over the course of decades (and millions of NSF dollars) to understand how congress works, and how to lobby congress. The discipline was
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Science fiction and real-world innovation have always fed off each other. The history of the electronic book shows us things are more complicated than fiction predicting factNesta has published two papers on the mutual influence of science fiction and innovation. It's been great fun working with the authors: busting the myth that science fiction predicts future technologies; exploring what stories tell us about public attitudes to technology; and finding out about the latest trends for
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March 27, 2013
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9:26 PM | Tennessee Consideres Cutting Welfare Payments to Parents Who Skip Parent-Teacher Conferences
A very controversial Tennessee law that would reduce federal welfare benefits (by up to 30 percent) for families with students who fail a grade in school has another strange education implication.
According to a piece in The Tennessean:
It was amended to limit maximum penalties to parents who do not attend parent-teacher conferences, enroll their child in tutoring or attend a parenting course. Special needs students would be exempt from the law.
State Sen. Stacey Campfield introduced the […]
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On March 8 I wrote that, due to the sequester, the military had suspended its tuition assistance program, an education benefit paid to active-duty members of the American armed forces to allow them to take college courses during off-duty hours at no cost to themselves. Well, crisis averted. The Hill:
The Pentagon is restoring funding to the tuition assistance as a result of the government funding bill Congress passed last week, which prohibited the military from making cuts to the program. The
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Diana Natalicio has been the president of the University of Texas at El Paso since 1988. During her time at the school, which educates mostly low-income and first-generation college students, she’s worked to improve college access and completion while also increasing the school’s endowment and research capabilities. She has been elected chair of the board of directors of the American Council on Education, the major coordinating body for all the nation's higher education
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March 26, 2013
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For the first time, state legislators in the U.S. may require their public universities to grant students credit for online courses given by outside providers. A bill introduced in the California Senate would extend this concession only when a required class is full and not offered online at the college. The legislation, which is expected to be adopted in some form, has been hailed nationally as a leap for massive open online courses -- MOOCs, for short. Advocates pitch MOOCs as classes for
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