Worthwhile Canadian Initiative

Boy versus Teacher: A Lesson in Mastery

"Read each sentence or poem. Mark an X on the word or words that need to be capitalized. Then write the sentence correctly on another sheet of paper."

"Writing it again is a waste of time."

Why is Ontario's Government Being So Mean to Its Teachers?

Being in Toronto for the Rimini Conference in Economics and Finance 2012 and standing in the shadow of Queen’s Park has led me to contemplate why the Ontario government  is suddenly being so mean to its teachers.  After years of Dalton McGuinty as the education premier with an expansion of education funding and programs, the government does seem to have become rather uncharacteristically harsh-imposing new contracts to prevent wages increases.

No, you may not speak to my class

Because I would be abusing my authority if I said "yes". So you shouldn't even ask.

[Updated: see below]

This post is about teaching economics, though it could be about teaching anything else. It's also about allocating scarce resources between competing ends, which is the subject matter of economics.

Coming Soon to a University Near You...H-Index Rankings

Most of us are familiar with the metric known as the h-Index.  Developed by Jorge Hirsch, the h-index  is a measure that says that if you have an index of h, you have published h papers each of which has been cited at least h times. 

Compensating differentials, field of study and the Quebec student strike

Only something like 35% of Quebec students are on strike*, and in a column in today's La Presse, Yves Boivert notes that those on strike are overwhelmingly from the arts and social sciences faculties; those in natural sciences, engineering, medicine, etc have all stayed in class and their session is ending normally. His argument is that since people in the arts and social sciences cannot expect the sort of salaries that students in other faculties will likely get, the tuition increase hurts them more, so it is to be expected that they will be more likely to object.

My first reaction was: "Okay, that makes sense."

My second reaction was: "Hold it, what about compensating differentials?" Increased salaries are only one form in which the returns to education are realised, and it's one that is a relatively recent addition. For centuries, people had been studying philosophy, history and literature for their own sake. Students would take all forms of returns into account when choosing their fields of study, and those at the margin between electrical engineering and English literature would view the combinations of the two sorts of returns as equally balanced in each discipline. Increasing the cost shouldn't change anything.

A complication is that the high-earning programs usually have limited enrollment, so applying marginal analysis here may be problematic.

What do you think?

*For non-Canadians: The Quebec government decided last year to increase tuition fees in Quebec by 75% over 5 years, to a level just under the Canadian average. A student strike has been in progress for 11 weeks or so.

The impact of tax cuts on government revenues

An average person, asked to explain the impact of cutting taxes, might well reason:

I have represented this argument in flow chart form to give it a spurious air of logical coherence. Yet any flow chart is only as good as the reasoning that underlies it. In this case, that reasoning is seriously incomplete.

A survey about rubrics

I use rubrics sometimes, and I'm curious to know if other people do as well, and how they feel about them, so here is a survey about rubrics:

Rubric Survey

I've put a couple of demographic questions on towards the end, but please feel free to skip them. Update: preliminary results over the fold.

Should Canadian professors be paid in US dollars?

A recent study claims that Canadian university professors are - as the Toronto Star put it -  "the best-paid in the world".

The media reports should be interpreted with caution. The study is restricted to professors at public universities, hence excludes the highest earning academics in the US and, possibly, other countries. "The world" turns out to be a selection of 28 nations, including countries as diverse as Nigeria, Latvia, Saudi Arabia and South Africa. A number of wealthy nations such as Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden are excluded. The quality of the salary data varies from country to country. The Canadian figures, which are based on Statistics Canada's census of Canadian academics, are very accurate. The salary estimates for some other countries are based on lower quality data sources.

Do economics majors need to learn Excel?

My first job after finishing my undergraduate degree in economics involved using Lotus 1-2-3 - the first "killer app" spreadsheet program - to create graphs. I'd never been taught to use a spreadsheet, but I worked it out.

Fast forward a couple of decades. Spreadsheets are ubiquitious in the workplace. When a new research assistant joins the Bank of Canada, their first job - like mine - is crunching data with a spreadsheet. Yet, at some universities, it is possible to graduate with an economics degree and never learn how to use Excel.

What is a University President Worth?

Along with the Canada geese returning home and the melting snow revealing buds of green growth, another sign of spring in Ontario is the unveiling of the sunshine list – those individuals in the Ontario public sector and broader public sector earning $100,000 or more.  Included as always on the 2012 list are university salaries (for 2011) and given the occupy movement and the preoccupation with the top one percent a glance at university CEO salaries can be entertaining.

Why is research higher status than teaching?

It is a truth universally acknowledged: within academia, research has higher status than teaching. The question is, why?

High status work is generally well paid work, and vice versa. Wages are determined by market forces, so supply and demand is the first place to look for an explanation for the high status of research.  

Butterfly wings and meatgrinders

One of the Drummond Report's recommendations for the post-secondary sector is to:

Create a comprehensive, enforceable credit recognition system between and among universities and colleges. This is an absolutely essential feature of differentiation [between universities].

Credit recognition could save individual students tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, and give them months or even years of their lives back.

When professors stop being research active

University professors typically divide their time between teaching, research, and administration. In theory, and often in practice, professors' research informs their teaching, and teaching makes people better researchers. 

Yet, as time goes by, the research ideas come less frequently, it becomes harder and harder to "keep up with the literature", and a certain percentage of people give up on research. What then?

Why I don't recognize your foreign educational credentials

The Canadian immigration literature seems to regard employers with a hint of disapproval. For example, a recent survey talks about "the failure to recognize foreign credentials" as if employers and others are, for some unaccountable reason, not able to recognize a credential when it's staring them in the face.

I've just spent the last couple of hours trying to recognize foreign educational credentials, and it's hard. Really hard.

Looking for an Example of Price-Elasticity of Demand?

The application results for UK universities in the wake of a tripling of tuition fees are in and they show a drop in applications.  The limit on tuition fees in September 2012 is projected to rise to up to 9,000 pounds per year up from about 3,350 pounds for an increase of about 169 percent.  University applications in the UK have dropped from 506,388 in 2011 to 462,507 -  a drop of 8.7 percent. 

The efficiency case for nepotism

A firm wanting to invest in a worker, to train her and give her valuable skills, runs a risk: what if she leaves, and takes her valuable human capital elsewhere?

A firm can induce its employees to stay through deferred compensation. It pays new employees less than their productivity merits, and senior employees more. The junior workers work hard and invest in themselves and the company, because they know they will get the big pay-off eventually. The senior workers are happy because they are well-remunerated. The firm is happy because it has a productive and highly trained workforce.

What not to wear, economist edition

What should you wear for an academic job interview? Ariel Rubinstein suggests casual attire:

I would argue that wearing jeans and a t-shirt is your dominant strategy:

If you are a good student, then a department that will not give you a job because of your "sloppy" appearance does not deserve to have you.

If you are mediocre, then there are many other candidates like you and dressing casually is the only way for you to get noticed.

Shakespeare, speaking through the character of Polonius, suggests buying the most expensive clothes you can afford: 

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,
But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy:
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;

These two pieces of fashion advice are not as diametrically opposed as they might seem. Both recognize that clothes act as signals. The question "what not to wear?" is asking what should, or shouldn't, a person be signalling.

Low vs falling prices, and relative vs absolute prices, Intro Econ again

The discussion of Intro Economics in my last post got a bit esoteric at times. I want to bring us all back down to earth.

This morning I got an email from a student who took my Intro Economics course last year. He works in retail, selling hi-tech goods. He asked me this question: hi-tech prices have been falling, and yet sales have been growing, so why does the Bank of Canada target 2% inflation? Why would deflation be such a bad thing?

He didn't ask that question because he thought it might be on the exam. He asked it because he wanted to know. He wanted to understand the world around him. And he wanted to know if the Bank of Canada's 2% inflation target made sense, given his own personal experience.

There's a demand out there for knowledge and understanding. Our job, as suppliers, is to try to meet that demand. And my ex-student's question is one we economists can answer. And our job, as teachers of Intro Economics, is to try to answer questions like that without setting up a two sector dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of a monetary economy. Our job is to try to explain it simply, and clearly. And that is what makes it a very hard job to do well.

Forget all that hi-falutin ideological crap. We're no good at that stuff anyway. Or no better than anyone else in Poli Sci, Sociology, Philosophy, or wherever. This is what we are better than anyone else at doing. So we should be doing it. This is our comparative, and absolute, advantage. This is our core business. This is economics. This is what Intro Economics is really about.

But damn it's hard to do it well.

Why "great teacher" doesn't get you on the short list

I'm spending today doing course outlines, meeting with students, and reading letters of reference.* Carleton is hiring this year. I'm on the labour/behavioural economics committee, which so far has received over 100 applications.

A candidate's letters of reference are a key part of the package. Generally I skip to the end and read the last couple of paragraphs.  If a person is a graduate from a good school [i.e. top 3 in Canada, top 20 in US], and their letter says "our best applied micro candidate on the market this year," then that person is almost certain to make the interview list, especially if there is something on the file indicating some kind of connection to Ottawa or to Canada, or a liking for long, cold winters.

Could you pass Eco 100?

My best friend's son is taking Eco 100. While studying for his midterm exam, he encountered this question: 

True or false: There is no difference between these two equilibrium equations in Eco 100 consumer theory as one equation can be transformed mathematically into the other (a) MUx/MUy=Px/Py (b) MUx/Px=MUy/Py.

What do you think? Is this statement true or false? Please vote here (only the first 200 answers will be recorded.)