Uncle Philly

On the down side, Uncle Philly's crotchety; but, on the up side, he's worth knowing.

Is Higher Education Worth it?

Certainly here in the U.S., and across the world's developed nations, the answer is still a clear Yes.

The above image (duly lifted from The Economist) shows that in the U.S. there is an $100,000 dollar advantage to the state's coffers (even after student aid programs are taken into account) and around $165,000 dollar advantage to the individual him- or herself.

Some people have worried that there are too many college graduates, and that high supply will mean a lower demand for them from employers, but this has not been the case, so the time and money investments by a person seeking a college degree still pays off.

Also why people chose college at all is not clearly based on the calculation of these financial advantages:

Alison Wolf of King’s College London, the author of a book provocatively entitled “Does Education Matter?” says a big reason why school-leavers go to university is peer pressure. With many graduates to choose from, employers increasing turn up their noses at anyone who does not sport a degree, no matter what the job’s requirements. The result is more akin to an arms race, with everyone running to stand still, than a recipe for increasing prosperity.[1]

Finally, higher education is always a good way to ride-out times of unemployment and recession, because when the economy returns, graduates are best placed to enter the marketplace with the appropriately acquired technical skills. Of course, as a college professor, it is both prudent and enjoyable for me to purport such analysis.


O.

REFERENCES

[image] The Economist (from article below)

[1] "It still pays to study" The Economist Sept. 12, 2009.

ACT scores and college readiness

The ACT is an examination used in college admissions. It's been around since 1959, and was conceived as an alternative to the SAT. As a professor, I prefer the ACT; because, in my experience, it identifies students who seem to have natural talent for academic work -- and even for what kinds of academic work. The SAT, another college admissions test, seemingly tells me if the student is generally intelligent, but it's much harder for me to translate that into predictive performance in a specific major (such as in Philosophy). Granted, the SAT does have subject tests, but these must be taken in addition to the standard SAT test. Such an addition is inconvenient for those who want curriculum-based testing already in place; and, of course, for the poor student who has to pony up the extra money, study, and brain-labor to trudge through yet another set of admissions tests.

Also, I see a lot of college-age people arrive from home schooling situations, and from low population counties where the public schools are seriously underfunded. Moreover a person in the top 10% of their High School graduating class means one thing in a class of 20, quite a another in a class of 300. The ACT gives gives me a fairly objective assessment of comparison for various students.

The Washington Post reports that the total number of students taking the ACT jumped by 9% last year. The article further notes that 43% of this year's high school graduates took the ACT, and that three in four test-takers will likely need remedial help in at least one subject to succeed in college. As the above chart shows, the average ACT score is just over 21. (The test range runs from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 36) Surprisingly, only 22 percent met a benchmark score for college readiness in all four subjects (i.e. in English, math, reading and science.) Another finding of interest is that "among 2008 graduates who took the minimum core curriculum in math -- algebra I and II, plus geometry -- just 14 percent met the math benchmark."[1]

Naturally, there is plenty of room for debate about standardized scoring for college admissions. The original idea of entrance exams was to help evaluate a student's potential and to determine if that student was academically ready to attend college. Yet with computerized study guides, the ability to take the test multiple times, and (in 2010) the choice of which among the scores to send where, it looks like the process could be manipulated, especially if the student comes from a well-to-do family that can afford multiple takes and study helps. With all that artificial test-prep, just what is being measured?

O.

REFERENCES

[image] Washington Post

[1] Justin Pope "ACT scores down, but more students college-ready" Washington Post Aug. 13, 2008 (Accessed August 13, 2008).

Textbook prices, publishing idiots, and the future of course content

The New York Times is reporting on a problem that's going to get worse before it gets better: students scanning their textbooks and giving the scans away for free.[1] I've known a long time that textbook publishing houses are playing a losing game. Their books are foolishly over-priced.

For example, I use a textbook in one of my classes, one now in its 6th edition. I can say that the content difference between the 4th and the 6th edition is negligible, but the layout is so different that I'm forced to use the new editions.

One might argue that I could just use another book. There are a couple of reasons against this. First, the textbook in question is very accessible, so I've made a tactical call: it's better to have a book that students will enjoy reading, and therefore do so, rather than it is to have a book that students won't read -- or won't read well.

Second, because I'm teaching 160 students a year for the course, and offering four major objective tests in the class, that means I am forced to offer lots of different tests and versions. There is really only one way such a feat becomes practical: test banks. These contain hundreds of questions on each chapter than can be selectively mixed and matched over different iterations of testing. Prudently, the publishing houses tie their test bank data to the chapter layout of the ever-issued new editions. My classes are fairly small. Imagine classes where a prof teaches 400 students a year. Clearly, the textbook publishing houses have.

With the rise of devices like the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader, textbook usage is on the verge of entering a new digital era. The textbook publishing companies like to think that they will be able to leverage this for more profit margin, since they can eliminate the middle man. They are wrong, at least for the areas of classics and humanities. Why so? Although the sciences change rapidly, classical works in history, literature, and philosophy don't change -- at least no faster than language dialect changes. A good translation from the 1950s (or even earlier) is just as readable today as the moment it fell off the printing press. Profs like myself who are disgruntled at the idiotic prices students are forced to pay will get together and produce their own textbooks with an open license to use each other's material. (This is something like why the open-standards software movement has been so successful.) When, by evolutionary modification and adjustment of better and worse entries, these efforts reach a high level of content and readability, they will live on for many years, for many cost free years. (There are wiki efforts which have started doing this already.)

Classroom content in digital book-reading devices which will eventually be adopted as the standard tool for text-"books" of the future. When the cost of a digital book reader falls to less than the cost of the total cost of books for a semester's classes, that will be the sweet spot when students take matters into their own hands, and when scan-n-share will really take off. Even now, students regularly share textbooks and "rent" them to their friends.

As a social group, college students are the most potent mix of cunning, intelligence, and thrift. When it comes to outsmarting textbook publishers, these students will win; and, this whole industry will probably be forced to move to a non-profit status industry. The old model will die. And I'll say, "Good riddance."

REFERENCES

[image]Tempe in Touch (city website)

[1]Randall Stross "First It Was Song Downloads. Now It’s Organic Chemistry" New York Times July 27, 2008 (Accessed July 27, 2008)

The economics of how to live happily ever after

Stay in school as long as possible, and then get married to somebody else well-educated. That's what been reported in a recent article of The Economist. It also helps if you become a professor:

Research also suggests that middle- and working-class parents approach child-rearing in different ways. Professional parents shuttle their kids from choir practice to baseball camp and check that they are doing their homework. They also talk to them more. One study found that a college professor's kids hear an average of 2,150 words per hour in the first years of life. Working-class children hear 1,250 and those in welfare families only 620.

And make sure you put the bulk of your big spending on their education earlier rather than later, even kindergarten is probably too late. Early childhood education programs (think preschool and earlier) yield profound results:

Participants achieved greater literacy and higher grades, and they were more likely to graduate high school. Later in life, they were more likely to be employed—and to earn more—and less likely to be on welfare. They also committed less crime and had lower rates of teen pregnancy.[2]

The study also points out that not only your kids, but all of society benefits from not having to invest in crime and welfare support for the many children that otherwise are affected by not receiving such care.

The science of family values is giving me creepy, right-wing religious Republican feelings. But as studies and common attestation by their political representatives clearly show ( [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [etc. etc.] ) these people are scientifically illiterate as a social group; so, I'm safe from becoming likeunto them.



REFERENCES


[images] The Economist


[1] "The frayed knot" The Economist (May 24th, 2007)

[2] "Teach your children well." Slate (May 25, 2007)

[3 - 6] in-line links provided.



O.

Grading papers in the shadow of my own insanity

Moooweehahahaha! Hahahaha! Ahhhh hahahaha. [cough. cough.] I’ve been grading papers all day, and I mean ALL day. I’m now officially insane. I really loathe grading papers. Well duh! You’d think this makes no sense, something like a plumber saying he loathes getting his hands wet and dirty. The problem is, I have self-initiated ADD. When reading papers, I’d rather be doing anything else. Of course, this is exactly why I put the task off until the last minute. I’m always hoping I’ll be in the mood to grade a stack of long papers (as if that has ever happened.)

My method, which has always been successful, and which worked again today is as follows:

1. Go to coffee shop first thing in the morning. (Avoids any distractions, like the Internet.)
2. Get *totally* jacked on caffeine and sugar. (Pharmacologically increases reading speed!)
3. Grade papers until I note hunger. (Often greatly delayed by coffee with cream.)
4. Order food at said coffee shop. (Never dare to leave and accidently find pleasure.)
5. Goto 2 while any papers remain.

Note well that some papers are most excellent. But here is the strange thing: Given a 2-3K word paper, I think I can now tell (after more than a dozen years of reading such) an A-level thesis defense paper by reading the first full page, and then by reading, at random, a single additional page from that paper. Suppose this proves correct 90% of the time. Should I used the method? I don’t know whether I *should*, but I’m not going to run the experiment, because I know that I *would*.

There is a way, however, that other professors have recommended [1] to take away all of my chores of essay grading.

Get behind me ye doers of evil!


REFERENCES

[image]Dan Henck, Artist Site.

[1] Daniel J. Solove, A Guide to Grading Exams, Concurring Opinions Blog (Accessed 12/14/2006)


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