Survey Says: Critical Thinking Is Inconvenient

The survey of GOP attitudes about higher education is getting heaps of play and deservedly so (see this tweetstorm that shows how recent the change is and how it is by folks who, surprise, didn't go to college).  It is striking that colleges and universities would be so widely feared (yes, feared), given that higher ed has been a key source of: economic growth, upward mobility (until lately, I guess), innovation and bad movies about lecherous professors.  I am not going to document the war on college as Dan Drezner has done a fine job of it.  It might be an exaggeration that the right have demonized universities, extrapolating whatever happens at Oberlin to make it seem like universities are left-wing mind-control machines.  But it ain't far off.

To be clear, this is not that new, as roughly twenty years ago, I encountered a group of freshpeople who had been warned about the darkness that awaited them at university: that THEY teach evolution here (at Texas Tech).  I didn't expect these students to be the harbinger of things to come, but in a sense they were.  The right-wing media with assists from the mainstream have done much to demonize colleges and universities. Yes, more profs are to the left of center than to the right.  Yes, students leave university with changed attitudes and believes because they get exposed to different ideas and an abundance of facts and to, gasp, different people from their hometown.  They leave... more educated (but not more left wing).

And that is the threat and that is what is feared: the GOP and its allies have moved away from principled stances on the issues and rely more heavily on fear (all parties rely on some fear-mongering, but the emphasis and the targets vary and matter).  What is the best cure for ignorance and fear?  Most folks say education.  So, yeah, warring on college over the past twenty years makes sense, as the GOP, facing an inability to appeal to the next generation via ideas, has to try to deny them the training and knowledge that might make it harder for the party to peddle its toxic brew.


While colleges and universities could serve the public better, it is important to remember that many of them are public institutions, and their problems are often the product of bad public policy.*  Much of the increased expense of universities is due to states providing less support for state-run universities.  That the debt burden on students and graduates is a public policy problem, that could be ameliorated if politicians were willing to do something about it.

Oh and about those pesky protests that alienate the right: we had them in the 1960s yet universities remained engines of growth and innovation for the following decades anyway.  So, yeah, this is another example of the GOP/Fox/etc undermining American institutions because it is good for the party even as it is bad for the country.  A familiar dynamic in a book I co-authored, but one that is more destructive in the US than we could have guessed.




*  Dan mentions a natural experiment about folks choosing not to go to college.  I would argue that there has already been a public policy impact--the decline of state support for universities.  Only late in the game have some (Arnold Schwarzenegger!) realized that more money going to prisons than universities might just be a bad idea. 

The Source of the 10% Problem

I have ranted often about the ten percent problem: that a certain percentage of students simply cannot follow instructions.  That if I ask those who cannot follow instructions to move to a side of the classroom, they will lay down on the floor, stand on their head or do something else.  Only last week did someone suggest that I tell the students who can follow instructions to move.  Of course, that would not work either since self-awareness is not a strong suit of those who cannot follow instructions.

Anyway, I realized this is not a teenage or college student problem last week.  I attended the orientation at my Frosh Spew's school.  They had joint sessions and then the new students went off for their orientation, and the remaining folks (mostly parents but also suffering younger siblings) got to have heaps of presentations about various elements of college life.  The Q&A revealed that instruction comprehension and especially its absence is a lifelong thing.  There were more than a few parents asking questions that had already been answered, and more than a few parents asking questions that need not be asked.  Yes, some good questions were asked as not every presentation was perfect, and there is a lot of room for confusion for parents new to this process. 

Much has changed since when we were in college--a lot more resources, a lot more awareness of the complications and stresses, and so on.  But when the presenter says: if your child is over 18, then we cannot tell you about their grades or their health circumstances or their finances without a written waiver, then you don't really need to ask: but if my kid is sick, you will tell me, right?  Only if it is life threatening.  Otherwise, no, the college will not do so.  And calls from parents will be re-directed from profs to associate deans--which gives this prof another reason to believe that administrative bloat may not be all that bad. 

Oh, and one note on Canadian/American cultural differences: after ultimate last night, I was asked about my trip last week that caused me to miss the last game, and I talked about college.  The Canadians pointed out that college means something different up here--mostly technical or vocational schools.  Even as most Americans who get BA's get them from universities (size matters), they refer to it as going to college.  Which is strange given that American colleges range from junior to community to vocational to liberal arts colleges.  Canada does not really have much in the way of liberal arts colleges (there are some near exceptions). 

College Costs: US and Canada are on Different Planets

As I leave later today for the first foray into the US for college tours for my daughter, I saw this piece and it almost makes me weep.  University costs in Canada are really, really, really low.  Which I already knew, having scoffed at the Quebec students protesting their especially low tuition.  This article quickly sums up the basic reality in most of Canada: once you build in grants, scholarships and tax credits, the costs have gone down and not up for most folks:

Economists such as Carleton University professor Frances Woolley note that we’ve moved to this rebate system because everyone wins: well-off students with mediocre grades (who wouldn’t have gotten into university at all back when I went) are now effectively subsidizing the smart kids and the ones who need financial aid. This takes some of the burden off the government funding, and still allows universities to grow and admit more students every year.

This is quite un-Canadian since the folks here tend to hate means-testing, which often means that the poor subsidize the rich, essentially.  But here we have a nice progressive outcome.

Alas, I have grown up with the philosophy that my kid should go anywhere that she feels is best for her, and given the lack of liberal arts colleges in Canada, she very well may go south for college.  Which means heaps of dollars and hence my weeping.  Sure, the sticker price for American schools is not always what folks pay, but it is far closer to the real price for us unless there are scholarships for ex-pat Americans that we do not know of.  

The Canadian students should appreciate how good they have it, and the provincial governments should do their best not to screw up a good thing.  Watch them try.

Oh well, the adventure begins. 

Picking on Harvard

The Harvard students are revolting!  Ah, an easy joke. They are petitioning to demand an investigation into the now notorious dissertation of Jason Richwine.  Why?  Because Richwine wrote an awfully designed and executed dissertation?  No, it seems like they are protesting that the dissertation was/is just a bit racist--arguing that Latino immigrants have lower IQs and thus should be kept out.

The students' protests, I think, miss the point.  As much as I dislike Richwine's arguments, he is correct to argue that academic inquiry means that objectionable ideas can be pursued and can produce projects that lead to degrees, such as his Harvard doctorate.  After all, those who do research and find that being gay might be genetic and thus not a choice would have found much opposition decades ago.  We can figure out all kinds of work done in universities that seemed shocking to society at the time but was essentially progressive.  That Richwine's work is regressive in many ways does not mean we should create an environment where we vet ideas for whether they conform with what we think of appropriate work.

However, the students should be protesting ... that Harvard's standards might be questionable.  Dan Drezner and others have done the yeo-person's* work of reading the dissertation, so I will rely on their judgements.  Also, I will rely on the basic realities that race and IQ are both inherently problematic--both are hard to measure, both represent contested concepts, and both are far less fixed/immutable than those who tend to rely on them for their work.  So, it seems to be the case, given the nature of the project and how it has been executed (thanks, Dan, for taking that bullet and reading a dissertation you did not have to read), that the dissertation committee signed off on a crappy dissertation.**

* Obscure Oberlin reference.

** To be fair, supervising dissertations can be very hard, and often students are doing work at this at the edges of one's expertise.  The idea of having committees supervise dissertations is in part aimed at addressing this problem.  Still, I now have greater respect for the processes in Canada that have external examiners who are a key part of the process.

Thus, the real question about Harvard's reputation right now is not about the kinds of ideas being researched but the quality of the work that gets the Harvard imprimatur.  Harvard's reputation as the best university in the US (or close to it in the various rankings) depends not just on having lots of smart people hanging around Cambridge but making sure that the people who leave with the Harvard degree are well trained via the usual procedures--passing tests, writing good theses, and defending dissertations successfully.  If people can get through without adhering to the standards of the discipline (whatever it may be), then this raises questions about the value of the Harvard degree.  And students who pay huge amounts of money and/or who have worked really, really hard to get into and succeed at Harvard should care about that.  All they have done has either been to pursue excellence for its own reward or to get the stamp on their forehead that says Harvard.

The reality is that Harvard's faculty is chock full of really smart people, but really smart people are not always right and do not always do the best work.  I spent last week engaged in a series of conversations about work on ethnic tolerance and diversity because the mainstream media had picked up some Harvard studies and thought them to be good  in part because the Harvard sauce on it lent it legitimacy.  In this conversation, I took issue with a key aspect of work done by two incredibly smart and well-regarded Stanford scholars.  Just because I respect these folks a lot does not mean I buy everything they say. 

So, perhaps there is good news about this Richwine mess--that folks will not automatically assume that the research produced by those at Harvard or trained by Harvard folks is anything close to perfect or definitive.  That, however, is bad news for those students now at Harvard.  Oops.

MOOC Amok

Much buzz about Massive Open Online Courses.  The NYT has a column on it today.  I have to address it because MOOCs seem like a really cool idea, but pose some problems if when politicians and administrators  consider them as a panacea for solving some of the real challenges we face in higher education--spiraling tuition. 

The author, AJ Jacobs, has a nice pithy take and looks at some of the important stuff as he took 11 different courses via MOOC.  The article is interesting and engaging, but I am afraid it suffers from grade inflation.  How so?  Well, other than convenience, nearly all of the other grades given (except for the profs who get a B+) are below a B yet the final grade is a B. 

The profs get a B+ as they are interesting, organized, and knowledgeable.  Rock on for the profs!  Jacobs does worry:

MOOCs are creating a breed of A-list celebrity professors who have lopsided sway over the landscape of ideas. I pity the offline teachers. I fear one of the casualties of these online courses might be the biodiversity of the academic ecosystem.

Following the Wrong Role Models

I posted at CIC two weeks ago about the Canadian Forces and Department of National Defence falling back on denials rather than answering question so often that it has become the first response.  Well, my old employer, McGill, seems to be using the Canadian government as a role model.  Students, student journalists and others have ramped up the number of access to information requests that they have made of McGill, and now McGill is essentially asking for permission to deny these folks their rights to get access. 

Sure, some of it may be gratuitous or abusing the system, but a university is supposed to be a creator and disseminator of information.  It should have little to hide and be more transparent than pretty much any other public institution.  Carleton, my current employer, resisted the attempts of newspapers to get info about their Political Management program.  Once they released the info and revised the agreement with the donor, the problem went away. 

McGill should respond to the access requests, provide the docs and move on.  Covering up/resisting becomes the story and not one that is going to be favorable to the university.  If it uses heaps of staff time, then revise/fix how information is stored.

I am familiar with ATIP processes as I have asked the Canadian government for documents and have been mostly pleased by the responses.  Sure, lots of stuff in the Canadian docs on Afghanistan have been redacted, but I could see most of the stuff I was looking for.  It took awhile at times.  I am currently waiting for a Privy Council document, and I am curious as to how long it will take. 

Anyhow, McGill, Carleton and other public universities are government institutions in both good ways and bad--they are obligated to be transparent, they are run by people who want to evade the spotlight, and when they try, the spotlight gets stronger.  This is a lesson that people never seem to learn.  On this one thing, the Borg were right: resistance is futile.

Snow is Cold, Sky is Blue, College Sports Are Expensive

This story demonstrates something that we have known for quite some time--that despite the argument that universities make money from the big sports, the reality is that the big sports are often huge money pits.  I have long been annoyed at how much the athletics tail can often wag the academic dog.

This was most obvious two stops ago on my academic journey at Texas Tech.  I never did feel pressure to pass failing athletes, but it was obvious that the big sports were sucking money away from the rest of the poorly managed institution.  But it is not just TTU--it is endemic.

Between 2005 and 2010, on a per-capita basis, the report found, athletic costs increased at least twice as fast as academic spending at institutions with top-tier athletic programs.

Yow.  And, of course, the most expensive sport is football:

Football consumes much of the athletic budget. At institutions competing in the top-tier Football Bowl Subdivision, the report found, median athletic spending per athlete was $92,000 in 2010, compared with median academic spending per full-time student of less than $14,000. In the other Division I subdivisions, median athletic spending per athlete ranged from $37,000 to $39,000, compared with median academic spending per full-time student of about $11,800. 

And this does not even build into the budget the costs of the concussions the student-athletes are accumulating.

One of the nice things about Canadian universities, even though they have significant sports programs, is that the sports programs do not seem to have much power or influence, at least not when compared to those in the U.S.

Students Really As Consumers

I am not a big fan of For Profit higher education.  Of course, I have a dog in this fight (sorry), as one could imagine a world where these entities take over higher education, making it harder for me and my kind (that would be my grad students) to get and keep jobs.

Instead of spewing my biased spew, I will let Garry Trudeau take the floor:

These schools have been ripping people (especially Veterans) off big-time.  Not good.

Anyhow, I look forward to the rest of the week as the story continues at Doonesbury.

Students and Tourists

We often think of students and tourists in the same light--folks actively trying to observe and learn from their surroundings, people are not really doing a job, and people who drop a fair amount of money wherever they go.  Educational institutions and tourist traps serve the local economy in ways that are often underestimated.


However, according to the US Embassy in Canada (the helpful folks who turned out my wife's passport app in two weeks--thanks, guys!), tourists in Montreal need to be alert to the dangers posed by student dissent.  Yes, Montreal 2012 is, to the US government, risky, not unlike Cairo 2011. 

The U.S. Consulate in Montreal alerts U.S. citizens traveling to and residing in Quebec Province of the potential for continuing student protests, some of which have resulted in violence and arrests. The U.S. Consulate urges U.S. citizens to avoid the areas of demonstrations, and to exercise caution if within the vicinity of any protests.
For several weeks, there have been large demonstrations in Montreal and outlying cities protesting university tuition increases. While the majority of the protests have been peaceful, some participants have incited violence, by throwing rocks and engaging in other acts of vandalism. These demonstrations have varied in size, with some attracting thousands of protestors to downtown Montreal. Businesses remain open although vehicular traffic patterns and public transportation may be temporarily disrupted due to protest actions. Most of the protests have been well-publicized and announced several days in advance, while others have occurred with no prior notice. While the demonstrations are intended to be peaceful, some can turn into confrontational or potentially violent situations.
There are no indications that foreigners or U.S. citizens are being threatened or targeted. Nonetheless, U.S. citizens are advised to remain alert to local security developments and to be vigilant regarding their personal security. The local police service, Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal (SPVM), provides frequent security updates in French and English via Twitter (@SPVM).
The Department of State strongly urges U.S. citizens to avoid demonstrations, as bystanders can quickly be caught up in unforeseen violence and in some cases detained by the local police. If you believe your security is compromised, call the police at 911

However, that is as far as I go.  The idea of Quebec Spring is rather quite appalling since the students are asking for less tuition, not democracy.  The government has used some repressive force but not in any way on the scale or intensity as folks in the Mideast.  The student groups, having not distanced themselves sufficiently from those sending smoke bombs into the metro and doing other dangerous deeds, have lost heaps of support.  Whatever they wanted is not worth it for the rest of Quebec society--the damage, the inconvenience, the costs to business and to government. 

But given the multiplicity of groups and how unrepresentative they already are of the students, it is unlikely to end soon.  The government cannot really negotiate much further since it would look like they are giving in to terrorists. 

Who Rolled Whom?

I have gotten some more information about the deal Quebec made with the leaders of the student groups, which suggest that maybe Quebec rolled the students rather than the other way around, contrary to my previous post.

The key is that the students will only have four spots on the nineteen person panel.  So, their influence will be mostly symbolic unless they can get other folks on their side.  Of course, the bad news is that the university folks only have six seats, so the panel is unlikely to be all that helpful to universities either.

It is also not clear how the increases in tuition are balanced by cuts in fees.  Given that some schools in Quebec have very little in the way of fees, it may be the case that the totals going to universities still increase over the next seven years.

Still, the idea that there is heaps of room to cut university budgets just because there has been some mismanagement is problematic.  The biggest university expense, as Lucien Bouchard pointed out, is personnel.  That would be profs, staff.  Quebec rates of wages are lower than rest of Canada's so not really much room to cut salaries, especially with unions on the panel.

Of course, this is all moot.  The students will have to agree to the deal, and if they use the same kinds of rules as before, open votes, with only limited turnout, I am guessing that the vote will be against the deal.  What happens if one or two groups vote for and one or two vote against?  Hmmm.

Anyhow, the devil is very much in the details, but the details may be overcome by events this week.

Failing Bargaining 101

Looking at the "demands" now made by CLASSE, the most radical of groups presenting themselves as representatives of Quebec's students, I wonder if they are really clever or just really ignorant.  Taking an extreme stance can be seen as good bargaining if they think it can push the other side, the Quebec government, into moderating its claims.  But this set of demands is less likely to do that than to help the Quebec government define CLASSE as insincere, crazy, and/or insane.  Why?   Let's go to the demands:

• Cut research funding.  Wait, cut research funding?  Ah, these folks believe that research funding and teaching are unconnected.  And they also believe that "much research conducted profits private corporations as opposed to students or taxpayers."  As the tweeter abbreviation goes, FFS!  
• Obviously, the first thing is that research and teaching are NOT independent activities. We actually do include new research in the classroom.  So, unless they only want to learn stuff that may be outdated, they might just want research to be funded.
• Second, where does a lot of the research money go?  To employing students.  I guess these folks have never been nor have ever met research assistants.  I am employing four undergrads in addition to a grad student this summer.  But these folks apparently do not want tainted employment since they might be working for THE MAN.  
• Third, since most of these boycotting students are not in engineering, the sciences, medicine, it is more likely that the research that is funded in their areas have nothing to do with capitalisme.  Oh, please save us all from idealistic socialists.
• Quebec would have to offer free tuition in five years.  That's right--they want more than a freeze--they want a rollback to a mythic fantasyland where tuition is free.  Such places do exist actually, but they tend to have stricter admission criteria since such magic lands admit far fewer students.  Geez, these folks suck at math.
• How is this paid for?  Capital taxes on financial institutions.  Because such businesses would not adjust by either leaving Quebec or by passing the costs on to those who use their services.  These folks suck at Econ 101 as well.
• Cut advertising where universities compete with each other.  So, prospective students should not be informed of the differences among the institutions?
• Freeze wages and hiring of university administrators.  Well, hmmm.  What counts as an administrator?  Is this a freeze on numbers or would it lead to a decline in administrators through attrition?  While I rail against the explosion of administrators and administrative expenses, I do recognize that some of these folks might be doing something related to, well, teaching.  So, I am opposed to generic solutions.
• Moratorium on construction/expansion of satellite campuses.  This, I think, I would not mind, but then again, are any of these aimed to reaching students and serving communities that are under-served?  Not all growth is, well, bad.

The other two student groups have made less extreme demands:

• maintain the freeze on tuition since university educations should not be subject to things like ... inflation, 
• better management of university spending through more involvement of students (um, no contradiction there, right?).
• a freeze on investments in universities, because, well, investing is bad.

Even if one thinks that tuition could not go up as fast as Quebec is planning (and the government did extend the time frame and increase the amount of aid going to the less well off), the rest of these demands are not just unrealistic but harmful to those making the demands.

While some universities (UQAM) wasted heaps of money on new construction, that is not really the source of funding problems.  That tuition was frozen for more than a decade, thanks to previous protests, has helped to create the difficulties now.  More importantly, these demands reflect ignorance of what universities and those working there do on a daily basis.  Research is not harmful to teaching, most research is really not going to private evil corporations, more ignorance is not more bliss, and not all administration is wasteful.

What the more radical demands do is taint the rest of them.  Perhaps freezing the growth of administration might make sense.   But if you demand to cut research at the same time because of the deluded belief that research is part of the MAN's grand plan, you just look silly and, even worse, dumb. 

Yes, I am aware that I have interests in play (or would if I were not leaving Quebec), but, unlike the students, I think I can figure out how my ideals and my interests might be finessed, rather than pushing for things that fit my ideology but undermine my interests.  A university education is pretty handy that way.

Tyranny of the Minority

I usually complain about the threat of tyranny of the (local) majority in Quebec, but the student boycott reveal something else:




Note, the data seems to come from CLASSE, the most extreme of the three student groups "representing" the boycotters.

So, we have a significant group of folks but a minority nonetheless making significant claims that we must not take entirely at face value. 

The government just compromised--extending the time for the increase in tuition to seven years.  The students, my guess, are likely not to budge as they seem mighty committed to no increase at all.  Suspending the increase, which is what the PQ and some other folks have advocated, would be a total surrender, since it would be very hard for the government then to initiate increases down the road.

But damn this is costing Montreal, Quebec, and the students a lot of money.  Tends to violate basic stuff about costly behavior in bargaining.... or does it?

Tuition and Loans

While I have railed against the students of Quebec for over-reacting to the increases in tuition, I want to be clear that the American system right now is mighty messed up with the cost of loans about to skyrocket thanks to the "enlightened" Republicans.

Thanks to these guys for putting things into perspective:

Modest Protest Proposal

The student groups leading the protests against higher tuition in Quebec are complaining that they are being lumped in with the violent actors that have interrupted Metro service, damaged offices and what not.  I understand that they are in a hard position: that either they support the violence but cannot say so or that they do not support the violence but cannot control the people who show up at the protests.

Here is my modest proposal: take a breather from organizing big, confrontational street protests for about a week.  Announce you are doing this so that anarchist fish that swim within your sea of students cannot hide themselves, at least for a week.  This would show that you care about Montreal and about Quebec and not just about yourselves.  Yes, it would take some steam from your movement, but it would demonstrate a real interest in doing what is right for Quebec. 

As it stands now, it seems as if the groups doing the organizing do not seem to realize that putting hundreds or thousands of people on the streets might not be just a bit problematic at a time of escalating violence.  The only way to de-escalate is to do less.  Condemn the violent actors, be creative in organizing protests where the possibility for violence will be minimized (including violence conducted by the cops), and seek other ways to persuade the public of the rightness of your cause.*

*  Of course, I do not support the tuition protesters as I have repeatedly protested here.  Still, I do believe that they have a right to engage in dissent.  I just want it to be thoughtful, peaceful dissent that does not provide provocateurs with more opportunities.

The real risk of continuing on the present course is that the groups will alienate the rest of the province--those that have thus far not been alienated. 

On a related note, I agree with Don Macpherson that Pauline Marois has painted herself into a corner: that by adopting the red square (symbol of the tuition protesters), she now either stands with the violence or abandons the students.  I am perhaps more openly gleeful about this outcome than Don, but perhaps not.

Math Folks Get Math

There was a piece in a today's Montreal Gazette that argued that computer and engineering students in the province (a) have much less support for student strikes that seek to prevent increases in tuition.  Which just goes to show my assertions that folks who oppose tuition increases suck at Math and perhaps don't understand their self-interest.

The Arts/Humanities students argue that they are more interested in keeping tuition down since their long-term salaries are less likely to compensate for higher tuition.  Perhaps.  Perhaps the computer/commerce/engineering folks understand that the current and future costs of higher education in Quebec are an incredible deal compared to elsewhere in North America. 

The irony of this is that the passion for striking becomes reversed at the next level--the science graduate students tend to be more interested in striking because science research and teaching assistants are worked much harder (abused?), compared to those in the arts and social sciences. 

Anyhow, I prefer to think that the division between Arts and higher tech folks is not just one gets paid less in the future.  Instead, one gets the math of investing in higher education to maintain the value of the degree.  The others want the next generation to keep having a nearly free lunch, even if it means that the value of the degree sinks due to a lack of funds.

The good news for me is that McGill students tend not to strike over tuition even if they participate in rallies and protests.  Plus they are on break this week, so it is unlikely that they will get their act together to strike soon.  And not before too long, finals will be around the corner.

Hate the Game, not the Player

So, a school was caught gaming the rankings.  Should we be shocked?  Nay.  I have often spewed about rankings of all kinds.  Law schools regularly game the rankings by employing alums for key time periods.

Congrats to Claremont McKenna:

according to Robert Morse, the director of data research at U.S. News, is “the highest-ranking school to have to go through this publicly and have to admit to misreporting.”

I guess they must have been really good at gaming the system to be so highly ranked so that their gaming can be so very visible.

Why does this happen?

But repeated revelations of manipulation show the importance of the rankings in the minds of prospective students, their guidance counselors, parents, the alumni considering donations, the professors weighing job offers — and, of course, the colleges themselves.

We have only ourselves to blame.  It is about self-esteem for folks at the schools, and it is for getting status for those who are applying.  The big questions are the real admit rates for medical schools, law schools, grad schools and .... jobs.  I would love to see a regression or three on the factors driving admission with school rank being one factor but GPA, test scores, etc being factored in as well.

I am fundamentally of the belief that for undergrad, it almost does not matter where you go with one caveat in a second---that one should go to a place that has programs in the fields you desire with enough competence in other areas in case you change your mind.  But one should not flip out about going to school number 27 rather than school number 17 or 7.  The next generation of Saidemans are approaching college (with one already in) and my key bit of advice is to largely ignore the adults and the rankings.  Go to whichever school feels right for you.  I would recommend a smaller school than a bigger one, having taught at the bigs and gone to a small, but even that is not hard and fast.

What is the one caveat I have? That the quality of one's peers matters as much or more than the pedigrees and productivity of the profs.  So, go to places where one's fellow students are interesting and engaged--which is why McGill is a great place for students (not just a cheap place to be outsourced).  And if happens to be a place that is sunny or has great skiing, well, more power to ya.

The game will always be the game, but you don't have to play.  That is what I learned at Oberlin and by watching The Wire and the Game of Thrones.

The Grass Is Always Greener

I have long whined about Quebec and its underfunding of Higher education, so it is only fair that I should point out, as I learn more about my new home, that Ontario is trying to compete with Quebec in undermining its future.

First, there is the tuition rebate--students who bought into Ontario universities expecting a certain level of fees are getting a significant chunk back.  Which would be ok if the government knew how to pay for it.  But they didn't.  They really did write a check without thinking about how to pay for it.

Which leads to second, they are cutting research funding to pay for the tuition cuts.  Lovely.  Because, as we all know, there is no connection between research and teaching.  Sure, some would argue otherwise.  Oh, I wrote that.  Damn.  What was I thinking?  Oh, that's right, I was thinking that knowledge creation/dissemination might actually be a better multiplier than pretty much any other investment by governments.  Silly me.  Darn those inconvenient facts.

The guy responsible for this, Premier Dalton McGuinty, is a Liberal.  Funny, I used to think that Liberalism went along with Enlightenment, knowledge, education, and such.  But if this is the future of the Liberal Party, then I might actually be glad that the party has been marginalized at the federal level.  Oh, and the future of the Liberals is also mighty @#$!^*&-ed, despite getting sound advice.

On the bright side, it is nice to know that Quebec and the US do not have a monopoly on politicians who don't understand math, budgeting, or education. 

The Drunk Frat Boy Vote

I have been using the phrase "Drunk Frat Boy Vote" ever since Jesse the Body Ventura won the gubernatorial election in Minnesota.  With three candidates vying for the position, it seemed as if there were just enough drunk frat boys who thought, "wouldn't it be cool?!" to put Ventura just over the top.

Well, last night, we got to see the Drunk Frat Boy Vote* exercised somewhat differently--rioting to protest the firing of a football coach who did the bare minimum when he heard about molestation.  I am pretty sure the rioters were not protesting the firing of the university's president. 

* As the article makes clear, there were young women doing stupid things as well.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”  Edmund Burke

Ok, Paterno did not do nothing.  He did next to nothing.  He informed his superior and then went about his business.  He did not check to see if the allegations were followed up.  He let his superiors cover up the situation.  Paterno should have gone to the cops, perhaps not immediately but certainly after he saw that the folks at Penn State were letting a child molester benefit from the institution's fears of embarrassment.

“But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”NYT

Sorry, but Paterno and his "superiors" did the tarnishing.  Had "Joe Pa" done the right thing in 2002 (and probably actually earlier than that), then he would have been a hero.  Now, he is a bum.

And, yes, this entire event makes it clear how twisted priorities can become in the world of big college sports.  Students end up identifying with their school and their coach, rather than the kids who had been abused.

School's Out. Let's Talk About School

Several interesting posts from people who know well the pro's and con's of advanced degrees and life doing foreign policy stuff.  Check out the discussion spawned by Andrew Exum and Erin Simpson and then commented on by Dan Drezner,  Robert Farley and James Joyner.

Most of these folks have more policy experience than I do (one year), more experience with policy schools (none yet, although IR/PS was near the UCSD poli sci dept and I worked with profs who were based at IR/PS), but I have had students move on to policy positions and most of my PhD students have found tenure-track positions.  So, I have heaps of opinions about this stuff but I can summarize it in one line, given this job market

• If you do not have a deep curiosity about politics, a PhD in political science is not for you. 

 The PhD is no guarantee of a job, and it does represent a serious opportunity cost (see Farley) in terms of time.  Once you are in a PhD program, it becomes mighty hard to leave as sunk cost logics tend to overcome arguments about exiting.  Having a PhD does open up some interesting alternatives but strangely closes others as one becomes over-qualified in some eyes.  Policy PhDs and academic PhDs are entirely different beasts with only some programs doing a good job of providing people enough of a background in each.  It really is a case of path dependence--you can get off the path, but it has costs.

I do disagree a bit with Joyner who basically says don't go to a school outside the top ten or twenty-five.  Rankings are far from perfect, as I have noted before.  And one can end up doing great in grad school (great idea, great execution, strong pubs)* so that a very good program can be good enough.  But there is a point--that the worse the reputation of a school, the more you are daring the fates.  You can get a great education in a middling program and get a good job, but it is riskier.

* Not referring to me, as I had good idea, good execution and no pubs.  

Grad school is a reasonable choice, if you go in with your eyes open to what opportunities that it may or may not open up.  But there are tradeoffs, so it is not a great idea for those who simply want to delay "real life" a  few years. 

Texas Sucks at Math

I have teased McGill students for being bad at math because they think they can get the education they expect without raising (or perhaps even lowering) tuition.  Well, Texas puts other bad mathletes to shame: proposing a college education for just $10,000.  That's right--four years of education for just a total of $10,000.  Given that the average public university in Texas costs $6,500 per year in tuition, and the $10k figure is to include tuition, fees, and books, the proposal is essentially offering to reduce the cost of an education by 2/3's.

How to do this?  More online stuff, community colleges (have they been watching too much TV?), accelerated and self-paced formats (holy contradiction in terms--would most folks be self-pacing fast or slow?), and so forth.  The best way to do this would be to increase state subsidies to universities, but how likely is that?

Or, to borrow Marc Lynch's terms for policy solutions in the Middle East (Magic Democracy words), we can just use magic educational innovation words to cut the cost of a college degree in Texas by two-thirds.  It is hard enough to keep the costs from rising, but to cut them by that much?  I guess if all you want is a degree stamp and not an education, this should be pretty easy.

Of course, like any good consumer product, the devil is in the details.  What is excluded from the new Texas $10k degree?  Check out the fine print: Does not include Math, Budgeting, Economics, Management, Public Policy, Accounting, Logic, etc.

The funny thing is that money may not guarantee a high quality education with great outcomes, but we can be pretty certain that an absence of money is a guarantee of a sub-standard education. 

I wonder if these folks had basic econ: what happens when you depress the cost of something?  Does it change the demand?  Hmmmm.  I guess I will spend $10k to find out, right?