EclectEcon

Is it appropriate for the university to bar the tax authorities from receiving information about a student's class schedule?

I received the following notice from an associate dean a couple of days ago:

It has come to my attention that Canada Customs and Revenue Agency has approached an instructor in a large first year course to provide information about a student's examination schedule so that the student could be served with papers, presumably at the examination. (CCRA was clearly fishing. The student in question is not enrolled in that instructor's class.)

There are NO circumstances under which any information about students should be given out to persons outside the university. If faculty or staff receive inquiries of this type, they should direct the questions to the Office of the Registrar.

Does this sound weird to you? Why wouldn't the tax authorities go directly to the registrar in the first place? And if they had already been rebuffed by the registrar, how would they go about selecting various professors for their fishing expedition? Do you think maybe this was a collection agency or something similar?

About a month ago, I mentioned that a student in my introductory economics class had sent me e-mail expressing concern because I frequently said insulting things about York University and the students there. She also objected to my spelling of gubmnt. I never met this student, and I also have no idea what she looks like (she was one of 350 in the class).

Today my teaching assistant sent me the grades for the class. My correspondent earned a mark of 39 (out of 100, not out of 40 as one person wondered). I figure she's a prime candidate for York's Sociology department. Jack figures she's likely to sue me for discrimination.

I expect that by making some negative comments about York University in my classes and on my exams, I have offended some people. I suppose that by writing "gubmnt" instead of "government" in my classes I have offended some people.

I sure hope I don't get dragged before the Human Rights Commissions for having done these things. Here's the background.

In my teaching, I often refer to York University in very negative terms. For the most part, students love it because York is a rival for both Guelph, where I am visiting this year, and UWO, where I am employed on a permanent basis.

As an example, when I am teaching about the minimum wage, I say,

Let's consider the market for unskilled labour

and while I'm saying that, I'm writing across the top of a supply and demand graph "York Graduates." And whenever I want to point out that some people might not behave as if they are rational maximizers (or might do dumb things in general), I say "York Graduates" or something like that.

York University does, indeed, have a reputation of being a commuter campus with many students who are less serious than many students at other universities. That said, their bizskool is pretty darned good. Their lawskool, however, has a reputation for being pretty left-wing and interventionist. Also, their campus is by far the ugliest in Canada and one of the ugliest in the universe.

As for my use of "gubmnt", I don't know when I started writing that in my notes and on the overheads (and exams). I suspect it started a couple of decades ago, under the influence of a former colleague who loved watching The Dukes of Hazard on television.

Two days ago, I received the following message from a student:

Dear Professor Palmer,

I am a student in your...Economics class ....
I am stating a concern about your midterms, most specifically your second midterm.

I found that your midterm was incredibly disrespectful. The two occurrences I am talking about are: question 3 when you made a reference to York University* and question 4 when you spelt ‘government’ as ‘gubment’.

Firstly, York is an honoured university in our province’s capital and I believe that students, faculty and graduates should be respected in the way that they deserve. Secondly, I have no idea what was being implied when ‘gubment’ was written down but I believe that the government of this country should be respected as well.

I noticed these on your first midterm as well as in class. I believe in freedom of speech but I also believe that there is a time and a place. The University of Guelph is a professional institution and is seen in a professional way.

Thank you very much,

Oops. If the criticism/concerns had stuck to my getting cheap laughs at someone else's expense, I could understand that; I don't normally think humour that puts down other people is all that funny. But this type of criticism is utter nonsense.

York is hardly an "honoured university"; it is at best a middling university in this province, and whether it is located in the province's capital is irrelevant. So what if it is located on the northern edge of Trono? I wonder if making York students the butts of my derogatory remarks makes them feel bad. I wonder if this is case warranting a complaint to the human rights commission.

As for my use of "gubmnt", regular readers of this blog will recall the many times I have praised the current Cdn gubmt for its position on Israel, Durban, Kyoto, Afghanistan, etc. But whether I write gubmnt or govt or gubment doesn't matter. To me it's just an amusing take-off on The Dukes.

I know my spelling sometimes bothers some people. They are not amused by "bizskool" or "eagre" or "Trono" or "gubmnt". But these quirks that amuse me hardly merit this type of reaction or concern.

What matters to me is that this student pulled out claptrap cliches and political correctness to question what I said and wrote.

*The question referred to was this (note that the answers were to be completed on Scantron sheets that have only choices a through e):

3. An appropriate question to ask someone who argues that moving toward free trade should occur only if the losers are compensated by the gainers is
a). How would you compensate the losers without creating incentives that would distort people’s incentives?
b). Would you be willing to compensate those who will lose if we do not move toward freer trade?
c). How do you propose to carry out this scheme?
d). How would you tax the gainers without creating deadweight losses due to the taxes?
e). All of the above would be appropriate.
f). What year did you graduate from York?

Also, the instructions for the exam included this admonition:

4. Calculators are not allowed. Also, no hats, no cell phones, no dictionaries, no talking, no beer, no wine, no illicit recreational drugs, and no extra paper.

I guess that would also be viewed as inappropriate by some people.

Gabriel Mihalache is about to embark on a graduate school adventure in North America, and he became concerned after reading this advice to incoming economics grad students. Here are some edited comments I have provided for him (and others):

1. Some schools (but not all) have profs who seem to think it is some measure of their masculinity to fail students and be tough on them. If you have selected one of those schools imbued with testosterone poisoning, and you find that out ex post, you have little choice but to suck it up and tough it out (or drop out). Usually there are cooler, more rational folks around who won’t let them fail everyone they teach just to prove how tough, smart, and rigorous they are.

2. Get the old exams! Study from the old exams! For some courses, I could not for the life of me figure out why so many of my classmates were getting such high grades. Then they told me about the old exams that had been floating around. Many/most profs use variants of the same types of questions, even if they don't ask exactly the same questions, and studying from the old exams is great preparation for those courses.

3. Study groups! I had some dynamite study partners in grad school. We complemented each other beautifully, and we all gained from it.

4. Read all the papers the prof has written on the topic of the course, even if the papers are not on the course reading list. Egomaniacs that they/we are, they/we teach from these papers and ask about them on exams. If the prof has written tonnes of stuff on that topic, at least try to read the abstracts, introductions, and conclusions (and any published comments/debates!)

I once had a prof who was lecturing almost exclusively from his own papers. When I asked him about it, he replied in shock, “Why are you reading those papers? They’re not on the reading list.” I guess he had never had a student do more than the minimum. I had read them during the break before his course began, just to get ready for the course.

5. Don’t give up on a subject. I had one course in which the prof (citing a book review in the old AER) pointed out that in one place the number of equations didn’t equal the number of unknowns. After the course was over, I felt uneasy about that particular material, so I went through my text to make sure I understood what he had been teaching. No matter how hard I worked on the math, I couldn’t see an error in the text, so I went to see him about it. It turned out the math had been edited in the second printing of the text (which I was using, but he still had the first printing). My doing this showed him I was a serious scholar, and in the process I learned some more.

6. Being buddies with profs is not a bad thing, but do NOT expect it to help with grades, reference letters, etc. Performance matters.

I realize you have a sense of foreboding when you read a piece like the one to which you linked. Let me assure you that it is mostly correct. Life in graduate school can be unpleasant. One particularly bad year (bad admission decisions, bad profs) many years ago, we had nearly a third of our first year class drop out. Given the environment that existed then, I didn’t blame them.

But most schools have fixed these problems and try to fix them quickly when they are discovered.

Nevertheless, much of grad school is a test of your desire and stamina. Learn from it, because once you become an assistant professor it’s just more of the same. If you throw yourself into it and really get a kick out of learning new stuff, you'll be well-prepared for the future. It might even be fun.

Addendum: Mike Moffatt has more here.

Stephen Karlson, who blogs at Cold Spring Shops, is an economics professor at Northern Illinois University. You can follow his thoughts and concerns here. A childhood friend also teaches there, in the history department.

My own thoughts: anger, sadness, sympathy, horror.... all jumbled together.

I attended The Chicago Theological Seminary from 1965 - 67. I went there in large part because the school was very active in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The seminary served as a base for much of Martin Luther King's work in Chicago; Jesse Jackson was a year ahead of me as a student there. It was an interesting, even exciting, place to be. [see below for digressive comments.]*

Perhaps because of this background, it perplexes me a bit to see this development in Toronto:

In a tight vote, Toronto District School Board trustees Tuesday night approved a contentious proposal for a black-focused school that opponents argued would be the equivalent of segregation.

... Tuesday night's vote means that an alternative Afro-centric school will open in the city in September, 2009, but its location and grade levels are still to be determined.

... The proposal for the Afrocentric alternative school was in response to a request submitted in July by members of the black community, who were alarmed by the high dropout rate.

...TDSB statistics reveal that many black students are struggling. The dropout rate for students of English-speaking Caribbean descent is highest among all groups at 40 per cent compared with 23 per cent for those with Canadian roots, according to tracking data of a cohort of students between 2000 and 2005.

"Separate, but Equal" was not perceived as a viable solution to these problems back in the 60s and 70s; perhaps with more freedom of choice, as in a voucher system for funding education, the problems will be less serious.

With these thoughts in mind, here are some very cynical thoughts about possible outcomes from this programme. I hope I am wrong, and I hope that the freedom of choice (and competition between schools within the school district) will keep these outcomes from happening:

• This school will have a very high drop-out rate, though it will be masked and covered so as to minimize the numbers.
• This school will have a higher expense per pupil than the average in the area. But the numbers will not be trustworthy because the school board will want to inflate them to make it look as if they are "doing all they can" to help the students there and yet will not want the numbers to look too grotesquely out of line with the other schools.
• Violent crime rates in this school will be greater than in other Toronto schools (unless "misreported", a euphemism for "covered up".).
• Graduation rates from this school will be lower than for other Toronto schools, except that...
• grades will be seriously inflated in this school, in part to keep students in school and in part to propel the graduates to colleges and universities.
• Consequently, after a few years, we will hear stories of students' graduating from this school and being unprepared to transfer schools or to attend post-secondary schools.
• This plan will open the door for many other racial and ethnic groups to ask for funding for special schools. It will be difficult to know where to draw the line.
• and most seriously, achievement scores will be lower in this school than the Toronto average (unless those, too, can be fiddled somehow).

If even a portion of these predictions comes true, in part, I will hold the parents responsible. They will not be forced to send their children to this school; they can send them to some other school in Toronto. I realize these days with teen-agers, parents do not make this choice on their own, though.

The major problem, however, will lie with the "education establishment", the people who train in Canada's education schools. Here is why:

Trustees Tuesday night voted on four recommendations that come with an initial price tag of $820,000:

- Open a black-focused alternative school in September, 2009, and set up a team to determine such things as grade level, location and appropriate curriculum.

- Set up a three-year pilot program in three existing schools that will integrate the history, culture and experiences of blacks in society.

- Team up with York University and other postsecondary institutions to establish a centre for staff development, research and innovation to track data and test best practices to help marginalized and vulnerable students.

- Have the director of education look at other proposals and develop an action plan for improving achievement among underperforming students.

Do you see a pattern here? I see a lot of programmes designed to increase the demand for people with master's degrees in bureaucracy education. For the sake of the students, I hope they receive the attention and the incentives to make the school work.

One good thing is that the school will provide an option, a choice; students (and/or their parents) will not be forced to select this school, and in that way it differs enormously from the segregated schools of the US south in the pre-civil-rights era; in fact, this school will provide something akin to pseudo-vouchers. And if my above predictions are correct, and if the effects cannot easily be disguised or hidden from parents and students, then the school will either wither or become a sinkhole for increasing funding and hand-outs.

My cynical predictions do not have to come true, though. An op-ed in today's NatPost indicates that there are some positive possibilities in the provision of education for aboriginals in Canada (see here). Perhaps the lessons from those experiences can help inform the policy proposals for this school as well.

But.... in the midst of all this, what happened to the concepts of integration and multi-culturalism?

*I left seminary before finishing my studies there for several reasons. The primary reason was that I felt quite hypocritical, realizing that whatever theology to which I might subscribe (near-atheism?), it was far different from anything that most people in most churches thought I was talking about. A second reason was that I had become increasingly uncomfortable in my evolution away from being an idealistic socialist, filled with hubris, a position held and supported by a large majority of my classmates and professors, toward a libertarian who values the long-term achievements of freedom and markets.

Try this quiz. I scored 15 out of 21.

Given that it's a multiple-choice quiz, this result implies that I probably knew only 12 or 13 of the correct answers and got lucky with a few. But see what happens when you try to convince students that a correction factor for guessing and wrong answers gives a better estimate of how much they know.

Do you think students who have completed a finance course should be able to calculate (or, worse, identify in a multiple-choice question) the effective annual interest rate on their credit card account, given the monthly rate? Me, too.

Do you think students who have completed a finance course should know what is meant by "double taxation"? Me, too.

Do you think students who have completed a finance course should know that when the opportunity cost of investing in financial capital goes down, the prices on other assets will be bid up? Me, too.

Do you think a prof whose students cannot do the above should be fired? Me, too.

And those were the gimme questions on the exam, designed to keep the class average from slipping too far.

I would feel like a horrible failure if I thought the students had done much work for the course. Nevertheless, I still feel like a failure.

Alex sent me this test. Someone claims it is used for job applicants in Japan.

My younger son, Adam Smith Palmer, got everyone across the river right away. Good thing, since he and his wife would like to work in Japan some day.

I looked at it and quit. I think that means my IQ is zero.

This is a revised repost of an open solicitation I made several years ago:

Invite Me to Speak at Your School's Graduation Ceremonies
This is an open solicitation.
I would like to give the commencement address at your school.
Here are some reasons you should invite me:

1. I have a cap and gown that have been described as cool or sexy (click here to see a photo).
2. I look very professional and academic with my gray beard and glasses.
3. I have considerable experience listening to bad commencement addresses, so I know what not to do or say.
4. I am an award-winning professor, with considerable acting and speaking experience.
5. I promise not to cuss (unless you want me to).
6. I will charge no fees (until the demand increases considerably)
7. I will pay (some of) my own transportation expenses, within reason
8. You have your choice of opening lines (and topics):

• "Never apply latex paint over glossy alkyd enamel."
• "There are no refunds for losing lottery tickets."
• "If you're going to save the world, do it yourself — don't ask the gubmnt to do it."

I am the Esquire Bedel for The University of Western Ontario. What that means is that even though I am on sabbatical this academic year, I returned to UWO to carry the ceremonial mace during the convocations that were held yesterday and today. [Photo and more here and maybe a better photo here].

For a description of what goes on during convocation at this university and especially of the university mace, click here.

On Wednesday, I received a Facebook friend request from one of my students. The very next day I received e-mail from him saying he'd been sick for the past few weeks and hadn't been able to study for the midterm scheduled for that day. hmmmmmm.

And now I see from Facebook that he planned to attend two different parties that very night, one of them in another city. Double hmmmmm.

addendum #1: I also see from Facebook that this student claimed to be be "studyin" and "studyin like a champ" on two different days a week before the midterm exam. Triple hmmmmm.

addendum #2: another unthrilling aspect of Facebook is seeing the parties your granddaughter plans to attend this weekend.

Phil Miller has a quote about how to study, from Tyler Cowan's latest book. Since my students have midterm exams on Thursday, this advice is apt: do problems; make sure you can do problems; answer questions; anticipate questions.

The point is this: most people do not study very effectively. They study to feel they are trying. They study to feel better about themselves. They do not always study to succeed in their chosen field. They spend hours staring blankly at sheets of paper and nodding about what they understand. Students should spend more time trying to solve problems or answer questions, usually under simulated exam conditions and with a clock ticking. Tick, tick, tick... that's the way to go, and yes, the whole point is that it hurts.

and with good reason. See his latest column here. He concludes:

In the month since the NAS released its study, none of the schools covered by it has contested its findings. Because there might as well be signs on the doors of many schools of social work proclaiming "conservatives need not apply," two questions arise: Why are such schools of indoctrination permitted in institutions of higher education? And why are people of all political persuasions taxed to finance this propaganda?

I am convinced that the average and marginal social products of social workers are negative.

Yesterday, Jack sent me this from the Financial Post. It is a scathing attack on "An Inconvenient Truth" and the British School System's attempts to indoctrinate children using Al Gore's film.

... The 11 inaccuracies that the court found are not quibbles. They represent the film's most spectacular claims about the dangers of global warming, and form the very basis of the film. Were the film to be edited to have these inaccuracies removed, in fact, vanishingly little would be left.

- The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro demonstrate global warming. The government's expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.
- The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 caused temperature increases over 650,000 years. The court found that the film was misleading: Over that period, the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800 to 2,000 years.
- The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina, which it suggests was caused by global warming. The government's expert had to accept that it was "not possible" to attribute one-off events to global warming.
- The film attributes the drying up of Lake Chad to global warming. The government's expert had to accept that this was not the case.
- The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing Arctic ice. It turned out that Gore had misread the study: In fact, four polar bears drowned because of a particularly violent storm. - The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream, throwing Europe into an ice age. The claimant's evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.
- The film blames global warming for species losses, including coral reef bleaching. The government could not find any evidence to support this claim.
- The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt, causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.
- The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting. The evidence was that it is in fact increasing.
- The film suggests that sea levels could rise by seven metres, causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact, the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40 centimetres over the next 100 years, and that there is no such threat of massive migration.
- The film claims that rising sea levels have caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The government was unable to substantiate this claim and the court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

The judge's final decision is expected within the week. It promises to change how and what students are taught, and to empower teachers and students alike who choose to think for themselves. In classrooms in Canada and elsewhere around the world, meanwhile, our children are not empowered to question the conventional wisdom on climate change, and teachers continue to show An Inconvenient Truth without any guidance to the children in their charge.

Update: That he won the Nobel Peace Prize only renews and deepens my disrespect for that committee and its processes. Fortunately, the economics Nobel is decided by different people. For more, see this from WaPo.

Today is Thanksgiving in Canada. Pumpkin pies, turkey, and lots of enjoyable wine and company.

Ahhhhh. Now I understand why class attendance was down on Thursday afternoon. Students start leaving for the Thanksgiving break on Thursday.

When I first started teaching in Canada, I taught a course that met at 2pm on MWF. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, only seven of the seventy students showed up for class. I never again held classes on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend.

Here is a good list of things to be thankful for.

Click on the cartoon to see a larger, more legible version.

Last week I wrote about a Winnipeg school that has banned junk food and about the black market that emerged in the wake of the prohibition.

What if, in addition to the ban, the school set up its own sales but charged double the prices one might pay in nearby convenience stores? The higher prices would reduce the quantity demanded and have the desired result of inducing students to eat less junk food, via the substitution effect.

I doubt if the de facto Pigouvian tax (i.e. the administratively set higher prices) by itself would have much effect if the black market were allowed to continue unless the tax were so small that the transaction costs of operating in the black market were larger than the perceived gains to the students, and so the ban would have to be continued.

If the school considers this option, I recommend they just put in vending machines with high prices and make no public statements about the prices. Announcing that they are charging high prices to discourage the consumption of junk food would raise red flags and cause controversy.

When students object to the high prices, the school can then claim that the proceeds are all used for X, where X is something that would otherwise be paid for from fungible funds so that indirectly the net proceeds would end up in the general fund of the school. Perhaps the best way to proceed would be as follows:

• Announce that due to funding shortages, programme X will have to be scaled back.
• After the firestorm of protests, reluctantly give in and concede that well, okay, we'll restore that funding, but the only way we can do so is to raise funds through junk food vending machines (plus kickbacks from the pop and junkfood distributors who will pay to have their machines in the schools).
• Don't tell anyone this is the plan you're following.

There is a strong implication that a Master's Degree in media studies is a worthless degree. My suspicion is that it ranks right up there with hydraulic socionomology on the worthless scale. Here is the statement with that implication, from an article, "Is College Worth the Cost, Part 2" by Anya Kamenetz on Yahoo.

The grad students I meet generally have high aspirations and a desire for meaningful careers. Yet it's still quite possible to become a novelist without an MFA, a journalist without a journalism degree, and just about anything without a master's in media studies.

I burst out laughing as I read that last phrase.

Overall, the article was interesting. It didn't talk only about the major successes of people who borrow to finance MBAs, nor about the financial losses of those who borrow for their M.Ed. But it did point out some of the different financial payoffs (I know, there are other non-pecuniary payoffs from education) from earning a Master's degree in various areas. For example,

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the payoff from social science and liberal arts master's degrees is actually negative — the average liberal arts MA earns less than the average of all BAs. [EE: but what about compared with the average of all social science and liberal arts BAs?]

And according to an in-depth study conducted back in 1999, those with Ph.D.s in the humanities had the highest debt and lowest income of all students in all disciplines.

Moreover, universities are increasingly relying on part-timers rather than tenured professors. That means the number of well-paying, secure jobs in academia is going down.

At the same time, though, many Masters students are willing to cough up mega-bucks to attend programmes like those at The University of Chicago, where the financial success of the graduates seems much more likely. See this [h/t to Brian Ferguson].

Again from Kamenetz,

In general, master's degree students come out with an average of about $32,000 in debt, while for Ph.D.s it's around $53,000. Those with master's degrees earn about 18 percent more than those with bachelor's degrees on average, and Ph.D.s earn about 50 percent more.

Technical fields have a bigger payoff. Graduates with master's degrees in computer science, engineering, or math earn about 50 percent more than those with bachelor's degrees.

Education, one of the most common master's degrees, has a comparatively small but positive payoff.

In discussing this piece, several of us agreed with its opening,

"Isn't a master's degree the new bachelor's?" I hear this all the time when I visit college campuses.

In some ways, the answer is yes. The number of master's degrees conferred is expected to rise 30 percent over the next 10 years, and 40 percent of college graduates will enroll in a graduate program within a decade after college.

If BAs are so common and easy to obtain, perhaps the value of an MA is that it distinguishes someone from other people by offering some further credentialization.

As a new academic year begins, here is an update of my open letter to my students.

To my students:

• When I was an undergraduate student, I had friends who got out of all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons; further, any excuse I didn't hear about as an undergrad I have heard enough times in my 58 years as a prof to be familiar with it. Deaths in the family, apartment fires, tears on command, cars breaking down, feigning symptoms of depression, you name it: I either knew someone who used it or have had to deal with it. I have a pretty good feeling for when you are trying to bull$hit me, so don’t try. And while I am very sympathetic if it’s legitimate, I am ruthless if you lie to me.
• I read quite a bit, and I am an okay writer. People who read copious amounts and who write a lot notice writing style, so if you try to plagiarize, I will almost always be able to tell. If I suspect you plagiarized work for my course, I will report you, and I will fail you in the course, and I may try to get you expelled from the university (as I did several years ago with one student whose offence was repeated and flagrant).
• If you miss class, please do not ask me if anything important happened. I wouldn't give the lecture if I didn't think it was important. What do you expect me to answer? “Yes, actually, on the one day you missed I decided to give a pop quiz that counts for 50% of your grade. Then we discussed the answers to the final exam, and then I gave everybody real, not invisible, chocolate chip cookies. Too bad you missed it.”
• Cell phones are disruptive. Please turn them off before you come to class. If yours rings in class, you will have to leave. In fact, because of past disruptions from students playing games or text messaging, if your cell phone is on your desk or in your lap, you will have to leave class, regardless of whether you are actually using it.
• The same thing applies to laptop computers. Don't bother bringing your laptop to class because I will just ask you to close it and put it away.
• And while we're on "don'ts", please do not eat in class. Doing so is very distracting to the students around you.
• During the lectures and discussions, I may seem fun and amusing, but that does not mean my tests are easy. My exams are hard.
• University is different from high school: reading all the material and going to class does not guarantee you an A or even a B unless you are considerably above average in ability. You actually have to study too.
• Class clowns may have been funny in high school, but they aren't in university. My classes are not like Canadian Parliament --- heckling is not permitted.
• If you are out on the town drunk and want to yell at me about your grade, then please do not ever take any of my classes again. Even though I strive to maintain anonymity in my marking, I will not want to see you again.
• And don't send me nasty e-mails about an exam or mark when you are in a drunken stupor at 4am. Believe me, you will regret it the next day.
• Please do not tell the other faculty members (including those in the department of hydraulic socionomology) what I say, unless it is good and about them or it is something you learned that you thought was really neat that also does not clash with their theoretical viewpoint; academics tend to be sensitive about criticism.
• I hope you are not offended by my jokes. They are funny, but sometimes not to religious conservatives or most liberals.
• If I am late for a meeting and rushing out of my office, or if I am trying to eat lunch in between classes, or if I am out with my colleagues for dinner, I might not be all that keen to answer questions about the upcoming midterm.
• This is for the boys: I'm hetero.
• This is for the girls: If you are flunking my class, do not make sly little suggestions about what you might do to earn a passing grade. You are flunking my class — why should I think your performance would be better in any other areas? Besides, I'm too old to care.
• Incompletes are for students who, for legitimate, documented reasons, could not finish the class. If you don't like your grade, you cannot take an incomplete.
• I will do my best to give the first midterm exam or at least a major assignment before the drop deadline. If you take the midterm and do badly, and then don't drop the class, and then come back 3 months later and try to act as if you were never in my class and you want me to sign a form, I won't. I'm a pushover for many things, but that does not include unwillingness to accept responsibility for your own actions or inactions.
• If I see you out on the town or at the sports bar, and you want to buy me a drink, you cannot currently be in my classes or ever take any of my classes again. Then probably you can buy me a drink.
• Similarly, I am delighted that you like my art work (The next major showing will be at Starbucks/Chapters in Masonville, North London, February 2008). And, yes, it is for sale. But do not think that if you buy some, you will get a higher mark in my class. You won't. So it is probably best if you wait to buy anything until at least a year after you have had your last class from me. And do not tell me while you are taking a class that you would like to buy something a year later - that won't work either.
• If I set up extra office hours to help you, and you don’t show up, I will refuse to set up any other office hours outside of regularly scheduled ones.
• When you tell me, “I’m getting kicked out of school because of the grade I got in your class,” this might make me feel bad, but it certainly makes me question whether this is the first/only bad grade you have ever received.
• If you come to see me because you are worried about your grade, and you use all the study suggestions that I might provide, and I really honestly believe that you are trying hard but you are still getting a bad grade, I will wish I had the guts to tell you that not everyone is meant for university, but most likely I won’t.
• If you ask a stupid question in class, I will try not to laugh at your question. I apologize if I do.
• Please ask all the questions you want to in class. Really. I learn from my mistakes. If I see anyone so much as roll an eye, I will pull them aside after class and tell them that’s inappropriate. If it is a very large class, though, and your questions seem to be dominating the class discussion, I may have to ask you to save some for after class.
• I like to tell stories. Once you figure this out, please do not use it to try to reduce the content and coverage of the actual, regularly scheduled lecture, and hence, the amount of material for which you will be responsible: You will still be responsible for the assigned material regardless of whether we cover it in class.
• If you work for me on a project, and you do a good job, I will write you a glowing letter of recommendation. If you work for me and do a lousy job, I will write a letter that, while not direct, will let the program or job you are applying for know what kind of a student you are. Remember that things like, “She was often on time,” or, “From my conversations with him, it is clear that he very much wants to go to graduate school,” are not really compliments.
• And, please, if you liked my class, if you feel that it changed the way you think, if you learned a lot, if you were challenged, please tell me. Because people in our economy face limited resources and time, seeing the lights go on for you is what keeps me going. I love teaching, and I am clearly not in it for the money. Actually, this last item goes for all your professors.

From this source [h/t to Rebekah]:

"The members of Imperial College UCU have voted overwhelmingly - by more than five-to-one - to reject Motion 30 - the boycott of Israeli academic institutions," said Imperial UCU member and leading UK academic Michael J. McGarvey, Reader in Molecular Virology at Imperial's Division of Medicine.

"In conjunction with the very similar results from the recent ballots of members at the University of Oxford and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, this clearly demonstrates that the vast majority of ordinary members of UCU are against a boycott and the damaging effects that this could have on British academia."

At the Imperial College, 82% of the faculty members voted to reject the boycott, 2% abstained, and 16% voted in favour of the boycott. These results lead to two questions:

• What's wrong with the 18% who did NOT vote against the boycott, and
• How can "leadership" like the UCU union leaders claim to represent their membership in the face of such overwhelming rejection of their motion? They should resign en masse.

Phil Miller recently linked to this story in the Mankato, Minnesota, Free Press telling of some people who visited Mankato, hoping to see pyramids and do some whale-watching. They had been duped or misled by this website, which was created by a Mankato professor, purportedly to illustrate to his students that they should not accept as truth everything they see on the internet. For me, it's just plain funny to read about the Mankato Hot Springs, the underwater world, and deep-sea fishing on the Minnesota River.

But it isn't quite so funny to people who don't know any better. From The Free Press story,

Rosaura Prada stood in tears Tuesday morning after several frustrating hours of trying to find someone to give her answers about a fake Web site that led her to Mankato.

Prada, of Edinburg, Texas, brought her mother, Maria Alcantar, of Garden City, Kan., on vacation to Mankato Monday to see the underwater city, the pyramid and maybe do some whale watching. But when they arrived at their motel, they found no one knew about these and dozens of other attractions that the Web site...

Apparently it has happened before, too. The site has existed for over a decade and has received mention in the NYtimes and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

There were some questions about whether the disclaimer on the site is adequate, but I have to wonder why such a site should need any disclaimers at all. At some point we have to tell people that spoofs exist and they, themselves, have the responsibility to check things out more thoroughly before spending money on vacations like these. And perhaps examples like this will help illustrate the importance of paying attention in geography and science classes in grade school.

I'm thinking of starting a similar page for Clinton, Ontario. If it weren't for all the schools located here, we'd be a dying or dead community, and we could use the injections of tourism dollars into our local economy.

I recently had the joy of speaking with a man who delighted us with tales of having quit school when he was 15. He had a summer job that extended into the fall, and he loved both the responsibility and the opportunity. He didn't bother to tell his mother that he wasn't going to school, and he enjoyed playing in the band so much that he kept going to school for the band, even after his extended summer job ended in the late autumn.

After regaling us with these tales, he said something like, "I guess you'll probably be writing about this..."

But I assured him that I wouldn't if he didn't want me to, and that even if I did, I wouldn't use his name.

He suggested that I should use the story as an example of what young people shouldn't do when they are young --- a sort of "Do as I say, not as I do story."

I disagreed. I think his story is a great example of "Do as I do, not as I say." He has had a marvelously successful life, he is a terrific person, and he is very kind and caring on top of it all. I see no reason that others shouldn't follow his example.

It's not that I think all young people should drop out of school. It's just that in his case it sounds as if that was the right decision.

Update: Let me add that he eventually did finish high school, did some programmes in business management and accounting, and became a very highly respected professional in his home town.

A large contingent of U.S. unions have issued a joint statement criticizing the British UCU proposed boycott of Israeli academics:

Over 30 American trade unions ranging from the American Federation of Teachers to the American Postal Workers have condemned the spate of boycott initiatives by trade union movements in the UK, branding them "inimical" and questioning the motives for singling out Israel.

The University and College Union motion to boycott Israeli academic institutions came in for strong criticism.

"Calls for academic boycotts of Israel are inimical to and counter to the principles of academic freedom and freedom of association, key principles for which academics and educational unions have struggled over many years. Rather than limiting interactions with Israeli educators, academics and educational institutions, we see the importance of maximizing, rather than proscribing, the free flow of ideas and academic interaction between peoples, cultures, religions and countries," the unions said in a statement issued late Thursday evening [July 22nd].

With atrocities occurring around the globe, the trade unionists questioned the motivations of the boycotters and asked why the motions are by nature one-sided: "With the large number of local, regional and international conflicts, with the diverse range of oppressive regimes around the world about which there is almost universal silence, we have to question the motives of these resolutions that single out one country in one conflict.

"We note with increasing concern that virtually all of these resolutions focus solely on objections to actions or policies of the Israeli government, and never on actions or policies of Palestinian or other Arab governments, parties or movements. We notice with increasing concern that characterization of the Palestinians as victims and Israel as victimizer is a staple of such resolutions. That there are victims and victimizers on all sides, and that many if not most of the victims of violence and repression on all sides are civilians, are essential items often not mentioned in these resolutions."

[h/t to BenS]

For the past several years, all of my teaching at The University of Western Ontario has been concentrated on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It makes for long days, but also long weekends and long blocks of time to read and do research.

I always conclude my last Thursday class with,

Thank you, keep well, and have a nice weekend. The weekend begins on Thursday at Western.

I wouldn't ordinarily have said something like that except that several students in previous years had told me that Thursday night was the best night to go out, and then they would just cut their classes on Fridays.

Imagine my surprise (and this just shows how naive I really am) when [h/t to Newmark's Door] I read this statement as the third of about 120 items in the list, "You Know You're in College When..."

3. Weekends start on Thursday.

Many of the students who had classes on MWF told me they didn't understand why I said that since they still had classes on Fridays. They tended to be among the better students, of course.

In the spring and summer, when I have taught at the International Study Centre at Herstmonceux Castle, there are no Friday classes. Fridays and Saturdays (and some Sundays) are reserved for field trips for various classes. So at that institution, the weekends do indeed begin on Thursdays.

And this coming academic year, I will be on sabbatical at Guelph University, where I will be visiting every Tuesday through Thursday. Once again, the weekends begin on Thursdays!

Digression: Further evidence of my naivete is that there are several references to "beer pong" in that list. I could easily infer that it is some kind of drinking game, but I had to look it up on Wikipedia to see what it really is all about. The most amusing part of that article comes at the end, when it talks about "Bud Pong", a variant of the game from Anheuser-Busch:

Bud Pong was the branded version of beer pong that brewer Anheuser-Busch said involved the drinking of water, not Budweiser or any other beer. In the summer of 2005, the company began marketing "Bud Pong" kits to its distributors. Francine I. Katz, vice president for communications and consumer affairs, was reported in The New York Times as saying that Bud Pong was not intended for underage drinkers because promotions were held in bars, not on campuses. And it did not promote binge drinking, she said, because official rules call for water to be used, not beer.

The New York Times quoted a bartender at a club near Clemson University as saying she had worked at several Bud Pong events and had "never seen anyone playing with water. It's always beer. It's just like any other beer pong."[1]

Some expressed incredulity at Anheuser-Busch's public statements. Henry Wechsler, director of the College Alcohol Study at the Harvard School of Public Health, said: "Why would alcohol companies promote games that involve drinking water? It's preposterous,"[1] while advertising news site Adjab opined that "someone playing Bud Pong with water is about as likely as a teenage kid using the rolling paper he bought at the convenience store to smoke tobacco."[10].

On October 19, 2005 the company professed surprise that some players were using beer instead of water, and withdrew the game in response to criticism. Francine I. Katz stated that "Despite our explicit guidelines, there may have been instances where this promotion was not carried out in the manner it was intended."

If I ever play this game, I want Phil Miller on my team. And Ms. Eclectic thinks it should be played with single-malt scotch!

I initially figured, "Yup, rich kids of privilege; athletes. They did it." Obviously, in canceling the remainder of last year's season, the president of Duke agreed with me.

Then I started reading things indicating there were holes in the prosecution's case. Big holes. But I never read much about it; and I never followed the details.

Here is a tidy summary from the NYTimes. I must say, no DNA match looks more like "innocent" than just "not guilty" to me.

By a Druze student from Israel [h/t to MA]:

As a holder of two degrees from the University of Haifa and a PhD student at the University of London, I traveled to Bournemouth for the meeting of the British University and College Union (UCU) as an Israeli delegate on behalf of the Israeli Council for Academic Freedom.

The discussions at the meeting regarding the imposition of a boycott on Israeli academia took place in a hostile environment while ignoring all the facts we presented regarding freedom of expression and academic freedom at Israeli institutions of higher learning.

Evidence that Israeli lecturers who hold pro-Palestinian views are able to express their positions uninterrupted both in their research work and lectures, as well as in the media, had no effect whatsoever on the discussions.

Even when we presented a list of organizations and research centers that operate in the framework of Israeli universities and boast Israeli-Palestinian or Israeli-Arab cooperation, with the promotion of ties between the peoples their top agenda, it did not make a difference.

... The truth is that it is clear to this group of lecturers that Israeli academia is least at fault for what is happening in our region, certainly when compared to the freedom of expression at our neighbors' academic institutions. After all, the English know full well that the technological, academic, and cultural achievements in the State of Israel stem first and foremost from the freedom of expression and research in every field in Israel.

Therefore, the figures we presented were futile, because all they cared about was their one and only objective: De-legitimizing the State of Israel with no relation to its academia; presenting it as an apartheid state that deprives its minorities of elementary rights such as education and the freedom of expression.

The UCU: a bunch of scary non-scholars.

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East [SPME] have issued a scathing criticism of the UCU's motions proposing a boycott of Israeli academics. SPME seems to me to be somewhat leftwing, with many members opposed to the west-bank settlements; nevertheless they have spoken out against the boycott. Here, in part, is the SPME reaction:

[T]his action [was] instigated by a small group of anti-Israel union delegates who appear not to represent the views of the union membership and who have singled out Israel for opprobrium. The motion is an attempt to delegitimize and to silence the only Jewish state in the world, one of a tiny minority of states in the Middle East that truly honor academic freedom. In Israel's prestigious universities, faculty members represent all religious and political persuasions. Many Israeli professors are Arabs; many are Muslims. How professors at universities in Arab countries are Jews? How many are non-Muslims? How many belong to nondominant Muslim denominations?

In Iran, professors have been purged from universities for ideological and religious reasons, and an American academic, Haleh Esfandiari, was recently imprisoned while visiting her 93-year-old mother. Despite the gargantuan scale of human rights abuses in Sudan, Syria, China, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, Gaza, the UCU is not considering a boycott against any of them. Why not?


The proposed boycott is immoral and antithetical to academic principles. It shuts off dialogue, when one of the key purposes of universities is to promote dialogue and thereby the pursuit of truth. It ignores existing projects where Israeli and Palestinian academics cooperate. It requires academics to hew to one ideological line. And it constitutes discrimination on the basis of nationality.

That is the title of this piece by Bradley Burston [h/t to MA]. Here is an excerpt, but it is very well-written. rtwt [read the whole thing].

Just for the sake of argument, let's suppose that you're a British academic. You believe strongly that the occupation must end, that the Palestinians should have an independent state, that Israel's military and diplomatic policies are wrongheaded to the point of immorality.

What to do? Simple. Find the one group within Israeli society which has consistently, vigorously and courageously campaigned against the occupation since its inception.

Then attack them.

...No matter that in the whole of the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein managed to hit all of Israel with a total of 39 missiles, and that two weeks ago, Hamas sent 40 rockets into the Sderot area in the space of a single day.

No matter that the Sapir College, Israel's largest public college, has for years been a primary target of Qassam crews.

No matter that in boycotting all Israeli academics on the basis of their being Israelis, the measure is patently racist, a grotesque reprise of the history of curbing academic freedom.

No matter that Israeli Arab academics who are staunchly opposed to the occupation are vehement opponents of the boycott as well.

No matter, even, that opposition to the boycott runs strong within the British University and College Union itself. In fact, all the more reason to press on.

For the genuine elitist, the unpopularity of an opinion is the best assurance of its real value.

Perhaps this is why the whole boycott campaign smacks of a uniquely far-left British brand of moral masturbation, a desperate, delusional, sterile, supremely self-contained form of non-activism that risks nothing even as it changes nothing.

Update: For more analysis and discussion, check out Lower Education from the New Republic by Marty Peretz. His article, along with comments there, offer some additional insights about the nature of the institutions that have been pushing the boycott.

First it was the AUT leadership, voting a boycott of Israeli scholars, and they were rebuffed, to say the least, by their general membership.

Then it was NATFHE, another union of academics, voting to boycott Israeli scholars, but they soon merged with the AUT, leaving a vote of their directors as meaningless.

But now the leadership of the combined unions, under the general grouping, the UCU, have voted to support a boycott of Israeli academics.

I strongly oppose their views on two grounds:

1. First, I am not convinced that Israel is doing much wrong with its occupation of the west bank. Failure to occupy the west bank would have been like telling robbers that if they get caught, the only punishment is that they must give back what they have stolen and that there will be no further deterrence. That's just plain silly because it doesn't discourage robbers from trying to steal again and again.
   
   Israel repelled an attack in 1967, only to have to fight another war in 1973. After that war, they said (and quite rightly under both international law and following just plain common sense) if you folks are going to keep using these lands as launching pads, both literally and figuratively, we're going to hold them until you renounce such plans. Such renunciation has not occurred.
   
   Nevertheless, Israel has been open and democratic. Yes, it cut off payments to the Palestinian Authority once Hamas was elected, and for bloody good reason: Hamas has as one of its primary goals the eradication of Israel (and, incidentally, the Jews who live there). There is no earthly reason why the UCU should expect Israel to continue making payments to a sworn enemy. If they really disagree, let them all contribute 10% of their salaries to the US Republican party.
2. But even if you don't accept my first point, this one is compelling: in the name of academic freedom, there is no justifiable reason for this boycott. If the UCU wants to single out academics for boycott, let them single out those from China or Iraq or Iran or Egypt or any other place where there are documented human rights abuses or flagrant violations of the concept of academic freedom. Academic freedom says that we scholars should assess the works of others on their merits, not on the basis of the politics of their home country.
   
   Instead, the UCU picks on Israeli academics. There can be only one reason for this: anti-semitism, pure and simple. And it is frightening.

For more, please see this, which summarizes the motions that were passed by the UCU Congress.

Also, please see this from Engage, which says

1 This is not a decision to institute a boycott. That decision can only be made by the whole membership through a ballot. That was the commitment on which Sally Hunt was elected as General Secretary. Congress also backed a policy which does not allow a boycott of Israeli academic institutions unless it is called for by Israeli campus trade unions. Which it won't be.

2 UCU Congress has today voted for a roadshow touring colleges and universities drumming up support for an exclusion of Israelis - and only Israelis - from our campuses, our conferences and our journals. The union is mandated to finance this tour and to stack the debate in favour of a pro-boycott outcome.

And also see this for a reaction.

And one final point: where is the outrage from non-Jewish, non-Israeli organizations? I am embarrassed and appalled by the (so far) lack of responses from such groups. Am I the only gentile in the universe who sees things this way?

[h/t to MA for the links]

Update #1: also see this from Melanie Phillips and this from Little Green Footballs.

Update #2: Both Melanie Phillips and Normblog quote this from Ha'aretz:

On Wednesday, representatives of the new British University and College Union (UCU) will be meeting in Bournemouth. On the agenda is another proposal to boycott Israel's academic institutions. These proposals have become as regular and as predictable as Qassam attacks on Sderot. The fact that studies at the Sapir Academic College in Sderot are not taking place because of the constant rocket fire from Gaza, even though the college is not in occupied territory and Gaza is no longer occupied, apparently does not bother British academia. The fact that Hamas, which controls the Palestinian Authority, does not recognize even pre-1967 Israel, and commits acts of terror against civilians, does not matter either. These nuances did not stop one boycott initiator from saying last week that justice in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is entirely on one side.

Norm continued,

This editorial in Haaretz rightly identifies the thinking of the would-be boycotters as impelled by a desire to de-legitimize Israel - identifies it with 'the position that the very birth of the Jewish state was a mistake'.

Update #3: And check out Stephen Pollard's column about boycotts of Israel.

Update #4: Rénald writes,

I find this totally ridiculous! Why of all people attack the scholars??? Why not the bakers, bankers and doughnut makers? It would make as much sense.

Boycotting scholars is like boycotting knowledge...it can only lead to ignorance or maybe they are already there!

to which BenS adds,

Of course, but why boycott any Jewish institution? The boycotters are playing copycat and operating like an ignorant herd….which they are. I’ll make one exception for these ignorant hypocrites: let them boycott for themselves and their families any medical or scientific advancement created or produced by Jews -— but being hypocrites, they won’t do that.

Update #5 Tim Worstall says that English academic unions are not worth worrying about.

The academic unions are well known to be populated and run by people with any number of very peculiar bees buzzing under their bonnets. The rest of us look upon them almost fondly, as examples of a well meaning but possibly futile form of Care in the Community.

The idea that we should take seriously anything that comes from such obvious nutters simply never occurs to those of us outside the hallowed halls of academe.

I hope he's right, but the UCU is still wrong and very unscholarly.

It is so difficult to understand how scholars worthy of the name got to these views. Click here for a complete list of the motions that are to be discussed at the Bournemouth meetings later this week. I will not reproduce them here.

My recommendation: find out which schools support such anti-Semitic drivel, such blind one-sidedness, and boycott academics from those institutions. My guess is that such a retaliatory boycott would be totally unnecessary; I cannot imagine the authors of these motions produce much, if any, work that is truly scholarly in nature.

I see from the SPME website that there will be a booth at the Congress, operated by a combination of Israeli and Palestinian students, presenting examples of Israeli/Palestinian co-operation.

As most of you know, I am back teaching at Herstmonceux Castle again this summer (albeit for only six weeks this summer). I took this photo this afternoon.



Here are the Wisteria in the castle courtyard. Everything in England is blooming much earlier this year because the weather has been so warm (around +20 C for the past two weeks or so). The dryness is once again, however, raising questions about how water should be allocated (see this for a description of the problems faced last year).



Here is the view of the castle gardens from my office window (through the crenellations at the top of the parapet).

Melanie Phillips is reporting this story from the wire services:

Schools are dropping controversial subjects from history lessons - such as the Holocaust and the Crusades - because teachers do not want to cause offence, Government research has found. The way the slave trade is taught can lead white children - as well as black pupils - to feel alienated, according to the study by the Historical Association. And a lack of factual knowledge among teachers, particularly in primary schools, is leading to ’shallow'’ lessons on emotive and difficult subjects.

Some teachers have even dropped the Holocaust completely from lessons over fears that Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic reactions in class. And one school avoided teaching the Crusades because its ‘balanced'’ handling of the topic would directly contradict what was taught in local mosques.

The report, funded by the Department for Education and Skills, said: ‘Teachers and schools avoid emotive and controversial history for a variety of reasons, some of which are well-intentioned. ‘Staff may wish to avoid causing offence or appearing insensitive to individuals or groups in their classes. In particular settings, teachers of history are unwilling to challenge highly contentious or charged versions of history in which pupils are steeped at home, in their community or in a place of worship.'’

I would have let this person write a make-up exam. From Curling, a blog I maintain along with Alan Adamson,

Last year, Denmark's Jensen had to leave the competition early due to health concerns. Her team battled valiantly without her, losing the final round-robin game to finish 6-5 and one win away from tiebreakers.

This year, another Dane will be departing early. Second Camilla Jensen, Angelina's sister, leaves Friday to write a critical university exam back home. She is now out of the starting lineup with two round-robin matches left to play.

"It's my whole education, so sadly I must go," said Jensen. "So let's go Denmark, let's get those Olympic points."

I realize this was a huge exam at the end of her educational career, unlike the examinations we give our students in North America, even at the end of a year-long course in Canada. But I still would have let her write a make-up exam somehow. Hell, we let people write make-up exams for competitions in every other sport; why not the Women's World Championships in Curling? As it was, Denmark lost to Canada in the first game the team played without her, and then proceeded to lose to last place Italy in the next game Denmark played.

All that having been said, it certainly is nice to learn about a student with so much dedication to her education.

Bill Sjostrom at Atlantic Blog brutally dissects a poll of international relations "scholars". The poll construction and results reveal the field of international relations to be rife with left-wing anti-Semites. The title of this posting came from this paragraph:

[I]n questions 66 and 67, only 8% (6% in Canada) support an attack against North Korea if it continues developing nuclear weapons, but that jumps to 53% (50% in Canada) if the Security Council approves. Questions 68 and 69 show the same result for Iran. Support for invading Iran if it continues to develop nuclear weapons jumps from 9% without Security Council approval (7% in Canada) to 48% with it (41% in Canada). The poll offers for no explanation for the fetish for the largely irrelevant Security Council. Is there something about IR scholars wanting to keep Putin happy?

My nephew sent me these. I have no idea where he got them. Some of them are "tears-streaming-down-the-cheeks" funny.

Last week, the C.D. Howe Institute released a study saying that "Canada Needs More Graduate Students." I usually agree with the results of the research done under the auspices of the C.D. Howe Institute, but I have two very sizable nits to pick with this one.

• First, I abhor seeing things cast as "needs". Anytime I read or hear about someone using the word "need", I figure they're trying to put their hands in someone else's pocket. They are, in reality, trying to get taxpayers to pony up for something that will benefit only a few. And in this case (surprise!) academicians think taxpayers ought to cough up more for graduate students, schools, research, etc. No vested interest there... No rent-seeking there, nosiree Bob!
• Second, In the increasingly global economy, or even with increased mobility within Canada, it is not at all clear to me that Canada, especially Eastern Canada, has or should try to develop, a comparative advantage in the production of graduate education. Instead, we should ship our good undergraduate students to the U.S. and elsewhere (including Alberta? see below), let the taxpayers of those jurisdictions foot the majority of the bill for the education, and then hire all the people we want (not need!) from those places.

Sadly, the report seems to confuse the idea that "to grow, we will want well-trained employees" with the conclusion "therefore the gubmnt should train 'em." It doesn't follow.

In fact, we should even consider closing down all our graduate schools and letting all the highly paid professors go wherever the market might take them. For every one of those profs who leaves, we can probably hire at least two assistant professors. We tell 'em we expect them to do research and keep current, but they won't have graduate courses to teach, and they won't have graduate students to be research assistants. I really doubt that undergrad education in Canada would suffer as a result. We would have more professors, albeit on average likely to be of lower research quality, but they would have a much lower student-faculty ratio.

Perhaps Canadians would be better off if Canada let others subsidize post-graduate education. We could then free-ride off their efforts and use our scarce resources to concentrate on something else.

There is one possible exception to this plan: Given that Alberta seems determined to plough a truckload of its oil revenues into research and post-graduate education (see this), perhaps the rest of Canada should try to free ride on Alberta (and the rest of the world). Even so, there is still no compelling evidence that the rest of Canada "needs" more graduate students.

Stephen Karlson at Cold Springs Shops has some good examples of the trade-offs that many universities are forced to make:

Students are affected by poor resource allocation in other ways. Class sizes have grown since 2000 because of a 20 percent increase in undergraduate enrollment, without an equivalent increase in full-time faculty. Students are closed out of classes because there are not enough faculty to teach them. Graduate students, the life-blood of a research university, have dropped by 10 percent since 1970. Instead of hiring new faculty and attracting new graduate students, the university has devoted scarce resources to boosting the number of athletic coaches and staff by 25 percent since 1994. What's more important at the university, better education or better games?

(We continue to manage with half the faculty we had in the late 1980s, and I have now counted 10 or 11 requests to get into my closed classes, which sold out during November early registration. If there were some way I could run my classes as an independent contractor ...)

... Ask a professor to meet more classes or larger classes, see if he hits the top journals as frequently. Hire adjuncts to meet multiple sections of introductory classes: the remaining tenured faculty who were hired to direct dissertations will get the message. Devote some of your capacity to chasing the excess demand for prestige degrees, listen to the discontent from in-state parents and students.

I realize that some universities claim that having a top-ranked athletic programme will attract better scholars, better students, and more donations for academic programmes. I have yet to see any evidence supporting this argument.

The executive committee in District 12 of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Union will be voting this Thursday on a motion that criticizes Israel for the problems in the middle east [link via Judith]. The text of the motion is

BIRT District 12 STBU Council endorse the following motion for AMPA 2007:

“BIRT AMPA 2007 urge the Provincial Executive to express OSSTF’s criticism of Israel’s continued violation of the human rights of Palestinians as well as its belief that the achievement of justice for the Palestinians will help bring peace to the Middle East and to the people of Israel by taking the following actions:

a) Request the provincial Human Rights Committee to develop an educational campaign for its members as well as curricular materials for the classroom, to be ready for September’s Provincial Council, on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, Palestine’s role in this conflict, the role of Canada in the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the international community’s response.

b) Request the Human Rights Committee to devise a campaign to materially and morally support the students of the occupied territories unable to receive an education due to the occupation and make links with teacher unions and student organizations both in the occupied territories as well as Israel who are seeking a just and peaceful solution to this region’s conflicts.

c) Write a letter to the prime minister as well as to the leaders of the oppositions parties, urging them to:

i) Pressure Israel to comply with international humanitarian law including the decisions of the International Court of Justice and the Fourth Geneva Convention;

ii) Call for Israel’s withdrawal from all occupied territories;

iii) Demand the removal of Israel’s “separation wall” which has resulted in the annexation of Palestinian land and extreme hardship in the daily lives of Palestinians;

iv) Pressure Israel to restore the revenues collected by them to their rightful owners, the Palestinian Authority;

v) Publicly criticize Israel’s aggression against Gaza and Lebanon and

vi) End Canada’s sanctions against the democratically elected government of
Palestine which has resulted in the paralysis of the civil service and the extreme impoverishment of the Palestinian people.

d) Develop ways OSSTF can demonstrate its support of the growing international call for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel.”

Estimated cost: to be determined
J. Kunin, Vaughan Road Academy/H. Hulays, Harbord CI

This is sheer nonsense, and it is frightening that educators in Ontario might believe it. It smacks of standard appeasement, and it is wrong.

• The security fence (it really is more of a fence than a "wall") has saved countless lives in Israel by deterring suicide bombers.
• Poor education in Palestine can hardly be seen as the fault of Israel when Palestinian leaders have absconded with billions of international aid and when their schools spend so much time teaching hatred of Jews and not enough teaching basic skills.
• The Canadian gubmnt was absolutely right to withhold aid to the Palestinians after the election of Hamas, an organization with the stated goal of destroying Israel. That the Ontario teachers want this aid re-instated suggests to me that they, too, favour the obliteration of Israel.
• Why no mention of the kidnapping of Israelis by Hamas and by Hezbollah?
• And why no mention of the incessant hail of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel?
• And how about condemning human rights abuses in China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela? Or don't those count?

What appalls, puzzles, and angers me is that educators here and in the UK, so eager to support a David vs. Goliath cause, can be so blind to the facts and the history of the Middle East. I can only conclude that there is a strong anti-semitism underlying this motion, and I shudder to think of the biases its sponsors might be imparting to their students.

As Charles says at LGF,

At every juncture, over the course of many years, the Palestinians have shown the world that they simply don’t care about having a state. They care about destroying Israel. After Arafat died, the Palestinians had a historic opportunity to change course and move toward statehood—and instead they elected an openly genocidal terrorist gang.

I really doubt if the OSSTF supporters of this resolution understand any of this.

Enrolments in economics courses at The University of Western Ontario were at an all-time high during and just after the major recession of the early 1980s. They are much lower now. There has been some speculation that this is due to the counter-cyclical nature of economics enrolments, but my casual empiricism suggests that economics enrolments elsewhere have not declined as the good times rolled.

Is it possible that grades play a role in enrolments? After all, people respond to incentives, and students are people, too.

Here are the percentages of A's and B's in our Economics intro (020) course, compared with the percentages of A's and B's in other social science courses at this university (Economics is the lower line):



And here are the respective percentages of F's given (economics is the upper line):



I can attest that we have had approximately the same grade distribution in our introductory economics courses for over 35 years. It appears that grade inflation elsewhere has left us looking mean and ugly. Furthermore, if anything, given the elimination of grade 13 in Ontario, students are nowadays performing worse than they did five years ago, so, no, the other departments are not reflecting the influx of better students.

Now for a possible solution: Suppose we cannot convince professors in other departments to toughen up their grading standards. Should we lower our standards and begin giving higher grades in our intro course (current students need not reply)?

My friends at other institutions in the US tell me that if their economics departments tried to give fewer than 45% A's and B's and tried to fail more than 5% of the students (both of which seem standard in economics here at UWO — see the graphs), there would be mass riots. But perhaps that's because the students in those institutions have come to expect easy grading.

Quite honestly, I don't know how I could, in good conscience, pass the students who are failing under our current grading regime.

Ms. Eclectic keeps reminding me what a truly horrible undergraduate student I was (failed a math course, got D's in intro micro and in labour econ, and "Gentlemen's C-'s" in tonnes of other courses); she says my expectations are too high (current students need not comment to agree).

From the Times Higher Education Supplement,

Twenty-five UK academics have been found guilty of research misconduct in the past three years, including faking results, plagiarism and misuse of funds.

A Times Higher investigation using the Freedom of Information Act shows a sharp increase in the number of cases in universities...

Some 105 institutions responded to the survey. There were 73 cases of alleged misconduct investigated between 2004-06. Of these, 25 were upheld, 37 were dismissed, and 11 results are pending.

These results are based on self-reported data by the universities. That means the number of instances is almost surely greater than 25. Many are probably undetected and some are probably under-reported.

[T]here were fears that some universities were still not proactive enough in encouraging staff to report concerns - 63 institutions, including several research-intensive universities, had not investigated any cases in the three years.

Although some institutions did not provide details, plagiarism was the most common allegation, followed by the misrepresentation or fabrication of results and misuse of research funds.

From Richard Vedder, courtesy of Sparky:

On average, I like college students more than university administrators. True, college students are often immature, overly hedonistic, and abysmally ignorant of many of the fundamental events, persons, and concepts of Western civilization. But they are mostly sincere, usually honest, and generally mean well. That is as true today as when I began teaching back in the days of Socrates (actually, a couple dozen centuries thereafter). By contrast, many college administrators these days simply are untruthful, pompous, self-righteous and arrogant. I find the sins of students less egregious on average than those of individuals running institutions.

While this view is generally correct, let me add that at the present time, I am very happy with our president and dean.

From Phil Miller comes this reference.

Students in the hospitality and restaurant administration program at Metropolitan State College of Denver are learning the art of beer in one of the only programs of its kind in the country. ...

It's a six-week course and the first part of the class includes a course on safety issues regarding serving and consumption of alcohol.

They have to be 21 or older to get into the class, and there's usually a waiting list.

A waiting list? Why don't they lay on another section of it? If the costs would be "too high" (i.e. the incremental costs would exceed the incremental revenues), then why don't they raise the price?

Oh, yeah. This is the world of gubmnt-funded academics.

The Canadian academic scene is generally very pleasant:

• Classes begin after Labour Day, unlike many universities in the US.
• We often have a break of nearly a month over Christmas and New Year's Day (with a few exams thrown in during that period).
• We have a one-week "reading week" or "conference week" in February with no classes, during which students allegedly read for their term papers and confer with their professors; in reality, it is called "slack week", and everyone travels.
• Best of all, classes end in early April (followed by another exam period). That's right, we have a 7-month academic year.

So how can there be any drawbacks (unless you don't like cold weather)?

Here is one: Today is US Thanksgiving; I have classes this afternoon and will not be able to watch the NFL games scheduled for this afternoon. That would ordinarily be a major drawback for me.

However, today my economics and sports class will have a "field trip" to an on-campus pub, where we will watch the first afternoon NFL game, so it's not all that bad! (except it is the Dolphins vs. the Lions, two teams with not-great records.)

[No deep-fried turkey, though]

embarrassing addendum: another drawback is being in the office and forgetting that people in the US typically are not available for work calls today. Apologies to those of you in the US whom I called this morning.

Not-so-embarrassing update: Here is a photo of our "field trip":

Do we have old stuff that we keep rehashing in economics, and does that make us cantankerous and silly? Were instantaneously adjusting rationalized expectorations and overlapping generalizations* the macroeconomists' analogue to post-modernism in English literature?

I was led to these questions by Newmark's Door, the first blog I read each weekday morning. Craig scours the blogosphere and provides his readers with interesting and insightful material. Here is just one example [Follow those links to see the context for this quote]:

Why are English departments the way they are? It seems to me that the explanation for their behavior is simple: you spend decades of your life studying something that's essentially static, and trying to come up with new reasons for it to be relevant, because it's simply not hip anymore to insist on the value of literature for its own sake. And really, there's only so much post-feminist Lacanian theory that you can apply to Chaucer before it becomes patently absurd. So you know you're smart, and you know that literature has value, but you're always having to justify your existence to each other and the world at large. It will eventually either drive you insane or turn you into an embittered scheming husk of a human.

*Otherwise known as instantaneous adjustments, rational expectations, and overlapping generations.

Is this the correct use of the word "bleg"? a Blog Beg?

We do not often receive applications from students who have taken the US Advance Placement economics courses, but we are anticipating having to deal with this question in the near future. How do your schools deal with advance placement?

1. One possibility is to pat the students on the head and say, "Good work! You will be especially well-prepared for our introductory course."
2. Another is to let those students who did well in the AP courses use them as a pre-requisite for taking our advanced courses. We would not give them university-level credit for the courses, but it would help them move on to more advanced courses more quickly.
3. A third possibility is to give them actual course credit for their AP economics course if they did well (earned a 4 or 5, or maybe only if they earned a 5, but watch out for AP grade inflation!).

Given the performances I have seen by students who have taken, and received high grades in, what I would ordinarily think of as good high school courses (on average, with a few notable exceptions, their performances have not been great), my inclination is to go for option one. But I can be persuaded to go for the second option. I'd really like some help here.

For a summary of the results of some of our research on "What Good is High School Economics?" check out that link.

[With thanks to Craig Newmark for his pre-bleg assistance in just formulating the options]

A recently released report from the C.D.Howe Institute decries the low levels of spending on R&D in Canada:

Despite [various forms of gubmnt] support, Canada ranks low in aggregate R&D intensity — that is, R&D as a percentage of gross domestic product. On this measure, business R&D in Canada in 2004 was 1.07 percent — below the average of 1.53 percent for OECD member countries and well below that of other Group of Seven major industrialized economies except Italy. Canada also compares poorly to Sweden, for example, which provides few direct subsidies for R&D (but has a very competitive production tax regime): business R&D as a percentage of GDP in Sweden is about double that in Canada.

What to do?

Why is this a problem? Why do anything? Canada also ranks low in the production of oranges. And relative to total GDP, Canada also ranks low in manufacturing. In these areas, we recognize, acknowledge, and accept that Canada has a comparative advantage in the production of other things. Why don't we do the same thing with R&D?

The study demonstrates that a different set of tax policies would almost surely induce more spending on R&D, and that such policies would probably be efficient. But maybe, just maybe, Canada should get out of the R&D business and try to free-ride as much as possible on the R&D carried out elsewhere. And even if Canada is unable to free ride on the R&D of others, maybe we should import rather than produce our R&D.

Whatever your reaction to this, please do not give me the tired song about how Canada needs to support R&D to maintain its competitive edge and to keep our educational system at the forefront of knowledge. We don't need a number one educational system in Canada; we have almost always recommended that our top grad students study at the best schools in the US — there's nothing wrong with out-sourcing that, too.

Addendum: I am all in favour of tax policies that promote efficiency, and if such policies happen to promote more R&D spending, so be it. My objection above is to the notion that more R&D spending in Canada is, per se, a good thing.

Researchers have found that when university tuition fees increase, students drink less beer. One possible explanation is that they substitute within a given budget. Another possible explanation is that students must work more, and more students must take on part-time work, when tuition fees increase (and as a result have less time and inclination to drink). Either way, it looks as if education and drunken stupors tend to be weak substitutes in the utility functions of students.

A recent study led by Nick Foskett, professor of education at the University of Southampton, looked at the experience of fee-paying students in Australia and New Zealand, as well as asking British students about their plans and expectations. Among a number of broader conclusions, they expect an outbreak of sobriety in the student body.

This is partly for social reasons. As students pay higher fees, they become more likely to have some kind of job and more likely to be living at home. Neither trend is conducive to heavy boozing.

But there is another, more direct, channel of causation. Booze costs money, even at the Leeds student union bar. Students with less disposable income may, rather than mugging old ladies or turning to prostitution, simply drink less.

[see Tim Harford for details]

But if the price of beer changes, will university enrolments change by much? Probably not. "Gee, beer is cheaper now, so I think