Higher Education, Liberal Arts and Shakespeare – NYTimes.com. My comment: First, liberal arts is not a luxury. Try this for starters. When you try to move up the corporate ladder, you are not going to get many chances to ask higher ups what they “meant by that”; and you better hope you can write good […]
Research Indicates Even Top Departments Calling A No-Go For a PhD, a Guess What? A PhD!
December 12, 2014 by
Here is a link to the paper. (I will make my point after quoting from the paper.) JEP (28,3) p. 205 – The Research Productivity of New PhDs in Economics: The Surprisingly High Non-success of the Successful. Here is an important conclusion quoted from the paper. “…At the majority of the departments ranked in the top […]
An Example of College Benefitting From the Dumbing Down of High School
November 18, 2014 by
Remedial Courses in College Stir Questions Over Cost, Effectiveness – WSJ. Here is what I wrote. “From decades of observation – as a math professor – I can shed light on a fair amount of the problem. Poor high school education starts in college, not high school. In a nutshell, here is what happens. (Actual cases, […]
Don’t Let Colleges Conflate Budget Crises With Money Grabs – To The Detriment of Their Citizens
October 9, 2014 by
This story is about state schools admitting out-of-state students over in-state ones just for tuition. But that is not the whole story, as I described in my comment, posted below. Colleges’ Wider Search for Applicants Crowds Out Local Students – WSJ. “Yes, budgets have been cut – but that is not the whole story. […]
Another Comment on David Brooks “Becoming a Real Person”
September 9, 2014 by
Becoming a Real Person – NYTimes.com. “For the life of me, I cannot fathom why David Brooks and Frank Bruni (See his piece from yesterday.) are discussing what college should be, what colleges should do, etc. , when, overall, colleges (elite or not) have become corrupt institutions. As well meaning as Brooks and Bruni may […]
Princeton Grading Policy Change – Solving for the Winning Solution? And to What Problem?
August 8, 2014 by
There is a report in today’s New York Times. It has links to the announcement by Princeton’s president, and to the faculty committee’s report. Princeton Is Proposing to End Limit on Giving A’s – NYTimes.com. The reason I ask if this is solving for the “winning solution” (See below for a definition) is that Princeton […]
Colleges’ New Aid Target Sometimes is Just a Way to Make More “Profit”, Especially at Private Schools.
Colleges’ New Aid Target: the Middle Class – WSJ. Here was my comment. “Most private universities have only raised their published tuition. For over a decade, their net tuition has remained fairly constant. Basically, they give a discount by calling it “financial aid”. (I think economists call it discriminatory pricing, a way to maximize revenue and profit.) […]