A reason to ban computers in the classroom?

This post on the Marginal Revolution blog and this report from Boston.com say that students learn better when they take notes by hand than when they take them with a computer. The post has a links to a report on the study by VOX and the original study.

Another depressing assessment of learning at college

A money quote: "'Colleges are increasing their attention to the social aspects on campus to keep students happy; there is not enough rigorous academic instruction,' he said."

WSJ article

TOPICS: Education
SUMMARY: Four in 10 U.S. college students graduate without the complex reasoning skills to manage white-collar work, according to the results of a test of nearly 32,000 students.
CLASSROOM APPLICATION: If complex reasoning skills is a form of human capital, then instructors can present the improvements in complex reasoning skills during the four years of college as improvements in human capital. One issue for students to investigate is the relationship between improvements in human capital during the college years and the initial position at the beginning of the freshman year.
QUESTIONS: 
1. (Introductory) Why is the ability of managers to reason through complex problems important to businesses?

2. (Advanced) Are students who begin college with poor complex reasoning skills more likely than students who begin college with good complex reasoning skills more likely to improve these skills during their college years?

3. (Advanced) The article notes the possibility of "selection bias" in estimating the scores of college freshmen and seniors. What is selection bias? Why is it important to statistically correct for selection bias when comparing the test scores of freshmen and seniors?

Reviewed By: James Dearden, Lehigh University

Fwd: (2014Fall) PRIN OF ECON - MICRO: Median Earnings by Major

The bottom of this article has a nice search feature that gives you the # of majors, median, 75th and 25th percentile earnings, and the % working in jobs, broken into three categories that I don't fully understand. The medians for Economics and Business Economics are $47,000 and $46,000 respectively.  Here are some other medians: Petroleum Eng. - $110,000, Finance - $47,000, Accounting - $45,000, Computer and Information Systems - $45,000, Psychology - $41,000, General Business - $40,000, Business Mgmt. and Admin. - $38,000, Marketing and Marketing Research - $38,000, Political Science and Government - $38,000, History - $34,000, and Social Work - $30,000.

" These figures don't necessarily mean that switching majors will bring a big financial boost. Economics majors, for example, earn $7,000 — 18 percent — more on average than "general business" majors, but economics is also generally considered a harder and more prestigious major, and therefore tends to draw more top students; it's unlikely all those business majors could have gotten themselves a $7,000 raise just by switching to econ. Similarly, majoring in astrophysics won't net a $62,000 salary for someone who flunks Calculus 101. And of course, if a huge surge of students really did decide to follow the dollar signs into petroleum engineering, the glut of supply would likely drive down wages."

Online Learning @ Stanford

This opinion in the WSJ describes John Taylor's experience teaching an online course at Stanford. 

Creativity

The BBC's advice on sparking creativity.

Education is a scarce good

I think that learning is a noble pursuit, that I am privileged to help students learn, and that students are privileged to have the opportunity to learn. Here is some advice to help students make the most of their opportunity. Remember: people generally get out of an activity what they put into it.

You will learn more as you devote more time and effort to this class. Since education is not a free good, the cost of learning is not zero. The cost comes in many forms, some explicit and some implicit. The explicit costs include the tuition you pay and any subsidy that the government gives to the University. The implicit costs are the time and effort that you, the student, must devote to your classes. The rule of thumb is to spend three hours studying outside of class for every hour spent inside class. Completing an economics class successfully is unlikely without spending a considerable amount of your time and effort. If you limit your effort to only the time spent in the classroom, you will not learn much and the experience might be miserable.

“Read, read, read; write, write, write; think, think, think” is how a group of teachers summarized the goals of education. I believe that you will learn much and enjoy the class if you read, write, and think about the material on a regular and ongoing basis. This article from the NYT argues that your study time is more effective if you break it into several small sessions.

Preparing before class is crucial. I attempt to fill the time we have together with problems, exercises, discussion and debate; students without proper preparation will not be ready to learn because they will not be ready to participate meaningfully. Complete readings and assignments when they are due, not after.

Use the time we have together wisely. 

1. Bring questions to class about material we covered earlier that you don’t understand. 
2. Be ready to start on time, clickers, paper, notes, and pen or pencil out and ready to use. 
3. Take good notes: summarize the main points and outline the discussion. Writing down what you are seeing, hearing and thinking helps you remember.
4. Pay attention and avoid distractions. Contrary to some popular conceptions, your brain works better when it focuses on one activity at a time. Browsing the Internet and social media are distractions to your brain and the brains of the students seated near you. Contact the instructor if another student’s use of the computer distracts you.

Review and organize your notes the day you take them. Studies show that if you review and organize your notes within 24 hours of taking them you will retain 80% of the information for 8 weeks. A student who heard this remarked, "That's long enough."

Identify and learn the general principles used in the course as you study. Economics is more about the forest than it is about the trees. Learning why you followed a particular approach to solve a problem is usually more important than learning how to solve the problem; the problem is usually an example of a more general principle. The goal is to have you apply the principles and concepts to draw your own conclusions and to support them. “The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique for thinking, which helps the possessor to draw correct conclusions” (John Maynard Keynes).

Is college worth the cost?

This report says that the answer is a qualified yes, with a 2-year degree being a better bet than a 4-year degree for many people, and majors that stress analytical and quantitative skill (cough, economics) being better bets than majors that do not: 

A Proposal for Student Loans

This article from the WSJ reports a proposal to make repayment of student loans a percentage of the student's income after graduation. The percentage and number of years during which payment occurs would vary depending upon the school, major, and perhaps characteristics of the student.

The article is a good introduction to signaling. Students might learn more about the earning potential of various majors when they see that one major requires 10% of their salary for 5 years while another major requires 20% for 15 years.

The article is also a good introduction to adverse selection and moral hazard. Who is more likely to choose this plan over a traditional fixed-repayment loan, someone who plans to work hard to earn high income or someone who prefers to enjoy life and wants to work enough to "get by". How does the requirement to pay a percentage of income to the lender affect the incentive to work?

Is the typical economics curriculum ideal?

This article and the folks at the Institute for New Economic Thinking say "No" and offer alternatives.

School Choice

Here is an account of New Orleans's use of school choice. The initial results look good.

Having trouble finding a job?

You might learn something from this article. I wonder what the best response is by colleges and universities.

Teaching econ to MBA students

Here is a nice post discussing economics, MBA students, and Schools of Business.

College major and earnings

Here is a story from NPR on the most and least lucrative college majors. Here is the full report from 2009 which prompted the story. Notice that Business Economics has the highest median earnings for Business and Economics has the highest median earnings for Social Sciences. The story points out that employees consider a number of factors when choosing a major or job besides salary - salary matters but salary is not all that matters.

Colleges Try Cutting Tuition

This article might be a good way to talk about price discrimination, game theory, strategy, and behavioral economics. It discusses the recent decisions by some colleges to reduce simultaneously nominal tuition rates and financial aid offers. Doing so may leave the net tuition equal for many families. The hope is that the simpler process will attract more and better students. The article points out that families may not respond rationally to lower net prices.

What makes an instructor good?

This essay from WSJ argues that instructors who follow eight principles help students achieve.

1. A little pain is good for you.
2. Drill, baby, drill.
3. Failure is an option.
4. Strict is better than nice.
5. Creativity can be learned.
6. Grit trumps talent.
7. Praise makes you weak...
8. ...while stress makes you strong.

This article points out that the incentives at a growing number of colleges may induce instructors from following these principles. An implication is that student evaluations should not be viewed in isolation from the grades students earn in the course.

Here is another opinion that relying on evaluations does not promote learning and does promote higher GPAs.

Here and here and here is a two-part post on what evaluations measure.

Why college costs so much

In this interview Richard Vedder discusses what he sees as the reason that the cost of college has increased so much - government subsidies. Who can't like an explanation  that includes a reference to moral hazard?

An Econ Major Has a Good Job Interview

NPR recently ran this story on the disconnect between employees they want to hire and graduates from colleges and universities. Part of the story is an interview between a employer and a student a VCU who is a double major in computer science and economics. 

Economists Crunch Data Well

This article in the WSJ is a good reason to study economics. For example, the MA program where I teach offers a three-course sequence in econometrics. 

Econ on Demand

Click here to see some good video clips discussing a variety of topics in economics 

Costs

Here is a nice video from the Kahn Academy on short-run costs.