Bursting Bubble or Tsunami? Part 1

Last week I ranted about universities failure to measure and disclose whether they actually contribute to their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems and communicate clearly and cogently.  Here is a graphic presentation from Education News about another troubling aspect of higher ed.  Please note that this excerpt is reproduced in accordance with the terms of Creative Commons License CC By-NC-ND granted by Education News.Education News

Hard Times for Higher Ed

American education has been a favorite whipping boy for politicians, journalists and pundits at least since the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk: The Imperative For Educational Reform. Recently times have been especially tough as the economic crisis has reduced institutional revenues forcing faculty layoffs and concomitant shrinkage in course offerings. At the same time many people who cannot find work have decided to go back to school, placing greater demands on the stressed colleges and universities. In the last year or so and particularly in the last six months two threads of criticism of higher education have echoed concerns that drove me for the fifteen years when I headed first the Exxon Education Foundation and then the ExxonMobil Foundation.

Assessment and Accountability: the lack of data about whether students learned anything in college or which types of institutions (if any) are more effective at producing learning gains. Sure everyone knew that the graduates of Yale and Stanford were smarter that those of North South State University (NSSU) in Nowhere, Oklahamshire. But of course, those students were much smarter and better prepared when they entered Yale and Stanford. Perhaps they would have done as well at NSSU. In fact, insiders knew quite a bit. They knew that certain small and relatively unknown schools such as Hope College in Holland, Michigan and St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas consistently outperformed much more renowned and better endowed and larger schools, but the data was mostly anecdotal and insufficient to sway either policy makers or high school counselors. Furthermore, universities consistently blocked research that might disclose unpleasant findings about how much their students learned. I recall a massive study of student learning of science and math funded by both the National Science Foundation and the Exxon Education Foundation and conducted by Prof. Alexander Astin at Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. Before the colleges and universities agreed to take part they demanded that the data would be disguised so that no one other than the researchers could see the results of any specific school. The study produced some powerful conclusions that were included in Astin's important book What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited (1993). However, many other potentially game-changing findings were submerged due to the stonewalling of the participants.

This intentional lack of transparency is still a huge problem but things are beginning, very slowly, to change for the better. As the cost of higher education has continued to grow faster than inflation parents, taxpayers and state legislators are demanding that the curtain be lifted. In 2000 the Council for Aid to Education (CAE) launched the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA) which presents realistic problems that require students to analyze complex materials and determine the relevance to the task and credibility. Students' written responses to the tasks are evaluated to assess their abilities to think critically, reason analytically, solve problems and communicate clearly and cogently. Scores are aggregated to the institutional level to inform the institution about how their students as a whole are performing. By 2010, over 200,000 U.S. students had tested with the CLA in over 450 institutions. In January 2010 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) asked the CAE to create an international version of the CLA for the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes project covering its 31 member countries.

January 2011 saw the publication of Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses by Richard Arum and Josipa Roska. The study using data from the CLA showed that a large fraction of undergraduates register hardly any gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, problem solving or communication skills in their first two years of college. Educational journals and blogs immediately filled with articles trying to refute Arum and Roska's findings. While some of the criticism is warranted, most is simply an attempt to deflect attention and has been unsuccessful.

Although Arum and Roska's work is ground breaking, the data is still disguised. Universities that administer the CLA still do not release data that would allow a prospective student to compare School A with School X.

Additional research research is underway and will certainly be helpful, but I say it's time to stop studying the problem and start solving it. Billions of dollars are being spent each year on largely worthless coursework. Students and their families take on crushing debt, often for no gain. These stakeholders have a right to know which institutions measure up and which are failing.

Yesterday New York Times columnist David Brooks took the issue to a wider audience in his article "Testing the Teachers."

Oh, I almost forgot that there were two threads of criticism of higher education that have caught my interest. The other is the lack of innovation in educational delivery systems and how that is about to change.

In the interests of full disclosure:

1. I was on the Board of Trustees of the Council for Aid to Education in the late 1990s and early 2000s when the CLA was being launched.
2. The ExxonMobil Foundation made the first grant to support the planning for the CLA.
3. Richard H. Hersh is a former president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges and Trinity College is one of the founders of the CLA. He has a new book on related topics, We're Losing our Minds: Rethinking American Higher Education. For a humorous introduction to the book watch Hersh on The Colbert Report.

Some Colorful Facts about the US Federal Tax Situation

I highly recommend this colorful set of charts about the Federal tax system. The collection was compiled by Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans make any sense when it comes to tax reform, which in my view is absolutely essential.  Just letting the Bush tax cuts expire would help a lot with the deficit but we would still have a nightmare of a tax code.  Some thoughtful ideas about how to untangle the mess are set out in Simon Johnson and James Kwak's new book White House Burning: The Founding Fathers, Our National Debt, and Why It Matters to You.

I have to sign off now and get to the post office with my love letter to the IRS.

Visit to Xiamen and Yun Shui Yao, Fujian, China

March 30 through April 3 we traveled to Xiamen,  an island city in Fujian Province and to Yun Shui Yao, a rural village also in Fujian.

Click here for photo album.

Three Cheers for Good Government: Not Small Government

All the Republican Candidates rail against BIG government.  Obama and company blast away at Big business.  There is a grain of truth in both arguments. However, the claim of neither side is credible in part because neither party admits any merit to the other's charge.  Furthermore, neither party has a record of following up on its promises.

Is big government the problem or is it inefficient government? Government that has been captured by interest groups, lobbyists and big business?  The founding fathers were alert to the dangers of tyranny and invented the system of checks and balances at the heart of the Constitution.  But they could not have imagined the huge limited liability corporations that arose in the 19th century and have continued to expand their global reach.  Although they do not have the power to imprison or tax, these companies have the potential to cause suffering as surely as despotic governments.  If Republicans are so concerned about abuse of power by big government, why aren't they also concerned about abuses by the business sector?  Instead they propose to massively roll back regulation.  They, with help from their masters in the finance industry, have successfully fought implementation of Public Law 111-203 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

Of course, the biggest threat to the social order comes when government acts in collusion with big business to promote crony capitalism rather than free market capitalism.  On January 17, 1961 in his Farewell Address to the Nation President Eisenhower warned of the threat to liberty from the "military industrial complex."  Today he might opt for the "financial, prison, military industrial, legislative complex."

Writers' Week

In the last week I have had three different and interesting encounters with writers.

On Tuesday March 20 Hong Kong International School, a K-12 institution where my wife is an administrator, hosted the novelist Chang-Rae Lee for a day or two as a visiting artist.  I was lucky to be able to attend a talk he gave to a group of parents, faculty and high school students.  Lee came to the USA from Korea in 1968 at age 3.  He has published four award-winning novels and directs the creative writing program at Princeton.

As one might expect from such a thoroughbred author, he spoke from a finely prepared script talking about his family life, his education, his decision to abandon a nascent career in finance for his real love, writing.  His talk included a recitation of a long, vivid and moving passage from his first novel Native Speaker.  Lee acquitted himself well in a long Q&A session but it is clear that he is most comfortable with the well polished written form rather than improv.  He had lots of helpful remarks for the aspiring writers in the audience, but is was clear that by writer he mean one composing fiction.  His response to my question about whether he had anything to offer writers of non-fiction was superficial.  You can learn more about Chang-Rae Lee here and here.

The day after meeting Lee I caught up with the ghost of John Updike in the form of a rebroadcast of two interviews by Terry Gross on her NPR Fresh Air program.  Updike died in 2009.  The program was to mark his 80th birthday on March 18.  Listening to this grandmaster in the last years of his life reflect on such a long career was a bright counterpoint to the rising star.  You can listen to the Fresh Air interviews here. 

Finally, on Sunday the New York Times Magazine carried "Why Talk Therapy Is on the Wane and Writing Workshops Are on the Rise". I have had a few friends who worked through their mid-life crises by taking sabbaticals from mainstream careers to enroll in creative writing programs. So far all who have taken this cure have eventually returned to the dark side. However, one of them is still undergoing treatment. I'm rooting for him to stay the course.

(ps-For readers who think I was either an engineering or accounting major: Nope--English and my second choice was physics.)

Sunday (Tuesday) in the Park (at Home) with George (Russ)

Every Tuesday for the last fours years or so I have downloaded Russ Roberts's EconTalk podcast and spent an entertaining hour or more listening to his interview of an interesting character--often, but not always, a fellow economist. Last week (March 6) was typical: an 87 minute talk with Columbia University Professor Charles Calomiris about banks' capital structures, the effect of leverage on risk and the role of financial regulation. While the audio was downloading I made a quick detour to Cafe Hayek, the blog that Roberts shares with his colleague Don Boudreaux. There I stumbled across a video of Russ giving a talk at Southern Methodist University's (SMU) Cox School of Business in Dallas. Since I was the executive-in-residence at Cox 2005-2007 I couldn't resist watching his performance. Between the SMU video and the EconTalk podcast I spent a good part of Tuesday with Roberts.

The video was enlightening as it was the first time I had seen the professor in action and the first time I had encountered him as a soloist rather than in a duet. Roberts teaches economics with stories rather than using arcane mathematics and charts. That makes him much more engaging than the average econ prof. As I watched him pace the stage I thought how much his approach was similar to the ministers that preach in the churches surrounding the SMU campus. Roberts's sermon was about the superiority of the emergent order of a free market economy compared to one where decisions are made by committees or regulatory agencies. He ridiculed the 40 members of L'Académie française who are charged with protecting the purity of the French language. But his real target was politicians. In his talk he derided politicos from both parties although on the podcasts he leans more heavily on Democrats. It was all very entertaining.

But worrisome, too. There was absolutely no hint that emergent free market economies might fail to efficiently deliver certain kinds of goods and services (e.g. public goods, natural monopolies, externalities). There was no consideration that free people might intentionally trade off some of the efficiency of a free market in favor of other values. Although there was brief mention of regulatory capture, there was really no worry about the power that huge global corporations now exercise both directly and through business associations and front organizations. There was prolonged derision for politicians but no serious suggestions as to how the nation's governance could be reformed.

In other forums Roberts has admitted that he does not consider economics a social science. For him libertarian economics is an ideology--one that he promotes with the skill and enthusiasm of an accomplished preacher-man.  Like most good preachers he has some large blind spots and he is very selective about the evidence he brings to his arguments.  Knowing that, I continue to listen to him because one can learn from great preachers even if not subscribing to their creed. But I worry about our college freshman and sophomores who get their first taste of economics from such a smooth talker.  And I worry about the mostly gray heads in the SMU audience who left with all of their preexisting assumptions confirmed.