The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Education, Flotsam and Jetsam on May 19th, 2012
Sunday is graduation day for undergraduates at the University of Rochester, and it also marks the completion of my fourth year here as well. Thank you to the dozens upon dozens of terrific students who have made the last 4 years a far richer experience than my very own 4 years of college. I promised [...]
Posted in Education on Apr 29th, 2012
Chew on this on this fine weekend morning: would you rather have $500,000 in your hand or have a completed degree from a 4-year college of your choosing? What about any school outside the Top 25? UPDATE: Tyler Cowen shares this with us: Data available from the UC Office of the President shows that there [...]
Posted in Education, Institutions, incentives on Apr 28th, 2012
The average time to degree at Western Governors University is 2.5 years. By the way, when students wish to complete a degree early at my dear college, the college charges them for virtually the entire year’s worth of tuition to do so. Talk about collegiality! Of course, it IS very costly to attract and retain [...]
Posted in Education, Health Care, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 20th, 2012
I have in mind some good that you cannot take with you when you transfer from place to place. This is true whether you move from place to place for selfish reasons, noble reasons, family reasons, or any reason whatsoever. I am not talking about health insurance of course, but your college education. When you [...]
Posted in Education, Price System on Apr 19th, 2012
Free, high quality education for all, right?
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Education, Environment, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 19th, 2012
Our student paper printed this article on how arguments against wind are overblown. For interested students, I will be going into the gory details in Eco 238, so will not rehash all of the economics of wind here. I’ll sporadically return to this piece in between my puppy drownings and coal burning rituals, but here [...]
Posted in Education on Apr 11th, 2012
Read the entire speech here. No commentary provided today. SLIDE 62 The debate over tuition occurs at a time of increasingly vitriolic attacks on the purpose of higher education. Several books and articles about higher education have asserted, among many other things, that tuition and fees are too high and are rising too fast; professors [...]
Posted in Education, Methodology on Apr 2nd, 2012
Open up any college course catalog. Check out the course titles. And ask yourself: what will I learn in this course? If you saw a course titled “Unicycle Justice” what would you think you were going to learn? Well, something about unicycles I am sure. And if you took a philosophy course on Unicycle Justice, [...]
Posted in Education on Apr 1st, 2012
Imagine that you read the following: I wish he had focused instead on the ideal of a university as an institution that promotes the free exchange of ideas and lively debate at its best in an atmosphere of civil discourse in which the dignity of every individual is respected. And imagine if the author also [...]
Posted in Education on Mar 31st, 2012
Little birdies (actually some Angry Birdies – they are among the few kids who are full-pay students) have informed me in recent days: (1) My truth-seeking university is close to “banning the bottle.” Yes, they are going to make the sale of bottled water illegal on campus. How long until they send the Green Gestapo [...]
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