The Phi Beta Kappa Society last spring rejected an application for a chapter at George Mason University because GMU rescinded an invitation to Michael Moore to speak on its campus. They expressed concerns over GMU's commitment to academic freedom. FIRE has upped the ante now, inviting Phi Beta Kappa to look at speech codes on the campuses where it does have chapters.

We urge Phi Beta Kappa to stand behind its demonstrated commitment to academic freedom by insisting that its member institutions respect the free speech rights of their students and faculty. To this end, we request that you respond to FIRE detailing how you intend to ensure that academic freedom is protected at all Phi Beta Kappa institutions.

Don't hold your breath, guys.

Categories: higher_ed

Graduate assistants at NYU, the first to have ever unionized, have been on strike since November 9. They've now been told that they must go back to work or lose their stipends for spring semester. The GAs are resisting. The strike results from NYU's administration choosing not to let a collectively bargained agreement expire when a court case made it unnecessary for them to recognize the GA's union. Given that GAs were only the primary instructors for 165 of the 2700 courses NYU offers, the strike probably hasn't affected most students.

See Inside Higher Ed fmi.

Categories: higher_ed

Readers in Minnesota will see some familiar themes in Wendy McElroy's article today on the push in California for universal preschool. (h/t: reader jw)

If successful, California's high-profile campaign may set a standard for other states. [Rob] Reiner's proposal is to fund universal preschool through a 1.7 percent increase in taxes on annual incomes of $400,000+ for individuals, $800,000+ for married couples; this would generate an estimated $2.4 billion per year. Attendance would be voluntary.

As you might guess, some skepticism arises from the use of an income tax on very high incomes. (The fact that it's pitched by Rob Reiner probably doesn't help, either.) But it also comes from a very disputed RAND study that claims the program pays for itself. The research that's out there, however, says the benefits of universal preschool on cognitive or social scales fall to zero as the child continues through the education system, perhaps disappearing as early as second grade.

The familiarity to Minnesota readers should come from the leadership taken by two researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Art Rolnick (who Strom declares makes me only the second-smartest economist in Minnesota) and Rob Grunewald. Their work makes a case for targeted preschool towards disadvantaged children, and not necessarily to improve cognition. As this interview with Nobel laureate James Heckman discusses, the gains may be more towards encouraging behaviors that improve life success, like "motivation, self-control and time preference." I'm often caught telling my classes that the most important thing you teach your children is delayed gratification, and how to do that by increasing a child's incentives to save. It's one of the reasons I support teaching economics to children from quite young ages -- I'm not interested in them knowing supply and demand, but I am interested in getting the concept of constrained optimization across. Kids are naturally maximizers, but they have trouble seeing constraints.

At any rate, the Rolnick-Grunewald work has moved to policy stages, and their proposals are different both in seeking targeted programs rather than Reiner's universal proposal, and by seeking public-private partnerships for provision and funding. The plan includes tuition-plus scholarships for parents to be able to choose between public and private early childhood development programs (approved by a public-private board), with a mentoring program or home visits. I like this program, but it has potential dealbreakers for the education borg because it uses a voucher-type system and for the strong parental control types like McElroy.

This is the great danger: the presumption that government can raise children better than parents. If universal preschool is voluntary, then it may merely create another massive and ultra-expensive bureaucracy that accomplishes little.

If it is compulsory, then universal preschool will extend the government's usurpation of parenthood so that all 3- and 4-year-olds are under state supervision.

I do not think she would be mollified by the public-private board.

Categories: education

I thought 3.8% was pretty good, but considering the hurricanes a revised 4.3% growth rate reported this morning is quite remarkable. Upward revisions were made to most consumption figures, partially offset by an increase in imports. Along with the news yesterday from the Conference Board that consumer confidence has rebounded sharply in November, we have some reason to believe the rest of 2005 will be cheery.

The Skeptical Optimist, meanwhile, sings the praises of forecaster Brian Wesbury. I've seen Wesbury at economics conferences, and he is a pretty optimistic guy. He's forecasting GDP growth for 2006 at 4%, well above the consensus forecast. I'm not sure I'm going up that high, but the data I see around the St. Cloud area and statewide are also pointing towards accelerating growth.

Categories: economics

While I doubt we do it until spring, when Swiftee can grace us with a two-wheel drive-by, I like the idea of having outstate bloggers compete for the right to host MOB Road Show II. So does Mitch. Road Show I was here in Cloudytown and we had a final count of 27 attendees representing 13 blogs. So let's hear it Duluth, Mankato, Rochester, Moorhead, and places far and wide. Let's find a place for the spring fling to outstate!

Meanwhile, MOB applications are available. Doug may lay claim to mayor, but we have rules, and Saint Paul administers the roll. Ignore these at your peril.

Crossposted at The Sports Economist.

As noted by Joanne Jacobs, some student-athletes in Florida are using private high schools to skirt eligibility rules for college football. Joanne calls it simply a diploma mill story, but it's much more rich than that. The NCAA has rules on course eligibility -- which courses count as college prep, and how many you must take to become eligible to play as a freshman in an NCAA-sanctioned intercollegiate event -- and rules for GPA and SAT or ACT score minima. However, it has some real peculiarities, one of which is that the higher one's GPA, the lower the SAT score required for eligibility. (See page 7 of this document fmi.) So what students are doing in Florida is shopping not for a degree per se but a place with enough grade inflation to raise their GPAs to match the SAT or ACT scores they've already earned.

For example, after Morley's junior year at Killian (a public high school --kb), a computer program used to project eligibility showed him graduating with about a 2.1 G.P.A., meaning he would need at least a 960 on the SAT. At University (private), he raised his average to 2.75, so his 720 SAT score was exactly what he needed to qualify.

The NCAA has frequently adjusted the schedule of GPA/SAT/ACT to meet whatever complaints are there, but I don't recall other stories where students were shopping for a GPA/SAT match by changing high schools. It certainly makes sense ... and it's the NCAA's own rules and their willingness to blatantly adjust them to be sure they don't miss any really good athletes that has led to this case.

This is only one of several examples. A colleague who's graduated from Cincinnati told me over lunch last week another weird example where an international student took ESL courses at a Miami high school, and his second and third courses counted but the first did not (I presume because it was not deemed preparatory for college.) And in this Ten for Tuesday article from SportsLine we find student-athletes who get suspended for not pulling out of the NBA draft properly, playing in an unsanctioned summer league, or this one which my friend from Cincy didn't mention:

6. Chadd Moore, Cincinnati: ...Moore, a senior guard who has been plagued by a bad back, quit the team for good last year -- or so he thought. After playing in a 2005 summer league, he felt so good that he decided to return this season. Not so fast. While the summer league was sanctioned -- he played alongside several UC teammates -- Moore hadn't sought the proper medical waiver from last year's medical hardship. Or something like that. Moore is missing the first five games,
by which time I hope to understand the rationale behind his suspension.

Me too. This is only possible in a world where the NCAA continues to act as a monopolist that tries to sell a mythical vision of student-athletes.

A story from Critical Mass tells of Pomona College -- where yours truly taught his first principles of macroeconomics course -- tells of intramural inner-tube water polo.

("What? Intramural water polo???" Yes, they have that at Pomona. Is this a great country, or what!?!)

Apparently the games are co-ed, and goals scored by females are worth two points but those scored by males only one. Good thing they aren't up here in the upper Midwest, where six-foot Scandihoovian females dot the plains. Anyway, there is discussion about a possible problem with the scoring rules, according to the minutes of the student Senate reported by Erin O'Connor.

Sports Commissioner Alex Wakeman '06 asked the Senate for advice about an inner-tube water polo scoring system concern. ...One student was concerned about where transgendered students fit in this system. Wakeman understands the concern, but she is reluctant to change the scoring system because she feels it encourages more women to participate. DesRochers pointed out that the Senate needs to learn more about transgender issues because they do not have the vocabulary and background to provide the best solutions for these problems.

Yeah, I suppose "equipment check" is out.

Taking a time out yesterday wasn't a feeling of being harried or hurried. Indeed, when I take days off from this blog it's often because I'm doing things I love doing, and so far this week I have been doing that. First, over the weekend when I often queue up three or four posts to use through the week I was instead spending time with family and friends, and working on the next Quarterly Business Report. By about 1:30 yesterday afternoon I had finished the last of it and sent it off to the Times, who publishes it in its ROI Central Minnesota magazine. It should be out in late December.

The more I write economics here and in QBR the more the two styles merge. My co-author tends to write on a set format; my writing tends to look like two posts here strung together. (There are bits of posts from last September that showed up in other ways in QBR.) I then have a section that needs to be a little more formatted, then we're done. This used to take me three or four days, but skills developed here have reduced that writing time to about six hours, included the first pass at revisions.

All of this is meant to contribute once more to the discussion of the value of blogging: Daily blogging is a discipline that makes one apply butt to chair and write. When non-blogging writing is needed on short notice, it's easy to do it. Do I need to write about economics to have that discipline develop? No, though it helps and it's natural since it's what I normally think about.

It also comes in handy for what I did this morning. My in-laws were often found in their latter years at a local senior center. When well and in town, in fact, they were there daily, and they remembered it in their wills. So when a humanities group at the center called and asked if I would be willing to speak to them, it felt only right to help the place that meant so much to Lloyd and Doris. And again blogging came in handy, as they had asked me to talk about savings and debt, and I could go to many different blogs to read. Some of the slides I created for the talk this morning -- and what a great job I have, that a speaking engagement there can count as part of my work here -- will get used this afternoon in class.

And they better be as engaged as my audience this morning. If you can get a job teaching senior citizens, get it.

so I took one. I'm not even getting to do my usual research, else I could talk forever about this from Alex Tabarrok. Maybe later, though for now you can see my connection to that literature.

Nothing more here today, run along now.

Andy points out a good blog in Duluth, and from that I find a second. We would love to have MOB members in the Duluth/Iron Range area. Last year we hosted a Central Minnesota road show for MOB bloggers to get fully credentialed as members of MOB. As a reminder, the rules for joining MOB are two, as explained by Saint Paul: You must write to him at the address on their blog to get provisional admission, and then confirm this by coming to a MOB event or a Keegan's Thursday trivia contest.

The goal of having outstate events is to spread MOB from the Cities to the rest of the state. Mankato is already on our radar. Could we have a contest for best blog posts inviting MOB to your city? And not just Mankato or Duluth! Where are you Alex? Moorhead? Or even you, Pelican Rapids!

That's what we call it around my house -- the utterly useless gift you get from your Aunt Matilda who lives half a world away that you send to someone else in lieu of buying it yourself. The Economist ran this story a few years ago on economic research showing how much value is destroyed by Christmas. But markets work best by moving resources from lower to higher-valued uses, and the presence of eBay is helping Aussies recover more of the lost value.

With Australians expected to spend between $600 and $1000 each on Christmas presents for friends and relatives this year, many people are resorting to selling items on auction websites such as eBay to raise money for the festive season.

"By the time you add up gifts for friends, family and the kids and food, Christmas costs a lot of money and selling things on eBay gives me the opportunity to raise more money to cover that," four-year eBay veteran Shauna Wood said.

"With the extra money coming in, I can splurge on nice gifts for my friends and family.

"And the great thing is you can sell off all the crappy gifts from last year."

Chances are Ms. Wood's relatives are scouring eBay trying to see if she's selling their gifts. Given my father and sister are both eBay power sellers, I've adopted a different strategy, as my roommate in grad school said it best.

Cash. Offends. Nobody.

Hat tip: Mark Steckbeck.

I'm enjoying looking at Hugh Hewitt's straw poll, particularly using the tags that people are attaching to their entries. I get the Condi Rice idea, I think, except why does she do so well among those who tag themselves as fiscal conservative or 'economy'?

I'm also surprised how well Newt Gingrich does.
Categories: politics

While at church last night for a Thanksgiving Eve service -- and I think it's the first time I've gone to one, this being a busy season at the university -- I started to think of what I am thankful for. Undoubtedly my family came to mind, with Littlest sitting next to me (I usually lead the songs so it's a treat to get to sit with her) and Mrs. S at the piano, surrounded by a very small group of worshippers all of whom I knew by name. In some sense they are my family here now, with Mrs.' parents having left their mortal coils this past year and with my own family living 1400 miles away. So too is the school and its teachers who teach Littlest. I am thankful for #1 Son, who this year has learned to stand for himself and take responsibility for his life. While we live nearby we walk in separate circles, yet he is always a joy to talk to on the phone or see in person. (And he doesn't ask for money!)

I am of course as well thankful for a job that provides for me and my family, and for a group of colleagues that make being a department chair an honor and not a chore. I've had two deans in the last year as well that have taught me things and been good to work with (as in fact were the previous two -- drawing four good ones in a row is pretty remarkable.) That has allowed us to attract more and more majors to our classes, and I get to advise them. They're great kids and a privilege to teach.

I am also thankful to the readers of this blog and the many friends it has created. Thanks to the Northern Alliance brethren -- for the humor of watching Mitch lay an egg at the Fair or the Fraters House of Horrors and the pleasure of getting to talk to smart people each Saturday like them and Ed and John and our callers (including you, Phil of New Brighton), and for swapping cigars with Strommie and Andy the producer, and making new friends like AAA, Marty and Tony and the Race to the Right gang. For notes from others in and outside the MOB this week like Gary, Jeff, Leo and others I may forget. For commenters who make me work harder like Doug and Nathan and Michael and Eva. Yes, I disagree normally with the last two, but it's the ones who disagree with you that strengthen your arguments. I thank them for staying engaged.

As the song goes, praise God from whom all blessings flow. We neglect to thank Him for so many blessings in our lives. As we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner today, even if we are alone He is with us and has provided for us. Seek His forgiveness and ask Him to put thankfulness in our hearts. Enjoy your day, and we'll see you tomorrow.

The AP wire picks up the story of our campus closing its only indoor smoking facility:

The only indoor smoking facility on campus will close after a final day of smoke breaks Wednesday. A student government poll taken last year found that 57.8 percent of students were in favor of closing the room, known as the Apocalypse Room.

St. Cloud State and Minnesota State University-Mankato are the only four-year state institutions that still offer smoking rooms.

There's a certain ironic humor of calling the smoking lounge the Apocalypse Room, but frankly few nonsmokers even know where the damn thing is, or was. It's in the student union basement near where other students eat. I've sat in the next room numerous times and did not smell anything.

So students are now told to smoke outside here at Frozen Tundra State. They will huddle near the door, and nonsmokers who are bothered by smoke will scamper through doorways snarling at the smokers and complaining about how close they stand to the door. One faculty member referred to it once as running the "Marlboro gauntlet".

Perhaps they'll create free smoking zones. After all, we already have free speech zones.

So on Tuesday the Lawrence, KS, Journal-World runs an article describing a course titled “Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies”. The professor for the course is Paul Mirecki, chairman of the religious studies department at the University of Kansas, and he says he's teaching the class because "the KU faculty has had enough."

The course also will cover the origins of creationism, why it’s an American phenomenon, and why Americans have allowed it to pervade politics and education,
Mirecki said. He said several KU faculty have volunteered to be guest lecturers.

“Creationism is mythology,” Mirecki said. “Intelligent design is mythology. It’s not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not.”

Now there's nothing wrong in my view of trying to teach a course that seeks to explain the popularity of intelligent design and creationism. And it's certainly topical in Kansas, where the state's Board of Education now requires that students be taught criticisms of the theory of evolution. But what's with the comment that "the KU faculty has had enough"? Should the inspiration of a course be to 'teach those yokels a lesson'? Some state politicians, unsurprisingly, don't like having stick poked in their eyes. And Mirecki is poking.

Mirecki said intelligent design proponents liked to view themselves as the victims, but that’s not the case.

“The educational system of Kansas is under attack,” Mirecki said. “All they are is oppressors. They’re not martyrs and victims ... I’m expecting insecure, threatened people to start being more and more vocal. They don’t want their beliefs to be analyzed rationally. That’s what this class is devised to do.”

So the pols are poking back.

But some conservatives, such as Sen. Kay O’Connor, R-Olathe, were unmoved.

“Why poke a stick in somebody’s eye if you don’t have to?” she said. “If you’re going to have an intelligent design course and call it mythology, I think in the very least it’s a slap in the face to every Judeo-Christian religion that’s out there.”

And John Altevogt, a conservative columnist and activist in Kansas City, said Tuesday that state officials should require the university to change the name of the Department of Religious Studies to the “Department of Religious Intolerance.”

“If we can’t do that,” Altevogt said, “maybe we settle for some cuts in spending.”

The provost of KU is backpedalling a bit and arguing that the word mythology is both misunderstood and unfortunate. Today's story is full of justifications of how this is a serious course with serious content and "objectivity", as if yesterday's quotes of Prof. Mirecki had not happened. It seems like Kansas should take a lesson from Wisconsin and think twice about how it comes across to legislators. But it would also do well to look into the responsibilities of faculties as contemplated by the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure.

College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.

Emphasis mine. I don't think Prof. Mirecki has read that last sentence. He certainly hasn't understood it. And it's not like he recently forgot...

Categories: higher_ed

Excessive charity?

Aid agencies have pledged too many boats to victims of last year’s tsunami disaster in the Indonesian province of Aceh, threatening over-fishing in its waters, the Red Cross warned on Tuesday… The province now [faces] a situation where, if all the pledges were kept, it would have more boats than it had before the tsunami.

Please note that overfishing wouldn't be a problem if the waters were privatized. Didn't I just link to a private sector development blog?

Categories: economics

'The integration revenue funding formula contains a financial disincentive to fully integrate schools or districts,' states the [legislative] auditor's report. 'If districts successfully integrate, they will no longer receive integration revenue. If a district ... achieves racial balance among its schools, the district would no longer be eligible for integration revenue.'

Here's the universal lesson we should draw from the specific "nonsuccesses" of integration revenue: Government programs reward failure, not success. They discourage eliminating problems in favor of managing problems. Failure is a major reason to keep the money flowing.

From Craig Westover today.

Categories: politics, education

Via Newmark's Door, I find an article in Slate on online professor ratings. It makes good fun of what students evaluate professors on, and how one becomes a "hot" professor (represented on RateMyProfessors.com by a chili pepper next to your name.) Three quotes stand out for me.

Remember—as demonstrated by your fellow marketing professors—people who are compelled to rate things online have usually had a strong emotional response, i.e., they either hated you or loved you. For every student complaining that "this is the most boring class ive ever taken ... she is too much of a hippie and needs to occasionally wear a bra," there is another who will write, "Clone her as the model of a Perfect Prof!"

I have in fact taken to wearing a bra. I don't know that I'm a hippie. But I do notice that the distribution of scores for most faculty on these things is bimodal. I thought when I first looked at mine -- yes, of course I looked, wouldn't you? -- that it was what my friends say about me: "You either love him or hate him." But if you look at student evaluations given to all members of the class, there's a lot of "feh" in my classrooms.

...a casual read through the ratings turns up a lot of suspect data. I doubt, for example, that a professor named "Homer Saxshual" really teaches art history at the Wentworth Institute of Technology. I also doubt that the student who took Joyce Carol Oates' writing seminar at Princeton was being truthful when he or she wrote, "Brooke Shields told me this was a great blow off class."

There isn't a screen that asks you when or where you took the course. Some campuses are linking their registration systems to these online ratings providers to help students decide whose section of a class to take. I don't expect them to screen who rates whom, but I would think a disclaimer discussing data quality to be within reason.

The take-away impression of RateMyProfessors.com is that students want you to be organized, fair, accessible, and reasonably interesting. When you think about it, that's kind of hot.

Not if you "give too many C's", though. Oh well. No chilis for me.
Categories: higher_ed

A story in this week's Chronicle of Higher Education (the weekly: temporary link, permalink for subscribers only) describes how the University of Wisconsin has gotten itself into hot water with the legislature and the public. It's a series of missteps largely caused by the UW system itself:

• a dalliance between an administrator and a graduate student that allowed the former seven months of paid "sick leave" during which he was looking for another job;
• the same administrator ends up getting sued for harrassment and is demoted to a "backup job", in essence tenure for an administrator to a position paying $73,000 ad infinitum;
• chancellors of the campuses getting $700 a month in car allowances;
• a top-heavy system with 25% of employees classified as administrators;
• failure to fire three faculty members who wer convicted of various sex crimes;
• the Madison campus' health services running an ad for a "morning-after" pill featuring "a smiling coed in scanty beach attire" and encouraging students to "stock up on the pill before going on spring break and advised them that they could get the pill from campus health clinics over the phone without an appointment;"
• UW-Stout's decision, later rescinded, to ban ROTC due to the stance of the military on gays;
• and not mentioned in the article is the continued debate over Bible studies led by RAs at UWEC.

You thought the Packers were having a bad year? One administrator complains that the Legislature "get[s] two people to issue press releases when anybody burps." That animosity appears in many ways, the article details, and it has caused Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature to become bolder in setting tighter budgets and proposing other restraints on the system. The faculty and administrators quoted would seem to indicate a university that thinks it's owed by the great unwashed. It may take them some time to learn.

(h/t: reader jw)
Categories: higher_ed

A colleague's wife sends this to me, and it makes a great deal of sense. It discusses how we are behind in international comparisons of student achievement. But since I am not a teacher in the usual sense of the word, I suppose I should ask those who are. What do you think of this passage?

Lurking behind these test scores, however, are two profoundly important and closely intertwined topics that the United States has yet to even approach: how teachers are trained and how they teach what they teach. These issues get a great deal of attention in high-performing systems abroad - especially in Japan, which stands light years ahead of us in international comparisons.

...The book has spawned growing interest in the Japanese teacher-development strategy in which teachers work cooperatively and intensively to improve their methods. This process, known as "lesson study," allows teachers to revise and refine lessons that are then shared with others, sometimes through video and sometimes at conventions. In addition to helping novices, this system builds a publicly accessible body of knowledge about what works in the classroom.

The lesson-study groups focus on refining methods that improve student understanding. In doing so, the groups go step by step, laying out successful strategies for teaching specific lessons. This reflects the Japanese view that successful teaching is the product of intensive teacher development and self-scrutiny. In America, by contrast, novice teachers are often presumed competent on Day One. They have few opportunities in their careers to watch successful colleagues in action. We also tend to believe that educational change would happen overnight - if only we could find the right formula. This often leaves us prey to fads that put schools on the wrong track.

There are two other things that set this country apart from its high-performing peers abroad. One is the American sense that teaching is a skill that people come by naturally.

I'm leaving the rest out because it deals more specifically with NCLB, which I'm not as interested in here. (If you want to comment on it, feel free.) The reason I ask is that this may be a place where higher education has an advantage, insofar as we take mentoring of other faculty's teaching more seriously and that the rules to reach tenure are perhaps more stringent (including longer in most cases) than those in K-12 education. Many young professors have spent years as teaching assistants, coached by an advisor at their graduate university. Those faculty tend to be focused on teaching more than research (as I recall, for instance, Paul Heyne was the advisor to all the TAs at the University of Washington for many years.) So mentoring may happen.

Second, we know that some faculty are better off not in the classroom. Those who can sort themselves into research institutions through excellent publication do so; those that can't may find themselves either at lesser institutions or in a non-academic position. My general observation is that the sorting process works more voluntarily: Faculty who find teaching tiring and dull (and receive feedback to that effect from their students) often choose to leave for the business or government worlds.

Also, because textbook and curriculum adoption tend to be more under individual faculty control -- for example, we might not even use the same textbook between the sections of the same course in the same department at the same school -- it may be that these faculty are less prone to fads.

Possible? Likely? Let me know.

Categories: education, higher_ed

Chad the Elder notes today's WSJ article (subscriber link) that there is a shortage of skilled labor:

We all know what's been happening to the U.S. manufacturing sector over the last few years, right? The media is full of stories (most completely anecdotal in nature) describing how greedy corporations have been outsourcing all the "good jobs" to places like Mexico, India, and China, closing down the factories and "meels" (as John Edwards would say) that made America a great nation, and leaving the average working class American with a dismal future of low-pay, no-benefits jobs at either McDonald's or Wal-mart.

The problem with this woeful tale of American manufacturing decline is that those spinning the sad stories have rarely bothered to talk with those firms actually doing the manufacturing.

But we have, here in St. Cloud. I co-author the Quarterly Business Report with my colleague Rich MacDonald, and we survey local area businesspeople about current and future conditions of their firms. Except during the recession of 2001-02 (-03 up here, since the closure of Fingerhut in Jan. 2002 set us back relative to the rest of the business cycle), businesses have consistently reported that they have trouble finding additional labor, and particularly that which is skilled. In our August survey we found that 22.2% of area businesses reported they were having more difficulty attracting qualified workers (only 4.4% reported less.) As a result, we asked a special question in the last survey on what firms spend on employee training. Almost one in four said they spend more than 5% of their budget on employee training and development -- the national average is about 2.5%.

Thus stories about GM laying off 30,000 workers focus on an excess supply of labor while deeper data shows a shortage of human capital. Firms are spending more in making investments in their own workforce. This demand for skilled labor will quite possibly also lead to increased demand for older workers, which would soften the blow raising retirement ages or the age at which one qualifies fully for Social Security. Indeed, what sense does it make to give skilled labor an incentive to not work?

UPDATE: Chad notes in an email:

The sad thing is that this story from the WSJ will likely receive little or any attention elsewhere.

"US Manufacturers Looking For Workers" isn't a good lead for network news.

Yup.

Categories: economics

The NABE Outlook, which is a consensus forecast from 45 economists, indicates that GDP will finish the year with an annual growth rate of 3.6% this year and 3.3% next. There will be a short-term uptick in inflation to 3.8% (in the year through the fourth quarter), but 2.3% next year. Core inflation about the same at 2.4% for 2006. Higher oil prices will inflate the trade deficit to $769 billion this year and only subside to $630b next. But the most interesting part of the full report (available only to members) was the range of forecasts for oil prices at end 2006:

<$40 10%
$40-$60 45%
$60-$80 32%
$80-$100 9%
>$100 4%

That indicates that one in four forecasters think there will be a signficant move in oil prices between now and the end of next year, with slightly more thinking we go north of $80 than south of $40. I wonder if there's been another time where we've had that much uncertainty. And with that, I wonder how certain these forecasters are of their estimates. I know at least one weather forecaster who does a good job depicting uncertainty.

Categories: economics

Someone in Pinellas County, Florida, is suing the local school board arguing that its failure rate for black students, at 2.5 times the rate of white students, is unacceptable.

"Public education, to me personally, is specifically set up to dumb us down," said William Crowley, who filed the lawsuit.

Crowley said the white-run school system allowed his son to fall behind. His remedy doesn't call for monetary remuneration. Instead, he said he wants the system fixed.

"The facts are overwhelming and not just in Pinellas County, but nationwide, there is a high failure rate of black students across this country," Crowley said.

The problem that this raises is that the suit may cause the school board to point fingers back at the black community.

"Someone needs to point a finger back at themselves and say 'What part do I have in this?' and maybe this community needs to look at itself and ask what part do we have in this," [School board Superintendent Clayton] Wilcox said.

The lawsuit could compel black students and their parents to discuss in open court how they prepare their children for school, both academically and socially.

One critic argues it's not the school's fault that black students are not learning.

"To suggest that the school district can somehow uniquely single out black kids and give them inferior educations while giving other kids a better education is kind of ludicrous," said Ward Connerly, head of the American Civil Rights Institute.

I'd also suggest they call Bill Cosby as a witness.

Categories: education

Apparently windfall profits windbag Senator Byron Dorgan is getting mad at us economists. At Cafe Hayek, Russell Roberts quotes the senator:

There are a couple of economists writing in recent days—I won’t name them—who can tell us everything about the future but can’t remember their home phone number. You know the type. They are telling us what will happen here is if people can’t afford to pay the cost of energy, it will force them to conserve more. Easy to say for one of these economists who drive around town in their Volvo or Mercedes cogitating about the future.

As Roberts points out, the utility of a high price is not to encourage conservation but exploration and innovation. Doubters will take you to the peak oil debate -- will we run out of oil exploration? See this talk at AEI by another economist, James Hamilton, and this article from USA Today. But that misses the innovation and alternative energies side: See this from Business Week last May.

Categories: economics

The Chronicle of Higher Education (temporary link; permanent link for subscribers) reports that the US Commission on Civil Rights has heard testimony about the increasing anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias on college campuses.

"Anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism are systemic ideologies in higher education," said Gary A. Tobin, president of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, a San Francisco-based group, at a hearing before the commission. Those ideologies, he said, "find their expression in the classroom and outside the classroom, producing what we consider to be an environment of harassment and intimidation of Jewish students."

And this seems to come from faculty of the left, such as this fellow.

What areas of research or activism are you currently most engaged with?
I am currently researching African and PanAfrican history and theory, especially in East Africa; as well as forced resettlement of Bedouin in Israel; and issues of Jewish whiteness as a variant of whiteness in general. I am actively working on Palestinian solidarity at the moment, ...

But why? From the CHE article,

At a news conference the day before the hearing, Mr. Tobin said that "anti-Israelism is framed in the politics of race."

"Jews and Israel are white, colonial, Western oppressors," he continued. "Palestinians are brown, indigenous, colonized people." So "in this paradigm, Jews are racist," as is anyone who supports Israel. Therefore, "anti-Semitic language is legitimate because you're combating racism," he said. "That's how it plays out."

This might explain our history of attacking people who try to defend Israel's right to self-determination.

Categories: higher_ed

I first noted this post from Craig Newmark about a reduction in teaching load in the economics department at the University of Virginia. Margaret Soltan notes that the department is cancelling classes and bringing in adjuncts to teach the rest, and that this is to the detriment of students. Well, their visitors aren't exactly chopped liver, four of five with PhDs from first-rate institutions. (So why are they teaching as adjuncts? --ed. Perhaps they came out in the market late, or doing a post-doc. I don't know.) Stephen Karlson adds some details from the UVa newspaper suggesting the school is responding to competition for these researchers, while remaining concerned over the loss of faculty from the classroom.

One point that misses, however, is the pedagogical return to having faculty who do research. Newmark also posts about Duke hiring faculty in its economics department for the expressed intent of collaborative research with students.

A primary reason for hiring more professors is the University- wide push toward encouraging independent research projects by undergraduate students—a goal that requires one-on-one faculty-student interaction, administrators said.

“George McLendon is very eager to see us offer more research opportunities for the undergraduates, and inevitably that involves more faculty members,” said Emma Rasiel, director of undergraduate studies for economics. “We don’t want to stretch the faculty too thin.”

And with whom would you want those students to have one-on-one interaction if not someone who actually does research?

Virginia, Duke, the University of Minnesota and other top institutions view their mission as turning out PhDs. They will talk a good game about undergraduate education, but they are about creation of knowledge much more than dissemination. High-profile researchers will generate applications for graduate study from better and better students. While you may not get a whole course from that faculty member, those graduate students who are good will have access to the star faculty, and they will generate more and better applications for graduate study. I think there's a case as well that they turn out better PhDs, too.

But what about the SCSUs of the world? Even there, our department has continuously argued that our best teachers are those who also do research. They are better read of the newest and best literature in their fields. They understand the craft of writing good research papers, which we use to teach our senior seminar.* (Here, for example, is my syllabus for that course.) I participate in blogging on The Sports Economist so that I can keep up to teach my once-in-a-while Economics of Sports class. (Sorry, no syllabus -- I'm completely redoing it this spring.) It's not just that academics at Directional State University who don't do research aren't fun in the lunchroom or at the office mixer -- they are also uninteresting in the classroom, as they recite the same tired notes semester after semester.

I'm not sure if I'm saying that teaching and research are complements in production, or that there are scope economies. But I am saying that the view that those that do research are somehow cheating the student body or the taxpayer is simplistic.

*--"But you don't give release time for research, do you?" We try. Faculty can buy themselves out of the classroom for sponsored research, just as they do elsewhere. And we try to control loads to make our current 24 credit hours (roughly, 8 classes) per year assignment a little more manageable. And unlike Virginia, I can't go out and hire adjuncts with PhDs from Chicago and Northwestern to replace faculty who are bought out of the classroom.

Categories: economics, higher_ed

So we are told by a student in the morning campus paper who tells us to be realistic:

Students spend more time sleeping on the weekends than they do going to class every week. College is much more than studying and going to class. It encompasses all the other things, like going to parties, hanging with friends, getting into relationships and breaking up, tail gaiting, and going to sporting games. A major part of college is social.

A few points, dear student?

1. I gave my last midterm last week -- your fellow students kvetched that it was wrong to give a test during deer season.
2. I don't assign term papers in most classes, because you don't know enough to write one and I'm trying not to waste your and my time pretending you do.
3. What is 'tail gaiting'? A social activity that men do?
4. You later write "Many of those who teach at the college level should not be in a classroom." You know, of course, we say the same thing -- "many of those who attend college should not be in a classroom." And, mirabile dictu, most of you aren't ... until after Thanksgiving. Must be that balancing act again.

Categories: education

I split last week 2-2, but the bets on the two winners were larger than the losses on the two losers, so the bankroll is now up to $1,020.50. Whatever made me think the Chiefs would be a good road team??? Ick. Perhaps I'm gunshy, but I don't see much on this week's board. So here are only two games I like, and I'm light on these even.

1. Oakland at Washington (-6). There's a pretty standard rule that you bet the home team when the visitor travels three time zones. Washington is also in a bad mood after the ripoff they took last week. If the Redskins can score 35 on Tampa Bay, they should be good for a dime more against the Raiders. Take Washington at home, lay the six, for $33. (The over is a good bet here as well at 43.)
2. Pittsburgh (-3.5) at Baltimore. Yes, it's Tommy Maddox under center, but this is a team that runs and runs and runs. They won't take the Ravens lightly this time, and there's no way that defense plays as well as it did a few Monday nights ago. Bet $22 on the Steelers and give the points.

This is always one of my favorite indicators of the economy, even though it's reported with a seven-month lag:

From December 2004 to March 2005, the number of job gains from opening and expanding private sector establishments was 7.6 million and the number of job losses from closing and contracting establishments was 7.3 million, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the U.S. Department of Labor. Gross job gains exceeded gross job losses in all sectors, except manufacturing and information.

I use this in class as evidence of how healthy an economy we have. It's worth noting in this report that a little more than 7% of the workforce finds a new job each quarter and a little less than 7% lose one. The graph of this series, begun in 1992, shows a couple of interesting things. First, we are not generating as many new jobs each quarter as we did in the late 1990s. So while job losses are down significantly since the recession in 2001, workers aren't being added back at the same rates they were before the recession, which accounts for the slower decline in the unemployment rate. Second, if the finding rate for jobs is lower, we would expect that the natural rate of unemployment has risen. If the job separation rate has also fallen, that might not be true, but the rate looks to be about constant.

My Arnold Kling-ish question: Does this graph indicate a slowing of the churn?
Categories: economics

Our never-surprising Department of the 3.7 GPA sponsored showings of
WalMart: The High Cost of Low Price this week. A faculty member sends to the announcement list of the campus this praise.

Very good documentary film. SCSU should show it again. I assigned my student to view it for bonus points as part of the Ethical and Social Issues chapter in my course.

No word if they will be getting bonus points for Why WalMart Works or visiting the WalMart video feedroom.
Any chance the makers of this movie will visit the 300-500 workers to be hired in Mankato? Why let diverse viewpoints in when your mind is made up?

I have gotten a few notes about the situation at University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire that I wrote about earlier this week. According to an email Tom Burton of the UWEC College Republicans, the Student Senate will take up the issue Monday; for now, the administration is sitting around waiting for someone in the UW system to make a legal ruling on the rule that bans a resident assistant from holding a Bible study in her or his room.

Another email from a UWEC student reminds me that UWEC has also shown an anti-religion attitude in its service learning requirement:

In my opinion, I don't see anything wrong with RA's leading a Bible study in their rooms or in their dorms. They are students, they live there, and they should have those same rights, too. As long as the RA's don't pressure anybody to join or make someone feel uncomfortable about it, they should be able to lead Bible studies. I don't believe that anyone was actually offended by this male RA leading the Bible study. It is more of the university trying to enforce their whole separation of church and state.

Recently, UWEC has been attacking people with religion. Last year, they were trying (I am not sure if they succeeded) to put a ban on religious service learning. At UWEC, we are required to fulfill 30 hours of service learning (community service) in order to graduate. The university doesn't feel that anything religiously affiliated should count (that includes working in soup kitchens), because the person is proselytizing their faith. Yet, volunteering for a political campaign is perfectly acceptable!

She's right, there was such a case, and it passed the university council. Separation of church and state has often been confusing on college campuses, but if one cannot count working in a soup kitchen as part of one's service because the kitchen was organized by a church but can participate in a rally for Planned Parenthood, something is definitely wrong.

According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz:

Namely, Ryan Carstensen, with a student commentary in today's University Chronicle. He analyzes our buddy Professor Davis.

If the trouble is that SCSU doesn't have enough students of color, why try and discount and distance ourselves from international students? Do none of these students exhibit color? Is it only American students of color we should be concerned with? I'm not sure what the Davis agenda entails, but it smells a bit off. It certainly doesn't appear to be truly concerned with diversity, or he'd be shouting about international enrollment from the rooftops.

Whatever his agenda might be, you have to admire his recruitment game plan. "Be honest with the minority students you attempt to recruit, tell them they may be in for a rough time." I'm no marketing wizard, but perhaps scaring the prospective students is a bad plan. Can't imagine why Mr. Davis might be having difficulty getting people to listen to him.

Well done, sir. As a followup question, Mr. Carstensen, perhaps you could ask him why he keeps sending these letters to high school counselors?

Did somebody say "plantation"?

A couple of weeks ago we had a seminar presented by Dilip Ratha, a World Bank economist who you'll see a great deal of over the next few months. Peter Gallagher reviews the new Global Economic Prospects 2006 report from the Bank, which focuses on workers' remittances. Gallagher notes correctly that both developing and industrialized economies have been quick to lower barriers to trade in goods and capital but not for labor. Indeed, USA Today reports this morning that momentum is building for a fence to run the entire length of the US-Mexico border. That ignores the gains that can be made in industrialized countries from having smart, motivated workers join already-skilled labor forces, and the gains to developing countries from wages remitted by workers back to their home countries. Longtime readers of the Scholars will remember I did some work on this in Armenia two summers ago.

Gallagher suggests you buy Western Union stock, because they transfer money. The problem with WU is that they're awfully expensive. If I want to send $50 to my great-uncle in Armenia it will cost me an extra $13 to make the transfer. I can do much better by going into "little Armenia" in the Hollywood/Glendale area and find a window in the back of a store owned by an Armenian. I give him the money, he calls a friend back in Yerevan, and the friend takes money to whomever is to receive it. Rich Armenian parents can support their kids in America this way, for example, by letting the kid pocket the $50 here and handing the $50 over to the relative there; this avoids the banking system entirely. And other banks can do this for less than the WU wire; between Russia and Armenia, the cost was 1%. All of which is to say, don't buy Western Union stock for this reason.

That aside, there's much to learn from this report, particularly for the United States and other countries that attract immigrants:

Destination countries can enjoy significant economic gains from migration. The
increased availability of labor boosts returns to capital and reduces the cost of production. A model-based simulation performed for this study indicates that a rise in migration from developing countries sufficient to raise the labor force of high-income countries by 3 percent could boost incomes of natives in high-income countries by 0.4 percent. In addition, high-income countries may benefit from increased labor-market flexibility, an increased labor force due to lower prices for services such as child care, and perhaps economies of scale and increased diversity.

There are losers to be sure, particularly in the wages of lesser-skilled workers and within that group most particularly among earlier migrants. The net benefits or costs to the countries from whence immigrants originate is much harder to calculate. Sure, they get those large benefits, but they also suffer brain drain. I haven't read all of the report yet, just the intro and first chapter, but between that and talking with Ratha I get the impression he thinks the net might be negative for origin countries, a result that strikes me as surprising. I'll have to ask him about this next time I see him.

Dilip appears in this radio report from MarketPlace.

UPDATE (11/18): And this from the BBC.

Ruh-roh. This could be trouble.

There's a simple reason why computers have not taken over teachers' jobs: They're boring, unpersuasive, unattractive and soulless.

That may soon change if Amy Baylor can perfect the virtual professors she's working on.

... In a study funded by the National Science Foundation, Baylor employed non-stereotypical, virtual engineering mentors to challenge young women's stereotypes about the engineering profession.

Baylor had 79 female students rate a series of pedagogical agents on which were most like themselves, most like an engineer, and which they'd prefer to have as a professor.

The agents were identical except for age, gender, attractiveness, and "coolness" (differing clothes and hair styles).

"As anticipated, when the young women in the current study were asked to select the agents who were most like them and who they most wanted to be like, they tended to pick young, female, attractive and cool agents," Baylor writes in a recent report.

"However, they also selected the young, female, cool agents as being least like an engineer," the study found. "When asked to select who they would most like to learn from about engineering, the women in the current study were far more likely to pick male agents who were uncool but attractive. Interestingly, it was also the male, uncool agents that they tended to rate as most like an engineer."

(h/t: reader jw)

The Chronicle of Higher Education temp link good for five days, permanent link for subscribers) reviews Brainwashing 201, the second short film made by Evan Coyne Maloney about classroom politicking. The first and last few grafs give you the start of the movie quite well

In a darkened theater, a married couple appears on the screen. "Laura and Roger Freberg seem like normal people," narrates a pleasant male voice. "She's a professor at Cal Poly, and he owns a local business. They've been married since 1972. They live in a beautiful town. And their daughter was recently awarded a Bronze Star for her service in Iraq. But they also have a horrible secret. And for seven years, it made their lives living hell."

"A lot of bad things happened," Mr. Freberg says. Someone tried to break into their house, a swastika was burned on their lawn, and he says, "some really nasty threats" were made against their children.

"Were they closet Nazis?" the narrator asks, to footage of two Nazi soldiers forcibly escorting a priest down the street.

"Did they have people buried in their backyard?" he asks, as viewers see a scene from Night of the Living Dead.

"No, it was something worse ... much worse," he says, dragging out every word. "They were ... Republicans!"

...When colleagues found out she was Republican, Ms. Freberg says, she was removed as chairman of her psychology department. (She says that she sued the university and reached a settlement, but according to Robert C. Detweiler, interim provost at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, her charges alleging political and gender discrimination were thrown out.)

"I'm talking about neurons," Ms. Freberg continues, but students told her they knew all along that she was Republican. When she asked them how they could tell, she says, they told her, It's "because of what you don't say."

A murmur of sympathy from the audience, but soon the film elicits more laughter. "I'm learning in geography class that gender is socially constructed," one student tells Mr. Maloney.

"I never knew that carbon chains had anything to do with politics, but they do," says another student.

But what really makes the crowd howl are the shots of Mr. Maloney randomly asking students to direct him to the men's-studies department and the men's center on various campuses. They look at Mr. Maloney like he's crazy, telling him, sometimes while laughing, that such things don't exist.

At the University of California at Santa Cruz, when Mr. Maloney asks a female student the purpose of the women's resource center she tells him it "promotes feminism" and tries to get women "involved in politics." At this, the words "Warning: Truth Detected" flash on the screen, as her word "politics" echoes several times.

Jerry Plagge tells of a student at Normandale Community College who listens to a Shakespeare professor make some point relating George Bush (and we might guess, Iraq) to Henry V. (One of his commenters made the Iraq connection, and I buy it.) Fine, but the student said the classroom got away from the professor.

And whatever reach of a connection he had before completely fizzled away into a full fledged Bush bashing marathon. I was getting a little upset, but I didn't get super angry until my teacher asked some question relating to conservatives and the girl behind me answered:

"Because they're crazy f***ing conservatives."

Hm. What an intelligent answer. These liberals, I tell ya.

I am not critiquing the professor's lecture for content but for style here, and the style is troubling because it licensed the student to use an epithet in reference to conservatives. If I was teaching a course on genocides and got my class to full froth over, say, the Armenian genocide and a student referred to "crazy f***ing Turks" and there was a Turkish student in the room, would that be a hostile environment for that student? Why yes, yes it would be. You would hope that the faculty member would take that very moment to tell the student that she had acted unprofessionally and hold her accountable for that. It's what you do with any student using any curse word in the classroom, and why faculty should check their pottymouths at the door.

Jerry says he's sad to see this behavior at Normandale and surprised it happened there rather than some more elite institution, whereas I think it's more likely to happen at the less-selective institutions. These are not going to be the best-trained, most nuanced professors you can find. They will not be as adept at argumentation, lecturing, and persuasion, and may resort to the same sort of cheap tricks that you hear amateur comics use on open mic nights.

Amy Klobuchar, a candidate for the DFL nomination to replace Mark Dayton in the Senate, is still selling her plan for a "gas gouger tax" and is running a radio ad in northeastern Minnesota. At the request of Gary Miller at Kennedy versus the Machine, I wrote this over there. I transcribed the radio ad from here and offer you the first 30 seconds (the rest covers her background, as you can hear for yourself.)

News announcer: "Today ExxonMobil reported the biggest profits in U.S. history: $10 billion in three months."

Voiceover: The oil companies are raking it in, and you know who's paying. What are the Republican leadership in Congress are doing: Absolutely nothing. Well, Amy Klobuchar thinks there' something we can do. Make the oil companies that are profiteering pay a penalty. The more they gouge, the more they pay. Klobuchar says the money should help people pay for home heating oil. And also invest in the long term in home-grown energy, like ethanol and biomass, wind and solar, a comprehensive energy policy.

The twist here is the directing of the tax money. As David Altig points out here in discussing the Byron Dorgan variation of this, the money gets tied to a home-grown energy policy. If it's such a great idea for governments to engage in this, though, why tie funding of these policies to a windfall profits tax? Given the failed history of these taxes to raise revenues, either those policies go unfunded or they increase demand for higher income tax rates.

David also pointed out a major problem here, which is that it makes energy exploration a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition. If you invest in something that produces a good whose price is rising, you get taxed extra hard. If you invest in something that produced a good whose price is falling, nobody compensates you. See my post here, and in particular the video of the interview between Lee Raymond and Neil Cavuto. Or see MSU Mankato economist Phil Miller at Market Power.
Categories: economics, politics

In response to my post on the Justice Department's filing against Southern Illinois' race-based scholarship programs, blogger Jason Hinds adds a quote from SIU history professor Jonathan Bean. Bean wrote Hinds:

Actually, they missed the worst program of all, the so-called "cradle-to-grave" affirmative action program DFI (Diversifying Faculty in Illinois). This program pays members of certain racial groups--including Asians who are triply OVERREPRESENTED as faculty--to go to graduate school (plus $17,000 stipend) and they pay back by taking a tenure-track job at one of 34 institutions, including private colleges in Illinois (e.g., Northwestern). This program is different because, at SIUC's behest (I am told), the state legislature established it in 1985.
...[I]t's not just "anti-white," as the Sun Times implies. No "whites," no people from North Africa, no Middle Easterners, and no people from certain Asian countries need apply. However, if you were born in Latin America to a white businessman who works for a multinational -- bingo! You are "Hispanic." Defining race and distributing benefits on this basis is not only wrong and illegal, it often violates common sense (as the case of the Asians shows). When I challenged, in writing, the inclusion of Asians in the DFI program, I was later told by an administrator that, yes, they are triply overrepresented overall but still underrepresented in areas like English literature! What this means is they will never admit success: once a group is "in," it is in FOREVER.

Or, as someone noted in our piece on Professor Davis on Monday, some people of the same color are non-diverse while others are.
Categories: higher_ed

Ben Bernanke is not shying away from an open discussion of inflation targeting. In his testimony yesterday he offered a vision of how IT would augment the gains in disinflation made by Greenspan:

...under Chairman Greenspan, monetary policy has become increasingly transparent to the public and the financial markets, a trend that I strongly support. A more transparent policy process increases democratic accountability, promotes constructive dialogue between policymakers and informed outsiders, reduces uncertainty in financial markets, and helps to anchor the public's expectations of long-run inflation--which, as I have argued already, promotes economic growth and stability.

One possible step toward greater transparency would be for the FOMC to state explicitly the numerical inflation rate or range of inflation rates it considers to be consistent with the goal of long-term price stability, a practice currently employed by many of the world's central banks. I have supported this idea in my academic writings and in speeches as a Board member. Providing quantitative guidance about the meaning of "long-term price stability" could have several advantages, including further reducing public uncertainty about monetary policy and anchoring long-term inflation expectations even more effectively.

I view the explicit statement of a long-run inflation objective as fully consistent with the Federal Reserve's current policy approach, including its appropriate emphasis on the role of judgment and flexibility in policymaking. Most important, this step would in no way reduce the importance of maximum employment as a policy goal. Indeed, a key justification for this action is its potential to contribute to stronger and more stable employment growth by further stabilizing inflation and inflation expectations. In any case, I assure this Committee that, if I am confirmed, I will take no precipitate steps in the direction of quantifying the definition of long-run price stability. This matter requires further study at the Federal Reserve as well as extensive discussion and consultation. I would propose further action only if a consensus can be developed that taking such a step would further enhance the ability of the FOMC to satisfy its dual mandate of achieving both stable prices and maximum sustainable employment.

This is a bigger deal than you may realize. It certainly makes Congress nervous, as noted by Senator Richard Shelby, saying he wants to have the Fed pay attention to both mandates. Bernanke assures him that the Fed would continue to do so. But the purpose of IT is to make price stability the first goal. Now, unlike New Zealand or other countries that put their central bank chiefs on a performance contract -- hit the target or you're fired -- the vision Bernanke doesn't act as binding on the Fed's behavior. He noted in questions later, for instance, that he would not be tied to the actual inflation rate but the path of expected inflation.

Responding to a question about a hypothetical rise in inflation in 2007: "My principal concern at that point would not be that inflation had temporarily risen above its normal range -- for example current inflation is above the range that in the long run would be desirable. But the concern would be that expectations about inflation going a year or two into the future had become unhinged or unanchored."

You could always claim that you are not responding to current inflation because your forecast of expected inflation indicates return to the target rate. And the Fed's independence means that it's the last arbiter of these things. But Bernanke is arguing for this as a way of reducing uncertainty about Fed behavior.

In 2003, there was an episode where there was clearly miscommunication between the Federal Reserve and the bond markets and it caused a significant fluctuation in the bond markets. It was over the issue of whether or not there was some risk of deflation coming forward.

"Clearly there was a misunderstanding about that risk.

"It impressed on me the importance of speaking clearly and communicating clearly and making sure there was understanding on both sides about what the Fed is saying and what the Fed is intending to do."

We had a communications official from the New York Fed here a couple of years ago -- I can't remember if it was late 2003 or early 2004 -- and it was obvious to me that at least there, where the system open market desk is tasked with the daily conduct of monetary policy, communications was being re-thought due to misperceptions in the bond market. (See contemporary stories here and here.) They argued that the Fed had something to do with this behavior:

There seems little doubt, based on the reading, that Bernanke will be confirmed by a large margin. That's why the hearings are not getting news ... well, that and the Senate's behavior. A few years from now, though, this might be the more meaningful change.

UPDATE: New Economist points out this review of the literature on inflation targeting. It's pretty throrough.
Categories: economics

Maybe that R.A. could come over here and help this young lady.

I am not a very religious person, but I do believe in a god and I think that is good enough. I sure as hell do not need someone pushing what they believe onto me and telling me that I am in the wrong because I don't believe what they do.

Somehow I think I missed the transition sentence there.

A few weeks ago FIRE put out a note that the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire had banned resident assistants from leading Bible studies in their dorm rooms. This occurred after an RA had gone into the basement of his dorm with some students to study a verse. Arguing that the students were employees of the university, UWEC said it was simply a work rule.

In a Sept. 22 e-mail to Steiger, Deborah Newman, associate director of housing and residence life, elaborated on the university's position.

"As a state employee, you and I have a responsibility to make sure we are providing an environment that does not put undue pressure on any member of our halls in terms of religion, political parties, etc.," Newman wrote. "As a 'leader' of a Bible study, one of the roles is to gather and encourage people to attend. These two roles have a strong possibility to conflict in your hall."

To have an RA lead Bible studies in his or her room might make that person unapproachable by others who are uncomfortable with the RA's religious nature. Others, such as the chairman of the UWEC College Republicans, Tom Burton, argue that it is a violation of a students freedom to religious expression.

I understand that the RA needs to be available to the students he is paid to support, but as long as he is open to people contacting him during his Bible study and is not turning students away, he should not be stopped from studying the Bible.

Or as this student letter to the editor says, there are lots of things that an RA can do that can make another dorm resident uncomfortable, like drinking. (I take it to be legal there if you're 21 -- SCSU is a dry campus.) FIRE got involved and sent a letter to the school agreeing with this view. The school has responded and said it does not permit RAs to do any organizing of groups or activities. Yet last year, FIRE notes, an RA was praised for organizing a discussion group ... about the Vagina Monologues.

U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-Green Bay) is turning up the pressure, calling for hearings. (h/t: Boots and Sabers) And Owen notes that the Journal-Sentinel in Milwaukee gets it:

The problem is that there is no such place. Students don't just seek advice from R.A.s when they're in the dorm. They talk to R.A.s at lunch, over coffee and at the local bars. If the university's contention is that being an R.A. is a 24/7 kind of job, that applies no matter where the R.A. is when she or he is asked a question by a student.

But the university draws an artificial line at the dormitory door. It's a line that won't hold.

Exactly.

Categories: higher_ed