Category Education
Are gifted education programs a waste of money?
In my latest Globe and Mail piece, I summarized a study by Sa Bui, Steven G. Craig, and Scott Imberman on the effectiveness of gifted education. The authors look at students in a large urban American school district who were evaluated for gifted programming in grade five. They ask: Who does better on the grade 6 and 7 […]
What’s the best way to scale grades?
It happens. An exam question is not clear, or more challenging than intended. The exam is marked by an over-zealous TA. Or perhaps the students haven't studied as hard as they should have. As a result, the students' grades are, in some sense, too low – they do not accurately convey the students' level of […]
Don’t eat the marshmallow
"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery" – Mr. Micawber in Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield" Canadians are increasingly indebted. 31% of us struggle to make our bills and payments. We're pretty clueless when it comes to retirement – just 40% […]
Dumb men commercials
Dumb men commercials. Ads featuring men who can't cook. Men who are too stupid to understand how casinos work. And, especially, dumb white men, like the oldsters in the TD ad or the man with "tax pain" in the H&R Block commercial. There's enough stupid men commercials to inspire a blog dedicated entirely to the subject. Why are these ads so pervasive?
Is it wrong to keep working?
Older university professors earn more than younger ones - this paper has Canadian evidence and references. Studies of scientists and of Norwegian academics have found that research productivity begins to fall at some point, but the onset and rate of decline varies across disciplines. One more recent study found that age and publication productivity were unrelated. Studies (here and here) that track professors' student evaluations over […]
Wikipedia is dominated by men. So what?
About 15 percent of contributors to Wikipedia are women. Sometimes this shows. The entry for employment equity as of March 5, 2011, ran as follows: Employment equity refers to Canadian policies that require or encourage preferential treatment in employment practices for certain designated groups: women, people with disabilities, Aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities.[1] Employment equity goes beyond mere non-discrimination […]
We learn, and then we forget
Every time the census is released, hopes are raised for the future of bilingualism in Canada. Although relatively few older Canadians can speak both official languages, bilingualism rates are higher for young Canadians. Here's a picture, based on 2006 Census data, showing the percentage of non-Francophones in each age group who are bilingual, that is, […]
Toilet cleaning, department chairing, and the ratchet effect
One of my all-time favourite paper titles is Marc Bilodeau and Al Slivinski's "Toilet cleaning and department chairing: volunteering a public service." Like any great title, it conveys the gist of the authors' argument in just a few words. Chairing a university department is a public service. Like toilet cleaning, it is something that has […]
The political economy of rising tuition
Some facts about university finances in Canada: 1. Undergraduate tuition has doubled in real terms in the last twenty years; tuition in professional programs has risen much more rapidly. 2. University enrolments are growing, as the participation rate – the percentage of people in a given age group attending university – continues to rise. 3. Each […]
Have universities reached the tipping point?
In 1983, a t-shirt cost about $10 or $20, an album $10 or $15, and undergraduate tuition at University of Waterloo cost $1313.74 annually for architecture, its most expensive undergraduate program. In 2011, a first year architecture student at University of Waterloo pays $7,697 in fees each year (and architecture is far from being University of Waterloo's most expensive program). […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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