Category Education
A Digression on University Finance
Well, you may have caught Alex Usher’s HESA post this week on university finances. He presented data on university operating budgets from the CAUBO/Statistics Canada financial survey for the period 2007-08 to 2011-12 that shows that university budgets went up by 28 percent. This is quite intriguing because while universities maintain they have been having […]
Men, women, and law school tuition
Law school is a human capital investment, worth making (roughly speaking) if the benefits are higher than the costs. Male lawyers earn, on average, more than female lawyers (e.g. here). But that does not mean they get a higher return on their legal education. The pay-off to going to law school is the increase in […]
Why don’t schools teach typing?
My niece wants to take a typing class. She watches her mother's hands whiz across the keyboard, rattling off 80 or 90 words per minute. She wants to be able to write quickly and effortlessly too. But her school doesn't teach typing. The question is: why not? Learning how to touch-type is a classic example […]
Do ratemyprofessor scores correlate with official teaching evaluations?
"He's a smart guy, almost as smart as he thinks he is…" Review on ratemyprofessors.com The ratemyprofessor.com website comes in for a lot of criticism. Some allege that the reviews are bogus. Others argue that it provides no useful information for students, just laurels for hot, easy teachers. Another common criticism is that too few students post […]
How quickly does hotness fade?
Ratemyprofessors.com allows students to grade a professor's clarity, helpfulness, ease and – just for fun – rate their appearance as "hot" or "not". A professor with more hot than not votes is awarded a chili pepper on the ratemyprofessors.com web site. Hotness declines with age, but how quickly? To find out, I combined ratemyprofessors hotness scores with […]
The (slowly) changing face of Ontario economics departments
When I was an undergraduate, many of my professors were Canadian born and American trained. The demographic profile of Canada, and of Canadian economics classrooms, has changed since then, as our country has recruited high skilled immigrants from around the world. But has there been a corresponding change in the demographic composition of the professoriate? As […]
Canadian universities: reading the writing on the wall
The Royal Military College of Canada (RMCC) is the only university under direct federal control, thus recent developments there indicate the Harper government's vision for post-secondary education. This CAUT-commissioned report, whose authors include eminent economist Robin Boadway (an RMCC grad and ardent supporter of the college), describes a number of developments that merit close attention.
Does public sector salary disclosure raise or lower salaries?
I don't know. Ontario's salary disclosure legislation, which requires that all salaries over $100,000 per year be made publicly available, was introduced by the Progressive Conservative government of Premier Mike Harris. That government had a somewhat unenthusiastic attitude towards MUSH (municipalities, universities, schools and hospitals) and the public service. The aim of the legislation was, […]
What does the federal budget mean for the post-secondary sector?
Reforming universities is difficult. Cures tried elsewhere, like the UK Research Assessment Exercise, have induced people to publish more. Yet, to the extent that research comes at the cost of time spent teaching or engaging with students, "incentivizing" research could actually decrease the social value of universities. University reform is doubly difficult in Canada, […]
Boys, retention, and multiple regression
A followup to my previous post on university retention and males. Assume boys and girls are identical, except: there's something in the water at high schools that causes boys to do worse than girls; and there's something in the water at universities that causes boys to do worse than girls. Suppose you had a data […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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