Category Education
Frivolous Fees and Serious Money
Over on Ramblings and Musings, University of Toronto professor Victor Ivrii is thinking about frivolous fees. His article is prompted by a National Post piece on "Sanctioned sex club events and Israeli Apartheid Week". The National Post article asks: Why is their money going to support controversial events, such as Israeli Apartheid Week or the “Epic […]
Financial Literacy Quiz
Today I'm trying to do some work with the Canadian Financial Capability Survey. This survey contains a test of financial literacy/knowledge, which I have reproduced below the fold:
Universities, Public Funding & Entrepreneurship: The Consequences of Risk
Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates asked some interesting questions in his morning blog post. The world of university funding in Canada is changing – there is more money overall for universities but governments have been paying a declining share of university operating budgets with the remainder coming from tuition and assorted sources of […]
University retention and males
Carleton University admits more male students than females. But it graduates more female students than males. Why? What, if anything, can and should we do about it? (I don't know.) The public access data is here. (Datacubes is a lovely tool, but it takes a little time learning how to use it.) You can see […]
Copy/paste/re-write; student essays as collages
This is not about economics. Maybe it's about teaching. Maybe it's about the internet. I only have anecdata, and it is compromised by sample selection bias. I don't have any theory, and I don't have a proposed policy.
Leviathan, Exit, Voice and Ontario Teachers
The last few weeks has seen the death of two economists – James Buchanan and Albert O. Hirschman – whose work has influenced my intellectual development and thinking over the years. Their thoughts combined with tomorrow’s “political action” by Ontario teachers against the soon to expire McGuinty government has caused me to think about what […]
The dirty secret of economics education
It's hardly a secret to anyone who's worked in an economics department: some students enrol in economics because they want to study something that seems vaguely useful, but they don't have the grades, or the mathematics and language skills, to make it in business or engineering.
Measuring Universities: Once More Unto the Breach
Making change sometimes involves an elaborate public discourse and preparation of affected stakeholders and in Ontario the discourse is towards getting people in the public sector to do more with less. The latest target was drawn to my attention by Alex Usher’s Higher Education Strategy Associates (HESA) morning bulletin, which featured the preliminary report by […]
Questioning grades: a very short survey
If you've ever been a student or a teacher, please answer this seven question survey: Take part in our online survey I explain what the survey is about below the fold.
The students’ dilemma
Imagine a world where education is of no intrinsic value, and serves only as a signal of an unobservable character trait called "ability." Performance (which can be observed) is determined by both ability and effort. Effort is costly. Some students have a high level of ability, and some have a low level of ability. A professor's […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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