There is a strong bias in this country to giving all high school graduates access to college. We have no real alternative plan for 18 to 22 year old high school graduates aside from the military. There are no decent jobs for them. We don't have vocational training programs for them to become plumbers, carpenters and whatnot. If you are a high school graduate, aren't destitute, and aren't going into the military, chances are that you'll at least try college for a semester or two. About two thirds of high school graduates do just that.
In order to accommodate this extraordinary level of participation, we've created colleges for every kind of student imaginable. There are schools for the very smart, schools for the average student, schools for the high school dunce, schools for the wealthy, and schools for the poor. There is some overlap between those distinctions I've just made, but the fact is America has a very stratified, caste-like system for higher education where the strata are highly organized by SAT score, high school GPA and family income level.
Come from a wealthy (180K annual income or better) family and chances are you won't go to a public school. If you're a 2100 or better SAT kind of kid, you'll end up at places like where I used to teach, Duke. If you're an 1800 of better SAT kind of kid, you'll end up at places like Syracuse or Kalamazoo. If you're kind of slow, but rich, there are places for you as well.
Similarly, if you come from a family of relatively modest income (80K or less), you aren't going to go to a private school unless it's a sketchy for-profit one like the University of Phoenix (for profit private schools typically make their money by fleecing the poor and lower-middle class). You might try to save some money and go to a community college first before you go to a four year state school. If you're smart and can afford it, you end up at the flagship state campus. If you're slow, you'll end up at an open-admissions public school, typically a campus where there are few dorms and many students live at home or work at least part time.
Given the great variety of schools available - thousands of four year schools - one would think that graduation rates would be reasonable for our nation's students. But they aren't. Despite a large menu of schools, graduation rates have stagnated at about 50 percent for decades. Much of that stagnation is due to the low-end schools, both private (usually for profit) and public. Graduation rates for these schools can be abysmal, in the 20 percent range. But even at flagship state schools, which get the best of the students from modest income families, graduation rates are typically less than 75 percent.
There are those that think this level of failure is acceptable. A little college is better than no college at all they say. But this blithe optimism ignores that the average GPA of those that do drop out is incredibly low relative to national averages, in the 2.0 to 2.3 range from what little data I can find. In this day and age, that kind of student has learned essentially zero over his or her year or two on campus. It is a waste of time and money for these people to attend college.
The low graduation rates indicate that there is a profound mismatch between the academic performance of incoming freshmen and what is expected of them. It’s not really a matter of brains. We’ve already stratified students so that they, by and large, are attending the kind of college they should attend based on their scholastic aptitude. It’s a matter of commitment and finances. Many students don’t really have the financial resources or time to do the 20 to 25 hours a week of work and attendance required. They may have to work full time. They may have families to raise. Others have the resources, but not the drive.
Over the last fifty years, we’ve tried to deal with our high college dropout rates by lowering academic standards. It hasn’t worked. Part of our failure to increase graduation rates relates to the increased cost of higher education. Part of it relates to our continuing to push for higher access. Part of it relates to the increasing failure of our high schools to prepare students for college (or to be fair, the inability of high schools to produce a higher percentage of college ready students out of the high school pool).
This dilution of what a college degree means, ultimately, that our best and brightest aren’t being challenged as much as they once were. Literacy rates are down for college graduates. Study hours are down for college students. Recently, for example, I took a tour of a flagship school’s intro physics labs. The class didn’t use calculus, but somehow met requirements for many students’ majors. The campus has, on paper, the best students in the state by far. Physics without calculus for students who are, supposedly, science majors? Roll over Isaac Newton and give Albert Einstein the news.
When it comes to college education we have been emphasizing quantity over quality for decades. Curiously, this watering down has occurred across the board, even in places where student quality is, at least on paper, quite high. There is no good reason why the schools that attract the best and brightest have decided to expect less of their students. But they have done so.
Despite the high number of students who fail to graduate, there are those who continue to push for even more access to college. The Obama administration certainly is pushing hard in this direction. Obama has called for a dramatic increase in the population of college graduates. He wants an astonishing 60% of all 25 to 34 year olds to have associate degrees or better within 10 years (up from 40% today) and has argued that the increase is necessary for this country to maintain its economic competitiveness.
The Obama team’s views on access have their origins in a recent book, The Race Between Education and Technology by Goldin and Katz. It’s a very good book. I highly recommend it. For those who believe that books no longer can influence society, the profound impact of this one book on DC thinking says you’re wrong. But I think the message of this book – or at least how people like Obama are interpreting the message of this book – is also wrong. I’ll continue this next time.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The Cost of Denying Our Mortality
Recently, I took care of two health issues, one for me and one for my cat. What happened to me? I had a couple of suspicious-looking bumps on my forehead. I'm from Slavic stock. I have two skin colors, pasty white in winter and tomato red in summer. If anyone has the type of skin prone to cancer, it's me. I went to a local skin doctor to have the bumps looked at. He took a little slice from each bump, did some biopsies, and asked for a second opinion from people at Stanford. The grand total for this tiny procedure that took ten minutes of his time and another half hour of a tech's time preparing some slides? Eight hundred and ninety bucks, 540 from my doctor and 350 from Stanford to look at the slides. The verdict? One wart and one pre-cancer growth, both of which need to be removed.
I was furious about the bill for the second opinion. Stanford's fee for looking at the slides was 110 dollars more than my skin doctor charged for his entire biopsy. It cost me three hundred and fifty bucks for one Stanford doc (or tech) to look at a couple of slides probably for no more than two minutes each. I've been trying to avoid Stanford for all my medical work for a long time. They have a wonderful gleaming facility that looks like a high end hotel. In the end, you pay for all the spit and polish, more than anywhere else in the area.
Four years ago, I had a routine colonoscopy at Stanford and they charged 800 dollars more than a nearby hospital charged my wife for the same work. For the extra money, they did give me nice booties to wear so I wouldn't slip on the floor if I walked around while I was recovering (my wife didn't get booties at her hospital). Three years ago, I had Stanford look at a urine sample and the fee was 800 bucks, about three times more than I had ever been charged before. After that, I decided to foreswear Stanford Hospital and I dropped my Stanford primary care physician. This little extra Stanford bill for my biopsies reminded me just why I hate Stanford's medical facilities.
Enough about me and my kvetching about Stanford. A week after my biopsy, my cat was attacked by a raccoon. She's lucky to be alive. I took her to the veterinary emergency room late at night and waited while they sedated her and stitched her up. The total fee? A mere five hundred ninety seven bucks. The facility was kind of run down. Nothing gleamed. The vet certainly didn't give my cat little booties to wear. But she came out of the emergency room alive and well, adorned a silly Elizabethan collar to try and keep her from ripping out her stitches. The collar lasted less then 10 minutes, the length of the drive home. Somehow, she found a way to slip it off while still in her transporter. My cat is a feline Houdini.
Had I been attacked like my cat and gone to the emergency room at Stanford or El Camino hospitals, I know what the fee would have been for being sedated and patched up. Somewhere around 10 times more than the fee for my cat (and since my insurance deductible is 8K, I would have paid for all of that out of my own wallet). Thinking about the difference in cost made me think about the difference in care. The pet hospital was very basic. The hospitals on the other hand are both gleaming towers. Forty years ago, they weren't that way I know. Stanford and El Camino hospitals weren't as grungy as the pet hospital, but they were modest, no-frills things. It's not surprising that they both charged much less way back when.
I know I'm being glib here, but after taking my cat home I really did start to think to myself, "You know next time I have a medical problem that needs emergency treatment, I'm going to stop talking, start meowing, drive myself to the pet hospital, and try to convince those vets that I'm a cat. The care will probably be fine and I'll save myself several thousand dollars."
It's obvious that animal hospitals charge less than human hospitals chiefly because we value our pets' lives far less than our own. Had the animal hospital told me it would cost 6K to treat my cat's raccoon wounds, I would have balked, though I really do like my cat. Vets charge what the market bears. The quality of their facilities reflects their lower fees. No one gets outraged when we put a cat down and talks about death panels for Fluffy.
I'm going to say something outrageous here. We can learn something about our own health care from how we treat our pets when they are sick. We put limits on the care we provide them. We put a value on their lives.
Americans don't do this when it comes to human life. We believe that we should spend whatever it takes to keep the ones we love alive whether it be for a day or month longer. We've even embedded this idea into our insurance policies, which no longer are allowed to have monetary caps. We believe that hospitals should be symbols of life everlasting, possessing every piece of equipment known to keep us going for as long as possible. This effort at extending life no matter what, ignoring the definite inevitability of our mortality is slowly but surely bankrupting this country.
I have seen this denial of mortality in my own family. My parents and grandparents were all European. Both my father and grandparents came here as full adults and their attitude toward death was much more pragmatic and realistic than what I see is typical with Americans. For example, after a decade of dealing with Parkinson's disease, my father was more than willing to say good bye to this world. "Give me a pill," he said to me. "This is no way to live." I would have done just as he requested, but first I asked my mother for permission. She said no, she wanted him to go on for as long as he could. He did live for several more years, but I never saw the point in it, and neither did my father. Then again, despite all the hardship, I truly believe my mother was grateful to have my father for that extra time.
My mother's attitude toward death was far more aligned with American attitudes (of course I'm generalizing and assigning cultural trends to individual behavior). After living with a fatal cancer for more than a year, far longer than anyone thought was possible, she had major surgery to remove a tumor so that she could live a few more months. The cost was about 100K, almost all of it paid by Medicare and a Medicare supplement. I'm a mama's boy through and through, and was happy to have her live those extra months. But I knew that had we lived anywhere else, that surgery would have never happened.
My wife's family is a typical American one and not surprisingly in my view, there have been major surgeries involving my wife's family for people in their eighties that have totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs. One of those surgeries left the patient unconscious for over a month. She was eventually electro-shocked back to consciousness, but now suffers from dementia. She is in a nursing home, bedridden, and the bills keep piling up. When all is said and done, the cost of her care will be over one half-million dollars.
As I write this another relative in his nineties - who has been blessed with health and a sharp mind for almost all those years - has spent a week in the hospital in and out of consciousness as doctors continue to keep him going. Only in America.
America is by its nature an optimistic, can-do country. I've never seen any other place quite like it. We believe that no hurdle is insurmountable. It's wonderful to see this optimism in action. But when it comes to dealing with sickness and inevitable death, that optimism has a limited place. Somehow we need to come to terms with the fact that it is neither desirable nor financially viable to extend the lives of our citizens no matter the cost and the quality of that life.
I was furious about the bill for the second opinion. Stanford's fee for looking at the slides was 110 dollars more than my skin doctor charged for his entire biopsy. It cost me three hundred and fifty bucks for one Stanford doc (or tech) to look at a couple of slides probably for no more than two minutes each. I've been trying to avoid Stanford for all my medical work for a long time. They have a wonderful gleaming facility that looks like a high end hotel. In the end, you pay for all the spit and polish, more than anywhere else in the area.
Four years ago, I had a routine colonoscopy at Stanford and they charged 800 dollars more than a nearby hospital charged my wife for the same work. For the extra money, they did give me nice booties to wear so I wouldn't slip on the floor if I walked around while I was recovering (my wife didn't get booties at her hospital). Three years ago, I had Stanford look at a urine sample and the fee was 800 bucks, about three times more than I had ever been charged before. After that, I decided to foreswear Stanford Hospital and I dropped my Stanford primary care physician. This little extra Stanford bill for my biopsies reminded me just why I hate Stanford's medical facilities.
Enough about me and my kvetching about Stanford. A week after my biopsy, my cat was attacked by a raccoon. She's lucky to be alive. I took her to the veterinary emergency room late at night and waited while they sedated her and stitched her up. The total fee? A mere five hundred ninety seven bucks. The facility was kind of run down. Nothing gleamed. The vet certainly didn't give my cat little booties to wear. But she came out of the emergency room alive and well, adorned a silly Elizabethan collar to try and keep her from ripping out her stitches. The collar lasted less then 10 minutes, the length of the drive home. Somehow, she found a way to slip it off while still in her transporter. My cat is a feline Houdini.
Had I been attacked like my cat and gone to the emergency room at Stanford or El Camino hospitals, I know what the fee would have been for being sedated and patched up. Somewhere around 10 times more than the fee for my cat (and since my insurance deductible is 8K, I would have paid for all of that out of my own wallet). Thinking about the difference in cost made me think about the difference in care. The pet hospital was very basic. The hospitals on the other hand are both gleaming towers. Forty years ago, they weren't that way I know. Stanford and El Camino hospitals weren't as grungy as the pet hospital, but they were modest, no-frills things. It's not surprising that they both charged much less way back when.
I know I'm being glib here, but after taking my cat home I really did start to think to myself, "You know next time I have a medical problem that needs emergency treatment, I'm going to stop talking, start meowing, drive myself to the pet hospital, and try to convince those vets that I'm a cat. The care will probably be fine and I'll save myself several thousand dollars."
It's obvious that animal hospitals charge less than human hospitals chiefly because we value our pets' lives far less than our own. Had the animal hospital told me it would cost 6K to treat my cat's raccoon wounds, I would have balked, though I really do like my cat. Vets charge what the market bears. The quality of their facilities reflects their lower fees. No one gets outraged when we put a cat down and talks about death panels for Fluffy.
I'm going to say something outrageous here. We can learn something about our own health care from how we treat our pets when they are sick. We put limits on the care we provide them. We put a value on their lives.
Americans don't do this when it comes to human life. We believe that we should spend whatever it takes to keep the ones we love alive whether it be for a day or month longer. We've even embedded this idea into our insurance policies, which no longer are allowed to have monetary caps. We believe that hospitals should be symbols of life everlasting, possessing every piece of equipment known to keep us going for as long as possible. This effort at extending life no matter what, ignoring the definite inevitability of our mortality is slowly but surely bankrupting this country.
I have seen this denial of mortality in my own family. My parents and grandparents were all European. Both my father and grandparents came here as full adults and their attitude toward death was much more pragmatic and realistic than what I see is typical with Americans. For example, after a decade of dealing with Parkinson's disease, my father was more than willing to say good bye to this world. "Give me a pill," he said to me. "This is no way to live." I would have done just as he requested, but first I asked my mother for permission. She said no, she wanted him to go on for as long as he could. He did live for several more years, but I never saw the point in it, and neither did my father. Then again, despite all the hardship, I truly believe my mother was grateful to have my father for that extra time.
My mother's attitude toward death was far more aligned with American attitudes (of course I'm generalizing and assigning cultural trends to individual behavior). After living with a fatal cancer for more than a year, far longer than anyone thought was possible, she had major surgery to remove a tumor so that she could live a few more months. The cost was about 100K, almost all of it paid by Medicare and a Medicare supplement. I'm a mama's boy through and through, and was happy to have her live those extra months. But I knew that had we lived anywhere else, that surgery would have never happened.
My wife's family is a typical American one and not surprisingly in my view, there have been major surgeries involving my wife's family for people in their eighties that have totaled hundreds of thousands of dollars in costs. One of those surgeries left the patient unconscious for over a month. She was eventually electro-shocked back to consciousness, but now suffers from dementia. She is in a nursing home, bedridden, and the bills keep piling up. When all is said and done, the cost of her care will be over one half-million dollars.
As I write this another relative in his nineties - who has been blessed with health and a sharp mind for almost all those years - has spent a week in the hospital in and out of consciousness as doctors continue to keep him going. Only in America.
America is by its nature an optimistic, can-do country. I've never seen any other place quite like it. We believe that no hurdle is insurmountable. It's wonderful to see this optimism in action. But when it comes to dealing with sickness and inevitable death, that optimism has a limited place. Somehow we need to come to terms with the fact that it is neither desirable nor financially viable to extend the lives of our citizens no matter the cost and the quality of that life.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Our Ridiculous Expectation For Politicians
Suppose you worked for a company, did your job well, and in your free time had an affair or went online and sexted with someone other than your wife or husband. Your boss found out about the dalliance and fired you on the spot or demanded that you resign. Unless you're in the morals and values business - you're a church pastor for example - your response should be, "I'll see you in court." Whether you are or aren't cheating on your spouse has nothing to do with your job. It's not a criminal offense. Can you imagine if it were? We'd have to outsource our prisoners, we'd have so many of them.
People cheat. Husbands. Wives. If they didn't, damn, we wouldn't have anything to write about in novels and show on TV series. It's common. I don't think it's a good idea to cheat because I personally believe it's a hurtful thing to do to the one you love. But I understand that monogamy isn't for everyone and that especially under the influence of alcohol, it can be a very tenuous concept.
I've known lots of people who have had affairs, one-night stands, and who knows what else. If I were to use monogamy as a guide for whom I can and cannot trust in matters outside of sex, I'd have to pretty much not trust a third of the people I know fairly well and like. How did I come up with that number, one third? It's a guess, based on the number of times I've seen people I know make that certain kind of sheepish to warm "we've slept together" hello with someone else. It's a tell that I think all people have, that certain kind of hello. I can't explain what it entails, but I can identify it instantly. My guess of one-third is not that much different than polls about adultery , which if I remember correctly suggest that 30 to 60 percent of all married people cheat.
I don't think it's valid to use monogamy as a guide for trust on other issues. Sex is different. We're wired for it. Our hearts are not universally steadfast and attached to one person and one person only. Just because someone is monogamous does not indicate to me that I can trust him or her on money matters. There are no data that I know of that show that those that are monogamous are better thinkers, more creative or are more conscientious workers. It's true that they do, on the whole, make better spouses.
When it comes to marriage, give me a monogamous partner, please. But in a work or business environment I don't care whether the person I'm working with is having an affair or frequents dirty book stores at night. That's his or her private business.
This country does seem to separate people's sexual appetites (at least heterosexual ones) from the workplace. It would be a ridiculous expectation to not do so. We'd have to fire a lot of key personnel in all companies if we considered monogamy to be part of someone's work description.
But when it comes to politicians, we do get ridiculous. We expect our elected officials to not do what so many others do frequently. Politicians can't have affairs. The argument is frequently made, "If you can't trust him to honor his marriage vows, how can you trust him to do anything else?" It's an absurd if and then argument. What do attitudes toward sex have to do with someone's ability to make good laws, work well with others, and honor promises concerning legislation? Nothing. Monogamy is desirable in marriage, certainly, and its absence can create hell in someone's personal life if they get caught cheating. Beyond the issue of marriage and family, however, it's of no importance.
I'll make one concession to the "those who cheat are bad through and through" argument. There are people who sexually harass others on the job routinely, whose efforts at sexual conquest overwhelm their lives to such a degree that they can do little else but wallow in sexual desire. No, I don't trust people like that, no more than I'd trust a heroin addict with my money or laptop computer.
Your garden variety cheaters, however, are just being human. They shouldn't have to wear scarlet As on their dresses or sport jackets. They can be outstanding workers and contributors to society. That's just as true of ordinary citizens as it is for politicians.
I don't like to make assessments based on small datasets, but let's, for example, look at our last three presidents. One, Clinton, has had countless affairs. The other two, Bush and Obama, seem to be (Who knows really?) loyal and true to their spouses. Was Bush any more trustworthy than Clinton? No. Is Obama any more trustworthy? Based on issues that are important to me that I've seen him waffle on, no. Bush is likely monogamous, but an idiot. Obama is likely monogamous, but has limited leadership ability (aside from speechwriting and oratory, two big exceptions) and has little skill relating to others one on one. Based on our small sample of three, I'd say not only is monogamy overrated as an indicator of presidential capability, but cheaters make the best presidents.
As I write this, a politician, Anthony Weiner, is preparing to resign from congress for sexting with a bunch of women. Yawn. I happen to think that Weiner isn't a very good congressman. He likes to get on TV and scream and shout. He doesn't seem to work effectively with others in DC. Basically, he's a loudmouth, do-nothing. That said, his district keeps re-electing him. They apparently think that all that bluster is valuable. Whether he sexts or not, whether he exchanges bodily fluids or not with someone who isn't his wife, shouldn't matter.
We've been through this before with I don't know how many politicians, both Democratic and Republican. We keep expecting and demanding that our politicians rein in their desires when, in fact, they have rock-star like access to sex. It's an expectation and demand that makes no sense, and one that isn't present in the culture of any other Western country.
We pretend that the sexual revolution never happened and our lives are like 50s television shows. We ignore the fact that in this day and age, there is no privacy and the internet can capture and send to the world every little stupid move we make. We watch with rapt attention as the media pontificates about every sexual transgression of a politician and cynically turns these events into morality plays. I wish America could be realistic about sexual desire and politics, but I expect sanctimony to be the standard response for at least the next few decades.
People cheat. Husbands. Wives. If they didn't, damn, we wouldn't have anything to write about in novels and show on TV series. It's common. I don't think it's a good idea to cheat because I personally believe it's a hurtful thing to do to the one you love. But I understand that monogamy isn't for everyone and that especially under the influence of alcohol, it can be a very tenuous concept.
I've known lots of people who have had affairs, one-night stands, and who knows what else. If I were to use monogamy as a guide for whom I can and cannot trust in matters outside of sex, I'd have to pretty much not trust a third of the people I know fairly well and like. How did I come up with that number, one third? It's a guess, based on the number of times I've seen people I know make that certain kind of sheepish to warm "we've slept together" hello with someone else. It's a tell that I think all people have, that certain kind of hello. I can't explain what it entails, but I can identify it instantly. My guess of one-third is not that much different than polls about adultery , which if I remember correctly suggest that 30 to 60 percent of all married people cheat.
I don't think it's valid to use monogamy as a guide for trust on other issues. Sex is different. We're wired for it. Our hearts are not universally steadfast and attached to one person and one person only. Just because someone is monogamous does not indicate to me that I can trust him or her on money matters. There are no data that I know of that show that those that are monogamous are better thinkers, more creative or are more conscientious workers. It's true that they do, on the whole, make better spouses.
When it comes to marriage, give me a monogamous partner, please. But in a work or business environment I don't care whether the person I'm working with is having an affair or frequents dirty book stores at night. That's his or her private business.
This country does seem to separate people's sexual appetites (at least heterosexual ones) from the workplace. It would be a ridiculous expectation to not do so. We'd have to fire a lot of key personnel in all companies if we considered monogamy to be part of someone's work description.
But when it comes to politicians, we do get ridiculous. We expect our elected officials to not do what so many others do frequently. Politicians can't have affairs. The argument is frequently made, "If you can't trust him to honor his marriage vows, how can you trust him to do anything else?" It's an absurd if and then argument. What do attitudes toward sex have to do with someone's ability to make good laws, work well with others, and honor promises concerning legislation? Nothing. Monogamy is desirable in marriage, certainly, and its absence can create hell in someone's personal life if they get caught cheating. Beyond the issue of marriage and family, however, it's of no importance.
I'll make one concession to the "those who cheat are bad through and through" argument. There are people who sexually harass others on the job routinely, whose efforts at sexual conquest overwhelm their lives to such a degree that they can do little else but wallow in sexual desire. No, I don't trust people like that, no more than I'd trust a heroin addict with my money or laptop computer.
Your garden variety cheaters, however, are just being human. They shouldn't have to wear scarlet As on their dresses or sport jackets. They can be outstanding workers and contributors to society. That's just as true of ordinary citizens as it is for politicians.
I don't like to make assessments based on small datasets, but let's, for example, look at our last three presidents. One, Clinton, has had countless affairs. The other two, Bush and Obama, seem to be (Who knows really?) loyal and true to their spouses. Was Bush any more trustworthy than Clinton? No. Is Obama any more trustworthy? Based on issues that are important to me that I've seen him waffle on, no. Bush is likely monogamous, but an idiot. Obama is likely monogamous, but has limited leadership ability (aside from speechwriting and oratory, two big exceptions) and has little skill relating to others one on one. Based on our small sample of three, I'd say not only is monogamy overrated as an indicator of presidential capability, but cheaters make the best presidents.
As I write this, a politician, Anthony Weiner, is preparing to resign from congress for sexting with a bunch of women. Yawn. I happen to think that Weiner isn't a very good congressman. He likes to get on TV and scream and shout. He doesn't seem to work effectively with others in DC. Basically, he's a loudmouth, do-nothing. That said, his district keeps re-electing him. They apparently think that all that bluster is valuable. Whether he sexts or not, whether he exchanges bodily fluids or not with someone who isn't his wife, shouldn't matter.
We've been through this before with I don't know how many politicians, both Democratic and Republican. We keep expecting and demanding that our politicians rein in their desires when, in fact, they have rock-star like access to sex. It's an expectation and demand that makes no sense, and one that isn't present in the culture of any other Western country.
We pretend that the sexual revolution never happened and our lives are like 50s television shows. We ignore the fact that in this day and age, there is no privacy and the internet can capture and send to the world every little stupid move we make. We watch with rapt attention as the media pontificates about every sexual transgression of a politician and cynically turns these events into morality plays. I wish America could be realistic about sexual desire and politics, but I expect sanctimony to be the standard response for at least the next few decades.
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
The Gieretics
As I've posted a few times before, I'm a proud fair weather fan when it comes to sports. Athletic contests are supposed to be entertaining. Losing makes for bad entertainment. Why would I want to root for a team that loses a lot, especially a professional one. Would I buy a stock in a company that loses money every year? Would I watch the movie The Betsy - the worst movie ever made in my humble opinion - twenty times just because I think Robert Duvall and Laurence Olivier are wonderful actors? It makes no sense to me.
I follow a team fervently when it wins. But if that team starts losing year after year, I happily ignore it. Fickle passion has worked for me for decades now. However, baseball poses a special challenge.
I love baseball. It's really the only sport I care about. My team of choice is the Oakland Athletics. I adopted them when I moved to California, having been without a team for many years. The Milwaukee Braves left me and my hometown city with all the selfishness of a child-support-dodging dad - hyperbole I know, but I couldn't resist - when I was young and by the time the Brewers came into town, I was too into drugs to even notice. The Giants were in closer proximity to my new California home, but their ballpark at the time, Candlestick, was the worst place to watch baseball in the country by far. It was cold, foggy and damp most every night and sometimes during day games as well. The swirling wind was a constant and the fans were loutish drunks. Fights would break out next to me at games. Yuck. Oakland was far better.
The A's weren't very good when I arrived in California so like the proud fair weather fan I am, I barely paid them any mind and only went to a few games a year. But the late 1980s and early 1990s were dream years and my fanaticism for the A's blossomed. I even bought season tickets!
Lately though, the A's have been a depressing bunch. They got a new owner several years ago who sees the team strictly as an investment, starves the team's payroll, and lives off major league baseball revenue sharing. Every year is the same. By the end of June, the A's are so far behind that the season is effectively over. So it will be this year.
I still go to A's games now and then. However, even a die hard fan's ardor would be tested by what the current owner is doing to the team. Neglect is, after all, perfectly valid grounds for divorce, but that's not my style. Instead, I've decided a new approach is needed this year. I need to broaden my horizons. I'm doing what many neglected spouses do. I'm cheatin'. The Giants have a nice ballpark now and they are playing pretty good ball (and miraculously won the World Series last year). I haven't taken drugs in decades so I now know my hometown Brewers exist and they're playing well, too.
I'm not a glutton for punishment. I've decided to hedge my bets and root for three teams this year, the Giants, the Brewers, and the Athletics. I'm calling this three headed beast the "Gieretics" (pronounced ji-er-eh-tics). It's the best idea concerning baseball that I've come up with in years. After all, I have legitimate reasons to root for all of these teams. The Giants are my proximity team. The Brewers are my hometown team. The A's are my adopted team. Go Gieretics!
My new approach has already yielded great benefits. When I scan the box scores in the morning, the chances are that one of my teams has won. Winning is, as I've noted, entertaining. Being associated with one or more winners most every day has greatly improved my mood. I no longer shout out "my team stinks" to no one in particular most every morning as I read the sports section. Three heads are indeed better than one.
I follow a team fervently when it wins. But if that team starts losing year after year, I happily ignore it. Fickle passion has worked for me for decades now. However, baseball poses a special challenge.
I love baseball. It's really the only sport I care about. My team of choice is the Oakland Athletics. I adopted them when I moved to California, having been without a team for many years. The Milwaukee Braves left me and my hometown city with all the selfishness of a child-support-dodging dad - hyperbole I know, but I couldn't resist - when I was young and by the time the Brewers came into town, I was too into drugs to even notice. The Giants were in closer proximity to my new California home, but their ballpark at the time, Candlestick, was the worst place to watch baseball in the country by far. It was cold, foggy and damp most every night and sometimes during day games as well. The swirling wind was a constant and the fans were loutish drunks. Fights would break out next to me at games. Yuck. Oakland was far better.
The A's weren't very good when I arrived in California so like the proud fair weather fan I am, I barely paid them any mind and only went to a few games a year. But the late 1980s and early 1990s were dream years and my fanaticism for the A's blossomed. I even bought season tickets!
Lately though, the A's have been a depressing bunch. They got a new owner several years ago who sees the team strictly as an investment, starves the team's payroll, and lives off major league baseball revenue sharing. Every year is the same. By the end of June, the A's are so far behind that the season is effectively over. So it will be this year.
I still go to A's games now and then. However, even a die hard fan's ardor would be tested by what the current owner is doing to the team. Neglect is, after all, perfectly valid grounds for divorce, but that's not my style. Instead, I've decided a new approach is needed this year. I need to broaden my horizons. I'm doing what many neglected spouses do. I'm cheatin'. The Giants have a nice ballpark now and they are playing pretty good ball (and miraculously won the World Series last year). I haven't taken drugs in decades so I now know my hometown Brewers exist and they're playing well, too.
I'm not a glutton for punishment. I've decided to hedge my bets and root for three teams this year, the Giants, the Brewers, and the Athletics. I'm calling this three headed beast the "Gieretics" (pronounced ji-er-eh-tics). It's the best idea concerning baseball that I've come up with in years. After all, I have legitimate reasons to root for all of these teams. The Giants are my proximity team. The Brewers are my hometown team. The A's are my adopted team. Go Gieretics!
My new approach has already yielded great benefits. When I scan the box scores in the morning, the chances are that one of my teams has won. Winning is, as I've noted, entertaining. Being associated with one or more winners most every day has greatly improved my mood. I no longer shout out "my team stinks" to no one in particular most every morning as I read the sports section. Three heads are indeed better than one.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
On The Shopping Theory of Grade Inflation
One of the stranger things about looking at college grading is the bizarre theories people use to try to explain grade inflation. It's not just the uninformed that do this. Professors do it too. They even publish papers about their bizarre theories. I don't understand it. It's as if a detective were to come upon a crime scene, see a dead body, see a knife in that body, find a man hiding in the kitchen covered in blood whose fingerprints match those on the knife and declare, "Space aliens came and killed this poor victim." OK, I'm exaggerating, but you get the point.
What has caused grades to rise nationwide? Professors are grading easier year after year. Look at the data class by class. The data are undeniable.
But to admit that this is the case would be admitting that professors are abrogating their responsibility to challenge students. No one wants to do that, especially the professoriate. It's a pathology, I guess, to not admit guilt. It creates a professoriate that believes in fantasies. For example, there's a chapter in a book that surveys professors about grading practices. If I remember that chapter correctly (I need to go back to the reference to make sure of the numbers) a minority admit they inflate grades, yet a majority believe that their colleagues do so. It's funny, this pointing of fingers at "the other guy," but it also causes people to come up with bizarre excuses for grade inflation and maybe even more bizarre grading policies.
One of the stranger theories about grade inflation is that it's mostly the students' fault. The theory goes like this. Students shop around and find the classes with the highest grades. They do more and more careful shopping every year. Grades go up as a result. This theory is really an extension of "the other guy is doing it" idea. It says that many professors are truly responsible, but there are weak links in grading and students exploit those links to the maximum (and that maximum keeps rising). It's a nice theory in that it removes culpability from a good portion of the professorate. Too bad it isn't true.
Grades are, in fact, going up class by class. There are differentials between departments, of course, but those differentials have been in place for decades. Grades are going up in physics, English, psychology, economics, et al. They are going up almost everywhere. The last decade saw some plateauing of grades in a small number of departments and universities that defied national trends; there are also a handful of schools that have worked hard to make sure they grade honestly. There are few strong links in the chain.
If the shopping theory were true, one would expect that students would flock to the humanities, where grades are as high as an elephant's eye, and avoid the sciences in increasing numbers every year. In fact, science enrollments, in terms of percentage of students enrolled, have been static for decades nationally. In contrast, humanities enrollments have dropped precipitously.
Here's a link to a paper that extols the shopping theory. It examines undergraduate grades at Cornell over the 1990s to the early 2000s. To be fair, it does admit that there is plain old "classic" grade inflation caused by other factors, but it is loathe to admit that professors are simply grading easier (instead it seems to assume that the other principal cause of inflation is that students are getting smarter and smarter).
The paper is mishagos to the third power. Not only does it say that students are shopping more and more, but also that Cornell is facilitating that shopping by posting median grades of its classes (examples of the postings can be found here and here). Students are supposedly flocking to these postings and preferentially selecting easy A classes. But if that were the case, wouldn't grades be going up at a higher rate since the time median grades began to be posted?
Median grades have been posted online since 1998. Here are the data on grades (in terms of percent A grades awarded) at Cornell from 1988 to 2004. Where's the acceleration in grade inflation from 1998 onward? It isn't there. In fact, Cornell has had garden variety inflation for about 25 years now, the same as just about everywhere else even though it's only one of a small percentage of schools that posts its grades in detail online. None of the other schools that post their grades, some with far more detail than Cornell, have particularly high rates of inflation relative to national averages either. Yes, students shop for easy grading classes to some extent. They shop by word of mouth in some schools. In others, they shop by looking online. But are they shopping more than in the past? The data - both national and at Cornell - say that if they are, it's a minor effect at best.
The paper admits that not all of the observed rise in grades is due to student shopping. It tries to make estimates of the contribution of the shopping effect and, surprise, surprise, finds that effect to be significant. In other words, Cornell would hardly have any grade inflation compared to other similar schools (who don't post their grades) if students didn't shop.
How does it make that claim? The paper states that students are enrolling in high grading classes at a rate faster than the rate that those high grading classes are being created. Here are the data for high grading Cornell classes in liberal arts (classes in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences excluding cross listed classes because quite frankly I got bored with cleaning up the data files past about 500 classes for each year; it's still a very good highly representative sample); by high grading, I mean classes that report a median grade of A- or better.
The percentage of easy grading classes - and there are 1500 classes represented in this chart total - keeps going up at essentially the same rate as the number of students who enroll in easy grading classes. Students weren't preferentially selecting easy grading classes in 2010 with any significantly greater frequency than in 1998; the lines are essentially parallel. Over the 13 years encompassed by the data, the percentage of students who enroll in high grading courses do outpace the creation of those courses but the effect is tiny; the two lines were 23 percent apart in 1998. In 2010, they were 20 percent apart. That narrowing could be due to course shopping. It could be due to noise. It's a minor secondary influence at best.
Let's say that 3 percentage point differential is indeed all due to increased shopping. What does that mean in terms of a rise in GPA over 1998 to 2010? Probably about a 0.01 increase in GPA or less in terms of university averages. It's a big nothing.
So what's the real story at Cornell? Grades are indeed going up. There are a ton of easy grading classes nowadays, more than ever before. Professors keep lowering their standards, and have made A the most common grade awarded by far. Students keep enrolling in about the same assortment of classes as before. At least in the liberal arts at Cornell, there is no readily observable shopping effect. Is the shopping effect a major component of grade inflation in other classes like engineering? I doubt it. Why would students even need to shop carefully when two thirds of all classes have a median grade of A- or better? Random selection will find them lots of easy A's. The shopping theory for Cornell likely is fiction.
Cornell has about the same level of grade inflation as its peer schools, although its GPA's historically have been a little lower than Harvard et al. Just like at its peer schools (with the exception of Princeton, which has made a real effort to control grade inflation), professors keep grading easier year after year. At quite a few (if I include elite liberals arts colleges as well as research universities), the percentage of A's has already crossed the 60% threshold. Cornell probably won't get there until the mid-to-late 2010s.
Lots of dopey papers are written and published every day. So this paper shouldn't be a big deal. It should be ignored. But here's the crazy thing. It hasn't been ignored. In fact it has influenced Cornell policy. As a result of this paper, Cornell has decided to no longer post median grades. Apparently, the professors of Cornell really believe that by doing so, they'll quell grade inflation. Good luck with that.
I have a better idea, of course, for Cornell. Listen up. You really want to tackle grade inflation? Tell your professors to stop being such easy graders. And what about that shopping theory of grade inflation? It may be a minor secondary effect with or without data postings online and is nowhere near as important as professors desperate to blame anyone but themselves for high grades would lead you to believe. Or maybe space aliens are the real cause of grade inflation. Anything is possible.
What has caused grades to rise nationwide? Professors are grading easier year after year. Look at the data class by class. The data are undeniable.
But to admit that this is the case would be admitting that professors are abrogating their responsibility to challenge students. No one wants to do that, especially the professoriate. It's a pathology, I guess, to not admit guilt. It creates a professoriate that believes in fantasies. For example, there's a chapter in a book that surveys professors about grading practices. If I remember that chapter correctly (I need to go back to the reference to make sure of the numbers) a minority admit they inflate grades, yet a majority believe that their colleagues do so. It's funny, this pointing of fingers at "the other guy," but it also causes people to come up with bizarre excuses for grade inflation and maybe even more bizarre grading policies.
One of the stranger theories about grade inflation is that it's mostly the students' fault. The theory goes like this. Students shop around and find the classes with the highest grades. They do more and more careful shopping every year. Grades go up as a result. This theory is really an extension of "the other guy is doing it" idea. It says that many professors are truly responsible, but there are weak links in grading and students exploit those links to the maximum (and that maximum keeps rising). It's a nice theory in that it removes culpability from a good portion of the professorate. Too bad it isn't true.
Grades are, in fact, going up class by class. There are differentials between departments, of course, but those differentials have been in place for decades. Grades are going up in physics, English, psychology, economics, et al. They are going up almost everywhere. The last decade saw some plateauing of grades in a small number of departments and universities that defied national trends; there are also a handful of schools that have worked hard to make sure they grade honestly. There are few strong links in the chain.
If the shopping theory were true, one would expect that students would flock to the humanities, where grades are as high as an elephant's eye, and avoid the sciences in increasing numbers every year. In fact, science enrollments, in terms of percentage of students enrolled, have been static for decades nationally. In contrast, humanities enrollments have dropped precipitously.
Here's a link to a paper that extols the shopping theory. It examines undergraduate grades at Cornell over the 1990s to the early 2000s. To be fair, it does admit that there is plain old "classic" grade inflation caused by other factors, but it is loathe to admit that professors are simply grading easier (instead it seems to assume that the other principal cause of inflation is that students are getting smarter and smarter).
The paper is mishagos to the third power. Not only does it say that students are shopping more and more, but also that Cornell is facilitating that shopping by posting median grades of its classes (examples of the postings can be found here and here). Students are supposedly flocking to these postings and preferentially selecting easy A classes. But if that were the case, wouldn't grades be going up at a higher rate since the time median grades began to be posted?
The paper admits that not all of the observed rise in grades is due to student shopping. It tries to make estimates of the contribution of the shopping effect and, surprise, surprise, finds that effect to be significant. In other words, Cornell would hardly have any grade inflation compared to other similar schools (who don't post their grades) if students didn't shop.
How does it make that claim? The paper states that students are enrolling in high grading classes at a rate faster than the rate that those high grading classes are being created. Here are the data for high grading Cornell classes in liberal arts (classes in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences excluding cross listed classes because quite frankly I got bored with cleaning up the data files past about 500 classes for each year; it's still a very good highly representative sample); by high grading, I mean classes that report a median grade of A- or better.
The percentage of easy grading classes - and there are 1500 classes represented in this chart total - keeps going up at essentially the same rate as the number of students who enroll in easy grading classes. Students weren't preferentially selecting easy grading classes in 2010 with any significantly greater frequency than in 1998; the lines are essentially parallel. Over the 13 years encompassed by the data, the percentage of students who enroll in high grading courses do outpace the creation of those courses but the effect is tiny; the two lines were 23 percent apart in 1998. In 2010, they were 20 percent apart. That narrowing could be due to course shopping. It could be due to noise. It's a minor secondary influence at best.
Let's say that 3 percentage point differential is indeed all due to increased shopping. What does that mean in terms of a rise in GPA over 1998 to 2010? Probably about a 0.01 increase in GPA or less in terms of university averages. It's a big nothing.
So what's the real story at Cornell? Grades are indeed going up. There are a ton of easy grading classes nowadays, more than ever before. Professors keep lowering their standards, and have made A the most common grade awarded by far. Students keep enrolling in about the same assortment of classes as before. At least in the liberal arts at Cornell, there is no readily observable shopping effect. Is the shopping effect a major component of grade inflation in other classes like engineering? I doubt it. Why would students even need to shop carefully when two thirds of all classes have a median grade of A- or better? Random selection will find them lots of easy A's. The shopping theory for Cornell likely is fiction.
Cornell has about the same level of grade inflation as its peer schools, although its GPA's historically have been a little lower than Harvard et al. Just like at its peer schools (with the exception of Princeton, which has made a real effort to control grade inflation), professors keep grading easier year after year. At quite a few (if I include elite liberals arts colleges as well as research universities), the percentage of A's has already crossed the 60% threshold. Cornell probably won't get there until the mid-to-late 2010s.
Lots of dopey papers are written and published every day. So this paper shouldn't be a big deal. It should be ignored. But here's the crazy thing. It hasn't been ignored. In fact it has influenced Cornell policy. As a result of this paper, Cornell has decided to no longer post median grades. Apparently, the professors of Cornell really believe that by doing so, they'll quell grade inflation. Good luck with that.
I have a better idea, of course, for Cornell. Listen up. You really want to tackle grade inflation? Tell your professors to stop being such easy graders. And what about that shopping theory of grade inflation? It may be a minor secondary effect with or without data postings online and is nowhere near as important as professors desperate to blame anyone but themselves for high grades would lead you to believe. Or maybe space aliens are the real cause of grade inflation. Anything is possible.
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