http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i34/34a00101.htm?utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
This doesn't seem that controversial, but I guess anything "old" is considered passe in some circles.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Post-Christian America?
From the USA Today story contradicting the Newsweek and other versions of the U.S. slouching toward agnosticism and atheism. The real story, apparently, is the rise of Hispanics and megachurches.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/post-christian-not-even-close.html
Over the past two decades, I have taught the "Christian America" debate to hundreds of students in my Religious Studies courses. When we finish our discussion, I call the question. My Christian students almost invariably describe the United States as a multicultural nation of religions, but my Jewish students tell me you have to be blind (or Christian) not to see that this is a Christian country. Here Christmas, not Passover, is a national holiday, and the only question about our presidents' religious affiliation seems to be from which Christian denomination they will come.
Mark Silk, who runs Trinity College's Program on Public Values, which released the latest ARIS report, agrees that the news media were napping when they spun secularization straw out of the gold in this report. For him, the rise of the "nones" is old news. From 1990 to 2001, the portion of those who said "none" when asked, "What is your religion, if any?" jumped from 8.2% to 14.1%. Over the past seven years, that figure basically flatlined, rising less than a percentage point to 15.0%.
The real news in this data, Silk says, is a shift in the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism from the Northeast to the Southwest, and in the process from whites to Hispanics. The other big story, he told me, is the continued displacement of mainline Protestants by born-again Christians, who now constitute 34% of the U.S. population. The "non-denominational Christian" category that populates U.S. megachurches has exploded from under 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to in excess of 8 million today.
When I remarked that this hardly looks like a picture of a post-Christian country, Silk, who edits a newsletter called "Religion and the News," agreed, but warned me not to be too hopeful about diverting this story midstream. "You can tell the truth," he said, "just don't expect anybody to pay attention."
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/04/post-christian-not-even-close.html
Over the past two decades, I have taught the "Christian America" debate to hundreds of students in my Religious Studies courses. When we finish our discussion, I call the question. My Christian students almost invariably describe the United States as a multicultural nation of religions, but my Jewish students tell me you have to be blind (or Christian) not to see that this is a Christian country. Here Christmas, not Passover, is a national holiday, and the only question about our presidents' religious affiliation seems to be from which Christian denomination they will come.
Mark Silk, who runs Trinity College's Program on Public Values, which released the latest ARIS report, agrees that the news media were napping when they spun secularization straw out of the gold in this report. For him, the rise of the "nones" is old news. From 1990 to 2001, the portion of those who said "none" when asked, "What is your religion, if any?" jumped from 8.2% to 14.1%. Over the past seven years, that figure basically flatlined, rising less than a percentage point to 15.0%.
The real news in this data, Silk says, is a shift in the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism from the Northeast to the Southwest, and in the process from whites to Hispanics. The other big story, he told me, is the continued displacement of mainline Protestants by born-again Christians, who now constitute 34% of the U.S. population. The "non-denominational Christian" category that populates U.S. megachurches has exploded from under 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to in excess of 8 million today.
When I remarked that this hardly looks like a picture of a post-Christian country, Silk, who edits a newsletter called "Religion and the News," agreed, but warned me not to be too hopeful about diverting this story midstream. "You can tell the truth," he said, "just don't expect anybody to pay attention."
Women vs. Men in promotion processes
The basic summary appears to be that a combination of “microdifferences” (child care, less emphasis on research, etc.) amounts to substantially slower times to promotion for women at research institutions, even in a field such as English where women are more highly represented.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/27/mla
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/27/mla
Friday, April 17, 2009
Why Colleges Fail?
Interesting study looking at what happened to all 824 private colleges that existed in 1975. 11% failed in the last 34 years. Why did some survive and others fail?
1) Endowment per student was more important to survival than net tuition per student.
2) Larger and more selective colleges had higher survival rates, but running G&PS programs (i.e. diversification?) mattered less.
3) Religious schools had higher survival rates.
Of course, this study looked only at survival and not at other questions like which schools entered the market in the last 34 years and which schools became more viable over that time period.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/17/closing
1) Endowment per student was more important to survival than net tuition per student.
2) Larger and more selective colleges had higher survival rates, but running G&PS programs (i.e. diversification?) mattered less.
3) Religious schools had higher survival rates.
Of course, this study looked only at survival and not at other questions like which schools entered the market in the last 34 years and which schools became more viable over that time period.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/04/17/closing
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
The End of Philosophy?
Interesting argument, as is often the case with David Brooks, this time about how moral reasoning actually works.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=2
I should note that JBU's resident philosopher, Jay Bruce, as well an anonymous poster, argued that Brooks is simply rehashing David Hume, and making something of a hash or the rehash as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/07/opinion/07Brooks.html?_r=2
I should note that JBU's resident philosopher, Jay Bruce, as well an anonymous poster, argued that Brooks is simply rehashing David Hume, and making something of a hash or the rehash as well.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The College Tuition Pricing Game
I've been reading a book on game theory, and one of the sections dealt with college pricing schemes. The authors rightly, I believe, describe our tuition pricing as an inefficient Nash equilibrium. Nash (he of "A Beautiful Mind" fame) argued that there are equilibrium points in any game. An example of an inefficient equilibrium is our QWERTY keyboard layout. It was initially designed to slow down keystrokes so that typewriters wouldn't jam.
But that problem no longer pertains with modern computers, so why don't we switch to a more efficient layout? Basically, because we've "always" done it this way. It would take more time and effort to retrain the existing typers than you would gain in efficiency from the new layout, so barring some mandate from on high, no individual person has enough incentive to learn the new system.
Well, almost no one. With an inefficient system, there will always be about 2% of the population who are "innovators" willing to try the more efficient approach. But as long as 76% of the population is using QWERTY, the "slippery slope" will lead us to have 98% using the inefficient system.
So how does this apply to college tuition pricing? All of our institutions, as with cell phone companies and other organizations, focus on the list price (tuition, in our case) but not the true "all in" price (what college costs after you include room & board, fees, discount, quality of education, etc.). It takes too much money and effort to educate people out of their focus on the tuition bottom line for any one entity to switch to "all in" pricing that eliminates discounting and all of these other costs. You occasionally see a school try to move outside of the typical pricing models, but most fall back into the usual patterns fairly quickly.
The authors suggest, therefore, that even though this system is inefficient for all parties, it is unlikely to change, and we should just play this "bad" game as well as we can. Namely, we should all maximize our "hidden" costs and minimize our "up front" costs in order to maximize our revenue. So far, JBU hasn't gone completely in that direction, but it seems harder and hardre to resist the "fee-based" tuition model that the state schools have adopted or the "merit award" structures that the elite privates have used. We're clearly on that slippery slope as well.
But that problem no longer pertains with modern computers, so why don't we switch to a more efficient layout? Basically, because we've "always" done it this way. It would take more time and effort to retrain the existing typers than you would gain in efficiency from the new layout, so barring some mandate from on high, no individual person has enough incentive to learn the new system.
Well, almost no one. With an inefficient system, there will always be about 2% of the population who are "innovators" willing to try the more efficient approach. But as long as 76% of the population is using QWERTY, the "slippery slope" will lead us to have 98% using the inefficient system.
So how does this apply to college tuition pricing? All of our institutions, as with cell phone companies and other organizations, focus on the list price (tuition, in our case) but not the true "all in" price (what college costs after you include room & board, fees, discount, quality of education, etc.). It takes too much money and effort to educate people out of their focus on the tuition bottom line for any one entity to switch to "all in" pricing that eliminates discounting and all of these other costs. You occasionally see a school try to move outside of the typical pricing models, but most fall back into the usual patterns fairly quickly.
The authors suggest, therefore, that even though this system is inefficient for all parties, it is unlikely to change, and we should just play this "bad" game as well as we can. Namely, we should all maximize our "hidden" costs and minimize our "up front" costs in order to maximize our revenue. So far, JBU hasn't gone completely in that direction, but it seems harder and hardre to resist the "fee-based" tuition model that the state schools have adopted or the "merit award" structures that the elite privates have used. We're clearly on that slippery slope as well.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Whither the Humanities?
As with most economic downturns, this one is causing enrollments in Humanities to decline which is raising once again the question of the long-term direction of liberal arts education. Most answers appear to be some form of "back to the future."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/books/25human.html?_r=1
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