I found this surprising (emphasis mine): The average outstanding student loan balance per borrower is $23,300. Again, there is substantial heterogeneity in balances of individual borrowers. The median balance of $12,800 is roughly half the average level, which indicates that a small fraction of people have balances significantly higher than the median. About one-quarter of… Continue reading

The new Chronicle College Completion Site may be met with groans from people who think the wrong metrics have been chosen or that necessary detail has been omitted, but I think it’s wonderful. Sure, I’m not sure that cost per degree should be the central figure in the debate. I think cost per degree probably does… Continue reading

Regular readers will know I geek out about this stuff — the way different metrics within an industry can give radically different pictures of what is going on.  And so, with the recent focus on completion and attainment rates, it’s helpful to note that one does not imply the other. Here’s Arthur Hauptman on the subject: In… Continue reading

I was looking at an older NY Times article about student debt, and noted this paragraph: The report found that student debt loads vary substantially from state to state: New Hampshire students topped the list, owing an average of $31,048, while Utah’s students averaged half that. Students borrow more in the Northeast and Midwest, where… Continue reading

What follows is an example COMPARABLE analysis of the beginning of an article. You’ll notice that although the comparison in the article is really just a comparison between last year’s debt and this year’s debt it is sort of a structured examination of the number used and its implications. The COMPARABLE framework is the framework… Continue reading

Today I came across this on the web: why is everyone quitting gluten now? There are a number of very valid reasons for the growing number of people having to pass on the pizza. The short form: gluten is a poison (see below). We tolerate it, and tolerate it, like cigarettes in the lungs. And… Continue reading

This is brilliant. You should watch it. Added note: I was just thinking of my endorsement up there, and realizing everyone probably clicks the link expecting a TED style video that will wrap everything up for you in a nice metaphor wrapped in a story of humanity and triumph. Nope, it’s just an old dude… Continue reading

This is new today:   This seems pretty straightforward at first. Seniors, in a survey-based study, report better sleep than young adults. But we hit the same problem here as we do in happiness research. How people define things varies both with age and with the cultural norms of your generation. It’s hard to get… Continue reading

  This is from the University of Edinburgh. It’s being heavily circulated right now in edtech. I agree with most of it. I find point two particularly a) true, and b) problematic. And if the truth of the manifesto is to be useful truth, that’s the piece that has to be solved institutionally first.   Continue reading

So we have this COMPARABLE framework I’ve been working on, where COMPARABLE is an acronym for the sorts of things you want to look at when presented with a comparison. The “M” in the acronym stands for “Mental Experiment”, and it’s a reminder that a lot of sanity checking claims is about taking some guesstimate… Continue reading