Statistical Literacy
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The Studying Gap – International Edition
I got interested whether the Humanities/Science study divide held up internationally, so I checked out the excellent EUROSTUDENT report. And guess what? It does (with an interesting student employment twist): (Sorry about the graph… it’s just huge). Here’s what the report concluded: Humanities students tend to study less and work alongside their studies more frequently The Continue reading
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The Studying Gap
Yglesias: People, I believe, intuit that the STEM fields are good majors. But I think that’s not just, or even primarily, because of their intrinsic merits. The fact that these programs are hard and the people in them tend to spend a lot of time studying is an important part of the story. By contrast, majoring in Continue reading
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Canadian students more in student loan debt than American students
From MacLeans.ca: In the U.S., average debt at graduation rose to $25,250 in 2010, according to a Nov. 3 report by the Project on Student Debt. Here in Canada, students were graduating with an average debt of $26,680 according to a 2009 report released by the Millennium Scholarship Foundation. If anything, the Canadian average is higher now. Continue reading
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Rising College Costs Are Due Largely to Books, Room, and Board, Study Finds
Update — I just noticed this was a CCAP study. So forget the study —Vedder’s little conservative lobbyist think tank does the sloppiest work around, and I am pretty sure this study is no different. I regret having given it (mistakenly) any publicity at all. I do wish the Chronicle would stop publishing CCAP’s press Continue reading
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Pinker on Statistical Literacy
Better Angels, indeed: In a question and answer session on Freakonomics Radio, Pinker was asked what people can do to help society “resist the urge to think things are worse and worse and the world is less and less safe when this is manifestly not the case”. Pinker’s answer was interesting: “One necessity is greater Continue reading
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From Klein’s The student debt crisis in one chart (article here) Continue reading
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Inequality and economic growth. From the IMF, which I hope is using this to rethink its approach… Continue reading
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Scholarships Go Disproportionately To White Students
Scholarships Go Disproportionately To White Students From Yglesias, today: The issue here isn’t racial discrimination, it’s a symptom of the fact that the incentive structure of American higher education is totally screwy. Schools want to produce two things. One is rich alumni who give them money, and the other is high ratings from US News Continue reading
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Healthcare swallows everything
Healthcare swallows everything Government spending as a percentage of GDP This is basically the story all over America: John Arnold, director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Budgeting, said that Medicaid and other health-care expenses are predicted to grow to as much as 40 percent of the state budget by 2015. That will force Continue reading
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Quantitative Literacy Hits the New York Times Op-Ed Page
Quantitative Literacy Hits the New York Times Op-Ed Page Today: In math, what we need is “quantitative literacy,” the ability to make quantitative connections whenever life requires (as when we are confronted with conflicting medical test results but need to decide whether to undergo a further procedure) and “mathematical modeling,” the ability to move practically Continue reading
Hapgood 