Kruse Kronicle

Instead of Work, Younger Women Head to School

New York Times: Instead of Work, Younger Women Head to School

Workers are dropping out of the labor force in droves, and they are mostly women. In fact, many are young women. But they are not dropping out forever; instead, these young women seem to be postponing their working lives to get more education. There are now — for the first time in three decades — more young women in school than in the work force. ...

... Many economists initially thought that the shrinking labor force — which drove down November’s unemployment rate — was caused primarily by discouraged older workers giving up on the job market. Instead, many of the workers on the sidelines are young people upgrading their skills, which could portend something like the postwar economic boom, when millions of World War II veterans went to college through the G.I. Bill instead of immediately entering, and overwhelming, the job market.

Now, as was the case then, one sex is the primary beneficiary. Though young women in their late teens and early 20’s view today’s economic lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills, their male counterparts are more likely to take whatever job they can find. The longer-term consequences, economists say, are that the next generation of women may have a significant advantage over their male counterparts, whose career options are already becoming constrained.

For now at least, many young women still feel that the deck is stacked against them. ...

... Some studies suggest that women are pickier about their job choices than men. Already earning lower pay, women are less willing to work when wages fall further, especially if they are able to rely on an employed (and these days, often newly re-employed) husband. Women are also more reluctant to work night or weekend shifts, according to government data on how Americans spend their time, partly because they have more family responsibilities. ...

... Then there are societal influences that affect a person’s willingness to take a lesser job or return to school.

“There is still this heavy cultural message that men should be out there earning money and supporting themselves, and they feel more distressed by losing their breadwinner role,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families. “We’ve made much more progress overcoming the ‘feminine mystique’ than this masculine mystique.” ...

... “Today young girls are told they can do anything, go into any occupation. But if boys express any interest in traditionally female occupations, they get teased and bullied,” Ms. Coontz said. “Lots of guys are not understanding what’s happening to traditional low-income or middle-income male jobs.”

Jobs in the male-dominated manufacturing industry and in other sectors involving manual labor have been, and still are, in structural decline. These careers can also be hard to maintain indefinitely because youthful strength eventually fades. And now many manufacturing workers do not have pensions to carry them through when their bodies do break down. ...

Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom

Creativity Research Journal: Creativity: Asset or Burden in the Classroom (HT: Marginal Revolution)

One of the most consistent findings in educational studies of creativity has been that teachers dislike personality traits associated with creativity. Research has indicated that teachers prefer traits that seem to run counter to creativity, such as conformity and unquestioning acceptance of authority (e.g., Bachtold, 1974; Cropley, 1992; Dettmer, 1981; Getzels & Jackson, 1962; Torrance, 1963). The reason for teachers’ preferences is quite clear creative people tend to have traits that some have referred to as obnoxious (Torrance, 1963). Torrance (1963) described creative people as not having the time to be courteous, as refusing to take no for an answer, and as being negativistic and critical of others. Other characteristics, although not deserving the label obnoxious, nonetheless may not be those most highly valued in the classroom.

….Research has suggested that traits associated with creativity may not only be neglected, but actively punished (Myers & Torrance, 1961; Stone, 1980). Stone (1980) found that second graders who scored highest on tests of creativity were also those identified by their peers as engaging in the most misbehavior (e.g., “getting in trouble the most”). Given that research and theory (e.g., Harrington, Block, & Block, 1987) suggest that a supportive environment is important to the fostering of creativity, it is quite possible that teachers are (perhaps unwittingly) extinguishing creative behaviors.

I knew it! That is why I had so many problems in school. The teachers disliked me for my creative genius. ;-)

The study does raise interesting questions. I also remember that a disproportionate number of teachers are Myers-Briggs SJs. Not always a happy experience for us NFs and NTs (me).

Princeton goes open access to stop staff handing all copyright to journals – unless waiver granted

The Conversation: Princeton goes open access to stop staff handing all copyright to journals – unless waiver granted

Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University will prevent researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted.

The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a condition of publication.

Universities pay millions of dollars a year for academic journal subscriptions. People without subscriptions, which can cost up to $25,000 a year for some journals or hundreds of dollars for a single issue, are often prevented from reading taxpayer funded research. Individual articles are also commonly locked behind pay walls.

Researchers and peer reviewers are not paid for their work but academic publishers have said such a business model is required to maintain quality.

At a September 19 meeting, Princeton’s Faculty Advisory Committee on Policy adopted a new open access policy that gives the university the “nonexclusive right to make available copies of scholarly articles written by its faculty, unless a professor specifically requests a waiver for particular articles.”

“The University authorizes professors to post copies of their articles on their own web sites or on University web sites, or in other not-for-a-fee venues,” the policy said.

“The main effect of this new policy is to prevent them from giving away all their rights when they publish in a journal.” ...

Church Attendance Falling Among Less-Educated Whites: Study

Huffington Post: Church Attendance Falling Among Less-Educated Whites: Study

While overall church attendance has declined slightly in the United States in recent decades, a new study says attendance at religious services among white Americans who did not go to college has fallen more than twice as quickly as it has among more highly educated whites.

The study, released Sunday by the American Sociological Association, draws on decades of data from the General Social Survey and the National Survey of Family Growth to conclude that "moderately educated whites," defined as people with high school degrees, attended religious services in the 1970s at about the same rate as whites with degrees from four-year colleges. In the last decade, however, they attended much less frequently.

“Our study suggests that the less educated are dropping out of the American religious sector similarly to the way in which they have dropped out of the American labor market,” says researcher W. Bradford Wilcox, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

The research shares some conclusions with a recent study by a University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor whose findings contradicted the common myth that less-educated people are more religious. That study, released in early August, concluded that a college degree does not make a person less religious, but that more education does make people more accepting of the validity of religions other than their own. Both studies used data from the General Social Survey, which is an ongoing survey of American' attitudes and behaviors that began in 1972. ...

The Secret Language Code

Scientific American: The Secret Language Code

Psychologist James Pennebaker​ reveals the hidden meaning of pronouns

... Much to my surprise, I soon discovered that the ways people used pronouns in their essays predicted whose health would improve the most. Specifically, those people who benefited the most from writing changed in their pronoun use from one essay to another. Pronouns were reflecting people’’s abilities to change perspective.

As I pondered these findings, I started looking at how people used pronouns in other texts -- blogs, emails, speeches, class writing assignments, and natural conversation. Remarkably, how people used pronouns was correlated with almost everything I studied. For example, use of  first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my) was consistently related to gender, age, social class, honesty, status, personality, and much more. Although the findings were often robust, people in daily life were unable to pick them up when reading or listening to others. It was almost as if there was a secret world of pronouns that existed outside our awareness. ...

... PENNEBAKER: Almost everything you think you know is probably wrong. Take this little test. Who uses the following words more, women or men?

 > 1st person singular (I, me, my)
 > 1st person plural (we, us our)
 > articles (a, an, the)
 > emotion words (e.g., happy, sad, love, hate)
 > cognitive words (e.g., because, reason, think, believe)
 > social words (e.g., he, she, friend, cousin)

Most people assume that men use I-words and cognitive words more than women and that women use we-words, emotions, and social words more than men. Bad news. You were right if you guessed that women use social words more. However, women use I-words and cognitive words at far higher rates than men. There are no reliable differences between men and women for use of we-words or emotion words (OK, those were trick questions). And men use articles more than women, when you might guess there’d be no difference.

These differences hold up across written and spoken language and most other languages that we have studied. You can’t help but marvel at the fact that we are all bombarded by words from women and men every day of our lives and most of us have never “heard” these sex differences in language. Part of the problem is that our brains aren’t wired to listen to pronouns, articles, prepositions, and other “junk” words. When we listen to another person, we typically focus on what they are saying rather than how they are saying it.

Men and women use language differently because they negotiate their worlds differently. Across dozens and dozens of studies, women tend to talk more about other human beings. Men, on the other hand, are more interested in concrete objects and things. To talk about human relationships requires social and cognitive words. To talk about concrete objects, you need concrete nouns which typically demand the use of articles. ...

... In my own work, we have analyzed the collected works of poets, playwrights, and novelists going back to the 1500s to see how their writing changed as they got older. We’ve compared the pronoun use of suicidal versus non-suicidal poets. Basically, poets who eventually commit suicide use I-words more than non-suicidal poets. ...

... One of the most interesting results was part of a study my students and I conducted dealing with status in email correspondence. Basically, we discovered that in any interaction, the person with the higher status uses I-words less (yes, less) than people who are low in status. The effects were quite robust ...

... Across four years, we analyzed the admissions essays of 25,000 students and then tracked their grade point averages (GPAs). Higher GPAs were associated with admission essays that used high rates of nouns and low rates of verbs and pronouns. The effects were surprisingly strong and lasted across all years of college, no matter what the students’ major.

To me, the use of nouns -- especially concrete nouns -- reflects people’s attempts to categorize and name objects, events, and ideas in their worlds. The use of verbs and pronouns typically occur when people tell stories. Universities clearly reward categorizers rather than story tellers. ...

 

 

New Book: "Upside: The Suprising Good News About the State of Our World" by Brad Wright

Bradley Wright's Weblog: My new book, Upside, is now available

My second book has been released. It’s entitled Upside: Surprising Good News about the State of Our World, and it’s available on Amazon, Christian bookstores, and various other places… if there are any left ;-)

The guiding question for this book is whether the world is getting better or worse. Now, I realize that you’re probably thinking right now that that’s too narrow of a topic, but bear with me, it’s a question worth asking. ...

... My book develops two paradoxes. One, many, many things in the world are getting better, but most people are convinced that things are getting worse. Two, most people think that their lives are getting better, but their community and nation is getting worse. In my book I explore the reasons for these paradoxes.

After that—since I’m a data-driven guy—I present information about what’s happening in the world. I cover areas that most people take as important, such as income and poverty, health, education, happiness, crime, freedom, faith, marriage, families, and the environment.

In each of these areas, I present the best available data about how things are changing. The data come from sources such as the US Census Bureau, the World Bank, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and various sociological surveys.

I finish with examining various explanations for why so many things are getting better, and what we should do in response. ...

I can't wait to read this book! As long time Kronicle readers know, I've visited this topic over and over again at my blog. I did a World Social Indicators - 2008 series that details some of these issues. The incredible amount of pessimism in the face of the greatest expansion of global prosperity and physical well-being in the history of the world is just astounding.

 

Technology and Inequality

Project Syndicate: Technology and Inequality

... There is no doubt that income inequality is the single biggest threat to social stability around the world, whether it is in the United States, the European periphery, or China. Yet it is easy to forget that market forces, if allowed to play out, might eventually exert a stabilizing role. Simply put, the greater the premium for highly skilled workers, the greater the incentive to find ways to economize on employing their talents. ...

... As skilled labor becomes increasingly expensive relative to unskilled labor, firms and businesses have a greater incentive to find ways to “cheat” by using substitutes for high-price inputs. The shift might take many decades, but it also might come much faster as artificial intelligence fuels the next wave of innovation.

Perhaps skilled workers will try to band together to get governments to pass laws and regulations making it more difficult for firms to make their jobs obsolete. But if the global trading system remains open to competition, skilled workers’ ability to forestall labor-saving technology indefinitely should prove little more successful than such attempts by unskilled workers in the past.

The next generation of technological advances could also promote greater income equality by leveling the playing field in education. Currently, educational resources – particularly tertiary educational resources (university) – in many poorer countries are severely limited relative to wealthy countries, and, so far, the Internet and computers have exacerbated the differences.

But it does not have to be that way. Surely, higher education will eventually be hit by the same kind of sweeping wave of technology that has flattened the automobile and media industries, among others. If the commoditization of education eventually extends to at least lower-level college courses, the impact on income inequality could be profound.

Many commentators seem to believe that the growing gap between rich and poor is an inevitable byproduct of increasing globalization and technology. In their view, governments will need to intervene radically in markets to restore social balance.

I disagree. Yes, we need genuinely progressive tax systems, respect for workers’ rights, and generous aid policies on the part of rich countries. But the past is not necessarily prologue: given the remarkable flexibility of market forces, it would be foolish, if not dangerous, to infer rising inequality in relative incomes in the coming decades by extrapolating from recent trends.

Drain or gain?

Economist: Drain or gain?

Poor countries can end up benefiting when their brightest citizens emigrate

... Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. By some estimates, two-thirds of highly educated Cape Verdeans live outside the country. A big survey of Indian households carried out in 2004 asked about family members who had moved abroad. It found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age of 25. This “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.

Many now take issue with this view (see article). Several economists reckon that the brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the effects of remittances, for the beneficial effects of returning migrants, and for the possibility that being able to migrate to greener pastures induces people to get more education. Some argue that once these factors are taken into account, an exodus of highly skilled people could turn out to be a net benefit to the countries they leave. Recent studies of migration from countries as far apart as Ghana, Fiji, India and Romania have found support for this “brain gain” idea. ...

A Decade Makes All the Difference (College Education)

New York Times Economix: A Decade Makes All the Difference

Only 45% of college grads under 25 years old have a job that requires a college degree. That compares to 60% in 2000.

E-Readers Fail At Education

Fast Company: E-Readers Fail At Education

Is our desire for gadgetry getting ahead of what our brains actually need?

... A recent University of Washington study interviewed 39 first-year graduate students in the university's Department of Computer Science & Engineering, which participated in a pilot study of Amazon's Kindle DX (a large-screen e-reader). By seven months into the study, fewer than 40% of the students did their schoolwork on the Kindle. The problem: the Kindle has poor note-taking support, doesn't allow for easy skimming, and makes it difficult for students to look up references (in comparison with computers and textbooks). As a result, some of the students interviewed kept sheets of paper with their Kindle case to take notes, and other read near computers so that they could easily look up references.

There's another, larger problem, according to the U of W:

The digital text also disrupted a technique called cognitive mapping, in which readers used physical cues such as the location on the page and the position in the book to go back and find a section of text or even to help retain and recall the information they had read.

Except for the cognitive mapping issue, these are all are technical problems that could all be fixed in future Kindle upgrades. The other problem is larger: Are we getting excited about a future that our brains aren't ready for? Could books have developed not simply because they were the available technology, but because they actually convey information to our brains in a more efficient way? If we're pushing technologies for learning that, cognitively, make it harder to learn, we need to take a step back. ...

Why churches are a hotbed for finance education?

Christian Science Monitor: Why churches are a hotbed for finance education

Personal finance classes offered by churches are often well-attended by the congregation. Some of the things that make these classes successful can be helpful to people who don't attend church, too.

Over the last few years, I couldn’t help but notice that several churches in my local area have run personal finance programs of various kinds, such as Financial Peace University and so on. Having sat in on a few of them, I can certainly say that they’re often well-attended, with enthusiastic people taking notes and often asking good questions, too.

This left me wondering why churches are such a hotbed for personal finance education. I’m not so much interested in the reasons why churches would host such events, but why churches happen to be the place where such events find great success. More importantly, is there anything useful in that relationship that could be applied to those who seek financial success without such groups?

In order to figure this out, I’ve had conversations with a few different pastors and a lot of different church members over the past year along these lines. Why does your church host personal finance programs? Do you feel they’re successful? Why do you feel that they’re successful?

The answers were actually pretty consistent – and fairly insightful. ...

Burden of student loans squeezing grads

New York Times: Burden of student loans squeezing grads

In some circles, student debt is known as the anti-dowry.

Student loan debt outpaced credit card debt for the first time last year and is likely to top a trillion dollars this year as more students go to college and a growing share borrow money to do so.

While many economists say student debt should be seen in a more favorable light, the rising loan bills nevertheless mean that many graduates will be paying them for a longer time.

“In the coming years, a lot of people will still be paying off their student loans when it’s time for their kids to go to college,” said Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of FinAid.org and Fastweb.com, who has compiled the estimates of student debt, including federal and private loans.

Two-thirds of bachelor’s degree recipients graduated with debt in 2008, compared with less than half in 1993. Last year, graduates who took out loans left college with an average of $24,000 in debt. Default rates are rising, especially among those who attended for-profit colleges.

The mountain of debt is likely to grow more quickly with the coming round of budget-slashing. Pell grants for low-income students are expected to be cut and tuition at public universities will probably increase as states with pinched budgets cut back on the money they give to colleges. ...

And there is this little detail ...

Unlike most other debt, student loans generally cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the government can garnish wages or take tax refunds or Social Security payments to recover the money owed.

Is It Time to Write the Eulogy?: The Future of Seminary Education

Patheos: Is It Time to Write the Eulogy?: The Future of Seminary Education

Our seminaries are dying and the Master of Divinity degree has been discredited. Will we make the necessary changes to better prepare leaders for the Church, or will we limp and wander into the future?

Our seminaries are dying and the Master of Divinity degree has been discredited.

Bishops and other church leaders once believed both were essential to effective ministry, but today they are considered one of several routes to ordination and an increasing number of church leaders are arguing that attending seminary may actually be detrimental to the process they once considered the gold standard.

A large number of the mainline seminaries are selling their buildings and property, cutting faculty, and eliminating degree programs. Those that are not, are competing for a shrinking pool of prospective students and rely on scholarships and lower academic standards to attract the students that they do have.

There are countless reasons for the crisis, some of them as old as the professional preparation of clergy itself.

In the quest for academic respectability, seminaries have not always remembered that preparing clergy was the mission and lifeblood of their institutional life. Some have focused on preparing scholars, which though essential, is secondary to its primary ministry of preparing new generations of spiritual leaders. Some have prepared students who lacked the practical skills to effectively lead a congregation. Others have produced students who were so poorly grounded in the Christian faith that they lacked the necessary spiritual formation to be effective. ...

A lengthy but interesting article. He gives his own prescription at the end. What do you think?

 

Is There Real Competition Between Universities?

David Leonhardt writes:

...If someone asked your grandparents 50 years ago to name the country’s best colleges, they would have come up with a list that looks very much like the list you’d come up with today. Can you think of any other industry in which that’s the case?

Or go back only to 1983, the year the U.S. News college rankings began, and compare the stability in that ranking with the turnover in the Fortune 500 since then. The top of the 1983 Fortune 500 is filled with companies that don’t exist today (Texaco, Nabisco, Beatrice) or that have been humbled (General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Xerox). See Tyler Cowen for more on this point.

It’s hard to look at this picture and conclude that higher education is a bastion of intense competition. ...

Interesting point.

Are Prepaid Debit Cards Bad for Teens?

US News Money: Are Prepaid Debit Cards Bad for Teens?

With two teenagers in the house, my wife and I spend a considerable amount of time discussing family finances. And for this reason, a recent article by Sheryl Nance-Nash caught my attention. In the article she argues that prepaid debit cards are a bad idea for teenagers. Our children do not carry a prepaid card, but it’s something I’ve given a lot of thought.

So we put together a list of factors to consider if you are thinking about a prepaid card for your teenager. ...

Interesting advice.

Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

New York Times: Social Scientist Sees Bias Within

SAN ANTONIO — Some of the world’s pre-eminent experts on bias discovered an unexpected form of it at their annual meeting.

Discrimination is always high on the agenda at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference, where psychologists discuss their research on racial prejudice, homophobia, sexism, stereotype threat and unconscious bias against minorities. But the most talked-about speech at this year’s meeting, which ended Jan. 30, involved a new “outgroup.”

It was identified by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who studies the intuitive foundations of morality and ideology. He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.” ...

On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan

New York Times: On Evolution, Biology Teachers Stray From Lesson Plan

Teaching creationism in public schools has consistently been ruled unconstitutional in federal courts, but according to a national survey of more than 900 public high school biology teachers, it continues to flourish in the nation’s classrooms.

Researchers found that only 28 percent of biology teachers consistently follow the recommendations of the National Research Council to describe straightforwardly the evidence for evolution and explain the ways in which it is a unifying theme in all of biology. At the other extreme, 13 percent explicitly advocate creationism, and spend at least an hour of class time presenting it in a positive light.

That leaves what the authors call “the cautious 60 percent,” who avoid controversy by endorsing neither evolution nor its unscientific alternatives. In various ways, they compromise.

The survey, published in the Jan. 28 issue of Science, found that some avoid intellectual commitment by explaining that they teach evolution only because state examinations require it, and that students do not need to “believe” in it. Others treat evolution as if it applied only on a molecular level, avoiding any discussion of the evolution of species. And a large number claim that students are free to choose evolution or creationism based on their own beliefs. ...

Global Poverty Falls Below One Billion

The Brookings Institution: Poverty in Numbers: The Changing State of Global Poverty from 2005 to 2015

... How many poor people are there in the world and how many Are there likely to be in 2015?

To calculate the number of people in the world living in extreme poverty, we update the World Bank’s official $1.25 a day poverty estimates for 119 countries, which together account for 95 percent of the population of the developing world. To do this, we take the most recent household survey data for each country, and generate poverty estimates for the years 2005 to 2015 using historical and forecast estimates of per capita consumption growth, making the simplifying assumption that the income distribution in each country remains unchanged.

Global poverty figures are then calculated by adding together the number of poor from each country. (See the Appendix for a full account of our methodology.) Our results indicate that the world has seen a dramatic decrease in global poverty over the past six years, and that this trend is set to continue in the four years ahead. We estimate that between 2005 and 2010, the total number of poor people around the world fell by nearly half a billion people, from over 1.3 billion in 2005 to under 900 million in 2010. Looking ahead to 2015, extreme poverty could fall to under 600 million people—less than half the number regularly cited in describing the number of poor people in the world today. Poverty reduction of this magnitude is unparalleled in history: never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period of time.

When measured as a share of population, progress remains impressive, but is more in line with past trends. In the early 1980s, more than half of all people in developing countries lived in extreme poverty. By 2005, this was down to a quarter. According to our estimates, as of 2010 less than 16 percent remained in poverty, and fewer than 10 percent will likely be poor by 2015.

The first Millennium Development Goal defines a target (MDG1a) of halving the rate of global poverty by 2015 from its 1990 level. In an official report prepared for the U.N. MDG conference this past September, the World Bank stated that we are 80 percent of the way toward this target and are on track to meet it by 2015, though the Bank warned that “the economic crisis adds new risks to prospects for reaching the goal.”3

Our assessment is considerably more upbeat. We believe that the MDG1a target has already been met—approximately three years ago.4 Furthermore, by 2015, we will not only have halved the global poverty rate, as per MDG1a, but will have halved it again.

Over the past half century, the developing world, including many of the world’s poorest countries, have seen dramatic improvements in virtually all non-income measures of well-being: since 1960, global infant mortality has dropped by more than 50 percent, for example, and the share of the world’s children enrolled in primary school increased from less than half to nearly 90 percent between 1950 and today.5 Likewise there have been impressive gains in gender equality, access to justice and civil and political rights. Yet, through most of this period, the incomes of rich and poor countries diverged, and income poverty has proven a more persistent challenge than other measures of wellbeing.6 The rapid decline in global poverty now underway—and the early achievement of the MDG1a target—marks a break from these trends, and could come to be seen as a turning point in the history of global development. ...

Here are some interesting charts and graphs:

  

I particularly liked this graph:

Nigeria will soon have more poor people than India.

U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead

Bloomberg: U.S. Schools Are Still Ahead—Way Ahead

...Meanwhile, the perception is that American children live a relatively easy life and coast their way through school. They don't do any more homework than they have to; they spend an extraordinary amount of time playing games, socializing on the Internet, text-messaging each other; they work part time to pay for their schooling and social habits. And they party. A lot. These stereotypes worry many Americans. They believe the American education system puts the country at a great disadvantage. But this is far from true.

The independence and social skills American children develop give them a huge advantage when they join the workforce. They learn to experiment, challenge norms, and take risks. They can think for themselves, and they can innovate. This is why America remains the world leader in innovation; why Chinese and Indians invest their life savings to send their children to expensive U.S. schools when they can. India and China are changing, and as the next generations of students become like American ones, they too are beginning to innovate. So far, their education systems have held them back.

My research team at Duke looked in depth at the engineering education of China and India. We documented that these countries now graduate four to seven times as many engineers as does the U.S.The quality of these engineers, however, is so poor that most are not fit to work as engineers; their system of rote learning handicaps those who do get jobs, so it takes two to three years for them to achieve the same productivity as fresh American graduates.As a result, significant proportions of China's engineering graduates end up working on factory floors and Indian industry has to spend large sums of money retraining its employees. After four or five years in the workforce, Indians do become innovative and produce, overall, at the same quality as Americans, but they lose a valuable two to three years in their retraining. ...

The Party of Nonvoters

Pew Research: The Party of Nonvoters

 

The End of the College Textbook as We Know It?

Carpe Diem: The End of the College Textbook as We Know It?

From today's Chronicle of Higher Education, a possible solution? 

 

"Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).

Why electronic copies? Well, they're far cheaper to produce than printed texts (MP: $25-30 vs. $150-300), making a bulk purchase more feasible. By ordering books by the hundreds or thousands, colleges can negotiate a much better rate than students were able to get on their own, even for used books. And publishers could eliminate the used-book market and reduce incentives for students to illegally download copies as well.

Of course those who wanted to read the textbook on paper could print out the electronic version or pay an additional fee to buy an old-fashioned copy—a book."

Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

New York Times: Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system.

Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.

A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation. But in an era when outsourcing is most often an act of budget desperation — with janitors, police forces and even entire city halls farmed out in one town or another — the contract in Santa Clarita has touched a deep nerve and begun a round of second-guessing.

Can a municipal service like a library hold so central a place that it should be entrusted to a profit-driven contractor only as a last resort — and maybe not even then?

“There’s this American flag, apple pie thing about libraries,” said Frank A. Pezzanite, the outsourcing company’s chief executive. He has pledged to save $1 million a year in Santa Clarita, mainly by cutting overhead and replacing unionized employees. “Somehow they have been put in the category of a sacred organization.”

The company, known as L.S.S.I., runs 14 library systems operating 63 locations. Its basic pitch to cities is that it fixes broken libraries — more often than not by cleaning house.

“A lot of libraries are atrocious,” Mr. Pezzanite said. “Their policies are all about job security. That’s why the profession is nervous about us. You can go to a library for 35 years and never have to do anything and then have your retirement. We’re not running our company that way. You come to us, you’re going to have to work.”...

Greedy capitalists taking over one of the last fortresses of the intellectuals. There has to be a movie in this story somewhere.

A mother's education has a huge effect on a child's health

Washington Post: A mother's education has a huge effect on a child's health

It turns out that pencils and books for mothers may be as important as vaccines and drugs for babies in reducing child mortality in the developing world.

That's because a mother's education level has a huge, if indirect, effect on the health of her children. That relationship, observed in many small studies in rich countries, turns out to be true everywhere on the globe, according to a new study.

Half the reduction in child mortality over the past 40 years can be attributed to the better education of women, according to the analysis published in the journal Lancet. For every one-year increase in the average education of reproductive-age women, a country experienced a 9.5 percent decrease in the child deaths.

"The effect of educational expansion on child health has been enormous," wrote Emmanuela Gakidou, the lead author and a researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.

A mother's education affects her children's health in myriad ways, said Christopher J.L. Murray, a co-author of the study.

According to Murray, better-educated women are more likely to understand disease-prevention measures such as vaccines and mosquito nets, and to use them. They are more likely to take a sick child to a clinic early and to follow treatment instructions. They are more likely to understand germ theory and set clean water and sanitation as household priorities.

With more schooling, women tend to have fewer children and space births more widely, both of which also reduce child mortality. ...

Sheryl WuDunn: Our century's greatest injustice

"Sheryl WuDunn's book "Half the Sky" investigates the oppression of women globally. Her stories shocks. Only when women in developing countries have equal access to education and economic opportunity will we be using all our human resources."

Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

New York Times: Plagiarism Lines Blur for Students in Digital Age

At Rhode Island College, a freshman copied and pasted from a Web site’s frequently asked questions page about homelessness — and did not think he needed to credit a source in his assignment because the page did not include author information.

At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.

And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.

Professors used to deal with plagiarism by admonishing students to give credit to others and to follow the style guide for citations, and pretty much left it at that.

But these cases — typical ones, according to writing tutors and officials responsible for discipline at the three schools who described the plagiarism — suggest that many students simply do not grasp that using words they did not write is a serious misdeed.

It is a disconnect that is growing in the Internet age as concepts of intellectual property, copyright and originality are under assault in the unbridled exchange of online information, say educators who study plagiarism.

Digital technology makes copying and pasting easy, of course. But that is the least of it. The Internet may also be redefining how students — who came of age with music file-sharing, Wikipedia and Web-linking — understand the concept of authorship and the singularity of any text or image.

“Now we have a whole generation of students who’ve grown up with information that just seems to be hanging out there in cyberspace and doesn’t seem to have an author,” said Teresa Fishman, director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson University. “It’s possible to believe this information is just out there for anyone to take.” ...

Why did feds claim Kindle violates civil rights?

Washington Examiner: Why did feds claim Kindle violates civil rights?

Did you know the Justice Department threatened several universities with legal action because they took part in an experimental program to allow students to use the Amazon Kindle for textbooks?

Last year, the schools -- among them Princeton, Arizona State and Case Western Reserve -- wanted to know if e-book readers would be more convenient and less costly than traditional textbooks. The environmentally conscious educators also wanted to reduce the huge amount of paper students use to print files from their laptops.

It seemed like a promising idea until the universities got a letter from the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, now under an aggressive new chief, Thomas Perez, telling them they were under investigation for possible violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

From its introduction in 2007, the Kindle has drawn criticism from the National Federation of the Blind and other activist groups. While the Kindle's text-to-speech feature could read a book aloud, its menu functions required sight to operate. "If you could get a sighted person to fire up the device and start reading the book to you, that's fine," says Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the federation. "But other than that, there was really no way to use it."

In May 2009, Amazon announced the pilot program, under which it would provide Kindle DX readers to a few universities. It wasn't a huge deal; Princeton's plan, for example, involved three courses and a total of 51 students, and only in the fall semester of that year. University spokeswoman Emily Aronson says the program was voluntary and students could opt out of using the Kindle. "There were no students with a visual impairment who had registered for the three classes," says Aronson.

Nevertheless, in June 2009, the federation filed a complaint with the Justice Department, accusing the schools of violating the ADA. Perez and his team went to work.

"We acted swiftly to respond to complaints we received about the use of the Amazon Kindle," Perez recently told a House committee. "We must remain vigilant to ensure that as new devices are introduced, people with disabilities are not left behind." ...

And if the books read on Kindle are presented in print, that isn't discrimination??? I assume they get around print versions through audiobooks, braille books, or paid readers. How does the book being electronic thwart these solutions?

The moralistic bureaucratic regulatory mind never ceases to amaze me.

Garment Factories, Changing Women’s Roles in Poor Countries

New York Times - Economix: Garment Factories, Changing Women’s Roles in Poor Countries

While visiting garment factories in Bangladesh on assignment recently, I met young women who had migrated from villages to the city in search of jobs that they needed to support their families back home. It is a fairly standard story in this part of the world.

What struck me, however, was how their journeys had changed them and their views about life. Take Maasuda Akthar, who moved to Gazipur, a town 30 miles outside  Dhaka, when she was 16 with her sister. (I wrote about her in this article about how the Bangladesh garment industry was benefiting from increased labor costs in China.) She married a man whom she met at the factory. As an experienced seamstress, she now makes more money than him. Ms. Akthar, 21, told me that her husband had offered to become the sole breadwinner in the home so that she could stay at home and “be comfortable,” but she refused because she enjoys working. Not only that, she told me she did not plan to have children for a few years.

My conversations with Ms. Akthar and the other woman appeared to confirm what economists, policy makers and businessmen had told me: By giving women an independent source of livelihood, Bangladesh’s garment industry has changed this conservative Muslim country’s society in immeasurable ways. (More than 80 percent of the three million people who work in the industry are women.) ...

... Mr. Mobarak also found that girls who live in villages with garment factories tend to marry later and have children later than the girls who grow up in villages without factories. In other countries, this has typically happened as women get more educated, but Mr. Mobarak’s survey of 1,500 families suggests that it is happening slightly differently in Bangladesh, which has a literacy rate of just 55 percent.

“Girls do seem to take advantage of these jobs at 17 to 19 years old, and that allows them to delay marriage and child bearing,” Mr. Mobarak told me in a telephone interview. “Even if it’s not happening through education, it is happening through work.” ...

... Wages in Bangladesh’s garment industry are among the lowest in the world. The minimum wage, which the government is expected to increase soon, is just 1,662 taka (about $23) a month. Labor groups are demanding a sharp increase and their protests and clashes with the police have periodically shut down factories in recent weeks.

Still hundreds of thousands of women flock to Dhaka and other garment hubs in Bangladesh every year because factories pay more than the women could earn in villages. ...

Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom

Pew Research: Minorities and the Recession-Era College Enrollment Boom

The recession-era boom in the size of freshman classes at four-year colleges, community colleges and trade schools has been driven largely by a sharp increase in minority student enrollment, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of new data from the U.S. Department of Education.

Freshman enrollment at the nation's 6,100 post-secondary institutions surged by 144,000 students from the fall of 2007 to the fall of 2008. This 6% increase was the largest in 40 years1, and almost three-quarters of it came from minority freshman enrollment growth.

From 2007 to 2008 (the first year of the recession), the freshman enrollment of Hispanics at post-secondary institutions grew by 15%, of blacks by 8%, of Asians by 6% and of whites by 3%.  ...

One religious institution that isn't so post-racial

CNN Belief Blog: One religious institution that isn't so post-racial

Even as the communities that churches serve become more diverse, there’s some religious quarters where people of color remain dramatically underrepresented: the nation’s seminaries.

About one-third of all accredited theological schools lack a single minority faculty member, according to leaders with the Fund for Theological Education, a nonprofit group that offers mentoring and financial support for minority doctoral students at seminaries.

The fund is co-hosting a leadership conference this weekend at the Chicago Theological Seminary aimed at producing more African-American students at the doctoral level in theological schools.

Jonathan Walton, an assistant professor of African-American religions at Harvard Divinity School, says minority students who are identified as gifted at the college level are encouraged to go into law or medicine because of those fields' financial rewards.

Walton, who personally received financial and mentoring support from the Fund for Theological Education, says America’s future religious leaders won’t be able to serve their communities as well if they don’t receive training from a diverse seminary faculty.

“You want your training ground for America’s clergy to be as diverse as the country itself,” he says.

The New Demography of American Motherhood

Pew Research: The New Demography of American Motherhood

Executive Summary

This report examines the changing demographic characteristics of U.S. mothers by comparing women who gave birth in 2008 with those who gave birth in 1990. It is based on data from the National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau. It also presents results of a nationwide Pew Research Center survey that asked a range of questions about parenthood.

Among the key findings of this report:

• Age: Mothers of newborns are older now than their counterparts were two decades ago. In 1990, teens had a higher share of all births (13%) than did women ages 35 and older (9%). In 2008, the reverse was true -- 10% of births were to teens, compared with 14% to women ages 35 and older. Each race and ethnic group had a higher share of mothers of newborns in 2008 who are ages 35 and older, and a lower share who are teens, than in 1990.
• Marital Status: A record four-in-ten births (41%) were to unmarried women in 2008, including most births to women in their early 20s. In 1990, 28% of births were to unmarried women. The unmarried-mother share of births has increased most sharply for whites and Hispanics, although the highest share is for black women.
• Race and Ethnicity: White women made up 53% of mothers of newborns in 2008, down from 65% in 1990. The share of births to Hispanic women has grown dramatically, to one-in-four.
• Education: Most mothers of newborns (54%) had at least some college education in 2006, an increase from 41% in 1990. Among mothers of newborns who were ages 35 and older, 71% had at least some college education.
• Explaining the Trends: All the trends cited above reflect a complex mix of demographic and behavioral factors. For example, the higher share of college-educated mothers stems both from their rising birth rates and from women's increasing educational attainment. The rise in births to unmarried women reflects both their rising birth rates and the shrinking share of adults who are married.
• Attitudes about Parenthood: When asked why they decided to have their first (or only) child, the overwhelming majority of parents (87%) answer, "The joy of having children." But nearly half (47%) also say, "There wasn't a reason; it just happened."

Study: U.S. church attendance steady, but makeup of churchgoers changes

University of Nebraska: Study: U.S. church attendance steady, but makeup of churchgoers changes

U.S. church attendance rates have held relatively steady over the past three and a half decades, a new study shows. But the makeup of the nation's congregations has undergone significant changes during that same time.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln sociologist Philip Schwadel applied a new multi-level estimation method to uncover several original findings about how often Americans -- and certain groups of Americans -- worship.

His findings challenge some popular notions: First, aside from a moderate decline in the 1990s, the study shows that Americans' churchgoing routines have been fairly constant over the decades, at around 23 to 28 services a year.

"There is a small decline in church attendance over time, but not nearly as large as suggested in popular culture, or even by some social scientists," Schwadel said.

Second, sizeable shifts have occurred within traditionally reliable churchgoing groups -- women, southerners and Catholics -- that suggest those groups' overall impact on church attendance rates in the United States has begun to wane.

The study examined General Social Survey responses from nearly 41,000 Americans from 1972 to 2006 and appears in the current edition of the journal Sociology of Religion. Using complete age, period and cohort data, Schwadel reaches the following conclusions:

* In 1972, Catholics attended religious services an average of 18 days per year more than mainline Protestants. By the first few years of the 21st century, however, the difference had dropped to about six days per year.

* The estimated difference in attendance between southerners and non-southerners was almost six days per year in 1972. By 1996, the gap was just three days per year and has only slightly widened since then.

* Women in 1972 went to church roughly 10 times more a year than men. By 2006, that gap had shrunk to about six more times a year.

Why are the gaps closing? The declining influence of women, Catholics and southerners is not the result of compositional changes, Schwadel said -- that is, the proportions of Americans who are Catholic, female or living in the South have not declined. In fact, the proportions of Catholics and those living in the South have risen in recent decades.

Instead, the researcher estimated that declining impacts of the traditional groups were related to rising education levels among all three, along with growing minority populations. Education levels rose disproportionately among women, Catholics and southerners in the last 35 years, leading to geographic and economic mobility that didn't broadly exist in the early 1970s.

The declining difference in attendance between Catholics and mainline Protestants does not necessarily mean all Catholics are attending less often. Instead, many Catholics now have high levels of church attendance because they are Latino, which make up one-third of American Catholics today, rather than because they are Catholic, the study found. In other words, the difference in attendance between non-Latino Catholics and mainline Protestants is declining precipitously.

Women provide perhaps the most dynamic example of societal changes over the time span, Schwadel said. Traditionally, they connected their roles in the home and the family to their roles in their churches.

"But as more women have gone to college, participated in the workforce and have begun to work outside the home, it can be said that they are becoming more like men in a number of ways," he said. "Few people have really thought about whether the traditional role of women in their church has changed. This may change that."

Men have historically held leadership positions in their congregations, while women have been the majority in the pews on any given Sunday, he said. More importantly, they have been the bedrock of most church organizations, powering the clubs and outreach groups.

"It's worth a closer look to see if women are less likely to participate in these types of groups over time -- and if so, what changes that might mean for their churches in the long run," Schwadel concluded.

WRITER: Steve Smith, University Communications, (402) 472-4226

Maternal Deaths Decline Sharply Across the Globe

New York Times: Maternal Deaths Decline Sharply Across the Globe

For the first time in decades, researchers are reporting a significant drop worldwide in the number of women dying each year from pregnancy and childbirth, to about 342,900 in 2008 from 526,300 in 1980.

The findings, published in the medical journal The Lancet, challenge the prevailing view of maternal mortality as an intractable problem that has defied every effort to solve it.

“The overall message, for the first time in a generation, is one of persistent and welcome progress,” the journal’s editor, Dr. Richard Horton, wrote in a comment accompanying the article, published online on Monday.

The study cited a number of reasons for the improvement: lower pregnancy rates in some countries; higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care; more education for women; and the increasing availability of “skilled attendants” — people with some medical training — to help women give birth. Improvements in large countries like India and China helped to drive down the overall death rates.

But some advocates for women’s health tried to pressure The Lancet into delaying publication of the new findings, fearing that good news would detract from the urgency of their cause, Dr. Horton said in a telephone interview.

“I think this is one of those instances when science and advocacy can conflict,” he said.

Dr. Horton said the advocates, whom he declined to name, wanted the new information held and released only after certain meetings about maternal and child health had already taken place. ...

Kansas City Needs to Support Covington

I don't often use this blog to promote political causes, but today I'm making an exception. Kansas City School Board Superintendent John Covington led the board to make a long overdue reduction in the number of schools a few weeks ago. The consolidation will reduce overhead, and it is a move toward improving the quality of education in one of the most dysfunctional school districts in the nation. Some school board candidates are running to undo Covington's courageous decision. It is time to get behind Covington. Therefore, I want to encourage all my Kansas City, MO, readers to get out there today and vote for the reform candidates who support Covington.

4th District:

Joseph Jackson

At-Large:

Kyleen Carroll
Crispin Rea

U.S. students' reading scores show little progress

USA Today: U.S. students' reading scores show little progress

WASHINGTON — In spite of high-profile efforts to improve the reading skills of the USA's poorest schoolchildren over the past several years, their reading abilities barely improved last year compared with 2007, results of a federally administered test show.

Reading scores essentially didn't budge in 2009, both for students overall and minority students, according to results issued Wednesday on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Fourth-graders' scores were unchanged at 221 points on a 500-point scale, and those of eighth-graders rose just one point, from 263 to 264.

Likewise, achievement gaps between white, African-American and Hispanic students changed only slightly since 2007, though in fourth grade, the difference between white and African-American students' scores has tightened six points since 1992. Overall, though, average scores in both grades have risen just four points since then. ...

A divided Kansas City board votes 5-4 to close 26 district schools

Kansas City Star: A divided Kansas City board votes 5-4 to close 26 district schools

A divided Kansas City school board voted Wednesday night to move ahead with a historic plan to close 26 schools.

Hundreds of people in an overflow crowd — sometimes shouting out in dismay — watched with national media as the board ushered in Superintendent John Covington’s “Right Sizing Plan.”

While the nation may be watching to see whether Covington can carry out his sweeping plan, the superintendent and his board will tend to the task of working together in the weighty days ahead, board President Marilyn Simmons said.

“I do not think this is something for celebration,” she said after the 5-4 vote. “This is a somber moment.”

The school closings will reduce the number of district buildings by more than 40 percent and underpin Covington’s drive to cut $50 million from the shrunken district’s budget. ...

I was watching Morning Joe this morning, and this was one of the lead stories. One commentator used this as an example of underfunded school districts and the sign of a looming crisis. The fact is that Kansas City, Missouri School District's population has been in decline for years. For some time now, school space has been overcapacity and all the overhead that goes with keeping each location open. Past superintendents have tried to close schools in recent years and failed. This time Covington succeeded. Hats off to him. This is not a sign of a collapsing school system but the emergence of fiscal responsibility that should improve the plight of KCMO students.

Also, don't get me started on three reporters I've already heard who talk about "the unfolding story in Kansas." Guess the geography classes didn't take too well with many in the national media. :-)

Parents Train Young Consumers

Marketing Charts: Parents Train Young Consumers

Marketers who target the youth market may be dealing with savvier consumers than they anticipated, according to the latest American Express Spending & Saving Tracker. Seventy-one percent of parents with children ages six to 16 say their children understand the US is in a recession, and 91% say they plan on teaching their children financial responsibility in 2010.

Top Three Savings Lessons Parents Teach Kids

The 91% of parents who plan to teach their kids financial responsibility this year rated the following three as the most important, in order of how many respondents mentioned a particular lesson:

• Understanding debt and its impact on saving and spending (30%).
• Teaching the value of a dollar through an award system like an allowance (25%).
• Basic teaching of how money is earned and used in everyday life (21%).

Kids Become Cost-conscious

Despite the reputation of kids as being selfish and not listening to what they are told, Spending & Saving Tracker results indicate that at least some American kids are hearing what their parents tell them about financial responsibility. One in five children (20%) has indicated to a parent that “maybe we shouldn’t buy that due to the recession.” Interestingly, kids of the affluent were most apt (31%) to suggest that a parent hold back on a particular purchase.

Allowances Represent Spending Opportunity

Marketers of toys, candy and other kid-friendly goods have an opportunity to capture allowance spending, according to the following figures regarding allowance habits of U.S. consumers:

• Sixty-two percent of parents in the general population give their kids a weekly allowance.
• Among the general population giving an allowance, the average amount is $12 a week, or $48 a month.
• Almost half (47%) of the general population giving an allowance expects it to be spent, rather than saved.
• Twenty-three percent of the general population giving an allowance places no restriction on how it is spent.
• Thirteen percent of the general population giving an allowance permits it to be used for non-essentials such as toys, movie tickets and games.
• Ten percent of the general population giving an allowance permits it to be used for essentials such as gas and lunch money. ...

When I was in early grade school, I got an allowance contingent upon doing certain chores. One of those chores was keeping books and recording my income and expenses (using broad categories.) I had to present those books to get my allowance. That didn't continue into my teen years, but long enough to get into the habit of watching finances and understanding cash flow. I think I was about ten when my folks opened a savings account in my name where I could deposit or withdraw my savings.

What training did you have as a kid? What are you doing to teach financial responsibility to your children?

Harvard’s Crisis of Faith

Newsweek: Harvard’s Crisis of Faith

Can a secular university embrace religion without sacrificing its soul?

It doesn't take a degree from Harvard to see that in today's world, a person needs to know something about religion. The conflicts between the Israelis and the Palestinians; between Christians, Muslims, and animists in Africa; between religious conservatives and progressives at home over abortion and gay marriage—all these relate, if indirectly, to what rival groups believe about God and scripture. Any resolution of these conflicts will have to come from people who understand how religious belief and practice influence our world: why, in particular, believers see some things as worth fighting and dying for. On the Harvard campus—where the next generation of aspiring leaders is currently beginning the spring term—the importance of religion goes without saying. "Kids need to know the difference between a Sunni and a Shia," is something you hear a lot.

But in practice, the Harvard faculty cannot cope with religion. It cannot agree on who should teach it, how it should be taught, and how much value to give it compared with economics, biology, literature, and all the other subjects considered vital to an undergraduate education. ...

... Undergraduates with more than a passing interest in religion are pointed to the Divinity School, half a mile away from Harvard Yard, where they can take graduate-level courses about belief from people who are, by tradition, believers. This separation of "faith" from "reason" occurred in the early part of the 19th century, when the American university evolved into a secular place. Even now, in an era when a presidential candidate cannot get elected without a convincing "faith narrative," the scholars who study belief continue to reside in the Divinity School, and when the subject of religion comes up, the scholars on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences sniff at its seriousness. ...

Structural Barriers Discourage Girls From Going Into Math and Science?

Mark Perry takes aim at this article in the Chronicle for Higher Education that says structural educational barriers prevent women from going into math and science. Summarizing from 2009 SAT report from the College Board, he writes:

1. The average number of years of math study for boys and girls in high school is almost identical: 3.9 years for boys and 3.8 years for girls.

2. The average number of years of science study for girls (3.5 years) in high school is almost the same as for boys (3.6 years).

3. High school girls had exactly the same math GPA as boys of 3.14, and a slightly higher average GPA for science (3.27) than boys (3.23).

4. More girls take biology and chemistry (55%) in high school than boys (45%), i.e. 122 girls per 100 boys.

5. There are 127 girls taking high school AP/Honors science classes for every 100 boys.

6. For high school students reporting more than four years of math study, the percentages are equal by gender: 50% of boys and 50% of girls take more than four years of math.

7. Both 50% of boys and 50% of girls in high school report that calculus is the highest level of high school mathematics taken.

8. More high school girls than boys took AP Honors math courses, by a ratio of 117 girls for every 100 boys.

Bottom Line: The evidence shows that high school girls are equally prepared, if not more prepared (more AP math and science classes), than high school boys for college programs in math, science and engineering. ...

Is the World Getting Better or Worse

New Scientist

(HT: Brad Wright)

Star Trek Stops Women From Becoming Computer Scientists

Wired: Star Trek Stops Women From Becoming Computer Scientists

The gender gap in computer science may have been widened by Star Trek, a new study suggests — but it could be bridged with a less geeky image.

New research published in the December Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that the stereotype of computer scientists as unwashed nerds may be partially responsible for the dearth of women in the field, as shown by National Science Foundation statistics.

“What this research shows is that the image of computer science — this geeky, masculine image — can make women feel like they don’t belong,” says lead author Sapna Cheryan of the University of Washington.

“I think this is an important contribution to the literature,” says Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton of the University of California, Berkeley. He says it raises questions about how much conscious control people have over their choices.

Previous research has found that a person can get a good sense of what another individual is like just from spending a few minutes perusing that person’s bedroom. Cheryan wondered if the same was true of classrooms.

“You can get a message about whether you want to join a certain group just by seeing the physical environment that that group is associated with,” Cheryan says. “You walk in, see these objects and think, ‘This is not me.’” ...

Expectations, meet reality (PCUSA)

Presbyterian News Service: Expectations, meet reality

Theological educators grapple with leadership needs in changing times.

SAN ANSELMO, Calif. — More than 100 leaders of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) theological education institutions gathered on the campus of San Francisco Theological Seminary Nov. 16 to discuss emerging leadership needs in the church and how seminaries might concentrate dwindling resources to meet those needs.

The “fishbowl” exercise — four participants providing initial comments with others weighing in in response — took place during the semi-annual meeting of the PC(USA)’s Committee on Theological Education (COTE) as part of the ongoing work of the Joint Committee on Leadership Needs, sponsored by the Office of the General Assembly and the General Assembly Mission Council.

“Our charge is to study the pastoral and leadership needs of the church and recommend policies and strategies to address those needs,” said the Rev. Landon Whitsett, pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Liberty, Mo., and a COTE representative to the joint committee. “We’re starting with questions like: What is the identity and function of a church leader? Who are they? Who are we missing? What [leadership] gifts are we missing? How can we nurture leaders now for future leadership ...?”

The traditional norm of a seminary-trained pastor serving one congregation full time is gone, said the Rev. Marcia Myers, director of vocation for the denomination.

“More than half our congregations are not served that way,” she said.

The Rev. Jeffrey Bullock, president of the University of Dubuque Theological Seminary, agreed.

“It’s important to understand not what we want the situation to be but what it actually is,” he said. “I’m concerned that two-thirds of churches in my presbytery are no longer able to afford full-time [pastoral] ministry.

But there is also opportunity there, Bullock said, noting growing programs to train Commissioned Lay Pastors and distance learning, a non-residential educational approach that’s having considerable success at Dubuque. ...

How to Profit off the Poor… and Keep Your Soul

Tech Crunch: How to Profit off the Poor… and Keep Your Soul

DELHI, INDIA–“I’ll take you! I live there!” a small boy with a blue shirt and a perfect toothy grin said as he ran ahead of me. His quiet friend in yellow jogged beside him smiling shyly, his jet-black Elvis curl bobbing on his forehead. The boy in blue stopped a few yards in front of me turned around, beaming and added in Hindi, “I know computers quite well.”

These weren’t middle class kids on the well-trod, parent-driven Indian path to seats at IIT. These were Delhi slum kids, whose families likely live on less than $2 a day. And yet, for the last five years, they’ve spent several hours of their free time every day playing games and learning English, Math and Science on computers.

So how have they bridged the much-agonized-about digital divide without a hand out from a chip company, computer company or wealthy philanthropist? A for-profit Indian company called NIIT.

It started back in 1999 when Sugata Mitra, NIIT’s chief scientist, noticed his kid could learn how to use gadgets like a mobile phone far faster than tech-savvy adults could. At this time, most computer “labs” in Indian schools were one or two computers that were only to be used under the strict supervision of a teacher. The reasoning was computers were expensive and required training and supervision. As a result many kids only got to look at them from afar in the classroom.

Instead Mitra wondered what would happen if he left a computer out in the open for a group of children to discover. So he literally knocked a hole in the office wall to the slum on the other side.  He shoved a computer in the hole and set up a camera on a tree limb to record what happened. A 13-year-old, illiterate kid who’d never seen a computer wandered over tentatively, and soon realized he could move the cursor by moving a finger across the touch pad. Within four hours, a small group of kids had gathered. They had figured out how to open Internet Explorer and were playing a game on Disney’s Web site. “All of us were absolutely shocked watching that,” says Abhishek Gupta who heads the program now. Some expected the kids to break or even try to steal the computer.

A pilot project with the World Bank followed, and 22 of these “Hole in the Wall” kiosks were set up around the country from 2001 to 2005. The organization studied the results closely. The most obvious take-away was that kids left on their own will learn computers. The project also helped develop team-building and social skills—with 200 kids sometimes huddled around one screen. Whether the computers lead to more general academic improvement was less clear, but in many cases it was up measurably, Gupta says.

But interestingly when that partnership was over, NIIT didn’t take the project down the non-profit route. It’s not because the company is adverse to such things—it’s also opening a new high-end university that is run as a non-profit. But there’s a unique attitude in India that believes the way to eradicate poverty is to turn India’s scrappiest, free-market entrepreneurs on the problem, not to increase handouts. ...

Business: The New Liberal Art

Business Week: Business: The New Liberal Art

Interest in business is surging at elite liberal arts colleges, and schools that once shunned the business major are now offering coursework.

Ever since fleeing Europe's tyranny for the New World, Americans have established a collegiate system which emphasizes a broad, liberal arts education. Even as larger state schools mimicked European universities and offered undergraduate majors in vocational fields, the Ivy League schools and their peers, for the most part, resisted. "In America, we think more in terms of a broad undergraduate education," says Paul Danos, dean of Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business (Tuck Full-Time MBA Profile). "Other parts of the world are much more specific. They believe in the benefit of students going directly into their major and taking several years of very narrow, technical work. We don't think of it that way."

But as the financial industry becomes an increasingly sought-after destination for talented undergraduates, some top schools are reconsidering that age-old bias. In the last three years, liberal arts colleges that once shunned the business major have begun making business courses available to undergrads. And with the job market in turmoil, interest in these programs has surged. At Tuck, growing demand has led the school to triple the number of business classes it offers. Columbia, which has seen increased interest among undergrads for the business courses in its catalog, is considering a program similar to one at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management that yields a business certificate upon completion. That program itself has been so popular that it expanded just a year after its inception.

Once wholly committed to their vision of students well-versed in philosophy, history, and science, these schools appear to be changing course. According to Amir Ziv, vice-dean at Columbia Business School, behind this shift in attitude is "a lot of demand from the undergrads to know something about business."

For liberal arts students, a little bit of business knowhow is a powerful thing, giving them the confidence they need to work in a business setting. ...

One Educator/Author's Use of Blogging

N. Gregory Mankiw is an economics professor at Harvard and author of leading economics textbooks. He has also been blogging for a few years now.

What he has done is map his blog posts to his textbook. Students can read the book and then use the map to find blog posts he has written that highlight, illustrate, or elaborate on points he makes in the textbook. You check out the mapping by clicking here.

Pretty cool!

Education Last Century, and Economic Growth Today

NYT Economix: Education Last Century, and Economic Growth Today

Not entirely sure what to make of this high correlation between education a century ago and GDP today, but it is a fascinating graph.

No improvement for fourth-graders on national math test

Christian Science Monitor: No improvement for fourth-graders on national math test

The 2009 math scores reported by NAEP, a national assessment, represented the first time since 1990 that no gains were made.

For the first time since 1990, America's fourth-graders showed no improvement in math – a disappointing finding in the latest release from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), known as the nation's report card.

In four states, scores for fourth-graders actually declined between 2007 and 2009 – the first time any state has shown a drop since all 50 states began participating in the assessment in 2003.

The news is better at the eighth-grade level, where scores did rise by two points since 2007. But achievement gaps between white and minority students stayed the same.

"This is a warning light that there's something going on here, and school districts should look into it," says Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy in Washington. But noting that long-term trends are still positive, he says, "it's not an alarm bell."

Particularly surprising is the fact that the plateau is in elementary school – in general, the most reliable source of good news for education gains. And it occurred across the board: There was no change from 2007 for any racial or income group; no change in any achievement gap; and no change in the percentage of students at any of the three achievement levels (basic, proficient, and advanced). ...

Where quality of life has improved most since 1990

The Economist: Healthier, wealthier and wiser

Where quality of life has improved most since 1990.

NORWEGIANS live the best lives in the world, according to the UNDP's “Human development index” published on Monday October 5th. Rich western countries as usual score well in the UN's measure of health, education and wealth data for 2007. But other countries can claim notable improvement in the past two decades. Of the 116 nations for which there are data, Mozambique has improved the most, scoring almost 50% higher in the 2007 index than it did in 1990. Many other African countries have also seen increases in their quality of life. China has seen its score rise by 27% on the back of strong economic growth. Six nations have slipped backwards, as AIDS or an ailing economy has driven down life expectancy and wealth.

 

Princeton Students Don't Like Free Kindles

U. S. News: Princeton Students Don't Like Free Kindles

When Princeton University administrators brokered a deal to have 50 students receive free Kindle DXs preloaded with their course material for the semester, they were hopeful students would see the devices as useful, sustainable academic tools. Instead, most of the students who received free E-readers say they're dissatisfied with the device and find it inconvenient to use, the Daily Princetonian reports.

"I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool," says senior Aaron Horvath. "It's clumsy, slow, and a real pain to operate."

Horvath added that using the Kindle has forced him to change the way he studies and digests reading material.

"Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes, and other marks representing the importance of certain passages—not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs," he says. "All of these things have been lost, and if not lost, they're too slow to keep up with my thinking and the 'features' have been rendered useless."

While some professors, like Harriet Flower, find the Kindle beneficial because it is easier on her eyes, professor Stan Katz wants to wait and see if he can teach and students can learn as effectively using a Kindle.

"I require a very close reading of the texts. I encourage students to mark up texts, and . . . I expect them to underline and to highlight texts," Katz says. "The question is whether you can do them as effectively with a Kindle as with paper."

There is nothing like getting a new book, putting it close to your face, fanning the pages, and getting that new book smell. Until Kindle can add the new book scent, it will never work. :-)

Grad School Enrollment by Gender

Source

The Least Surprising Correlation of All Time

Greg Mankiw's Blog: The Least Surprising Correlation of All Time

The NY Times Economix blog offers us the above graph, showing that kids from higher income families get higher average SAT scores.

Of course! But so what? This fact tells us nothing about the causal impact of income on test scores. (Economix does not advance a causal interpretation, but nor does it warn readers against it.)

This graph is a good example of omitted variable bias, a statistical issue discussed in Chapter 2 of my favorite textbook. The key omitted variable here is parents' IQ. Smart parents make more money and pass those good genes on to their offspring.

Suppose we were to graph average SAT scores by the number of bathrooms a student has in his or her family home. That curve would also likely slope upward. (After all, people with more money buy larger homes with more bathrooms.) But it would be a mistake to conclude that installing an extra toilet raises yours kids' SAT scores.

It would be interesting to see the above graph reproduced for adopted children only. I bet that the curve would be a lot flatter.

He has a follow up: And I thought I was being boring

And this follow up: Test Scores and Biological Father's Income