Assorted Links

1. A useful documentary ("The Flaw") on the economic crisis aired last night. Featuring the likes of Robert Shiller, Robert Frank, Joseph Stiglitz and Dan Ariely. See http://theflawmovie.com/.

2. In reference to the above, the Slingbox is a very useful invention for anyone traveling frequently or living abroad who wants to be able to watch tv in their home country.

3. Interesting paper combining the important areas of price elasticity of demand with respect to health expenditure and myopia.

Moral hazard in health insurance: How important is forward looking behavior?
Aviva Aron-Dine, Liran Einav, Amy Finkelstein, and Mark Culleny

Abstract

We investigate whether individuals exhibit forward looking behavior in their response to the non-linear pricing common in health insurance contracts. Our primary empirical strategy exploits the fact that employees who join an employer-provided health insurance plan later in the calendar year face the same initial (spot) price of medical care but a higher expected end-of-year (future) price relative to employees who join the same plan earlier in the year. Our results reject the null of completely myopic behavior; medical utilization appears to respond to the future price, with a statistically signi…ficant elasticity of (initial) medical utilization with respect to the future price of -0.2 to -0.6. To try to assess the extent of forward looking behavior, we develop a stylized dynamic model of individual behavior and calibrate it using data from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment. Our calibration exercise suggests that the elasticity we estimated is substantially smaller than the one implied by fully forward-looking behavior, yet it is sufficiently high to have an economically signi…ficant effect on the response of annual medical utilization to a non-linear health insurance contract. Overall, our results point to the empirical importance of accounting for dynamic incentives in analyses of the impact of health insurance on medical utilization.

4. Paper on the consumption value of higher education.

The Consumption Value of Postsecondary Education
Brian Jacob, Brian McCall, Kevin Stange,

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic964076.files/College%20Consumption%20Nov%202%202011.pdf

Abstract
Education provides both investment and consumption benefits; the former being realized after schooling is completed but the latter accruing only while schooling is actually taking place. In this paper, we quantify the importance of consumption value considerations to schooling decisions in the context of higher education and examine the implications for colleges’ strategies for attracting students. To do so, we estimate a discrete choice model of college demand using micro data from the high school classes of 1992 and 2004, matched to extensive information on all four-year colleges in the U.S. We find that most students do appear to value college attributes which we categorize as “consumption,” including college spending on student activities, sports, and dormitories. In fact, students appear to be more willing to pay for these non-academic aspects of colleges than typical academic aspects, such as spending on instruction. Estimates suggest that this taste for consumption amenities is broad-based among many student groups, whereas taste for academic quality is confined only to the high achieving. Consequently, policies that reallocate financial resources away from these non-academic aspects to instruction would not enable most schools to attract more or better students, as some policy-makers suggest. However, since student preferences for college attributes are very heterogeneous different colleges face very different incentives for changing their characteristics depending on their current student body and those they are trying to attract.

Our empirical approach makes a number of improvements on existing literature, including accounting for unobserved choice set variability created by selective admissions, controlling for fixed unobserved differences between schools and price discounting, and permitting greater preference heterogeneity.

Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning

4.6 million students in the United States (1 out of every 4) took a college-level online course at the start of the 2008/9 academic year. That figure rose to 5.6 million students in 2009/10, according to the eighth annual Sloan Survey of Online Learning, a report which uses data from more than 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States.

The importance of face-to-face lectures for students’ academic achievement has been demonstrated in previous economics studies such as Schmidt (1983); Romer (1993); Durden and Ellis (1995); Dolton, Marcenaro and Navarro (2003); Martins and Walker (2006) and Cohn and Johnson (2006). Therefore, it should be a priority to establish how online lectures compare; as many students are already learning online to some extent (as indicated by the Sloan Survey). A recent NBER paper by Figlio, Rush and Lin (2010) investigates the issue; details below.

Is it Live or is it Internet? Experimental Estimates of the Effects of Online Instruction on Student Learning
David Figlio (figlio@northwestern.edu), Mark Rush and Lu Yin
No 16089, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper presents the first experimental evidence on the effects of live versus internet media of instruction. Students in a large introductory microeconomics course at a major research university were randomly assigned to live lectures versus watching these same lectures in an internet setting, where all other factors (e.g., instruction, supplemental materials) were the same. Counter to the conclusions drawn by a recent U.S. Department of Education meta-analysis of non-experimental analyses of internet instruction in higher education, we find modest evidence that live-only instruction dominates internet instruction. These results are particularly strong for Hispanic students, male students, and lower-achieving students. We also provide suggestions for future experimentation in other settings.

JEL-codes: I20 I23
Date: 2010-06

What Do Students Learn in College?

They might attend their lectures, do additional hours of study and get good grades; but... what are students learning in college? A recent article in the New York Times asks just this question: "what are America's kids actually learning in college?". Thanks to Peter C for sending on the link. According to the NYT article, "a provocative new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, makes a strong case that for a large portion of the nation’s seemingly successful undergraduates, the years in college barely improve their skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing." The authors are Professors Richard Arum of New York University and Josipa Roksa of the University of Virginia. A Google-Books preview is available here.

Arum and Roska's research draws on survey responses, transcript data, and the Collegiate Learning Assessment, a standardised test administered to students in their first semester and then again at the end of their second year. More details on the authors' research project are available here. According to the authors' analysis (of more than 2,300 undergraduates at twenty-four institutions), 45 percent of these students demonstrate no significant improvement in a range of skills, including: critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing (during their first two years of college). According to the authors, "many students come to college not only poorly prepared by prior schooling for highly demanding academic tasks that ideally lie in front of them, but — more troubling still — they enter college with attitudes, norms, values, and behaviors that are often at odds with academic commitment."

In relation to academic commitment, education economists would draw attention to the idea of non-cognitive skills. Pedro Martins has shown that a targeted program related to non-cognitive ability – study skills, motivation, and self-esteem – can improve student achievement at state schools in Portugal. In work that I have done with Liam and Colm, there is a clear demonstration of academic advantage for Irish university students who are more future-orientated and more conscientious. A targeted program (providing academic and social supports) was evaluated in the setting of an Irish university by Denny, Doyle, O’Reilly and O’Sullivan (2010); the results suggesting it was an effective means of improving academic outcomes for socio-economically disadvantaged students attending Irish universities.

Returning to the NYT article, it interprets Arum and Roksa's research to indicate that "students are hitting the books less and partying more. Easier courses and easier majors have become more and more popular. Perhaps more now than ever, the point of the college experience is to have a good time and walk away with a valuable credential after putting in the least effort possible." A study by three Cornell economists found a large increase in enrollment in courses with a median grade of A; after a new policy which introduced the publication of course median grades on the Internet. This is suggestive of students enrolling in classes where it easier to obtain higher grade-scores; an issue which I raised before in relation to the Irish Leaving Certificate: the final examination at the end of second-level education Ireland.

Recent research by Brian Jacob, Brian McCall and Kevin Stange (all from the University of Michigan) specifically addresses the issue of the consumption-value of college education. Jacob, McCall and Stange report that students "appear to value several college attributes which we categorize as consumption because their benefits arguably accrue only while actually enrolled, including college spending on student activities, sports, and dormitories." In addition, research by Babcock and Marks (discussed on this blog before) documents that academic time investment among full-time college students fell from 40 hours per in 1961 to 27 hours per week in 2003. Another article from the NYT tells us that Arum and Roksa's research is "consistent with the findings of the National Survey of Student Engagement, which has polled more than 2 million students at more than 1,000 colleges and universities over more than a decade — and reported that many spend little time studying or writing."

According to this article in the Huffington Post, the Collegiate Learning Assessment "has its share of critics who say it doesn't capture learning in specialized majors or isn't a reliable measure of college performance because so many factors are beyond their control." Nonetheless, it looks like this debate is set to grow more widespread in the future. It also resonates with last year's debate in Ireland about the issue of grade inflation. Introducing a research component into the undergraduate curriculum could be one way to improve students' skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing. In 2005, Trinity College Dublin launched a summer programme offering undergraduate students, typically from Science and Engineering, the opportunity to work in research for an 11 week period, on projects in laboratory environments.

PhD Fellowship Restrictions to Residents

According to the Nature blog "The Great Beyond", it was announced today that Spain will restrict one of its main PhD fellowship programmes to current Spanish residents. Various countries in Europe have various rules on this. To the best of my knowledge (e.g. application form for IRCHSS here) the Irish programmes are open to non-Irish people who are EU citizens and there was even experimentation with making them available to non-EU citizens, which does not seem to operate anymore. This is something we really need to debate in Ireland and across Europe.

For the Irish case, given that money is being made available to fund PhD students, is it necessarily better that this would go to Irish residents or to EU residents instead of being opened up? If a bright Chinese student wins the competition, doesn't that yield benefits in terms of attracting bright people to Ireland? Ed Glaeser (talking in a general sense rather than specifically about this) argues that the best way for cities to grow is to attract bright people and let them do their thing. Restricting bright people from applying for your PhD funding is not a great way of achieving this. This is particularly serious in Europe compared to America as even the best universities in Europe have far more limitations in the extent to which they can provide their own funding to PhD students compared to US universities.

Related to this, if a bright Irish person gets accepted to a PhD programme abroad and at home, is it necessarily better for the Irish taxpayer if that person takes the home programme due to funding instead of being funded to take the programme abroad, particularly in cases where the programme abroad is better than the home programme? It really is an open question as to whether it would have been better had the 10 years or so of IRCHSS/IRCSET scholars gone away to whereever they would have got accepted, rather than doing their PhD to a large degree in Irish institutions. One model could be for every country to restrict some of its funding to natives but then to allow the natives to go to the best programmes they get accepted to.

A lot of the model now seems to be to retain bright natives and view foreign postgrads as effectively a cost. Does it make as much sense to think about viewing foreign postgrads as something worth subsidising and viewing native students going away as yielding more benefits than if they stayed at home?

Another way of putting this is that it is tempting to think that Spain is effectively free-riding by doing this. But perhaps it is inadvertently doing the opposite and instead pushing the brightest people in the rest of Europe from Spain to other countries.

Emotional health of undergraduates

This article from the New York Times reports "The emotional health of college freshmen — who feel buffeted by the recession and stressed by the pressures of high school — has declined to the lowest level since an annual survey of incoming students started collecting data 25 years ago".

EUA launches new study on Tracking Students' and Graduates' Progression Paths (TRACKIT!)

The European University Association (EUA) has announced the launch of TRACKIT!: a two-year project which will undertake a comparative study that focuses on tracking procedures applied by institutions, national agencies and researchers regarding students’ and graduates’ progression paths during studies and in transition into the labour market. In particular, it will consider the impact and relevance of tracking on institutional strategic aims.

The study ultimately aims to:
• enhance institutional reflection on how to ensure high quality student-centred learning and training
• improve the understanding of the articulation between degrees and employability
• underpin ongoing educational reforms and deliver an important contribution to the realisation of a Europe of knowledge.

It will consist of background data and literature collection, qualitative research based on site visits to institutions and a final report containing a provisional impact assessment of tracking measures for institutional enhancement.

TRACKIT! is being implemented by EUA, in a consortium with the Hochschul-Informations-System GmbH (HIS), Hanne Smidt Consulting, the University of the Peloponnese, the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University and the Irish Universities Association. It is supported by the Lifelong Learning Programme and will be completed in September 2012.

Economics for Business Studies: Does it Matter?

Does the Performance on Principles of Economics Courses Affect the Overall Academic Success of Undergraduate Business Majors?

Rupert G. Rhodd, Sandra M. Schrouder and Marcus T. Allen

Abstract: Using a sample of 1,339 graduates from an accredited business school and the maximum likelihood technique, this paper explores the relationship between overall academic success and performance on the Principles of Economics courses. The estimated model, which also includes some demographic variables, shows that the rank of professors teaching the course, age of students, and the number of credits earned do not influence business majors’ overall academic success. However, the grades earned on the Principles of Economics courses, gender, ethnicity, the major in which the student is enrolled, the number of years the student takes to graduate, as well as whether or not the student is completing a minor significantly affect the overall academic success or the final GPA of business majors.

Hunt Report: draft available

A draft of the long awaited Hunt Report is available here. The draft is dated August 8th so it possible that the published version will differ: after all why else wait 5 months?
It is a long report and covers a lot of ground so I haven’t read it all carefully. But from what I can see it is a lot like other such reports, fairly bland and uninspiring. There are many worthy statements that no one is likely to disagree with. That’s a bad sign in my view. Whether it adds much, or differs much, from the OECD’s recent report I don’t know. The committee that produced this report, though containing a range of very able people, looks to be dominated by insiders to the system. That’s also a bad sign in my view.
I confine my views to the issue of access to higher education by low income/low SES groups. This is mentioned in a few places. On page 13 it recommends widening access by such groups “by additional weighting”. What this means does not appear to be specified unless I have missed something.
Section 1.3 discusses “Broadening participation in Irish higher education”. Table 2.1 shows the dramatic differences in access rates by socio-economic background. This is all very well known but worth reminding ourselves of nonetheless. While it comments that pursuit of equality has been a mainstream concern of policy since 1966 it declines to mention that policy in this area has systematically failed, hence Table 2.1. After 40 years of failure, is some readically new thinking not required? This is something of an oversight.
As far as I can the only other place this issue comes up is Section 9.2, page 99 in the section “Maintaining equality of access”. The word “maintaining” should really be “achieving” since you cannot maintain something that has never existed. It comments that “One of the principal barriers for entry to higher education affecting students from lower income groups is their relatively lower levels of school completion and lower levels of attainment in the Leaving Certificate”. Well yes but it would be more precise to say, since this has been demonstrated, that it is THE principal barrier.
What this means, is that the problem with improving access to third level education lies elsewhere, in first and second level education (if not before). It may well have been beyond the remit of the report to recommend changes there but at least it should have noted this.
It comments further that “…students from lower income groups who do achieve the necessary prior levels of attainment, financial constraints… can and do affect participation. These financial barriers, which can be significant…”
No evidence to support this is given. It seems unusual that statements like this are made in an important document but with no reason to take it seriously. I suspect that this is because no such evidence exists & evidence implying the opposite does exist. It has been demonstrated that the abolition of university fees was not associated with a change in the socio-economic gradient in university access which suggests to me that fees are a side-show.

The Hunt Report: Key Recommendations

Key recommendations from the Hunt Report (or National Strategy for Higher Education) have been announced today in the Irish Independent. The Hunt Report has been discussed by Kevin and myself before on this blog. On a previous occasion, I also flagged a report entitled: "Policy Options for New Student Contributions in Higher Education", which dates from July 2009. There is no sign of the Hunt Report on the websites of the Higher Education Authority or the Department for Education and Skills. However, the Education and Skills website does have a link to "Strategy for Higher Education" on its homepage; but this link does not appear to be working. The key recommendations from the Hunt Report, as announced in today's Irish Independent, are as follows:

* Means test for families of students applying for higher education grants to be extended to include assets.
* Mergers of institutes of technology and of smaller colleges.
* Lower fees in key subject areas where there are skill shortages.
* Performance-related pay for college staff but much greater transparency of their workload.
* Increase investment in research and development to 3pc of national income, nearly double the present level.
* No university status for the Waterford and Dublin institutes of technology.

Addendum: The above set of recommendations do not say anything about a student contribution, something that many observers had been expecting. of course, the recommendations listed above may not reflect the entirety of the full report. Also, the other report mentioned above - Policy Options for New Student Contributions in Higher Education - covers the issue of a student contribution comprehensively, for those who are interested. Update: According to another article in today's Irish Independent: "For years, an argument has raged as to whether tuition fees should be brought back or student loans introduced. Controversially, it (the Hunt Report) recommends both." According to a third article in today's Irish Independent, students would have the option of paying part or all of their fees up-front or taking out a loan. The third article also mentions that the report recommends a stronger Higher Education Authority - which would monitor performance by colleges and keep back some funding until they improved their performance. I discussed the potential pitfalls of such an approach before on the blog here.

In relation to the recommendation on means-testing, this issue was previously investigated by an expert group led by Dr Donal De Buitleir in 1993. That group made recommendations to improve the fairness of maintenance grant awards. It was proposed that family assets, including businesses and large farms, be taken into account as well as declared taxable income when eligibility for maintenance grants is being calculated. In addition, an OECD panel of international experts looked at the De Buitleir recommendation in 2005 and strongly urged that it be implemented. So it can be argued that the implementation of this recommendation is long overdue in Irish higher education. Myself and Kevin discuss the above, and other aspects of Irish policy relating to higher education in this blog-post: How Education Policy is Made.

Who gets the higher education grant?

The Irish Independent has an interesting piece on the socio-economic background of higher education grant recipients. In particular it documents how a significant number from professional & employer backgrounds receive the grants, more in fact than from semi- & unskilled backgrounds.

Shocking news about progression to university in Ireland

The news from this years' Irish Times "feeder lists" is... well not news at all since it tells a depressingly familiar tale of unequal access to university.
Going to university and higher education generally is not, of course the be-all and end-all of secondary education but the government does not allow any other comparative data on educational attainment to be published at the school level, lest people be allowed to make informed decisions.

Incentives and Penalties for Third-Level Colleges

Writing on his blog, Ferdinand von-Prondzynski discusses in detail a report in the Irish Independent newspaper, which states that Irish higher education institutions will, under the framework of reforms to be recommended in the Hunt Report, face a combination of incentives and penalties. More specifically, "under a new funding system, colleges will receive reduced ‘core’ grants from the Exchequer. They will then be offered financial ‘incentives’ to meet targets in areas such as the retention of students, the rate of course completion, increasing access to college, teaching standards and research. If they fail to meet these targets, they will face financial penalties."

Ferdinand makes the point that a student retention target can easily be met by lowering the demands made by programmes of study, or moderating the severity of marking and assessment. He also states that "there is already a distinct financial penalty for student non-completion. A student who drops out will cause an immediate financial loss, because his or her fees (as paid by the state) and their part of the recurrent grant disappears". Furthermore, Ferdinand notes that if the HEA were to impose a penalty and withdraw further funds, this would directly lead to a lowering of quality of provision for those students who remain.

In addition to this, one could argue that it is not much good giving instiutions a financial reward for something that they need finance to achieve. Improving student retention will require enhanced student services, which in turn will cost money. Research by Joshua Angrist, Daniel Lang and Philip Oreopoulos shows that student services improve retention and achievement for females at Canadian colleges, even when incentives are also provided. The picture for males seems more complicated, but we do know from this Canadian study that females are more likely to use services than males. We also know from the recent HEA report, Study of Progression in Irish Higher Education, that males are more likely than females to not complete their course (17% male to 13% female non-completion rates).

From reading the accompanying HEA press release, it has come to my attention that there was a conference on student retention held in Dublin last Thursday. If one scrolls down on this webpage from the Irish Learning Technology Association, the flier can be seen. An American perspective was outlined by Prof. Vincent Tinto, Syracuse University, New York. Prof. Tinto's address, and presentations by other delegates can be accessed on this page of the HEA website. On a related note, readers may be interested to know that the full programme has been announced for the upcoming ESRI Higher Education Policy Conference on November 16th.

Drop-out in Irish Higher Education

Today on his blog, Ferdinand von-Prondzynski discusses a new Higher Education Authority publication: Study of Progression in Irish Higher Education. The study looks at data on student drop-outs broken down by institution and by subject. The Irish Times covered the release of the study yesterday. According to Ferdinand, the study "tells us that there is no significant difference in attrition between those from a better-off background and the less well off (though the latter are much less likely to get to university in the first place)."

Irish Policy Options for New Student Contributions in Higher Education

Readers may or may not be aware of this report to the Irish Minister for Education and Science: "Policy Options for New Student Contributions in Higher Education". The report dates from July 2009 but I have just found it on the website of the recently re-branded Department of Education and Skills. It is not clear whether this report is connected to the National Strategy for Higher Education in Ireland, recently discussed by Kevin on this blog.

In any event, the report outlines a number of issues in it summary, which are relevant to the potential introduction of a student contribution in Ireland. These include:

(i) Affordability considerations: "It is proposed that the level of any new student contribution should be related to current fee levels for Irish/EU students who do not qualify for free fees."

(ii) Top-up Fees: "Consideration could also be given to providing for a premium or ‘top-up’ range within which individual institutions would be free to increase charges for particular programmes. This would allow individual institutions to incentivise participation on particular programmes or to generate additional revenue according to their ability to compete for students. Such an arrangement could have the benefits of promoting competition and quality within the system."

(iii) Transition: "In transitioning to new fee arrangements, it would be important to avoid any potential for immediate shortfalls in institutional budgets by pitching fees at levels that do not match current ‘free fee’ contribution rates."

(iv) Collection of loan repayments: "The involvement of the national tax collection agency has been identified as being a critical success factor for a number of income contingent student loan facility models that operate internationally... It is recognised, however, that there are significant operational pressures on the Revenue Commissioners in the current Irish context which would limit their capacity to take on a role of direct collection agent for an income contingent loan scheme."

(v) Public finance: "In the current economic circumstances, it would be important that the introduction of a student loan facility would be designed to minimise any impact on the General Government Balance (GGB) or on General Government Debt (GGD)."

(vi) Upfront payment and tax relief: "In the context of any introduction of a loan system, continuing tax relief for students who pay fees upfront would amount to a form of discount for upfront payment. From an equity perspective, this would need to be factored into any consideration of the appropriate rate of surcharge on those availing of a loan rather than paying upfront."

(vii) Communicating complex issues: "Any policy change in this area will impact on significant numbers of students or potential students. A number of the options being considered are complex in nature and would give rise to very significant demands for information and clarification. An information strategy will need to be in place to communicate the details of any changes and to provide user friendly access to relevant detail on how the changes impact on individuals."

Class Size in Higher Education

The role of class-size in primary education has between discussed before on this blog. Earlier this year Kevin and Mark both posted interesting comments on the analysis of secondary data. In addition, I recently mentioned that data on primary-school class sizes in Ireland are available for the last four years by primary-school and class-room. Those looking for an introduction to how economists view the importance of class size in primary education could do worse than investigate this debate between Alan Krueger, Eric Hanushek and Jennifer King Rice.

"Alan Krueger maintains that smaller class sizes can improve students’ performance and future earnings prospects. He challenges Prof. Hanushek’s widely cited analysis of the class size literature, arguing that it gives disproportionate weight to single studies that include a large number of estimates... Jennifer King Rice brings a third-party perspective to the debate. She addresses each author’s arguments and focuses on the policy implications of the class size literature."

As educational achievement in higher education is often discussed on this blog, it seems salient to ask what we know about the importance of class size in higher education. To begin, it is helpful to point out that much of the work using education production functions has concentrated on the educational attainment of pupils in compulsory schooling, with less attention paid to higher education (Arulampalam, Naylor and Smith, 2009). The common inputs in education production functions are things like school resources, teacher quality, and family attributes, and the outcome is student achievement (Hanushek, 2007). However, there is a precedent for the theoretical consideration of higher education production functions (Freire and Silva, 1975; Johnson, 1978; Hopkins, 1990; Douglas and Sulock, 1995). There is also a much wider empirical literature on higher education production functions, in which researchers give attention to student inputs, in particular: lecture attendance and additional hours of study.

Looking at the evidence on class size in higher education, one result is that smaller classes do not translate into gains in achievement (Martins and Walker, 2006). Looking at economics students only, Kennedy and Siegfried (1997) find the same result i.e. that class size does not affect student achievement. Other work by Gleason shows that the same holds for mathematics students.

The opposite result (that class size matters) is found in a study examining peer effects and class size in higher education; Machado and Vera-Hernandez (2010) find that class size negatively influences medium ability college students. Dillon and Kokkelenberg (2002) show that class size "has a negative logarithmic relationship to grades and that the effect on class size on grades differs across different category of student."

In a recent Vox article, Bandiera, Larcinese and Rasul (2010) state that the effect of increasing class size in tertiary education is not yet well understood. Drawing on their article forthcoming in the Economic Journal, Bandiera, Larcinese and Rasul describe how they estimate the effects of class size on students’ exam performance by comparing the same student’s performance to her own performance in courses with small and large class sizes. "Going from the average class of 56 to a class size of 89 would decrease the mark by 9% of the observed variation in marks within a given student. The effect is almost four times larger for students in the top 10%."

It seems that the debate on class size in higher education is just as lively as the debate on class size in primary education.

Fair admissions to university?

The evidence base for fair admissions: can we achieve excellence and social justice?

The University of Manchester
7 - 8 July 2011

A unique conference bringing together theorists, researchers and policy-makers in higher education, working on fair admissions to competitive higher education institutions.

The full programme for the conference will be available from February 2011.

The Lake Wobegon Effect in Student Self-Reported Data

The Lake Wobegon effect, as described by Wikipedia, is also known as illusory superiority or the above average effect. It is a "cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others. This is evident in a variety of areas including intelligence, performance on tasks or tests and the possession of desirable characteristics or personality traits." The phraseology of the Lake Wobegon effect comes from Garrison Keillor's fictional town, Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average".

In 1994, Maxwell and Lopus published an article in the American Economic Review: The Lake Wobegon Effect in Student Self-Reported Data. According to the authors, overstated achievement may produce biased estimates of the relationship between achievement and educational inputs, if overstatement is correlated with achievement. Maxwell and Lopus produce evidence for biases which stem from two sources. First, below-average students tend to inflate their academic achievements, and second, they often fail to report their inferior accomplishments.

In a more recent paper (Journal of Economic Education, 2010), Haley, Johnson and McGee examine whether using student-survey data in place of official records data meaningfully biases regression estimates. They motivate their contribution by noting a useful statistical feature of overreporting on bounded variables such as grade point average. "Specifically, the misreports will be negatively correlated with the true grade point average, yielding a form of nonclassical measurement error that actually counteracts the bias." The authors connect this observation to reliability ratios used in labour economics. In two applications, they find that it is unnecessary to correct for the bias from the Lake Wobegon effect because it is so small.

Links of Interest: 29th September

1. President Barack Obama chose Austan Goolsbee to succeed Christina Romer as the head of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers. Here, the Wall Street Journal do a profile of Goolsbee.

2. The Guardian: a "nudge unit" set up by David Cameron in the Cabinet Office is working on how to use behavioural economics and market signals to persuade citizens to behave in a more socially integrated way.

3. The Daily Telegraph on Rory Sutherland's quiet behavioural economics revolution in the advertising industry.

4. Greatest Good: "a unique firm formed with the goal of applying rigorous, cutting-edge data analysis and economic methods to the most salient problems of business and philanthropy." Founding partners include Steven Levitt, Gary Becker, Daniel Kahneman and John List. Affiliates include David Laibson, Emily Oster, Steven Pinker and Richard Thaler.

5. The U.S. National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. They have a separate mandate to the Congressional Budget Office. "The Commission is charged with identifying policies to improve the fiscal situation in the medium term and to achieve fiscal sustainability over the long run."

6. A fascinating read for any Ph.D. student in Economics, or Ph.D. economist: 'Market Structure in the Production of Economics Ph.D.s'. Frank A. Scott, Jr. and Jeffrey D. Anstine; Southern Economic Journal Vol. 64, No. 1 (Jul., 1997), pp. 307-320.

7. The (Irish) Department of Education and Skills Inventory of Data Sources: "This document contains a matrix of educational data sources which are available from the Department of Education and Science and the agencies under its aegis."

8. University Attendance Scanners: "Northern Arizona University has installed electronic devices that record student attendance in an effort to boost freshmen grades and lift lagging graduation rates. But some students say the monitoring makes them feel less independent." (Southern California Public Radio).

9. "The Production and Deployment of an On-line Video Learning Bank in a Skills Training Environment" - Gerald Cannon, Mary Kelly, Colette Lyng, Mary McGrath; AISHE-J: The All Ireland Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Vol 1, No 1 (2009).

10. For economics undergraduates: the Irish Taxation Institute Fantasy Budget Competition. Who needs fantasy football?

Semesterisation's effect on exam results

"Trinity College will be releasing a report on semesterisation and its effect on students’ exam results next month, according to the college’s Communications Office." This is an excerpt from a story in The University Times, a Trinity college newspaper.

Outstanding Issues for the Bonus Points Scheme, and the Points System More Generally

"The manner in which students are admitted for third level education and in particular the points system have become matters of increasing public controversy in recent years." This sentence could have been written in recent months; it was in fact written in the late 1970's, and read before the Statistical and Social Inquiry Society of Ireland on the 24th May 1979. It is an excerpt from "The Leaving Certificate and First Year University Performance" by M.A. Moran and M.J. Crowley (Department of Statistics, University College Cork).

A couple of weeks ago, I outlined all the information that I was able to find on the introduction of bonus points for maths at UCD. Since then, I have developed some thoughts on outstanding issues for the bonus points scheme, and the Irish points system (for college entry) more generally. While the bonus points scheme is somewhat separate to the overall points system, and potential changes to the points system have been discussed before on this blog, the two areas of discussion make for natural bed-fellows. It would also be a shame to lose sight of what is happening in the wider points-system, given the attention currently being given to the topic of bonus points.

In relation to the issue of bonus points, I think that the debate would benefit from more focus on the following:

(i) The overall Project Maths initiative
(ii) The potential introduction of two maths examinations; one testing basic mathematical competency (at the end of Fifth Year), which if passed would secure a pass overall and entry to third level, and another to test advanced mathematics ability
(iii) The availability of higher level maths in schools throughout the country
(iv) The claim that half of second-level maths teachers do not have maths as a major subject in their degree
(v) Whether the bonus points would be awarded only to those who are going on to take a third-level course that requires maths
(vi) Whether there should be bonus points for science subjects in the Leaving Cert.
(vii) Whether maths should be compulsory for CAO points purposes

More broadly in relation to the overall points system, I have the following comments. I know that the points system, despite its flaws, is agreed by many to be the fairest and most transparent way that college places have been allocated to date in Ireland. Thinking about what can actually be changed, my suggestion is that we need more continuous assessment (CA). However, here's the twist --- this CA should be marked anonymously, just as the exams are. This would serve to take away the pressure of the "Big Day", and the CA could even be designed to encourage critical thinking, while at the same time being a fair and transparent assessment method. As things stand, I think that too much importance is given to one exam on one day for each subject.

Finally, I also think that having four (instead of three) compulsory choices might be fairer, in that it would be viewed as a more level playing-field. Looking at Leaving Cert. subject choice between 1997 and 2005 (based on analysis that I conducted before), we know that most students choose Geography, Business Studies, French and Biology for their optional subjects. The following are the most popular subjects, in order. (I should point out that after Accounting, the numbers taking any subject are quite low):

1. Geography
2. Business Studies
3. French
4. Biology
5. Home Econ.
6. History
7. Art
8. Construction
9. Physics
10. Chemistry
11. German
12. Accounting

I should also point out that there is a sizeable fall of about 50% in the numbers taking any subject after Home Economics. We can see that the top four (Geography, Business Studies, French and Biology) include one of Hist/Geog, one "Business" subject, one language and one science subject.