The university of the future, part one of three: Let the faculty lead

If I were to start a university from the ground up, given our current state of knowledge, I would work from a three-part foundation. Here is the first part:

The university should be faculty-led.

Something you can do

Here is something anyone can do to make the world a teensy bit better. It's simple, really: positive reinforcement.

"Can't you make it fun for them?"

Educators at all levels have heard this question. It is difficult not to take it as an insult. It's like saying to the parent of a crying infant, "Can't you keep that baby quiet?" To the extent that it is possible to make the educational experience enjoyable for students, while still fulfilling educational objectives, of course educators try to do that.

Nonspecific thoughts on Proposition 1

On May 7, Austin voters rejected Proposition 1, regarding what kind of background checks are mandated for ridesharing drivers. One very brief summary of the implications of yes and no votes is here. I never dug into the details myself, mainly because I’ve been feeling unenthusiastic about voting in general (but that’s another story). But I thought the hubbub around the vote was interesting, not least because no one seemed to know what the proposition actually said. Also, I saw two common fallacies underlying much of what was said against the proposition, both of which appear in lots of contexts:

• If a corporation wants something (e.g., Uber and Lyft want a specific standard of background checks for their drivers), that something must be bad.
• If government does not make something happen (e.g., ensuring that ridesharing services are reasonably safe), that something will not happen.

As categorical statements, both are wrong (which I do not mean as a comment on Proposition 1 specifically). One could view the first as arising from the intention heuristic and the second from a lack of understanding of how markets function.

Illegal immigration, de facto and de jure

Here is something about illegal immigration that struck me as curious. This was a while back--during one of the previous episodes when it was an especially hot topic politically. When a politician claims that it would be a good idea to take stronger measures against illegal immigration (like, say, building a wall along the US/Mexico border), but some object to such a measure, I have to ask: if we're serious about this law, then why would one object to whatever measures are taken to enforce it? There's actually a whole subset of the law and economics literature dealing with the question of why it is not generally optimal to use the maximum penalties available; e.g. why not punish speeding with ten-year prison sentences. There are a few issues that arise in that literature. In the case of immigration, I think the answer is that not everyone is on board with the law itself: many would argue that the standard for legal immigration should be different. Someone who opposes the law will naturally oppose any measures taken to enforce the law (plus something like a border wall is just so unseemly). So we end up with a de facto standard for immigration: getting into the country without going through official channels, and staying indefinitely, is feasible. Not assured, and not easy, but if you're willing to expend some effort and take some risks, you can do it.

That would be okay--to have an unofficial immigration standard that results from the push and pull between opposing views about the enforcement of the official standard--if not for the fact that illegal immigrants are shut out from so much of American society. Severely limited employment opportunity is the worst part, I imagine, but there is so much more than that. Fear of deportation excludes illegal immigrants from all sorts of rights and privileges to which the rest of us have access. For example, if I have cause to sue someone, I wouldn't generally fear any repercussions from filing a lawsuit. But I would not want to enter into any kind of legal proceeding if I faced a risk of my immigration status being discovered. Even if we disregard explicit threats ("If you don't do ____, I'll call the INS"), there are countless situations in which an illegal immigrant would have to accept something that would be unacceptable to a citizen.

Amnesty is not just about letting them stay. It's also about letting them exist like everyone else.

BTW, what image springs to mind when you hear the phrase "illegal immigrant"? For me it's someone working hard to eke out a decent existence for himself and his family. Not someone we should turn away or turn into a second-class citizen.

Meeting students where they are

This sums up much of what I have posted recently (here, here, here, and here).

It is often said that educators should "meet students where they are." I take that to mean understanding students' perspectives and patterns of thought, which understanding becomes the starting point for the educational process. But there is not much benefit in achieving such an understanding without also acknowledging what students want and what they are willing to do to get it. Recognizing where students are should inform what we try to do for them, not just how we do it. As I have discussed in previous posts, many students do not want the liberal-arts-oriented undergraduate education that we try so hard to press upon them. This is not an insult, or even a criticism. I think that we would do well to respect what students actually want from their education and to work with that, not with an ideal that educators have in mind.

Educators are not just content-delivery systems: there is much we can do to encourage and guide students, as long as they are at some level receptive to our goals. It is, however, a mistake to try to develop innovative approaches to teaching in order to reach all of our students when some students are fundamentally opposed to what we're trying to do.

It doesn't much matter where I meet my friend Archibald, if Archibald is a vegetarian and my purpose in meeting him is to get him to accept a sackful of cheeseburgers.

An alternative to undergraduate business education

In a recent post, I described how a college education can act as a signal (not an idea that I came up with, BTW): that a student's completion of an undergraduate degree demonstrates that the student is above some standard of intelligence and responsibility. Obviously higher education serves other functions as well, not the least of which is the actual education, we hope. However, I claim that the signaling function is sufficiently important for some students that they would not attend college otherwise, i.e. that there is a significant fraction of college students that would not obtain an undergraduate degree if there were some other way to communicate their intelligence and responsibility to potential employers. I suggest apprenticeships as an alternate means of communicating this information as well as a vehicle for some of our educational goals.

What's the point of a college education?

In previous posts, I pointed out that many undergraduates don't want and aren't getting the education that we are trying to provide, and I suggested that everyone would be better off if viable alternatives to a traditional education were available. Before getting into possible alternatives, it is useful to consider the reasons why one might go to college. This article lists five reasons, which I would condense into three:

1. To obtain the education itself, with all of the concomitant joys and sorrows.
2. To be able to get a better job, or more generally, to get whatever external benefits the degree provides (which may or may not be correlated with number 1).
3. To socialize, or more generally, to get any of the things from the college experience that are desirable to students but are not part of number 1 or number 2.

Probably most undergraduates would cite the ability to get a good job as one of the reasons they are in college. For most business students, in my experience, that is the primary or even the sole consideration. Whereas liberal arts students are likely to have some genuine interest in the field they are studying, business students are likely to view the degree as a means to an end. They may be amenable to the education itself to varying degrees, or they may embrace the education itself as the thing that is going to help them get a job or be successful in that job; but I have never encountered a student that was studying business because he or she enjoyed studying business for its own sake or perceived any value of this study that was not entirely career-related. (There may be such students out there, but I feel confident in claiming that they are not the norm.) It is common for business undergraduates to want to get through the degree with the minimum amount of fuss.

A radical general education curriculum

Here is an idea for the general education portion of an undergraduate curriculum. There are three requirements. Each student must:

• Design and conduct an experiment
• Design and defend a public policy
• Write a novel

There are detailed criteria for passing each requirement. Students have considerable flexibility regarding their approach to and the subject matter of each project, but all students are held to rigorous standards for the depth of each project and the thoroughness with which each is completed. Students receive a lengthy evaluation of each project including both quantitative and qualitative feedback. These evaluations are written by a committee of faculty members.

Students are given resources to enable them to complete these projects, including extensive advising and various courses. Many of these courses resemble typical general education courses, while others are more modular. Students are required only to complete the three major projects satisfactorily, and they may choose the courses that they feel will enable them to do that. Courses may include whatever activities that the instructor deems to be appropriate. Any evaluation of a student's coursework is for the student's information only and does not appear on a transcript. Under-subscribed courses are eliminated from the catalog and new courses may be introduced periodically based on faculty interest and availability and student demand.

Incoming students' orientation includes a discussion of what students can expect to gain from their completion of the three projects. They are urged to heed advice in order to stay on track to finish the requirements in a timely fashion but are given autonomy in selecting the instructional activities in which they will participate.

Hypothesis testing and arguments

Lately ideas related to hypothesis testing have been showing up a lot on the blogs I read, both in general--what exactly is it, what is the right way to do it, how do we teach it, how should we frame the conclusions, etc.--and in specific contexts. A common caveat is that failing to reject a null hypothesis is not the same as demonstrating that the null is true. Can't argue with that, but when facing this kind of question--what conclusion can we or should we draw if we do or do not reject the null--I think that it is essential to recognize that the statistical test is being employed as a rhetorical device and that it should not be viewed as independent of other elements of the argument. Hypothesis testing, like any bit of statistical inference (or any bit of science, for that matter), can in principle be executed and presented in a value-free manner, but in practice it virtually never is. Once you start talking about what we would like to know, you're imposing values on the process. Any argument about what we should do based on the statistical results will necessarily be value-laden. If there is some decision to be made based on the results of a hypothesis test in which the null was not rejected, one has to decide how failing to reject the null bears upon that decision, and there isn't going to be a single, objective answer to that.

More misspent university funds

A large state university with which I am familiar used to have a student organization called the State University Economics Association (not literally, but you get the idea). At some point they changed the name to the State Economics Association. The reason was that they could not have "University" in the name without following the university's requirements for student associations, and these requirements were sufficiently burdensome that the students did not want to deal with them. Paperwork was one thing, I remember, and there may have been other restrictions.

Recently, while walking through the campus of State University, I saw a number of notices for student organizations, many of which did not have "University" in the name. That tells me two things: students value the organizations themselves, but the resources that the university devotes to student organizations are largely wasted.

One response to the increasing cost of higher education is that universities should unbundle their services. Much as living in a university-owned dormitory is billed separately from tuition, other services, such as athletics or student organizations, could be available for a separate fee. Tuition would then be meant to cover only expenses directly related to the education itself (including some but not all of the overhead). Arnold Kling predicts that participation in social activities "would plummet. Students would find less costly ways to socialize." (He says some other interesting things about unbundling here.) I think that the goings on at State University support this point. Of course it is valuable for students to get together around various themes for fun, networking, or whatever else, but that does not mean that it is a good idea for the university to devote costly resources to such things. This is the kind of redefining of the university's role to which I referred in a previous post.

Not so great ideas in higher education

In the six years I have been in my current academic job, my university has created several administrative positions at the level of director or above. I'm not talking about filling existing openings, but creating new job titles that didn't previously exist. When there is a new vice president for this-or-that, I would guess that there is also support staff in this new department of this-or-that. My first reaction is usually skepticism about whether the benefit of such a position is really worth the resources being devoted to it. For some of the administrative positions that have been around for years, I have to wonder the same thing. Would we be much worse off if we didn't have that VP for XYZ?

To each his own

I remember a history class I took as an undergraduate. As I composed an essay in response to a question on the final exam, I felt that I was getting a glimmer of how historians think about the world (as well as developing the ability to put together a decent essay). It was very much like going to the gym and exercising muscles that I hadn't known I had. That exam was the culmination of a semester's work, but it was only one class in one field, which was one small part of my undergraduate education. The whole thing was, for me, tremendously gratifying. The difference between who I was when I graduated from college and who I had been when I started four years earlier is just staggering. Not all of that difference is attributable to my educational experience itself, but I have never doubted for a second that my undergraduate education is worth many times its cost in terms of all of the various resources used. I would have said that when I was a recent graduate, and it has become more obvious to me over time. The undergraduate degree was, for me, not so much an end in itself as a start on a path that I have followed ever since then. I don't want to claim that I am one of the great thinkers of our time, but intellectual growth has been a lifelong process.

The real crisis in higher education

A much-discussed concern about undergraduate education in the U.S. is the expense, which in real terms has increased dramatically over the past several decades. There may be a number of reasons for this, each of which deserves attention. Undoubtedly one of those reasons is that the percentage of Americans obtaining a college education has risen significantly. In the most basic economic terms, increased demand for a good or service tends to increase the price, since more resources must be drawn away from other uses that are of value. Rather than focusing on how to pay for an undergraduate education for all that desire it, I suggest reconsidering why students are going to college, what they are actually getting from it, and what potential alternatives might exist. A problem with higher education, perhaps the most pressing problem, is that there are too many students in college.

The police state, or maybe the police municipality

Tomorrow a new law goes into effect in Austin. It will be illegal to use a cell phone, as well as a variety of other devices, while driving or cycling, unless the device is being used in a hands-free fashion. A question this raises in my mind: will the police abide by this law? In Austin, as in probably just about every jurisdiction in the U.S., police have laptops mounted in their vehicles. More than once I have observed a police officer looking at his laptop screen or tapping on the keys while his vehicle is in motion. (The law seems to prohibit touching the device while in motion, so I guess simply looking at a screen of any kind would be within the letter of the law, as would touching the device when the vehicle is at a full stop.) I seem to remember hearing a story or two about this kind of behavior on the part of the police causing an accident, although I don't have a reference.

So I wonder, will police officers be expected to refrain from touching any of their electronic devices while driving? And even if the official policy is that they must, will they actually do so? I doubt there would be any reprisal against an officer for breaking this law in any instance where it did not lead to an accident. It's hard to imagine one officer writing a fellow officer a ticket for laptop use while driving.

Torture

Here's a hypothetical:

Let's say that the police have a man in custody who has kidnapped a child and hidden the child in a location that he refuses to disclose. Let's also assume that inflicting physical pain on this man is the only way to get him to disclose the location, that there would be no permanent damage caused by this infliction of pain, and that there is no other way that the police will be able to find the child. Is it then okay to torture the man for the sake of the child?

Good questions to ask about the chokehold

I'll say up front that I do not have the answers to these questions, that I am not supporting or opposing the use of the chokehold by law enforcement, and that I am not expressing any opinion about any specific incident. This post is, however, inspired by discussion of specific incidents, in which I find that people often focus on one issue to the exclusion of others. That is one of my primary objections to debate about all sorts of issues.

More about beliefs vs. facts

This article refers to research that makes some progress on the question of how to correct false beliefs. At the same time, reading it renews the concern I discuss here and here. If the article is correct about the reason for the persistence of false beliefs, we should expect that some people hold correct beliefs for the wrong reasons. I.e. if beliefs can be based on something other than facts, then some beliefs will be only coincidentally consistent with facts. These coincidental cases can lead to an unjustified confidence in one's whole process of belief formation. I'm concerned that someone reading the article might reason as follows:

• Global warming is a problem.
• I believe that it is a problem.
• Therefore, I am on the side of truth.
• Therefore, my beliefs about other things are correct also.

Quite the meta-problem.

Knowledge and the real unicorn

My daughter often talks about alicorns and sometimes pretends to be an alicorn. That's a cross between a pegasus and a unicorn, i.e. a unicorn with wings. So why can't she just be a unicorn with wings? Because unicorns don't have wings, of course. Not real unicorns (according to My Little Pony, that is, and perhaps other sources as well).

Someone who is asked how to kill a vampire will probably say a stake through the heart, and perhaps will mention other methods; but will most likely not qualify the statement with anything like "typically" or "according to the majority of popular sources." When it comes to some of the finer points of vampire mythology, like whether they can survive in sunlight, there is significant disagreement among popular sources (The Hunger: yes; Buffy the Vampire Slayer: no; Twilight: yes, but they prefer to avoid direct sunlight because it makes them glitter conspicuously). It wouldn't be unheard of for vampire geeks to argue about such things without acknowledging that they are really arguing about which mythology is the dominant one, or which mythology each person prefers. Like when I was talking to someone who claimed that "Elvish" and not "Elfish" is the correct way to refer to the language of elves. ("Says who?" I said. "You realize elves aren't real, right?")

Consider, by way of contrast, Sherlock Holmes. He is no more real than unicorns, vampires, or elves, but if you want to know his address, there is a definitive answer. Or at least there is an answer that virtually everyone can agree on, because virtually everyone would agree that Arthur Conan Doyle is the definitive source. This even though there may very well be fan fiction out there in which Holmes lives at 221A Baker Street, or 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, or wherever. In the same vein, one can confidently claim that J.R.R. Tolkien is the definitive source for information about hobbits. He did invent them, after all. There is much more room for argument about elves (and orcs, and all kinds of other stuff), not least because there won't be universal agreement about what "definitive" even means. (Tolkien also capitalizes the names of these races, but I'm not on board with that. Languages, on the other hand, even made-up ones, should be capitalized, imo.)

Here comes the tortured analogy. Nowadays, knowledge is viewed more like the mythology of vampires or elves than that of Holmes or hobbits. I think that's fair to say. There is good reason to view results of scientific research as authoritative (which is not to say infallible), whereas arguing over whether one non-scientific source is more authoritative than another tends to boil down to declaring allegiance to something--an ideological group, a way of thinking, a set of values, etc. Which is something like claiming that one depiction of vampires (or elves or unicorns) is "right" and another "wrong." Far from a perfect analogy, but what the hell.

De-politicization of beliefs

An addendum to yesterday's post.

Say there is some issue A, like "climate change is a problem that warrants policy intervention," with which liberals are more likely to agree and conservatives are more likely to disagree (or vice versa). There has been talk of de-politicizing such issues, meaning removing the association of the issue with one ideological group (which may be a matter of detaching the issue from underlying beliefs or values that differ across ideological groups). The presumed benefit of de-politicization is that it would make conservatives more likely to believe A. But at the same time, it would make liberals less likely to believe A. That it is a political issue cuts both ways: it's harder to get some ideological groups on board, easier to get others.

Now, what we really want to accomplish is to get people to believe something because it's actually true. Appealing to reason doesn't seem to be the way to go, its effectiveness being severely limited. Perhaps there is a way to appeal to beliefs or values that are common to many ideological groups--stuff that tends to unite rather than divide people. This  raises the question of whether people adopt beliefs because they want to agree with their own group or because they to want to oppose some other group (about which I wrote a paper). If you argue an issue in a way that is meant to appeal to one's humanity (rather than one's ideology), will that fail because there is no obvious group to which one can be opposed? Does Haidt's "groupishness" have an inherent us-vs-them component? If so--if people need to find something to disagree about--then maybe the thing to do is change the focus of disagreement to something more innocuous. I.e. try to get liberals and conservatives to expend their us-vs-them energies on something that doesn't have such dramatic consequences.