"Statistics" not "plastics"

In 1967, the career advice to The Graduate (Benjamin) was:

Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Now, forty years later, apparently it is "statistics". The article notes that "Computing and numerical skills, experts say, matter far more than degrees." I will add this to my ongoing critique of college education as we have it now.

“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”

The rising stature of statisticians, who can earn $125,000 at top companies in their first year after getting a doctorate, is a byproduct of the recent explosion of digital data. In field after field, computing and the Web are creating new realms of data to explore — sensor signals, surveillance tapes, social network chatter, public records and more. And the digital data surge only promises to accelerate, rising fivefold by 2012, according to a projection by IDC, a research firm.

Yet data is merely the raw material of knowledge. “We’re rapidly entering a world where everything can be monitored and measured,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Digital Business. “But the big problem is going to be the ability of humans to use, analyze and make sense of the data.”

The new breed of statisticians tackle that problem. They use powerful computers and sophisticated mathematical models to hunt for meaningful patterns and insights in vast troves of data. The applications are as diverse as improving Internet search and online advertising, culling gene sequencing information for cancer research and analyzing sensor and location data to optimize the handling of food shipments.

So, why are Swedes not so corrupt?

Am following up on a comment in a discussion on whether liberals are more corrupt than conservatives; the comment there was this:

How much you pay your public servants matters. And culture probably matters most of all. One of my favorite studies from the last few years looked at parking tickets for diplomats in New York, who of course can get away with leaving them unpaid because of diplomatic immunity. The Kuwaitis averaged 246 unpaid tickets per diplomat per year; the Swedes averaged zero.

Naturally, I followed up on that. So, what does the study say?

The authors find that there is a strong correlation between illegal parking and existing measures of home country corruption. This finding suggests that cultural or social norms related to corruption are quite persistent: even when stationed thousands of miles away, diplomats behave in a manner highly reminiscent of officials in the home country. Norms related to corruption are apparently deeply engrained, and factors other than legal enforcement are important determinants of corruption behavior.

I am willing to buy into this idea. I suppose there is a great deal of value in "lagom"

64 Years later. Nukes haunt us.

Here is to hoping that we will never ever again use a nuclear bomb, as we did in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago.

It is an unfortunate irony that news of Burma's interest in acquiring nukes with North Korean assistance comes at the same time.

I hope that President Obama will sincerely follow-up on, and implement, his grand statement in Prague earlier this year:

Just as we stood for freedom in the 20th century, we must stand together for the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the 21st century. (Applause.) And as nuclear power –- as a nuclear power, as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act. We cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.

So today, I state clearly and with conviction America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. (Applause.) I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly –- perhaps not in my lifetime. It will take patience and persistence. But now we, too, must ignore the voices who tell us that the world cannot change. We have to insist, "Yes, we can."

Does god hate Africa? Burma?

It is always a pleasure to read Heather Mac Donald's writings, especially when I am in agreement with her. I am delighted that she is actively associated with the Secular Right. Here is Mac Donald, writing about how "god" showed at the "beer summit."

I was struck nevertheless by the sudden infusion of God talk in Gates’ post-beer statement:

Let me say that I thank God that I live in a country in which police officers put their lives at risk to protect us every day . . . .

Thank God we live in a country where speech is protected, a country which guarantees and defends my right to speak out when I believe my rights have been violated . . . .

And thank God that we have a President who can rise above the fray, bridge age-old differences and transform events such as this into a moment in the evolution of our society’s attitudes about race and difference. President Obama is a man who understands tolerance and forgiveness, and our country is blessed to have such a leader.

I suspect that those activist conservative believers who argue for American exceptionalism and the essential role of faith in American life will not necessarily agree that we have God to thank for Obama’s election. Conservative and liberal believers undoubtedly loop each other like a double helix in their clairvoyance regarding the beneficent workings of God in the world. But if Reagan or Palin are the answer to prayers, why not Obama, too?

I am puzzled as usual, however, by the implications of such an interpretation of human experience as Gates here proposes. If it’s God to whom an individual American owes thanks for the good fortune of living under a stable, constitutional government, why doesn’t God confer such a benefit on Africans or the Burmese? An African baby no more deserves his birth circumstances than an American baby deserves his. If we’re all guilty of original sin from conception on, why are the consequences so much more severe for some people than for others? Predestination doctrine tells us to just shut up and accept such blatant injustices as the way that God does business, but I do not consider it an advance for human understanding to replace a medium-sized conundrum with a gargantuan one.

Cash for clunkers:bribing the middle class

Matt Welch:

Cash-for-clunkers is indeed very "popular." So is the home mortgage interest deduction, the prescription drug benefit, and any number of federal programs that siphon from the diffuse pool of tax revenue+debt and blast out concentrated benefits to the broad middle class. The standard for judging these things shouldn't be popularity–Richard Nixon's wage-and-price control spasm of 1971, to name one of many historical measures now widely and rightly considered asinine, was hugely popular at the time–but whether they make sense in both the short and long term.

Cash-for-clunkers amounts to a rounding error in Tim Geithner's nose-hair at this point, which is probably why at least some liberals seem so genuinely baffled by the disproportionate criticism it has drawn. But for some of us it's also a nearly perfect symbol of economic statism run amok. The federal government is taking from the many, giving it to the less-than-many, destroying functional cars, funneling money to an auto industry that it already largely owns (at a hefty taxpayer price tag), then taking multiple (and multiply premature) bows for rescuing the economy and the auto industry in the process.

Tim Geithner's nose-hair? Very funny.

On a totally different note, a year ago I read Matt Welch's piece on his experience at the 1984 Olympics, and how his own jingoistic theatrics changed his view forever. I emailed him in appreciation, also because it reminded me of how it similarly dawned on me in my teenage years that the anti-Pakistan tone in cricket matches were simply nauseating .... Here is an excerpt from what Welch had written:

Then Shane Mack struck out looking on a curve ball.

It was as if the Goodyear blimp had deflated in one second on the centerfield grass. People were either stunned into silence, or (as in our case) muttering bitter obscenities at the world in general. Then came a horrifying sound from somewhere behind my left shoulder. It was a grown man, a grown American man, and his two kids, clapping, and saying, in perfect English, "Hoo-ray Japan!"

My eyes nearly burned clean out of my skull. The Hulk, John McCain...they had nothing on the white-hot American rage I felt at that moment. I wheeled around, fangs bared, glared at this pleasant-looking man, and yelled: "SHUT UP, YOU...COMMIE!!!!"

The genie was seconds out of the bottle when I began to feel regret. A crowd of furious Americans, who had been taking our cues for several innings now, immediately erupted into a "YEAH!!!", then began to chant: "COM-MIE!! COM-MIE!! COM-MIE!!" Dodger Dog wrappers went zipping by my ear in the general direction of the offender. Confronted with a potentially violent mob of Angeleno nationalists, the alarmed fan fled the facility, ushering his two young kids to safety.

My friend was psyched. I, in the words of Bob Dylan, "became withdrawn." Harnessing (or having the illusion of harnessing) a crowd of thousands turned out to be much more frightening than fun. Going plum loco over an exhibition baseball game felt, well, loco. And taking the side of a snarling overdog against a hapless and vastly outnumbered minority suddenly felt like the opposite of how I ever again wanted to approach either social dynamics or political thought.

The ride home with my friend's dad was totally silent, as if we were keeping our lips sealed about some terrible crime. In the following days, I noticed everything began to look different. The crowd-whipping antics of Wally George were no longer funny. Republican politics in general, particularly the flag-waving, lefty-baiting strain, became revolting overnight. So did knee-jerk, anti-Ronnie Ray-gun rhetoric. Religious settings of all varieties—Southern California was then going through a big fundamentalist revival—became intolerable exercises in peer-and-God pressure. People who I had internally dismissed as outcasts at school I now externally sought after as friends. People whose approval I once craved were suddenly ridiculous to me. I started gravitating toward any book that challenged the accepted wisdom of a topic I thought I knew, starting with baseball. And any time I found myself in an overwhelming majority, my first question became, "What if we're wrong?"

None of this made me a better person, obviously, and undergoing a change of heart at age 16 is about as rare and interesting as the sun rising in the east, but I feel better having confessed.

Oh, BTW, Welch did reply to my email, with a note "Makes it all worthwhile ... almost!"
Indeed!

Cartoon of the day :-)

Graduates Equal Growth. Yeah, right!

If anybody ever reads this blog, well, it will be clear that I am not a rah-rah fan of college for everybody. Having this view while being a college professor puts me in a tiny minority, I suppose. Not that I am with a solid majority on this topic outside the academic walls either. Therefore, I feel much better when educators write essays skeptical of college for all, or about how China and India are producing college graduates. Such as this one in Change, which is published by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching:

President Obama wants everyone to go to college. This is an estimable goal: as he and everyone knows—including any high school drop-out—education is critically important for individual success. Moreover, college can still open people’s minds and feed their souls. But as a solution to recession? Forget it.

The author, Alison Wolf, is a chair professor of Public Sector Management at Kings College, London. Professor Wolf writes that:

There are three reasons why we cannot simply assume that a year in college, or a college degree, automatically makes everyone first more skilled, and then more productive, and so more prosperous. The first is that education is about sorting people out, not just about teaching and learning. The second is that not all degrees are created equal. And the third is the nature of the job market.

No different from my op-ed, eh!

Chart of the day

Why economists and academics run into PR trouble!

Couldn't the economics professor have figured out a better way to convey the point instead of saying:

"With the exception of—possible exception of—prostitution, I don't know any other profession that's had no productivity advance in 2,500 years," he says.

And guess where he brings in this contrast? In the context of discussing online education!
Of course, my immediate thought was that through online prostitution gets the biggest bang for the buck; isn't that productivity? ha ha

U.S. not the only place higher ed faces crisis

CHENNAI, India — “Higher education: The mess,” screamed the cover of India Today, one of the country’s leading news magazines.

“Welcome to the club!” I thought to myself, reflecting on how the cover echoed discussions in the United States.

In America, the mess in higher education has been a major preoccupation.

In particular, the financial aspects from a student’s perspective are increasingly bleak. The recent issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that more students are taking out loans thanks to the widening gap between the cost of attending colleges and universities, and the financial ability of students and their families to pay: “Nearly 53 percent of full-time undergraduate students borrowed money to attend college in 2007-8, compared with 49.5 percent in 2003-4.”

To make things worse, fresh college graduates find that there are few jobs waiting for them, a situation that has grown even worse.

After all the time and money invested, students and their families begin to wonder if college degrees were worth it.

Having seen quite a few students in those circumstances, some, including me, wonder whether higher education is an economic bubble that is waiting to burst, similar to other bubbles that already have burst in this Great Recession.

However, the problems pale in comparison to those in India.

There simply aren’t enough colleges and universities in India to serve the large population that is college-ready. Capacity is an important issue because, demographically speaking, India is a young country — almost half the country’s population is younger than 25 years old.

Such a choked structure makes higher education significantly less accessible to the less privileged — and there are a lot of them.

My parents’ neighbors tapped into their networks to get a seat at one of the evening colleges here in Chennai for an 18-year-old whose mother works as a maid. There would not have been a college seat for this teenager without this effort.

My parents and their neighbors have chipped in with financial assistance, which has made it possible for this young man to attend college after working for a couple of hours every morning.

A few aspects of the Indian “mess,” however, are simply beyond any comparison with the United States.

For instance, the India Today article reports that “on average most Indian universities revise their curricula only once in five to 10 years.”

Such a “stable” curriculum might have been acceptable in the early years of the 20th century, but not now when we are barely able keep up with changes that come every day.

In contrast, most of the universities in the United States, including the one where I teach, regularly update the curricula to reflect new insights gained through scholarship, and to prepare students for a rapidly changing world.

In fact, a college curriculum that is not considered current might be grounds for revoking an institution’s accreditation.

On top of this, within the academic walls, and in public forums, including this newspaper, we have intense debates and arguments about higher education — something sorely lacking in many other countries, including India. These help ensure that the typical American college is of significantly higher quality than a typical institution in most parts of the world.

Ultimately, however, it comes down to the quality of students. I think this is really where the Indian higher education system is in a mess.

Citing a study by the McKinsey consulting group, India Today reports that “only one out of 10 Indian students with degrees in humanities and one of four engineering graduates are employable.” This certainly warrants an OMG!

The dismal conditions in India do not mean that we do not need to work on higher education issues, particularly here in Oregon. We need to be constantly vigilant — not to fend off economic threats outside our borders, but because we ought to offer the best opportunities to our youth.

I am reminded of my childhood: Whenever we complained that a sibling or a cousin got more snacks, my grandmother admonished us to “just focus on your plate!”

In America, in more ways than one, we do, indeed, have a lot on our plate.

For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Monday, Aug 3, 2009