Discover magazine examines the attempts by physicists to break down the Planck scale, “a region where distances and intervals are so short that the very concepts of time and space start to break down.” So far, all tries have been unsuccessful, leading more than one physicist to conclude that, “at the most fundamental level of physical reality,” time may not exist. (Hat tip: Jonathan Mallard, via the Bacon’s Rebellion blog)
The New York Times reports that many state colleges and universities are charging higher tuition rates for certain majors like engineering, business, and journalism. (Journalism? Journalism?) Academic officials cite “the high salaries commanded by professors in certain fields, the expense of specialized equipment and the difficulties of getting state legislatures to approve general tuition increases” as the impetus behind the increases. (Again, we say: Journalism?)
Today would have been the 95th birthday of Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, who died last November. In a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, Thomas F. Siems describes Friedman’s legacy as follows: “Thanks to his unwavering support for free enterprise and open markets, Friedman’s ideas have elevated standards of living for a rising share of the world’s population.”
15 Comments
JOURNALISM?
You could make the case that professions with higher-than-average salaries could fetch a higher “market price” when it comes to the degrees.’
But JOURNALISM?
Most people have no clue how little journalists make coming out of school. Seriously. Entry level for television is $14-18K. Print isn’t much better.
When you consider that there are as many graduates in broadcast news every year as there are jobs in the industry, you can quickly understand why salaries in the field stay so low.
Set aside everything you believe about journalism salaries. There are relatively few cushy anchor gigs. Most journalists make dirt and live on Ramen noodles.
— Ike PigottYou mean look at your scale twice, right?
Why would a photon, for the sake of the universe, travel at a speed different than light? Is it in the nature of definitive definition? Is that common? Economics is like physics: not social but a science. Dismal science.
Gimme two of those divided by the absolute value of the result squared. It gets wiki eh
.lermit
— lermitIt would be a very interesting bit of economic research if somebody did a study of the value of different college majors, as well as the fact that by going to college for four years you lose four years of income from not working full-time.
Who ends up better off financially, the 18-year-old who does not go to college and starts working right away, or the person who spends four years in college racking up student loan debt?
Has anybody researched this?
— mfw13I was surprised at the attention paid to universities charging different tuition rates for different majors… I think that’s been common practice up here in Canada for quite a while. In fact, I don’t know any university up here that *doesn’t* charge more for business and engineering classes. (None that I know of charge more for journalism, though.)
— gypsybluePhD programs do better
.lermit
— lermitI thought it was already common for tuition to be different in different fields — business schools, for example, charge more.
I don’t think costs have as much to do with it as “what the market will bear”. If you could pay $2000 a year more tuition and not have to take a foreign language, lots of people would pay.
— zbicyclistFriedman is a god.
I’m guessing the Journalism thing is demand driven. It’s a very easy major and is over-subscribed due to its apparent glamour.
My other theory would be that biased NYT editors included it in the league with engineering and business because they want journalism to be seen as a challenging discipline.
My friend told me a story about her first day in an engineering class. The prof said, “Welcome to your first day of pre-business…at least for most of you.” I wonder what they say in the first day of journalism. “Congratulations, you’ll never be wrong again.”
— hatch113I had to pay $500 extra every semester at my university because I was a part of the business college. It was worth it though. We always had the best of everything: the best teachers, the best programs, the best resources. It makes sense for colleges within Universities to charge more for money that will go directly to helping their students rather than divided amongst the entire university.
— Razelare: mfw13
I seem to recall a study that said Ivy Leagues weren’t worth it if you went to a standard school and took the difference in tuition and invested it.
— jybOn a personal note, I’m a teacher and the local schools that offered a credential program are Stanford, Santa Clara, or San Jose State. I chose SJSU because it cost something like 3,000 a year instead of 30,000. Schools don’t care where you went and you’re set on your pay scale so I’d be making the same if I went to Stanford but I’d have a whole lot more debt. Frankly I can’t think of one advantage of Stanford over SJSU in this case.
Looks like John Lott has won a moral victory over Steven Levitt in his defamation suit against Levitt:
The Chronicle of Higher Education now reports that Levitt has offered “a doozy of a concession” to make the lawsuit go away:
Unusual Agreement Means Settlement May Be Near in ‘Lott v. Levitt’
John R. Lott Jr.’s defamation lawsuit against his fellow economist Steven D. Levitt has provisionally been settled — but it may yet roar back to life.
In documents filed today in federal court, the two parties outlined a settlement that requires Mr. Levitt, who is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the best-selling book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explains the Hidden Side of Everything, to send a letter of clarification to John B. McCall, a retired economist in Texas.
Mr. Lott’s lawsuit alleges that Mr. Levitt defamed him in a 2005 e-mail message to Mr. McCall (who, contrary to what was reported in an earlier version of this blog item, is not the same John McCall who once taught Mr. Lott at the University of California at Los Angeles). In that message, Mr. Levitt criticized Mr. Lott’s work as guest editor of a special 2001 issue of The Journal of Law and Economics that stemmed from a conference on gun issues held in 1999.
The letter of clarification, which was included in today’s filing, offers a doozy of a concession. In his 2005 message, Mr. Levitt told Mr. McCall that “it was not a peer-refereed edition of the Journal.” But in his letter of clarification, Mr. Levitt writes: “I acknowledge that the articles that were published in the conference issue were reviewed by referees engaged by the editors of the JLE. In fact, I was one of the peer referees.”
Mr. Levitt’s letter also concedes that he had been invited to present a paper at the 1999 conference. (He did not do so.) That admission undermines his e-mail message’s statement that Mr. Lott had “put in only work that supported him.”
The provisional settlement is simple: Beyond the letter of clarification, the agreement does not require any formal apology from Mr. Levitt, and no money will change hands.
http://chronicle.com/news/article/2759/unusual-agreement-means-settlement-may-be-near-in-lott-v-levitt
— SteveSailerDoes anyone have any more (non technical) articles on the time link?
— Sciolist#3: Go here: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=returns+education
— oddToddI wonder if tuition stratification will draw more students to the field (in opposition to posters who argue it’s not worth it)- eg a student opting for engineering program, cuz it costs more so it must be better
— frankendufWill they lower the tuition costs on the music majors?
— petflyThis is utterly stupid in terms of the public good- except the journalism part makes sense. We should make it relatively cheap to get a science or engineering degree (for example), and make it cost a lot to get a degree that is oversubscribed in terms of number of jobs available or it’s relative contribution to society. If you want to drive down the cost of engineering professors, make more engineers, don’t add a disincentive!
The second stupid part about this is that most courses in good universities are available to non-majors in the field.
— memcknight