voluntaryXchange

Georgia Tech Faculty Revolt

Faculty at Georgia Tech are up in arms about the state of Georgia’s plans for how universities will run in the fall when they re-open.

GT is going to try to do face-to-face, with professors required to wear masks, but students not required to wear masks.

A supermajority of faculty signed the statement.

Do keep in mind that the dominoes of university closings in the spring started with a single one. That was the University of Washington, in a state with an early outbreak that never got out of hand.

Currently Georgia Tech has students living in fraternity housing over the summer, and has had about a dozen test positive.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Cross-posted from SUU Macroblog, which is required reading for my macroeconomics classes.

Masks In America

This is the top image on foxnews.com this morning:

Six people, presumably in line for COVID-19 testing, and 2 of the 6 can’t wear the mask properly.

And yeah … I’ll admit partial coverage is better than no coverage.

P.S. Part of me also wants to be ticked about 5 of 6 of them being on their phones … when I’m on mine when in line, I’m typically reading a book. I don’t think all five of them are reading books.

FWIW: About 3 years ago I started taking off points on exams in principles classes for students who were unable to follow directions: a point for each infraction. It’s a pretty bizarre experiment. Many students lose points here and there, some consistently lose several points each time, and whole classes will do worse on this if not reminded often. Directions are, of course, not hidden, and nowhere but the top front of the exam. It has really just amounted to a new way to put distance between the A students and the not-A students.

Still Here

I have not gone missing. Due to COVID-19, I have been posting like crazy at SUU MacroBlog (over 100 posts there since late January).

SUU MacroBlog is where I cover current events for my advanced macroeconomics class.

I was on top of the pandemic coverage for them from late January; it was obvious to me that it might turn out to be a major macroeconomic event.

That’s an understatement.

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On a related note, f**k the EU.

For year, I have written most of my blog posts in Open Live Writer, and before that Windows Live Writer.

But now, due to EU regulations, Blogger no longer accepts posts containing (potentially copyrighted) images from third party software.

SUU MacroBlog is hosted by Blogger, and has been since 2009.

For my workflows, this means that I now have to write posts in 2 different softwares. That’s not much of a problem, but it makes cross-posting from one blog to the other very difficult.

So, in the past, any of the work over there that I wanted to post here to look current was just a click away. Not anymore.

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So, if you’re interested, head over to SUU MacroBlog. There’s quite a bit there about interpreting the statistics associated with COVID-19.

Yeah Online!

My university is trying to go big online. This is starting out with 2 graduate programs and a long-term alliance with a private firm. Mixed feelings everywhere about this (we’ve had 3 people strike out with MBA managerial economics, so I think that qualifies as a new inning or something).

Here’s a piece from the Chronicle entitled “Purdue Global Has Had a Rocky Start. Is It Growing Pains or a Sign of Trouble?” about Purdue’s experience after buying Kaplan.

Two and a half years later, the audacious deal is showing signs of trouble. Daniels, who had predicted that the deal would produce a “very substantial revenue stream,” has said that Purdue University Global, as the former Kaplan online programs are now known, is not “achieving the growth we thought we might.” The university’s annual financial report, released this month, shows that Purdue Global suffered a $43-million loss last year …

Hat tip to the vXassociatechair.

Measuring a Deep State

Here’s a proposal: one might measure the size and strength of a deep state by the inability to move parts of it out of a desirable central location.

For example, if our elected officials can’t readily move bureaucratic offices and departments out of the D.C. metropolitan area, then the deep state is quite strong. This point is made by askblog.

Or, since I work at a university, if you can’t move administrative offices out of administrative suites and buildings,  then the deep state within that school is quite strong.

Be Coachable

Bob Bowman: “The most important thing is, he’s very coachable.”

That’s a lesson most people could stand to learn. I know I could (although I’ve gotten better at this, with effort).

This video came from the vXyoungman, who was a competitive swimmer in high school.†

He brought this up to me in trying to explain what he got out of athletics (he’s a music major who wants to be concert pianist). He’s fairly assertive that a big problem in music is that a lot of players aren’t very coachable, and a lot of music “coaches” aren’t very constructive.

FWIW: He loves VV, the professor he’s worked with for 2 years.

† The video comes from an ABC show I’ve never heard of from 2009-10, Shaq vs.

Go SUU, Sort Of???

My school, Southern Utah University, was just ranked the 6th most conservative public college in the country.

I wouldn’t disagree. We had a sexuality class taught by biologists discontinued a few years ago due to complaints. And our last president and provost had us designated as Utah’s liberal arts university … and had to backtrack because locals didn’t understand the usage of the word liberal in that context.

Having said that, I wonder what other places are like: we had progressive student protesters saying bigoted things about economists last month.

It’s Divorce, Not Lower Income, That Hurts Teenagers

Kids are hurt by the divorce, not by the change in parental income.

New research separates the effects of divorce on teenagers into non-monetary and monetary components (e.g., different income due to divorce).

At least on the dimension of going to college, divorce has a big negative effect. Change in income (usually a loss) due to divorce seems to have little effect. 

Via Marginal Revolution.

When the Editors Don’t Read

For many years, people speculated about what journalism would look like when the kids who weren’t taught to write well grew up.

I’ve noticed a few times over the last 5 years that we seem to have reached that point. Consider:

How did an editor miss a word that is wrong outright, and a word deletion that’s merely kludgy in “… on score three points in first quarter …”?

This is from an unattributed Associated Press piece entitled "Fred Cox, former Vikings kicker, dies at age 80" on Foxnews.com.

FWIW: I remember watching Fred Cox play when I was little, and once upon a time owned his Topps card:

It’s worth $10 now. Thanks for throwing that out around 1977 mom. I was an investor with a plan. Promise.

FOH for FMOOWMP (Office Hours)

Students have big trouble with this … especially early in their college careers.

Hat tip to these two pieces from NPR on how to overcome your fear of office hours, and how office hours are particularly foreign to students from rural areas.

Cross-posted from SUU Macroblog, which is required reading for my macroeconomics classes.