Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items tagged economist

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
sha towers

Doctoral degrees: The disposable academic | The Economist - 27 views

www.economist.com/17723223

phd academia university education doctoral degrees

shared by sha towers on 31 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • There is an oversupply of PhDs. Although a doctorate is designed as training for a job in academia, the number of PhD positions is unrelated to the number of job openings. Meanwhile, business leaders complain about shortages of high-level skills, suggesting PhDs are not teaching the right things. The fiercest critics compare research doctorates to Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
  • A graduate assistant at Yale might earn $20,000 a year for nine months of teaching. The average pay of full professors in America was $109,000 in 2009
  • America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • PhD students and contract staff known as “postdocs”, described by one student as “the ugly underbelly of academia”, do much of the research these days.
  • In some areas five years as a postdoc is now a prerequisite for landing a secure full-time job.
  • About one-third of Austria’s PhD graduates take jobs unrelated to their degrees. In Germany 13% of all PhD graduates end up in lowly occupations. In the Netherlands the proportion is 21%.
  • In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment. In the humanities, where most students pay for their own PhDs, the figure is 49%.
  • in 1966 only 23% of science and engineering PhDs in America were awarded to students born outside the country. By 2006 that proportion had increased to 48%. Foreign students tend to tolerate poorer working conditions, and the supply of cheap, brilliant, foreign labour also keeps wages down.
  • The earnings premium for a PhD is 26%. But the premium for a master’s degree, which can be accomplished in as little as one year, is almost as high, at 23%
  • PhDs in maths and computing, social sciences and languages earn no more than those with master’s degrees
  • the skills learned in the course of a PhD can be readily acquired through much shorter courses.
  • In one study of British PhD graduates, about a third admitted that they were doing their doctorate partly to go on being a student, or put off job hunting.
  • The more bright students stay at universities, the better it is for academics. Postgraduate students bring in grants and beef up their supervisors’ publication records.
  • Writing lab reports, giving academic presentations and conducting six-month literature reviews can be surprisingly unhelpful in a world where technical knowledge has to be assimilated quickly and presented simply to a wide audience.
  • Many of those who embark on a PhD are the smartest in their class and will have been the best at everything they have done. They will have amassed awards and prizes. As this year’s new crop of graduate students bounce into their research, few will be willing to accept that the system they are entering could be designed for the benefit of others, that even hard work and brilliance may well not be enough to succeed, and that they would be better off doing something else.
  • sha towers on 13 Apr 11
     
    article from the Economist "The Disposable Academic: Why doing a PhD is often a waste of time
trisha_poole

Economist Debates: Personal Computing - 28 views

www.economist.com/...216

phd economist personal computing tablets PCs smartphones debate cloud computing cloud tech

shared by trisha_poole on 06 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • trisha_poole on 06 Nov 11
     
    A debate on the future of personal computing (including desktops and laptops) with rise in the number of portable devices that can access online content through "the cloud".
Chai Reddy

Monitor: The net generation, unplugged | The Economist - 34 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

economist students digital_natives millennials activism technology

shared by Chai Reddy on 09 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Growing up with the internet, it is argued, has transformed their approach to education, work and politics
    • Chai Reddy
      Chai Reddy on 15 Mar 10
       
      But has the education system changed its approach? There are different jobs than there were 20 years ago which is a partial reflection of technology but not sure how are systems have changed or accomodated the changes
  • Anecdotes like this are used to back calls for education systems to be transformed in order to cater to these computer-savvy students, who differ fundamentally from earlier generations of students: professors should move their class discussions to Facebook, for example, where digital natives feel more comfortable
    • Chai Reddy
      Chai Reddy on 15 Mar 10
       
      Is this an example of 21st century literacy? I've heard this term used often but I'm still looking for a good definition of it.
  • Only a small fraction of students may count as true digital natives, in other words. The rest are no better or worse at using technology than the rest of the population.
    • Chai Reddy
      Chai Reddy on 15 Mar 10
       
      This must mean that 21st century literacy must be taught.
Don Doehla

Johnson: Language networks: When bigger isn't better | The Economist - 20 views

www.economist.com/...johnson-language-networks

economist language research resources

shared by Don Doehla on 23 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Don Doehla on 23 Jan 15
     
    HOW would you rank "important" languages? If asked to rattle them off, many people start with English, but after that are reluctant to go further. Important how, they ask. One approach would be to look at people and money: surely a language is important if it is spoken by lots of people, in countries with great wealth (and presumably, therefore, power).
Randolph Hollingsworth

Ideas Trump Resources When it Comes to City Growth - Richard Florida - The Atlantic Cities - 0 views

www.theatlanticcities.com/...4963

shared by Randolph Hollingsworth on 22 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • Randolph Hollingsworth on 22 Mar 13
     
    important for all us educators to remember: knowledge and extractive industries do not mix. "Across all U.S. metros, the share of workers in resource and extractive industries had no correlation whatsoever to four key measures of regional development: economic output per capita, average wages per capita, income, or median household income (the correlations range from -.08 to .09, none being statistically significant). Conversely, the share of workers employed in idea-based knowledge and creative industries was strongly associated with all four regional development measures (with correlations ranging from .53 to .74). In line with the resource curse hypothesis, the share of employment in resource and extractive industries was negatively associated with share of employment in knowledge industries and also with the share of adults with college degrees, a key measure of skill and human capital which economists uniformly find to be a key driver of short and long-run economic prosperity."
Jac Londe

World debt comparison: The global debt clock | The Economist - 64 views

www.economist.com/...global_debt_clock

debt economics world global economy clock Map finance

shared by Jac Londe on 18 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • Jac Londe on 18 Apr 13
     
    Sustainable or unsustainable ? Public Debts are crippling our lives.
onepulledthread

Testing education: Pisa envy | The Economist - 22 views

www.economist.com/...ween-countries-growing-drawing

testing education pisa

shared by onepulledthread on 28 Jan 13 - No Cached
mollyfanning liked it
  • onepulledthread on 28 Jan 13
     
    short article on the international rankings of students in reading and math pointing out the difficulty in drawing strong conclusions.
Dallas McPheeters

Learning and earning: Equipping people to stay ahead of technological change | The Econ... - 34 views

www.economist.com/...t-their-careers-practicalities

shared by Dallas McPheeters on 13 Jan 17 - No Cached
  • Today robotics and artificial intelligence call for another education revolution
  • working lives are so lengthy and so fast-changing that simply cramming more schooling in at the start is not enough. People must also be able to acquire new skills throughout their careers.
  • lifelong learning that exists today mainly benefits high achievers—and is therefore more likely to exacerbate inequality than diminish it.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • a burst at the start and top-ups through company training—is breaking down. One reason is the need for new, and constantly updated, skills.
  • The 19th and 20th centuries saw stunning advances in education. That should be the scale of the ambition today
  • It is easier to learn later in life if you enjoyed the classroom first time around: about 80% of the learners on Coursera already have degrees. Online learning requires some IT literacy, yet one in four adults in the OECD has no or limited experience of computers. Skills atrophy unless they are used, but many low-end jobs give workers little chance to practise them.
  • Lifelong learning starts at school. As a rule, education should not be narrowly vocational. The curriculum needs to teach children how to study and think. A focus on “metacognition” will make them better at picking up skills later in life.
    • Dallas McPheeters
      Dallas McPheeters on 15 Jan 17
       
      Lifelong learning begins at home. Otherwise, it's an anomaly to the student's mind and may not be adopted.
  • Pushing people into ever-higher levels of formal education at the start of their lives is not the way to cope.
  • WHEN education fails to keep pace with technology, the result is inequality.
    • Dallas McPheeters
      Dallas McPheeters on 15 Jan 17
       
      Inequality was there long before high-tech innovations. The only gap produced by tech is between those with access to networks and devices and those without. two thirds of earth still without access to internet. 
Peter Beens

Daniel Pink on Drive, Motivation, and Incentives | EconTalk | Library of Economics and ... - 44 views

www.econtalk.org/...daniel_pink_on.html

DanPink podcast interview motivation inspiration education

shared by Peter Beens on 31 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Peter Beens on 31 Aug 10
     
    Daniel Pink, author of Drive, talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about drive, motivation, compensation, and incentives. Pink discusses the implications of using monetary rewards as compensation in business and in education. Much of the conversation focuses on the research underlying the book, Drive, research from behavioral psychology that challenges traditional claims by economists on the power of monetary and other types of incentive. The last part of the conversation turns toward education and the role of incentives in motivating or demotivating students.
Nate Fish

Daily chart | The Economist - 65 views

www.economist.com/...dailychart

shared by Nate Fish on 20 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Nate Fish on 20 Oct 10
     
    A good site if you teach a class that deals with global issues. If you bookmarked the other link I posted for this site, please use this one instead.  This one will take you to whatever the daily chart is, but the other one will only take you to a specific date.  Sorry about the confusion.
Nate Fish

The Economist--Daily Chart - 43 views

www.economist.com/21012013

shared by Nate Fish on 19 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Nate Fish on 19 Oct 10
     
    A good site if you teach a class that deals with global issues.
arnie Grossblatt

The best books of 2008 | Pick of the pile | The Economist - 1 views

www.economist.com/...displaystory.cfm

books reading entertainment

shared by arnie Grossblatt on 10 Dec 08 - Cached
  • arnie Grossblatt on 10 Dec 08
     
    For those looking for some holiday (and beyond) reading.
D. S. Koelling

Online Courses Should Always Include Proctored Finals, Economist Warns - Wired Campus -... - 34 views

chronicle.com/...31287

education students courses online

shared by D. S. Koelling on 11 May 11 - No Cached
  • Online economics students do not absorb much material from homework and chapter tests during the semester—perhaps because they expect to be able to cheat their way through the final exam.
  • she has noticed that her online students perform much worse than their classroom-taught counterparts when they are required to take a proctored, closed-book exam at the end of the semester.
  • Ms. Wachenheim’s findings parallel those of a 2008 study in the Journal of Economic Education. That study found indirect evidence that students cheat on unproctored online tests, because their performance on proctored exams was much more consistent with predictions based on their class ranks and their overall grade-point averages.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Those include insisting on a proctored final exam and reminding students of that exam “early, often, and broadly, so students are ever-conscious that they will be responsible for the material in an unaided environment.”
  • Jason Finley on 12 May 11
     
    "In self-paced courses, many students appeared to cram most of the homework and chapter exams into the final week of the semester. Few of them bothered to do the ungraded practice problems offered by the online publisher." First, where is the teaching? It sounds more like a case of poorly designed instruction...or a complete lack of instruction. Of course these students are not learning...they are not being taught. Also, if they are in classes which are actively taught by a teacher, then where are the formative assessments by the instructors? That teacher should know long before the final exam if the students know the material or not. A good teacher and a well developed online course would have a number of ways to determine this which do not allow for "cut and paste" or cheating. Finally, does this department test a student's memorization of material or the mastery of the concepts and and understanding of how to apply those concepts? Perhaps, there is also a need to reevaluate the assessments. Good teaching is good teaching. If a student is not learning the material, who is really to blame?
Tim Cooper

No assembler required | The Economist - 25 views

www.economist.com/...y-school-no-assembler-required

tools programming primary k-5 compsci

shared by Tim Cooper on 05 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • Tim Cooper on 05 Aug 15
     
    nice overview of programming and robot tools for younger (primary kids). Nice pitch for Scratch and background of edtech ala Papert.
Martin Burrett

Investing in public education earns high marks for greater upward mobility - 4 views

ukedchat.com/...investing-public-education

shared by Martin Burrett on 01 Apr 18 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 01 Apr 18
     
    "Investing in education may help boost economic opportunities for the next generation, according to a team of economists. In a USA study, researchers suggest that investing in public education can lead to more upward economic mobility and lower teen pregnancy rates, as well as provide a way to ease income inequality."
Martin Burrett

Oldest in class do better, even into university, study finds - 21 views

ukedchat.com/...oldest-kids-class

research age

shared by Martin Burrett on 11 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Martin Burrett on 11 Sep 17
     
    "It's been known for years that the oldest children in class perform better in school than their youngest classmates. But according to a new study co-authored by University of Toronto Scarborough economist Elizabeth Dhuey, that gap can persist, with older children more likely to attend post-secondary school and graduate from an elite university."
Nigel Coutts

What skills might our students most need beyond school? - The Learner's Way - 10 views

thelearnersway.net/...udents-most-need-beyond-school

education 21st century teaching curriculum

shared by Nigel Coutts on 16 Feb 20 - No Cached
  • Nigel Coutts on 16 Feb 20
     
    It is tempting to make predictions of the skills that our students will need beyond their time at school. Such wondering can be a useful guide as we contemplate what we shall focus on with our curriculum. Unsurprisingly, there is no shortage of predictions for future skillsets published by educators, economists and analysts. What might we learn from such lists, and how should education systems respond?
Javier E

Obama's War on Inequality - The New York Times - 16 views

www.nytimes.com/...obamas-war-on-inequality.html

inequality Democratic party gop great depression New Deal obama obamacare

shared by Javier E on 20 May 16 - No Cached
  • what can policy do to limit inequality? The answer is, it can operate on two fronts. It can engage in redistribution, taxing high incomes and aiding families with lower incomes. It can also engage in what is sometimes called “predistribution,” strengthening the bargaining power of lower-paid workers and limiting the opportunities for a handful of people to make giant sums.
  • We can see this in our own history. The middle-class society that baby boomers like me grew up in didn’t happen by accident; it was created by the New Deal, which engineered what economists call the “Great Compression,” a sharp reduction in income gaps.
  • Obamacare provides aid and subsidies mainly to lower-income working Americans, and it pays for that aid partly with higher taxes at the top. That makes it an important redistributionist policy — the biggest such policy since the 1960s.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • between those extra Obamacare taxes and the expiration of the high-end Bush tax cuts made possible by Mr. Obama’s re-election, the average federal tax rate on the top 1 percent has risen quite a lot. In fact, it’s roughly back to what it was in 1979, pre-Ronald Reagan, something nobody seems to know.
  • What about predistribution? Well, why is Mr. Trump, like everyone in the G.O.P., so eager to repeal financial reform? Because despite what you may have heard about its ineffectuality, Dodd-Frank actually has put a substantial crimp in the ability of Wall Street to make money hand over fist.
  • these medium-size steps put the lie to the pessimism and fatalism one hears all too often on this subject. No, America isn’t an oligarchy in which both parties reliably serve the interests of the economic elite.
  • Money talks on both sides of the aisle, but the influence of big donors hasn’t prevented the current president from doing a substantial amount to narrow income gaps — and he would have done much more if he’d faced less opposition in Congress.
1 - 20 of 24 Next ›
Showing 20▼ items per page