"...Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn..."

sakky · June 12, 2011, 1:29am

Does it now? Peer review being arguably the #1 most controversial topic in academia today. I doubt that you can interact with any current academics today for more than a short while before you inevitably hear somebody decrying the shortcomings of peer review. If the system of peer review was truly working as well as you claim, why is it viewed with such suspicion by the gamut of academics?

I think the best that can be said of peer review is that, while deeply flawed, it’s the only workable game in town. But that’s hardly to say that the system ‘works quite well’ by any reasonable metric.

Uh, uninformed (at least, by academic standards) currently decide right now that plenty of topics of study are unworthy of research funding because they don’t see value in them. Barack Obama was never a tenured academic. Yet he’s effectively made decisions that certain types of research funding - notably in renewable energies - are far more worthy than, say, funding literary analysis on Victorian poetry. He certainly did not take allocate billions of taxpayer research dollars to a large-scale “peer review” committee who might then have decided to grant all of it to university Art History departments. George W. Bush - again, certainly no academic - did the same in allocating large sums of funding to military research. Heck, every President in history since the development of the modern research university has directed that certain funding be directed to certain endeavors. Even the Morrill Land Grant Act of the 1860’s specifically stated that certain areas of inquiry - notably engineering and agricultural sciences - were to be provided strong preference in funding state universities through Federal grants.

You say that uninformed people should not be involved in determining where research funding should be allocated. Oh really? Isn’t that what happens right now through the political process? Right now, uninformed voters determine through the conduit of (also uninformed) elected politicians where research funding should be granted. If we truly disagree with where Barack Obama chooses to allocate Federal research funding, then we are free to vote against him in 2012, despite the fact that us voters are “uninformed”.

The only logical outcome of the notion that “uninformed” people should not be involved in the determination of who receives research funding is to implement an overarching peer-review committee that has a mandated and irrevocable claim on a certain percentage of taxpayer receipts every year to allocate to whatever research they please. If that committee decides to allocate their entire budget to research to Art History rather than green energy, then there would be absolutely nothing that the voters or our elected politicians could do about it, as they are “uninformed” and therefore unworthy of deciding where that funding should flow. Surely we can all agree - if nothing else- that such a system would be deeply undemocratic, and frankly, unAmerican. Government research funding is provided by the taxpayers, who are surely loathe to abdicate their power to decide where it should be allocated, even if they are making ‘uninformed’ decisions.

The upshot therefore is that ‘uninformed’ people make decisions that deny research funding to certain areas of inquiry all the time. For example, the Superconducting Super Collider which was supposed to have been built in Texas was defunded by Congress and shut down, resulting the loss of jobs of scores of scientists and represented a significant blow to the technology economy in Dallas. However unwise you might think that choice was in the development of the nation’s scientific infrastructure, I don’t think anybody disputes that Congress (and by extension, the voters) had the legal power to do that, however “uninformed” they might be. I am certainly not aware of any ‘peer review committee’ of academics that could have refunded the Super Collider by diktat. Similarly, if a groundswell of voters were to demand to defund, say, the National Endowment for the Humanities, who’s to say that they should be denied the power to do so? It’s the taxpayers’ money.

Peer review committees can and do have the power to take a given allotment of funding and then decide which researchers, within the strictures of that allotment, will then be funded. But they do not have the power to decide how much or even if that allotment of funding will be provided in the first place. That decision is almost always made by “uninformed” people - either the taxpayers, a charitable foundation, rich university donors, or other such parties from which the money is sourced.

Now to be clear, obviously I have no issue with some rich donor deciding to fund whatever research he wants. However, the notion that ‘uninformed’ people have no sway in deciding what types of research are funded and which are not is frankly a outrageous proposal. Such decisions by uninformed people are being currently being made all the time.

sakky · June 12, 2011, 1:39am

Even if they completed well short of the degree, they still presumably completed much of it. If somebody completed 75% of the degree, why can’t they approach employers now and claim that they completed most of the degree and should therefore be “mostly” eligible for their jobs? Yet like it or not, that strategy usually does not fly.

And similarly, one would think that employers would have caught on to the fact that plenty of college students are doing next to nothing, but rather are choosing creampuff majors where they can enjoy little more than a 4-year social experience. It’s not as if the Playboy list of top Party Colleges are secret, or that many colleges have raucous party environments and hordes of unmotivated and academically uninclined students. This is all public information that employers can easily deduce.

Let’s face it - employers either are not very smart, or (more likely) they simply don’t care. But since they don’t care anyway, I’m not sure they would care about the fact that they could obtain a “97%” graduate for a lower cost.

For example, let’s face it, somebody who completed 3 years of engineering with a 1.9 GPA (and therefore flunked out) nevertheless almost certainly worked harder and is more intellectually capable than somebody who graduated with a 2.1 GPA in Leisure Studies. But the latter person has a degree. He is eligible to compete for many entry-level degree-requiring jobs that the former person will be denied. Yet employers don’t seem to care about that. All they care about is that the guy has a degree.

Now to be clear, I am not saying that I consider my proposal of charging all tuition at the very moment of graduation to be a perfect proposal. I agree that introducing such a strong discontinuity at one particular point probably will introduce some distortions in the market. I am therefore open to a proposal along the lines of spurster to smooth the payout schedule.

But the bottom line remains that, right now, other than the very best ones (who have to worry about selectivity and graduation ratings), most colleges have little incentive to be careful about who they admit. Those who are admitted who are poorly prepared, poorly motivated, and therefore quit or flunk out have to pay tuition anyway, so the schools don’t really care. They have no incentive to care.

If you don’t like my proposal, fair enough, then put up one of your own. If you don’t do that, then you’re left defending the status quo, which seems to be a difficult battle to win.

ucbalumnus · June 12, 2011, 2:07am

A debating tactic that makes no sense. Just because there is a problem with the status quo does not mean that your proposal is the only one that could exist, or that someone who has not yet thought of a solution to the problem must either agree with your solution or support the status quo. Many problems do not have simple solutions in the real world (e.g. getting politicians to balance the government budget is theoretically simple, but rarely happens).

sakky · June 12, 2011, 2:11am

Actually, it’s a debating tactic that makes perfect sense. I have never once claimed that my proposal was the only one that could exist, nor have I ever claimed that everybody should always agree with my solutions.

On the other hand, I think it entirely fair to request that somebody who doesn’t like certain proposed reforms to provide a counterproposal. Either that, or try to defend the status quo.

Otherwise, you’re frankly not contributing anything to the discussion. It’s easy to tear down a house - far harder to build one in its place. If you don’t have anything to contribute, then you should probably admit that to be so.

chaosakita · June 12, 2011, 3:39am

Obviously, if someone is pointing out problems in your proposal but doesn’t feel like creating their own to be posted on a forum mostly full of high schoolers, obviously that person is just being totally unproductive. Give me a break. Such discussions are merely a source of entertainment and really lead to nothing productive being produced.

sakky · June 12, 2011, 3:52am

My fundamental issue with neoclassical economics - and hence with ‘market’-based solutions - is that economics readily discusses long-run market equilibrium points but has nary a word to say about how much time it would take to arrive at that equilibrium. Maybe it is true that the market in the long run will correct itself, but during the interim period - which could run for decades - people will continue to have to needlessly expend resources on unnecessary college degrees solely to pay the costly labor-market signal to remain competitive for decent employment. As Keynes famously declared: “In the long run, we’re all dead.”

As long as employers never have to pay a dime towards college tuitions of the people they employ, they will continue to demand that job applicants hold degrees. It’s not their money, so why not? They have therefore managed to ingeniously and deviously offloaded the costs of employment screening to the students.

Furthermore, neoclassical economists almost always neglect the fundamentally political nature of many societal outcomes. Rather than the market ultimately correcting itself if tuition outpaces inflation thereby reducing the number of college students, I suspect that the more likely outcome is that students (and especially their parents) will then vote in politicians who will provide larger educational subsidies. Hence, the cost of education will be socialized to the taxpayers at large. One should never underestimate the ability of a small but politically favored minority to extract benefits from the government. {Medicare, as an example, is probably fundamentally untameable and indeed continues to expand (i.e. Medicare Part D), because senior citizens are a politically favored class that has brilliantly leveraged their clout to extract government benefits.}

But for those who continue to object to my notion of schools not charging tuition to students who don’t graduate, then how about another proposal. The government will provide university funding - whether that be research funding, Pell grants, or, yes, even university tax exemptions, on a sliding scale according to the percentage of students they graduate - the highest graduation rate would receive maximum funding. To reduce the impact of year-to-year fluctuations, we could calculate the funding based on a X-year graduation rate moving average.

Now, granted, I am well aware of the counterargument that colleges might then simply reduce their standards. But as I said before: that’s already happening anyway. Right now, many (probably most) schools offer creampuff majors where students can pocket an easy degree for knowing and learning little and treat their college experience as a 4-year vacation. Yet nobody seems interested in fixing that problem.

sakky · June 12, 2011, 3:55am

You said it.

Most such discussions are indeed a source of entertainment. But there are a few that might actually lead to genuine reform. After all, the first step towards any reform is to have people talk about it. Maybe I can spark an idea in somebody’s mind. Maybe somebody with some clout will read this thread. Who knows?

But hey, if you truly believe that nothing productive is ever generated by these boards, then why do you even participate at all? Give me a break. You’re free to leave at any time. Nobody is holding a gun to your head.

"...Professors pretend to teach, students pretend to learn..."

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