Links 4/24/09

by Andrew Gillen

1) Over at the Quick and the Ed, Chad Aldeman offers the best commentary I’ve seen yet on making the Pell an entitlement and how to index it if so.

Congress doesn't like it because it takes away their annual authorizing power… Tax hawks don't like it because it makes another program an entitlement, even if it's one we approve every single year anyway.

and

Had the Pell been indexed to inflation, it would indeed be higher than it is today. But it would not have been nearly enough to cover college tuition costs, because those have outpaced inflation by enormous amounts… that's not the fault of the Pell, or federal legislators. It's the fault of colleges and universities that have been unable and unwilling to control costs.

2) Robots Teaching! (sort of)

3) An interesting statement from Daniel Kahneman:

I conclude from the fact that only five people predicted the current crisis that it was impossible to predict it.

It’s not a typo, and he was a co-winner of the 2002 Nobel in economics, so you probably need to read the piece to realize that it actually makes a lot of sense in context. HT: Thoma

4) The Project on Student Debt reports the latest numbers on private student loans.

The percentage of undergraduates borrowing private loans increased dramatically, from
5% in 2003-04 to 14% in 2007-08.