Links for 12/21/10

C. Kirabo Jackson

Peer quality can account for about one tenth of school value-added on average, but over one-third among the top quartile of schools…

Eric A. Hanushek

A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.

Cameron Neylon via Paul Jump

Once you start looking at how the scholarly communication system works with any degree of outside perspective, it looks utterly insane."

The Economist

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…

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships…

In America only 57% of doctoral students will have a PhD ten years after their first date of enrolment… Research at one American university found that those who finish are no cleverer than those who do not. Poor supervision, bad job prospects or lack of money cause them to run out of steam…

Academics tend to regard asking whether a PhD is worthwhile as analogous to wondering whether there is too much art or culture in the world…