Links for 12/6/10

Martin West and Ludger Woessmann

Although there is considerable international variation in the share of students attending private schools, existing evidence on the effects of private competition on student achievement across countries is limited…

Our recent work (West and Woessmann 2010) addresses this challenge by taking advantage of the historical fact that the size of the private education sector varies from one country to another for reasons that have little to do with national income, commitment to education, or contemporary school quality. In particular, the extent of private schooling stems largely from the Catholic Church’s decision in the 19th century to build an alternative system of education wherever they were unable to control schools operated by the state…

10-percentage-point increase in the percentage of Catholics in 1900 is associated with a 4.7-percentage-point increase in the share of students enrolled in privately operated schools in 2003…

Our results indicate that the share of schools that are privately operated has an economically and statistically significant positive effect on student achievement in mathematics, science, and reading…

Importantly, much of the positive effect of private school shares accrues to students in public schools, suggesting that the overall effect is not simply due to privately operated schools being more effective, but rather it reflects benefits of competition…

Finally, we also find that private competition reduces educational expenditure per student in the system, so that better educational outcomes are obtained at lower cost…

Dan Berrett

Bridget Terry Long … “Giving students and their families better information would enable them to avoid unworthy college investments that would leave them with substantial debt and little in the form of skills,” Long writes in her paper, "Grading Higher Education: Giving Consumers the Information They Need."...

[Terry W. Hartle ] “The history of these efforts is that what starts off as a desire for a simple dashboard ends up looking like something from the Apollo manned moon mission,”…

Gary A. Olson

At a council meeting a few months ago, we were discussing a new Ph.D. program proposed by one of the state's universities, when a state board member said, with obvious frustration, "You provosts keep asking us to approve new programs, but where are the program closures? How can we as a state afford unchecked expansion of academic programs without a commensurate reduction of unproductive programs from our books?"

It was a valid point. That savvy board member understood that curricular glut—as it is called in academic circles nationwide—is threatening to make our institutions inefficient and sluggish. We have become so overcommitted in course requirements and programs that it is threatening our ability to provide adequate support of our healthy academic programs…

Edububble

The Hollywood visionaries [producers of Iron Man 3] seem to like the idea of using the EMPAC as the impossibly futuristic office space for said impossibly rich man. In other words, they think the place looks impossibly expensive and overdone. That’s a good sign that Rensselaer has spent too much money on the place…