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There Is No Higher Ed Bubble. Yet.

by MabelBugnion Posted on December 22, 2014

Mother Jones

Is there a higher-education bubble? Will technology produce cheaper, better alternatives in the near future? Are kids and parents finally figuring out that if Bill Gates can drop out of Harvard and become the richest man in the world, maybe an Ivy League degree isn’t actually worth 50 grand a year? Dan Drezner thinks the whole idea is ridiculous, and he’s willing to put his money where his mouth is:

If, in fact, there really is a higher ed bubble, it should pop before 2020. And if it does pop, then tuition prices for college should plummet as demand slackens. After all, that’s how a bubble works — when it deflates, the price of the asset should plummet in value, like housing in 2008. So who wants to bet me that an average of the 2020 tuition rates at Stanford University, Williams College, Texas A&M and the University of Massachusetts-Lowell will be lower than today?

I’m open to changing the particular schools, but those four are a nice distribution of private and public schools, elite and not-quite-as-elite colleges, with some geographic spread. Surely, true believers in a higher ed bubble would expect tuition rates at those schools to fall.

I really don’t think that will be the case. So anyone who believes in a higher ed bubble should be happy to take the other side of that bet.

Not me. I’d be willing to bet that eventually artificial intelligence will basically wipe out the demand for higher education completely. But “eventually” means something like 30 years minimum, probably more like 40 or 50. Maybe even more if AI continues to be as intractable as some people think it will be.

In the meantime, Drezner is right: the vast, vast majority of college students don’t want to strike out on their own and try to become millionaire entrepreneurs. They just want ordinary jobs. And that’s a good thing, since if everyone wanted to run their own companies, entrepreneurs wouldn’t be able to find anyone to do all the non-CEO scutwork for their brilliant new social media startups.

So if something like 98 percent of college grads are aiming for traditional jobs in which they work for somebody else, guess what? All those somebody elses—which probably includes most of the people who think there’s a higher-ed bubble—are going to want to hire college grads. They sure don’t want to hire a bunch of losers who were too dim to drop out and become millionaires and couldn’t even manage the gumption to accrue 120 units at State U, do they?

Look: the rising cost of higher education has multiple causes, but it’s mostly driven by two simple things. At public schools, it’s driven by declining state funding, which transfers an increasing share of the cost of higher ed onto students. Unfortunately, I see no reason to think this trend won’t continue. At private schools, it’s driven by the perception of how much a private degree is worth—and right now, all the evidence suggests that even with fairly astronomical tuitions at elite and semi-elite universities, the lifetime value of a degree is still worth more than students pay for it. Universities understand this, and since these days they mostly think of themselves not as public trusts, but as businesses who simply charge whatever the traffic will bear, they know they still have plenty of headroom to increase tuition. So this trend is likely to continue as well.

If I had to guess, I’d say that there’s a class of 2nd or 3rd tier liberal arts colleges that might be in trouble. They have high tuitions, but the value of their degree isn’t really superior to that of a state university. They might be in trouble, and if Drezner added one of these places to his list it might make his bet more interesting.

But he’d still win. He might lose by 2040, but he’s safe as long as he sticks to 2020.

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There Is No Higher Ed Bubble. Yet.

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Cellphone Companies Are Working to Track Your Every Move

by MilfordMaddox Posted on November 4, 2014

Mother Jones

Your cellphone company knows what you did today—whether you want them to or not:

Verizon and AT&T have been quietly tracking the Internet activity of more than 100 million cellular customers with what critics have dubbed “supercookies”…. Consumers cannot erase these supercookies or evade them by using browser settings, such as the “private” or “incognito” modes that are popular among users wary of corporate or government surveillance.

….Privacy advocates say that without legal action, in court or by a regulatory agency such as the FCC or FTC, the shift toward supercookies will be impossible to stop. Only encryption can keep a supercookie from tracking a user. Other new tracking technologies are probably coming soon, advocates say.

“There’s a stampede by the cable companies and wireless carriers to expand data collection,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a Washington-based advocacy group. “They all want to outdo Google.”

Is there any hope for reining in this stuff? I’m pessimistic. The vast majority of users just don’t seem to care, and even if they do, they can usually be bought off with something as trivial as an iTunes download or a $10 Groupon discount. On the flip side, the value of this data to marketers is enormous, which means it can be stopped only by some equally enormous opposing force. But what? Government regulation is the only counterweight of similar power, and there won’t be any government action as long as the public remains indifferent about having their every movement tracked.

So this gets back to basics: How do you get the public to care? Business as usual won’t do it. It’s going to take something big and dramatic that finally crosses a line and starts to make people feel nervous. That hasn’t happened yet, but it might in the future. Stay tuned.

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Cellphone Companies Are Working to Track Your Every Move

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Conspiracy Theories and The Narrative: A Case Study in Iowa

by DeniceHagen Posted on November 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Long-suffering centrist Norm Ornstein wants to know why the national media has ignored the outlandish tea-partyish views of Joni Ernst, the Republican Senate candidate from Iowa. He thinks it’s because reporters have already chosen a narrative for this year’s campaign, and the 2014 version of The Narrative™ says that the GOP establishment finally vanquished the tea party this year after suffering through humiliating losses in 2012 by loons like Sharron Angle and Todd Akin:

The other day, The Washington Post carried a front-page profile of Joni Ernst by feature reporter Monica Hesse. The piece was particularly striking—a long, warm, almost reverential portrait of a woman candidate charming Iowans by doing it “the Iowa way”—no doubt, an accurate portrayal by a veteran journalist. Hesse did suggest, in passing, that Ernst has taken some controversial positions in the past, such as supporting “personhood,” but emphasized that she has walked them back. Not mentioned in the piece was Ernst’s flirtation with one of the craziest conspiracy theories, or her comments on dependency—or her suggestion that she would use the gun she packs if the government ever infringed on her rights.

….Of course, this does not mean that the press has a Republican bias, any more than it had an inherent Democratic bias in 2012 when Akin, Angle, and Mourdock led the coverage. What it suggests is how deeply the eagerness to pick a narrative and stick with it, and to resist stories that contradict the narrative, is embedded in the culture of campaign journalism. The alternative theory, that the Republican establishment won by surrendering its ground to its more ideologically extreme faction, picking candidates who are folksy and have great resumes but whose issue stances are much the same as their radical Tea Party rivals, goes mostly ignored.

There are several things going on here, all of them related:

As Ornstein says, once a campaign narrative gets locked in stone, it guides all subsequent coverage, regardless of whether it really fits all the facts.
For some reason, conservatives get a pass for holding wacky views unless they do it in a particularly boorish way (see Akin, Todd). When they chatter about, say, the Agenda 21 plot to take over our neighborhoods, it’s taken as little more than a routine show of tribal affiliation, not a genuine belief in nutball conspiracy theories.
More generally, campaign reporters simply don’t care about policy. It’s boring, and anyway, commenting on it tacitly suggests that they’re taking sides. So they write about it as little as they can.
The flip side of this is that campaign reporters are smitten with campaign strategy. Far from being disgusted by candidates who successfully hide their real views, they consider it a sign of savvy. Only bright-eyed idiots tell voters the truth about themselves.

And so we end up with puff pieces about Ernst’s folksiness and repeated coverage of Bruce Braley’s chicken battles. Agenda, 21, personhood, privatizing Social Security, and other far-right hot buttons get buried by the simple expedient of Ernst refusing to talk to reporters about them and then being rewarded for it by reporters who admire her “control” of the press.

Obviously Ernst isn’t my cup of tea, but if the citizens of Iowa want to send a right-wing loon to the Senate—well, it’s their state. As long as they do it with their eyes open, they should go right ahead. But if they send a far-right loon to the Senate because they mistakenly think she’s actually a cheerful, pragmatic centrist, that’s not so OK. And if the press is helping her put over this charade, the press ought to take a good, long look in the mirror. They don’t need to take sides, but they do need to tell the truth.

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Conspiracy Theories and The Narrative: A Case Study in Iowa

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In the fight for bike-safe streets, we’ll need everyone to join the ride

by HildegaWicks Posted on November 1, 2014

In the fight for bike-safe streets, we’ll need everyone to join the ride

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1 Nov 2014 8:05 AM

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At the mention of “bicycling advocates,” you probably picture dread-headed hippies at a Critical Mass ride, or yuppie professionals whining about their commutes. But it’s just not true. Not only do people of all backgrounds totally bike, but there are also tons of folks out there making the movement toward bike-friendly cities a lot more diverse.

To wit: A new, comprehensive “bike equity” report put out by the League of American Bicyclists profiles dozens of groups from El Paso to Milwaukee to New York that are bringing more bikes to people, more people to bike policy conversations, and more conversations about race, class, and equity to the conversation about bikes.

In Santa Barbara, Calif., for instance, Bici Centro brings affordable bike repair to the largest group of cyclists in the city: low-income Latino commuters. New York City’s Local Spokes gathers all kinds of people together from the Lower East Side and Chinatown to brainstorm ideas for bike programing and street design. Cycles for Change in St. Paul, Minn., has a Bike Library that lends bikes to low-income communities, and a program that helps first-time adult riders — often refugees and immigrants — “become the most amazing bike advocates.” (It’s also one of many bike coalitions across the country with an “earn-a-bike” program, which asks folks to volunteer a few hours at a repair shop before taking a bike home).

The report highlights all this and way, way more, and weaves in some powerful interviews with folks behind bike equity. Among them: Seattle’s Ed Ewing and Milwaukee Bicycle Works co-founder Keith Holt, who points out that shifting some of this stuff is going to take more than building bike lanes:

There are some folks who just say, “Black people don’t ride bikes.” I often ask, “How do you know this?” If that’s the premise, then that becomes the narrative everywhere. …

The general belief out there is, “If we just put more bike lanes in communities of color or make sure more low-income folks have a voice at the table that’s the big key for this.” Honestly, I think that’s part of the equation. … But I know that realistic access to affordable bike ownership and repair will make a huge impact, too. …

Bottom line: if there is no bike shop in a neighborhood, it’s much more of a challenge for someone to start and continue biking.”

Because “bike equity,” as wonky as that sounds, is about making sure cycle-friendly cities are actually friendly to all cyclists — and that bike advocacy includes all voices.

If not, well, bikes will never achieve world domination. And that’d be a damn shame.

Source:
New Report: Bike Equity Today

, League of American Bicyclists.

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In the fight for bike-safe streets, we’ll need everyone to join the ride

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Left and Right Agree: Cat-Calling Is Menacing and Disgusting

by Angie41Mucm Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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A few days ago, anti-street-harassment organization Hollaback posted a YouTube video of a woman walking through Manhattan for ten hours and being subjected to repeated and demeaning cat-calls. So what did conservatives think of this? Here’s Christine Sisto at National Review:

Most of the criticisms of this video are basically, “Since when is saying ‘good morning’ harassment?”…. The “harassment” comes from the intent. A woman doesn’t believe that a man genuinely wants to know how how her day is going when he shouts it at her as she walks by him on the street….Anyone with a modicum of common sense who watches the video can see that these men weren’t interested in wishing a random person a pleasant day.

….Whatever the cause of cat-calling may be, it should stop….A societal change is needed, one that can start with a guy not clapping his buddy on the back for telling some girl how much he enjoys her assets. Maybe, someday, we ladies can walk to work in peace.

Here’s Jay Nordlinger:

Christine Sisto has written about “cat-calling.” I’m so glad she has tackled this subject — it’s important. I have witnessed cat-calling my entire life, as we all do. In the main, I have not found it innocent, sweet, and breezy, as in a Warner Bros. cartoon. (“Hey, toots! Nice gams!”) I have found it menacing, disgusting, and semi-assaultive.

And here’s Jonah Goldberg:

I’d note that this practice pre-dates the rise of rap music by decades if not centuries or millennia. The issue isn’t race, it’s manners. Good manners are taught for the most part by good parents, good schools and good peers. I agree with Christine that Hollaback is spitting into the wind here. I also agree that catcalling should stop and that the only thing that can stop it is a societal change. But such a change would require a lot more than a few videos, no matter how viral. And it would also require the progressive Left to take on challenges much stiffer than bullying already well-mannered people to police their micro-aggressive grammar on elite college campuses or in obscure chatrooms. And that’s why I don’t think it will stop anytime soon.

Goldberg, unfortunately, simply can’t pass up the opportunity to somehow shift the blame for continued cat-calling onto the PC left. That’s shopworn and witless. But at least he’s against it. On the whole, then, good for National Review for not pretending that cat-calling is yet another innocent bit of fun that humorless liberals are trying to deny the rest of us. It’s disgusting and it should stop. At least we all agree about that.

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Left and Right Agree: Cat-Calling Is Menacing and Disgusting

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Democrats Like It When Forecasts Show Democrats Winning

by RobertDeGillern Posted on October 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Justin Wolfers shows us an intriguing example of confirmation bias today. It turns out that Leo, the New York Times election forecasting model, bases its forecasts on running hundreds of simulations and then taking an average. But readers who want to play around can go ahead and toss the dice themselves, generating their own random simulations. So what do readers do?

This is where confirmation bias comes in. If you’re convinced that the Republicans are going to win but your first two spins suggest a Democratic victory, you may feel deflated; perhaps you’ll spin again, in the hopes that you’ll finally get to see what a Republican victory looks like….85 percent of the time that your first two spins show a Democratic victory, you’ll keep spinning, perhaps hoping to see a Republican victory.

The same logic says that those who see the Democrats as likely to win are more likely to spin again after seeing the Republicans win in their first two spins, and once again, 85 percent of you do so.

Presumably readers are smart enough to know that these really are just random rolls of the dice that don’t mean anything. Only the average of hundreds of simulations are meaningful. And yet, many of us do it anyway. Why?

Properly speaking, I’m not sure this is actually confirmation bias. I suspect that partisans just want to avoid a feeling of hopelessness. Sure, the official results will tell them that, say, Democrats have a 34 percent chance of holding the Senate, and that should be enough. But it’s not. Democratic partisans want to see the concrete possibility of a Democratic win. Rather than confirmation bias, this shows a human preference for examples vs. statistical forecasts.

Now, I’d expect that Democrats would do this more than Republicans. After all, if Leo says Republicans have a 66 percent chance of winning, that should make Republicans pretty happy. Why bother running even a single simulation that might spoil the good news? Unfortunately, Leo’s data doesn’t tell us if this happens, because it doesn’t know who’s a Democrat and who’s a Republican. But I’ll bet I’m right.

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Democrats Like It When Forecasts Show Democrats Winning

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GDP Increases At Not-Bad 3.5% Rate in Third Quarter

by MelanieXFI Posted on October 30, 2014

Mother Jones

Today’s economic news is fairly good. GDP in the third quarter grew at a 3.5 percent annual rate, which means that the slowdown at the beginning of the year really does look like it was just a blip. Aside from that one quarter, economic growth has been pretty robust for over a year now.

At the same time, inflation continues to be very low, which you can take as either good news (if you’re an inflation hawk) or bad news (if you think the economy could use a couple of years of higher inflation).

We could still use some higher growth after five years of weakness, but at least we’re providing a bit of a counterbalance to Europe, which appears to be going off a cliff at the moment. Count your blessings.

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GDP Increases At Not-Bad 3.5% Rate in Third Quarter

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Why Do Republicans Hate the Beatles?

by AbrahamCorbett Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Over at the Facebook Data Science blog, Winter Mason shows us how personal likes and dislikes line up with political ideology. Democrats like Maya Angelou, The Color Purple, and The Colbert Report. Republicans like Ben Carson, Atlas Shrugged, and Duck Dynasty. It’s all good fun, though I’m a little mystified about why the Empire State Building is such a Democratic-leaning tourist destination. Maybe Republicans just dislike anything related to New York City.

But it’s music that I want some help on. I get that country tends to be right-leaning and Springsteen is left-leaning. But what’s up with the Beatles being so distinctively associated with liberals? It’s no secret that I know squat about music, so help me out here. No snark. I thought the Beatles had long since ascended into a sort of free-floating state of pop elder statehood where they were beloved of all baby boomers equally—and pretty much everyone else too. What do I not know that accounts for continuing Republican antipathy toward the moptops?

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Why Do Republicans Hate the Beatles?

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Which World Series Team Has the Less Obnoxious Owner, Giants or Royals?

by FloreneGKQN Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

Game 6 of baseball’s World Series is tonight in Kansas City, and the stakes are high: The San Francisco Giants could clinch their third championship in five years with a win, while the hometown Royals need a win to stay alive. Don’t have a rooting interest, or looking for another reason to tune in? Check out Mother Jones‘ report from last year on the political and business dealings of Major League Baseball’s owners. If you like Karl Rove, you may want to pull for the Giants—but if rationalizing child labor is more your taste, go Royals!

Here’s the dish on the Giants’ Charles B. Johnson:

Johnson, a mutual-funds baron and the 211th-richest person in the world according to Forbes, spent some $200,000 to try to defeat California’s Proposition 30, the sales and income tax increase that included elements of the state’s millionaire’s tax initiative. (Prop. 30 passed in November.) Other political expenditures: $50,000 for Prop. 32, which would have kept unions and corporations from using automatic payroll deductions to bankroll political activity, and $200,000 for Karl Rove’s American Crossroads.

And the Royals’ David Glass:

In 1992, when he was still president and CEO of Walmart, Glass was confronted by NBC’s Dateline with evidence of child labor at a T-shirt factory in Bangladesh. His response: “You and I might, perhaps, define children differently.” As Glass explained, looks can be deceiving—Asians are short. Then he ended the interview. Meanwhile, as the Royals’ owner he’s pocketed profits without making any discernible investment in the on-field product. He also once revoked press credentials of reporters who asked critical questions.

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Which World Series Team Has the Less Obnoxious Owner, Giants or Royals?

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Question of the Day: Does Obama Plan to Flood America With Ebola Patients?

by Madelai90A Posted on October 28, 2014

Mother Jones

From Fox anchor Megyn Kelly to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee:

So do you believe that the administration is planning on bringing Ebola patients from overseas here to America?

Yes, that’s an actual question, and I probably don’t have to tell you what Goodlatte’s answer is. The only thing missing is whether Goodlatte also believes Obama is planning to naturalize these folks by executive order so they can vote in Tuesday’s election.

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Question of the Day: Does Obama Plan to Flood America With Ebola Patients?

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