Tag: education

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What I Talk About When I Talk About Grading

“I’m supposed to graduate summa cum laude so I need an A in this class.”

That sentence, repeated to me at the end of most sessions of a 2-credit elective, was one of the strangest student interactions I ever had, made stranger by the use of “supposed to.” I took it as the obsessive noting of an expected outcome, if only I wouldn’t get in the way and screw it up.

My usual responses to the student, such as: ‘So, that means you’ll work really hard in this class, right?” only received a blank stare. My prodding of what interested her in the subject matter were similarly blank.

And yet, at the end of almost every class, that “supposed to” returned.

“Re-Centering” Academics

The last several generations saw tremendous changes in the expectations of university education. 

We went from academic admissions exams to an appeal for well-rounded students, from the introduction of aptitude tests to the test prep industry and the normalization of test retakes, from the blanket availability of student loans to dramatic tuition increases, from college attendance being the exception to the expectation, from mostly men to mostly women attending college. 

Access to the subject matter changed as well. While advanced content was formerly locked away in specialized books only available in university libraries and in the heads of professors, today you don’t need to join an institution. An explosion of online courses, YouTube channels, niche newsletters, and now AI, means that interested students have education at their fingertips in just about any subject. Many of those library books I wished I had access to growing up are digitized, sometimes free, or available to search and purchase. 

But what those books and online content don’t do – or don’t do very well – is provide a trusted evaluation of performance – a grade. 

Many recent articles and faculty have been debating what grades actually mean anymore. So I read the recent report Re-Centering Academics at Harvard College: Update on Grading and Workload. 

As we discuss grading, let me call out some sections of that report. Continue reading “What I Talk About When I Talk About Grading”

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No Argument

Only occasionally does a quote make me drop a book.

“A character is made by the kind of thoughts a man thinks when alone, and a civilization is made by the kind of thoughts a man speaks to his neighbor.”

The man who wrote it – Fulton Sheen – was an early user of mass media. First radio and then TV. His manner of speech, dramatic pauses, use of a chalkboard, and educated tone would seem a bit foreign to the quick cuts and highly stylized sets of today. That and the fact that he was a Catholic bishop.

But his TV series ran in various forms from 1952 – 1968. There is nothing comparable to it today because we have entered the post-mainstream TV era, among other things.

But back to the quote. Something kept drawing me to it. So to better understand I went to its source in the book Old Errors and New Labels and thought about the meaning of the quote’s individual terms.

    • A character (“the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual”): This is a term we don’t hear as much today.
    • Is Made: When we hear that character is to be made (or “character building”), we often think of dealing with hardship. The idea that a character is something to be made out of the awareness and practice of one’s thoughts is different.
    • The kind of thoughts: If thoughts over time can form a character, then we should be recognize what thoughts we have, where they come from, and whether they serve us well.
    • When alone: How often are we truly alone today? How often are we instead sitting by ourselves physically but tethered to the scenes, news, and ideas of somewhere distant? As a result, how often do those things become our thoughts, replacing whatever we would have thought if truly alone?
    • A civilization (“the society, culture, and way of life of a particular area”): Do we believe that we are in a common civilization with our neighbor? Is our civilization physically defined as people we live near or virtually defined as people who are distant? Can we have a civilization if we think inaccurate thoughts about each other and therefore, seemingly logically, come to hate each other?
    • Thoughts a man speaks: Not everything we think is worthy of being spoken and not everything we think is appropriate to be spoken. There is choice in turning thoughts into speech.
    • Neighbor (“a person living nearby,” alternately “any person in need of one’s help”): Is your neighbor of the same opinions as you? Should it matter? Would you want to move if they had thoughts you don’t like? Do you even have a relationship with your neighbor? Speaking your thoughts with your neighbor, are you at ease?
    • Character vs neighbor framing: Much of my writing here has been about scale effects and emergence. How more is not just the sum of all the individual smaller parts. Just so, civilization is not the sum of all the individual characters. Civilization is what emerges from the exchange between characters.

Continue reading “No Argument”

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CEOs, Students, and Algorithms

Hummingbirds and flowers co-adapted over millions of years. As with the shapes of the flowers they take nectar from, hummingbird beaks grew to different lengths, some straight, some curved.

Photo: Sonia Nadales

However, some bees learned that they could access the nectar within tubular flowers by chewing a hole at the base and robbing the nectar from there. When that happens, the flower loses its nectar without getting pollinated.

We see this with humans and computers too. Continue reading “CEOs, Students, and Algorithms”

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Changes in Value (Part 2)

While I discussed silver, tulips, and drugs in Changes in Value Part I, here I look at education, art, spices, chicken feet, and conformity. What systems influence the value of things? Why does value change?

At the end I provide suggestions to assess your own situations.

Education

I’ve been critical of higher education on this blog before, but for other reasons. When it comes to the the price of a college degree — and here I’m mostly talking of the price of American college tuition — we’ve seen a doubling in price, adjusting for inflation, over the last 30 years. A number of factors combine to drive up the price.

Continue reading “Changes in Value (Part 2)”

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Changing Minds on Coronavirus

Long-time readers of this blog know that I wrote about how disease spreads several times well before the recent coronavirus news. And then I wrote three posts on that. I’m hardly alone in my interest on this topic.

But apart from what we’re going through now, infectious diseases generally don’t get as much attention as I think they deserve. In terms of unintended consequences, I’m interested in the impact of disease on human decision making and where things went wrong, or well, in the past. As for the potential impact of COVID-19 in the near-term, some minds are changing in the midst of political, business, social, and educational impact.

And then there is the look back in history. When I recently learned the story of a European plague year’s impact on Dutch “tulipmania,” the modern and historical protective images intrigued me as well.

Left: a protective white suit used when dealing with extreme infectious environments. Right: European plague doctor “Doctor Schnabel” (Dr. Beak). Doctors stuffed sweet smelling flowers and herbs into the mask’s beak to protect against noxious fumes believed to transmit disease. Also note the waxed coat, hat, and gloves.

Continue reading “Changing Minds on Coronavirus”

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College Admissions Scandal

I tend to stay away from current events in writing about unintended consequences, but I’m weighing in on the recent college admissions scandal. After all, I’m a professor at the school with the most involvement. And the story isn’t really all that new. But it might play out differently than you expect.

tl;dr Is college too expensive? Short answer: yes. Longer answer: it depends. Point of the post: it will get more expensive. Continue reading “College Admissions Scandal”

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Categories of Unintended Consequences


There are many frameworks with which to evaluate unintended consequences. So far in my writing here I’ve looked at examples arranged around a theme (species introduction, food, government policy, human behavior etc) where there is a somewhat clear relationship between cause and effect (even if sometimes only in hindsight). I haven’t yet touched frameworks of complexity and won’t do so until I go deeper into more second-order effects.

This week I step back and look at basic categories of unintended consequences and call out potential new areas of exposure to second-order effects.

Unintended Consequences Categories
General categories of unintended consequences

Continue reading “Categories of Unintended Consequences”

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Visibility of Cost

Costs work differently depending on who pays and when they pay. These questions of “who” and “when” and innovations that change them are second-order effects that impact what society gets more or less of.

Some products come with only a cost of production, paid first by the producer and then pushed on to the purchasing customer. This is in spite of the products themselves creating external costs that greater society or specific individuals must bear later on. Other products have these external costs built in at the point of production. In either case, the type and severity of the costs can vary. These costs may be unseen to the product’s end customer, but it is the difference in cost type that changes behavior and leads to unintended consequences. Continue reading “Visibility of Cost”

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The University Fundraising Arms Race

Over the past two decades, American universities have created reasons to spend more and raise large donations, without end. What are the second-order effects of this increase in fundraising activity? 

American universities remain highly sought after for both American and international students. The trends over the last few decades include a larger population now attending college (both in total numbers and percentage of population) with lower acceptance rates (partly driven by the increased number of applications per applicant). These two trends continue in spite of greatly increased tuition. Continue reading “The University Fundraising Arms Race”

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