Class Issues
Category archives for Class Issues
Two Americas in Recovery
Posted by Chad Orzel on August 11, 2010 First Matt Yglesias and then Kevin Drum nail the current source of my occasional spasms of liberal guilt, namely the unequal distribution of the current economic troubles. They both note that the unemployment rate for college graduates is less than half that for folks without college degrees (Matt looks at total unemployment, Kevin at long-term…
Distilled Faculty Outrage
Posted by Chad Orzel on July 27, 2010 Via Inside Higher Ed this YouTube video is pretty much a distillation of faculty reaction nationwide to higher education’s response to the world economic crisis: The IHE link gives a little more context to the video, and some of the reaction to it. The arguments here are not all well-founded– science and engineering will necessarily…
Correlation, Causation, and Belief in Creation
Posted by Chad Orzel on June 1, 2010 Thinking from Kansas, Josh Rosenau notices a correlation in data from a Daily Kos poll question on the origin of the universe: Saints be praised, 62% of the public accepts the Big Bang and a 13.7 billion year old universe. Democrats are the most positive, with 71% accepting that, while only 44% of Republicans agree…
Links for 2010-05-27
Posted by Chad Orzel on May 27, 2010 Confessions of a Community College Dean: Thoughts on DIY U “Eleemosynary institutions have real and serious flaws, but they exist to empower the weak. They are necessary to empower the weak. If you rend them asunder, you will expose the weak to the predations of the strong. This is so fundamental that I’m surprised it…
Hearts, Minds, and Health Care
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 27, 2010 This Timothy Burke post on the current political moment deserves better than to be buried in the Links Dump. He’s beginning to despair because it looks like “there are many things which could happen which would improve the lives of many Americans which are not going to happen and perhaps cannot happen.” Take health care,…
When Oldsmobiles Turn Into Cadillacs
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 26, 2010 Kevin Drum checks in with the latest from the class wars: In the middle of a rant about healthcare reform and the compromise over the Cadillac tax, one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers says this: The idea that public employees make less than those in the private sector is a myth that needs to die. Most…
The Latest from Awful Yuppie Town: Green Divorce
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 18, 2010 One of the less attractive features of the New York Times is its tendency to feature little profiles of horrible people. They’re not presented that way, of course, but that’s the effect– I read these articles, and just want to slap everybody involved. Today’s story on marital tensions caused by environmental issues is a fine…
The Visual Misrepresentation of Quantitative Information: Wages and Debt
Posted by Chad Orzel on January 14, 2010 Regular readers will know that I have a bit of a Thing about bad graphs used in the media and on blogs. When people use stupid presentation tricks to exaggerate features of data to make their argument look stronger, it bugs me. But what really irks me is when people use stupid presentation tricks to…
Think of It as Kid Insurance
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 21, 2009 Janet has a typically thoughtful post about tuition benefits, following on a proposal to eliminate tuition benefits for employees of the University of Illinois. Janet does a great job of rounding up the various pros and cons of the benefit and its possible elimination. It takes no time at all for the “Tuition benefits are…
Even in Education, The House Always Wins
Posted by Chad Orzel on December 9, 2009 Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber has a very good post about schools that appear to “beat the odds”, getting good results with populations that don’t typically do well in school. It does an excellent job of laying out the problems with the vast majority of attempts to determine which schools are “beating the odds,” let…
