I do not pretend to know what good teaching methods are. I am not a teacher, I have no training in teaching, and I do not follow teaching methods literature. I write about education quite a bit here only because so much of our discourse around class, inequality, poverty, and related economic issues are tied… Continue reading Arguing about education reform’s teaching methods
Policy Shop: The STEM Myth
New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: A less notable excuse has been that our unemployment woes are structural—the skills employees have are not the skills employers want—and therefore economic stimulus wont do much to solve our unemployment problem. The STEM myth has been a major element of this structural unemployment theory, at least when it… Continue reading Policy Shop: The STEM Myth
Student debt and the macroeconomy
Mike Konczal is out with a post today about the macroeconomic effects of student debt, a post he briefly foreshadowed in our comment blood bath a couple of days ago about an unrelated matter. In the post, Konczal relies on a recent New York Fed report about the borrowing habits (specifically around car loans and… Continue reading Student debt and the macroeconomy
Who does US austerity benefit?
A classic way to figure out why something is happening politically is to follow the money. It does not always work (ideas do matter), but it is at least a good starting point. Here is a survey of people who have been said to benefit from austerity, and my analysis (usually confusion) as to how… Continue reading Who does US austerity benefit?
How badly do 4-year public and private schools skew rich?
The National Postsecondary Student Aid Survey has a breakdown of what types of students make up each kind of postsecondary school. I have been interested for some time in the breakdown of undergraduates by household income, and it provides those numbers (p. 72 of the pdf). There is a lot in the survey and I… Continue reading How badly do 4-year public and private schools skew rich?