Tag: Education
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Why Do Innovation Clusters Form?
Recently I attended a very interesting conference about high-tech innovation and public policy, with experts in various fields. (Such a conference will be either boring or fascinating, depending on who exactly is invited. This one was great.) One topic of discussion was how innovation clusters form. “Innovation cluster” is the rather awkward term for a…
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Return to Monkey High
Newsweek has released its annual list of America’s top high schools, using the same flawed formula as last year. Here’s what I wrote then: Here is Newsweek’s formula: “Public schools are ranked according to a ratio devised by Jay Mathews: the number of Advanced Placement and/or International Baccalaureate tests taken by all students at a…
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Do University Honor Codes Work?
Rick Garnett over at ProfsBlawg asked his readers about student honor codes and whether they work. His readers, who seem to be mostly lawyers and law students, chimed in with quite a few comments, most of them negative. I have dealt with honor codes at two institutions. My undergraduate institution, Caltech, has a simply stated…
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Minimum Age for Pro Basketball?
Yesterday was the NBA draft. In the first round, eight high school seniors were taken, and only five college seniors. (The rest were overseas players and college underclassmen.) The very first pick was a high school senior, chosen over a very accomplished college player. You have to be 16 to drive. You have to be…
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Computers As Graders
One of my least favorite tasks as a professor is grading papers. So there’s good news – of a sort – in J. Greg Phelan’s New York Times article from last week, about the use of computer programs to grade essays. The computers are surprisingly good at grading – essentially as accurate as human graders,…