Source: University slammed for ‘anti-union’ job ads | Radio New Zealand News.
Is the union wage premium negative in New Zealand? @FairnessNZ
07 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education, labour economics, unions
Penn And Teller BS Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa
04 Sep 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education Tags: Penn and Teller
Do charter schools cherry pick?
30 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education Tags: charter schools, racial discrimination
Gender gap in PISA scores across the OECD, 2012
29 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education, gender, human capital, labour economics Tags: gender gaps, reversing gender gap
Source: OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012.
The Black Gender College Degree Gap is Huge and Growing
25 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, human capital
How To End Poverty in the South Bronx with charter schools
12 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education Tags: charter schools
Anything opposed by the teachers unions must be a good idea
09 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, economics of education, politics - New Zealand Tags: teachers unions
#YesPrimeMinister on abolishing government departments
01 Aug 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, economics of education, television Tags: Yes Prime Minister
College and post-graduate wage premium in the English speaking countries, France, S. Korea, Finland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden
31 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education, human capital, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: Australia, British economy, Canada, College premium, Denmark, education premium, Finland, France, graduate premium, Ireland, Korea, Norway, post-graduate premium, Sweden
Source: Education at a Glance 2015, section 6.
Political leanings of American professors @robhosking
29 Jul 2016 2 Comments
in economics of education, labour economics, occupational choice, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA Tags: academic bias
Sociologists are rather level-headed compared to that hotbed of political bias, which is American history professors. Hardly any of them see themselves as a Republican. I must take back a few nasty things I said about political bias and sociologists.
Source: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS OF AMERICAN PROFESSORS Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, Working Paper, September 24, 2007
Tertiary educational attainment, 2000 and 2014, USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Australia
24 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of education, human capital, labour economics Tags: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, tertiary educational attainment.
The British, Australians, and Italians experienced strong growth in tertiary attainment since the year 2000. In the case of the Italians, it was from a low base. There is still a big difference in tertiary attainment between English-speaking and other countries.
Source: OECD Factbook 2015-2016.
Is academic philosophy a “safe space” for women?
23 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in discrimination, economics of education, gender, labour economics, occupational choice Tags: gender wage gap
Compulsory Te Reo Māori betrays those @nzlabour represents @jacindaardern @AndrewLittleMP
09 Jul 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education, politics - New Zealand Tags: economics of languages, expressive voting, network goods, New Zealand Labour Party
This policy of Labour of making Te Reo Māori compulsory in primary school and perhaps high school is reckless and betrays those for whom Labour claims to speak.
I must first declare a bias. I struggled to pass high school English. I never scored a single mark in a phonetics test – zero every time. I was hopeless at learning Japanese. I was wise enough to resist encouragement for my dear departed mother to enrol in French classes. I had no wish to be the class dunce in French.
The only reason I went to university was Mr. Carney in the first week of grade 7 noticed that I was in the level II classes for English and social science. As all my brothers and sisters topped the school or near enough, he assumed I was hiding my light under a bushel. He promoted me to the level III classes, which put me in the stream to matriculation colleges and therefore university.
Imagine how much I would have hated study if I was required to learn a language other than English when I was struggling terribly to learn English. I am still a bad speller. I leave it to the reader to judge my grammar. Who wants to be the class dunce in both English and French?
Requiring students of modest academic ability to acquire a 2nd language when they may not be doing well in mastering the basics is playing with their lives as though they were little toys.
Learning another language is not a priority for the Pākehā children nor Māori mokupuna when you consider the poor literacy rates among Māori, Pasifika and some Pākehā.
Source: Literacy skills of young adult New Zealanders | Education Counts.
60%of Pākehā are above the minimum level of competence to meet the prose literacy requirements of a knowledge society. This contrasts with the majority of Māori and Pasifika who are below the minimum level of competence.
Requiring children who do not have an aptitude for language or school in general to learn a language will reinforce in those who are not doing well that they are not very smart. This will give them more reasons to hate school and leave as soon as possible and never go back.
Source: Literacy skills of young adult New Zealanders | Education Counts.
Taking student learning time away from basic literacy skills will do little for a Māori economic development. This is because this taking of student learning time away from literacy and basic education will slow the closing of income gaps between Māori and others.
The key to helping children who do not have an aptitude to succeed at school is to find subjects where they do do well so they can get a good start to life. If students are not good at academic subjects, requiring them to do more academic studies such as study a language is fool-hardy.
Learning Te Reo Māori will not help children in their other subjects. The psychology of the transfer of learning was founded 100 years ago to explore the hypothesis that learning Latin gave the student muscle to learn other subjects, both other languages and generally learn faster.
Educational psychologists found that Latin does not help much in studying other languages and other subjects. No significant differences were found in deductive and inductive reasoning or text comprehension among students with 4 years of Latin, 2 years of Latin or no Latin at all.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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