There's something that has bugged me a while about real estate agents. Actually, there are several things, but structurally I keep wondering - why do we still have them? Why haven't they vanished from the earth?
One analogy - at least, it seems analogous to me - is travel agents. There used to be lots of travel agents. Once upon a time they performed a basic but important task - they gathered and consolidated a lot of information about airline flights and presented it to buyers. In so doing, they took a small cut of the transaction, basically as market makers.
While this operated, it made sense for buyers - it was much easier to call a travel agent than to call every airline and get their flight schedules and prices for flights from A to B. Travel agencies even built a special, proprietary database of flights, and that product gave them value in the market.
Of course along came the internet, and with it Expedia and Travelocity and silly commercials starring William Shatner, and suddenly travel agents largely vanished. Because the internet is an outstanding means of transmitting information between sellers (airlines) and buyers (us). Yes, travel websites do some consolidation for us, for which they take a small cut (usually about $5 per transaction or ticket). But they have, essentially, replaced travel agents - for a much lower cost.
Along the way, airlines learned that it's cheaper to sell us tickets online, so they've benefited too. Technology cut out the middle man, and the rest of us are better off for it.
So a part of me wonders - why haven't real estate agents followed travel agents into oblivion? The function is essentially the same - RE agents act as information transmitters between sellers and buyers. In the realm of information transmission, the internet is vastly superior to relying on an agent as a consolidator. Even the proprietary database agents have (the MLS system) is now available, at least to buyers, for free.
To be fair, RE agents do perform a few other functions - they have a system that allows access to houses (via lock boxes) to permit secure showings, they (supposedly) negotiate on behalf of their clients, and they run some of the paperwork involved in the transaction. They have the 'keys' to putting your house on the MLS in the first place. These things do have value.
But it is very difficult to see how this value amounts to the 6-7% - thousands of dollars - they usually take out of the transaction. Individually, many of these services can be bought from other providers for a fraction of the cost. A lawyer will draw up a purchase contract for you for a couple hundred bucks - and it's likely to be a contract more suited to your interests than the "standard" form that RE agencies use. For a couple hundred bucks more, the lawyer will even negotiate on your behalf. And websites like Zillow provide as much information - sometimes more - as any MLS listing, for free.
About the only thing that's not replaceable is the lock box system - but surely there's a less costly way of running that service as well. So what keeps RE agents in business?
I think there are three things that stand in the way of the logic of the marketplace here. First, agents have cleverly structured that 6-7% cut so that it appears to come only from the seller. This allows them to advertise what we all know in other contexts to be nonsense: that there is such a thing as a free lunch, because the "services" of the "buyer's agent" are "free to the buyer".
Economists know that free lunches are really illusions, and in this case the slight-of-hand is easy to see. The buyer's agent is paid their slice out of the seller's proceeds. But the seller's proceeds come directly from the buyer. If the seller has to pay a buyer's agent $5000, that simply adds $5000 to the price of the house, which comes back out of the buyer's pocket. All of a sudden that "free" service costs you a pretty penny - but you will never get a RE agent to admit this. (I've tried. Many just don't get it.)
Second, RE agents have managed to make the MLS database system indispensable - and they control access to it. Airlines (the sellers of flights) have direct access to put their flights and prices into databases or websites that buyers can see; house sellers can't do the same with the MLS. You the seller need somebody to put your house into that database, and absent a low-cost alternative you're stuck with RE agents.
I am a little surprised that someone hasn't set up a discount seller's RE service - we'll put your house on the MLS and hang a lock box on it, and that's it. Such a business would be cheap to run, and wouldn't need to take thousands from each transaction. But despite the economic logic, such businesses haven't taken off.
The third factor - the barrier to developing that low-cost alternative - lies in two perceptions. The first is the perception that a seller's agent can actually do something, other than listing a house on the MLS, that will increase the probability of a sale on your house. This is, to a substantial degree, a fiction: seller's agents have about as much ability to affect the market as day traders have to move stock indexes up or down. The market is going to do what it does; buyers who are likely to buy a particular house are either there or they're not. If they find the house, it won't be because of anything the seller's agent did - other than post the house on the MLS database.
The second perception is the "free lunch" fallacy above. Because buyers think that "their" agent is free, most will get one. And so it is buyer's agents who have the ability to influence what buyers do - which houses they see and, to a small degree, how those houses are presented.
This suggests that a low-cost seller's service would be problematic, not because it isn't efficient but because buyer's agents (who are generally drawn from the same pool as seller's agents; many are both) are likely to see such a service as a threat, and steer buyers away from those houses. In other words, RE agents have enough control over the perceptions of buyers and sellers to continue to dominate the market, even though there ought to be better economic alternatives.
Ultimately, none of this is that surprising. For all that we like to praise the "hidden hand of the market", the market is often filled with inefficiencies that keep it from acting in the nice, rational, efficient manner that economists tell us it should. People will do things - perpetuate myths, manipulate others' behavior - that advance their own individual interests, even if the result is inefficiency. Nor is there much of an argument here for outside intervention to "fix" the market - government intrusion would likely be even worse, because buying homes is a highly individual decision not easily reduced to common denominators.
There is a hidden lesson in here about the housing market. Basic economics tells us that the higher the transaction costs of an activity, the less of it you will get. For most folks, the transaction cost of buying and selling a home is higher than just about any other purchase - both in absolute dollars and as a percentage. This is an enormous inefficiency - essentially, a hidden tax that produces few public goods - that clearly hampers a recovery in the real estate market. And it's unlikely to go away anytime soon.
So the next time you're listing the villains of the real estate bust - banks, mortgage brokers, Fannie, Freddie, etc. - don't forget to throw in RE agents. They deserve their fair share, after all.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Google Glasses and the March (Stumble?) of Technology
There are lots of articles coming out on Google's latest project, Google Glasses (though I like "Google Goggles" better as a name). It isn't entirely clear what these things will do, but the idea seems to be that they will display information to you in real time, based on all of the tons of info out there in various cloud-based forms.
On the one hand, the tech geek in me says that these sound really cool - who wouldn't want a heads-up display in their glasses? But I'm also kind of ambivalent - all sorts of questions suggest themselves:
• Will people wearing these things have a tendency to walk into walls, or each other, because they're watching the data and not where they're going? Will we get more videos of people falling into fountains?
• Rumor has it that these things will have cameras built into them. If so, will they be tied to face-recognition software, so you get info on who you're looking at? If so, will it bring up that person's FB profile? Public arrest records? Contact information? Will this be the end of the anonymous crowd? This seems a little creepy to me - sort of Minority Report-ish.
• Ironically, will face recognition software still work if everybody is wearing big glasses?
• Will they have GPS/location tracking built in, such that you are essentially on Foursquare all the time? If so, how much more privacy would you be giving up while wearing them? It's already been discovered that law enforcement is getting cell phone tracking info without warrants; but do we really want more "Girls Around Me" style apps?
• Will these become a "must have" technology? I used to scoff at GPS units, because I'm pretty good at reading maps and navigating on my own - but now that I have one, I really like having it (more as a trip computer than as a navigator, although the later feature is sometimes useful). If they become "must have", will everybody start to wear glasses? If so, will "two eyes" become the new insult?
• At what point do we reach information overload? Do I really need to see review data on every restaurant I look at? At the very least, there will have to be a LOT of selectivity, because it would be really, really easy to get over-bombed with info, especially in crowded public spaces (will they short out in Times Square?)
• Fashion designers are going to have a field day with this. I'm sure the high-end eyewear makers are already in talks (or desperately trying to be) with Google, and I'm sure there will be some early-adopter Hollywood celebs (much like Arnold Schwartzenegger back when he bought an early-model civilian Hummer). How long until these things are available at Wal-Mart?
• Or is all of this just a fad, where people will decide that the expense (both equipment and a "data plan") and hassle of wearing glasses isn't worth it?
On the one hand, the tech geek in me says that these sound really cool - who wouldn't want a heads-up display in their glasses? But I'm also kind of ambivalent - all sorts of questions suggest themselves:
• Will people wearing these things have a tendency to walk into walls, or each other, because they're watching the data and not where they're going? Will we get more videos of people falling into fountains?
• Rumor has it that these things will have cameras built into them. If so, will they be tied to face-recognition software, so you get info on who you're looking at? If so, will it bring up that person's FB profile? Public arrest records? Contact information? Will this be the end of the anonymous crowd? This seems a little creepy to me - sort of Minority Report-ish.
• Ironically, will face recognition software still work if everybody is wearing big glasses?
• Will they have GPS/location tracking built in, such that you are essentially on Foursquare all the time? If so, how much more privacy would you be giving up while wearing them? It's already been discovered that law enforcement is getting cell phone tracking info without warrants; but do we really want more "Girls Around Me" style apps?
• Will these become a "must have" technology? I used to scoff at GPS units, because I'm pretty good at reading maps and navigating on my own - but now that I have one, I really like having it (more as a trip computer than as a navigator, although the later feature is sometimes useful). If they become "must have", will everybody start to wear glasses? If so, will "two eyes" become the new insult?
• At what point do we reach information overload? Do I really need to see review data on every restaurant I look at? At the very least, there will have to be a LOT of selectivity, because it would be really, really easy to get over-bombed with info, especially in crowded public spaces (will they short out in Times Square?)
• Fashion designers are going to have a field day with this. I'm sure the high-end eyewear makers are already in talks (or desperately trying to be) with Google, and I'm sure there will be some early-adopter Hollywood celebs (much like Arnold Schwartzenegger back when he bought an early-model civilian Hummer). How long until these things are available at Wal-Mart?
• Or is all of this just a fad, where people will decide that the expense (both equipment and a "data plan") and hassle of wearing glasses isn't worth it?
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Administration & the Cost of Higher Education
I'm probably unwise to take issue with my friend and co-author Steve Saideman, who has posted a few thoughts in his latest blog about administration and the cost of higher education. Steve did, after all, get all the way to the Sweet 16 in Twitter Fight Club. So I'm risking picking on somebody bigger than me (in internet writing terms). If I'm lucky, he won't notice.
That said, the article Steve makes reference to, although it makes some reasonable points, is a bit of an oversimplified trope. It's become standard for both students and faculty to complain that the rising cost of higher education - which in America, as in Canada, has well exceeded the rate of inflation for decades - is largely due to the rise of the bureaucracy and central administration. As Steve puts it:
But what's missing from the conversation is a better understanding of just where the growth in administration is coming from. It's easy to look at the broad numbers and assume that this is simply human greed - that university administrators are academic versions of Goldman Sachs or Enron VPs, finding ways to feather their own nests while sticking it to both their employees and their customers. That's a tempting story, especially today. But it misses a lot of the truth.
I can't possibly catalog all of the complexities that drive growth in administration in one blog post - even if I wrote a book, I'd probably miss some. But here are some of the major factors as I see them - from the point of view of someone who has been on both the faculty and administration sides of the fence:
1) Power Maximizers: Let's give the Goldman Sachs theory its due. There are administrators out there for whom "being in control" is the central motivation for them to get into administration. They seek power. And as the Realists tell us, power maximizers are never satisfied. I've worked for my share - some might say more than my share - of administrators who really are like this. These are people who will grab as much budget and add as many staff as they can to their own empires. And I stand with faculty and students in wishing that there were more effective ways of keeping such people in check. I would make only one observation to that end: this kind of behavior is, at minimum, enabled (if not encouraged or led) from the top.
2) Government Regulations: It sounds like a Republican talking point, but it is in fact true that over the last 20-30 years, government regulation (at both the state and federal levels) of higher education has increased substantially. Every time there's a new rule, you need more manpower to enforce that rule in each university. Case in point: in the US, there is a new financial aid rule that students must complete at least 67% of the credit hours they attempt, or lose their eligibility for Federal financial aid (which, at this point, is a large slice of the aid market). Who is going to keep track of that for the thousands of students we have? More financial aid office staff, of course. Every new federal or state mandate carries that cost with it. And these are not optional - if you don't enforce the rule, your students don't get aid and pretty soon you have no students. There is a real need - outside of any party's political agenda - to consider the cost of regulation. But nobody ever does.
3) The Hidden Cost of Technology: The advent of computers has made us vastly more productive. But just how much more depends very much on whether you consider the total cost of that technology. 20 or 30 years ago, most universities still kept their records by and large on paper. What computers they had were fairly simply mainframes that could be maintained by relatively small numbers of staff. Today, every university has a vast and complicated central database system. Go into any administrative office anywhere, and you will hear complaints about these systems - they are rigid, inflexible, confining, and often counterintuitive. They are also expensive, both to buy and to maintain. Universities have to hire staffs of programmers to keep the things working, and to adapt them every time something else changes (see above, on new regulations). Shiny new technology often comes with great promises of what it "could" do - but actually making it do those things costs a lot of money. I'd love to see data on the growth of IT staffs over the last 20-30 years. And again, this isn't considered optional by most folks - especially faculty, who are often the loudest complainers about how this or that technology doesn't work they way they want it to.
4) Mission Creep: Over the last 30-40 years, the mission of higher education has expanded substantially. Much of this is to the good - a college education has become far more accessible to the middle and even lower classes than it once was. But that expansion of opportunity has been accompanied by an expansion of responsibilities. As the student population has grown more diverse, the agendas, demands, and needs of the students have grown as well. How many universities 30 years ago had an office dedicated to support of GLBTQA students? (or would even have understood what that means?) How many had a Director - much less a Vice President - of Multicultural Affairs? As the understanding of "college" has grown beyond classes to the entire "co-curricular" experience - "educating the whole student" is a popular phrase - so have the resource needs of universities to grow and administer such programs. These demands don't come from "greedy administrators" - they come from students, from faculty (who frequently want their universities to reflect their own agendas and points of view), and ultimately from the larger societies we serve.
5) Sports: There's a risk here of another oversimplified trope. But there are some basic facts. Running sports programs, at nearly any level, is expensive. And despite the vast amounts of money floating around in top-level college sports, only a very small handful of Division I teams actually make money on these programs. In part this is because sports are more expensive than you might think, especially if you're trying to live up to today's standards of professionalism. And in part it's a hidden cost of another Federal regulation (see above) driven by another otherwise-laudable agenda (see above): Title IX. Nobody wants us to repeal gender equity in college sports. But that equity comes with a price tag. And very few universities can get away with cutting back on their sports programs, lest the alienate alumni and donors - even though the money those folks give often doesn't entirely cover the cost of running the programs in the first place.
The broad numbers - how much is spent on "faculty" and "central administration" - are easy to get, and easy to project simple stories onto. What we need is a much more complex analysis that traces the roots of cost increases all the way back to their source. We may find, as Walt Kelly told us many years ago, that we have already met the enemy - and that he is us.
That said, the article Steve makes reference to, although it makes some reasonable points, is a bit of an oversimplified trope. It's become standard for both students and faculty to complain that the rising cost of higher education - which in America, as in Canada, has well exceeded the rate of inflation for decades - is largely due to the rise of the bureaucracy and central administration. As Steve puts it:
It makes perfect sense--those who make the decisions spend more and more on themselves and those who enable them.He does go on to admit that "21st century universities are harder to administer and require more resources". And I think the bottom line conclusion is reasonable - that administration as well as faculty need to find ways to do "less with more".
But what's missing from the conversation is a better understanding of just where the growth in administration is coming from. It's easy to look at the broad numbers and assume that this is simply human greed - that university administrators are academic versions of Goldman Sachs or Enron VPs, finding ways to feather their own nests while sticking it to both their employees and their customers. That's a tempting story, especially today. But it misses a lot of the truth.
I can't possibly catalog all of the complexities that drive growth in administration in one blog post - even if I wrote a book, I'd probably miss some. But here are some of the major factors as I see them - from the point of view of someone who has been on both the faculty and administration sides of the fence:
1) Power Maximizers: Let's give the Goldman Sachs theory its due. There are administrators out there for whom "being in control" is the central motivation for them to get into administration. They seek power. And as the Realists tell us, power maximizers are never satisfied. I've worked for my share - some might say more than my share - of administrators who really are like this. These are people who will grab as much budget and add as many staff as they can to their own empires. And I stand with faculty and students in wishing that there were more effective ways of keeping such people in check. I would make only one observation to that end: this kind of behavior is, at minimum, enabled (if not encouraged or led) from the top.
2) Government Regulations: It sounds like a Republican talking point, but it is in fact true that over the last 20-30 years, government regulation (at both the state and federal levels) of higher education has increased substantially. Every time there's a new rule, you need more manpower to enforce that rule in each university. Case in point: in the US, there is a new financial aid rule that students must complete at least 67% of the credit hours they attempt, or lose their eligibility for Federal financial aid (which, at this point, is a large slice of the aid market). Who is going to keep track of that for the thousands of students we have? More financial aid office staff, of course. Every new federal or state mandate carries that cost with it. And these are not optional - if you don't enforce the rule, your students don't get aid and pretty soon you have no students. There is a real need - outside of any party's political agenda - to consider the cost of regulation. But nobody ever does.
3) The Hidden Cost of Technology: The advent of computers has made us vastly more productive. But just how much more depends very much on whether you consider the total cost of that technology. 20 or 30 years ago, most universities still kept their records by and large on paper. What computers they had were fairly simply mainframes that could be maintained by relatively small numbers of staff. Today, every university has a vast and complicated central database system. Go into any administrative office anywhere, and you will hear complaints about these systems - they are rigid, inflexible, confining, and often counterintuitive. They are also expensive, both to buy and to maintain. Universities have to hire staffs of programmers to keep the things working, and to adapt them every time something else changes (see above, on new regulations). Shiny new technology often comes with great promises of what it "could" do - but actually making it do those things costs a lot of money. I'd love to see data on the growth of IT staffs over the last 20-30 years. And again, this isn't considered optional by most folks - especially faculty, who are often the loudest complainers about how this or that technology doesn't work they way they want it to.
4) Mission Creep: Over the last 30-40 years, the mission of higher education has expanded substantially. Much of this is to the good - a college education has become far more accessible to the middle and even lower classes than it once was. But that expansion of opportunity has been accompanied by an expansion of responsibilities. As the student population has grown more diverse, the agendas, demands, and needs of the students have grown as well. How many universities 30 years ago had an office dedicated to support of GLBTQA students? (or would even have understood what that means?) How many had a Director - much less a Vice President - of Multicultural Affairs? As the understanding of "college" has grown beyond classes to the entire "co-curricular" experience - "educating the whole student" is a popular phrase - so have the resource needs of universities to grow and administer such programs. These demands don't come from "greedy administrators" - they come from students, from faculty (who frequently want their universities to reflect their own agendas and points of view), and ultimately from the larger societies we serve.
5) Sports: There's a risk here of another oversimplified trope. But there are some basic facts. Running sports programs, at nearly any level, is expensive. And despite the vast amounts of money floating around in top-level college sports, only a very small handful of Division I teams actually make money on these programs. In part this is because sports are more expensive than you might think, especially if you're trying to live up to today's standards of professionalism. And in part it's a hidden cost of another Federal regulation (see above) driven by another otherwise-laudable agenda (see above): Title IX. Nobody wants us to repeal gender equity in college sports. But that equity comes with a price tag. And very few universities can get away with cutting back on their sports programs, lest the alienate alumni and donors - even though the money those folks give often doesn't entirely cover the cost of running the programs in the first place.
The broad numbers - how much is spent on "faculty" and "central administration" - are easy to get, and easy to project simple stories onto. What we need is a much more complex analysis that traces the roots of cost increases all the way back to their source. We may find, as Walt Kelly told us many years ago, that we have already met the enemy - and that he is us.
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Trying (Too) Hard to Relive the 1960s
This story may not get much beyond regional coverage, but for those of us in higher education, it's an interesting one:
There are a number of notable items here. What's not so surprising is that a group of people, obviously quite exercised about a decision being taken by the college's board of trustees, decided that their disagreement gave them a right to try to disrupt the proceedings.
In the heat of the moment, there is an admittedly fine line between "my voice should be heard" and "I can shout you down and stop you from doing what you're doing". But that line is there, and anybody trying to protest against somebody else's decision needs to understand their core options. Either you persuade those who have the decision-making power to change their minds, or you force them to do something other than what they intended. The latter almost never works in our society, because groups of protesters rarely have the power necessary to force a different outcome - if they did, they would use it. But sometimes, people lose sight of that distinction and try to force the outcome they want anyway.
Persuasion, of course, can sometimes come from gathering a crowd and loudly proclaiming an opinion. But it's not as successful as you might think. It helps if that opinion makes sense. Shouting "education should be free" persuades nobody; you might as well shout "the sky is green". Nothing is free.
The real argument is, who should pay for it? If students want to argue that they should not pay for their own education, they had better be able to articulate a really clear vision of who will, and how that is going to come about. You have to convince other people with money that they should pay for your education. I'm not saying that's impossible - but it's not very easy, and shouting at a board of trustees isn't going to get it done. Contrary to some popular belief, boards don't conjure money out of the air.
Finally, it's worth noting the response of the board to this particular protest [emphasis added]:
Here's a lesson in calm crisis management. The board continued its meeting safely. Everyone who wanted to speak was allowed to. And anyone hurt in the fracas - even if their injuries were the result of their own behavior - would be treated at college expense. For a college in financial trouble, this sends a powerful signal: yes, we're listening. Even when those doing the talking cross the line of force, we're still listening.
This won't be the last time that a college faces these kinds of tough choices, or that students want to express their opinions about them. Hopefully both students and boards will learn from this incident. For students: stop pretending that quasi-violent mass action will get you somewhere - it won't. For boards: remain calm, and be the adults in the room even if the students aren't.
The lesson to both is simple: persuasion is built on respect. Treat the other with respect, and you are much more likely to get what you want - or, at least, closer to what you want than you might otherwise.
About 100 students protesting a plan to offer high-priced courses at Santa Monica College this summer tried to storm into a meeting of the college's Board of Trustees on Tuesday evening.
A handful of protesters suffered minor injuries as campus police tried to prevent dozens of students chanting, "Let us in, let us in" and "No cuts, no fees, education should be free," from disrupting the meeting during a public comment period.
There are a number of notable items here. What's not so surprising is that a group of people, obviously quite exercised about a decision being taken by the college's board of trustees, decided that their disagreement gave them a right to try to disrupt the proceedings.
In the heat of the moment, there is an admittedly fine line between "my voice should be heard" and "I can shout you down and stop you from doing what you're doing". But that line is there, and anybody trying to protest against somebody else's decision needs to understand their core options. Either you persuade those who have the decision-making power to change their minds, or you force them to do something other than what they intended. The latter almost never works in our society, because groups of protesters rarely have the power necessary to force a different outcome - if they did, they would use it. But sometimes, people lose sight of that distinction and try to force the outcome they want anyway.
Persuasion, of course, can sometimes come from gathering a crowd and loudly proclaiming an opinion. But it's not as successful as you might think. It helps if that opinion makes sense. Shouting "education should be free" persuades nobody; you might as well shout "the sky is green". Nothing is free.
The real argument is, who should pay for it? If students want to argue that they should not pay for their own education, they had better be able to articulate a really clear vision of who will, and how that is going to come about. You have to convince other people with money that they should pay for your education. I'm not saying that's impossible - but it's not very easy, and shouting at a board of trustees isn't going to get it done. Contrary to some popular belief, boards don't conjure money out of the air.
Finally, it's worth noting the response of the board to this particular protest [emphasis added]:
No arrests were made.
The meeting room was cleared and trustees adjourned to another room. Santa Monica police were called in to secure the perimeter of the building.
President Chui Tsang said the small boardroom wasn't able to accommodate all of the students who wanted to speak and that an adjacent room had been provided for the overflow.
When the meeting resumed, most of the students were allowed to address trustees from an adjoining room. Many urged the board to find other solutions to maintain access.
Board Chair Margaret Quinones-Perez announced at the end of the comment period that the college would pay medical bills for any students who suffered injuries during the disturbance.
Here's a lesson in calm crisis management. The board continued its meeting safely. Everyone who wanted to speak was allowed to. And anyone hurt in the fracas - even if their injuries were the result of their own behavior - would be treated at college expense. For a college in financial trouble, this sends a powerful signal: yes, we're listening. Even when those doing the talking cross the line of force, we're still listening.
This won't be the last time that a college faces these kinds of tough choices, or that students want to express their opinions about them. Hopefully both students and boards will learn from this incident. For students: stop pretending that quasi-violent mass action will get you somewhere - it won't. For boards: remain calm, and be the adults in the room even if the students aren't.
The lesson to both is simple: persuasion is built on respect. Treat the other with respect, and you are much more likely to get what you want - or, at least, closer to what you want than you might otherwise.
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
Kony 2012 and the "Do Something" Impulse
I will confess to being taken rather by surprise by the Kony 2012 video phenomenon. What surprised me was not the revelations about child soldiers in Africa, or the brutality of the Lord's Resistance Army movement in Uganda. What surprised me was that these things, which have been going on for a long time and have been well-documented, suddenly caught the attention of a lot of people who "discovered" what others had known for a long time. In this information-rich age, it's interesting to see that there is so much that many of us still don't know. (Granted, I'm a "conflict geek", having studied this stuff for years, so I tend to be more up on war-related atrocities than your average Joe).
So one takeaway - prepare for a shock - is that young people are more likely to pay attention to a viral Youtube video passed around among their peers than to watch CNN. No news there, though we don't usually see that gap quite so vividly.
The other dimension that the sudden interest in Kony and the LRA has raised is the "Do Something!" impulse. I was struck by this in reading a BBC article about an upcoming sequel to the original Kony 2012 video promised by the group Invisible Children. The article included this nugget in the middle:
And it's this last bit that I find a little troubling. Very often, there is precious little that can be done to "solve" the problem. Short of sending a large invasion force to root out and arrest Mr. Kony, what exactly is it that the US Congress is going to do?
There is no end of possible measures that will likely do little to change the behavior of the LRA, but will make us feel good about having "done something" so we can move on to the next issue. Half-baked measures - usually some form of sanctions - rarely have their intended result, and often have unintended consequences that either make the problem worse or cause "collateral damage" to others. Simply scolding the bad guys is just as pointless; as comedian Bill Maher recently pointed out, "awareness" without effective action is, well, just silly.
And what about all of the other horrible problems and crises around the world that haven't (yet) had viral videos made of them? As bad as the LRA is, there are other things going on in other parts of the world that are just as bad, if not worse. Will we solve those problems, too?
Eventually, a form of political fatigue sets in. People get tired of being outraged. Energy shifts elsewhere. And in the meantime, little of lasting value has been accomplished.
At root, the problem is the the US has never quite decided what its role in the world should be. Given the chaotic nature of our democracy, this isn't surprising - isn't even necessarily a bad thing. But what we tend to get, in the absence of a coherent idea of what our capabilities are and what we should do with them, is foreign policy by outrage - a random set of actions fueled by the video of the moment. There's an argument that the ultimately ill-fated Somali adventure of 1992-3 (spanning two Presidents) was of this kind.
Ultimately, I don't expect the US government to solve this question. Politicians will always respond to the "do something!" impulse, because they can't afford to be seen as doing nothing. But what we could use, instead of a sound-bite fixation on the celebrity crisis of the month, is a broader conversation as citizens about what kind of problems we should, and shouldn't, try to address. Our resources and capabilities are limited, and our moral and ethical commitments complex. It's time we stopped turning to our "leaders" with a cry of "Do something!" and turned to each other to figure out what we should and shouldn't do, and who we want to be when we grow up.
So one takeaway - prepare for a shock - is that young people are more likely to pay attention to a viral Youtube video passed around among their peers than to watch CNN. No news there, though we don't usually see that gap quite so vividly.
The other dimension that the sudden interest in Kony and the LRA has raised is the "Do Something!" impulse. I was struck by this in reading a BBC article about an upcoming sequel to the original Kony 2012 video promised by the group Invisible Children. The article included this nugget in the middle:
"All three of my kids, in different context and different times have said: 'So what are you doing about Joseph Kony and the LRA?"' Senator Chris Coons told the Associated Press in a recent interview.
Mr Coons is chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee. He has travelled to Africa to hear about the issue firsthand.The dominant response here might be to say, "Great! It's working!" After all, this is the point of "awareness" campaigns - to bring problems to the attention of powerful people who are otherwise likely to be unaware of them, in hopes that they will ... well, do something to solve the problem.
And it's this last bit that I find a little troubling. Very often, there is precious little that can be done to "solve" the problem. Short of sending a large invasion force to root out and arrest Mr. Kony, what exactly is it that the US Congress is going to do?
There is no end of possible measures that will likely do little to change the behavior of the LRA, but will make us feel good about having "done something" so we can move on to the next issue. Half-baked measures - usually some form of sanctions - rarely have their intended result, and often have unintended consequences that either make the problem worse or cause "collateral damage" to others. Simply scolding the bad guys is just as pointless; as comedian Bill Maher recently pointed out, "awareness" without effective action is, well, just silly.
And what about all of the other horrible problems and crises around the world that haven't (yet) had viral videos made of them? As bad as the LRA is, there are other things going on in other parts of the world that are just as bad, if not worse. Will we solve those problems, too?
Eventually, a form of political fatigue sets in. People get tired of being outraged. Energy shifts elsewhere. And in the meantime, little of lasting value has been accomplished.
At root, the problem is the the US has never quite decided what its role in the world should be. Given the chaotic nature of our democracy, this isn't surprising - isn't even necessarily a bad thing. But what we tend to get, in the absence of a coherent idea of what our capabilities are and what we should do with them, is foreign policy by outrage - a random set of actions fueled by the video of the moment. There's an argument that the ultimately ill-fated Somali adventure of 1992-3 (spanning two Presidents) was of this kind.
Ultimately, I don't expect the US government to solve this question. Politicians will always respond to the "do something!" impulse, because they can't afford to be seen as doing nothing. But what we could use, instead of a sound-bite fixation on the celebrity crisis of the month, is a broader conversation as citizens about what kind of problems we should, and shouldn't, try to address. Our resources and capabilities are limited, and our moral and ethical commitments complex. It's time we stopped turning to our "leaders" with a cry of "Do something!" and turned to each other to figure out what we should and shouldn't do, and who we want to be when we grow up.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Higher Education Costs & Incentives: Nobody Gets Rich Doing This
A substantial kerfuffle was set off a little over a week ago by David Levy's Washington Post op-ed, "Do college professors work hard enough?" For those of you who don't want to read the original, the punch line is pretty simple: his answer is "no". In writing this particular piece, Levy has joined a long line of folks raising this question and reaching this particular conclusion. That Levy has himself been a faculty member once upon a time makes this particular iteration a little more interesting - but not much.
The fact that he tries to address this in an op-ed is warning sign enough: no complex subject can be thoroughly answered in the 800 or so words of a typical op-ed article. Even if the paper is manifestly generous in granting 1000 words, that's still barely enough to raise a question - not nearly enough to explore it or answer it with any conviction.
A proper answer to the question would have to dig into the complexities of efficiency vs. effectiveness in teaching, the role of research, and the value of "service" as performed by faculty. These things vary so widely across both institutions and disciplines that trying to make generalizations, as Levy does, in a single page is almost worthless - especially as a guide to public policy.
But one of Levy's 'facts' bears bringing out, because it is a classic trope of the op-ed argument. He claims that 'senior faculty at most state universities and colleges now earn $80,000 to $150,000 annually'. This is true as far as it goes - but what does it really mean?
For the average American - even the average WaPo reader - that sounds like a lot of money. But 'senior faculty' status generally only comes after 20-25 years of labor, during which time the faculty member in question works very hard indeed and for far lower wages. Moreover, it is those 20-25 years when financial needs are likely to be greatest - those are the years that people get married and have & raise children. By the time that coveted 'senior status' rolls around, the kids are frequently out of the nest. Try raising a family on an assistant professor's salary sometime and you'll have a very different picture of the work/reward balance for your average faculty member.
Moreover, that $80 - $150k spread exists because of differences in fields. And those differences exist because of much broader market forces. Senior faculty make the bigger numbers only in business, engineering, and the sciences - fields in which, with much the same education and skill set, they could go into the private sector and make at least that much money if not more, and much earlier in their careers. You might read Levy's article and think that $150,000 gets you a tweed-jacketed English professor ruminating about Chaucer. In fact, it gets you a very bright engineer who could double his money working for Lockheed Martin, but who is instead teaching the next generation of engineers. At that rate, it's a bargain.
Having been a university administrator, Levy should know better. There are a host of cost factors that drive up the cost of higher education - not the least of which is that, with minimal incentives for efficiency, most universities have no idea what it really costs them to produce a graduate. Soaring faculty salaries are pretty low on this list. The brainpower and motivation to be a university professor, at least as measured by the level of education needed, are at least equal to those needed to be an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor - all of which are paid substantially more.
Ultimately, markets really do sort these things out. If enough people think higher education is too expensive to be worth it, they will seek alternatives - and universities will be forced to find ways to be more efficient. If enough people think that watching football live and in person is important, they will shell out significant money to freeze on hard seats in a stadium somewhere. And it isn't clear, given taxpayer subsidies for stadiums and similar things, which of those markets gets more public subsidy dollars. But you don't see the President, or the Washington Post, fulminating about how much Tim Tebow gets paid to be moved from team to team.
People ultimately choose career paths in life based on a combination of things: money, interest, skill set, geography, family. We live in a system where, if you don't like the result of your choices, sometimes you can change them - many do. Once you have a WaPo op-ed or two, maybe a book or a good resume, you can become a public speaker - which pays $5000 minimum for talking for an hour or two. Former university presidents rake in substantial sums in "consulting fees". Does David Levy partake in any of this? I have no idea. But I'm guessing that he probably doesn't want us looking at his compensation - why he feels he needs to attack the money made by his former employees is beyond me.
The fact that he tries to address this in an op-ed is warning sign enough: no complex subject can be thoroughly answered in the 800 or so words of a typical op-ed article. Even if the paper is manifestly generous in granting 1000 words, that's still barely enough to raise a question - not nearly enough to explore it or answer it with any conviction.
A proper answer to the question would have to dig into the complexities of efficiency vs. effectiveness in teaching, the role of research, and the value of "service" as performed by faculty. These things vary so widely across both institutions and disciplines that trying to make generalizations, as Levy does, in a single page is almost worthless - especially as a guide to public policy.
But one of Levy's 'facts' bears bringing out, because it is a classic trope of the op-ed argument. He claims that 'senior faculty at most state universities and colleges now earn $80,000 to $150,000 annually'. This is true as far as it goes - but what does it really mean?
For the average American - even the average WaPo reader - that sounds like a lot of money. But 'senior faculty' status generally only comes after 20-25 years of labor, during which time the faculty member in question works very hard indeed and for far lower wages. Moreover, it is those 20-25 years when financial needs are likely to be greatest - those are the years that people get married and have & raise children. By the time that coveted 'senior status' rolls around, the kids are frequently out of the nest. Try raising a family on an assistant professor's salary sometime and you'll have a very different picture of the work/reward balance for your average faculty member.
Moreover, that $80 - $150k spread exists because of differences in fields. And those differences exist because of much broader market forces. Senior faculty make the bigger numbers only in business, engineering, and the sciences - fields in which, with much the same education and skill set, they could go into the private sector and make at least that much money if not more, and much earlier in their careers. You might read Levy's article and think that $150,000 gets you a tweed-jacketed English professor ruminating about Chaucer. In fact, it gets you a very bright engineer who could double his money working for Lockheed Martin, but who is instead teaching the next generation of engineers. At that rate, it's a bargain.
Having been a university administrator, Levy should know better. There are a host of cost factors that drive up the cost of higher education - not the least of which is that, with minimal incentives for efficiency, most universities have no idea what it really costs them to produce a graduate. Soaring faculty salaries are pretty low on this list. The brainpower and motivation to be a university professor, at least as measured by the level of education needed, are at least equal to those needed to be an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor - all of which are paid substantially more.
Ultimately, markets really do sort these things out. If enough people think higher education is too expensive to be worth it, they will seek alternatives - and universities will be forced to find ways to be more efficient. If enough people think that watching football live and in person is important, they will shell out significant money to freeze on hard seats in a stadium somewhere. And it isn't clear, given taxpayer subsidies for stadiums and similar things, which of those markets gets more public subsidy dollars. But you don't see the President, or the Washington Post, fulminating about how much Tim Tebow gets paid to be moved from team to team.
People ultimately choose career paths in life based on a combination of things: money, interest, skill set, geography, family. We live in a system where, if you don't like the result of your choices, sometimes you can change them - many do. Once you have a WaPo op-ed or two, maybe a book or a good resume, you can become a public speaker - which pays $5000 minimum for talking for an hour or two. Former university presidents rake in substantial sums in "consulting fees". Does David Levy partake in any of this? I have no idea. But I'm guessing that he probably doesn't want us looking at his compensation - why he feels he needs to attack the money made by his former employees is beyond me.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Perspective on Questions of National Security
I first got interested in international politics in the mid-1980s. Back then, the Cold War was the question in international relations. This was partly because we were Americans, and the Soviets were our chief concern, and this caused us to overlook all sorts of other issues going on around the world (poverty and development, growing environmental problems, regional conflicts) that weren't related to the Cold War rivalry. But it was also because the question at the center of the Cold War was fundamental: the survival of the human race or its extinction in a nuclear war.
It seems almost quaint now, but the IR field back then was dominated by the question of interstate war and the logic of nuclear deterrence and escalation. We argued about arms control and deterrent force structures and the nature of crises because we had the feeling that if leaders got any of these things wrong, we could all die. And we weren't wrong about that - it was true.
I just redrafted the syllabus for my international conflict class the other day - a course I've been teaching, in one form or another, for 15 years. Like everything else, academic fashions change alongside broader social concerns. Nobody writes about nuclear war, or even interstate war, much anymore. There's a lot about terrorism, and conflicts over resources, and refugees, and a host of other things. In a sense, that's as it should be - although I do have to remind my students that the nuclear weapons are still there in abundance, even if we don't do duck-and-cover drills anymore.
What I find more interesting than the change in scholarship, however, is the lack of change among politicians. In this election year, presidential candidates have been falling over each other in an outbidding effort to be the "tough guy" who can handle the life-threatening crisis of the day. Their chief concern? Iran.
Iran? Seriously? Although the level of rhetoric that accompanies these thundering speeches about how Iran threatens the stability of the world is little changed from the rhetoric 40 years ago about the Soviets, it no longer makes sense. The fate of the human race does not hang in the balance. A conflict with Iran - even a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel, the worst scenario being discussed - would be an epic tragedy, but would not come close to threatening life across the planet as we know it. It's not that there aren't high stakes here - they're just not nearly as high as they used to be.
So the next time you hear some politician shouting about the "greatest foreign policy crisis of this generation" or some other such nonsense, pause for a moment. Hit the mute button. And recall that there was a time, not so long ago, when the threats were a heck of a lot more serious. Then turn the sound back on and continue laughing at the unintended comedy show of politicians who have lost all perspective.
It seems almost quaint now, but the IR field back then was dominated by the question of interstate war and the logic of nuclear deterrence and escalation. We argued about arms control and deterrent force structures and the nature of crises because we had the feeling that if leaders got any of these things wrong, we could all die. And we weren't wrong about that - it was true.
I just redrafted the syllabus for my international conflict class the other day - a course I've been teaching, in one form or another, for 15 years. Like everything else, academic fashions change alongside broader social concerns. Nobody writes about nuclear war, or even interstate war, much anymore. There's a lot about terrorism, and conflicts over resources, and refugees, and a host of other things. In a sense, that's as it should be - although I do have to remind my students that the nuclear weapons are still there in abundance, even if we don't do duck-and-cover drills anymore.
What I find more interesting than the change in scholarship, however, is the lack of change among politicians. In this election year, presidential candidates have been falling over each other in an outbidding effort to be the "tough guy" who can handle the life-threatening crisis of the day. Their chief concern? Iran.
Iran? Seriously? Although the level of rhetoric that accompanies these thundering speeches about how Iran threatens the stability of the world is little changed from the rhetoric 40 years ago about the Soviets, it no longer makes sense. The fate of the human race does not hang in the balance. A conflict with Iran - even a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel, the worst scenario being discussed - would be an epic tragedy, but would not come close to threatening life across the planet as we know it. It's not that there aren't high stakes here - they're just not nearly as high as they used to be.
So the next time you hear some politician shouting about the "greatest foreign policy crisis of this generation" or some other such nonsense, pause for a moment. Hit the mute button. And recall that there was a time, not so long ago, when the threats were a heck of a lot more serious. Then turn the sound back on and continue laughing at the unintended comedy show of politicians who have lost all perspective.
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