Data from the Global State of Peer Review report for 2013–17 68.5 million hours spent reviewing globally each year 16.4 days is the median review time 5 hours is the median time spent writing each review 477 words is the average length of review reports 10% of reviewers are responsible for 50% of peer reviews 41% of survey respondents see peer review as part of their job 75% of journal editors...
Beware the algorithm
[UPDATE: Aviso Retention was purchased by Watermark, and one of their media specialists has been harassing me to update my post to reflect that. I’m not sure why, because as the post below makes clear, the product is worthless; they claim they can predict student performance before classes begin, but his analysis showed that their model sucked. You’d almost be better off flipping a...
Colleges publicly offer to match tuition at rival schools
This has been going on for years in secret, as institutions track the pricing of their peers (when I was in IR, the most common question I heard was, “What are other schools doing?”) and by negotiating privately with admitted students. Now it’s finally in the open: Escalating the heated battle for students, some private colleges are offering to match public in-state tuition...
ASHE has become a woke joke
A colleague sent this to me. They searched the latest Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) conference program for the following terms, to see how many sessions came up: qualitative = 74 identity = 69 diversity = 46 inclusion = 27 oppress = 23 critical race = 22 privilege = 21 quantitative = 19 student affairs = 16 consciousness = 15 social justice = 13 regression = 13 white...
Gary Pike and Jenny Lee are incompetent and disingenuous
The Review of Higher Ed has taken the unprecedented decision to suspend consideration of manuscripts due to a backlog of accepted manuscripts that need to be published over the next couple of years. The supposed reason? They are having a hard time finding reviewers (see here and here). A simple thought experiment shows why this is false. Suppose the situation with reviewers suddenly grew so...
“Social justice is … snitch culture”
From “I Was the Mob Until the Mob Came for Me”: In my previous life, I was a self-righteous social justice crusader. I would use my mid-sized Twitter and Facebook platforms to signal my wokeness on topics such as LGBT rights, rape culture, and racial injustice. Many of the opinions I held then are still opinions that I hold today. But I now realize that my social-media hyperactivity...
Finland has both a superior education system and a superior drinking system
I had no idea I was acting Finnish all these years: The name says it all, or most of it, anyway; päntsdrunk means to drink an alcoholic beverage in your pants — specifically your underpants, and it’s picking up interest in the U.S. There’s even a new book out called “Päntsdrunk: Kalsarikanni: The Finnish Path to Relaxation” by Miska Rantanen, indicating that this seemingly...
Genes explain as much variation in educational attainment as income
Over the past five years, Benjamin has been part of an international team of researchers identifying variations in the human genome that are associated with how many years of education people get. In 2013, after analyzing the DNA of 101,000 people, the team found just three of these genetic variants. In 2016, they identified 71 more after tripling the size of their study. Now, after scanning the...
Pre-K program advocates try to prevent research from being published
I had the opportunity to study under Lipsey when he was one of the instructors at the IES CRT Summer Institute. That he of all people had to deal with this is really depressing. Do not question the narrative that all educational spending and programs are double-plus good! We must think of the children! We believe that most people will agree that society has an obligation to prevent or ameliorate...
More states opting to ‘robo-grade’ student essays by computer
“I’ve been working on this now for about 25 years, and I feel that … the time is right and it’s really starting to be used now,” says Peter Foltz, a research professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He’s also vice president for research for Pearson, the company whose automated scoring program graded some 34 million student essays on state and national...