The Economics of Higher Education, Part 1: Science Is Hard
(Photo: Martin Lopatka) If you are the sort of person who worries that the U.S. is not producing enough college graduates with science degrees, it’s worth wondering exactly why that…
Richard Prum says there’s a lot that traditional evolutionary biology can’t explain. He thinks a neglected hypothesis from Charles Darwin — and insights from contemporary queer theory — hold the…
How psychologist Dan Gilbert went from high school dropout to Harvard professor, found the secret of joy, and inspired Steve Levitt’s divorce….
He has been a lawyer, an instructor at the F.B.I. Academy, the owner of a frozen-yogurt chain, and a winner of the TV show Survivor. Today, Kwon works at Google,…
Stephen Dubner’s conversations with members of the San Francisco 49ers offense, recorded for Freakonomics Radio episode No. 350, part of the “Hidden Side of Sports” series….
Ellen Wiebe is a physician who helps seriously ill patients end their lives in Canada, where assisted suicide is legal. Is death a human right?
(Photo: Martin Lopatka) If you are the sort of person who worries that the U.S. is not producing enough college graduates with science degrees, it’s worth wondering exactly why that…
…policies. Price does appear to be a policy lever through which state governments can alter the field composition of the workforce they are training with the public higher education system….
…in general obtain a better education. The problem is that fees never cover average costs. Taxpayers in the net-receiving countries subsidize the education of net-sending countries’ students. I don’t see…
Trump says it would destroy us. Biden needs the voters who support it (especially the Bernie voters). The majority of millennials would like it to replace capitalism. But what is…
Levitt’s skepticism notwithstanding, it seems there may be a good reason for some people to get tattoos. David B. Wiseman, a psychologist, showed 128 undergraduate students photographs of tattooed and…
How do kids learn about money? What’s the big problem with education? And who made Raiders of the Lost Ark?…
…who can’t get easy access to credit—who are most likely to raise their spending if they get the extra dollars. Education Policy: Perhaps folks think that forgiving educational loans will…
Trump says it would destroy us. Sanders says it will save us. The majority of millennials would like it to replace capitalism. But what is “it”? We bring in the…
…beginning in the 1980s: We propose the rise of crack cocaine markets as an explanation for the end to the convergence in black-white educational outcomes beginning in the mid-1980s. After…
Palliative physician B.J. Miller asks: Is there a better way to think about dying? And can death be beautiful?…
…and engineering students graduate able to “work hard” but cannot solve problems expertly and creatively? What would an educational system look like that took seriously the principles of deliberate practice?…
…accident statistics since the program was rolled out in 2008 seemed defensive – so I started to look up Connecticut statistics online. Having attended 2 hours of the training, I…
Palliative physician B.J. Miller asks: Is there a better way to think about dying? And can death be beautiful?…
(Photo: USAG- Humphreys) When it comes to educational attainment, good intentions aren’t enough. New research, led by Liz Todd of Newcastle University, looks at schemes to increase the educational attainment…
Beyond the immediate casualties, school shootings have costs — for survivors, and for the rest of us….
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
The ethologist and conservationist discusses the thrill of observing chimpanzees in the wild, the value of challenging orthodoxy, and why dying is her next great adventure.
The primatologist discusses the thrill of observing chimpanzees in the wild, the value of challenging orthodoxy, and why dying is her next great adventure….
Evidence from Nazi Germany and 1940’s America (and pretty much everywhere else) shows that discrimination is incredibly costly — to the victims, of course, but also the perpetrators. One modern…
Tom Dart is transforming Cook County’s jail, reforming evictions, and, with Steve Levitt, trying a new approach to electronic monitoring….
We seem to have decided that ethnic food tastes better when it’s served by people of that ethnicity (or at least something close). Does this make sense — and is…
We tend to think of tragedies as a single terrible moment, rather than the result of multiple bad decisions. Can this pattern be reversed? We try — with stories about…
…the same? Essentially, coaches appear to receive similar training, face similar information sets, and ultimately make similar decisions. The results – perhaps not surprising when you consider these similarities –…
…being very similar; if we are similar in one trait — if we have similar tastes but attract (or fail to attract) different groups of women, or vice versa —…
