I have earlier gone on record saying that while perhaps it was possible for a person to have planted too many tomato plants by some objective measure, I find it hard to feel that any number would be too many, given that home-grown tomatoes are among the yummiest things ever, particularly with a splash of high-quality balsamic vinegar, and everybody will be your best friend forever if you share your bounty with them (unlike, e.g., zucchini). However, hearing that the number RB planted for this summer is 21 plants...well, that really is a hell of a lot of tomato.
It's even more tomato in other languages:
twenty-one tomato plants
vingt et un plantes de tomate
veintiuno plantas de tomate
einundzwanzig Tomatenpflanzen
Of course, this is just another way of saying to readers in places like Colorado and Oklahoma who had snow this past weekend: Yep, the tomato plants are out; it's already completely and utterly spring here in Austin, baby. I saw scads of blooming bluebonnets next to the parking lot at school today, which has been one of my own personal signs of spring (since we don't have things like "the first robin of spring" here).
I am still trying to convince Leo of how fun it would be for him to pose for the obligatory central Texas "sitting in the bluebonnets" photograph as a good-bye gesture to Austin, but he doesn't seem very interested. (Last time I mentioned it, I thought at first he was nodding, but he was only nodding off.)
Monday, March 30, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
It's Official!
I have just accepted the offer at Most Favored University. I am moving to North Carolina this summer, and, economy willing, so are Robert and Leopold.
Yay!
(It occurs to me that I will need to figure out another name for this place, since MFU is most decidedly not an appropriate pseudonym.)
Yay!
(It occurs to me that I will need to figure out another name for this place, since MFU is most decidedly not an appropriate pseudonym.)
Quote of the Day: Vulture Edition
"Although children had opportunities to learn something about a number of topics [on food producer web sites], the distinction between advertising and education was not always clear. ...Approaches that use a brand character to convey educational material (e.g., Twinkie the Kid describes how much vultures like Twinkies and then lists facts about vultures) are examples. In this particular case, there is the potential that children will learn incorrect information (i.e., that vultures eat Twinkies)."
Moore, Elizabeth S. and Victoria J. Rideout (2007). The online marketing of food to children: is it just fun and games? Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 26 (2), 202-220.
When you think about what vultures actually do eat, it's not clear to me whether including this accurate information would tend to make children more or less attracted to the Twinkies brand. I mean, carrion is pretty nasty, but don't kids often like nasty things? (For instance, remember this?) Perhaps the company is missing out on a great opportunity to fascinate/disgust kids with photos of vultures eating dead stuff.
Moore, Elizabeth S. and Victoria J. Rideout (2007). The online marketing of food to children: is it just fun and games? Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, 26 (2), 202-220.
When you think about what vultures actually do eat, it's not clear to me whether including this accurate information would tend to make children more or less attracted to the Twinkies brand. I mean, carrion is pretty nasty, but don't kids often like nasty things? (For instance, remember this?) Perhaps the company is missing out on a great opportunity to fascinate/disgust kids with photos of vultures eating dead stuff.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Cost-Benefit of an Advanced English Degree for Future Teachers
One thing that is commonly discussed on the Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE) grad school forum is the wisdom of getting an MA or PhD in English, given that one is primarily interested in teaching. There is also much discussion about how hard it is to find full-time community college work with an MA and how even a huge proportion of PhDs have trouble getting a tenure-track position in 4 year college and instead end up teaching community college, high school, or leaving academia entirely. A lot of people appear to view the MA (and to some extent the PhD) as a way to get into teaching without having to deal with high school students or the K-12 bureaucracy. The number of people who want to do research rather than teaching appears to me to be rather lower than I am used to in other disciplines (but there are so many biases affecting this perception that I can't vouch for its accuracy at all).
Yesterday, I mentioned to Robert that people talk a lot about this topic, but I've never seen anyone run the numbers on it to see if and under what conditions it makes financial sense to pursue an MA or PhD in English if one's goal is teaching. But surely the data exists to attempt to quantify the effect on one's lifetime earnings of getting one of these degrees. And following a line of fairly traditional microeconomic thinking, one could look at the differences in lifetime earnings of people who took their BA directly to the high school market and those who have an advanced degree and try for the higher education market; if an MA or a PhD is a losing proposition financially, you could think of that difference as the amount of money people are willing to give up (on average) to teach college students and not high school students (or to get the "prestige" of being "Doctor Somebody" or a "professor" even if it means teaching at Crapola County Community College in Crapola, North Dakota).
So we (read: mostly Robert) ran some numbers comparing different teaching outcomes following a graduate degree versus going immediately into high school teaching with a BA, which I consider the "default" career path of an English major who wants to teach.
We used the salary information for Austin ISD and Austin Community College to represent typical incomes for high school and community college/4 year college teachers respectively. Interesting to note was that the pay for English teachers at Austin CC is higher than the average salaries reported in the CHE's own research on pay for professors in 4 year colleges during 2007-2008. Austin CC instructors make 17% more as assistant professors, 9% more as associate professors, and 13% more as full professors than do 4 year college instructors at those ranks, on average. Robert suggests a couple of reasons for this: Austin CC is known to pay well relative to other community colleges, and community colleges typically use a single payscale for professors in all departments. In 4 year colleges, pay differs a lot based on the department and English professors tend to be at the lower end of this pay scale. So in our analysis, the salary numbers for college teachers is in the range of fair to generous.
***Finding 1: Getting hired by a "good" community college like Austin CC may be more lucrative for an English professor than getting hired by a typical 4 year university.
To generate the lifetime earning numbers, we made the following assumptions:
People will work (or be in grad school) for 43 years following their BA, then retire (assumes people get their BA at the standard age of 22).
The discount rate applied to the income stream to calculate the present value is 3%, a conservative estimate, and is used for all scenarios.
Masters degrees take 2 years to complete. (There are a few programs that let you do a BA/MA in five years, but we are focusing on those people who are graduating with their BA and contemplating grad school. And the number of those five year programs is small enough to ignore.)
Doctoral degrees take 8 years to complete. Doesn't this seem high? Well, it does take a long time to finish a PhD in the humanities. Data on 2000-2001 doctoral students in English says the average time to the PhD is 8.2 years.
Significantly, we assume that both MA and PhD students are funded with full tuition waivers and assistantships/stipends of $8,500 and $14,500 respectively. We could easily change these numbers to reflect higher stipends or people having to pay for their own education.
The average MA or PhD holder takes 3 years of adjuncting at the CC or 4 year college level before getting a full-time tenure track position. A study from 1995 reports that the average time on the non-tenure track before getting on tenure-track is 2.8 years. (If anything, I would expect that number to be higher now.)
Scenarios with lifetime earnings in present value:
People who go directly from their highest degree into high school teaching:
BA to H.S. - $1,450,000
MA to H.S. - $1,380,000
PhD to H.S. - $1,140,000
***Finding 2: As many K-12 teachers have noted, getting a graduate degree does not pay for itself. The small increase in annual pay does not make up for the two (or eight) years of lost earnings while working on the degree. A teacher who pursues a masters degree part-time, while teaching, will face a different cost-benefit. They will not forgo their teaching salary, but will probably have to pay for the degree (since they will not be available to earn their keep by teaching English 101 at their university).
People who go directly from their highest degree to a tenure-track CC or 4 year college position (aka The Luckiest Ducks):
MA to CC/4 year - $1,510,000
PhD to CC/4 year - $1,410,000
People who adjunct for 3 years before getting a tenure-track position (The Relatively Lucky Ducks):
MA 3 year adjunct - $1,460,000
PhD 3 year adjunct - $1,350,000
People who adjunct full-time for their entire career (The Unlucky Ducks):
MA adjunct - $1,000,000
PhD adjunct - $890,000
***Finding 3: The MA or PhD who adjuncts 3 years before landing a tenure-track job or gets a tenure-track job immediately will be better off financially than the MA or PhD who goes directly to high school teaching.
***Finding 4: However, an MA or PhD who does not get on the tenure-track but adjuncts full-time will make less money in their lifetime than their counterpart who goes to high school teaching. A full-time MA or PhD adjunct will make a lot less than if she had taken her BA directly to high school: an MA adjunct makes only 69% as much as a BA high school teacher and a PhD adjunct makes only 61% as much. And that's after going through the hell of writing a dissertation.
Whether it makes financial sense for the typical English BA to go to grad school depends on how likely they believe getting a tenure-track position with their advanced degree will be.
***Finding 5: From an economic standpoint, the typical PhD college instructor will make less than the typical BA high school teacher no matter what the chances are of getting into an average university. Even if the PhD has a 100% chance of getting a tenure-track job immediately, she gives up $38,500 over her lifetime relative to being a BA high school teacher. If she is like the average person and takes 3 years of adjuncting before getting tenure-track, she gives up $99,400 over her lifetime. A 1995 study of English PhDs found that after 10 years, 20% of college instructors are adjuncting; with an 80% chance of adjucting 3 years then tenure-track and a 20% chance of full-time adjuncting, she gives up $191,000. Of course, a person might feel that sacrificing this amount of money is worth it for the lifestyle/prestige advantage over being a high school teacher.
***Finding 6: MA college instructors will earn more than BA high school teachers if they get onto the tenure-track but will earn less if they do not. If she has a 100% chance of immediately getting a tenure-track job, she will earn $62,100 more than if she had become a BA high school teacher. But for the more realistic scenario of 80% chance of 3 years adjuncting then tenure-track and 20% chance of adjuncting the entire time, she will give up $81,200.
My take-away from this (admittedly quick and dirty) analysis:
Both the MA and a PhD are losing propositions for the typical person relative to skipping grad school and becoming a high school teacher. Getting the MA (esp. if fully funded) might make financial sense if you can get into a community college relatively quickly (or, possibly, if you can get into a well-paying "prep" school that prefers teachers with grad degrees). As for the PhD...well, I hope that you get a large stipend (say, over $30,000) or attend a particularly strong program that gets you into a much higher-than-average paying university or you really place a large value on having a PhD or teaching college students instead of high school students because the typical person pays a premium for opting out of the high school teaching career.
Yesterday, I mentioned to Robert that people talk a lot about this topic, but I've never seen anyone run the numbers on it to see if and under what conditions it makes financial sense to pursue an MA or PhD in English if one's goal is teaching. But surely the data exists to attempt to quantify the effect on one's lifetime earnings of getting one of these degrees. And following a line of fairly traditional microeconomic thinking, one could look at the differences in lifetime earnings of people who took their BA directly to the high school market and those who have an advanced degree and try for the higher education market; if an MA or a PhD is a losing proposition financially, you could think of that difference as the amount of money people are willing to give up (on average) to teach college students and not high school students (or to get the "prestige" of being "Doctor Somebody" or a "professor" even if it means teaching at Crapola County Community College in Crapola, North Dakota).
So we (read: mostly Robert) ran some numbers comparing different teaching outcomes following a graduate degree versus going immediately into high school teaching with a BA, which I consider the "default" career path of an English major who wants to teach.
We used the salary information for Austin ISD and Austin Community College to represent typical incomes for high school and community college/4 year college teachers respectively. Interesting to note was that the pay for English teachers at Austin CC is higher than the average salaries reported in the CHE's own research on pay for professors in 4 year colleges during 2007-2008. Austin CC instructors make 17% more as assistant professors, 9% more as associate professors, and 13% more as full professors than do 4 year college instructors at those ranks, on average. Robert suggests a couple of reasons for this: Austin CC is known to pay well relative to other community colleges, and community colleges typically use a single payscale for professors in all departments. In 4 year colleges, pay differs a lot based on the department and English professors tend to be at the lower end of this pay scale. So in our analysis, the salary numbers for college teachers is in the range of fair to generous.
***Finding 1: Getting hired by a "good" community college like Austin CC may be more lucrative for an English professor than getting hired by a typical 4 year university.
To generate the lifetime earning numbers, we made the following assumptions:
People will work (or be in grad school) for 43 years following their BA, then retire (assumes people get their BA at the standard age of 22).
The discount rate applied to the income stream to calculate the present value is 3%, a conservative estimate, and is used for all scenarios.
Masters degrees take 2 years to complete. (There are a few programs that let you do a BA/MA in five years, but we are focusing on those people who are graduating with their BA and contemplating grad school. And the number of those five year programs is small enough to ignore.)
Doctoral degrees take 8 years to complete. Doesn't this seem high? Well, it does take a long time to finish a PhD in the humanities. Data on 2000-2001 doctoral students in English says the average time to the PhD is 8.2 years.
Significantly, we assume that both MA and PhD students are funded with full tuition waivers and assistantships/stipends of $8,500 and $14,500 respectively. We could easily change these numbers to reflect higher stipends or people having to pay for their own education.
The average MA or PhD holder takes 3 years of adjuncting at the CC or 4 year college level before getting a full-time tenure track position. A study from 1995 reports that the average time on the non-tenure track before getting on tenure-track is 2.8 years. (If anything, I would expect that number to be higher now.)
Scenarios with lifetime earnings in present value:
People who go directly from their highest degree into high school teaching:
BA to H.S. - $1,450,000
MA to H.S. - $1,380,000
PhD to H.S. - $1,140,000
***Finding 2: As many K-12 teachers have noted, getting a graduate degree does not pay for itself. The small increase in annual pay does not make up for the two (or eight) years of lost earnings while working on the degree. A teacher who pursues a masters degree part-time, while teaching, will face a different cost-benefit. They will not forgo their teaching salary, but will probably have to pay for the degree (since they will not be available to earn their keep by teaching English 101 at their university).
People who go directly from their highest degree to a tenure-track CC or 4 year college position (aka The Luckiest Ducks):
MA to CC/4 year - $1,510,000
PhD to CC/4 year - $1,410,000
People who adjunct for 3 years before getting a tenure-track position (The Relatively Lucky Ducks):
MA 3 year adjunct - $1,460,000
PhD 3 year adjunct - $1,350,000
People who adjunct full-time for their entire career (The Unlucky Ducks):
MA adjunct - $1,000,000
PhD adjunct - $890,000
***Finding 3: The MA or PhD who adjuncts 3 years before landing a tenure-track job or gets a tenure-track job immediately will be better off financially than the MA or PhD who goes directly to high school teaching.
***Finding 4: However, an MA or PhD who does not get on the tenure-track but adjuncts full-time will make less money in their lifetime than their counterpart who goes to high school teaching. A full-time MA or PhD adjunct will make a lot less than if she had taken her BA directly to high school: an MA adjunct makes only 69% as much as a BA high school teacher and a PhD adjunct makes only 61% as much. And that's after going through the hell of writing a dissertation.
Whether it makes financial sense for the typical English BA to go to grad school depends on how likely they believe getting a tenure-track position with their advanced degree will be.
***Finding 5: From an economic standpoint, the typical PhD college instructor will make less than the typical BA high school teacher no matter what the chances are of getting into an average university. Even if the PhD has a 100% chance of getting a tenure-track job immediately, she gives up $38,500 over her lifetime relative to being a BA high school teacher. If she is like the average person and takes 3 years of adjuncting before getting tenure-track, she gives up $99,400 over her lifetime. A 1995 study of English PhDs found that after 10 years, 20% of college instructors are adjuncting; with an 80% chance of adjucting 3 years then tenure-track and a 20% chance of full-time adjuncting, she gives up $191,000. Of course, a person might feel that sacrificing this amount of money is worth it for the lifestyle/prestige advantage over being a high school teacher.
***Finding 6: MA college instructors will earn more than BA high school teachers if they get onto the tenure-track but will earn less if they do not. If she has a 100% chance of immediately getting a tenure-track job, she will earn $62,100 more than if she had become a BA high school teacher. But for the more realistic scenario of 80% chance of 3 years adjuncting then tenure-track and 20% chance of adjuncting the entire time, she will give up $81,200.
My take-away from this (admittedly quick and dirty) analysis:
Both the MA and a PhD are losing propositions for the typical person relative to skipping grad school and becoming a high school teacher. Getting the MA (esp. if fully funded) might make financial sense if you can get into a community college relatively quickly (or, possibly, if you can get into a well-paying "prep" school that prefers teachers with grad degrees). As for the PhD...well, I hope that you get a large stipend (say, over $30,000) or attend a particularly strong program that gets you into a much higher-than-average paying university or you really place a large value on having a PhD or teaching college students instead of high school students because the typical person pays a premium for opting out of the high school teaching career.
Monday, March 23, 2009
I Just Want to Scream
I found out today that my latest "brilliant" masters thesis idea has been specifically pointed out as an interesting and important area for future research in a February 2009 journal article by a certain professor at a certain top 10 marketing department. In the discussion, he even mentions the exact same other line of research that had me thinking of this particular idea as a likely improvement on current methods. (I am not willing to be specific because I still hold this glowing, fragile idea protectively against my chest.)
Maybe I should be happy, since this publication sort of validates that it was a good idea. But you know, I already knew it was a good idea. Apparently, it was too good for me to get first crack at it. Not that I know that he is already working on this follow-up project that is almost exactly like the thesis I had in mind, but I feel totally scooped nevertheless. (I mean, god, I was talking to Robert about an affiliated idea to this one just this past Saturday!) I guess I needed to get off my duff a couple of years ago to get to this idea first. Of course, within minutes of reading this introductory paper I had thought of various ways to follow this up and some potentially interesting offshoots, but ... it doesn't feel like my idea anymore. I hope that this feeling of disappointment (bordering at moments on rage) passes soon.
You know how I sometimes like to say that there is nothing wrong with being a researcher who doesn't do ground-breaking work but rather contributes to the science by testing, refining, defining boundary conditions of, etc., other people's big theories? That this is valuable and satisfying work that I would be happy spending my life doing because I just love doing research? Well, that is still my official position, but the punch-in-the-gut feeling I had seeing my idea in print provides evidence that I really do want to do innovative work and have ideas nobody else has thought of yet. And while this idea was never going to cause a paradigm shift a la Martin Seligman, it was something different from what other people are doing in the general field. And yeah, maybe it's somewhat silly to think that one's masters thesis is going to be very competent, let alone inventive, but I still hope that it is both.
Well, my undergraduate psychology advisor assured me that eventually I would have many more ideas than I could ever follow up on myself. So I am going to keep adding to my list of research ideas. Maybe when it's thesis time, one of them will not have been looked at by someone else yet.
Maybe I should be happy, since this publication sort of validates that it was a good idea. But you know, I already knew it was a good idea. Apparently, it was too good for me to get first crack at it. Not that I know that he is already working on this follow-up project that is almost exactly like the thesis I had in mind, but I feel totally scooped nevertheless. (I mean, god, I was talking to Robert about an affiliated idea to this one just this past Saturday!) I guess I needed to get off my duff a couple of years ago to get to this idea first. Of course, within minutes of reading this introductory paper I had thought of various ways to follow this up and some potentially interesting offshoots, but ...
You know how I sometimes like to say that there is nothing wrong with being a researcher who doesn't do ground-breaking work but rather contributes to the science by testing, refining, defining boundary conditions of, etc., other people's big theories? That this is valuable and satisfying work that I would be happy spending my life doing because I just love doing research? Well, that is still my official position, but the punch-in-the-gut feeling I had seeing my idea in print provides evidence that I really do want to do innovative work and have ideas nobody else has thought of yet. And while this idea was never going to cause a paradigm shift a la Martin Seligman, it was something different from what other people are doing in the general field. And yeah, maybe it's somewhat silly to think that one's masters thesis is going to be very competent, let alone inventive, but I still hope that it is both.
Well, my undergraduate psychology advisor assured me that eventually I would have many more ideas than I could ever follow up on myself. So I am going to keep adding to my list of research ideas. Maybe when it's thesis time, one of them will not have been looked at by someone else yet.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
What I Did on My Spring Break
(1) Illness....boo. But I'm feeling mostly better tonight.
(2) Put in my full hours on my job. Discovered that the data is going to be trickier to analyze than I expected. Realized my experience with GLM is kind of longer ago than I remembered. Remembered that I have an in-house statistician. Grinned.
(3) Discovered the Chronicle of Higher Education forums. I've been reading the archives of the 'Grad Life' forum this week and am really appreciating the insight from these people (grad students, professors, and applicants) on the various realities of the grad student experience.
One big take away for me? God I'm more glad than ever that I do not have any desire whatsoever to enter a humanities/soft social sciences field and instead want to do something as practical as a business PhD. Too bad I don't have the background/desire to become an accounting professor (though my financial accounting professor tried to recruit me into their masters of accounting program after my A+ grade) because man, those people make out like bandits. I'm hoping that a marketing PhD will set me up to make out like a slightly crooked tax collector. I'm hoping that a well-regarded masters degree will set me up for that. I am even more thrilled that my masters program is funded.
Other take aways center on the importance of one's advisor, the need to be strategic about applying to grad school and selecting one's area of concentration to position oneself for the job market, the priority of research over coursework in the PhD process, and stuff like some pointers for useful yet cute-looking backpacks.
Hey, this trivial stuff is important! For instance, I am drooling over this one - a laptop bag. If the computer is free, I can justify a pricey bag for carrying it around, right? And wait, I'm employed now. I could pay for this with one good work day. This is a sort of scary line of thinking...must...not...do...that. But actually, I am sort of looking forward to getting a new bag(s) for grad school. My current backpack is a hand-me-down from Robert that is shredding such that the zipper gets stuck on the plastic unless I zip it very carefully and use two hands.
(4) Had a very long, satisfying discussion over iced tea and under sunny skies with my in-house economist with a concentration in labor economics about the many and varied reasons that a job like K-12 teacher does not and probably cannot pay like other careers/professions.
(Note: I know that it is important to many teachers to consider themselves "professionals" rather than some other kind of worker, but I question the wisdom of setting oneself up to be disappointed that one's chosen career does not have the pay-off that the professions like law, medicine, accounting, etc. have. I mean, yes, teaching does require a credential, but so does cutting hair. I say this not to demean teaching, but merely to point out that a great many smart, industrious people doing important work - that requires more advanced training than teaching does - nevertheless do not make lawyer/doctor/CPA salaries.)
This conversation also made me think of an idea about a pilot program that could be tried for reducing teacher drop-out among new (say, first and second year) teachers. I hope to have the time/energy to blog about this later in the week. It is not a cunning plan that cannot fail, but is an idea that I have not yet encountered and that I think would be acceptable to current teachers (unlike most ideas). Stay tuned...
(5) Oh, and I almost forgot, sent emails/letters to the un/under-funded masters programs. I haven't yet officially accepted Most Favored University's offer, but I am almost positive now that I will in the next couple of days. I really need to do this. If nothing else, I am holding on to funding offers that the next person down the list is really going to need to make her own best decision. (At least one of the programs for which I got the highest funding package does not fund all of their students, so this matters.)
(2) Put in my full hours on my job. Discovered that the data is going to be trickier to analyze than I expected. Realized my experience with GLM is kind of longer ago than I remembered. Remembered that I have an in-house statistician. Grinned.
(3) Discovered the Chronicle of Higher Education forums. I've been reading the archives of the 'Grad Life' forum this week and am really appreciating the insight from these people (grad students, professors, and applicants) on the various realities of the grad student experience.
One big take away for me? God I'm more glad than ever that I do not have any desire whatsoever to enter a humanities/soft social sciences field and instead want to do something as practical as a business PhD. Too bad I don't have the background/desire to become an accounting professor (though my financial accounting professor tried to recruit me into their masters of accounting program after my A+ grade) because man, those people make out like bandits. I'm hoping that a marketing PhD will set me up to make out like a slightly crooked tax collector. I'm hoping that a well-regarded masters degree will set me up for that. I am even more thrilled that my masters program is funded.
Other take aways center on the importance of one's advisor, the need to be strategic about applying to grad school and selecting one's area of concentration to position oneself for the job market, the priority of research over coursework in the PhD process, and stuff like some pointers for useful yet cute-looking backpacks.
Hey, this trivial stuff is important! For instance, I am drooling over this one - a laptop bag. If the computer is free, I can justify a pricey bag for carrying it around, right? And wait, I'm employed now. I could pay for this with one good work day. This is a sort of scary line of thinking...must...not...do...that. But actually, I am sort of looking forward to getting a new bag(s) for grad school. My current backpack is a hand-me-down from Robert that is shredding such that the zipper gets stuck on the plastic unless I zip it very carefully and use two hands.
(4) Had a very long, satisfying discussion over iced tea and under sunny skies with my in-house economist with a concentration in labor economics about the many and varied reasons that a job like K-12 teacher does not and probably cannot pay like other careers/professions.
(Note: I know that it is important to many teachers to consider themselves "professionals" rather than some other kind of worker, but I question the wisdom of setting oneself up to be disappointed that one's chosen career does not have the pay-off that the professions like law, medicine, accounting, etc. have. I mean, yes, teaching does require a credential, but so does cutting hair. I say this not to demean teaching, but merely to point out that a great many smart, industrious people doing important work - that requires more advanced training than teaching does - nevertheless do not make lawyer/doctor/CPA salaries.)
This conversation also made me think of an idea about a pilot program that could be tried for reducing teacher drop-out among new (say, first and second year) teachers. I hope to have the time/energy to blog about this later in the week. It is not a cunning plan that cannot fail, but is an idea that I have not yet encountered and that I think would be acceptable to current teachers (unlike most ideas). Stay tuned...
(5) Oh, and I almost forgot, sent emails/letters to the un/under-funded masters programs. I haven't yet officially accepted Most Favored University's offer, but I am almost positive now that I will in the next couple of days. I really need to do this. If nothing else, I am holding on to funding offers that the next person down the list is really going to need to make her own best decision. (At least one of the programs for which I got the highest funding package does not fund all of their students, so this matters.)
Friday, March 20, 2009
Mental Accounting and Me
When I got my official acceptance letter and funding information from Most Favored University, I was pleasantly surprised that in addition to the tuition waiver and teaching assistantship money, I am also getting a laptop computer (which I keep when I graduate).
Of course, this made me pleased, but I realized that it actually made me more pleased to find out I would get $X for the TA and a computer worth $Y than if I had been given a higher than expected assistantship in the sum of $X+Y. I have been planning to buy a laptop computer anyway when I start school so maybe I'm glad I won't have to invest the time in researching different models to make that decision for myself? No, I don't think that's it - I mean, I am happy to outsource the brainy work of investigating the various options to my tech-geek friends. I also am not especially happy because I think there will be some kind of benefit to having the same kind of computer as all my classmates (that may be true but it doesn't account for my reaction to the news).
I think this is just one of those simple situations in which getting a product valued at $Y seems better than getting $Y in cash.
Perhaps in my case, getting a computer from the university puts the computer purchase decision outside of my general purchase framework (i.e. Operation Cheap Ass) and means that I will get a nicer computer than I would have comfortably allowed myself to buy. Or possibly my reaction just reflects how painful it is for me to spend my own money.
Googling suggests that the laptops are Lenovo (once IBM) ThinkPads (which is hilarious to me for reasons that should be obvious to the informed reader).
In any event, this deal gets sweeter all the time.
Of course, this made me pleased, but I realized that it actually made me more pleased to find out I would get $X for the TA and a computer worth $Y than if I had been given a higher than expected assistantship in the sum of $X+Y. I have been planning to buy a laptop computer anyway when I start school so maybe I'm glad I won't have to invest the time in researching different models to make that decision for myself? No, I don't think that's it - I mean, I am happy to outsource the brainy work of investigating the various options to my tech-geek friends. I also am not especially happy because I think there will be some kind of benefit to having the same kind of computer as all my classmates (that may be true but it doesn't account for my reaction to the news).
I think this is just one of those simple situations in which getting a product valued at $Y seems better than getting $Y in cash.
Perhaps in my case, getting a computer from the university puts the computer purchase decision outside of my general purchase framework (i.e. Operation Cheap Ass) and means that I will get a nicer computer than I would have comfortably allowed myself to buy. Or possibly my reaction just reflects how painful it is for me to spend my own money.
Googling suggests that the laptops are Lenovo (once IBM) ThinkPads (which is hilarious to me for reasons that should be obvious to the informed reader).
In any event, this deal gets sweeter all the time.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
