With the rise of cell phones, text messaging, iPods, and laptops, attention deficit in the classroom grows. To paraphrase Herbert Simon, a wealth of distractions creates a poverty of attention. Students who arrive late or leave early add to the din, disrupting the class flow and imposing a negative externality on students and the instructor. The bigger the class, the greater the external cost (in contrast, an absent student imposes few externalities).

How do instructors handle this source of distraction? For example, are late arrivals and early departures even mentioned in the syllabus? To get some idea, I reviewed a random sample of 40 online syllabi for principles of economics courses taught in the United States (of course, the sample is not random in the sense that it's limited to instructors with a syllabus online, though we might expect this group to be more organized than others). Only seven of the 40, or 17.5%, have anything to say about arriving late or leaving early. By ignoring these external costs, we condone behavior that penalizes those trying to teach and to learn.

When the issue does appear on the syllabus, what's the approach? Since seven syllabi is too small a sample for much analysis, I gathered a second sample consisting of 40 online syllabi of U.S. principles of economics courses that at least mention arriving late or leaving early. I will summarize these policies, starting with the mildest mention to the most severe threat.

The gentlest approach is simply to remind students to be considerate, such as: "If you happen to be late or should you need to leave early, please enter and exit the class with as little disruption as possible." In other words, minimize the external cost of your actions. Six of the 40 syllabi offer reminders only, with no threats of consequences. The next step up requires students to inform the instructor beforehand. For example: "If for some reason you are not able to come to class or you have to come late or leave early you need to contact me before class and let me know." Eight of the 40 syllabi ask for this clearance. But only one of the eight spells out any consequences for failing to get clearance. That one exception is a killer: "If you must leave early to make an appointment, etc., you must inform me at the beginning of class. If you do not so inform me, I will fail you on your next exam."

Two syllabi note that arrive-late/leave-early behavior could influence a student's grade at the margin: "Be aware that at the end of the semester I will look closely at your attendance and punctuality in making my grade decisions!" And on another syllabus, "Moreover, tardy students and those who leave early are disruptive. Such students will lose the benefit of the doubt in case of borderline grades and will be counted as absent if they miss attendance when it is taken."

On 14 of the 40 syllabi, instructors use variants of a point system that allows for a certain number of late arrivals, early departures, and absences before students start feeling the pinch. For example, a student who exceeds the equivalent of three absences could have 15% subtracted from the course grade. On another syllabus, the equivalent of five unexcused absences results in a failing grade. Several syllabi rely on guidelines from the student handbook. Notable is the rate of substitution between late/early behavior and absences. On two syllabi, three late arrivals and/or early departures equal one absence. On three syllabi, two lates/earlies equal one absence. And on eight syllabi it's one to one. Some instructors consider a student as absent if arriving after attendance has been taken.

One syllabus seemed to recognize external costs by penalizing late arrivals but not absences: "For each minute that you are late, you will make a single tick mark in your notebook. At the end of the semester, you will owe the class 10 cents per tick mark. We will gather up all the money, and take a vote as to which charity we shall donate it. (There will be no penalty for missing class altogether. But in a study done to see what factors were most highly correlated with GPA, class attendance ranked highest.)" An alternative more consistent with the external costs involved might be to award the cash fines to students who weren't late.

We know that most any policy beyond gentle persuasion imposes record-keeping costs. I can't say how effectively any of these policies reduces the targeted behavior. Nor can I say anything about an instructor's verbal urgings or threats that never appeared on a syllabus. I experienced an approach in graduate school that never appeared on the syllabus and required no record keeping, but halted late arrivals quickly. If a student arrived late, this particular instructor would stop the lecture, wait for the late-arriver to be seated (thereby focusing on the deed), then start the lecture over from the beginning. The class would groan, heightening the student's embarrassment and sharpening peer pressure to avoid coming late.

From time to time in these pages, I evaluate offbeat resources students might use to help learn economics. The list has included Cliffs Notes for Economics, Economics of Encarta, The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, and, last spring, "Wiki Economics." I turn now to Economics for Dummies (Wiley Publishing, 2005) by Sean Masaki Flynn, an assistant professor at Vassar and a Berkeley Ph.D.

Beginning in 1991 with DOS for Dummies, the series now has more than 1,000 titles, including Golf for Dummies and Puppies for Dummies. Flynn's book follows the Dummies formula: paperback, black and white, short "get-in, get-out" stand-alone sections, non-threatening headings (e.g., "Supply and Demand Made Easy"), irreverent cartoons, and several "top-ten" lists. Editors also homogenize the writing by, among other things, addressing the reader as "you" and the author as "I," and avoiding the passive voice and the future tense. The target audience includes "high school or college students" looking for help with an economics course (p. 4).

Eighteen chapters and an 80-term glossary plus an index (but no chapter summaries) appear in 362 generously spaced pages. Professor Flynn generally displays a firm grasp of economics, good intuition, and much of what he writes is fine, but he seems hemmed in by the Dummies formula (who wouldn't be?). The material is fairly conventional, though the coverage is uneven. For example, there are twice as many micro chapters as macro chapters.

Since the Dummies series features top-ten lists, I'll offer my own top ten suggestions for improving Economics for Dummies. Given the sort of editorial meat grinder these books go through, most of my suggestions may be better directed at the editorial sausage-makers than at Professor Flynn.

1. Don't promise an "in-and-out," lateral presentation when you can't deliver. In the introduction, the author claims, "This book is set up so that you can jump in anywhere and understand what you're reading. For example: Want to get the skinny on how the Federal Reserve changes interest rates to stimulate the economy and fight recession? Jump right to Chapter 7" (p. 6). OK, so I jumped to Chapter 7. But once there, I am stopped cold by this "tip": "If you haven't read Chapter 6, I encourage you to do so before tackling this chapter" (p. 124). Because much of economics builds on itself, the presentation must necessarily be more linear than lateral. Economics is not golf or puppies.

2. Don't claim in the title the book is for dummies, when it's clearly not. Of course, the selling point is that if this book is for dummies then surely a struggling student would find it helpful. But the title misleads. Again, in the introduction: "I wrote this book assuming some things about you: You're sharp, thoughtful, and interested in how the world works…. You're not totally intimidated by numbers, facts, and figures. Indeed, you welcome them because you like to have things proven to you rather than taking them on faith…."(p. 4). So the author assumes the reader is no dummy, and some of the book reflects that. For example, the spending multiplier is relatively sophisticated and all seven of a firm's short-run costs get introduced. Ironically, the book's efforts to simplify matters often eliminate clarifying steps, making the results harder to follow, as with the AD-AS presentation.

3. Don't promise things will be easy only to have to backpedal when they're not. Once material becomes tougher than advertised, Flynn must reassure readers with such balm as "Before you start hyperventilating, let me explain what these things are" (p. 102). "Confused? Stick with me"(p. 129). And "If you think I'm speaking in tongues right now, bear with me" (p.142).

4. Careful with the trendy language. Words such as "hip," "bogus," and "gross" may have passed their use-by date. For example, Flynn writes that he doesn't like Cherry Garcia ice cream "because I think it's gross" (p. 153). Sounds like dated Valspeak.

5. Ditto with cute and funny. "Farmer Babbage grows cabbage." "[T]he LRAS is a vertical line-it isn't a curve at all! (Do you feel cheated?)" … "Still don't believe me? You're a tough audience. Keep reading-I'm going to convince you yet!" (p. 103).

6. Avoid simplification that borders on tautology. For example, "[T]he AD curve slopes downward…because there's an inverse relationship between the price level and the amount of stuff that people want to buy….The downward slope of the AD curve captures the fact that at lower prices people buy more"(p. 102). Such an "explanation" is indeed simple, but perhaps too simple.

7. Flesh out and update the book's web site. Flynn claims to offer a "huge amount of information" at the book's online site (www.learn-economics.com). This supplementary material is organized by chapter, but half the chapters offer nothing at all, and some of the rest need updating (Greenspan still heads the Fed, and at least one in six web links have gone dark).

8. Don't pander to students by stereotyping economists. According to Flynn (or his editors), this book offers the straight dope on economics, untainted by "some pinhead with a Ph.D." (p.4). Flynn also remarks that "...like most economists, I'm not actually very hip" (p. 289). The cartoons reinforce the economist-as-nerd stereotype.

9. In tables and figures, watch out for the little things. Small slips can confound students. For example, Table 3-2 identifies production possibilities by number, but the PPF in Figure 3-1, on the next page, identifies some of these combinations by letter and the rest simply as points. Figure 6-2 offers a stylized sketch of the business cycle, showing expansions as vertical portions of a wavy line-that is, expansions occur instantly. And the faint line in Figure 5-2 underscores one problem with printing only in black and shades of grey.

10. Oh, and one more thing: lay off the booze. Beer is one of three items in the "collegiate price index" (p. 88) and later serves as a key example in demonstrating a consumer's marginal utility (pp. 182-192). Although Flynn's consumer gets a stomachache from a ninth slice of pizza, even a tenth pint of beer yields positive marginal utility. No mention is made of the effects of so much alcohol, but ten pints would boost most anyone's blood-alcohol level to double the legal limit for driving. Call me a wet blanket, but large quantities of beer may not be the best example for the target audience-high school and college students.

THE GRAPEVINE

The Fall 2006 issue of The Teaching Economist reviewed student evaluations of economists appearing on RateMyProfessors.com. Economists teaching at small, elite colleges did better than economists at Ivy institutions, public universities, and two-year colleges. John Nye of Washington University in St. Louis writes: "I was struck by the results for the elite schools. I wonder if part of the story is that these schools have brighter, more self-selected students. And brighter, more motivated students are more likely to look with favor on teaching in general (of course, controlling for easiness, professor's looks, etc.). I notice that as our own student body has improved in quality over the years, so have my course ratings. Though I might like to think that I have learned more about teaching, I also think that our students are better prepared to deal with intellectually stimulating work and don't just expect to be entertained. One more point. I think that Econ is generally a tougher subject. At a large, non-elite school, there is more self-selection between courses, so I would expect economists at non-elites to suffer a "hardness" penalty. This would flatten the relative ratings at the elites because of the relative homogeneity of the student bodies (econ vs. non-econ) and widen it at the big schools." My one reservation about these explanations is that students at the Ivy schools are also smart and may not be looking to be entertained. Yet Ivy economists seemed to do the worst in the overall ratings, especially when we factor in that, as the "hottest" faculty of the bunch, they should have gotten a natural lift in their evaluations.

Also in my RateMyProfessors.com discussion of student evaluations, economists rated higher in overall quality were judged to be easier than those rated lower in overall quality. Michael McPherson of the University of North Texas finds, based on observations from 609 economics classes taught by 35 different instructors over eight and a half academic years, that instructors can "buy" higher student evaluation scores by awarding higher grades but only in principles courses. Tenured or tenure-track faculty receive substantially better evaluations than other teachers. And larger class size has a significantly negative effect on evaluations. "Determinants of How Students Evaluate Teachers" appeared in the Winter 2006 issue of the Journal of Economics Education.

Along similar lines, Laura Langbein of American University looked at all 7,686 courses taught there between the Fall 2000 and the Spring 2003 to see if faculty who award higher grades get better teaching evaluations. She finds that actual grades have a significant, positive effect on evaluations. The results hold up even after any possible endogeneity between evaluations and actual grade is taken into account. She concludes that students, faculty, and university administrators are engaged in an individually rational but socially destructive game. Evaluations send a faulty signal of teaching quality and grades send a faulty signal of a student's future performance on the job. "Management by Results: Student Evaluation of Faculty Teaching and the Mismeasurement of Performance" can be found at http://www.pubchoicesoc.org/papers2005/langbein.pdf

Dick Schiming of Minnesota State, Mankato, writes that he finally got around to reading I Am Charlotte Simmons, Tom Wolfe's novel set at an elite liberal arts college. He would like to share the following excerpt: "[B]ut if you want to be cool, you don't show it, you don't say it, you don't even let on. A cool guy-and I've seen this happen-can secretly work his ass off five-no, four-nights a week at the library, but he has to make light of it if anybody catches on. You know what the favorite major of the cool guy is? Econ. Econ is fireproof, if you know what I mean. It's practical. You can't possibly be taking it because you really love economics (p. 378)." Professor Schiming observes that at elite schools students often choose economics because it is the only business-related major available, so Wolfe's students major in economics for pragmatic, career reasons. Professor Schiming adds that Minnesota State has a college of business so students interested in a business career are more likely to major in marketing, management, finance, or accounting. "As a result, most of the econ majors are majors because of their inherent fascination, appreciation, and/or love of the discipline. When I teach our senior seminar, we talk early on in the semester about why they became economics majors. While none ever starts out as econ majors, they always tell me that they soon came to understand the power of the economic way of thinking. In some ways, it is a rather pure emotion as most of them are unsure or unaware of the employment opportunities. They came to econ and stayed because of the inherent attraction of the discipline."

This spring, William Becker of Indiana University is offering "Teaching Economics to Undergraduates,"a course aimed at graduate students in economics. The class meets weekly for two and a half hours and is required of those leading discussion sections. The focus is on instruction, organization, and assessment. His syllabus can be found at http://www.indiana.edu/~teaching/allabout/prepare/syllabi/E502.pdf.

Odds and Ends

The AEA's website for undergraduate economics is now up at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/AEA/students/index.htm. According to the introduction, "This website provides an overview of the skills, the literature, and the issues found in modern economics. It also provides information about careers, graduate study, and other opportunities for undergraduates." Ten economists developed the site, with Malcolm Getz of Vanderbilt as site director (he has also directed undergraduate studies in economics at Vanderbilt since 1996). The home page links to some original material, such as "What Is Economics," and to many economic sites. More than a dozen major headings link to a variety of resources. For example, "Programs" connects to hundreds of undergraduate economics programs in the United States and Canada. "Fields" presents the JEL classification system with links to 24 field descriptions in Wikipedia. "Opportunities" offers sources for summer study and research, and outlets for presentations. And "Skills" explores the talents needed to succeed in economics, including a section on writing well. The AEA site will become a must-stop for undergraduates interested in the discipline.

Who is the richest person ever to have earned a graduate degree in economics? Warren Buffet has an M.A. in economics from Columbia in 1951. Someone who invested $10,000 in Berkshire Hathaway in 1965, when Buffet took control, would now be worth more than $50 million. Worth $42 billion in the latest Forbes listing (second to the $50 billion of Bill Gates, a Harvard dropout), "The Sage of Omaha" and huge philanthropist still lives in the house he bought three decades ago for $31,500 and until last September still drove a 2001 Lincoln Town Car (it has since been sold at a charity auction for $73,200).

The San Francisco Fed's educational resources include "Ask Dr. Econ" at http://www.frbsf.org/education/activities/drecon/askecon.cfm. The search engine tries to find a match for any question by answering a similar question that has been asked in the past. But it's pretty crude. My questions yielded answers that were not really close.

The first-ever National Assessment of Educational Progress in Economics was administered to students in grade 12 from January to March 2006. If the reporting follows the recent exams in science, test results will become available sometime this spring.

RateMyProfessors.com is being acquired by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns MTV, VH1, and Comedy Central.

The full set of Milton Friedman's video series "Free to Choose" is now available for free at http://www.ideachannel.tv. Included are both the 1980 original series and the 1990 updates, with an introduction by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"The seeker of truth should be humbler than the dust. Only then, and not 'til then, will he have a glimpse of truth."-Gandhi

"I find it useful to remember that everybody lives by selling something."-Robert Louis Stevenson

"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."-Charles Darwin

Acknowledgments: For helpful comments on a draft of this issue, I thank John Carey, Sarah Greber, Dennis Hanseman, Charles Martie, Stephen Miller, and Susan Smart.

If you have developed any attention-getting examples, ways to "sensationalize" economic ideas, useful resources on the Internet, or more generally, ways to teach just for the fun of it, please share these with colleagues in “The Grapevine” by sending them to:

William McEachern, Editor
The Teaching Economist
Department of Economics
University of Connecticut
341 Mansfield Road , Unit 1063
Storrs , CT 06269-1063

e-mail: william.mceachern@uconn.edu

Electronic versions of all issues of The Teaching Economist are available at www.thomsonedu.com/economics . If you have not yet asked to receive a hard copy of this semiannual newsletter, compliments of Cengage South-Western, or if you need to change your address, please write to:

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 Return to Contents of Issue 32, Spring 2007