Guten Tag from Freiburg, where I am here for two purposes: debating methodology in Southeast Asian studies, and consuming Schweinefleish in various forms (so far: Speck, Knoblauchsalami, Bratwurst, and I’ve only been here for 16 hours). As I posted previously,…
Here are some stylized facts about Chinese universities. Cheating among students is rampant Faculty turnover is high Instructors are overworked Administration and oversight of teaching and pedagogy is at best weak Here are some stylized facts about U.S. higher education Everyone…
I recently finished a new paper on context and method in Southeast Asian politics. I wrote it for a conference next week on area and method in Southeast Asian studies at Uni Freiburg. Here is the abstract: This paper summarizes my reflections…
At this time of year I find myself talking to students considering PhD programs who are interested in my own advice on whether or not pursuing a PhD is a good idea. One question that has come up repeatedly has…
Ahem. Today’s SMBC contains a linguistics error. There is no glottal stop in “pet dog,” “mint condition,” “rat trap,” “internet porn,” or “elephant gun.” Those are unreleased alveolar stops. I do think that there’s a glottal stop in “Bat Man.”…
Via Marc Bellemare, an interesting paper (PDF) by Bold et al. on “scaling up” randomized controlled trials, with an application to educational reform in Kenya. The general problem here is that RCTs are a great way to identify the effects of…
This is my job! It’s early May, and that means that this semester’s teaching is finally done. Phew. This has been the heaviest teaching semester that I’ve ever had: one 65+ person lecture plus two 15-person seminars (both of which…
