No Extra Credit for You!

An interesting exercise.  I may try this in the fall for my large "Intro to PE" class, especially since there is no risk of actually having to give out any extra credit given how people will react.

The story.

The bottom line:  The "question"... Click for an even more self-interested answer.

The obvious response is that in classes that are small, and communicate, they have some chance of solving this.  But in large classes, with anonymous responses and secret scoring....not much risk to the prof., I'd say...

Grow Up

If you can't handle comic books, perhaps college isn't the right place for you yet.

ATSRTWT

The diner scene Doctor Dee from The Sandman is pretty rough, but nothing a high school kid shouldn't be able to handle.

Petitioning the school to block other students from learning from materials you happen to find objectionable? There's a word for that. A naughty word. It begins with 'T.'

Shame on you Ms. Shultz. If you can muster any.

Coercion and External Costs: Auckland Beast With Two Backs Edition

From our old pal Eric Crampton, something I gather must be a "problem" for undergrads: noisy dorm room canoodling. The GTM had a piece here a while back on side payments for dorm rooms at Duke. The relevant take-away from that story is that room accommodations for students tend to be part of bundled contracts: they're tied to attendance, and typically, no one raises a stink when the housing department leans a little to the thuggish side.

And why should anyone, so long as the conditions aren't too gulag-ish? The kids are out of the house for the first time in their lives, so they're happy. The parents just got one of their rooms back to use for their own externality generation, so they're happy, and the community sure doesn't want roving gangs of young adults churning the local rental markets, so they're, well, they're not unhappy. Universities can get away with a whole lot more coercion with 18-22 year old kids than they might with, say, people my age.

But officials still should probably let students find their own mutually beneficial solutions to common pool problems, right? Being especially rigid with room assignments seems peculiar. Roth has all these cool matching algorithms to perhaps make initial assignments better. You, know, maybe have something like OKCupid for dorm rooms, and then why not have exchanges or something for the fine tuning?

I suppose this is what they call a bleg: at your university, how do administrators determine room assignments? What could be done to make the process better? Is this even an important problem?

Tales From the Front: Exchange is Immoral!

Step 1: Duke kids are smart, and care about their living arrangements.
Step 2: Duke administrators care about a concept that they made up, though it has no actual meaning. And that concept is "fairness."
Step 3: Duke administrators keep making up new rules and than are appalled, aghast, agonized (and other words starting with letters of the alphabet) Duke students will try to game the system to compete for better room arrangements.
Step 4: Duke administrators then try to change the rules, punish those who follow the rules, etc. If "fair" has ANY meaning, it must surely be "do not constantly change the rules" and "do not punish people who follow the rules, just because you don't like the outcome."

Now, Duke is going to change the rules, to make things more fair. Really.

Some background. Some more background. For years, Duke has allowed groups or blocks to have priority in room selection. The reason is that it is easier to fit in small groups and individuals once the larger groups have been placed. This year the admins decided that it would be better to make it effectively impossible for any except large groups to have any choice whatsoever in room selection. And they wanted to limit the choice even the big groups got, so they instituted a lottery.

One of the features of a lottery, of course, is that the assignment of a group to a space allocation has zero, zilch, bagel, nada to do with how much that group VALUES that location. And since a number of the groups are more or less the same size (and since size is variable, and growth or shrinkage might change allocations in the future), some groups thought about what we economists call "side payments."

For example, suppose one group, an ad hoc group based on some shared interest or goal (the "Baseball Stats Study Group") gets assigned prime dorm space on the main quad on west campus. This is pretty noisy space for an intellectual group, but would be perfect for a group that is a frat.

And suppose a frat, Iota Tappa Kegga, about the same size, gets assigned a space way off the main quad, in a queit corner of the dorms.

Now, the BSSG likes the main quad space, because it is convenient for classes. But it is noisy, and the BSSG-ers value the space only slightly. But the ITKs really value that spot. The ITKs take up a collection, and are willing to offer a payment of $5,000 to make the change.

The result is that BSSG gets the $5,000, which they value much more than the space. The ITKs get the prime space, which they value much more than $5,000. And no one else is harmed, or even effected. (If anything, the noise externality is reduced, since moving ITK to the main quad means nobody will notice their noise over the bedlam already there, whereas if ITK had stayed in the back corner their noise would have bothered the neighbors.)

Here's the cool part. When the crack Duke admins learned of the plans to exchange, that was fine. No objection, the rules allowed for groups to trade, all it took was a majority of each group.

But THEN the staff learned of the plans to offer side payments! Outrage! The Dukites were immediately ill-tempered, impassioned, incensed, indignant, inflamed, infuriated, irascible, irate, ireful, irritable, irritated (and other words starting with letters of the alphabet). This email was sent out (I am totally NOT making this up):

Oct 28, 2011
Hello,

Unfortunately, some behaviors have been brought to our attention that are deeply disturbing. Apparently some groups, very few I am convinced, have included offers of rather large sums of funds to encourage another group to trade houses with them.

To be clear, any exchange of houses found to have involved money as part of the agreement will not be approved. If approval is granted and the exchange of funding comes to light at some point in the future, the approval will be rescinded. Other referrals deemed appropriate for this behavior will be made.

This behavior contradicts the intent and spirit of the opportunity the Duke Houses committee offered groups at this point of the process, an opportunity only considered because several student voices advocated for this chance. Eliminating the opportunity for a trade was considered, but we hate to punish all involved for the actions of a very few. This may change however if this behavior does not cease immediately.

I have head from a number of groups already and there is such excitement out there for what lies ahead in fall, 2012. Let us make that the defining theme of what is happening right now, and not these other actions.

Sincerely, XXX YYYYYYYYYY
Associate Dean for Residence Life
Co-Chair, Duke Houses

There is just so much to like here. "Behaviors"? You mean like making offers that make two parties better, and no one worse, off? "Referrals"? To the police? To Santa Claus? To the kids' priest/rabbi/vicar/imam/sociology professor (depending on their religion)? "Eliminating the opportunity for a trade was considered..." Wow! Trade is fine. Exchange is illegal. (The actual max offered, btw? $15,000!) These Jesuitical distinctions would have had ol' Thomas A himself scratching his Aristotelian head and thinking, "WTF? I mean, WTFingF?"

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UPDATE: I am SO happy. This is exactly the sort of thing I had hoped this blog would encourage. Well done, lad. A good analysis, and good questions.

UPDATE 2: Another student works on the problem. This is what the blog is for, folks!