Very excited for Bay Area voters to seppuku the state next year by causing BART to cut 70% of service by July and for Jane Kim to crash the state insurance market if she wins insurance commissioner vs. Ben Allen and then insurers cancel everyone and then no new construction can get financed and nobody can transact anything.

"at a time when President Trump is threatening to demolish American democracy, it’s nothing short of embarrassing that Pelosi would go all out for a candidate who so clearly has neither the experience nor the ideas to meet the gravity of the moment."

The University of California Board of Regents heard presentations on the SAT on Wednesday, specifically on whether it should be re-introduced into freshman admissions. I found the below excerpt from one presentation illuminating: "the statistical power of tests in predicting outcomes does not address whether UC ought to consider expected college success when deciding which students to admit, or to what extent we should" So, it's clear the debate is not centered on whether the SAT predicts college success -- the presenter says so himself. The heart of the debate is this: a UC education is a path to upward mobility, and the anti-SAT faction believe that this golden ticket should be given to those who would benefit from it the most, especially those who they feel have been harmed by society in the past as a form of restorative justice. If you hold this viewpoint, the increased failure rates in intro math classes and the surge in student unpreparedness are irrelevant.

Research idea: random audit university classes for AI-cheatability. Collect syllabi, assignments, review student submissions. What share of classes—in which fields, at which schools—let students phone it in 100%? This is currently unknown. Colleges should do these audits by policy. Some faculty just don't know their classes are compromised and would benefit from learning. Some faculty don't care—a much more challenging problem that deserves more daylight. If you run a class where students can do 100% of the work with AI and put in zero effort, you should be getting dragged through the press.

@NorthwesternU Economics department dropping some hard truths about predocs (good!)

It's starting to feel like 2021 again, but specifically for director level analytics roles (at least that's what the LinkedIn algo sends me). They all want 10+ yrs of experience, and that pool is small. If you are getting a graduate degree in economics... keep going

I typically keep opinions to myself, but when academic research strongly supports my prior on an issue that affects my daily life as a teacher, I can’t help but share. We need the SATs back badly. Thank you @dartmouth for this highly illuminating study. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.12…

The AAUP is an organization advocating for the interests of university professors. The "-UP" there stands for "University Professors." My view on the AAUP endorsement of El-Sayed is that since this organization has endorsed a candidate for the first time ever in its century-long history, the candidate certainly ought to have a well-thought-out, somewhat detailed written proposal I can look up, to see what he wants to do for university professors. Near as I can tell, all there is from his team in written form are the two paragraphs below. What he supports there that specifically pertains to the interests of university professors is: - more funding for science (he doesn't mention other disciplines, e.g. in the humanities or social sciences); - more tenure slots for teaching-focused-professors (he doesn't mention more tenure slots for research-focused-professors). I am surprised there is nothing written here supporting academic freedom of speech and freedom of inquiry. The AAUP endorsement says that El-Sayed plans to fight the Trump Administration's political interference into academic research, but this appears to be based entirely on a statement El-Sayed made during one rally, not on anything his team has committed to writing supporting academic freedom as a principle. In short: I believe there is a significant mismatch between the historic nature of the AAUP’s first-ever endorsement and the thinness of the candidate’s written record on core faculty priorities (in particular academic freedom).

AAUP broke a century-long neutrality streak to endorse a senate candidate who, if you go to his campaign page, commits nothing in writing to topics like academic freedom, plagiarism, AI, research support in the humanities and social sciences...anything which is of central concern to professors as a profession with collective interests.

This is an extremely odd first endorsement to make. Haley Stevens would likely be an excellent defender of university research and teaching. This signals to people that the AAUP is not about protecting higher education, but random extreme left causes.

Very funny that a lot of folks spent weeks arguing that the professoriate isn’t a political monoculture only for the AAUP to say “yeah so we are doing this endorsement because our members are super liberal and we gotta represent their super liberal views which are a monoculture.”

A prominent complaint on universities is that they’ve been politicized So what does the professional association of professors do? It makes the first political endorsement in its 110 year history, wading into a factional fight in a Democratic primary @aaup needs new leadership

I am not an AAUP member, but I think it is a really bad idea for the American Association of University Professors to be endorsing candidates, especially in a factional Democratic primary.

Glad to see more high density housing going up next to the University of San Francisco. The more other units are available the more it takes pressure off the units that our students can afford.

This is just punching ourselves in the face

Friends don't let friends continue to give exams and papers that are not adapted to the current AI landscape (this is AFTER 27 bailed so the reality is even worse) PS Props to students 1, 22, and 31

It might come down to signal vs. noise. In an age where we are inundated with AI slop, it's necessary to build mental filters to know what to ignore. When I see the slop style, it's a signal that the author couldn't be bothered to write something themselves. Sometimes the content is completely vacuous—like when a student uses genAI to send a variant of a cover letter to 200 different professors. At other times, the slop style signals that the author had a 1-sentence idea and asked Claude to turn it into an essay / viral tweetstream. The author is saying "I value your time less than I value mine." I would rather just read their 1-sentence idea. I'm interested in hearing the thoughts and ideas of the people I follow. I'm not interested at all in hearing Claude's responses to their questions. If I have those questions, I can ask an AI myself. I value hearing people's distinct voices, because I think their voice conveys some of how they think. When you take your voice and sloppify it through AI, we lose some of the message. Last, there is an element of dishonesty. It's like lip-syncing. They are saying "this is my idea and my voice" but it is not their voice, and so it makes me doubt whether it's even their idea. I follow and enjoy some bot accounts which are labeled as such. They're interesting, and it's interesting to see what bots can and do write. But humans presenting bot content as their own, I find it toxic. It's like counterfeit currency, it's not only bad in and of itself, it undermines the real currency as well.

We are hiring a Pre-Doctoral Research Assistant in Applied AI & Economics! The ideal candidate will have just finished their undergrad or Master's in a related field and wants to work on research prior to starting a PhD program. Apply here: forms.gle/rztjdhrq9NALsFTj9

UC soc sci & humanities faculty endorse reinstatement of SAT for admissions: ucstudentsuccess.org/socscih… The UC is an incredible engine of progress and knowledge. We need this to ensure our students are those best able to use what it offers and move it forward.

Anonymous course evaluations may no longer be truly anonymous. Professors often have digital samples of each student’s writing, and AI may make it easy to match an evaluation to its author. I would never do this, but colleges should warn students.