My writing style is rather muddled, with digressions all-over the place, and the ones on better economics teaching end-up here. Even though I have barely taught anything - certainly not at a college - and I have not been a student for a long time, so it's a bit daft to offer advice and suggestions to those in the trade.
This follows a blog post called "boring economics is interesting" about studying economics at the worst of the 1980s recession, on a course that often didn't quite cover the 1980s recession, with large parts of obviously stupid rubbish. We studied the micro-economics rules of thumb out of a special stupid textbook called Laidler, which tried ot show that one could be derived from another, without other application or reference to fact. Why didn't lecturers change the course? Why didn't students like me walk-out? Those questions are still running in the late 20-teens. What was it like in 1985? It was odd because the college itself was a victim of whimsical funding changes, which I think are an economic problem. The Chief was a man who had been hauled before the McArthy or Todd Committees and probled about anti-american activities, like a teach-in-protest he did in his 20s at UCLA where staff and students just chatted about what they wanted to teach and learn. So he was a perky witness to the history of bad economics teaching. Where stupid teachers use a circular argument about subject names as an excuse: "economics is rubbish therefore we teach rubbish as economics", Fishman put the lie more simply "We have to teach this stuff in order to call this an economics degree".
"It's nothing earth-shattering"
... said a tutor about one of the models on my 1980s economics course,
What not to do
We'd just studied ASAD model to be followed by the ISLM model which suggests the ASAD model is wrong although teachers know and students guess that both are wrong. They are about tweaking the economy via interest rates and government deficits up or down; both have been done to death. They don't get to the point by saying why UK factories close, which in the mid 1980s, was an interesting subject to students with no job prospects and our redundant parents.
In lectures, we also learned about Cow Theory, by which democratic welfare states should be run-down in favour of a globalized sweatshop economy and pay towards the process, for example through the British Council's Delphe programme which funds just this kind of teaching at UK taxpayers' expense. Oxfam commissioned a book called "Rigged Rules and Double Standards" to make just this kind of point. A group of people from the New Economics Foundation, I think, overlapped with a group called Futerra Communications and their fake trade association Ethical Fashion Forum, tend to make these kinds of points.
Professor Patrick Minford of Cardiff Business School gets to the point in saying that most UK manufacturing would close with unilateral declaration of zero tariffs against goods from China, and he thinks this is a good thing (Sun article quoted by Evan Davis on Radio 4's More or Less program). This is how ignorant economists are allowed to be; they don't all understand that the tariff is to protect the higher costs of a welfare state because that's another subject called Social Policy. There's more say about him, personally, that is polite; he demonstrates why economics is a failed subject.
What order to teach things in?
The post crash economics society call for teaching to start with problems, and to choose theories that help solve those problems. Lots of economics students might have had a similar idea, while listening to a lecture about something they do not want to know and suspect that nobody else wants to know either. If theory is taught in order to solve a real problem, then a large proportion of it can be cut and the Post Crash Economics Society suggest things like Game Theory that came-in after I studied. I was lucky
What to call the subject? Social Policy & Management Science? Applied Economics?
I add this in 2018: a new idea. Suppose the problem is subjects called "economics" and expectations of what to teach by applicants or all kinds, decision-makers at the college, and textbook-writers. For example because political and government economics, such as how to fund the NHS, seem to be taboo and of no interest to some students, while management science is a bit of an odd thing to apply-for at the age of 18 or 19 without any work experience - it's a bit of a fall-back geography kind of uncool subject a tthat age, however much it's interesting to people decades older.
Near me in London, someone tried splitting "Applied Economics" and "Business Economics", which are good titles. Then students got wary of spending £9,000 a year on course for people without great A-level results or history, and the "Applied Economics" course dropped for lack of students, which is a pity.. Another idea would be to have "Management" or "Business Mangement" or some title like that next door to "Social Policy" or "Political Economics" which is a new one I have just coined. The idea is that "economics" becomes a title for one or two short courses on the notice board and not the big letters on the college web site that lure people in. Maybe less people come-in, but I understand that Economics has about as much attraction as Geography just at the moment; it isn't something you'd mention on a dating site. Whatever I think, college managers have the same idea. As I typed blog posts about Economics degree feedback on Unistats, I realized that some colleges like Imperial have dropped it altogether, despite it being a schools subject name. A student from Cardiff was quoted as saying something like "if they don't want to teach economics, why don't they set-up a new department to teach it?". I don't know, but the Open University has such a slow server for their Economics degree that it's very unlikely that enough people will apply to make the course viable. They have much quicker server speeds on other subjects. So someone at Open University is deliberately trying to get them out of the Economics market. As I said, it's not just me that wants a new name.
What to study. What kinds of problems do politically-minded macro students want to solve?
Back to teaching
These suggestions for teaching are nothing earth-shattering either. I'm not well-qualified to comment on what to teach as I'm not a student, teacher, or economist.
Keele departments are exposed to bad feedback because they taught mainly joint-honours. Apparently 30% on a recent check, but 100% when I was there with a compulsory third subject in year one and foundation year for big chunk. So a subject like economics that gets bad reviews everywhere got worse reviews at Keele because students compare it to some other subject they chose for fun. If the trend at Keele is for more single subject economics students, and better feedback, it could be because the single subject people know nothing better and lack critical skills, so other improvements are worth a thought.
A way of checking this would be for someone good at maths to work-out which joint-honours subject combinations with economics give better feedback. My hunch is that traditionally-taught science courses, which teach theory first with plenty of algebra, go well with taditionally-taught economics which is the same. Leicester Uni has a BSc Economics course and a BA economics course. The BSc scored worse on 2015 Unistats quoted on my the Star Courses page.
When Keele departments get bad feedback, they have another problem, which is generally high expectations of Keele. I think that might make the score worse than a student would give for the same course at at a college that they expect to be bad, to have low staff ratios, to teach something they don't want to know. If the course is half decent they are surprised. Meanwhile at Keele, people travel however-far to live on a campus for a couple of courses taking less than half their time, so students are bound to be a bit dissapointed with the courses. There are also low scores for Economics at the LSE, suggesting that the high expectations of specialist students tend to be dissapointed too. And Brunel, and Goldsmiths.
Unistats also publish a graph. I don't know quite what it graphs, but down is bad.
More noisy, detailed data is shown on Unistats:
https://unistats.ac.uk/Search/SubjectList/052 : Checking in early 2017, Keele Economics scores better than St Andrews (specially their MA course) and most of the Scottish colleges, with the LSE, Brunel and Goldsmiths scoring badly too, but the gist is still bad for Keele.
College publicity often repeats Keele is number one for student satisfaction overall, and to hold-on to this boast the college needs to do something about economics. In 2008 they thought of closing the subject, but were talked out of it; it's hard to offer a lot of subject-mixing choices and not offer a popular subject. So something needs to be done even if the course is good; expectations need to be managed.
A long post called Boring Econimics is Interesting shows that there was a good economics course at Keele till the 80s recession, when problem-solving workshops of six students to one teacher were cancelled and replaced by classes of 25 students noting conventional wisdom from someone standing at one end of the room. The idea of a problem-solving approach, in which theories are yanked-in to the course if they help solve a problem, is mentioned on the post-crash economics society's report about how to sort the subject out.
It's possible to google the names of people working in this good department at the early 80s - they are mentioned in the preface of Kieth Smith's British Economic Crisis. A bit of googling finds two of them now teaching at Imperial College and one at Birmingham Uni. These are the people to ask about how to restore a decent course at Keele. The Birmingham one even writes about economics teaching for a living.
The reason for asking ex-Keele teachers is that Keele teachers have the problem of condensing a course that's often taught over 90 weeks full-time into less than half of that. They face a broad intake of students, which is another problem for Economics courses where different students can have very different expectations I guess.
Any teacher who has taught a popular joint-honours economics degree could have good ideas too. I think that any prospective economics student would be daft to do a single honours degree. There would be too much chance of getting frustrated, seeing only other frustrated students, and dropping out while the keen ones are the least imaginative. I think that courses where people end-up doing economics next to a whole range of things are most likely to bring common sense to the subject, but how, exactly, on a Monday morning with 12 or 24 bored 20-odds scowling at you? Maybe that's why a tutor from Keele got interested in teaching about the subject.
I don't know if the page here relates to the white paper at all. This is more based on decades-old experience of being a student. I think it's better to make suggestions and show ignorance than to criticise without suggestions, so here goes.
Managing expectations; grouping people with the same expectations together
I think a problem with economics courses is high and conflicting expectations.
I remember that a problem on my course in all subjects (it was a subject-mixing college) was that the first bit repeated A level.
This is known to teachers and students, but there is no strong incentive or easy solution for dealing with it. The long process of passing exams and getting course offers seems to be a rationing ritual which serves no other purpose: once you are at college, you start at the beginning of the subject again. I don't have a solution to this and so shall move-on to the next subject.
Where to teach
I think holiday camps are a likely place, at least for courses about hospitality. Use them for teaching in winter and as holiday camps in summer. There's one holiday camp on the market to use all the year round according to this.
The need to teach in a physical place suggests some interaction between people that would not happen on a distance learning course. Students comparing ideas. Lecturers adapting the course to students.
From my experience of an under-funded 1980s course, this didn't happen on the course itself so the course could have been held anywhere, but being among students and near a library probably made it easier.
Another factor is that a lot of 18 year-olds most likely want to stop living with their parents full-time. They want to meet other 18 year-olds. But if they go to Oxford Cambridge or London, with extreme housing costs, they will boomerang back to their parents' spare bedroom after the end of the course. I guess that housing costs are extreme, because they are high in these areas. The particular cost is the cost of accomodation that an ex student might want or get, compared to the wage available on a job that an ex-student might want or get. Something similar applies for people who want to work at universities.
I have started a subject here without knowing where to finish it.and shall move-on to another point.
social insurance / social security / welfare state : passnotes
I think another problem with economics courses is their use of american syllabuses which leave-out social insurance, so I will explain social insurance for those who don't know about it.
by the way - sites were people post stuff like this
Expectation: information that is fit for purpose, accessible & trustworthy
Default settings. Quality Assurance Agency benchmarks: Red, amber & green
Talk about talk
Courses at other colleges
Expectation of value for money, and others not mentioned by the quango
Expectations are hard to manage among economics students
Trying to manage expectations among economics students
Better economics teaching: teaching everything at once in a way yet to be invented
Hope: dealing with the algebra thing
Hope: information that is more than just fit for purpose
Trade qualifications and help with self-employment bundled with a degree course
The need not to teach things twice to the same students after A-level
The possibility of cheap courses
Current National Student Survey questions, including optional follow-up questions and extra questions for NHS students
International Student Course Satisfaction
Table of feedback scores for the economics degrees for the universities that take most international students. Most of the courses are at the bottom of the league table for student feedback
Introduction:
I don't know how to get a landline number for free to a mobile, but I do know the formula for getting a cheap mobile or smartphone and pay as you go sim card in the UK.
Scroll down for the clearer bits.
Almost free phones exist if you get the best value pay-as-you-go sim card and put it in some inherited or cheaply-bought mobile phone, saving the
price a bamboozlement contract and
work of understanding the contract: if it's complicated, it's not worth understanding.
Incoming calls from a number that looks like a landline are another good thing to have if you're in business. I hope someone can tell me about how to get them.
As I do my tax return I discover that one of the items is a monthly £15-£20 to Virgin Media for a landline, which I am scared to give-up in case my shoe shop customers think a mobile number is dodgy or expensive to call. If I could find a way to add a respectable-looking landline number to a free way of receiving calls on a mobile, that would be worth up to £240 a year. Even if I had all the money I could ever need, £240 saved last year could have earned another £24 this year on a P2P money site paying about 10% and double every seven and a bit years, allowing me to pay the taxpayer for my care home costs if I get old, or maybe leave a trust fund for that purpose that pays 5% towards care for the old and 5% re-investment.
So, if anyone knows the answer, please post a link to how to get a free landline-looking number for a phone without this £15 monthly bill. Or a link to where the subject is discussed.
Incoming calls and landline numbers for mobiles - Voip or mobile for incoming calls? - cheapest sim-only calls -cheapest second hand mobile phones, preferably unlocked - Cheapest SIM-only phone calls - Cheapish smartphones secondhand
The specific need is for a service that links to a cheap or free landline-style number, and works over wifi on a smartphone.
This is work in progress.
http://free03numbers.com has customers with a free UK a landline-like number beginning 03303 and then six non-memorable digits. It is not taking new customers this April 2017 after "instability" in November.
http://www.03numbersforfree.co.uk connect to a voip address for free on their advanced option, or a UK landline beginning 01, but not a mobile.
https://www.localphone.com/incoming_numbers/united_kingdom/london_2031 offer a landline style number for 90p a month including tax. The number can be connected to a mobile but charges localphone's rates for incoming calls. It can be connected free to their own voip software; I'm not sure whether this includes their app for smartphones.
The next stage is to understand their suggestions of what to connect this number to; what to type into the boxes if you open a free account on their web site. There is a 1.5p charge each minute for connecting it to a mobile (otherwise you have to give-out a mobile number which might put customers off) but none for VOIP. Free03numbers.com have a video saying what to type if you know the answer, but not to say whether asterisk or skype or whatever is best to choose. They have a list of sites to try.
Voip also offers cheap outbound calls, but frankly that isn't a problem; email does the job and mobile works for emergencies.
The simplest solution is to learn nothing about voip and have two mobiles, with one turned-on for work. Callers just have to get used to calling a mobile number. This could be the way to go, as all of them order online nowadays; none rings and says "can I have a catalogue please". One or two a day ring saying "This is Microsoft asking for your passwords"; I don't know if that's worse or better on a mobile number.
Incoming calls and landline numbers for mobiles - Voip or mobile for incoming calls? - cheapest sim-only calls -cheapest second hand mobile phones, preferably unlocked - Cheapest SIM-only phone calls - Cheapish smartphones secondhand
This information is important, because once you have got a good Pay-as-you-go sim, you can choose any second hand mobile phone that works on the same network or is unlocked. You may already have one in a drawer somewhere. The trouble is that sites promoting free sims don't make any money directly. Who is going to keep them updated? An enthusiast for the public good? Who is going to host the information? A free web host? Fortunately the two have come together on Pete Foreman's site about cheap pay as you go sim cards at https://payg.pythonanywhere.com which is a much more important link than it looks and lists a few other similar.
Incoming calls and landline numbers for mobiles - Voip or mobile for incoming calls? - cheapest sim-only calls -cheapest second hand mobile phones, preferably unlocked - Cheapest SIM-only phone calls - Cheapish smartphones secondhand
Cheapest second hand mobile phones, preferably unlocked
If you have free wifi for some reason, then a phone that works over wifi when possible is a good thing.
If you don't have a favourite mobile phone in a drawer, unlocked to any network or ready to use a PAYG sim from that network, then ebay is pretty good at finding local or lowest price+postage offers for a offers that you can sort in a dozen ways from here: Ebay.co.uk/sch/Mobile-Smart-Phones-/9355/i.html
There are some other sites too. http://second-handphones.com has a good search system for phones over £30 or close, and plenty of stock from phone recycling companies. The search system is useful. If you have a certain sim card and do not want the hassle of unlocking a mobile phone to work on it, you can buy a cheaper phone from a seller on the same network who does not want the hassle of unlocking either.
Cashgenerator.co.uk and cashconverters.co.uk, the two big pawnbroker franchises, have web sites for selling pawned mobiles, starting at £10 for most of the basic ones locked to a network. They are not good value for borrowing money but better for buying phones.
Aliexpress phones take weeks to arrive from some seller in China, sometimes with a fraud attached so best bought with a credit card fod disputes. They include some very cheap credit card sized phones, and some smartphones under £40 with cheap glass that breaks if you hint at sitting on it. You can get second hand phones with better glass at the same price, so generally that's the better-value deal and a greener one.
Incoming calls and landline numbers for mobiles - Voip or mobile for incoming calls? - cheapest sim-only calls -cheapest second hand mobile phones, preferably unlocked - Cheapest SIM-only phone calls - Cheapish smartphones secondhand
Cheapish smartphones secondhand from the same places
I am no great expert on this, but can only say what I know about the cheapest smartphones second hand. For example I don't know why fairly small apps like Waveapps for scanning receipts as mentioned on my book-keeping post don't find enough room to download to my old Samsing Galaxy smartphone that says it has plenty of space. There is probably a knack. There are a lot of things I don't know. Anyway, here is something I do know.
Blackberry smartphones
don't work well with other systems and cards or for misers in general. There are endless discussion threads with the answer "no" to whatever question is asked. So they are cheapest second-hand.
Nokia smartphones
This is the second cheapest smartphone second hand because it uses an obscure operating system called Windows which can't download your favourite apps. If you don't want to download an app, then maybe a nokia smartphone second hand is the one for you
HTC Desire smartphones
This was some kind of cheapskate smartphone which often didn't have the technical ability to download many apps. Later versions may do - I don't know - but the brand has become what it was meant to be: the brand for a teenager's first smartphone. For that reason it is often cheap
This heading might look a bit odd but I use this phone for a UK-made vegan shoe shop called Veganline and want to make my related pages look relevant.
Random and unknown smartphones
The one closest on an ebay local search might be a couple of pounds cheaper if you can collect and save postage. Oh and there are cheap ones on Aliexpress, but they break if you sit on them and are best bought with a credit card for some sort of come-back if the seller is a scammer.
Incoming calls and landline numbers for mobiles - Voip or mobile for incoming calls? - cheapest sim-only calls -cheapest second hand mobile phones, preferably unlocked - Cheapest SIM-only phone calls - Cheapish smartphones secondhand