Public choice economics and online schools in Oregon

Public choice economics simply says that those who govern us, politicians, bureaucrats, all those who inhabit the governing structure, are subject to the same enlightened self interest as the rest of us. They respond to incentives concerning their personal benefit just as the people they are.

Those in favour of ever yet more government action tend to dislike this theory. As if the receipt of a government paycheck negates basic humanity. Yes, easy to joke that clipboard wielders aren’t entirely human but that is a joke.

Worth noting that the idea doesn’t in fact militate against government action per se. It only says that we have to consider those incentives faced by those taking the action and perhaps rejig them so as to reflect the general, rather than specific, benefit.

Given all of that it’s useful to spot people reacting to said economic incentives in managing public policy. Oregon has decided to close the public schools in response to coronavirus. We’re not sure about that action but OK. Then they decided to close the online schools as well. Why would this be?

 “Enrollment of new students to virtual public charter schools during the closure would impact school funding for districts across Oregon and therefore may impact the distribution of state school funds and delivery of services as directed under the executive order,” the department said in its guidance to districts.

People might actually like the online schools which are outside the standard public school bureaucracy and this would have funding implications for that standard public school bureaucracy in the future. Note that, observing the incentives faced and not considering the overall sensibleness of the policy, this does make perfect sense. The interest of the bureaucracy is not to have children escaping its tender ministrations therefore it acts to stop children doing so. An entirely rational response considering only that self interest.

There are reports of similar events in other states, Pennsylvania being mentioned more than once.

We thus have an example, out there in the wild, of public choice economics. The people within government take decisions based upon the incentives they face. Again, this does not mean that government should never do anything, it just means that we should be precise in our crafting of those incentives so as to end up with sensible decisions.

Oh, and, of course we also need to be distinctly suspicious of any decisions made until we’ve examined the incentives which lead to them.

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What's the Real Story About Liberty University 'Reopening' Amid Coronavirus?

According to The New York Times's Paul Krugman, Liberty University is Exhibit A of life-threatening "science denial." As students returned from Spring Break, Jerry Falwell Jr. announced the school would remain open, welcome students and faculty back to campus, and hold some classes in person. Yet news outlets reported that Liberty University would "reopen," making the school notorious across the country for risking infection.

"What lies behind Republican science denial?" Krugman asked. "The answer seems to be a combination of fealty to special interests and fealty to evangelical Christian leaders like Jerry Falwell Jr., who dismissed the coronavirus as a plot against Trump, then reopened his university despite health officials’ warnings, and seems to have created his own personal viral hot spot."

Yet Liberty did not "reopen." It merely "remained open," as the statement the school sent to government authorities made clear. Falwell transitioned the vast majority of classes online. He did welcome students and faculty back after Spring Break, however, and some students have reportedly showed symptoms of COVID-19.

The New York Times quoted Liberty University lead physician Thomas W. Eppes Jr. saying that nearly a dozen students showed COVID-19 symptoms. Three students were tested: one tested positive, another tested negative, and results are pending for the third. According to Liberty, Eppes disputes ever having said nearly 12 students showed symptoms.

After Liberty University partially welcomed students back last week, the Central Virginia Health District dispatched health specialists to survey the campus amid community concerns. According to a statement from the district, two specialists performed a check on open areas and food establishments on campus, and they found no violations of Gov. Ralph Northam (D-Va.)'s Executive Order 53.

Employees served food, even keeping the usual self-serve products behind countertops. Staff sanitized equipment like soda machines and utensil dispensers every fifteen minutes.

Falwell published an article in Newsweek explaining his university's position.

"As a Christian university, we also consider it our duty to continue to act with compassion in the midst of this crisis—and we're proving that we can be in total compliance with the law under this current emergency while also fulfilling our Christian mission. We're living up to our duty—not shirking it—by allowing a small percentage of our residential students to stay safe on our campus," he wrote.

He listed Liberty University's efforts to limit the spread of the coronavirus:

Our entire course selection moved to our online platform.

Students were given the option to learn from home.

No classes are conducted in person, except for a few labs limited to 10 or fewer students.

Faculty have the option of working from home and conducting their office hours remotely.

All food services are takeout only. All other non-essential facilities, such as fitness and social centers, are closed.

Every touchpoint is wiped down and disinfected by our dutiful staff throughout the day.

Our computer centers only have every third computer operational for social distancing.

Our police force has a campus-wide presence ensuring that people follow our strict rules.

We have designated a former hotel, currently vacant, as a quarantine site if it is needed.

When students were allowed to return to campus, about 1,100 of the 15,500 students returned, Falwell said. This number included "hundreds of international students who truly have nowhere else to go. They are now living a nomadic life, keeping a strict distance from others in their dorms and in public spaces, and they're continuing their coursework through Liberty University Online Programs."

In his Newsweek article, Falwell noted that Virginia Tech is allowing roughly 950 foreign students to remain on campus, and the University of Virginia is allowing about 300 remain. A Virginia Tech student has also tested positive for the coronavirus.

Liberty students and faculty have long complained about Falwell's control over the campus, claiming he censors their voices and abuses his position. He arguably embarrassed himself in his gushing praise of Donald Trump during the 2016 primary, and his Trumpian swagger may detract from his evangelical leadership.

Falwell had downplayed the threats of the virus before announcing that Liberty would remain open, and his announcement drew attention precisely because it seemed defiant of national trends. Falwell insisted that "ninety-nine percent of [students] are not at the age to be at risk and they don’t have conditions that put them at risk." While the elderly are at greatest risk of death from COVID-19, young people have gotten the disease and died from it, and Falwell should not have made these remarks.

Despite Falwell's unfortunate remarks, Liberty is not a "viral hot spot."

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Part of our core mission? — Exposing the Left's blatant hypocrisy

Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is the largest conservative group on America’s college campuses, which have closed and moved their courses online due to the coronavirus. TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk views this as an opportunity to expose the political bias that exists at many of these institutions. On Sunday, March 22, he issued a tweet addressing the issue: “To all college students who have their professors switching to online classes: Please share any and ALL videos of blatant indoctrination with [TPUSA]. Now is the time to document & expose the radicalism that has been infecting our schools. Transparency!”

Judging by the blowback, transparency is the last thing many of America’s professors want.

In fact, the Chronicle of Higher Education insisted transparency was akin to weaponization. “The coronavirus-prompted shift to remote teaching was stressful enough for faculty members before Charlie Kirk weaponized online learning,” it complained. And though the Chronicle admitted that research reveals “faculty members skew left politically, and conservative students can feel marginalized, there’s no evidence of a siege on conservative thought in the classroom.” Moreover, it asserts that accusations of indoctrination are a “common right-wing talking point.”

Asserting that professors skew left politically understates reality. A study published by the National Association of Scholars of 8,688 tenure-track professors at 51 of the 66 top-ranked colleges in the nation revealed the ratio of Democrat-registered faculty members versus Republican-registered faculty members was 10.4 to 1. If one removes two military colleges, West Point and Annapolis, technically described as “liberal arts colleges,” from the calculations, the ratio is 12.7 to 1. Mitchell Langbert, an Associate Professor of Business at Brooklyn College who conducted the research, also discovered that 39% of the colleges in his sample had zero faculty members who were registered Republicans.

Dylan Bugden, an assistant professor of sociology at Washington State University, is worried about that transparency. He has decided not to record his lectures and instead post presentation slides, short quizzes, activities, and an exam, while remaining available for office hours. “I find it difficult to teach without referring to important events and issues in the world,” Bugden explained in an email. “Doing so is a powerful way to help students see that what we learn in class is not just abstract or a mere intellectual exercise, but matters for the things they and their peers care about.”

He further asserted that such an approach leaves faculty members — especially women and people of color — vulnerable to attacks, even as he admits some students have given him course evaluation asking him to keep his personal politics out of his teaching material. Ultimately he decided that even if the risk of an online campaign against him is low, it is still “so severe that it’s simply not worth it.”

Rachel Michelle Gunter, a professor at a community college in North Texas who teaches American history, is equally concerned. Thus she will send her students to her video lectures on YouTube, where those videos will be “unlisted,” meaning they can’t be found by conducting a YouTube search or going to her faculty page. After two weeks, the videos will be made private.

Yale University professor Jason Stanley offered advice to professors on how they should prepare for ostensibly being outed by conservatives. “If one of your colleagues gets hit, support them,” he tweeted. “It is not a time to lecture them about [what] you think they did wrong. They need your support, not your moralizing and sanctimoniousness. We’re all in this together. This is an attack on academic freedom, not a time for Schadenfreude.”

Transparency is an attack on academic freedom? Shouldn’t one not only be proud of what one what teaches but willing to see it disseminated as widely as possible?

That professors would be fearful of being “exposed,” coupled with the fallback excuse of being “taken out of context,” is telling. Jeffrey A. Sachs, a lecturer in history and politics at Acadia University in Canada, insists there is a “vast and highly successful” right-wing apparatus ready to destroy a professor who says the wrong thing, assigns the wrong reading, or submits the wrong grade. “Simply put,” he huffed, “faculty are alarmed because they are paying attention.”

To emphasize the point, the Chronicle notes Mr. Sachs has compiled a database of professors “who have been fired for political speech.”

Not exactly. Some professors were fired, but some resigned, some were suspended or demoted, and some were denied promotion or had their course canceled. Moreover, the notion that any type of free speech insulates one from the consequences of that speech is absurd. Many of these educators said outrageous things for which they should have been held accountable.

That it was all the doing of a vast right-wing conspiracy? One of those professors, Erika Christakis, taught at Yale before she resigned in 2015 for what Sachs described as her criticism of “safe spaces” at the Ivy League School.

Hardly. As Christakis herself revealed in a Washington Post op-ed, an email she sent urging students to think critically about an official set of Yale guidelines on costumes to avoid at Halloween — one in which she wondered if there was “no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious” — precipitated a firestorm whereby nearly “a thousand students, faculty and deans called for my and my husband’s immediate removal from our jobs and campus home.”

Precipitated by right-wing students? “I am a registered Democrat, and I applaud Yale’s mission to better support underrepresented students,” she added. “But I also recognize the dizzying irrationality of some supposedly liberal discourse in academia these days.”

Perhaps the widespread exposure of “dizzying irrationality” is what the current controversy is really all about, especially when one considers the skyrocketing costs of college that has left America’s students mired in a collective $1.6 trillion in student debt. Perhaps if future consumers got firsthand information on what some professors are saying, they might think twice about enrolling.

“For those that are using the classroom to intimidate conservatives or otherwise lie to, bully, or indoctrinate students to hate America, we will highlight those cases so parents, students, administrations and donors can make better, more informed decisions moving forward,” a TPUSA spokesperson explained. “Knowing the truth shouldn’t be controversial.”

That it is speaks volumes.

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