They do. Both CMU and Pitt have private police forces. And you don't think that things like Pitt games bring venue to the city? The city seems to think so.

I would hope you think we should also charge churches real estate taxes. I feel pretty confident all the churches take up more real estate than the universities. I wonder what the public reaction to that would be?

Greedy? CMU has a *tiny* endowment compared to their status (only 10% of their operating budget). None of student tuition goes to the endowment, its all used to operate the university. And, of course, many students seem very happy to pay it. I wish that universities didn't have to charge that much, but I think it's unfair to call CMU greedy.

It's not the shrinking tax base that's to blame. Its the city mismanagement of it's pension fund. "That need stems from decades of questionable management of the city's pension fund, which holds around one-third of the $899 million it should to cover future obligations."

Not only do they pay state taxes, but the city of Pittsburgh has an income tax (not an insignificant one either). In addition Carnegie Mellon along with other non-profits in the city *voluntarily* contribute money to the city to help pay for services. Many university students stay in the city after they graduate, getting jobs, etc. Of course the employees of these universities pay a lot of taxes. Even more, universities like Carnegie Mellon attract businesses. Several businesses (including Google and Intel) have offices on Campus and have employees (who pay taxes).

This is an utterly absurd attempt to cover a budget shortfall by preying on those who have little political power. They mayoral election just happened two weeks ago in Pittsburgh, so the students who are angry about this will have moved on by the next time there is an election. Many of them aren't registered to vote in the city anyway.

Absolutely! I have students that take notes on computer, and I think it's a terrible idea. First there is the problem of equations. In the class I teach we introduce a lot of symbols, so even if you have a fast system you would have to find the symbols in a big list. By the time you do, you're probably behind.

Second, note taking is a tool which helps you learn the material better. Transcribing the notes later helps significantly more, because now you get to revisit the material with fresh eyes. Something that may have seemed obvious initially may seem less so when you transcribe them. Now you can go to the next lecture an ask questions from the previous class. (As a professor, I'm *very* impressed when students do this, because it proves to me that they did something other than drink beer between the end of the last class and the beginning of the next.)

Finally taking notes on a computer provides you with many distractions. I know lots of students who claim "I don't get distracted from using a computer", but then my grader or another student informs me the were surfing the web, reading email, IMing, etc. Save yourself from having to avoid these and just use paper.

This is the standard response I always see to people questioning day traders (or to the more recent high-frequency trading). Liquidity is a good thing, so that those who want to buy can and those who want to sell can. But, as I recall, day traders are a recent invention. Is there any real evidence that the market had insufficient liquidity before day traders? Why isn't the vast amount of trading done for slightly longer term investments sufficient to create liquidity? And don't go telling me we need liquidity from day traders to support other day traders.

Yes and no. My contractual duties don't require anything *in particular*, but they do require that I do several of a list things to get promotion or tenure. On that list is writing a textbook.

I don't know about where you work, but for me the distinction between "spare time" and "work time" is extremely blurry. Other than for classes and meetings, I don't ever have to come to campus. But, of course, I'm expected to do a significant amount of work -- probably more than I could accomplish if I only worked 9-5 M-F.

That's only true in two cases: 1. the textbook is for a big market class like an introductory class. No matter how widely adopted, I don't think an advanced textbook on, say, the philosophy of biology is going to make much money. The market is too small.

2. You have to get the book adopted at a lot of universities. My parents wrote an introductory physics textbook that was adopted at a good number (more than 10), but they never made much money at it. We have a friend that has the majority of the introductory physics market and he's rich, but he's a rarity.

Except that in my contract (as a professor) it explicitly says that any intellectual property I create while employed is mine alone.

The good thing about the open-source education market is that if we can find a truly good way around the publication industry *many* professors would happily switch. Very few people make any real money on textbooks, and most of us would be happy to publish our research and educational materials for free. But there are two roadblocks that have nothing to do with congress or the publication industry.

First, if I work hard on writing a textbook I want to be sure that others will use it. Right now there is no good way to have my textbook "certified" other than using the publishing industry. If we could get a system going where other people could vet a book, and that fact could be advertised, then I think a lot people would release their books for free. In fact, people are already releasing books for free, but they aren't widely adopted because people don't know about them.

Second, we need to have a way of judging the quality of a textbook. Right now, if a good publisher publishes my book, my university can say "look he wrote a good book." But, if I release it under an open license, they have no way of knowing if what I wrote was crap.

There are clear ways around these problems, and once one or two systems become widely accepted I expect most of the textbook industry to disappear with or without the help of congress.

That's just not possible. Almost all universities run on federal funds. If a given professor's research isn't sponsored by federal funds, the cost of the building in which she works almost certainly is (at least in part). The concept of "rejecting" U.S. funds is like rejecting your paycheck, you worked hard to earn it, you take it.

These places are giving out money for biology, chemistry, theoretical high energy physics, english, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology?!? Maybe a little, but not much.

First, we (professors) are reimbursed, we're paid by our university to produce exactly this sort of work. So, professors who are being paid for their textbooks are (in a sense) double dipping. We are also grossly underpaid for the amount of work and the level of qualifications, so I can't really fault someone for this, but it is double dipping.

Second, we don't get much for books. We do give them away for cheap.

I think there is one other problem as well. When you have a vaccine that isn't 100% effective, at least a subset of the population might treat it as if it was 100%. People might engage in more risky behaviors assuming that they're immune. If you take the full effect of a vaccine into account, it might even cause an *increase* in HIV.

Hopefully this is just a step to a better vaccine.

It's precisely this fact that makes me discourage students from online distance education whenever possible. Both in undergrad and grad school, I learned way more from random discussions, be they with other students or professors, than I ever did during the official class time. So much of an education is had by being around others who are also interested in the same things and eager to talk about it.

Thank you. I get really tired of hearing people claim that professors are teaching out of their textbooks to make money. VERY FEW textbook authors make any real money, and none of them make much from their own classes.

Some, I'm sure, do it for an ego boost, but most people I know that teach out of their own textbook do it for completely honest reasons. They really think they know the best way to teach material and want to teach it that way. Often there is lots of nuance that they want to teach that isn't captured in any particular book.

If a professor honestly thinks they have the best way to teach some subject, they have to write a book. And, if they want that book adopted by others, they have to get the book published. While we have gone a long way with free textbooks on the web, the fact is that you're very unlikely to get that book adopted by others unless you have the publishing industry sending out representatives pushing your book. So -- while it may seem silly that professors don't give away their books given how little they make on them -- many use publishers because they honestly want the material to be taught in a better way.

I don't think it did, primarily because the media wasn't as partisan then as it is now. There was no Fox News or MSNBC.

Not that I'm interested in defending Quayle, but I always found the spelling bit a red herring. Lots of *very* smart people can't spell. The ability to memorize a large list of words (or the unwillingness to do so) doesn't convey intelligence one way or the other. I always find it strange that people want to equate knowing lots of little bits of information with intelligence.

It's not so easy as you think. People can often modify the apparent plagiarism my changing words around, substituting synonyms, adding in extra words. Then you have to search for different parts of the sentence, considering different wordings. Sometimes people purchase papers from their friends or a service who never posted their paper online.

When you have a class of 100 students with 2-3 potential plagarism cases, it can take significant time to track down. All this is taking away from time the instructor could be giving helpful feedback to students who are interested in learning.

The services that exist now are already very good at saving time by focusing one's attention on particular cases that can be proven. If those tools get better it can reduce that time even more. Overall this will significantly improve the quality of education by both freeing up time and also preventing the incentive to cheat yourself out of an education by plagarizing.

I watched the video, and it provides a compelling argument assuming that you're interested in only one thing: not going to jail. And while that is a pretty big thing that we all care about, we often usually care about other things as well.

For instance, if I'm not a serial killer but the police think I am, I would certainly want to talk to the police even if doing so increased my risk of going to jail by a small percent chance because I have a larger interest in helping the police find the guilty party. And lets be clear, the lawyer on video provides some scenarios about how talking to the police could hurt you, but he provides no statistics or any evidence whatsoever about how likely those things are to occur.

Turnitin is not disciplinary action. If the turnitin report comes back indicating plagarism, then the instructor investigates using the turnitin report and then takes disciplinary action. Many papers come back flagged by turnitin, but they are often false positives (quotations, commonly used phrases, etc.) Any university that doesn't require some additional effort on the part of the instructor is a joke.

That's a bit of leap in logic. For the sake of argument, suppose that requiring turnitin.com submission signals a lack of trust. Why does a lack of trust on the part of an instructor signal a willingness to be unfair? It seems to be like being overly diligent to maintain honesty signals exactly the opposite, that the instructor cares about the legitimacy of her grade.