Issue 10, Fall 1995

William A. McEachern, Editor

The Evidence File

• The Nobel Prize for economics was first awarded in 1969, but another economist won a Nobel Prize decades earlier. Norman Angell (1873-1967), an English economist, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933 for his writings and lectures advocating international peace. He served in Parliament from 1929 to 1931 and was knighted in 1931. He authored The Great Illusion (1910), The Money Game (1936), and America's Dilemma (1940). He also invented the Money Game, a series of card games using paper money to teach about money and credit.

• According to a survey of the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, only 44% of undergraduates at public research universities were satisfied with their interactions with faculty and administrators; 64% were satisfied at private research universities; and 75% were satisfied at private four-year colleges.

• Let me remind you again about TCH-ECON, the electronic discussion group for teaching economics run by Jim Barbour at Elon College. To subscribe to TCH-ECON you may use either the Bitnet or the Internet format. The list is run using the Internet format.
  • If you choose the Internet format simply send an e-mail message to: TCH-ECON-REQUEST@vax1.elon.edu. The text of the message should be the single word SUBSCRIBE.
  • If you prefer the Bitnet format, send your message to: listserv@vax1.elon.edu. The text of that message should read SUBSCRIBE TCH-ECON your name.

  Traffic got particularly heavy over the summer. I counted up to 75 messages some days. About half relate to teaching directly; the other half include other economic issues plus a fair amount of misdirected mail (such as useless confirmations, requests to subscribe or unsubscribe, and the like).

• According to the New York Times, 93% of all letter grades at Stanford were A's and B's, a tremendous increase from two decades ago. At Harvard 43% of all grades were A's, twice as many as in the mid-1960s. Yale and Princeton had similar profiles. At the University of Connecticut this past year, 66% of undergraduate grades were A's and B's; in Economics the figure was 55%. (In my principles course, 36% of the grades were A's and B's.) A recent posting on TCH-ECON argued that grade inflation began during the war in Vietnam, when grades took on life-or-death significance. Incidentally, where you teach, are grades in Economics below the college average? If so, why?

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