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The National Bureau of Economic Research has released the study summarized below. In today’s tough job market for grad students, it suggests inherent optimists do better – at least for MBAs. Happy Labor Day. The Importance of Being an Optimist: Evidence from Labor Markets Ron Kaniel, Cade Massey, David T. Robinson NBER Working Paper No. 16328September 2010 Dispositional optimism is a personality trait associated with individuals who believe, either rightly or wrongly, that in general good things tend to happen to them more often than bad things. Using a novel longitudinal data set that tracks the job search performance of…

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Below are data from a table from the recently-released “The Digest of Educational Statistics 2009” published by the National Center for Educational Statistics. It shows the estimated rate of 2005-06 high school graduates attending degree-granting institutions, by state, in 2006. Note that California – despite all of the talk we hear about preparing the workforce of the future – is not particularly highly ranked. The full table is available at http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_203.asp United States…………. 62.0% ——————————- Mississippi ………….. 75.4 New York …………….. 75.0 Massachusetts ………… 72.6 South Dakota …………. 72.1 North Dakota …………. 71.9 New Mexico …………… 71.1 New Jersey ………………

Texas A&M System grades faculty — by bottom line (excerpt) September 01, 2010, Vim Patel, The Eagle Frank Ashley felt the shifting winds several years ago: As state officials embarked on accountability measures for K-12 teachers, he said, he told his faculty colleagues that public sentiment would eventually demand such measures in higher education. Now, Ashley, the vice chancellor for academic affairs for the A&M System, has been put in charge of creating such a measure that he says would help administrators and the public better understand who, from a financial standpoint, is pulling their weight. A several-inches thick document…