Curriculum Resource: Lesson Plan on the Occupy Movement

Last month I posted an NPR podcast and a dubious news item as resources to use for discussing the Occupy movement with students.  Now you can supplement those with an entire lesson plan developed by C-SPAN to drive students to consider this question:  Should students support or oppose the "Occupy" movement?

The lesson plan is build around some C-SPAN news clips and some current articles, pro and con, by some of the top columnists of leading newspapers.  However, it was low, medium, and high read levels indicated, so it can be used with a wide range of ages/abilities.  It is geared towards having a classroom debate, but the materials could be used on an individual basis and lead to writing a pro or con position paper instead.

It has some high quality resources on a timely subject, and the price is right, because it is FREE.  If you are interested, you can download everything from the C-SPAN Classroom Deliberations website. 

The Rising Costs of College

For your Halloween-eve enjoyment/terror, I've got something scarier than any ghost, zombie, monster, or masked killer...OK, maybe not the masked killer, but still pretty scary...

Here is a chart by the Freakonomics guys about the rising cost of college tuition between 1978 and 2008:

© 2011 Freakonomics, LLC

The chart only shows private colleges, but I believe the figures are pretty much the same for public ones as well.  And to take away your last hopes, although this chart only goes to 2008, it hasn't gotten any better in the last few years, particularly with all the cuts to state budgets.  According to Freakonomics, here are the figures for college tuitions in 2011-2012:

• The average published in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions was $8,244 in 2011-12, which is 8.3%, or $631, higher than in 2010-11. Average total for tuition, fees, room and board, were $17,131, up 6.0 percent.
• For out-of-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities, the published average was $20,770, which is 5.7%, or $1,122, higher than in 2010-11. Average total charges were up 5.2% to $29,657.
• The percentage increase was smaller, but the totals are still higher at private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities.  The published tuition and fees averaged $28,500 in 2011-12, which was 4.5%, or $1,235, higher than in 2010-11. The total average charges were up 4.4% to $38,589. 
• The average increase in published in-state tuition and fees at public two-year colleges was even higher.  They totaled $2,963, which is 8.7%, or $236, higher than in 2010-11.The average increase in published in-state tuition and fees at public two-year colleges was even higher.  They totaled $2,963, which is 8.7%, or $236, higher than in 2010-11.
• Holding the line at a mere 3.2% increase were the average published tuition and fees, which were estimated at $14,487 in 2011-12.

The question nobody seems to be able to answer definitely is WHY college tuition is rising at three times the cost of living, higher even than our sky rocketing health care costs.  

One silver lining to note, however, is that these figures are the PUBLISHED tuition and fees.  In recent years, many, if not the majority, of students are actually paying substantially less than the published rate, at least for state and nonprofit four-year colleges, due to grants and scholarships and such.  The Obama administration is now requiring colleges to post a calculator on their websites so families can input their income information and such, and get a better idea of the real costs they will be expected to pay.  This at least allows students to better compare colleges on what their real, ultimate costs will be, not just to dismiss certain colleges on their published fees when they would probably be required to pay less.

But I don't think anyone has any good ideas about how to reign in these soaring increases in college costs.

 

Curriculum Resource: IMF International Economics Games

Perhaps it is all this focus on the debt ceiling debate, but our homeschool group has been abuzz about economics education discussions and resources lately.  But when I heard about these two online games by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), I knew I had to post them, seeing as I have not just one, but TWO people in my immediate family who have served as the US Executive Director to the IMF!

The IMF has an educational section on its website with curriculum guides for middle school and high school teachers, and some online games for middle school and high school students.  The first game for the middle schoolers is called Where in the World & What in the World is Money?  In this game, students use a time machine to visit cultures around the world at different times in Earth's history, and discover that the units of exchange have varied greatly over time and space.  The other game for this age group is Trading Around the World, which is a little more involved than the first one.  Students choose to play a role based on a trader from different continents across the world.  They your trader goes about trying to sell his/her goods at the best prices, while buying other things at the biggest bargains.  Sometimes the desired trades are blocked by trade barriers, which helps students understand why international organizations like the IMF exist to keep trade flowing.

If you have a high schooler, or an advanced middle schooler, you could also check out the Money Mania game.  It is a quiz on macroeconomics, set as a game show format.  You pick your character, who is competing against a typical uninformed high school student and a college economics major.  But it isn't easy!  In the beginning, I was getting trounced by the college econ major.  But then they asked some questions about policies that my father spent most of his early career working on....so shame on me if I didn't get those right!  Then, at the end, they asked four questions specifically about the IMF itself, all of which, fortunately, I got right (did I mention TWO of my family helped run the IMF?).  But even with those advantages, I ended up tying with the college student.  So I don't know how well most higher schoolers would do, let alone middle schoolers.

Still, these are fun ways to help explain why it might matter whether or not the US defaults on its international loans, and some other aspects of international economics.