SynthOrange posted:

I'd say it's not even about students, but unis desperate for cash.

open24hours posted:

Isn't the NAIRU hypothesis demonstrably false, as economies with full employment and low inflation exist?

Les Affaires posted:

I'd be interested in reading about this if you have examples, NAIRU is a very curious measurement to me for exactly that reason.

open24hours posted:

Group work sucks but so does life after university and it's good preparation for it.

open24hours posted:

I don't know of any papers, but Australia in past decades had full employment and low inflation. Singapore currently has almost full employment low inflation.

Doctor Spaceman posted:

Full employment essentially means "unemployment is at NAIRU". We've never had 100% employment.

open24hours posted:

That's what it means now, it used to mean actual full employment, or very close to it.

Mr Chips posted:

I work at a university. Plenty of my colleagues are >2nd gen WASPs who are massive bludgers and barely capable of writing a coherent email or following simple instructions.

open24hours posted:

Well you can't just say that the NAIRU was coincident with whatever the unemployment rate was either. Presumably it would be possible to calculate past NAIRUs to see if they match the actual unemployment rates.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2015/1/13/interest-rates/kill-nairu

quote:

With any luck 2015 will finally see the death of the NAIRU, the acronym that has produced more misery in the past 50 years than any other.

It stands for the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment and refers to the idea that there is a level of unemployment below which wages and prices will start to rise, so that interest rates have to be hiked to get unemployment back up. Ever since Kiwi economist Bill Phillips plotted British unemployment against inflation in 1958 and invented the Phillips Curve, the relationship between price stability and a whole lot of people being out of work has been a pillar of economic theory and central banking practice.

The so-called dual mandate of most central banks – full employment and price stability – is actually regarded as a theoretical impossibility; or rather “full employment” is another way of saying “NAIRU”.

In other words, for 50 years or so our economic betters have decreed that inflation can only be kept under control, and the value of money preserved, if a lot of people don’t have a job. And they have gone about ensuring that that is the case.

The other theory about inflation, the one put forward by Milton Friedman, is that it is “always and everywhere” about money: the more money there is, the more inflation.

Well, both of those theories are now falling apart. Friday’s employment data in the US saw unemployment fall from 5.8 per cent to 5.6 per cent but hourly wages actually fell. And of course the Federal Reserve has materialised more than $US3 trillion of fresh money since 2008, yet inflation is still falling. When the US CPI is released on Friday it is expected to show that consumer prices fell in December. Most of that comes from the 50 per cent collapse in the oil price, of course, but wages growth is not inflationary either, even though unemployment is falling. Despite all this, economists are still churning out reports that link the next increase in interest rates to the level of unemployment (they’ve given up equating it to money supply – that’s a dead duck).

So what IS the non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment? Well, according to the US Congressional Budget Office, which calculates it regularly, it’s … well, it’s 5.7 per cent – above the current US unemployment rate. But actually it’s a moving target, fluctuating between 5 per cent and 6 per cent since 1950. That is, at least 5 per cent of the workforce always needs to be unemployed for prices to be stable. What rubbish. I read a report yesterday from the economists at Societe Generale that the NAIRU is "generally thought to be between 5.25 – 5.5 per cent, which will be reached by late winter/early spring. By that time, we should see at least budding evidence of wage pressures".

Or not. Human jobs are being replaced by machines and software algorithms at an accelerating rate, so pay rises are very hard to come by these days, and will be for a while. On top of that cloud computing and other technologies are reducing non-labour costs and making labour more productive. At the same time, tough competition is forcing firms to pass on their cost reductions in lower prices to maintain market share. By the way, that’s what’s going on in the oil market: OPEC is attempting to hold market share against competition from the American shale producers, and the price has collapsed as a result of a price war.

That’s not to say inflation is dead. But it’s definitely in a coma, on monetary life support, with most central banks printing money and holding interest rates at near zero to try to get average prices to go up instead of down. Their concern is deflation, not inflation. So maybe someone should take the NAIRU out the back and strangle it, and start thinking about actual full employment instead of 5 per cent. They might not achieve it, but you never know unless you try.

hooman posted:

Group Work at university is a terrible idea. I did engineering at university (where I had to do a lot of group work) and I work as an engineer now and group work at my job is absolutely nothing like group work at university. You have personnel whose job it is to manage people, to set tasks and estimate hours to reassign if things are taking longer or shorter than expected, you are constantly with the people you are doing work with so if you have a question you can just ask it, you have a hierarchy and a chain of command and also you ensure that in any task you are leveraging the people with experience/expertise in the area to ensure it gets done, there's a formalised review process and a set of company expectations regarding formatting, style, presentation and flow.

None of this poo poo exists in a university setting, group work at university teaches you only to hate your peers and nothing about what it's like working in the real world.

SynthOrange posted:

Hockey's quitting.

hooman posted:

This is quite literally race baiting because this issue isn't to do with international students, it's to do with lovely students. International students do not have a monopoly on being lovely students.

HookShot posted:

My university had an entire course called "Busines English", the only required English course for the business degree that was fully designed for international students.

Essentially the entire semester long course was going over things like your/your, they're/their/there, basic spelling rules and other things like that. I ended up using the class as an opportunity to catch up on my novel reading in the back of the class while collecting my attendance marks.

I have no problem with international students, I had plenty of friends who were international students, but quite frankly if they don't have basic English skills they shouldn't have been accepted into an English language program, and I certainly felt pretty loving ripped off for having to pay for a mandatory English course that taught me poo poo I learned in the first grade.


Also gently caress all group assignment bludgers. They're all terrible.

HookShot posted:

My university had an entire course called "Busines English", the only required English course for the business degree that was fully designed for international students.

Essentially the entire semester long course was going over things like your/your, they're/their/there, basic spelling rules and other things like that. I ended up using the class as an opportunity to catch up on my novel reading in the back of the class while collecting my attendance marks.

I have no problem with international students, I had plenty of friends who were international students, but quite frankly if they don't have basic English skills they shouldn't have been accepted into an English language program, and I certainly felt pretty loving ripped off for having to pay for a mandatory English course that taught me poo poo I learned in the first grade.


Also gently caress all group assignment bludgers. They're all terrible.

Birb Katter posted:

Did you happen to fail this course by any chance?

HookShot posted:

Les Affaires posted:

If the actual NAIRU is in fact far lower than what is predicted by the IMF (5.7%) then theoretically we could keep interest rates at or near zero in the medium term and not have to worry about an outburst of inflation, and the overall effect would be us getting far closer to "full employment" of around 2%. The people who would be pissed off with this idea would be rent-seeking savers who have all their money in bank accounts earning a few percentage points above inflation, because it would force them to put their money to work and take a risk, or to invest it in ventures that do it for them.

quote:

Labor has questioned the credibility of the latest Fairfax-Ipsos poll in the wake of a crushing result for the Turnbull Government.
The poll recorded a seven-point turnaround in the Coalition's fortunes since August, with it leading Labor after preferences by 53 per cent to 47 per cent.
It also showed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's personal approval on 68 per cent to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten's 32 per cent.

But in a tweet, Labor frontbencher Kim Carr has pointed out what appears to be a anomaly in the state-by-state breakdown of the results.
"Fairfax-Ipsos Poll claims to have the Labor vote in Victoria on 28%. Believable?' he wrote.
The figures also showed the Greens' primary vote in Victoria on 21 per cent, six points clear of the figure in Western Australia and nearly double that of most other states.
While a good result for the new Turnbull Government was not surprising, this was well up on the bounce seen in most other polls.


Malcolm Turnbull is riding a wave of positive poll results as he wins over progressive voters. But the issue of asylum seekers, and particularly that of the women allegedly raped on Nauru, will put this to the test, writes Paula Matthewson.
This was the second outlier result for a poll that has struggled this year.
In March, following the first party room revolt against Tony Abbott, the poll recorded a four-point rise in the Coalition's primary vote, an eight-point turnaround in a month.
At that time, pollster Jessica Elgood explained the results this way: "Voters appear to already be factoring in Abbott's potential departure. They don't like him, prefer Turnbull and assume Abbott is not long in his job."

The latest poll of 1,403 respondents was taken from Thursday to Saturday and had a margin of error of 2.6 per cent.

Negligent posted:

How do you make a complaint about international students having poor English without it being race baiting? Not being facetious I actually want to know.

hooman posted:

By not blaming international students for it, but instead blaming the systems and entry requirements that allows people with terrible English skills (be they international or local) into university courses that require them. The best physicist I know failed English at high school had to do a special test to get into university. This person should never be excluded from university due to his lack of English skills.

Group assignments are loving terrible and you really shouldn't be given them at university.

Jumpingmanjim posted:

Why don't the international students bear some responsibility for these problems. No one makes them attend a university that teaches in a language they don't understand.

quote:

When the Berlin Wall fell, elated Germans pocketed pieces of concrete as souvenirs.

When Tony Abbott was toppled as prime minister, his most senior colleagues marked history with pieces of a smashed marble table, a Senate committee heard on Monday.

The Italian marble coffee table was broken during a reportedly wild party in the prime ministerial suite on the night he was deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in September.

Emails held by the Department of Parliamentary Services, based on reports by Parliament House cleaners, suggest pieces of smashed marble were seen in other ministerial offices on the Tuesday morning after the long drinking session.

"It is understood the table may have been damaged by persons standing or dancing up on it. Anecdotally, we have been advised that pieces of the table top were present on the floor on Tuesday morning and more pieces have since been seen in the ministerial offices," said the email to DPS officer Rob Barnes.

Liberal minister Jamie Briggs was confined to a wheelchair the day after the party but has denied rumours he had fallen from the table. There was also reports Mr Abbott danced shirtless on the night.

There was also a crack to the bronze base of the table, bought for $590 during the 1980s.

Senator Penny Wong asked DPS staff why there was no immediate investigation called into damage to what is Commonwealth property, saying in "any other work place" if a table was smashed at a leaving party someone would be asked to pay.

"It's kind of unusual for ministers to have shards or fragments of marble in their offices, correct?"

Mr Ryan replied: "There are a many things that are in minister's offices, I wouldn't like to comment."

The hearing boiled over when Senate President Stephen Parry suggested that cleaners had broken a "duty of confidentiality" by reporting what they saw in ministerial offices.

Senator Wong replied: "So it's the cleaner's fault for telling people that ministers have been souveniring bits of marble? Are you going to go after the cleaners?"

"Are you seriously telling the committee, Mr President, that your primary concern is the cleaner's conduct in this?"

Parry: "No, I'm not saying that Senator Wong. What I'm saying is how can we rely on evidence, anecdotal evidence when it would be the duty of cleaners not to report matters that they sight on minister's desks."

Wong: "I will place on record that I think it is an extraordinary thing that a presiding officer is concerned about what the cleaners have done here and not about the fact that Commonwealth property has been treated in this way."

Throughout the hearing Labor and Coalition senators wrangled over the correct term of whether the table had been "damaged" or "smashed" during the long drinking session.

Senator Parry said: "The word smashed is speculative. It's seriously damaged."

Senator Wong said she would agree to "broken in half"

The hearing heard further evidence of the siege-like atmosphere in Mr Abbott's office in the days after the spill as his chief of staff, Peta Credlin, and other staffers shredded documents and prepared to hand over the suite to Mr Turnbull.

DPS staff were refused access until Friday – four days after Mr Abbott lost the party room ballot – to inspect the broken table.

DPS has two quotes to replace the Italian marble. One under $1000 and a second that is "well over that price", said DPS officer John Ryan.

ShoeFly posted:

Time for something a bit more amusing!

There was also reports Mr Abbott danced shirtless on the night.

open24hours posted:

In some countries (like Japan), outside of the elite universities they're pretty much just daycare for young adults. Show up, get your degree, go get a job as a salaryman somewhere.

ShoeFly posted:

Time for something a bit more amusing!

quote:

Senator Penny Wong asked DPS staff why there was no immediate investigation called into damage to what is Commonwealth property, saying in "any other work place" if a table was smashed at a leaving party someone would be asked to pay.

Les Affaires posted:

Hooman is right, this isn't an issue with international students, it's an issue with lovely students and there are multiple ways of ensuring lovely students are either prepared for the workload and expectations, or quite rightly flunked when they don't perform.

Les Affaires posted:

Which highlights an interesting paradox: send your kid overseas to a high quality university that does not act like a daycare, but then demand they pass regardless of effort or merit because of the money you've spent.

hooman posted:

Group assignments are loving terrible and you really shouldn't be given them at university.