When I mentioned to friends that I was planning a trip to Kazakhstan, the most common response was “that’s where Borat is from”, referring to the fictional character portrayed by Sasha Baron Cohen in the popular 2006 comedy film. But unlike the impoverished backward nation portrayed in the movie, visitors to Kazakhstan will find a destination far different than one might imagine. Kazakhstan is a mountainous country, nestled in Central Asia with the Tai Shan Mountains serving as a backdrop to Almaty, its largest city. Economically, Kazakhstan had benefited tremendously in the late 2000s and early 2010s when the price of oil and natural gas (its most abundant resources) peaked. But unlike other developing countries which had squandered their oil wealth due to corruption, Kazakhstan invested heavily in infrastructure and education, leading to beautiful, modern cities with wide avenues and efficient public transportation systems. Kazakhstan’s emphasis on education, especially science and math, can be tied to its important role as the home and original launch site (which remains today as a result of a lease agreement between Kazakhstan and Russia) of the Russian Space Program. Ensuring all citizens have access to both primary and higher education is a key government priority that has led Kazakhstan to experience rapid economic growth. A visit to Astana, the capital, might confuse a weary traveler with other dynamically growing cities such as Dubai or Shanghai. Kazakhstan’s infrastructure development allowed it to bid for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Although it lost its bid to Beijing, Kazakhstan made a positive impression on the Olympic Committee, making a future bid more likely to be successful. And perhaps the most striking observation of Kazakhstan is its people. Most Kazakhs resemble the Chinese more than Russian in physical appearance. In terms of tourism, although there are plenty of hotels, modern airports, and beautiful attractions, one will find very few American and European tourists. For that reason, very few Kazakhs speak English, and English signs are not very common. But that should not deter one from visiting this beautiful country. Just turn on the Google Translate app, and venture out and interact with some of the most-friendly people in the world. - Eric Chiang, Author of Economics: Principles for a Changing World ... View more

Among the most famous and popular animals in the world is the panda bear, whose existence in the forests of central China had been threatened by deforestation and economic development throughout the 20th century. Since the 1970s, however, conservation efforts have allowed the panda population to nearly double, allowing scientists and tourists from around the world to observe their majestic qualities and playful personalities. On a recent visit to Chengdu (currently the fourth largest city in China with a population of over 14 million), I enjoyed a unique experience unavailable anywhere else in the world. In the foothills of the Qionglai mountains about an hour’s drive west of Chengdu is the Dujiangyan Panda Research Center, which is home to approximately 20 pandas including U.S.-born pandas Tai Shan (born in 2005) and Bao Bao (born in 2013), both of whom were born in the National Zoo in Washington D.C. and subsequently returned to China under the panda lease agreement. Unlike many zoos outside of China which are privileged to host usually at most two pandas at a time, the Dujiangyan Panda Center allows tourists to visit over a dozen pandas for a small admission fee of about $12. However, for a significantly larger “donation”, one can experience pandas much more up close. For a payment of about $120, one can become a “volunteer” for the day, helping to prepare food for the pandas and cleaning up their dens. But the ultimate experience requires one to plunk down an additional $300. This buys you 20 seconds to sit alone with and hug a panda cub, just enough time to capture priceless memories via photos and video. Despite the hefty fee, demand is very high and the experience (limited to 20 persons per day) sells out weeks in advance. All of the funds collected are used to advance further conservation efforts, which has recently allowed the panda to be removed from the endangered species list. - Eric Chiang, Author of Economics: Principles for a Changing World ... View more

This afternoon, Jeffrey Young of The Chronicle of Higher Education, interviewed Christine Ortiz, dean of education at MIT, as a follow up to the article he wrote last month on a new nonprofit university she is leaving MIT to start, that provides students with a well-structured global education experience in a non-traditional format.  She shared some of her interdisciplinary vision via a slide that highlighted personalized learning in the knowledge domain, core science and engineering, and humanities, arts and social sciences (visualization credited to Jason Chuang).  Ortiz emphasized students being engaged, passionate, and that they would have flexibility in their day.  She sees the new classroom as focused on project-based learning and investigation to advance students to higher levels of learning, led by mentors (more one-on-one interactions versus standard lectures). The curriculum will not only be STEM but will incorporate the humanities, and it will have accreditation in place to insure quality.  How do you create global educational experiences in your classroom? What project based learning assignments have you done successfully? If you’re looking to incorporate more active learning in your economics classroom, Worth Economics supports your efforts with EconED Active, a site dedicated to open resources for active learning in your classroom.  And follow our author Eric Chiang and Marketing Manager Thomas Digiano  as they travel around the world to gather ideas for taking your Principles of Economics course global. Watch for how this Around the World feature gets incorporated in Chiang's upcoming book, Economics: Principles for a Changing World 4e. ... View more

In a plenary session on the first full day of events at SXSWedu, Temple Grandin, Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University, focused participants on meeting the needs of every learner we touch.  The crowd cheered when she encouraged us to understand that people think differently and we need to bridge the gap between the field and academics.  “A lot of my work has been observation. Observation is a part of science.”  She went on to say, “When I learned how my visual thinking was different from verbal thinking, it gave me insight into how different people’s brains approach problem solving. If I don’t have a picture, I don’t have a thought.”  Drawing from her observations in the field, she cited her exposure to different experiences that created opportunities that some labeled students aren’t getting to. "How did I find my passion? I was exposed to it."  She showed real concern for obstacles education creates for students, like a student who was denied taking a biology class that she really wanted to take because she wasn’t able to first pass her algebra class.  The talk really left me thinking—what are we trying to accomplish in the economics classroom?  Are we preparing materials for different kinds of thinkers as we create our lessons?  Are there enough visuals to encourage the visual learners and enough content to support the language-based thinkers?  And, are we exposing students to enough economics to get them interested in the field?    ... View more

Our sister organization, Springer, just published Volume 22 of the International Advances in Economic Research, hosting a number of open access articles. Exciting news that a highlighted article relates to the economics of education! It just so happens we are working on the first textbook specifically for the Economics of Education course so it's motivating to see current research expanding  views on efficiency and productivity in education using various approaches to computational methods.While working with authors  Sarah Turner and Mike Lovenheim on this project, I have been inspired by their analogies and passion for the economics of education. In the IAER article, Cristian Barra and Roberto Zotti use "bootstrap technique... to provide confidence intervals for efficiency scores and to obtain bias-corrected estimates" in their research on education. This is interesting to me because I've started to take online coding courses to help me understand the software technology industry publishing is diving into, and this statistical technique, bootstrap, has the same name as this free and open-source HTML/CSS tool that is used to create dynamic websites and apps. As I learn more about web development, it will be interesting to see the crossovers I've learned from economics, business, and now, technology. You can download and read a free copy of Barra and Zotti's article "Measuring Efficiency in Higher Education: An Empirical Study Using a Bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis"on Springer's journal ​site here. Shameless plug: Pls vote for what you think our economics of education textbook should be titled! Register and VOTE HERE.​ ... View more