Category: Teaching

“Inside Job” The Director Speaks

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business, Teaching, White Collar Crime3 Comments

Charles Ferguson directed the documentary “Inside Job.” He writes about his thoughts and conclusions from creating the documentary.

One of the things he found puzzling (as do I), doesn’t doing serious long term damage to the nation’s infrastructure like roads, bridges and education become a concern for the financial elites since over time it damages their American investments?

Here’s the answer.  (from the article) –

The financial services industry and the most successful American multinational firms now obtain rapidly increasing fractions, often already the majority, of their investment, employees, and revenues from (a) other wealthy individuals and corporations and/or (b) outside the United States. Over the last two decades their political interests, contributions, and lobbying have gradually followed these larger trends. As a result, the political duopoly has overseen a massive disinvestment in the future of the United States and the American people, and a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90% of the population to the top 1%. Taxes on dividends, high incomes, capital gains, and estates have sharply declined, while tuition at public universities, hours worked per family, household debt, and government deficits have all increased.

They have no interest in the long term future of the nation. This nation is similar to the Wild West idea of Robbers’ Roost.

Robbers’ Roost is a town hidden in the hills where the outlaws go to hang out. There is no law there. They do what they feel like. They are safe from the sheriff and all those people they took stuff from.

The United States is going to be a great big friendly place for people with lots of money and few morals. One law for them. One law for us.

James Pilant

The trailer –

My Students (Revised)

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching

This is a shorter, more carefully revised version of my earlier “My Students” posting.

One of the things I like to teach my students is that they have no intellectual inferiority in regard to the Ivy League schools.

On the face of it, that may sound ridiculous, but it is not.

A great many of these heavily lauded (and immensely well paid) graduates of the schools blessed by the establishment have participated wholly and happily in the greatest financial debacle in history. Their well honed degrees disguised their incompetence, their stupidity, their lack of intellectual depth and their overwhelming sense of entitlement.

The fact that so many of these Ivy Leaguers journey off to cash in their degrees and their honor in various financial firms is a black mark against our educational system. You see, we depend on this system to produce the scholars, the politicians, and all those various professions which make nations function with honor and purpose. Instead we get a rush of graduates toward a predatory system of financial institutions.

My students would try to take care of their fellow citizens never forgetting where they came from and the struggle they must make to simply get a job in the current market. They deserve better. Nevertheless, from this crop is my hope, that these people, these individuals working to better themselves will be the leaders of tomorrow, not the children of the elite, not the well favored few, but my students.

It is not a matter of free will or gumption that keeps my students from being as successful as those. It is a well ingrained attitude, a lack of expectations, and a consistent contempt and suspicion of the educated. We can do better. We, the citizens, have a responsibility to our children to act the part of guides and supporters. I do not mean the blind support given whatever the merits. I mean a willingness to encourage excellence and the hard, difficult job of not submitting to the idea that some people are better. They are better when they prove it. My student can prove their excellence.

But learning is not just a matter of schooling. It is a life long endeavor. Most people stop when they put that piece of paper on the wall. But that is all they are, paper, wood pulp. If my students are to change this state, this country, and this world, there must be support and dedication to a lifetime of learning. A person who continues the task of development, of becoming, is inferior to no learner on earth, whatever their degree.

There are books and as long as there are books – as long as the great works of mankind – are readily available, any human being can become educated and developed. Any individual can build the power of understanding, a basic command of the ideas that govern this society, and a sense of purpose in their lives. But we have to believe. My students need that. My students need to walk in a community where people believe they are just as good, just as smart and just as capable as students from anywhere in the world.

All they have is the power of their minds and the determination of their hearts. If they only believe.

James Pilant

Steven Mintz AKA Ethics Sage Comments On My Post – The Legacy Of An Inspirational Teacher Is Felt Throughout The Ages.

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Teaching

The post ended on an explanatory note about league tables. These are the English variation of our school rankings under No Child Left Behind (an abomination of a law). Steven Mintz begins his comment at that point.

I couldn’t agree more about “league tables.” Newsweek reported the best high schools in the U.S. in June 2010 and based its selections on how hard school staffs work to challenge students with advanced placement college-level courses and tests. Nowhere in the ranking is the fact that the best high schools are those that serve all of the students not just the very best among them. As a college professor I find it to be disturbing that so many students lack a strong work ethic and motivation to learn for learning sake. How do we measure whether a high school instills these values that are so important to success in college and to create the thirst for lifelong learning? We also should recognize that what a teacher should and does accomplish in the classroom may not be known for years. Perhaps Henry Adams said it best: “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell, where his influence stops.”

The Ethics Sage (Steven Mintz) can be found here. I recommend his web site. It is on my blog roll.

(The Ethics Sage’s current post deals with Jeff Skilling (Enron) and his appeal which if successful could release him from prison.)

James Pilant

The Dumbest Quote for the Day

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Government Failure, Philosophy of Business, Teaching3 Comments

I teach in Northwest Arkansas. Students here tend to feel that because they are from Arkansas and go to a small college that they are going to have trouble competing with students from name schools. I always tell them that they are just as smart as students from anywhere in the country. As evidence of this, I point to the litany of stupidity, overreaching and greed by these graduates of name universities in the banking industy.

Well today, I got a new quote to use:

It’s not a surprise that we know we have crises every five or ten years. My daughter came home from school one day and said, ‘daddy, what’s a financial crisis?’ And without trying to be funny, I said, ‘it’s the type of thing that happens every five, ten, seven, years.’ And she said: ‘why is everybody so surprised?’ So we shouldn’t be surprised…

This is from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimion. That’s right. You heard it clearly. This financial crisis is just “the type of thing that happens every five, ten, etc.” Do you mean the financial crisis that destroyed a large proportion of the value of American homes, came within an inch of destroying the international banking system and has put millions of people out of work? That one? It seems to me the others were a lot smaller – much, much, much smaller. I hope he is better in other aspects of teaching his children. The story of Santa Claus has more validity.

Mr. Dimion has an MBA from Harvard Business School. You see, my students are just as smart as their students. The evidence is clear. I don’t think I could get any of my students to claim that the current financial crisis is a kind of “seasonal” phenomenon and that we shouldn’t be surprised when the elite educated bankers screw up on in a manner barely conceivable in fiction.

James Pilant

(First published in January of this year.)

Is A College Education Worth $800,000?

On By southwerkIn Economic measurement, Teaching4 Comments

The number, 800,000 dollars, has been used often to describe the advantage of a college education over a high school diploma. However according to new data, the actual value is $450,000 dollars. If that isn’t bad enough, according to the American Institutes for Research, it’s only worth $279,893.

Let’s figure it up. The number of working years used is forty. So if we divide 800,000 by forty, we get 20,000 dollars a year in advantage over someone with a high school diploma. Now let’s look at the revised figures. At 450,000 dollars, a college degree adds 11,250 dollars, which is much less impressive than 20,000 dollars. But if the American Institutes for Research is correct, it is only worth about 7,000 dollars.

Now, none of this takes into consideration, the costs of college itself, in particular the burden of paying off students loans which can easily get into the tens of thousands.

Am I discouraging you from pursuing a higher education? Certainly not, there are many advantages, intellectual and otherwise for going to college. I do want you to be aware that we might want to contemplate some kind of structural change in how we pay for education and how education is rewarded in the job market.

And be cautious about these kinds of statistics. The first decade of the twenty first century was cruel to the middle and lower classes. They lost a lot of economic ground. One of the things that was hit hard was earning power. Whole classes of jobs disappeared. The very, very few new jobs carried much lower salaries and reduced benefits.

Take a look at this film on college costs:

James Pilant

(This is a repost of a column I wrote some months ago.)

Could A Foreclosure Freeze Damage The Housing Market?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Philosophy of Business, Teaching, White Collar Crime

Well, of course, it will. Massive wrong doing has consequences for the innocent. That is the nature of illegal acts. That is the nature of speculation and greed. People without fault are injured.

So, we have competing values here. Should the health of the economy and the suffering of the innocent be a bar on prosecuting thousands upon thousands of mortgages done outside the rules of the law.

I’m going to come down on the side of the rule of law.

I teach business ethics. You can’t have business ethics just through teaching and exhortation. They have to be backed up by penalties. If the suffering of the innocent is a bar to prosecution, it sends a clear signal that cutting corners, skirting the law, deliberately disobeying the law, have little or no consequences as long as the perpetrators can point at economic hostages and say, “Oh, but we can’t harm them.”

You cannot avoid prosecuting the guilty in the business community over and over again without them getting the message that there are no consequences. They will realize (or have realized) that the law does not apply to them.

Once they know this, what will happen to the rest of us?

Here’s the CBS News Story – Beware it has a commercial.

James Pilant

Mark Thoma – The Lessons Of The Economic Crisis Of 2008

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, Government Failure, Teaching

Mark Thoma is a distinguished academic. His take on the vital lessons the banking collapse and the poorly executed bailout are similar to my own.

The overarching lesson in all of this is that getting government out of the way isn’t always the best path to prosperity. The crisis should have taught us that government has an essential role to play in preventing problems from occurring in the economy, and in correcting problems when they occur despite our attempts to prevent them. But, unfortunately, due to poorly executed policy, political posturing, obstructionism in Congress, and ineffective rebuttal from the administration, that’s not the lesson that has been learned.

He maintains a largely academic web page, which is worth a read. He also has a Facebook page which I recommend you join.

This is an example of his rhetoric.

This man has full sized lectures available on You Tube. He is an expert on econometrics, but don’t worry he is not always that high on academic difficulty when he speaks or writes.

Chris MacDonald – Chilean Miners: What Is Rescue Worth?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, ethics, Teaching2 Comments

You cannot accuse Professor MacDonald of not being timely.

This article is a very clever while straightforward analysis on what on the surface is a simple question but ethically has more arms than an octopus in circus sideshow.

Here is the ethical thought problem he poses –

So, a thought experiment: what if there were only one company qualified to do the rescue work, or only one company available locally? What should that company charge?

A few quick options:

1. They should charge whatever the market will bear, which would essentially amount to charging the most the Chilean government and/or the mining company involved are willing to pay.

2. They should charge nothing. They should be happy to be involved, and to charge anything would be to put a price on human lives, which is unacceptably exploitative.

3. They should charge just enough to cover their own costs — machinery, fuel, and maybe their own workers’ wages.

4. They should charge exactly the same to drill this hole as they would to drill any other hole of similar size, depth, and complexity. No more (that would be exploitative), and no less (that would be foolish).

Do you favour one of those four? On what grounds? Or can you suggest another principled answer?

Follow his columns, he writes regularly and if you follow the articles and pay a little attention, you will probably have the equivalent experience of an undergraduate class in business ethics!

James Pilant

Do Case Studies In Business Ethics Increase Ethical Behavior?

On By southwerkIn business ethics, Capitalism, ethics, Teaching, White Collar Crime

Only if the examples are of a particular type and taught in a particular way. Back in 2006, a group of professors from a variety of business disciplines got together to teach a class using the examples of Enron, Worldcom, Tyco and Shell.

From the article at SmartPros –

At the end of the semester, the number of students in a simulated trading room who were caught in misconduct or misusing information for insider trading was significantly higher than at the beginning. The students said, “You taught us how to do it,” Buono recalled.

“For those of us who’ve spent our careers teaching this, it’s been a disappointing time,” said Buono, who has taught at the Waltham, Mass., college for 27 years. “Some of the most renowned names in the corporate world are now jokes at cocktail parties. And they were led by graduates of our business programs.

Obviously, the teaching of unfortunate case studies is not the best route to ethical behavior. The professors decided to try a new tack and taught examples from a perspective of moral heroism.

Their initial studies indicated some success.

What’s my take? I loath case studies. My favorite example is a case in which the employee is put crossways with his boss over a fairly minor issue that would however, result in the loss of his job. The study goes on to explain that his wife is in the hospital and his children are in an expensive private school. The case study is loaded for one side. It is obvious students will do the correct and moral thing on a test but take away from the class, the real lesson, the lesson of getting along.

In other words, this kind of ethics teaching is negative ethics teaching. This example clearly indicated that a moral life is expensive and damaging to a career, and that it really doesn’t matter anyway. After all, management will get someone to do the immoral act anyway. Just Great! We desperately need a generation of ethically sound business leaders and our business schools can’t even get ethics case studies right.

How much change in the case study movement do you think has happened since 2006? Why do we have case studies anyway? Simple, it is good class discussion and easy to teach. So we wind up with generations of moral phonies, because business ethics teachers are unwilling to do their job because it’s hard.

My contempt for standard textbooks and standard business ethics teaching is hard to put into words. I write my own class material emphasizing individual moral development. Each individual student charts out an ethical course for their life path. As the semester progresses the students are asked what changes occur because of their exposure to Catholic Social Doctrine, etc. An individual with a thought out moral system is much more likely to make the right decision when confronted with an ethical problem. You prepare a student to be a good human being. That’s the heart of teaching. You don’t teach him silly examples that he will quickly discard as not being part of the real world, you teach that a life lived nobly and honestly is better than the other choices.

James Pilant

Camp Millionaire

On By southwerkIn ethics, Teaching4 Comments

The Serpent and the Wolf

Claire Prentice writing for BBC news tells the story of Camp Millionaire where children learn the elements of financial management and wealth accumulation. I am sure to many this sounds bizarre but I have no problem with this practice. In fact, I teach my class that having money and, in particular, keeping money are arts that have to be learned. Students from upper middle class backgrounds have an enormous advantage over their lower class counterparts in the pursuit of economic success because of their head start in financial knowledge. I have discussed this with people from the upper crust (as much as we get in Northwest Arkansas) and they assume that lower class people are stupid because they don’t know these simple things. These things are not simple and if your parents did them daily, weekly and monthly, it’s easy to pick up this knowledge, much easier to understand these things than a student who comes from a family that has trouble putting three meals a day on the table.

Sometimes, I think we fail our college students in business schools across the country because we fail to teach them the habits of the upper classes. These may well be more important to business success than any actual talent, witness the disastrous behavior of Wall Street firms if you don’t believe in the success of style over substance. We probably ought to combine the serious elements of subjects like accounting with less technical but often more critical skills like upper-class mannerisms and expectations.

I want you to understand clearly that I hold the practice of judging people by whether or not they have the “look” of the right social class to be utterly contemptible. As a matter of ethics and intelligence at its most mundane level we should hire based on competence. This has mutated into something now called emotional intelligence. I kid you not. In this country, there is a philosophy that says getting along is more important than competence, than knowing how to do your job. Imagine American history without difficult people, John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Harry Truman (27% approval rating), and Lyndon Johnson. Every one of them was difficult to get along with as a person, but they had contributions to make just as employees do.

Well, these current philosophies have results and in my judgment we’re due for another set. Business philosophies come and go like the fabled length of skirts and with less reason and intelligence. These fashions would be less important if more thinking were done.

But as I was saying, business fashions, trends and much other nonsense has a lot to do with success or failure, hired or unemployed. It is a nasty world full of stupid and incompetent people. I don’t want to have to teach students that talent, intelligence, courage and hard work are often irrelevant to business success but I cannot deny objective reality.

We should teach students to dress, eat, socialize and converse in the manner of the “successful” people. We should teach them what elements of the truth are acceptable in business practice. We should teach that to do good and act honorably and justly according to the tenets of your religion are often elements of ridicule in the world of business. Now, immediately someone will throw the example of some bible toting business manager who proclaims that all of his business is conducted according to God’s law. Right. His reading of it. What’s more, one of these types is just that: a type, not the kind of businessman we expect.

If you tell someone in business of your respect for honor, justice and truth; you will be immediately considered naive and there will be chuckles as you walk by. This is because sold out despicable lamebrains without morality or soul have to sleep at night. Their belief that they deal with the “real” world gives them a juicy rationalization for their lack of moral judgment and comfort with wrong doing.

Matthew reports that Christ said, “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16

I think this is a good saying for the honorable both Christian and non-Christian.

I (of much less status) send forth my students the same way. I want them to uphold high moral values and to try to do the right thing but I also want them to survive and succeed in the business world. The two goals are not incompatible but they are difficult.  

James Pilant