By David Silbey. Political campaigns are giant startups that flare into existence in campaign season, hire thousands and spend millions, and then mostly wink out of existence. Others have made this point. What’s interesting me at the moment is what happens to those campaign workers when the effort ends? A fair number stay in politics: move on to the next campaign, go to DC, or something similar. But a lot don’t, and it would be fascinating to trace their movement into the American economy. They have a lot of skills and experience, often at a very young age, and those skills are useful. In the same way that the veterans of World War II, often with great experience in logistics and supply movement, came back to the United States and filtered into an economy where those skills were prized, political campaign people may well be having knock-on economic effects. More...

By Robert Talbert. Yesterday I got an email from a reader who had read this post called What should math majors know about computing? from 2007. In the original article, I gave a list of what computing skills mathematics majors should learn and when they should learn them. The person emailing me was wondering if I had any updates on that list or any new ideas, seven years on from writing the article. More...

By Robert Talbert. Welcome to your weekly small-shiny-objects-from-the-web post:
Is banning PowerPoint slides the key to having meetings that are more informative, interactive, and community-driven? Well, it couldn’t hurt. I’d heard about US military command groups banning PowerPoint in meetings but the similar ban from physicists is new to me. More...

By Nick DeSantis. Small and midsize private colleges outpace many of their larger, public peers in preparing students for graduate study and careers in science, technology, mathematics, or engineering, concludes a report released on Monday by the Council of Independent Colleges. More...

By Nick DeSantis. Butte College, a two-year institution in Oroville, Calif., is investigating a part-time instructor’s Facebook posts about the U.S. military and the academic preparedness of returning student veterans. More...

By Nick DeSantis. A lawyer representing four college athletes on Monday filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the NCAA and its five largest conferences, asserting that players’ compensation had been illegally capped at the value of an athletic scholarship, ESPN reported. More...

By Nick DeSantis. Small changes in homework practices that incorporate three principles from cognitive science can improve student learning and performance on examinations, says a study released on Tuesday by the journal Educational Psychology Review. More...

By Nick DeSantis. The California state agency charged with regulating more than 1,000 private postsecondary institutions, such as for-profit colleges and vocational schools, has “consistently failed to meet its responsibility to protect the public’s interests,” says a new report from California’s state auditor, the Los Angeles Times reported. More...