Reply to Sidwell Basketball Article

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "Sidwell Basketball Article"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As an economist, I have to point out that desirability (which we call utility) can be a function of many variables. These variables can include, but are not limited to, the perception of eliteness, proximity to your house, affordability so that you aren't sacrificing college or other savings, athletic program, collaborative vs competitive atmosphere, and much much more. Economists actually build utility curves with multiple variables, no kidding.

As you can imagine, there will be no single definition of desirability that captures all families. Different families will weigh different things as being desirable.

The ratio of acceptances gets to the perception of eliteness, but it doesn't get at these other possible components of desirability that some families may value even more. So it would make perfect sense that 1000 families would prefer Gonzaga to Sidwell because Gonzaga is more affordable and they can pay the mortgage.[/quote]

You're mixing up "most desirable" with "most affordable."

According to your logic, the meal people most desire comes from McDonald's.  The car people most desire is not a Lexus, an Audi, or a BMW ... it's a Toyota Camry.

And you didn't answer the question -- Group A or Group B?  
[/quote]

I was blurring the issues, because most folks here wouldn't get it, and it's not crucial. But just for you: a person "maximizes utility subject to a budget constraint." Happy now? Yep, I didn't think so. This is another way of saying that price (what I called "affordability" in my post above) is a key factor in decision-making, because, for many families, Gonzaga is affordable, but Sidwell is not. To expand on this, what we've been calling "desirability" here would be referred to by economists as a function of all the variables that are important to this particular person when choosing a school. These variables may, or may not, include price, perception of eliteness, athletics, Catholic education, teaching methodology, location, and whatever else this person feels is important in a school, all weighted appropriately for this person. (Now I know you're really sorry you asked!) The key point, which I think economists share with psychologists, is that "desire" is a complex mix of many different factors, and that a single factor (like perception of eliteness, aka admissions ratios) doesn't fully explain what we've been calling the "desirability" of a school or why Gonzaga gets 1000 applications. In particular, price plays a much bigger role that many here seem to be acknowledging.

Taking your argument to its logical conclusion, you're implying that if we waved a wand and made all the Gonzaga families into millionaires (so that price becomes irrelevant), all the Gonzaga families would transfer to Sidwell (assuming there's room for them at Sidwell). And all the McDonalds customers would start dining at the Ritz. And all Camry owners would switch to BMWs. But I think you can see how we have absolutely no way of knowing these things. You can think of 100s of reasons why none of this would happen, for example, many Gonzaga families place a high value on sports and a Catholic education, many McDonalds customers just love their greasy Big Macs, and many Camry owners appreciate the cars' low-key reliability. It's like saying, "If Oberlin was in Los Angeles and cost half as much, it would get as many applications as UCLA." Really, how would we know that? We don't know and, really, nobody cares about useless speculation like this! Therefore, we're left with the facts that we have, rather than speculation on counterfactuals about what schools families would choose if only they were richer. And as I said above, price is clearly a factor in how people make real-life decisions about what they "desire" (as we've been calling it), given their budgets.

You need to re-read my first post carefully. I was trying to stay out of this, but the answer is in there. Here's a tip, though: if you "maximize utility subject to a budget constraint," you are going to get a quantity, not a ratio to something like class size. I'll also mention that scaling by class size skews numbers in unpredictable (and therefore unjustifiable) ways, and ad hoc solutions (let's toss out Curtis because we feel like it, but keep another school because we feel like doing that) only confuse things instead of helping.

I have no connection to either Gonzaga or Sidwell, FWIW.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics