Recessions are different now

Paul Krugman offers up this interesting nugget:

Let's assume that the pattern holds up if we look at real interest rates rather than nominal rates (there's a good chance that in the 1970s while the Fed thought it was tightening policy by raising nominal rates, inflation was rising even faster so real rates were falling). What does it tell us?

I think it tells us what Krugman has noted before - your father's recessions, those in the 1970s, happened when the economy overheated and the Fed raised interest rates to stop inflation. The most recent recessions are your grandfather's recessions, like those that occurred in the early part of the 20th century. Then, asset market bubbles developed, nursed along by an expansionary monetary policy, and then crashed with disastrous consequences.

Awhile back critics of the Fed would charge that it caused recessions because it was captive to the banking sector. Whenever it saw high inflation, it would slam on the brakes to protect the interests of bondholders. That's changed: in the recent booms the Fed acted as if it was captive to the banking system, keeping rates low and cheering the boom on to inflate profits. Hypothesis: the Fed's been captive to finance all along; the new pattern of recession reflects changes in the structure of U.S. capitalism from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism.

Playing with Posterous

Until now this blog has been pre-posterous. I'd like to enter the posterous era; but how? Posterous seems to want me to set up an entirely new blog under their control. Let me try this. Hmm.

Wanted: political economy models of financial regulation

I've read many, many (too many) scholarly/wonky papers laying out proposals for a new financial regulatory framework. The Obama Administration seems to be of a mind to adopt many of these proposals, but according to this article in the American Banker Administration proposals along these lines immediately ran into a political buzz saw when they hit Congress (specifically, when they hit Barney Frank).

Before the Obama administration even unveiled its plan to overhaul financial regulation, critics derided it as dead on arrival.

The administration reportedly wants to consolidate prudential oversight of banks into a single agency, hand systemic supervision responsibilities to the Federal Reserve Board and create a financial consumer protection agency.

But House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, a crucial administration ally, panned the main idea in an interview Thursday.

"There is no chance of that happening, not even remotely," said Frank, referring to a single prudential regulator. "If you were starting from scratch, maybe, but nobody is going to take bank regulation from the Fed, the FDIC, the OCC and OTS and amalgamate them."

The politics of financial regulation pit state chartering agencies against federal chartering agencies, community banks against big national banks, consumer groups against the banking industry, different federal regulatory agencies against each other, etc. This intricate political economy is not incorporated in a serious way in any of the papers I've read on the subject. It ought to be: what is a regulatory regime that addresses the economic issues while striking a politically sustainable compromise between competing interests?

Another view on cap-and-trade v. carbon taxes

Greg Mankiw posits the "fundamental theorem of carbon taxation":

cap-and-trade = carbon tax + corporate welfare

By this he means that while in principle cap-and-trade and carbon taxes have the same effects on emission reduction (or can be made to have the same effects through appropriate amendments), the need to arive at an initial allocation of emissions permits invites corrupt horse-trading. The Waxman-Markey bill working its way through Congress appears to be Exhibit A. Committee members are even as we speak divvying up the permits, though they seem to be spreading them around to benefit state and local governments, low income people, and consumer groups in addition to corporations.

But Robert Stavins takes a more benign view of the horsetrading, and makes an important point. Any piece of legislation, whether it's carbon taxes or cap-and-trade, is going to be distorted when it goes throught he sausage grinder. The distortions under cap-and-trade are likely to be superior to those under a carbon tax:

Manifest political pressures lead to different initial allocations of allowances, which affect distribution, but not environmental effectiveness, and not cost-effectiveness. This means that ordinary political pressures need not get in the way of developing and implementing a scientifically sound, economically rational, and politically pragmatic policy. Contrast this with what would happen when political pressures are brought to bear on a carbon tax proposal, for example. Here the result will most likely be exemptions of sectors and firms, which reduces environmental effectiveness and drives up costs (as some low-cost emission reduction opportunities are left off the table). Furthermore, the hypothetical carbon tax example is the norm, not the exception. Across the board, political pressures often reduce the effectiveness and increase the cost of well-intentioned public policies. Cap-and-trade provides natural protection from this. Distributional battles over the allowance allocation in a cap-and-trade system do not raise the overall cost of the program nor affect its environmental impacts.

Teabags v. Douchebags

David Sirota (via Brad DeLong) says all of American history can be summarized as a manichean struggle between teabaggers and douchebags, with the teabaggers of one era defining the political environment of the next. To whit:

1760s-70s:
- John Hancock, Thomas Paine, et al: Teabaggers
- British: Douchebags

1830s-60s:
- Abolitionists: Teabaggers
- Slaveholders and their apologists: Douchebags

1870s-90s:
- Populists, William Jennings Bryan: Teabaggers
- Corporate robber barons: Douchebags

1920s-30s:
- Labor unions, socialists: Teabaggers
- Republicans, corporate moneyed intersts: Douchebags

1960s-70s:
- Civil rights movement, women's rights movement: Teabaggers
- Racists and misogynists: Douchebags

But then the Douchebags learned to masquerade as Teabaggers:

1980s:
- Rich people, corporations, neoconservatives: Teabaggers
- Liberals, blacks, women: Douchebags

Which bodes ill for the prospects of the Obama Administration, since in the public eye the big spenders and bailouters in the Administration could be perceived as Douchebags while the crazies on the right masquerade as Teabaggers.

It's hard to quibble with this type of trenchant, well-researched historical scholarship, but I shall. I claim that we have a long history of Douchebags wrapping themselves in the flag of Teabaggery, and it doesn't always work. Examples:

- Slaveholders in the antebellum period railing about infringements on states rights and the south's peculiar institution.
- The founders of modern conservatism warning that the New Deal would lead us down the slippery slope to totalitarianism.
- Racists in the civil rights period railing about infringements on states rights and the south's peculiar institution.

Sometimes, I believe, the American people can tell the Douchebags from the Teabaggers. I have not lost hope.

Sotomayor: human, empathetic

That's the attack line from conservatives. The job of a judge is to apply the law as written; empathy and human experience have no place in the courtroom. See Andrew McCarthy in the National Review; Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard; the editors of the Wall Street Journal; George Will on RealClearPolitics. Critics call Sonia Sotomayor out for this passage in a 2001 speech:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Of course there's more to the speech, which is a thoughtful reflection on how having more women and minorities serving as judges would improve the administration of justice.


Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.


Sotomayor makes what I would think is an uncontroversial point that a person's background affects how he or she interprets the facts of a case, hence affects the rulings a judge will make. While we strive for objectivity, our judgments are affected by our life experiences, so the more types of life experiences that are represented on the court the more impartial justice will be.
This is the key point that Sotomayor's supporters should try to hammer home. A diversity of opinions on the court makes justice more, not less, impartial.

Social Security once again

Every year about this time the Social Security Administration Trustees release their report on the financial condition of the Social Security system. Every year the report elicits cries of anguish and consternation about the "bankruptcy" of the system and the need for reform. Every year I feel the need to set the record straight, and so here I go.

Robert Samuelson proposes that we go ahead and declare the Social Security system bankrupt right now so that we delay no longer in making the tough decisions required to restore solvency:

It's increasingly obvious that Congress and the president (regardless of the party in power) will deal with the political stink bomb of an aging society only if forced. And the most plausible means of compulsion would be for Social Security and Medicare to go bankrupt: trust funds run dry; promised benefits exceed dedicated payroll taxes. The sooner this happens, the better.

A snide response to Samuelson's piece is here. This time I'll take the high road and appeal to some basic economic logic, leaving the snark to others.

First, what is the evidence that Social Security is or will eventually be "bankrupt"? Samuelson:

That the programs will ultimately go bankrupt is clear from the trustees' reports. On pages 201 and 202 of the Medicare report, you will find the conclusive arithmetic: Over the next 75 years, Social Security and Medicare will cost an estimated $103.2 trillion, while dedicated taxes and premiums will total only $57.4 trillion. The gap is $45.8 trillion.

According to the table on page 201 to which Samuelson refers, $38.1 trillion of the $45.8 trillion deficit is the deficit in the Medicare system, $7.7 trillion is Social Security. So the Medicare-Social Security "crisis" is largely a Medicare crisis, i.e. a health care crisis. Congress is, at the behest of the Obama Administration, working on health care reform even as we speak. Agree or disagree with Obama's proposals, you can't accuse him or the other politicians in Congress of ducking this issue.

But the $7.7 trillion long-range deficit in Social Security is still a lot of money, right? Well, not really. The total $45.8 trillion shortfall is just 5.8 percent of GDP over the 75-year projection period. $7.7 trillion is about 0.97 percent of total GDP over that period. 0.97 percent of today's GDP is about $140 billion. $140 billion is an uncomfortable sum to have to spend, but if that's what it took to save the Social Security system I'm sure our government would have little difficulty filling the gap.

Let's take a closer look at the concept of bankruptcy as it applies to the Social Security system. The Trustees' report says that under current law, Social Security expenditures will surpass dedicated revenue and the money in the SS trust fund in 2037. That's the date people refer to when they declare that the system will be bankrupt. But all this means is that in 2037, some other source of funding will be needed to keep the benefits flowing. Congress could at that date raise FICA taxes, raise income taxes, impose a new tax whose revenues would be devoted to Social Security, or cut benefits. The concept of bankruptcy comes up only because we decided long ago to fund Social Security through dedicated payroll taxes, and those dedicated taxes, under current law, will be insufficient in 2037. We could easily apply the same concept to another part of the budget, say the defense budget. We've made a de facto commitment to spend something like four percent of our GDP on the military every year until the end of time. Under current law, there are no taxes dedicated to the funding of the defense budget, so every year we have a "deficit" in the defense budget of 4 percent of GDP. The present value of this deficit over the infinite horizon is 80 percent of GDP if we assume a discount rate of five percent. So the defense budget is bankrupt! And so is just about every component of our budget!

So what is the Social Security problem? The problem is that whereas today we spend about 4.8 percent of GDP on Social Security benefits, spending is projected to rise to 6.2 percent of GDP in 2034 and then level off at about 5.8 percent of GDP after 2050. Meanwhile because of a slowdown in the growth of the working population, revenues from GDP are expected to fall from 5 percent currently to 4.4 percent by 2083. So we have to figure out how to fill a 1.8 percent of GDP funding gap half a century from now.

The Robert Samuelsons of the world want us to start making changes now to save the system. But changes to tax rates or benefits today would not have any direct impact on our ability to meet the funding challenge in the far-off future. Our ability to finance our retirement system in 2083 will depend on how big the U.S. economy is in 2083. Taxing workers more today in order to add money to the Social Security trust fund does not make the economy bigger in 2083. A bigger trust fund would mean that the the Social Security system could go a few more years past 2037 paying its bills out of the accumulated money in the fund. The Social Security Administration would sell off the Treasury bonds it holds to raise the money it needs. If it didn't have money in its trust fund, the U.S. Treasury would have to borrow the money the system needs by issuing Treasury bonds. Either way, our government is selling bonds to the public. All raising taxes now accomplishes is to put off the date when this is done by the Treasury rather than the Social Security Administration.

What will help solve the financing needs of the Social Security system? Anything that makes GDP bigger in the future. A higher savings rate might do it. This could be accomplished by raising FICA taxes, but it could also be accomplished by reinstating a hefty estate tax, cutting defense expenditures, or anything else that reduces our budget deficit. We could make our GDP bigger in the future by investing more in education or R&D in industries of the future such as "green technology". Of course, reducing our budget deficit, improving education, and developing new technologies are things that we probably want to do anyway. So my recommendation for dealing with the Social Security problem: ignore it now, deal with the financing problem when the time comes. For now, just focus on making sound macroeconomic policy decisions.

Bring terrorists to the United States!

Congress seems to be digging in its heels against release of Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S. In the NY Times, Harry Reid is quoted saying "We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.” Someone explain the reasoning behind this. I would much rather have my terrorists or terrorist suspects here in the U.S. where I can keep track of them, rather than send them back to their home country of Yemen or Afghanistan or wherever and have them be released from custody and disappear into the mountains.

Greg Mankiw points out that the unemployment rate today is about at the level that Obama Administration economists projected it would be if there was no fiscal stimulus.

It's hard to argue with Mankiw's interpretation of this: that either (1) the stimulus plan has had no effect, or (2) the Obama economists underestimated how bad the economy would be under the baseline scenario; and if (2), then it's always possible to blame bad outcomes on a shifting baseline scenario and we'll never know whether the stimulus worked.

I'd be interested to know why the Obama economists thought that there would be a noticeable difference in unemployment with and without stimulus as early as the second quarter of 2009. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) wasn't passed until late February, and the actual increased spending and tax cuts so far have been small. According to the CBO's May Monthly Budget Review, from October 2008 to April 2009 tax revenue has fallen by $296 billion relative to what it was from the first seven months of fiscal year 2008, while spending has risen $350 billion, for a total stimulus of $646 billion. But the vast majority of this is due to the recession, not the stimulus package, and a big chunk occurred before ARRA was passed and in fact before Obama took office. There's no precise breakdown in the report, but I can only see a few tens of billions of stimulus under ARRA so far (mostly for things like Medicaid, unemployment compensation, and food and nutrition programs). In a $14 trillion economy, that's not enough to make a difference. Furthermore, unemployment is a lagging indicator - I wouldn't expect a significant boost to aggregate demand this quarter to affect the unemployment rate until next quarter. So what were Obama's economists smoking when they wrote this report?

Economics haiku

This is really too cute by half. Stephen Ziliak writes "Haiku Economics: Little Teaching Aids for Big Economic Pluralists":

Abstract: Haiku is a distinguished (if short) form of poetry with roots dating back to 17th century Japan. Poets understand that haiku is the most efficient form of economic speech. But technical efficiency is not the only or even the main goal of writing haiku. Haiku clear a trail for enlightenment and stimulate open discussion. A wide variety of poets, from Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694) to Richard Wright (1908-1960), have practiced writing haiku simply to improve their own powers of observation. To date, haiku and economics have not been explored together, and certainly not at the level of principles. This article introduces a new field of inquiry, "haiku economics," and offers tips on how to the start the journey in a classroom setting.

Haikus for econ
Published in low-tier journals
Key to promotion?

New graduation honor proposed

Along with the valedictorian and salutatorian, I (and the people sitting next to me at Commencement) propose we honor the graduating senior with the lowest GPA (he or she who came closest to missing the 2.0 cutoff for graduation). Call it the Sweating Bullets award.

Religious fanatics infiltrate armed forces of nuclear power!

GQ of all magazines has the story.

Leadership studies

A colleague dropped off an article from Harper's magazine, December 1993: "Choice Academic Pork," by Benjamin DeMott. It tells the story of the bizarre academic cult called "leadership studies" and the efforts of two Pennsylvania legislators - Arlen Specter and William Goodling - that resulted in a $10 million federal government funded boondoggle called the "Dwight D. Eisenhower Leadership Development Program." The Program doles out money to finance programs in leadership studies at colleges and universities all over the country. Examples of funding proposals:

The University of Richmond wants to publish a humanities skim-creaming anthology of snippets of Tolstoy, Plato, SasEkin, and others on leadership. ("Only such a reader--carefully organized and annotated--can provide the student with this kind of depth and texture in the study of leadership.")

West Texas A & M will bring one hundred "at-risk fifth graders to campus for a leadership workshop," will "present 16 'Rap and Eat' programs to campus and 4 programs to public schools" (the group to be hired is called Chillin' Time), and will conduct "peer education" in fields such as "You Booze You Lose."

The University of Arizona wants to spend tax money redesigning an existing course called The Spirit of Inquiry into a new course called The Spirit of Leadership. The old course was a variety show meeting once a week on topics ranging from extraterrestrial intelligence to Mexican folklore to "It Ain't Over 'Til the Fat Lady Sings"--a discussion, so titled, of Verdi's Don Carlo. ("The intrigue of a royal triangle is played out against the fiery background of the Inquisition and Spain's lust for conquest.") The new course will keep the sparky magazine format.

Wayne State bets on "leadership development seminars" to develop new habits in "a cadre of young leaders." (The new habits are those "proferred [sic] by Stephen Covey in his 1989 book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.... [The young leaders] will focus on Covey's 'Paradigm of We.'")

Then the kicker, of local interest:

A query: Whatever prompted elected officialdom to guide this beast to the public trough? Signs indicate that the Pennsylvania Republican sponsors--Specter and Goodling--had in mind nothing more than diverting a tiny rivulet of the mighty federal cash cascade to an upright local institution by the name of Gettysburg College. On the Senate floor, as he "put in" the Eisenhower program, Senator Specter quoted Ike telling a Gettysburg College convocation that "the future of our country depends upon enlightened leadership"; he also commended Gettysburg College for "helping ensure that Eisenhower's legacy of leadership will continue to exercise a beneficial influence on the nation he loved."

There was, of course, no House or Senate debate on the program; like hundreds of other "minor" bits of federal largesse in the past, the thing was simply folded into a quiet comer of a major bill by prior arrangement with the bill's managers. According to an Education Department worker I talked to, Gettysburg administrators assumed that most of the money appropriated would go directly to Gettysburg College because the school was an Eisenhower neighbor and a leadership-cult leader. (Gettysburg has a Department of Management led by a "Professor of Eisenhower Leadership Studies.") But that dog didn't hunt: the department's bureaucracy insisted on a competition.

"Upright local institution by the name of" indeed! Top 50, baby - choke on it!

Two years from now will be the quinquagenary (look it up!) of Eisenhower's farewell address warning of the "military-industrial complex," and the movers and shakers on campus are gearing up for another run at the federal trough. I hope this time we'll do it right and keep your tax dollars for ourselves.

Intellectual Calvinball

I came across this term in a recent post by Brad DeLong. My first thoughts were - Brilliant! But what slice of the American demographic understands the reference? All 30-50 year olds? Somewhat intellectually sophisticated 30-50 year olds? Males only, or is it a gal thing too? Just whites, or need blacks apply? My next thought was, did Brad make this one up? So I google the term, and get a gajillion hits; apparently it's in the ether.

Ook, greet.

From the Berkeley Electronic Press:

Pay Peanuts and Get Monkeys? Evidence from Academia
Glenn Boyle, NZ Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation, Victoria University of Wellington
A BEJEAP Contributions1 article.

Abstract: In most countries, academic pay is independent of discipline, thus ignoring differences in labor market opportunities. Using some unique data from a comprehensive research assessment exercise undertaken in one such country -- New Zealand -- this paper examines the impact of discipline-independent pay on research quality. I find that the greater the difference between the value of a discipline's outside opportunities and its New Zealand academic salary, the weaker its research performance in New Zealand universities. The latter apparently get what they pay for: disciplines in which opportunity cost is highest relative to the fixed compensation are least able to recruit high-quality researchers. Paying peanuts attracts mainly monkeys.

I'm not sure about the title though. If you pay peanuts, shouldn't you get elephants?

Oh, this has the makings of a healthy marriage

From the New York Times:



The caption says: "A protest on Wednesday over the Washington City Council’s vote to recognize same-sex marriages from other states included a traditional wedding ceremony."

Sure, a strict definition of "traditional wedding ceremony" might include oh, I don't know, a church and a minister rather than a crowd of rabid anti-gay protesters. And sticklers might argue that marriage is a sacrament the purpose of which is to unite a man and woman in the sight of God rather than a PR stunt to make a political point. But you've gotta like "traditional wedding ceremony" as a weapon in the culture wars.

Another worthwhile curriculum reform

University of Colorado just eliminated the course repetition option:

The program allows students to retake a course in which they have performed poorly — D+ or lower for undergraduates, C+ or lower for graduate students — and replace the first grade with the second. Undergraduates are eligible to retake 10 credit hours, or two-and-a-half full courses, and graduate students may retake one course. There is no tuition credit, and if the new grade is worse than the old, it goes on the transcript anyway...

Come the fall of 2010, students will still be able to retake courses, but both initial and final grades will count toward grade-point averages. That approach sits better with professors who think the current program dilutes academic standards, the Daily Camera reported.

I don't know why they don't get rid of the option altogether. But we'd do well to change our generous course repetition policy to something more akin to U. Colorado's.

I read the APPC report on the curriculum so you don't have to!

Actually I encourage everyone to read the APPC's report on the curriculum. Very thorough analysis, job well done, kudos to all. Some comments:

1. The report opens with the statement

"What we have learned is that the faculty is more lukewarm about the curriculum, in both a negative and a positive sense, than conversations about it might seem to indicate. At the same time, however, the prevailing sentiment is that we should work to improve and refine what we have developed, rather than start again from scratch."

This is putting an overly positive spin on the response of the faculty to the survey the APPC conducted. Faculty seem to support (lukewarmly) the four goals of the curriculum, but that's not a surprise. What's not to support? Who is going to come out against understanding "multiple modes of inquiry," "effective communication," "integrative thinking," and "local and global citizenship"? I think lukewarm support would be found for any four goals pulled out of a hat (how about "broad knowledge," "iniquisitiveness," "global perspective," and "ability to reason," just for example?).

The damning figures in the report are in the faculty's evaluation of the implementation of the curricular goals. On a scale of 1 to 6, faculty scored the current implementation of the curricular goals as 3.03 for MI, 2.76 for IT, 3.76 for EC, and 3.47 for LGC. Overall, less than 5 percent of faculty "strongly agree" that overall the implementation of the curriculum has been successful; the mean score on this question was 2.98, meaning most of us disagree with the proposition more than agree with it. We are clearly not happy with the specific course requirements that are supposed to support the curricular goals.

2. Interestingly, the only curricular goal for which the implementation was viewed favorably on average was the effective communication requirement. This is also the goal supported least by specific course requirements. Other than requiring a freshman writing course for students who score low on the SAT, we implement the effective communication requirement solely through departments' curricula for their majors. For example, if you are an economics major you will learn the writing conventions for economics in various stages from your first year to your last, culminating in a capstone paper. Perhaps the relative support for this component of the curriculum provides a lesson for reform: rather than relying on course requirements independent of the major, we should ensure that each department offers a number of courses that satisfy our curricular goals so that these goals are achieved in the process of completing the major. E.g. instead of requiring a "cultural diversity" course, we ensure that each department to the extent possible is incorporating cultural diversity into its courses so that students will achieve the goal as they work their way through the major. All introductory courses (again, to the extent possible) could be required to incorporate some of the goals like diversity so that students make progress towards those goals while completing their MI requirements.

3. I didn't think the APPC would be so bold as to recommend reducing the number of required courses from 14 to 11. I applaud that effort, though I think we could go down further. They get it kind of ass-backward on the integrative thinking requirement, however. The report recommends dropping the two interdisciplinary course option and requiring all students to do a cluster. The cluster, however, is the lamest part of our curriculum, and was singled out as such by many of the faculty surveyed. I would just do away with the interdisciplinary/cluster requirement. I would also get rid of the diversity/nonwestern/STS requirements entirely rather than repackage them as the report recommends. Doing these things would take us down to nine requirements. As discussed above, I would pursue the curricular goals of local and global citizenship, etc. through the introductory courses used to satisfy MI and through majors. I'd also encourage or require all students to have at least a minor in an interdisciplinary program in addition to a major in a discipline.

4. I think it is very important that our next curriculum force students to complete all of their general ed requirements in their first year (or maybe first three semesters). Suppose new students were given a very short list of course options for their first year, basically the introductory courses in each disciplinary department, and told to choose one from each area plus two semesters of a language, plus a math class and a first year seminar. Finish those in your first year, and then the last three years are all about the major(s) and minor(s). This takes pressure off students to pick a major in their first semester and frees them up to be more deliberative later on.

5. Curiously, the report does not assess the First Year Seminar program. How's this going? Is it achieving its goals (whatever they are)? My undergraduate curriculum had a scripted first year with mostly large classes, and then had a sophomore seminar that I remember being a really big deal and quite valuable. Would this be a better way of achieving whatever goals our FYS program is supposed to serve?