The view that the returns to public educational investments are highest for early childhood interventions stems primarily from several influential randomized trials - Abecedarian, Perry, and the Early Training Project - that point to super-normal returns to preschool interventions. This paper...

Formal education can be improved by transferring responsibility from the teacher to the learner. A simple approach to this is the time contract. Time contracts have been used successfully in nine quasi-experiments but, despite these successes, some educators see this as subversive research.

We all share the desire to improve the learning environment at Wharton and to have students who will be satisfied with this environment. While most of the Wharton Teaching Committee's recommendations are consistent with these aims, I believe that recommendation #1, to 'Establish Minimum...

A literature review suggested that behavioral changes occur more rapidly when the learner assumed responsibility. Natural learning, an approach to help learners assume responsibility, was compared with the traditional strategy in seven field experiments. It produced more than twice as many...

Snapshots from Hell describes a first-year student<92>s experience in the Stanford Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in 1989. Peter Robinson, formerly a speech writer for President Reagan, tells about his experiences in applying to business schools, living with other MBA students,...</92>

Recently, I published a letter in the Wall Street Journal (Armstrong 2004a) with the basic message that business school education has been losing effectiveness. Most important, students are not learning to do things, such as making an effective oral presentation, writing a persuasive management...