What Does it Cost a University to Educate One Student

A dilemma that may confront administrators is whether it makes economic sense to continue offering a program that is unable to draw in a sufficient number of students to recover its cost. But what is cost? Often, a university may determine a standard cost per credit or unit and use this figure as basis for computing total cost. This is then compared to a revenue stream and the difference, whether positive or negative, is imputed to the decision analysis process. This method of computing costs, while appealing for its simplicity, may fail to capture the effects of economies that may arise as one school or college services another. The inaccuracy in the cost computation may lead one to favor or disfavor a program that may have repercussions to the total university cost structure. Drawing from this need to determine a more accurate means of computing costs, as basis for decision-making, the authors used basic cost accounting methodology applied to the academic environment and were able to compute for a cost per degree per student for each university studied. While the methodology is more time consuming, the computed figures are deemed closer to actual costs and thus is more valuable to that critical decision of whether a program is worth pursuing or not

Testing the Relationship Between Confidence and Effort: A Behavioral Finance Perspective on the Problem of Financial Literacy

This experimental study tested the relationship between confidence and effort with the ultimate objective of discovering how these factors may influence financial literacy. This was done through a modified version of a slider test and ball allocation task. The population consisted of 85 random participants who were primarily approached through social media. A simple OLS regression, along with robustness checks, namely the Tobit model and instrumental variable (IV) regression model using Tobit estimators, were utilized to confirm the causal relationship between confidence and effort

Teaching Math with Confidence-Recommendations for Improving Numeracy from the Lens of Confidence Building

Despite the vast amount of literature surrounding the topic of financial literacy and related problems, there is still no universally accepted solution to this issue because the main factors causing financial literacy problems are still not fully understood both by researchers and current policy-makers. A possible new approach was discovered by Skagerlund et al. (2018), as their research suggested that financial literacy is driven by numeracy (the ability to process and perform basic numerical concepts and calculations) rather than direct knowledge about financial concepts. Given that numeracy is an effort based task, this policy brief provides a list of recommendations for developing numeracy from the standpoint of motivating effort to practice and improve the numeracy and mathematical skills of people for them to have the tools necessary to become financially literate, which may be more effective than creating a dedicated course on the topic of financial literacy. The results of the study confirmed that effort is indeed motivated by higher levels of confidence. Furthermore, information, particularly feedback regarding performance, plays a crucial role in shaping future confidence and, by extension, future levels of motivation and effort. Guided by these findings, this brief proposes the following policy recommendations

Determinants of wage and employment disparities for TVET and High School graduates

Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) was institutionalized by the Philippine government in order to fill in the gaps left by the higher education system in transitioning students to the formal workforce. However, recent studies suggest that TVET graduates have a difficult time gaining employment and wage increases because of skills supply and demand mismatches and the devaluation of TVET degrees. The mismatch is observed through the high unemployment rates of TVET graduates and various job availabilities that could not be filled up by these graduates due to the incompatibility of skills formation with job requirements which is evident in several sectors including ICT, Health Services, Agriculture, and Tourism. This paper used Naive Bayesian Regression and Propensity Score Matching methods to measure the direction and magnitude of labor market outcome differentials between TVET and High School graduates, as well as the Blinder Oaxaca Decomposition to measure how much endogenous and exogenous sources explain said wage and employment differentials

Philippine Structural Transformation - With or Without Maharlika

It appears the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) is a fait accompli. As we write, our finance officials are in New York and Toronto, pitching the MIF to international bankers and representatives of Middle East sovereign wealth funds. This means once President Marcos, Jr. affixes his signature, a newly-created Maharlika Investment Corporation (MIC) will pool, before the year is over, PhP 75 billion in seed capital from the LandBank and Development Bank of the Philippines. With a further PhP 50 billion plus two full years of dividends from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), its nine directors, all presidential appointees, will be able to invest in tradable commodities, overseas instruments, and local development projects to earn dual bottom line returns — financial and social — for the country

The LaSallian October 1991 digital launch

The LaSallian announced the digital launch of its October 1991 issue from the archives with features such as the opening of the St. La Salle Hall to sentiments about five-cent ice cream. Read the issue here: bit.ly/TLSOct199

Loob: Indigeneous, prosocial, and normative rationality in a dictator game

This work offers a modest two part contribution to the ongoing project to social homo economics. Part 1 argues that Alejo (1990) phenomenological reflections on loob, a Filipino term for personhood, are compatible with the emerging literature on neuroeconomics and amenable to empirical investigation. Part 2 tests specific claims about loob in a dictator game experiment conducted among 480 low income trilingual students in a rural municipality in Camarines Sur. The unusually high incidence of hyper fair offers seems consistent with a self other conception of personhood albeit one that does not appear sensitive to priming. A robust language effect was also found when instructions were coded in English as opposed to Tagalog and Bikol, but one that worked in unexpected ways