Whether or not (and how) professor quality affects student performance is an ongoing question in academia. Unfortunately, there are a lot of statistical problems involved in testing these effects. Here are a couple:
Students self-select into professors classes. So, better students might choose to take harder professor, while weaker ones might choose "softball" ones. Or alternately, grade-conscious students might select into classes of "easy graders"
Performance in a class is typically based on an exam that scored by the same professor teaching the class. This means that the professor can increase easily increase (or decrease) scores by "teaching to the test" or simply by inflating/deflating them directly
Student evaluations are subject to a number of biases, including the physical attractiveness of the instructor (oh well, I'm screwed...). In addition, they're endogenous with respect to expected grades.
Here's a very interesting paper that addresses these problems, written by Scott Carroll (of UC-Davis) and James West (at the USAF Academy). The paper, titled "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors" uses some of the unique features of the class assignment system at the U.S. Air Force Academy to disentangle some of the confounding effects that make testing the professor quality/student performance so challenging. At the USAF, students are randomly assigned to class sections, faculty in common courses teach from a single common syllabus, and exams are jointly graded by all faculty teaching the course. Here's the abstract (note: italics are mine):
It is difficult to measure teaching quality at the post-secondary level because students typically self-select" their coursework and their professors. Despite this, student evaluations of professors are widely used in faculty promotion and tenure decisions. We exploit the random assignment of college students to professors in a large body of required coursework to examine how professor quality affects student achievement. Introductory course professors significantly affect student achievement in contemporaneous and follow-on related courses, but the effects are quite heterogeneous across subjects. Students of professors who as a group perform well in the initial mathematics course perform significantly worse in follow-on related math, science, and engineering courses. We find that the academic rank, teaching experience, and terminal degree status of mathematics and science professors are negatively correlated with contemporaneous student achievement, but positively related to follow-on course achievement. Across all subjects, student evaluations of professors are positive predictors of contemporaneous course achievement, but are poor predictors of follow-on course achievement.
So, "higher quality" professors result in better long-term performance for their students. But at the same time, their students get lower grades in the foundations courses. This could be a result of lower quality instructors "teaching to the test", or of better instructors teaching in a way that's geared more towards follow-on classes at the expense of focusing on the intro materials (those ar tow ways of saying the same thing, BTW).
If you don't have access to NBER, you can read an ungated version of the paper here.
I catch one or more people cheating almost every semester. Most times, it's of the "cheat sheet on exams" variety. But sometimes, it involves plagiarism on a project.
I have less and less of a problem with it as time goes on, because I give very detailed guidelines as to what should go in each section of the project. So the likelihood that they'll be able to plagiarize something that matches up with the assignment's requirements is somewhere between slim and none. But still, it happens.
Here's a cautionary tale for those of you who have to do do group projects from Jacqueline Passey, who's now back to blogging (and with a new, improved title for her blog to boot). One of her group members plagiarized a good portion of her "contribution" to a group project in an accounting class. Luckily, Jacqueline caught it before handing it in and redid the work herself.
It's important to remember - if a member of your group plagiarizes on a joint project and the instructor catches it, you're equally screwed. So choose your group carefully, and check their work. If it has your name on it, you're responsible.
I just came across a book called "Brain Rules", written by John Medina, who is (from his website):
...a developmental molecular biologist focused on the genes involved in human brain development and the genetics of psychiatric disorders. He has spent most of his professional life as a private research consultant, working primarily in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries on research related to mental health. Medina holds joint affiliate faculty appointments at the University of Washington School of Medicine, in its Department of Bioengineering, and at Seattle Pacific University, where he is the director of the Brain Center for Applied Learning Research.
His book unpacks a great deal of research on how our brains work best (or worst), and touches on things like the effect of exercise on brain function (it's phenomenally good), how long we can hold attention (very short), how short term memory can be enhanced (a lot of repetition and saying things out loud), the effects of sleep deficiency on brain function (a lot, and it's not good), and the role of vision in learning.
The book seems to have a great deal of info that's relevent to teachers and presenters, and if he writes anything like he talks, it should be a fun read. You can see a video of him talking at Google here, and see his website here.
I'm putting the book at the top of my post-CFA reading list
Inside Higher Education just posted a troubling article involving the case of Steven Aird, a Biology professor at Norfolk State University (a Historically Black College in Virginia). He was known for being a pretty tough grader, and failed 80% of his students some semesters. What makes it troubling is that the university had a policy that if a student missed more than 20% of the class, he or she could be failed. And in fact, Aird's records showed that the average student in his class missed almost twice that many classes. So, just by following the college's policies, the expected grade in the class should have been an F.
Unfortunately, the university also had an unofficial policy that 70% of their students would get passing grades. So, they ended up crucifying the guy for holding the students to the very standard that the university itself had officially set.
RTWT here, and also read the comments that follow.
Can your teach people how to think more creatively (or effectively)?
Ed Boyden, assistant professor at MIT thinks he can:
When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.
He's got some excellent suggestions. You can read them here.
I received a number of interesting comments on my last post on teaching broadly vs. deeply, and I thought a few follow up comments might be in order.
First off, it's important to keep the context of the video in mind - Dr. Frank is talking about his experiences in the introductory course in Economics (not the higher level ones). In the intro course, students (Supposedly) get exposed to the most important, fundamental principles of the topic. If they don't learn them there (or don't find them interesting), they likely never get to the more advanced courses.
There are a lot of parrallels to the intro finance course. It's often viewed by non-finance majors as the topughest course in the business school. In fact, I've heard (but not verified) that the nationwide "drop or fail" rate for the course is well in excess of 25%. At one of my previous schools, we called the class FINANCE301, and had a phenomenon called the "FINANCE301 Major". This label gave homage to the fact that some students took the class multiple times (the record was five attempts). Granted, some undergrads simply don't have what it takes to pass the class, but that number seems incredibly high to me.
More importantly, (and this is what I took as Franks' main point), the current "broad but shallow" approach to teaching the intro class results in the vast majority of students lacking a deep understanding of the critical concepts necessary to succeed in their latter courses. The instructors feel better abbout this approach, since they can say that they're "keeping standards up" and teaching a very broad and impressive list of topics. But the students suffer.
So what's the solution? One school I'm aware of takes exactly the right approach (and in fact, it's related to what was suggested by one of the commenters on my previous piece):
For the intro class, they cover only a very limited number of topics: financial statement analysis, time value (including its variations like bonds and stock valuation, cost of capital, and capital budgeting), and risk and return;
Since they're covering fewer topics, they can spend much more time on each one. For example, they spend 3+ weeks on time value alone (as opposed to the typical one or two). Spending so much time on Time Value get paid back pretty quickly, since topics like bond valuation go much more quickly (students quickly pick up that it's just time value).
Finally, they give a lot of assignments that make the students "put pen to paper". In other words, they assign a lot of take home problem sets, end-of-chapter assignments, etc...
This covers the introductory class. It works because non-finance majors won't be setting dividend policy, or making capital structure decisions. So, they really don't need to cover those topics. But they do need to understand that financial statements reflect real business decisions (the accounting classes usually don't do a very good job of getting this across IMO), that money now and money later can be compared, that all assets muct be financed, and that there's an opportunity cost to investing. So, the above approach beats these concepts into them.
But UP, you say, this only covers the non-finance majors. Aren't you shortchanginh the finance majors? The same school mentioned above has a solution.
Before finance students can take any additional finance classes, they are required to take a six credit class class (called Fundamentals of Valuation) that covers all the theoretical and conceptual parts of finance that come up again and again (like TVM-based security valuation, contingent claim valuation, portfolio risk and return, etc...). It's a bone-breaker of a class, requires a huge time committment from the students, and has a very high failure rate. But once the studens have gone through it, they have an outstanding grounding in the basics that all other finance classes use again and again. So. later classes can move at an accelerated pace (basically, it's a decision to invest in fixed assets to gain operating leverage). As an example, a class on fixed income doesn't have to teach students how to bootstrap a yield curve, and can instead focus on applying it.
The approach works, because students begin to see that many (and perhaps most) advanced topics in finance are just combinations of the same basic building blocks (i.e. option valuation is really just a present value calculation with a few adjustments, CAPM is just an application of covariance, duration is time value applied to bonds, atc...).
Once I get tenure and can start making noise, I hope we can implement some of this approach here at Unknown University. As it is, I try to use many of the principles in my classes, but I catch flack from folks that teach classes following mine in the curriculum. Ah well, I guess I'll have to wait until I rule the world (BWAHAHA!). On that note, here's a classic I'm trying to get DVDs of for my kids. Enough bloggery - back to work.
Google regularly brings in interesting people to give talks at their company headquarters (talk about a free cash flow problem.) It turns out that these talks can be sen online at YouTube (here's the link).
I just came across a talk by Robert Frank, author of "The Economic Naturalist." He talked about his book, and about the problem of why so many students don't retain key concepts from their classes. For example, on the first day of my security analysis class I typically ask students the question "What should determine the value of a security." The answer, of course, is "The amount, timing, and riskiness of the cash flows from owning the security." Fewer than 1/4 of the class knows the answer without prompting.
Frank's explanation for why students retain so little is that we simply try pack too much into our classes. This makes our syllabus seem impressive, but shortchanges the students. As an example, we might cover 14 chapters (and 15-20 concepts) in a 14 week semester, rather than covering half that many and really drilling the concepts in.
"But Unknown Professor", you say, "We HAVE to cover A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, and in the introductory finance class or we're shortchanging the students." The problem with this approach is that a few months after the class is done, they don't remember anything about topics A-M except that they covered them sometime in class. Add they really don;t even have all that great a grasp of critical concepts such as the Time Value of Money.
In contrast, if you covered half as many topics, you could spend 3-4 weeks on Time Value rather than the usual week or two. This way, you could make them do about a hundred or so problems, and they'd really have it locked down.
In any event, here's Frank's Google Talk. Check it out. And teach fewer topics (but more deeply) in your classes.
It was the 2nd day of classes today, and the first case of the semester in my advanced corporate (case) class. It probably went as well as any class I remember teaching. I intentionally chose a lighter case - some number crunching, but more descriptive/intuitive than computational. But it made for a good warmup and tone-setter for the class.
One thing that helped was that almost everyone in class (with maybe two exceptions) had something to add. Another was that I knew almost all their names already (at the end of the first class, I had them hold a piece of paper in front of them with an assigned number listed on my class roll. I took their pictures one by one with a digital camera, and after shrinking and cropping the photo and putting them on two sheets with names, I had a "cheat sheet" that I could review. The whole process took about less than an hour, and I probably will be able to do it in half that next time. They were surprised, since none of their professors had ever gotten their names down so fast. Of course, at a better school, I'd be given the pictures automatically, but them's the breaks.
I like teaching cases, but having a successful class is largely a matter of student preparation and participation (if they're prepared and participate, most problems are solvable, but if not, you're screwed). And it definitely leads to better preparation on the part of the students if they know that I know who they are and WILL be calling on them - by name.
As for today, in a 75 minute class, we heard from 25 of the 27 students (often multiple times). Even more encouraging, some of the quieter students that I'd had in prior classes seem to be the most vocal.
As an aside, I informed the class on the first day of class that they'd be given a quiz on the third day (i.e. in one week's time) that covers selected skills and knowledge they should have obtained from the principles class (like time value, DCF valuation, NPV/IRR, common financial ratios, etc...). I gave them a very detailed list covering what they should know, so they have no surprises (it's in the syllabus and was even emailed out to the students the week before classes started). This should send the message regarding what they know coming in to the class in order to succeed in the class.
The combination of the high visibility and the quiz on prereqs might have something to do with the fact that of the 30 or so that started the class, six have already dropped after only the 2nd class. It might be that, or it could be the usual adding and dropping that happens in the first week (I call the in-and-outers "tourists"). I guess they went back over the border.
Either way, it's a smaller class, and the remaining ones will get a lot more attention and should be better prepared.
So, the semester is now officially off and running.
Update: Businesspundit links to a piece on changes in the way cases are taught at Columbia here.
The hardest part was reading about 20 investment analysis projects that averaged 20-25 pages each (basically a full-blown analysts report on a company of my choosing). Some of my students did a surprisingly good job of it. As for others...
The "best of breed" comment was something to the effect of
"The stock market has historically been a very effective way of valuing companies".
Oh well, it reminds me of the far side cartoon showing a class of dinosaurs and the teacher saying
"I'm afraid some of you won't be evolving next year"
Teaching can be frustrating, but it has its moments. I just ran into one of my best students - 3.9 GPA, got a CFA scholarship, is doing an honors project, etc...
Since he's planning on taking the CFA Level 1 Exam in June, he had some questions about how best to get started on the material. So, we talked for about a half hour, and I lent him my study notes so he could get started over the break (he hasn't yet gotten his material from Schweser and CFA Institute).
I wouldn't be surprised if he has the Accounting and Ethics sections (and probably the Quantitative Methods) of the CFA material locked down before he gets back from Christmas break.
If only I had a classroom full of students like him. But that would be too easy.
At the risk of sounding like Chauncy Gardner, teaching at the university level is a lot like farming - there's a definite rhythm to the semester that mimics the farming calendar. In the off season, you prepare the soil (make changes to the syllabus, do some reading for new materials in your classes, etc...). During the semester, there's planting (the first week or so), pruning and weed pulling (usually done with exams and quizzes), and finally, at the end of semester there's the harvest.
I gave my last final exam yesterday. So, the crop's almost in. Now all I have left to do is grade them (and the remaining class projects) and I'm done with teaching-related stuff for the semester.
No cracks about vegetables, please (or at least, not too many...).
But as for research in the "off season", there's a lot to do:
I just yesterday finished my part of the work on one revise and resubmit (I'll call it R&R-1), which involved a fair bit of empirical work, and SAS programming out the yazoo. Now I can turn everything over to my coauthors, who'll do the remaining writing, and deal with the rest of the referee's comments.
Since my part of R&R-1 is done, I now get to work on another R&R (R&R-2) where I get to do most of the writing (both coauthors are not native speakers of English). Unfortunately, the referee was extremely picky, so there's much to do.
There's a third R&R (R&R-3) for which a coauthor is doing the first draft on the revisions (it's all writing - no new empirical work is needed). Then, he'll pass it back to me for further editing (I'm the "senior" writer on this one - the coauthor was my student previously). With luck, I'll finish R&R-2 before this one comes back to me.
Then, there's a piece with a former colleague and a former Ph.D. student. It was sent out and soundly rejected previously. So, we (actually, the former Ph.D. student) did a lot of additional empirical work. Then the former colleague did a rewrite, and I'll get to do the final buffing and shining. Hopefully, it'll come back to me after R&R-2 is done and before R&R-3 comes back to me).
Somewhere in there, there's another piece that I'm trying to finish before the FMA submission deadline. It's with another former student - we'd previously done a pilot study with interesting results. Since then, we've expanded the data set to about 5x its original size, and then ran some additional tests. If the coauthor can finish his part of the data work (mostly the coding of governance data from about 500 proxies) soon, we can write up the new results and send it off.
There are a few other pieces in various stages, but I'll save discussion of them until they move out of the "vaporware" category.
Luckily, I have almost five weeks before the next "planting". Looks like it'll be a busy time. But that's what makes it fun.
I read the blog "Rate Your Students" on a daily basis - it's the electronic equivalent of the lounge where the faculty share stories about students among ourselves. Here's their latest offering - Twas The Week Before Finals
‘Twas the week before finals And all through the U, The students were yawning And some drooling too.
While papers are now due Students are at the mall, With not one single fear That their good grade might fall.
“I can write it all one night,” Thinks the tattooed pierced girl, “I’ll just peek at a Wiki And give it a whirl.”
They don’t come to class There is always a reason, These vary quite little From season to season.
“A cold” has the tall one, “With me it’s the flu,” “My sister’s in jail And Grandma’s dead too”
“Hangover” “flat tire” “My boyfriend dumped me,” “Alarm didn’t go off” “Had to play with my Wii”
“This class ain’t important, Many other things are.” With an attitude like this Frat boy’s sure to go far.
“I’m going to med school Organic’s the crux, Have to go over anatomy With my buds at Starbucks.”
“After that comes my psych And the math quiz I missed. Your class is ‘bout tenth On my priority list.”
Outside my office There arose such a clatter. A line of students? Now what is the matter?
Here come the grubbers The beggars and thieves, With the crap that they’re dishing I’m going to heave.
“This paper is all mine. I never would fake, That you found it on Google Is just a mistake.”
“You’ll ruin my average My perfect grade, A ‘C’ isn’t part Of the deal that we made.”
“I pay tuition You give me an ‘A,’ Then everyone is happy And I’m on my way.”
“Get lost all you losers!” I wanted to shout, But the tenure committee Would then throw me out.
I brought out a six pack Some pills and a noose But settled down with exams and a vodka and juice.
For many this season Is chock full of cheer But for profs, December Requires much beer.
It's a beautiful Friday here at Unknown University - it rained last night, and today is clear and sunny and about 80 degrees. So of course, 11 of my 45 students were absent from my investments class (they had a quiz Wednesday, so they figured "Why not? It's not like he'll give us a quiz!"
I try to have my students give me feed back every week or so on what they're enjoying (or not) in the class, and what they think I can improve on (or am already doing well). In addition, I ask them what topics in the course are giving them the most difficulty or causing the most confusion.
A lot of people think it's way overboard, but it only takes a couple of minutes, and often gives very valuable feedback. I don't report on ALL the feedback, but only address the few issues that are mentioned by multiple people. After all, if one student mentions it, it could be just a personal preference, but if 5 mention it, it's likely a problem. This time around, a couple of them though I spent too much time giving them grief for being late or absent. And they had a point - why lecture the people who are there about the importance of being there?
So, I told them that I agreed with them wholeheartedly . And since so many were absent, everyone who had signed the attendance sheet that day (I'd already collected it) got 5 points added to their most recent quiz score. In addition, they should mention this with a big smile to the eleven students who'd missed the class.
What can I say? I'm an applause whore at times. It had been a long week, and it's not like the missing students can complain about it to the Dean "Um - Dr. Unknown didn't give bonus points to all the students - only the ones who showed up for class."
A pretty easy teaching day today - my investments class gets a fairly long quiz, and we begin coverage of mutual funds, ETFs, Hedge funds, and such.
This quiz should give me a better idea whether their [performance on the first quiz was representative or not. If it was, the size of the herd may end up shrinking as we lose a few slow antelopes.
There are a couple of students in my class that probably should consider bailing out. That may sound harsh, but if a student is sufficiently far behind it's sometimes best if they drop - the effort they have to expend to catch up can end up really hurting their performance in other classes, and they also end up drastically slowing down the class they're behind in.
That having been said, I don't think they're at the point of no return yet. But they are rapidly approaching it.
So maybe I'll actually get some research done. The only problem is that I thatched and reseeded my lawn (or what passes for it) this weekend. That (and the generall pollen conditions) here near Unknown University have really made my allergies kick in. So, to the extent I can work with a case of "baloon head", I may get some work done on the revise and resubmit that's been sitting on my desk all week.
This semester I tried something a bit different in my security analysis class. Since the finance principles (i.e. required core finance) class is a prerequisite for this one, I always assumed that they had at least a fair grasp of the basics (like time value, using their financial calculator, constant dividend growth valuation, and so on). This time, the first day of class, I announced that they'd get a quiz at the beginning of the second week on "the basics). I figured this would serve two purposes: It would give me (and them) a better idea as to what they retain from their previous classes. And just as important, since it counted toward their grade, it would give them an incentive to review the material at the beginning of class. The questions I said I'd give them included:
A couple of questions on time value (PV of a lump sum, PV of an annuity, find the interest rate on the FV of an annuity)
A constant dividend growth stock valuation problem
A non-constant dividend growth valuation problem
An NPV problem
An IRR problem
A CAPM question
A basic question on financial statements
The results were eye-opening, and not exactly in a good way. Although the questions were pretty basic (except for the non-constant dividend growth problem), the average score was about 65, and only 3 out of the 45 students got a perfect score. Let's just say that it was a less than stellar grasp of the material. So, I told them that those who got less than 80% have a LOT of catching up to do.
After all, if they don't understand the basics, they surely won't get the more advanced material. And I simply don't have the time to review everything they're supposed to know from the class they supposedly already passed. After all, they ARE mostly finance majors.
At least I didn't teach the principles class, so I get to grouse about those who did... It should be interesting. I think the herd may be losing a few slow antelopes shortly.
After a few missteps (and a call to Techsmith'scustomer support), I manged to get my screen recording software up and running. I usually spend the majority of the first day of class on administrative things - how I grade, how many quizzes, exams, projects, etc...
It's never fun, and it suck a lot of energy out of the first class. But it is important material. So this time, put it all into a short recording, and I'll post it on the web. I'll still hand out the syllabus in class (at the END of the class), but instead of wasting precious class time on what I call "administrivia", and can use it to deliver some real content.
I'm pretty excited about the prospects for this stuff. I can see myself eventually moving a significant portion of my material online, and then using classroom time for the elements that don't lend themselves to web-based learning - like working problems, cases, and classroom discussion. This will also make it very easy to transition my materials to an online setting.
Yes, I am a hopeless nerd. But I'm o.k. with that.
Update: Bob Jensen has one of the best sites I've seen on derivatives-related accounting material. Not surprising, he's also done a few Camtasia videos (links are in the comments section).
We survived our vacation - 2500 miles and three cities, each with different groups of friends or family over an 11 day period. I haven't yet gotten entirely back into the swing of things, but at least I've been in the office for a couple of days, gone on a couple of rides (yes, the bike has been tuned up and de-tarred), and gotten a variety of paperworky-type thingies out of the way (like sending off material to the builder of our house for the 1-year follow-up, signing contracts for teaching CFA prep for the coming year, signing up to take CFA level 1 this fall, and so on).
I'll get back to serious work tomorrow, but for the last couple of days I've been researching screen-recording software. These packages allow you to record whatever displays on your computer screen (along with a soundtrack) and convert the recording into a video file. After a bit of research, I settled on Camtasia Studio by TechSmith. It's amazingly easy - I was able to create videos of a powerpoint presentation with a voice over almost immediately.
Off the bat, I can see a couple of good applications for the software:
There are some topics that are pretty involved and technical but I'd rather not spend a lot of class time on. As one example, I assign a financial analysis project that requires the students to use our trading room software. I usually have to spend the better part of an entire class period working them through how to access the various databases they have available. With this software, I can boot up the software in my office, go through the various menus, and record a voice-over to explain what I'm doing. Then, the students can review the video at their leisure as often as they need to understand the various processes.
Second, I'd like to record my classes. Since I use Powerpoint in class, I can have the recording software running while I work through my presentation. If I also have a portable microphone on me, I can post a record of my slides and a voice over to the web for students to review as many times as they like. Also, if they miss a day they don't have to ask "Did we cover anything important?" -- they can see for themselves that we didn't.
Finally, in the spring I'll be teaching an advanced Corporate Finance class. Some of the cases I'd like to use assume knowledge that the students might not have the best grasp of. With the recording software, I can quickly put together some quick videos that they can view on their own before they start on the cases. For example, one of the cases requires them to set up an Excel spreadsheet with circular references. This way, I can set up an example with lots of explanation and put it up as a resource.
I can eventually see my classes evolving to a model where I put a lot of the basic material up on the web and use classroom time to expand on web material, work problems, and answer questions. It could also make it pretty simple to convert my classes to online versions.
At least that's what I'm thinking now. But I just got the software, so we'll see. On the plus side, there's a 30-day trial version that's fully functional. So, I can work out the bugs before I get the Dean to shell out for it. But even if I pay for it out of pocket, it's cheap - less than $200.
Now that the summer's in full swing, it's time to empty out the old Bloglines account and do a link dump. I've been letting things build up, so this is a good opportunity to clean it out while SAS chews through the overly-large data set I'm torturing. So, without further ado, here are some links for your avoidance-behavior use:
Investingand Markets CXO Advisory Group has posted some interesting pieces lately. In one, they report on a study by David Blitz and Pim van Vliet titled The Volatility Effect: Lower Risk without Lower Return. The study finds evidence that investors overpay for the most volatile stocks (i.e. they underperform on a risk-adjusted basis).
And finally, they discuss work by Ben Marshall, Rochester Cahan and Jared Cahan titled Does Intraday Technical Analysis in the U.S. Equity Market Have Value?. Their answer seems to be a pretty resounding "no" - they use some pretty rigorous statistically analysis (bootstrapping tests) to examine some 7,846 trading rules from five rule families (Filter, Moving Average, Support and Resistance, Channel Breakouts, and On-Balance Volume). They find that (after adjusting for what's called "data snooping bias") that none of the rules are profitable.
Private Equity Bargeron, Schlingemann, Stulz, and Zutter (a group of college professors, not a law firm) recently conducted a study on the differences in gains to target shareholders for takeovers by private vs. publicly owned firms. They find that private acquirers leave less on the table (i.e. the targets get a lower announcement return when the acquirer is a private company). The answer seems to be that private firms' ownership structures lead to better decisions.
Academia Craig Newmark links to a great paper on student evaluations. It's specifically geared towards law school, but it's pretty generalizable, and has a lot of citations to prior work on factors that seem to drive evaluations.
