Incentives

                After thinking for days I arrived at my topic…

I decided to start with a small policy from my childhood. Sometimes your parents have things they really want you to be good at that you have no desire to pursue. Let me introduce you to my reading program growing up.  My mom was a big encourager of our learning process and understood the importance of kids who could read well. Reading has obvious benefits as a skill and as a way to improve critical thinking and your own vocabulary. We were paid as children a penny a page to read books and when we finished the book we would collect our bounty. It would usually come out to about two dollars. I read quite a few books while this policy was in place, but there was an issue here of not being able to truly monitor if I was reading and she made us discuss what we read before she gave us our rewards. I do seem to remember skipping boring parts of books in order to increase my reading output. A second incentive process that I never quite reached occurred in little league baseball. My Dad said that if I ever hit a homerun he would buy me a Nintendo 64. As a kid as much as I desired the reward I simply did not know the process for getting stronger, or hitting the ball that extra amount. Once I realized this would probably never happen the incentive became just an interesting thought and nothing really to strive for. I would not say my performance fell because of that but there was a level of excitement that left me.

                I understand these are not quite the same as a grading scheme but they are interesting stories that show some moral hazard and a failed incentive system.

In my classes there have been some incentive schemes while grading. I have been in a number of classes where your attendance is a huge portion of your grade. These are most often lectures, so I do understand there is a different dynamic.  In those that are not lectures, I often simply show up and enjoy by listening. I will say that my favorite class ever was stylized in this very manner. I did not have my head lost in some note taking. I simply enjoyed the passion displayed and practicality of the information. He made me think, he did not drill memorization that could be forgotten after an exam.  Some grading schemes that have failed my learning miserably are those that consist of a few exams and nothing else.  Especially if the teacher is bad, boring, etc., and the material was required and nothing of interest, I can guarantee it goes in one ear and out the other… and that’s only if I am not dozing off.  My performance does suffer but my actual learning experience (or lack thereof) makes the class a waste of money. In all honesty it has a ton to do with pursuing thing you actually like, then incentive schemes mean nothing, but there are skills and knowledge that should be learned even if they are not exciting because they might be useful one day. These are where structure and incentives play their largest role, in my opinion. Even bad teachers can force me to learn through a strict grading system.

I don’t really think that there is much to be done as far as risk aversion in the classroom. Sure I will complete the extra credit offered but I don’t feel as though I go too far beyond that as far as dealing with grades.  I might suggest that the real risk aversion that I do occurs when registering for classes. That is where I do my best to select professors and courses that A.) Fit my vision B.) I can do well in. The real risk aversion occurs early. I have also taken more classes than required so I can just drop one if I do not enjoy it or do bad on an exam.