Jeff Brown
@IlliniBizDean
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Former Illinois Gies Business Dean. Economist. Currently on mission to visit every US National Park.
Champaign, IL
Joined May 2011
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Tired of the electoral map? Here is a map of the legality of owning a Kangaroo by state.
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I am deeply concerned for our Gies faculty colleague,
@SHABAZGIL
.
According to many credible news outlets, Shahbaz Gill, Clinical Assistant Professor Business Administration in the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was arrested earlier this month by Pakistani authorities.
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@wickettred
I was a brand manager for Vicks VapoRub back in 1992/93. Go ahead and use it. It does not go “bad” it just loses some of its efficacy. :-)
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My fellow guitar players, notice the relative position of his left and and the capo. :-)
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Today’s PhD admissions is nuts. PhD courses as UG. Pre-doc RA job. Tons of advanced math. As a friend said, “how much longer til a PhD is required to be admitted to a PhD program?”
Arms race may be individually rational for departments, but socially sub-optimal.
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Many in academia are obsessed with being the smartest person in the room.
I’ve learned that I actually prefer being surrounded by people smarter than me.
That mindset allows me to learn and grow. It also makes me a better leader and a happier person.
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I'm one of 50 US Business School Deans who signed. It is in our national economic interest to reduce barriers to high skill immigration to the U.S.
When we send talent back to their home countries to compete with us rather than keeping them here, we lose
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I was told my most memorable line today in my panel on the innovation & the future of accounting was:
“If you don’t have a good empirical strategy for identifying causal effects, then big data will just give you a more precise wrong answer.”
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For 52 years, I’ve lived as a white male in a society largely built by and for people who look like me.
One thing I never learned to talk about in all those years is race. Not in a meanginful way. It was “impolite” or even risky. Just treat individuals with dignity, I thought.
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“How to damage the U.S. economy.”
Chapter 1: “Identify a highly successful export industry and cut off a key source of demand.”
“Bonus points if same actions reduce future US innovation and sends some of the world’s best talent to our competition.”
So...I just scraped new State Dept data on student visas (F-1's), and it looks like student visa issuance fell by ~70% from FY2019 to FY2020.
This is an astounding idiotic own-goal for America, given that education is one of our most successful exports.
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My dad found this photo of me from Time Magazine on the Berlin Wall 30 years ago. Kneeling down to help pull more people up. This was right in front of the Brandenburg Gate.
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Well, it’s official. I get to keep my Twitter handle for 5 more years.
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I tracked down the good Samaritan who found me unconscious on the road following my bike accident. It felt good to express my sincere
#gratitude
. After hearing how she used her truck to guard me from traffic, my faith in kindness of strangers skyrocketed. Thank you Debbie.
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I don’t often share family news on Twitter. But I want to honor my father, Mel Brown, who passed away this afternoon.
I am incredibly grateful to have had such an amazing role model for how to be a great dad and a good citizen.
“With great love, comes great grief.”
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Just so all sides are clear: there are only two solutions to Social Security & Medicare $ challenge:
1 Put more money in (taxes)
2 Take less money out (lower benefits)
If you are against one, you must be for the other. Choose your poison, but don’t pretend it’s lemonade.
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Wow! Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo & Michael Kremer win the Nobel in economics for their work on global poverty!
On a personal note, I’ve had professors & co-authors win the Nobel. Esther is my first PhD classmate to win. She’s youngest recipient ever.
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Over 3,300 economists (incl me) from across the full US political spectrum have endorsed a carbon tax.
When this large and diverse group of economists agree on a policy, it likely means 2 things:
1) it is a good policy
2) it is difficult politically
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It’s interesting how many people label expertise as elitism when the expert disagrees with them.
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If you could choose a single concept from any academic discipline that - if widely and deeply understood by all university leaders and faculty - would substantially improve outcomes, what would it be?
My answer: opportunity cost
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Rather, it means I knew my hard work had a high probability of being rewarded.
It means I had the ability to focus on working hard b/c I was not spending mental energy fighting stereotypes.
It means I was treated the way all people should be treated in a just and fair world.
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Now that I’ve had a chance to calm down … let me share why I called 9-1-1 earlier this evening and why I was so angry they did not answer.
…
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This policy is arbitrary, callous, and counter to our national interest.
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I’m in the mood for some positivity on Twitter. So, what is the best advice you’ve ever been given?
Mine: “presume good intentions.”
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Is there gender bias in economics? Absolutely
Must profession change? Yes
Must we accept a flawed economic model because it’s most visible proponent is a woman? Let’s hope not.
MMT deserves substantive criticism.
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We don’t need Harvard in the Midwest.
We already have some of the best public and private universities in the world here.
yes I would - Harvard should be opening locations in the Midwest instead of China.
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Lots of subtweets suggesting
@jenniferdoleac
is anti-worker/anti-diversity b/c she prefers EITC to min wage & her demand curve for RA hours slopes down.
I know we’re all on edge right b/c of national events, but please, this is not how we build a more inclusive profession.
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One of the highlights of my career as Dean and Dad.
Today I had the very rare and wonderful honor of handing a diploma for a Masters Degree in Management to my own daughter. Congratulations Maddie!!!
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A plea to my male senior colleagues in economics
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Had to say goodbye to this sweet boy today. I’m grateful for 13 years with my buddy.
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So I went back to hotel. And I am fine.
But I am angry. I’m angry at him. I’m frustrated that dozens of other people did absolutely nothing. And I’m upset at 9-1-1 for not answering.
That’s the whole story. No harm done to me. Maybe I was dumb. Maybe I was lucky.
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❤️ Dancing with my beautiful daughter on her wedding day. ❤️
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By my calculation, *first generation* UG students at UIUC outnumber *all* Harvard undergraduates.
Public Universities do so much more for economic mobility than the so-called “elites.”
Many others (eg
@profgalloway
) have made this point long before me.
Harvard’s endowment payout (which is much smaller than their annual return) last year was about $2 billion. That is about the size of the total UIUC annual budget. And UIUC educated more than 2x the number of students.
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1. A US trade deficit with any one country is no more a problem than the fact that I have a personal trade deficit with my local grocery store. I buy from Schnuck's because they can provide my groceries much cheaper than I can produce them all on my own.
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This is bad for the economy, bad for business, bad for education, and even worse for the long-term competitiveness of the US economy.
“Let’s send a half million really smart, talented, highly educated people to the competition” said no CEO ever.
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When the government announces that it intends to run a budget deficit, it’s announcing that it doesn’t intend to make current generation pay for the full cost of government, thus shifting burden to future generations, via higher future taxes, lower future spending, or inflation.
When the government announces that it intends to run a budget deficit, it's announcing that it doesn't intend to recapture every $ it intends to put into the economy.
#SoWhat
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I would be more excited about a 28 minute train ride between the University of Illinois and the city of Chicago
What do you think about the idea for a train that would whisk you from Chicago to Cleveland in 28 minutes?
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I'm stating a preference more than making a prediction, but my vote for tomorrow's Nobel Prize in economics is Harvard's Claudia Goldin for her work on women in labor markets.
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Harvard’s endowment payout (which is much smaller than their annual return) last year was about $2 billion. That is about the size of the total UIUC annual budget. And UIUC educated more than 2x the number of students.
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MMT is the Laffer Curve of the left: a simple model that fits on a napkin and has ideological appeal not because it is rigorous but because it makes promises seem less costly.
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The more I think about it, the more I really dislike the use of undergrad admission selectivity as a measure of education quality in higher ed rankings.
The resulting behavioral implications for universities are almost entirely negative for society.
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I don’t think I know a single PhD economist who believes this to be true.
Lots of reasons to like tax cuts, but “more revenue” is not one of them.
Sen. Tim Scott on the 2017 GOP tax law: “What we know is the Laffer Curve still works, but the lower the tax the higher the revenue”
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All of the following are true:
1. Economics has a serious problem with sexism.
2. MMT has serious shortcomings as a model.
3. We all have to be more careful to criticize the idea, not the person.
Is there gender bias in economics? Absolutely
Must profession change? Yes
Must we accept a flawed economic model because it’s most visible proponent is a woman? Let’s hope not.
MMT deserves substantive criticism.
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I think we turn away a lot of potentially terrific applied economists by subjecting them to unnecessarily mathematicized theory. I mean, can’t we just agree that someone already proved a fixed point theorem & focus on how to cleanly identify a good empirical question?
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I see
#EconTwitter
is debating the relative value of cats & dogs. I own both & thus consider myself an expert. All empirical evidence suggests a dog’s goal in life is to be happy & to make others happy. A cat’s goal in life is to engage in nefarious plots against owners’ lives.
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That’s it for now. I’m still learning and listening. Thanks to my friends who are guiding me on this journey.
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Admitting I am privileged being a white male doesn’t diminish my accomplishments.
It does not mean I am not proud of who I am. Or of my family.
It does not mean I am ashamed to be white or male.
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“Human capital” is a widely used economics term to refer to productive capacity of people (e.g., skills, knowledge) We even have a journal by that name:
Hassett used the term inartfully. Let’s move on. We have a thousand more important issues to discuss.
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Our family had to say goodbye to our Hana today. It’s tough, but a small price to pay for 12 years of joy.
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Military parade recalls this story of Soviet parade. First came tanks then missiles then nukes. Each more destructive than the prior. Last in line was old man. “Who is he?” asked bystander. “An economist” came the answer “have you seen how much damage a single economist can do?”
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A few (non-partisan) notes about GDP growth.
1) 4.1% annualized growth is good news!
2) A single quarter of annualized growth is not the same as annual growth. We would need to do this four times to have annual growth of 4.1%. But remember point
#1
- it is still good news.
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The news last week of Marty’s death was hard enough. To learn he committed suicide because he felt he was losing his virtuosity as a researcher is even harder.
He is one of many who got me where I am today. I’ll always be grateful.
Rest In Peace.
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For those who say that we should “not just throw dollars” at public schools: turns out those marginal dollars really do matter.
A study of public school spending cuts during the Great Recession finds a 10% spending reduction during all four years of high-school was associated with 2.6 percentage point lower graduation rates, from
@KiraboJackson
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My grandmother started at Miami University during the great flu pandemic in 1918. Students were sent home. She graduated in 1920.
100 years later, three of her great granddaughters are graduating from Miami during the Covid pandemic.
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I am well-trained in statistics, & common decision-making biases such as the availability heuristic.
Even so, I confess to spending 15 minutes on research & feeling relieved that a Boeing 737-800, which I board in 9 hours, is not the same as a Boeing 737 Max 8.
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I had the best FaceTime call of my life this evening when my oldest daughter and her now-fiancé called to share the news of their engagement! ❤️
#ProudPapa
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Our first child was born while I was in my PhD program. She turned 24 today.
How is that even possible?
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Kudos to
@Illinois_Alma
for having convenient & free saliva testing for Covid-19 around campus. It took me under ten minutes including the time to walk to and from my office.
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I’m proud of the University of Illinois.
This is a game changer against Covid.
The
#ILLINOIS
rapid saliva test for COVID-19 is now operating under FDA Emergency Use Authorization.
“Today’s news puts the University and the entire state of Illinois on the cutting edge of testing innovation on a national level." -
@GovPritzker
🔸🔹
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My discussion with Yahoo Finance about newly announced restrictions on international students studying in the U.S. I am dumbfounded as to why the U.S. would send the world's best minds back to their home countries to compete with us rather than build their business here.
Highlight: University of Illinois Gies College of Business Dean
@IlliniBizDean
on how they are keeping international students enrolled:
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My job market advice for candidates. Stop reading job market advice on X.
Seriously, some of this advice, while well-intended, is just silly. You have accomplished a lot already, so just continue to use your very good judgment that brought you this far.
Good luck. Enjoy it!
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I spend anywhere from 6-12 hours on zoom calls each day. When I have time that is not scheduled zoom, the last thing I want to do is sit at my desk & stare at my screen.
As a result, I have found it impossible to keep up with email. Anyone else have this issue?
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Being dean of the year, leading a business school named most innovative of the decade, & having a global impact on educational innovation is insufficiently “notable” for
@Twitter
.
I guess I need more controversial/caustic/offensive tweets to get more followers. :-)
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@DavidBarondeau
Parking subsidies are essentially pollution subsidies because on the margin they encourage driving over public transportation, car pooling, biking and walking.
And I’m guessing $857 is already subsidized.
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I don’t always agree w/
@Noahpinion
, but he is spot on in saying that if you want to credit someone for the last decade of economic growth, thank the
@federalreserve
.
How did the U.S. avoid a "lost decade" after the Great Recession? Give thanks this year for the Fed, says
@noahpinion
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Made it!
Over 40,000 steps today. Nearly all of it up or down steep inclines. Worth it.
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America’s great universities thank you for imposing a policy that will boost US exports and shrink UK exports. Bravo!
From today, the majority of foreign university students cannot bring family members to the UK.
In 2024, we’re already delivering for the British people.
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Sadly, our AER paper from 6 years ago may again be relevant.
Endowment decisions in this recession should be used to protect the university mission, not the endowment itself. But agency problems can get in the way.
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It’s hard to lose a PhD classmate, work colleague, co-author & person who recruited me to Gies.
When he’s also a best friend w whom you shared life’s greatest ups & downs, it truly hurts.
Thank you, Scott, for enriching my life. May God watch over your family.
It is with incredible sadness that we share our friend and colleague, Scott Weisbenner, passed away.
It was Scott’s wish that we hold a celebration of life sometime in the coming weeks. We will let you know once it has been scheduled.
More details: .
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Odd. When i was part of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, we viewed our function as providing advice to the President on what research indicated the effect of a policy would be, whether or not it matched the President’s intuition.
“This is the president’s vision,” said Peter Navarro, Trump’s ascendant trade adviser. “My function, really, as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition. And his intuition is always right in these matters”
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Before I was Dean, I was a scholar of insurance / risk management. So when I identified the revenue risk related to China, I worked w 2 outstanding finance faculty members to put theory into practice. I believe we were the first to do this.
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Actually, I’m pretty sure I could map my body weight against the S&P and get an even higher correlation, lol.
Of course, Wall Street likes Modern Monetary Theory (
#MMT
). US Benchmark index S&P 500 is moving upwards in step w/ US total debt.
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I think we give presidents too much credit & too much blame for the macro economy. And I’m sure I’m not first to think of this, but I think Trump’s criticism of Powell has little to do with policy & everything to do with having someone else to blame if/when a recession comes.
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10 days, 3 states, 7 National Parks, 75 miles hiked.
Scenery was beautiful. One-on-one time with middle child, priceless.
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Twitter reminds me frequently of the words of MIT Professor Frank Fisher when he said (paraphrasing) that it is difficult to be an expert on a topic that non-experts think they understand.
He was talking anti-trust, but it applies to many fields. Econ, Poli Sci, medicine ...
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“In 2018, the U.S. sold $42 billion of higher education services outside the United States.” (Inside Higher Ed)
If POTUS wants to reduce trade deficit with China, damaging one a leading exports by limiting OPT is senseless.
It’s also bad policy for many other reasons.
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A discussant at today’s meeting objected to an author’s use of the word “leisure” to refer to hours not at work. It got me thinking of words in academic disciplines that have different meanings than how the general public uses them. Here are a few - please add your own.
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And I got my test
@results
back in under 4 hours. Amazing work
@Illinois_Alma
(And I am happy that my mask wearing and social distancing is working. I tested negative).
Kudos to
@Illinois_Alma
for having convenient & free saliva testing for Covid-19 around campus. It took me under ten minutes including the time to walk to and from my office.
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But that’s not good enough.
So I’m going to share one thought today about the term “white privilege” and what it means - or importantly, what it does not mean - for me.
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Call me slow, but I’ve finally concluded that
#EconTwitter
is like trying to have a research seminar in a public stadium filled with hecklers. It’s almost as bad as EJMR.
But I like to have these conversations w colleagues I don’t get to see. What’s the alternative venue?
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@economeager
I still remember when a certain MIT professor was using q for price. So later in the lecture when he needed a variable for quantity, he chose p.
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I had fun teaching two sections of behavioral finance today.
Took cough suppressant because I am tail end of a bad cold.
Grabbed wrong bottle. Took a full dose of NyQuil right before class.
My attempt to offset the drowsiness with lots of caffeine was partly successful.
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I was 5 years too early. :-)
I'm stating a preference more than making a prediction, but my vote for tomorrow's Nobel Prize in economics is Harvard's Claudia Goldin for her work on women in labor markets.
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@j_giliam
Because it has the effect of excluding lots of folks. To take the right UG classes, you need to have come into college with lots of AP credits. Which means you had to go to the right high school. And so on ...
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@DeanObermark
@dynarski
@gbenga_ajilore
@causalinf
I will take a stab given that I have written dozens and read hundreds.
In no particular order:
1. Be specific. Glowing generalities are nice but useless. Talk about specific contributions the person made as a researcher and why the contribution is important.
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We are excited to announce tuition-free education at
@giesbusiness
and other
@Illinois_Alma
colleges for all Illinois students with family incomes below the IL median ($61k).
In-state students with a family income of $61,000 or less will come to
#ILLINOIS
tuition-free starting in Fall 2019:
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Since I crashed his 30th birthday party by being born, I decided to crash his 84th birthday party today with a surprise visit.
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I am pleased to report that my 11 month exercise / healthy eating regime to lose substantial weight so that I could gain it all back in a single day of uncontrolled Thanksgiving eating is right on track.
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Note to all students: this is NOT okay. Do not accept a job unless you fully intend to honor your commitment. Do not accept and keep looking.
Student has an offer with an investment bank. Offer expires in November. Job starts in June. Should he accept but keep looking for a buy side job, and rescind his IB acceptance if he gets a better job?
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@Noahpinion
You have also witnessed
- fall of Berlin Wall
- democratization of Eastern Europe
- unprecedented technological innovation
- massive world-wide decline in extreme poverty
- rapid decline in global infant mortality rates
And much more. The glass is more than half full.
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We have a hard enough time showing fiscal restraint in the US even when their was bipartisan understanding that deficit spending is problematic. Now people selling MMT are trying to completely unshackle policy from any modicum of fiscal constraint.
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New university password requirements:
1. Must be between 812-912 characters 2. May not use any characters found on a known keyboard or device
3. Must not use anything memorable
4. There is 87 step verification process
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