Jamin Speer

***NEWLY ACCEPTED PAPER*** I have a new short paper with Margaret Leighton We use decades of data (HERI) on incoming college freshmen to show that students' life goals have changed dramatically over time. Students really are very different than they were in the past! Here are the key findings:

Did some university-level stuff with people from other colleges last week which always makes me thankful to be an economist instead of pretty much anything else.

You could have given me 20 guesses where Northern State University was and I would not have guessed South Dakota.

yikes

So when do the Heat start trying to trade Giannis, @johnhollinger.bsky.social?

An Econ rap group called 2 Logit 2 Quit

Need some info: At your university, are any of your external reviewers for tenure or promotion allowed to be your co-authors or dissertation advisors?

Our department at Vanderbilt is seeking an assistant/associate professor of higher education policy. The position is intended for a quantitative researcher with a PhD in a social science, public policy, or education. Please circulate and let me know if you have questions! apply.interfolio.com/193891

Oregon State bet big on computer science. After a profitable run, things have gone south.

Apropos of nothing, New Mexico is a beautiful and underrated state and people should visit before it’s gone

We need a name for that feeling when you get old enough that none of your pop culture references work in class anymore

I've just stopped replying to all emails about our masters program (I am the masters coordinator!). They're all the same. These students aren't really coming, they're just sending emails to 50 places. We don't have a lot of $ anyway.

I swear if an asteroid was headed right for earth, our dean would email us and say "Yes this asteroid represents a new challenge, but it also represents great opportunity, and we should seize it."

Seen by a friend in Carlisle UK. Give me your best company slogan.

My own stata license

Data project (AI-able) and exam (paper, no aids) score distribution on the undergraduate Development Economics course I have been teaching at Stockholm University, 2022-2026.

Currently in month #10 of not having an office. It’s……not great, Bob. Don’t recommend.

“The current study presents findings from, to our knowledge, the first large-scale randomized experiment evaluating the effects of AI tutoring on student learning at a large U.S. public university.” The only problem is the findings are wrong. brendanbartanen.substack.com/p/ai-tutorin...

What if I told you social events are a choice and you can just go back to your hotel room after a couple of sessions and get takeout and watch playoff sports?

Marketplace enrollment is now down almost 20% year-over-year, per a new @kff.org analysis www.kff.org/affordable-c...

Recently got a referee invite. It was the 3rd time I'd reviewed the same paper. First 2 were at strong field journals. Paper wasn't good enough. 3rd time was "B" type journal. I just said accept. They've done enough, no need for more changes. That's what I would want someone to say for me!

This is great because my two biggest problems as a professor are students learning too much and being too engaged

Oh

If I were an nfl player I would be the Rams kicker

Is Columbus Day the fakest real holiday? What’s the realest fake holiday?

I got wonderful graduate training and I’ve been a reasonably successful economist for over a decade. So it’s pretty wild that macroeconomics just seems like this complete other language or country to me that I have no knowledge of.

The Nobel Prize goes to Hall and Woodford for “stuff I did not understand in the first year of graduate school and still don’t”

Interesting article but an experiment giving some people money is not a “universal basic income”. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/12/t...

"How do we know what courage is? When we see a man risk himself to care for another person, that’s courage. The legal judgment may be uncertain, but the moral verdict is already in. On the most traumatic night in a young woman’s life, a good man could not be found." www.nytimes.com/2026/10/11/o...

A particularly terrible (but very productive) person retired a while back from my university. He wasn't in my department but his terribleness was widely known. He made everyone's life worse in his dept. I don't like "tenure reform" but I wish we could do more about this type of person.

Shame on the students who treat my class the way I treat my annual IT security training (or shame on both of us?)

Learned about my dream job recently, but they were only hiring (much) more senior people. It was called retirement.

About to send in my application for Department Chair

“Okay we need a committee to evaluate the Dean. Sounds like a great job for all of our women and the Black Guy!”

Why are schools still offering asynchronous online classes? You can’t take those seriously at all anymore.

I’ve seen jobs described as tenure-track and tenure-line but today I saw “tenure-stream” which somehow sounds more peaceful. I guess you just float along and eventually you come to tenure. Or is this tenure…?

The decision-making at the University of Memphis is sometimes quite baffling.

Clint Eastwood with Jack Smith at the Hawks game