There could be many uses of Illinibucks if a
pre-specified quantity was granted to every student. If Illinibucks could only be
used to move to the start of a line, some potential uses of it could be
allowing students to register/waitlisted for courses early (for courses that
are popular and have fewer seats than demand for the class), reserving study
rooms, gyms or other facilities and moving up in the waiting list for advising
appointments or office hours. Regardless of the different possible uses of Illinibucks,
there would be many issues that implementing such a system would cause. There
are ethical issues of such a system since some students may not even get the
opportunity to register for some classes or may have to wait a long amount of
time for advising appointments and office hours if they do not have Illinibucks
left. Also, however, is the issue with pricing for the different services students
can buy with Illinibucks, since if the administered prices are too low or too
high, it could have adverse effects.
One way I would decide to spend my Illinibucks
would be for registering for some classes early. While I would not have to do
this for classes in my major since I would have priority registration
regardless, I would have to use some Illinibucks when deciding what gen-eds to
take. In the past I have not had issues with registering for a gen-ed course
since I plan what courses to take well in advance of my time ticket for
registration, but since other students will likely use Illinibucks to register
for a course early, I would have to do the same to ensure I get a seat in the class.
Another way I would use the Illinibucks would be for appointments and office hours,
since the lines for both can get extremely long, particularly for office hours.
Instead of having to wait in line for 1 hour (or possibly much more), I would
be able to use Illinibucks to get help on my difficulties immediately.
However, there could be various problems
with the administered prices. If prices are too low, then students would use
their Illinibucks freely and this could cause serious problems. For example,
when registering for courses, if registering early costs a very low proportion
of the allocated Illinibucks, since it is at the start of the semester (when
most students won’t have used any of their Illinibucks), there is a strong possibility
that many popular courses will become full extremely quickly and the waitlist will
also grow immensely, meaning that students who want to register for the course
at their actual registration time ticket, will have nearly no chance of
successfully registering for that course. Low prices would also mean that
students may use their Illinibucks for reserving facilities and skipping lines
for appointments/office hours with excessive frequencies. This will create long
lines of students who used Illinibucks to skip the line or be put on the
waitlist, which does not actually give any student an advantage since everyone
is using their Illinibucks.
If administered prices are too high, it
would mean that students may end up using their entire budget at once and
therefore won’t get much of an advantage out of it. Although this does mean
that students would be more wary of where they spend their Illinibucks, it also
means that if they have already used up their Illinibucks, they will have to
wait in a long queue every other time, even if they urgently need to skip a
line for what may be a valid reason. Therefore, the pricing of services offered
for Illinibucks would be a key issue.
However, another major issue would be the
ethical problems with Illinibucks. While some students would see it as unfair, such
a system would most likely also result in a huge market for Illinibucks where
students will try and buy and sell their Illinibucks for real money. Since
Illinibucks would not be transferable, the buyer will get the seller to use
their Illinibucks for them. This would clearly benefit wealthier students and while
students who are selling Illinibucks may prefer the system since they can make
real money of it, this clearly poses an ethical problem. While some students
would prefer the implementation of such a system, other students may not and
the advantage all students gain will never be equal. Therefore, while considering
the benefits of Illinibucks, due to the various problems it would cause, I
think it makes more sense to not implement such a system.
You are the first one to talk about a black market in Illinibucks. Let me say that in class on Tuesday we will look at a simple model of rationing demand in light of scarcity and talk about efficiency in that context. First come first serve, may not be efficient, especially if being first is more accident than a deliberate act. Efficiency requires the person who "values it more" to have access and the person who "values it less" to give up access. If those values are uncorrelated with the income/wealth of the person, I don't believe there is an ethical issue. If they do correlate, however, the concerns you raise are valid. In this case, one might have to have the Illinibucks non-transferrable, used either by the person to whom they were assigned or not at all. Perhaps the person's name would be printed on the Illinibucks and use would require showing a student ID.
ReplyDeleteI was interested to hear that certain Gen Ed classes gets sold out. I wonder which those are. Maybe we'll discuss this in class. The broader economic issue I'd like the class to confront is whether these capacity levels are somewhat arbitrary and can be raised, or if they are completely rigid. This requires looking at the limiting factor(s) and asking if those can be expanded, if more resources are devoted to the activity. When that it is possible, then the question is where should capacity be expanded? Could the usage of Illinibucks then serve as a guide for allocating resources to expand capacity?
In my post I pondered about low prices as well. I would wonder if maybe everyone would buy everything, therefore getting rid of any utility of the Illinibucks program.
ReplyDeleteI think the best use, like you said, would be ato skip to the front of specific lines. In the example of the office hour line skip they would have to price the transaction such that only a few people would bother buying, otherwise it would be useless.
I did not think about how registration could get messed up for some that would otherwise have no problems, like you said. I think this would cause some careful planning by the University to abate. Otherwise they would perhaps finally get the memo that some classes need more sections and they could perhaps hire a few more professors.