Latest news with #KelloggSchoolofManagement
NZ Herald
14-07-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
China's young workers face job woes as the economy impacts elite graduates' prospects
Yet Crystal's stellar CV left her with just one realistic postgrad option: a master's degree in economics and management, and two more years before she could enter the workforce. 'There's no guarantee' of a job out of undergrad anymore, Crystal said. 'By the time we graduated, the economic outlook was pretty dismal. The Peking University class of 2014 might have got a decent job and lived a comfortable life no matter what after graduating, but it's not like that for us.' Crystal's situation reflects the struggles that recent college graduates – even top performers from China's elite institutions – face while navigating the country's post-pandemic job market. 'It isn't just that recent cohorts of undergraduates from elite institutions couldn't find high-paying jobs,' said Nancy Qian, an economics professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. 'They were fighting really hard to get a pretty mediocre-paying job – meaning that the money wouldn't be enough to live independently.' Since the coronavirus pandemic brought the Chinese economy to a crashing halt, followed by a plodding, uneven recovery, newly minted graduates in China have faced a daunting labour market marred by layoffs and downsizing. As more and more Chinese students graduate each June to fill fewer and fewer spots, top-paying private sector firms have pivoted to mostly recruiting those with master's degrees, according to students and experts. Alumni of China's top undergraduate programmes have long flocked to graduate school: around 80% of Peking University graduates each year elect to continue their education. But rather than earning a master's to guarantee a higher future salary, students are now pursuing graduate degrees simply to secure a job, Qian said. Even that may not be enough. 'Many people mistakenly assume that once they have a graduate degree, they will receive a golden key to employment,' wrote a 2023 report from Zhaopin, one of China's largest online recruitment platforms. 'But in reality, that only buys a ticket to entry. Whether you can land a good job still depends on your abilities … having academic qualifications is the bare minimum needed for job searchers, not an advantage.' More Chinese students are also pursuing graduate degrees from domestic institutions in comparison to years past. At Beijing's Tsinghua University – consistently ranked the best university in the nation – 54% of the class of 2013 chose to commit to a Chinese graduate programme. By 2022, that figure rose to 66%, according to Tsinghua's postgraduation outcome reports. At Peking, 48% of the class of 2019 enrolled in a Chinese master's or PhD. For the class of 2024, that number was 66%. Students now think, ''If employers have increasingly high requirements, then I have to meet those requirements. So getting a graduate degree has become something I need to do,'' said Dong Jiachen, a recent graduate of the sociology master's programme at Peking University. Like Crystal, Dong knew that she wanted to work in the private sector – and that earning a master's would be just the start. 'Even before beginning the job search, you need to complete a number of internships, obtain the relevant certifications, practice for the written tests you'll be given by employers and so on,' said Dong, who worked six internships before landing a fulltime job at Meituan, China's DoorDash equivalent, this year. Since China began liberalising its economy in the late 1970s, the country has experienced bouts of unemployment, Qian said. But 'the thing that was really surprising for this wave of hardships of the job market is that it hit the people who are usually considered the safest, which is the elite educated,' she added. Many recent graduates who have worked hard to propel themselves into elite institutions are 'dispirited', Qian said. 'There's a question of, 'What was the point of it all? Why do we work so hard? Maybe we should just give up.'' Would-be employees are also now demanding more from their workplaces, said Lily Liu, the former chief executive of a Chinese online recruitment platform with around 100,000 users. 'Recent graduates' expectations are now multifaceted – expectations for the corporate environment, the industry values, the salary, the distance from home, the location. If these expectations are not met, recent graduates give up and go back to school.' Qi Mingyao, founder and chief executive of Ruihua, a Beijing-based telecommunications firm, pointed to the wider issue of degree inflation in China. 'When I entered college in '92, 100% of undergraduates could find jobs after graduating, and good jobs at that,' he said. 'Now, the graduate students of today are like the undergraduates of back then, and the undergraduates of today are like the vocational students of back then.' Ruihua downsized from around 60 employees before the pandemic to around 20 employees now and has not hired anyone in the past few years because of the state of the economy, according to Qi. If the company were to begin hiring again, Qi said he would seek out graduates with master's degrees. 'We would be looking to develop our software, and graduate degree holders would have more specialised skills than undergraduate degree holders.' The labour market downturn could lead to cascading demographic consequences for China. The next generation of would-be parents 'don't think they have money to get married and start a family', Qian said. 'When you have a lot of youth unemployment, all of those normal mechanisms for people to meet, socialise, get married and have children and families are broken.' In August 2023, the Chinese Government stopped publishing youth unemployment data after the unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds spiked to 21.3% in June of that year. Beijing began releasing the data again in January 2024, albeit with students excluded from the dataset. As part of the new update, the National Bureau of Statistics also said it would split the 25-29 age bracket – previously bundled into the 25- to 59-year-old age bracket – into a separate category to reflect the 'continuous rise in the years of education youth receive'. The youth unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds was 14.9% in May. The bleak outlook for new graduates shows little sign of improvement, especially given uncertainty over the Trump Administration's tariffs on China. 'The impact of the American tariffs is that foreign firms are hiring for fewer positions in China,' Liu said. After completing her master's this spring, Crystal is set to begin working at a leading tech firm in Beijing. 'If I compare myself to Americans or Europeans, of course I'll be unhappy – how can they have a 30-day holiday and still make so much per hour?' she said. 'But if I compare myself to previous generations in China, I feel like I don't actually work that hard. My parents' generation had long working hours too, and they didn't eat well or wear nice clothes. 'When I think about it that way, it just feels like it's our turn to shoulder the hardships that come with our generation.'
The Star
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Science shows you're probably bad at spotting AI images. These tricks can help
Is that celebrity really endorsing that product or is the ad an AI scam? Should you reconsider your vote based on that politician's photograph or is the image just AI-generated propaganda? Is your jealousy of that influencer's home or vacation because of their flawless taste or facility with AI image manipulation? As AI becomes a bigger part of our lives, the ability to spot AI images – and answer questions like these – is becoming more and more important. Unfortunately, the latest science suggests it's one skill that most of us are still pretty terrible at. Helpfully, though, science also offers a few tricks that can greatly improve your ability to tell AI fabrications from real-life images. How good are people at spotting AI images? Matthew Groh, a management professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, has been studying deepfakes for years. But like the rest of us, he's seen how AI has supercharged the problem by vastly improving both the quality and quantity of fakes out there. Just how big of a problem is this, he wanted to know. Are everyday people usually able to tell fact from robot-created fiction? To find out, he and a team of collaborators designed a massive study, recruiting about 50,000 volunteers and testing their ability to discern AI-generated images from real ones. How did his volunteers do? The good news is they were more accurate than just flipping a coin. The bad news is not by that much. Participants correctly identified AI-generated images 76% of the time and real photographs 74% of the time. 'That's very much in line with what other experiments have found,' Groh told KelloggInsight. 'It's halfway between random guessing and perfect identification.' The neuroscience of why you're bad at spotting AI images That leaves a lot of room for improvement. Which comes as no surprise to cognitive psychologist Arryn Robbins. On The Conversation recently, she explained the evolutionary basis for our struggles to spot AI images. 'Spotting errors in AI images requires noticing small details, but the human visual system isn't wired for that,' she writes. 'Human perceptual systems evolved to quickly assess environments for any threats to survival, with sensitivity to sudden changes – such as a quick-moving predator – sacrificing precision for speed of detection.' In short, you can blame your hunter-gatherer ancestors for your tendency to effectively scan for the gist of an image and miss that one person in the photo who has three legs. That ability kept early humans from becoming lunch (or starving from the lack of one), but it's not great for accurately spotting AI fakes today. Science-backed tips to get better at spotting AI fakes All of which is just scientific confirmation of what many entrepreneurs probably suspected. Humans are not great at identifying when an image is AI-generated. That should encourage us all to be a little more careful. But is there a more practical takeaway from this research? Actually, yes. The experts insist that, while your brain might not naturally excel at the sort of detailed observation required to spot AI fakes, a few simple tricks can make you much better at it. – Slow down. People only identified AI images about 75% of the time under normal circumstances. But they do a lot better if they remind themselves to look a little longer. Just devoting 10 seconds to looking at an image causes that success rate to jump to 80%. 'That's a big jump in accuracy,' Groh commented. – Know the most common AI flaws. Groh and his team also found that when people are explicitly told about common flaws in AI images, they get better at spotting them. In brief they are: weird anatomy (a sixth finger or strangely long neck), overstylisation (waxy skin, absurd levels of perfection), functional issues (a rigid slice of pizza, wildly misspelled signage), violations of the laws of physics (a mirror reflecting something different from what's in front of it), or cultural implausibilities (diversity in historical contexts when there is little chance it would exist). – Check the source. This step might not be worth your effort in low-stakes situations (go ahead and enjoy that AI-improved design inspo), but when spotting a fake matters, 'reverse image search can help trace a picture's origin,' suggests Robbins. 'If the metadata is missing, it might be generated by AI.' Humility rules (again) These tricks can make you modestly better at spotting. The most important takeaway from this research, however, might just be to remember you'll probably never be great at it. Especially if you're just casually scanning. That's just not how human brains work. The biggest lesson of all is the value of a little humility. (Yes, I'm on my favourite hobbyhorse once again.) Knowing that you, too, are susceptible to AI fakery should cause you to slow down, evaluate images more carefully, and double check anything important. You'll still get fooled sometimes. But thanks to steps like these you should be able to spot AI images far more often. – Inc./Tribune News Service
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Kellogg School of Management breaks ground on state-of-the-art education facility
New building to provide seamless global engagement and hybrid learning through cutting-edge technology EVANSTON, Ill., May 15, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Kellogg School of Management community gathered on May 14, 2025, for a groundbreaking ceremony for a new state-of-the-art building that will offer seamless hybrid instruction and global engagement through cutting-edge technology. The building, designed to integrate students, faculty, alumni and business leaders around the world, will cement Kellogg's position as a world-renowned business school and leader in innovative education for MBA and Executive Education programs. The ceremony marked the beginning of an exciting new chapter for Kellogg, bringing together leadership, donors, alumni and dignitaries to turn the soil and celebrate. The new building is an important addition to Northwestern and will establish a Kellogg campus for the institution in Evanston. Connecting through an underground corridor to the Kellogg Global Hub, the new building will create a "One Kellogg" experience, uniting Kellogg's portfolio of degree and Executive Education programs. "This is a momentous occasion in Kellogg's history. The new building will enrich the student experience across our programs and grow the impact Kellogg has on the world," said Dean Francesca Cornelli. "Not only will it be a beautiful structure, but it will introduce new opportunities for innovation in business education and embody our vision and strategy as a premier business school." The building is the centerpiece of and funded by Kellogg's Full Circle Campaign, an ambitious $600 million fundraising initiative that will also support faculty research, student scholarships and curricular innovation. To date, the building is nearly 75% funded, through a combination of allocated funds and gifts from generous Kellogg supporters, many of whom attended the ceremony on campus. "Today's event marks an important milestone for Northwestern and the Kellogg School of Management," said President Michael Schill. "We are driving critical research and teaching that will have a profound impact on business and society. This new building will enhance our ability to support important initiatives and will elevate Kellogg's profile even further." Northwestern and Kellogg leadership, University trustees, members of Kellogg's Global Advisory Board, and Full Circle Campaign donors attended the ceremony. Supporters of the University, Kellogg and the new building shared remarks and participated in the ceremonial turning of the soil, including chair of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees Peter Barris '74 ('11, '18 P); and his wife Adrienne Barris ('11, '18 P); Trustee Bon French '75, '76 MBA ('07, '21 P); Trustee Chris Galvin '73 '77 MBA ('11 P); Trustee Kimberly Querrey ('22, '23 P); Stephen Reyes '13 JD, MBA; Kathryn Park Schuldt '91 MBA; Trustee Gordon Segal '60 ('93 P); and Trustee Michael Shannon '83 MBA ('10, '15 P). Vision for the new building The state-of-the-art facility will replace the James L. Allen Center on the Evanston campus. Built with global collaboration in mind, the building's technology and classrooms will bring together students, industry leaders and alumni from around the world. It will double the seating capacity of the Allen Center and is expected to open its doors in fall 2027. Construction progress to date Significant milestones have already been achieved in the construction process. The demolition of the Allen Center was completed ahead of schedule and sustainably, with concrete from the foundations, slabs, and walls processed and reused to make construction roads and working pads. Local workforce: Many Evanston residents have begun working on the project in these first months, and the project will continue to seek out Evanston labor throughout its completion. About 250 workers will be present on-site during the height of construction. Sustainability efforts: The project has reused 5,807 tons of crushed concrete, saving 291 truckloads of material from being hauled in or off-site. A firm foundation: A total of 107 caissons have been drilled, reaching depths of approximately 80 feet each. That totals 8,560 feet of drilling — long enough to reach from the Kellogg Global Hub to Ryan Field! Next phases of construction As the project moves forward, construction will focus on earth retention and de-watering, mass excavation and the completion of underground utilities. After that, the concrete structure buildout will begin, including the erection of a tower crane and the shaping of elevator and stair cores. A dedicated crew will connect the Kellogg Global Hub to the new building through the underground corridor, connecting Kellogg's flagship buildings. Photos from the groundbreaking ceremony and a new model of the Kellogg building can be accessed here. Media contact: Mary Naset / marynaset@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Kellogg School of Management
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Sports Betting Is a Plague
When do practical policy effects trump cherished principles? The mess that has come with gambling liberalization should force the thoughtful kind of libertarian to consider that question. Set aside, for the moment, the recent ideological devolution of the Republican Party into national socialism: Traditionally, most of the Americans who called themselves 'libertarians' were in effect conservatives ('Republicans who like weed and porn,' as a Marxist friend of mine used to put it), while American conservatism was thoroughly libertarian, and not only as an economic matter but also in a way deeply rooted in the live-and-let-live sensibility of figures such as Barry Goldwater, with his suspicion of Moral Majority types. ('Mark my word,' Goldwater famously said, 'if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem.') Libertarians and conservatives both prioritize freedom; libertarians and conservatives both admit the unwelcome reality of trade-offs; libertarians tend to lean a little more into freedom, and conservatives tend to dwell more on the unpleasanter facts of life. Here is a sobering write-up of a study published in December by scholars at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management: At the outset, the researchers observed a sharp increase in sports betting in the states where it was legalized. 'The figure goes from zero in most states to sizable amounts, and it continues to increase for several months as people learn about it,' [Kellogg professor Scott] Baker says. 'Only a year or two after it's been introduced do we see a bit of a plateau, and this is at a pretty high level in terms of money spent and people involved.' By the end of their sample period, the researchers saw that nearly 8 percent of households were involved in gambling. These bettors spent, on average, $1,100 per year on online bets. While the amount of money people put into legal sports gambling rose, their net investments fell by nearly 14 percent. For every $1 a household spent on betting, it put $2 fewer into investment accounts. As bad as that sounds, the report in toto is considerably worse. For example, the researchers also found that sports gambling correlated with greater participation in other forms of gambling, especially lotteries, and that this trend is more pronounced 'among households that frequently overdraw their bank accounts,' i.e., poor people and those living on the financial edge. There is an open question of real relevance to policymakers in this: whether sports gambling is a cause of other reckless economic behavior or is a symptom of more general economic recklessness, especially among those already under economic stress. Economic pressure moves some people in the direction of conservation (cutting spending, saving more, etc.) but moves others in the opposite direction as their anxiety and sense of hopelessness work together to make high-risk activities seem more attractive: Gambling is fundamentally a form of entertainment based on wishful thinking about the likelihood of a big payoff—the economic version of George Orwell's man who 'may take to drink because he feels himself a failure but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.' The cause/symptom distinction is relevant, but the answer, whatever it is, is not dispositive: Even if increased gambling is only a secondary effect, it remains the case that, other things being equal, people in financial distress probably would be better off if opportunities to increase their distress were less readily available. A few regular readers will be thinking: 'Wait—this from the guy who supports legalizing heroin?' The thing about the prohibitionist argument is, it isn't always completely wrong. Alcohol consumption really did go down in the early years of Prohibition—it was a bad policy, but it did not fail on every front. And the benefits to be had from libertarian reform often turn out to be more modest in practice than what had been hoped for. For example: The presence of legal prostitution in some parts of Nevada has done little or nothing to alleviate the problems associated with street-level prostitution in Las Vegas and elsewhere and may have made it worse in some ways, with poorly informed visitors to Sin City believing that prostitution is legal there, which it isn't. Experiments with de facto legalization of some 'hard' drugs, and the more general liberalization of marijuana laws, has not eliminated the black market for drugs and thus defunded the cartels, while drug use generally has increased where drugs are legal. And now gambling legalization has led to more gambling and arguably to more destructive and addictive forms of gambling via app. You can make a good libertarian case that some of these intractable problems above point to reforms that were insufficiently libertarian: There is not very much legal prostitution in Nevada, and what there is remains relatively difficult to access and much more expensive than illegal prostitution—a couple of high-priced brothels an hour's drive from the Strip were never going to eliminate prostitution on the street of Las Vegas or in casino bars; black markets in marijuana and other drugs endure because prohibition of marijuana and other drugs endures, and this has effects even on legal production as marijuana cultivated for use in the liberal states is diverted to the black market in the prohibition states. ('What's the matter with Kansas?' indeed.) But if your best argument amounts to, 'The ideal hypothetical version of my policy is preferable to the non-ideal real-world version of your policy,' then you haven't made a very good case for your policy. And clear-eyed libertarian critics might have a few important things to say about legal gambling, too: that lotteries are state monopolies and that the casino industry is a series of regional state-organized cartels, that neither really is an example of free enterprise in action, and that, as with drinking alcohol, only a minority of gamblers develop problem habits. It is difficult to make a cost-benefit analysis here, because the benefits are almost entirely a matter of taste: Walking through an Atlantic City casino, I myself do not see anything that seems worth preserving—but, then, we have free markets, and more general liberty, precisely because different people have different values, interests, and priorities. (Given the advertising footprint of the sports-betting industry, you can bet that bro media would push back hard against any attempt at limitation.) Still, my thoughts linger on that money being diverted from retirement savings to be pissed away on sports gambling. The Kellogg authors offer the possibility that this is only partly a problem with sports gambling per se and that the pathology is made much worse, as so many things are in our time, by its having migrated to the lonely world of the smartphone, where you can make a spur-of-the-moment bet on a sleepless night at 3 a.m., perhaps after a few drinks. They suggest that the situation might be improved by restricting sports gambling to on-premises wagers in gambling parlors. But if you ever have visited any of those ghastly little mini-casinos that have popped up in converted convenience stores and gas stations around the country – or most of the big gambling palaces, for that matter – then you may come to assume that location constraints are unlikely to produce substantial results. Gambling is an ugly business, morally and aesthetically, almost everywhere it exists. Even the world's most famous baccarat enthusiast knows that. But you know what I'm still thinking about: $2 in vanished retirement savings for every $1 gambled. That's not the kind of return a reformer would hope for.
Time of India
06-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
'Govt can't remove me': Krishnamurthy Subramanian's old remark goes viral after sudden IMF exit
Live Events Sudden exit confirmed by official order Online irony not lost on viewers Why was Subramanian removed from his post? Timing raises eyebrows ahead of Pakistan loan vote Role vacant, replacement expected soon From "Thalinomics" to IMF fallout A year-old video of Krishnamurthy Subramanian , India's former Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has gone viral after the government terminated his tenure six months ahead of the video, shot during an event at the Kellogg School of Management in Illinois, Subramanian is seen in conversation with former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan . He states, 'I am not with the govt; I am not answerable to the Indian govt; Indian govt cannot remove me, etc.'Rajan responds, 'You're appointed by the government, Subbu.'Subramanian replies, 'Well, I'm under no obligation to sing from the hymns they give me.'Rajan then asks, 'Can they remove you?'Subramanian confidently says, 'Well, I guess not before my tenure ends.'But on 30 April, the government did just Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions issued a formal order stating, 'The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the termination of services of Dr Krishnamurthy Subramanian as Executive Director (India) at the International Monetary Fund with immediate effect.'Subramanian, appointed in August 2022 and due to serve until November 2025, was relieved six months early. He officially took charge at the IMF on 1 November 2022, representing a four-country constituency comprising India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri resurfaced clip has sparked a flurry of reactions online. One user on X (formerly Twitter) commented, 'This did not age well,' while another wrote, 'Ah man - this one from the Kellogg IBC didn't age well.' A third added, 'File this one under 'Didn't age well!!''The timing of the video's viral spread has only heightened public interest, especially given the lack of official reasoning from the finance no public explanation has been given, government sources suggest the termination followed internal concerns. These include allegations that Subramanian misused his IMF post to promote his book India @100: Envisioning Tomorrow's Economic Powerhouse, allegedly pressuring both public and private organisations to buy book, published by Rupa Publications, outlines a vision of India becoming a $55 trillion economy by also said Subramanian had challenged IMF datasets on India in recent months—reportedly straining relations with the agency. These clashes are not new; previous disagreements during his time as Chief Economic Adviser (CEA) from 2018 to 2021 also drew decision to terminate Subramanian's services comes just days before a crucial IMF board meeting on a proposed $1.3 billion climate resilience loan to Pakistan. India has been pressing multilateral agencies, including the World Bank and ADB, to halt or delay financial support to its has led some to view Subramanian's dismissal through a geopolitical Subramanian's departure, the IMF post representing India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan is temporarily vacant. The IMF website currently lists Harischandra Pahath Kumbure Gedara as alternate Secretary Ajay Seth, who is set to retire at the end of June, is reportedly the frontrunner to replace several attempts, Subramanian was unavailable for comment. Government sources say he later resigned, citing personal joining the IMF, Subramanian served as India's Chief Economic Adviser. He coined the term 'thalinomics' in the 2019-20 Economic Survey, using the cost of a thali to reflect inflation trends and support the Modi government's economic management. He also defended the government's 2016 demonetisation had returned to academia after his CEA term, only to be appointed to the IMF within a year. His exit now brings to a close a tenure marked by outspoken commentary, data disputes and a viral moment that, in retrospect, proved telling.
