I made an unsettling discovery in my undergraduate class on financial planning last week. While explaining mortgages, I asked my 38 students this question: if you buy a $400,000 house and pay 20% in cash towards the purchase, what will be the amount that you finance? Not a single student could tell me the answer. Despite the fact that they are all juniors and seniors majoring in business. I added more questions: what is 30 percent of 80? 60 percent of 90? They didn’t know. The closest they got was when one student said, in response to my query of “40% of 70”, that “I know it’s 4 times 7 but I don’t remember what that is.” Another student helpfully added, “28.” They explained to me why they couldn’t answer these math questions: they were never taught multiplication tables, percentages or fractions during their K-12 schooling. Instead, they were taught how to use a calculator. Without one, they are not able to do basic arithmetic. I later asked the dean about this, and he lamented that this isn’t a thing just for our university’s students; it’s a thing for their entire generation, nationwide. When I was in K-12, the fierce debate among parents and educators was whether to allow calculators in class. The calculators won. Today, the debate is about AI. And like before, the tech will win. But will that truly be a victory? Rowan University #college #math #loans #CFP #financialplanning

Ten years ago, I offered students a free £50 in class and asked who wanted it. Many students put their hands up, but only a couple were bold enough to come forward and try to take it (even though I made clear it was freely available, and not stealing). This was a social experiment to encourage students to take every opportunity and be proactive, even if it involves discomfort and going against the grain. The £50 went to a student, Laura, who kindly tried to give it back to me after class, but I insisted she'd earned it. I was delighted to see Laura again on Friday when giving a talk to the @LBS Alumni Council. It's no surprise that the same qualities she exhibited 10 years ago are also evident in her willingness to step forward and serve her alumni community on the Council.

Every college syllabus should include these graphs. Use AI for homework, you will get it done faster and get a higher grade, and then get crushed on the exam.

Savvy ice cream shop owner makes 43% of monthly rent betting on weather: 'If it rains, we still win' trib.al/4cfjpVl

Before AI, the standard teaching approach worked reasonably well for both motivated and demotivated students. Now you kind of have to choose. You can teach them to learn with AI and they'll be superpowered, but doing so makes assessment / grading near impossible. 1/

A Wharton economist ran a randomized controlled trial on almost a thousand high school students in Turkey. The result was so brutal for the AI-in-education narrative that it had to be peer-reviewed by PNAS before people would believe it. Her name is Hamsa Bastani. She teaches operations and information at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the study she published in 2025 alongside her co-authors is one of the cleanest experiments anyone has run on what AI actually does to learning when you remove it from the equation and check what is left. The setup was a randomized controlled trial, the same methodology used in clinical drug trials. Nearly a thousand high school math students in Turkey were split into three groups and put through four sessions of ninety minutes each. One group practiced with GPT Base, a standard ChatGPT-4 interface that could answer any question directly. One group practiced with GPT Tutor, a version of the same model that had been prompted to guide students with hints rather than hand them the answer. One group practiced with nothing but their textbook and their own head. During the practice sessions, the AI groups looked like a miracle. The GPT Base group solved 48% more problems than the students working alone. The GPT Tutor group solved 127% more. Every administrator looking at those numbers would have written a press release about the transformative power of AI in education and moved on. Then the actual exam came, and AI was not allowed. The students who had practiced with GPT Base scored 17% worse than the students who had practiced alone. Seventeen percent worse, despite having solved nearly half again as many problems in the sessions leading up to it. The students who had struggled the most, who had sat with the confusion and worked through it without a tool to rescue them, were now the only ones who could actually do the math when it counted. Bastani's team read through the chat logs to understand what had actually been happening during the practice sessions, and the answer was exactly what the exam results had already implied. The GPT Base group had not been learning. They had been extracting answers and moving on, and every moment that felt like understanding was actually the model doing the cognitive work while the student's brain waited for the next problem to arrive. The paper describes it precisely: without guardrails, students attempt to use GPT-4 as a crutch during practice, and subsequently perform worse on their own. The detail that should follow every conversation about AI in education is the one buried in the post-test survey results. The students who had relied on AI the most during practice were also the most confident they had understood the material. The tool had not just failed to teach them. It had convinced them they had learned something they had not, which is a different kind of failure entirely and a much harder one to correct because the student has no idea it is happening. The crutch had made them confident and weak at the same time.

Soy profesora universitaria hace once años. He tenido estudiantes brillantes, estudiantes que llegaron sin base y terminaron sorprendiéndome, estudiantes que prometían mucho y desaparecieron a mitad del camino. Hace dos semestres tuve al mejor estudiante que he visto en once años. No el más inteligente. El más comprometido. Hay una diferencia enorme entre los dos y no siempre se entiende. Entregaba todo antes del plazo. Hacía preguntas que obligaban a pensar. Participaba sin necesitar que lo llamara. A mitad del semestre me pidió una reunión.

Harvard, apparently, is about to adopt a new policy to combat grade inflation. I devised my own anti–grade inflation policy 25 years ago. I’ve shared it with provosts and deans, to no avail. Here it is: The Muñoz Plan Against Grade Inflation The plan has three key components:

India’s weight-loss drug market just ran a live experiment in price elasticity. Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide patent expired 20 March 2026. Within 3 weeks: 15+ generics launched Cheapest at Rs 2,000/month (branded was Rs 10,000+) Novo cut Ozempic and Wegovy prices by 36-48% But here is the part nobody saw coming. 🧵

.@pmarca on how to give your kid an unfair advantage

Reed explains that the job of a board member is not to add value or give advice. It is to replace the CEO: "If the company falls apart, I will be part of replacing the CEO. That's basically the entire job. To have the confidence to do that, you have to learn the business. Board members are not here to add value. They can hire consultants who know the industry and are not conflicted for advice. So I shouldn't spend my time trying to give advice. So then what am I doing? I'm here as a board member as an insurance layer. Don't measure yourself by did you give a suggestion? Measure yourself by did you get more prepared for the small chance that you will have to take big action."

One of the most bizarre things I observed at Shell was how someone would spectacularly fail at a $$$ project, and instead of being demoted or fired, the opposite happens. They get transferred to manage another high-visibility project or even get a promotion! It took me a long time to understand this but when I did, it changed everything for me. You see, performance is measured in most companies on two prongs: the what and the how. The “what” is the actual result: did you or did you not strike oil after drilling that well? The “how” is the behavior you displayed during the entire process. I was too focused on the actual results but I later found out that leaders rate behaviors higher. Hence, a project might fail in that it did not meet its stated objectives and yet the project manager might come out a winner because of how he carried himself through it all. So what are the behaviors highly cherished by the higher ups? First is daily updates. Forget weekly reports. Tell your boss and other key stakeholders about how the project is going at least once a day. When I say “tell”, I mean “tell.” Don’t rely solely on an email or a tool. Find a way to get in their face daily even if just for a min or two to verbally articulate the status of things. The pros at this put a standing 5-10 min meeting on their calendars and they come prepared to discuss the highlights and issues that need addressing. Which leads me to the second point. Second, involve your superiors in solving the problem. Don’t form James Bond or Jackie Chan, trying to do it all alone. Any issue that will lead to a delay or cost overrun or any other wahala should be brought up asap to be discussed. Much easier to do if you talk with them daily. It is hard for them to blame you on the outcome of a project they have been integral to. Third, conduct a “lessons learned” session where you perform an autopsy on the dead project. Share these lessons far and wide. You will be hailed as a sage. Suddenly you are now the guy helping the company become better by spreading wisdom gained from the school of hard knocks. This act alone has landed many people their promotion. Bottom line: you can secure victory from defeat. The high flyers in your company do it all the time. If the project succeeds, they win. If the project fails, they win. Be like them.