Sandbox

Sex discrimination lawsuit.

Union, RPI rank high on education value.
by Caitlin Tremblay, Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY), 30 June 2010, p. A5

The article reports that that two local colleges (Union College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) “are listed among New York state’s and the nation’s best colleges for making back the money spent on a bachelor degree, according to a study by the website PayScale.com…Payscale, a compensation research website, took the price of the schools’ degree and compared it to the average income of graduates to calculate a ‘return on investment.’ Only those with undergraduate degrees and full-time hourly or salaried jobs were included…Topping Payscale’s list are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (annual ROI of 12.6 percent), California Institute of Technology (12.6 percent) and Harvard University (12.5 percent).”

The article quoted statistics provided by “the plaintiffs’ main expert, Richard Drogin, an emeritus statistics professor at California State University, East Bay, who examined payroll data from 1966 to 2002 that Wal-Mart provided in the case.” These showed “that among hourly workers in 2001,…,women earned about $1,1000, or 6 percent, less a year than men, while among salaried employees, women earned $14,500, or 26 per cent, less.”

The article went on to state that “A study by Joan Haworth, an expert hired by Wal-Mart, disputed that analysis, finding that more than 90 percent of stores had no statistically significant pay differences between men and women.”

Discussion

1. Critique Joan Haworth’s reported analysis. Can you propose an analyses that would be more appropriate?

2. If you wanted to try to refute the claim of discrimination suggested by Professor Drogin’s analysis, how would you proceed?

Submitted by Gerry Hahn