I am having a bit
of difficulty determining how to answer this question, because the scope of the
rules regarding the Illinibuck market vastly changes my approach. My intuition
is telling me that the market is simpler if students cannot trade Illinibucks
between each other. Since everyone is allotted the same amount of currency, the
issue of unfairness between consumers is less apparent. For example, if
students can trade Illinibucks between each other and they can be used for
class registration, people who did not wish to use their Illinibucks could
possibly trade them to their friends, who have more desired classes. This could
lead to the “High School Class President” problem where more popular people
have a larger Illinibuck pools, and correspondingly better access to the front
of lines.
A possible remedy for
this issue is for there to be a diminishing value of returns for Illinibuck
expenditure, but this would make the market less free and it would not make it
completely fair for less social students. The issue then becomes: Where should
diminishing returns set in?
I do not think
Illinibucks should be used to be able to move up in registration times, no
matter the price, even if it is set by the university. If the price is too low,
Illinibucks become less relevant. For high prices, students would only be able
to move up in line for one or two classes. This encourages students to use
their currency to be able to register into popular courses. In order to match
demand, the price of registering early for the popular course would be close to
the value of allotted Illinibucks. Without an auctioning system, time would
still determine who got into the class, which is what I am assuming was the
issue we were trying to be resolve.
Perhaps the
Illinibuck system would be better suited for space reservations in the library
during finals and moving up in line in dining halls. These cases have lower
stakes than registration, but it would possibly be more convenient to use the
currency than to not.
During finals week, the UGL is a hotspot for study groups, which are always booked up a few weeks before finals, but there are not many limits on how many reservations a person can make. Also, as it stands, there is no way to reserve any of the smaller tables at the UGL. Illinibucks would be a way to limit the amount of reservations a person could make, but it would also be a vessel to institute a reservation system for each table in the library. It would be a time consuming task, and someone would have to be in charge of space reservation for the entire library, but it’s a possibility nonetheless. With an auction system, people who really feel like they need to study there have that availability guaranteed. There are other places for students to study, so this could also encourage students to find other places. Even still, fairness is a concern.
During finals week, the UGL is a hotspot for study groups, which are always booked up a few weeks before finals, but there are not many limits on how many reservations a person can make. Also, as it stands, there is no way to reserve any of the smaller tables at the UGL. Illinibucks would be a way to limit the amount of reservations a person could make, but it would also be a vessel to institute a reservation system for each table in the library. It would be a time consuming task, and someone would have to be in charge of space reservation for the entire library, but it’s a possibility nonetheless. With an auction system, people who really feel like they need to study there have that availability guaranteed. There are other places for students to study, so this could also encourage students to find other places. Even still, fairness is a concern.
Some days, I am especially
hungry, and if there were a system for moving ahead in line, I would use it to
get ahead in dining hall lines. I spend a lot of time in lines waiting to eat,
when I could be spending my time doing other things like procrastinate and
study. Paying a flat rate to move ahead in line would get me past people who
did not use their Illinibucks to move up, but I still would have to be behind
those who did. There are not many places that I can think of, other than
registering for classes, that require “standing” in line. From my experience
with lines in college, they can be pretty avoidable.
At first, I was confused by the
question, but the application of this sort of decision is riddled with seemingly
necessary rules and it is hard to plug up the loopholes. I’m still not sure
that I answered the question the right way, but the prompt was thought-provoking.
It's a hypothetical. There is no right way to answer the question. There are just more interesting responses and less interesting ones.
ReplyDeleteFairness is a legitimate concern with a system like this. So is efficiency. Having the Illinibucks non-transferable, with each student getting the same initial allocation, would seem fair. A seniority system might also be fair with juniors and senior students getting more Illinibucks than freshman and sophomores. Some of that is already in the prioritization that exists the way registration is done currently.
I was curious about your comments at the dining hall. Are there always lines? Or only at some times? If the latter, do students learn to go off peak, when it is likely to be less crowded? Or do students go early so the place doesn't run out of the favorite foods? On that one, it might be good to understand what is really in short supply and what isn't. Running a big cafeteria is an interesting production problem, especially if you really don't want to throw away food.
On the study space issue, two questions/comments to consider. First, is this mainly just during finals or is it the rest of the year too? Second, is UGL popular because everyone else goes there but other spaces, like the ACES Library, are available and not as heavily utilized? I'm not sure what is going on there. Maybe you can unpeel that one a bit more.
At first I thought of using illinibucks in dinning hall to move ahead of the line too, because some times the lines are extremely long and once it took me almost 20 minutes... But on a second thought, the lines are actually not always that long, and lines are usually much shorter 20 minutes before/after the peak. So I guess people won't have a very high incentive to use their bucks here if they are only given a limited amount of bucks which could be used somewhere else more important. Different entrace of a same dinning hall also have different waiting time, so students could also make use of this to shorten their waiting time. However, some students only have 1 hour between classes to have lunch, and could not avoid the peak, using illinibucks would be a good choice.
ReplyDeleteA lot of the time there are lines, especially for late night at PAR. Late Night is a special dinner service that runs from 8PM-12AM, and the only dining hall that is open at the time. Usually the rush hours for dining are as follows: 11AM, 12PM, 5PM, 6PM, 8PM, 9PM. The first few weeks of school the lines are the longest, presumably because Freshmen don't know when the peak hours will be. For the lunch and dinner services, the dining halls rarely run out of food; it just comes out in the next meal service time. The only time I could find myself using my illinibucks in this scenario, as Glenn mentioned, would be to spend as much as I needed to get in the front if it meant spending the bucks or waiting 20 minutes. I would also need to be really hungry.
ReplyDeleteI think you had a good idea about study space reservations - but how is that different than first come first served? If people reserved the table but then no one showed up, random people would just walk into the library and take that spot. This is sort of the way it is now; whoever gets to a table when it is open gets to claim that table. This also serves as motivation to get people to wake up early to study, since more tables will be open early in the morning when most people are still sleeping.
ReplyDeleteI do think that your idea about moving ahead in dining hall lines could be really useful. The area I live in has a new hall this year, but they didn’t open up an extra dining hall. So the lines are much longer this year and students always have to wait a substantial amount of time in each food line. I used to love the Mac & Cheese they offered once a week at the dining hall, but now I almost never get it because the long line leads me to the salad bar (which still has a long line, just not as long).