The end is nigh

Now they are writing books about how higher education may change in the next decade (via Marginal Revolution). This one happens to be from the editor-at-large (whatever that means) of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

From the book description:

The great credential race has turned universities into big business and fostered an environment where middle tier colleges can command elite university-level tuition while concealing staggeringly low graduation rates and churning out students with few hard skills into the job market.

I wonder if the NCAA will split off and form its own professional athletic leagues that are supported by beer companies.

Higher Education Bubble Watch

I read about the Enstitute: Learning By Doing in Forbes. This may not replace MIT, just yet, but I love seeing these upstart experiments to offer something different from the traditional seminar model of education.

I think this kind of stuff should start around 5th or 6th grade, maybe sooner.

Links

1. Proof of ‘precious childhood syndrome’? (via Instapundit)

2. Good advice for interpreting statistical evidence. Statisticians I know should read this.

3. Good reading from the Idiot’s Collective blog on Michael Sandel.

4. Michael Sandel thinks waiting in line is a more equitable way to allocate resources than price. I remember a story from last Black Friday about a lady who pulled up late to the Black Friday part and simply offered to buy product vouchers from those who had waited in line. But, I’m sure Sandel would outlaw line privileges.

5. But, Sandel uses price anyway.

The curious task of economics…

Russ Roberts, host of EconTalk podcast, often reminds his listeners and his Cafe Hayek blog readers that F.A. Hayek said:

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.

I think Edward Glaeser did a good job of fulfilling this task in last week’s EconTalk podcast when it comes to nice-sounding government policies that may have unintended consequences of hurting cities.

Here’s one consequence I hadn’t thought of regarding government policies meant to encourage more home ownership:

Having a very pro-home ownership policy also means you have an anti-urban policy, because typically single family houses are owner-occupied whereas multi-family dwellings are rented; on average more than 85% of multi-family dwellings with 5 or more units are rented, exactly the same percentage of households for single-family occupancy being owner-occupied. So if you are going to have federal policy which both directly, through let’s say the home ownership interest deduction, or indirectly, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are going to subsidize owning, you are going to be stacking the deck against high rise houses.

Glaeser also comments on how school districts hurt cities (my parents moved to a suburb when I was a child primarily to get their kids into a better school district):

Now the last thing that artificially stacks the deck against cities is just the way our local education systems work. So, by your telling me your kids like to go tromping around in grass, that’s great; my kids do that. I have no problem with parents making those choices. However, I grew up in the streets of Manhattan and that can also work perfectly well. The problem is that we’ve created such a strong schooling incentive for people to move out of those cities that have weak school systems. I think anything that we can do that tries to somewhat reduces those spacial, those schooling-related, which are fundamentally government-created incentives to suburbanize, that’s probably a good thing.

As I heard Glaeser say this, I was reminded of how Arnold Kling decomposed freedom into having the power of voice and exit. People with bad ideas to use public schools as a means to achieve their desirable social goals took over many public school districts and drowned out the power of voice for many. They didn’t worry about it because public schools were free and they figured that folks would continue to send their kids there. What were they going to do, move?

Yes, that’s exactly what happened. They exercised their power of exit.

The neighborhood I grew up in was a nice, middle class neighborhood. It had been for 40 years from when it was first built. Sadly, it turned into a pit soon after we left. And not because that was the natural order of things. The public education system was failing to educate and that chased people away.

More people wanted out than wanted in. ’Supply and demand’ says that means home prices will go down. When prices fell, folks who couldn’t afford much because they hadn’t made good life choices, or simply didn’t care, moved in. I remember my grandparents finally moving from the home that I believe they bought new when they discovered their next door neighbors were crack addicts willing to do just about anything for their next score.

There are neighborhoods of similar age and design in different parts of the metro area that are subject to different public school systems and they are still thriving.

It’s amazing to me that the very people who love cities so much, the so-called intellectual elites, have done so much damage to them. But, it’s the perfect example of Hayek’s fatal conceit and the curious task of economics.

Question about college

If earning a college degree is such a great investment, why does government need to back student loans?

Update: If it is such a great investment, it also strikes me as odd that parents feel they need to save to pay for their kids’ college educations.

Precious Childhood Syndrome

Our society places a great deal of priority on preserving precious childhoods as long as possible. I wrote about some of its effects in Too much education? and Your Mom was right: It pays to practice.

Others have written about it, too. Like, Is 25 the new 15? (HT: Instapundit). I believe so. Which means 15 is the new 5, or maybe 8. When my nephew turned 13, I told him that he was just two years younger than his grandpa was when he decided to move 8 hours away from home to a bigger city to get a job and be on his own for the rest of his life. This was a bit of a shock.  It would have been to me at 13, as well. Or 15 and 18.

Instapundit, himself thought so back in 2002.

Learning by doing

Alex Tabbarok of Marginal Revolution thinks apprenticeships deserve more respect, as he links to and quotes from a Financial Times article about German apprenticeships. I agree.

According to the article, more than 40% of Germans become apprentices compared with 0.3% of Americans.

I think many Americans go through informal apprenticeships. It’s better known as on-the-job training. It’s just that we usually start these much later life than we need to. We should and could start at around 16 or 17 years old, but we generally delay it into the 20s occupying the ensuing 5 or 6 years with a heavy dose of marginally productive liberal arts programming sold on the notion it produces well-rounded individuals.

However, I’ve met plenty of well-rounded individuals who skipped the formal programming. They became well-rounded by pursuing their interests and fulfilling their curiosities, rather than checking off a list produced by unproductive do-gooders.

Signals v Causes: High School Graduate

I often hear folks say that people with a high school diploma today cannot expect to do as well as folks did with high school diplomas in previous generations.

One cause offered to explain this is less opportunity because good manufacturing jobs have gone to machines and foreign competition.

More likely, K-12 education hasn’t evolved to teach students skills that are valued in today’s economy. I got this idea from Jeffrey Sachs, this week’s guest on EconTalk. I didn’t agree with everything Sachs had to say, but I did agree with this and recommend listening to the podcast.

Also, maybe education has evolved away from teaching such skills as curriculum designers have included things thought to enrich and broaden the students lives, but really just serve the personal preferences of those designers.

When I was truly on my own for the first time, I remember thinking how ill-equipped I was to determine something as practical as how much house I could afford, even though I did know what Keynesian multipliers were. Luckily, I educated myself by turning to personal finance magazine and books and asking friends and family. I wasn’t surprised later when it became clear with the housing crisis that many others also did not have this practical knowledge, either.

I was also annoyed that I learned in school how important it was for me to exercise my right to vote, but there was no mention about doing my homework on the issues and carefully considering who I voted for.

It is also more likely that a high school diploma, once viewed as a reliable indicator of demonstrated mastery in skills, knowledge and behaviors that were of some value to employers, is now viewed as a participation trophy — a mere bauble to add to the recipient’s trophy case — as standards have slipped and the purpose of a high school diploma have changed. 

I believe the purpose of the high school diploma was to reward the folks who tried. Somewhere along they way, however, that got too hard. We didn’t want to tell someone they didn’t deserve something because they didn’t put in the effort or meet the standard. Rather than expect them to rise up to the standard, we lowered it for them.

Signals v Causes: Preschool

Harry Jackson Jr. agrees with me that supporters of universal preschool may be mistaking signals for causes.

Perhaps creators of programs like Head Start did not consider another possible explanation for the reason elementary school performance so accurately predicts later academic achievement. What if children who typically do well in elementary school tend to have attentive parents who read to them, serve them nutritious meals, and limit their time in front of the television? What if these parents also tend to ensure their children get enough sleep, fresh air and exercise?

I also like this H.L. Menken quote that Jackson provides in his piece:

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

So true.

The universal preschool discussion also reminds me of my government begets more government thread.

Previous government interventions have discouraged family formation and responsible parenting for a portion of the population. That is what is causing under achievement in that portion. Instead of reversing the maligned incentives discouraging good parenting, let’s fix it with the clear, simple and wrong answer: more government in the form of universal preschool.

 

Competition in education

Here’s a great article about emerging acceptance and experimentation with charter schools, in the Wall Street Journal (found by way of Instapundit). Check out this paragraph from the article:

Mr. Finegold, the bill’s sponsor and the son of public-school teachers, said his motivation sprung from conversations with parents in Lawrence, part of his district northwest of Boston, where the struggling school district was taken over by the state in 2011. The state has since brought in charter operators to run two low-performing schools, and parents told him, “we’d be out of here” had that not happened, Mr. Finegold said. “One thing I don’t think people realize—charter schools are keeping a lot of the middle class in cities,” he said.

Someone finally responded to the exit feedback response.

While I’m sure this thought isn’t original to me, it occurred to me while reading the article how odd it is that strong supporters of the government education monopoly are often also critics of business monopolies.

I suppose they believe that more evil things may happen under a for-profit monopoly, like rising prices, corruption and fat cats getting richer.

Apparently, they haven’t kept up with how the price to educate a child in public schools has grown faster than inflation for decades, or how much money superintendents make and what type of corruption persists at failing school districts that keep getting their funding.

I’m guessing that’s exactly the behavior they would expect from business monopolies. To fix this in business, they want competition. To fix it in education, they usually want to keep out competition and just bring in a different fat cat.