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.

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.

 

Learned Helplessness

Recent discussion in the comments of this blog about poverty reminded me of a caller I heard on a local radio show I heard within the last year.  The caller was a teacher and he shared the results of an assignment he has always done with students in his 30 years of teaching in an urban school district.

He said that he has always done this assignment to encourage his students to think about their futures and how they will earn their keep.

The first part of the exercise is to think about and write down the things they may want to have someday — homes, cars, jewelry, boats, etc.  In the second part of the assignment, they think about what they’ll do to afford those things — like earn money as a nurse, or firefighter or start a business.

He then commented on how he has seen the responses to that exercise change over the years.

In his early years, his students would want to become nurses, firefighters and teachers to be able to earn money to buy what they want.

But, now he’s more likely to get these types of responses: I’ll just use the check or card that comes from the government to buy it, like Mom does.

I doubt much has changed. My guess is that the students normally say they’ll do whatever it is they see their parents or aunts and uncles doing.  The future nurses of 20 years ago probably had a Mom who was a nurse.

Which reminds me of this post where I linked to and quoted from a Wall Street Journal piece by Arthur Brooks about earned success and learned helplessness.

It also reminds me of the story Dr. Carson told in his speech about how his Mom would not allow Dr. Carson or his brother to accept excuses for their failures or their lot in life.

 

What does grade-level mean anyway?

Talk radio discussion topic from this evening’s drive:

Some school district is setting goals to increase reading proficiency for students from X% of students reading at their grade level to Y%.

The discussion was about the different goals set for different races and how that sends the message that it’s okay to underachieve to folks from races with lower goals.

However, that’s not what I’m writing about. I was more concerned with obvious oversight.

In the old days, to move up to the next grade you had to demonstrate your mastery of various things expected at that grade, including reading at grade level.

If you couldn’t demonstrate sufficient mastery of your grade-level expectations, you were held back. That was a darn good motivator for students and their parents to try hard.

In one population cited on the radio, 38% of that group could read at grade-level.The easy way to fix that is to hold the 62% who are not reading a grade level back until they are.

What I learned in business school

Bryan Caplan asks a great question, What Did You Learn in Business School? He goes on his post to clarify that he’s looking for things that you learned that you actually use in your career. I believe he is doing research for a book. I can’t wait to read it.

We live with the mostly unchallenged general belief that all school is good and the more school the better. I think that belief is something that more of us should challenge.

To answer Bryan’s question about what I learned that I use in my career, very little. Much of what I do I learned on-the-job or by researching topics on my initiative.

I’ve been thinking about this question myself a lot lately. I’ve been working on a blog post with the same theme.

One of the first things I credited b-school with was teaching me how to read financial statements. But, then I remember that I took an accounting class one summer while I was attending engineering school. I was interested in finance and thought that would be a good way to dip my toe into it.

I took a community education course, taught by the finance manager of an auto dealership. It cost $40. We met twice a week in the classroom of a junior high school. I remember one classmate of mine was a floral designer at grocery store who was considering a career change.

Later, when I took the accounting course offered in my university MBA program, which was taught by a PhD who advised state treasurers, I remember being underwhelmed with how remarkably similar it was the $40 community education course that I took.

Next, I thought that maybe b-school taught me how to value business and business cases, something I do a fair amount of now. I think it laid some groundwork, but after b-school I read Robert Hagstrom’s book on Warren Buffett’s investment decisions, The Buffet Way, and was impressed with the simplicity and elegance of the valuation approach Hagstrom described. I thought it was better than what I learned in b-school, so I adopted it and have done better in that regard than many of my b-school peers who have not read the book and struggle to even express in words what exactly a stock price is.

What about economics? I think a broad base in the economic way of thinking is a good tool to have a business analyst or manager. I loved micro and came as close as I could to not passing macro in my MBA program. But, neither did much for me. By the way, that was the second time I had taken both. The first time was as an undergrad. Economics was an area of emphasis (whatever that means) I remember being impressed with the “multiplier” in macro as an undergrad and I scored better there.

But none of the economics courses did much for me. It wasn’t until I read Thomas Sowell’s book, Basic Economics, later that I gained a better understanding of the economic way of thinking. Since then I’ve become quite the pop economist, thanks to reading many more pop econ books, a few heavier econ books and years and years of economics blogs, along with learning exchanges in the comments sections of those blogs (sounds a lot like an online course).

As I posted here, I think it would be good if b-school were to transition into more of an applied experience. Go do something. Start a business. Do a project for a business. Buy a business, try to grow it and sell it. You’ll learn a lot more valuable stuff and you will probably end up adding more value to the economy than hanging the standard sheepskin on your wall.

A Keeper on Education from Bryan Caplan

Here’s why Bryan Caplan loves education, but doesn’t necessarily want to force it on everyone.

It’s for the same reasons Coca-Cola sells beverages other than Coke (not everybody likes to drink only Coke) and Starbucks closed a bunch of stores a few years ago after going through their Starbucks everywhere phase (quality suffers when you over supply the market).

Try Not to be a Jackass

After reading this excerpt from the You’re Not Special commencement speech, I thought I’d write down what I would say if anyone ever asked me to speak at their commencement. Here’s my first draft:

Do you know what graduation is?

It’s our way to let you know that you are now expected to act like an adult.

When you sign your name to something, it will be legally binding, so make sure you read and understand what you are agreeing to.

When you take out debt, you will be expected to pay it back. You now get to pay your own bills.

You will no longer be given a $13,000 a year education funded by your parents and neighbors.

We expect you to become productive, property tax paying members of society, so you can help pay back the $170,000 of education that we just gave you so others can receive it too. I hope you learned something useful.

If you see a problem in the world that you want to fix, get creative. Own it. Volunteer to do something about it.

Always remember, you are a lucky. Your ancestors, within the past few generations drank dirty water, used an outhouse to do their business and may have suffered or died from a number of diseases that have since been wiped out with vaccines and disinfectants, just to name a few things that have improved.

You already live better than kings and queens did a few generations ago and much better than billions in the world RIGHT NOW. Many of those billions would trade places with you in heartbeat.

Keep that in mind when you have a bad day.

You may be poor, but soap is cheap. Keep yourself clean. Have some pride. That one is from my mother-in-law.

Home ownership is a privilege. You earn it after you have demonstrated that you can manage your money and take care of things.

Save your money to buy a home, if you want to be a home owner. Save for emergencies. Save for unexpected expenses. Save for job losses and income interruptions. Save for bad things that will happen to you through no fault of your own.

Save for retirement. Don’t count on anyone else to take care of that for you.

Also save enough money so you can quit your job when you are asked to do something that compromises your principles. That’s your “f-this” money, by the way.

Then save enough so you can quit you job with style. That’s your “f-off” money. That’s about 10x more than your “f-this” money.

Make a plan A. This is your main source of being a productive citizen. Develop a plan B, C and maybe D.

Get along with people. Be adaptable. Keep your skills sharp and learn new skills so you will have a plan B, C & D. If you are able-bodied, try not to be a burden on the rest of us. There’s no dignity in that.

If you aren’t able-bodied, try to figure something out. That will get you further.

Think about what will happen if you lose your job. What happens if you get divorced? What happens if someone gets a major illness?

If you haven’t figured it out, not many trophies and awards pay the bills. Most are meaningless and random. If you win one, it means that you satisfied the biases of some small group of people. A different group of people may have thought differently.

Your first responsibility should be to those around you. Your family. Your friends. Take care of them before you try to change the world. In fact, taking care of them is your best shot at changing the world.

You won’t get many trophies, awards and recognition for doing that, but you will make a very good difference.

Many of your heroes will turn out to be goats. Many of goats will have heroic moments. Don’t get too worked up about it.

If you plan to vote in elections, do your homework. If you don’t do your homework and all you can do is call the other side names, or say that you really like this candidate because you’d like to have a beer with him, please do us all a favor and do not vote, no matter what your teachers and MTV tell you to do. They should tell you to do your homework first.

Being productive isn’t always glamorous. Sometimes it means showing up on time and doing what you’re told. Sometimes it means putting into action that great idea you had. I know of a great many leaders who still didn’t mind getting their hands dirty.

You won’t always be awarded for good effort or good results. Thems the breaks. Life ain’t fair. Some of you are good-looking and some of us aren’t. That’s not fair. But that’s the way it is. I got that from someone else, but already forgot who.

Since you were a baby you have been learning through trial and error. You try something, you err, then try a different approach until you find something that works.

Don’t stop doing that. You will continue to make mistakes. Don’t get too worked up about them. But, do learn from them.

If you’re doing something where it’s really important not to make mistakes, learn to build a process or system that helps find mistakes, because you won’t stop making mistakes.

Be a good sport. There’s upside to being nice. There’s more downside to being mean.

With all things, there are trade-offs. You probably don’t know what that means now. Many of you will figure out what it means when you discover that whatever it is you think you want to do in life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It has trade-offs.

For anybody who has seen Rambo, being a badass is cool. But you also have to be able to stitch yourself up, and that usually isn’t very fun.

Learn to laugh at yourself, even when everyone IS laughing at you.

Finally, you can’t control everything, but you can control how you react to it. Try not to be a jackass. And when you are a jackass, apologize.

Justin Bieber on Superfluous Education

As some of you may know, I watch the occasional Ellen show.

Recently, Justin Bieber was on. If you don’t know who he is, ask any girl under 22 about him.

He has sold lots of “albums” (or is it downloads?), concert tickets and I think he is also finding talent and signing them to his own record label.

Ellen asked him about his education, since he’s only 18.

He said something like, Well, I study when I’m tour and doing all my work to learn the stuff I need to know.

Ellen asked, What do you mean?

He said, Well, I don’t need to know stuff like what is x + Q-squared. Who does? I’m learning things that are important to what I’m doing to make money, like how to negotiate contracts and have business meetings and such.

Ellen said, Yeah, You know, I’ve been around for a while and I can honestly say that I have never used x + Q-squared either.

You could claim this was a small sample size of two folks who have had good success in show biz and not everybody is like that.

But, I’ve worked in engineering and finance — two fields that do require a good working knowledge of math. I don’t think I’ve used x + Q-squared either or most of the math beyond high school algebra.

I think Justin and Ellen are on to something. Maybe kids should be in the classroom less. Maybe they need fewer extracurricular activities. Maybe kids beyond elementary or middle school should get a job, learn a trade, start a band, or start businesses and use school to learn more about how to be productive at those activities.

Less College for All

As I frequently write on this blog, college education isn’t what it use to be because of the heavy government subsidies. Just a few days ago I wrote:

College degrees no longer signal intelligent self-starters with moxie. Now degrees are signals risk averse, color-by-numbers people. Bureaucratic employers value these people for their conformity and aversion to risk.

Robert Samuelson agrees in the Washington Post. He wrote:

The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it.

The real concern is the quality of graduates at all levels. The fixation on college-going, justified in the early postwar decades, stigmatizes those who don’t go to college and minimizes their needs for more vocational skills. It cheapens the value of a college degree and spawns the delusion that only the degree — not the skills and knowledge behind it — matters. We need to rethink.

Thanks to Mark Perry of Carpe Diem for the link.