Education — All Bubble and No Champagne

champagne

Education in the United States is a disgrace. Education is all bubble and no champagne. It should be viewed as one of the biggest tragedies ever imposed by government, perhaps even including the violence of war.

For aspiring entrepreneurs, there is an opportunity in this post. Make yourself a lot of money while making most of the country very happy.

Government runs education like it runs everything else — terribly. Whatever government “fixes” it makes worse!  It mucks things up at all levels. Education is an easily demonstrated government example of ineptness that need not be.

The tragedy of the education system is that it destroys lives. Generations of poor are condemned to stay poor without proper education. Schools in poor neighborhoods are sub-standard, guaranteeing no escape. This outcome is considered political collateral damage. Politicians, especially Democrats, find it politically expedient to write off lives to placate constituents. Some say creating more ignorant people is good for the political class.

education_notA Long Time Ago

I recall having a discussion with a school-board member over forty years ago in Upstate New York. Yes, the education problem was apparent then and has only gotten much worse. She was excited about the reforms that the local school board was adopting.

After listening to her enthusiastic litany of changes, I explained that similar changes had been heralded for the prior twenty years with the intent of “fixing” things. Similar reforms had produced no results except a continuing downtrend in educational metrics. I opined that the simple mission of education was to educate and that this mission was compromised by all the tertiary functions that schools and teachers were burdened with. She agreed that education/learning was the primary and overriding objective.

Then we discussed some of the non-educational functions included in the laundry list of what schools were supposed to provide — indoctrination, homogenization, driver-ed., self-image enhancement, etc. etc. Agreement between us on these issues was more common than disagreement, although I was stubborn in my belief that elements in the new program addressed none of these.

Somewhat frustrated, she asked what it would take to convince me that schools were improving. I answered simply: “Sixteen year-olds in the fifth grade.”

She looked puzzled, suggesting that was indicative of failing rather than succeeding. Then she explained why that couldn’t and shouldn’t happen — socialization, differential development, etc. I replied something of the sort: “Sixteen year-olds in the fifth grade does not mean that schools are succeeding. It merely means that the primary focus is on educating children. It is a necessary but insufficient condition. Children learn at different rates.  (The same logic suggests that 12-year olds graduating from high school might be expected.) Until we stop moving kids along for social reasons, we are not concerned primarily about education. The existence of teenagers in grade school may not signify success, but it does demonstrate a change in emphasis. Unless and until such a change in emphasis is apparent, nothing is happening except more ‘edubabble’.”

We remained friends despite this difference. She was a wonderful neighbor and caring person. I last saw her at my daughter’s wedding. We did not revisit the subject.

Pre-College

School metrics, despite political tinkering, continue to decline. The US consistently ranks poorly compared with other nations. While some of these studies can be criticized, consistent low rankings trump whatever biases and/or methodologies may be questioned. We spend more per pupil than most (all?) competing countries. We consistently get less. More money, less results! A sample of some of these studies can be viewed in the links below:

From the NPR reference comes this outtake:

“In mathematics, 29 nations and other jurisdictions outperformed the United States by a statistically significant margin, up from 23 three years ago,” reports Education Week. “In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009.”

In reading, 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students — a jump from nine in 2009, when the last assessment was performed.

The decline in US education has been ongoing. There is no sign of it abating. Nothing meaningful is being done to reverse this trend. All the reforms, money and political doublespeak cannot hide the reality that our education system approximates that of some third-world countries.

Much pre-college education is little more than a holding pen, day-care for adolescents. Most children are baby-sat. Their experience is dreadful. For most it is like a national time-out. At the proper age, these children are released on society. Is it any wonder that many fail when reality hits?

Those who understand what is happening and are financially able take their children out of public schools to try and get them educated. Home-schooling is becoming popular for those incapable of the financial commitment. Unfortunately, single parent families don’t have either opportunity, dooming their children to inferior outcomes.

Whatever gap exists between the economic haves and have-nots is widened by this problem. Successful people with generally successful children leave the system. In many inner cities, schools are little more than prisons. Indeed, many of those neglected in this education tragedy are headed to real prisons.

The answer to this problem lies in bringing education quality up. Unfortunately that is impossible when schools are run by politicians and subject to political pressures. Blowing up the current system would be an improvement. Privatization is the only answer. Anything else is a sham, doomed to continue failure.

Government funding of education is something that most think necessary. Government delivery of education is not and it is the root cause of the problem. The Democrat Party and its incestuous relationship with teacher unions prevent change from occurring. This relationship also dooms a huge percentage of Americans (and future Democrat voters) to failure.

College

education animal-house-posters[1]College education has been dumbed down to conform to the quality of the raw material it gets from high schools. That limits what faculty can do. There is now a college for everyone. If you got out of high school, you can get into a college. Demand creates its own supply.

There is real learning going on at some top-tier schools, but pseudo-learning going on in most lesser quality schools. What is taught in first year and second year classes would have been considered remedial high school work decades ago.

The self-esteem need trumps the reality of learning. All students must feel good about themselves, regardless of how stupid or ignorant they might be. Further, “asses in the seats” pressures drives grading at many colleges. Financial pressures necessitate the retention of students at all costs, including the honest evaluation of their performance.

Learning occurs for those motivated, but at what cost? It is not unusual for college to cost $50,000 per year. Mark J. Perry reports this shocking information on the cost of textbooks:

A new milestone must have been established recently – we’re now officially in a new era of the $400 new college textbook and the $300 used college textbook 

Mr. Perry goes on to report:

The graph below shows the historical increase in college textbooks (981%) between 1978 and 2014 in comparison to increases in the overall CPI (262%), the CPI for medical care (604%), and the median sales price for new homes (408%) over that 37-year period. Textbook prices seem like they are clearly on an unsustainable trajectory, especially in the face of new low-cost alternatives as discussed below.

 

Tuition increases should mirror inflation, but they too have outpaced it. At the risk of dating myself, I remember tuition at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business back in the 1960s. Memory tells me that it was $570 per quarter and a quarter included (no change for number of courses) three or four courses. Twenty courses were required for graduation.

There were five faculty members teaching then who subsequently won Nobel Prizes in economics– Merton Miller, George Stigler, Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase and Eugene Fama. I was fortunate to have courses from four of them. Contrast the cost of $570 for three or four courses with that faculty with a $400 charge for a single textbook. Something is radically out of whack!

To be fair, inflation caused book prices to rise dramatically over the years. Inflation, student loans and the notion that everyone should get a college education drove up tuition. Government is the villain here. Government is responsible for inflation. Government provided the easy financing that enabled tuition increases to outpace inflation. The demand for college is little different than the demand for housing prior to the bursting of the housing bubble. Both were driven by inflation and the irresponsible availability and encouragement of debt. Like the housing bubble, the education bubble will end badly.

Encouraging borrowing in the education industry is arguably worse than what occurred in the housing boom, at least morally. It takes advantage of minors or near minors who commit to loans most don’t understand. When coupled with the rosy scenarios about jobs and high incomes, it is easy to make suckers out of the naive. Many graduates now live with their parents, jobless and worried about how they can ever pay off their student debt.

Some Economics

An important aspect in understanding education is the influence of government. Government involvement in any industry ensures mediocrity and stagnation. That is the nature of bureaucracy.

Education and prostitution are the only services delivered pretty much in the same manner as they were thousands of years ago. The latter is understandable (although internet porn and robot technology is likely to alter this profession dramatically). Education’s stagnation is also threatened by technological advance, probably more so than any industry. Despite this threat, no other industry lags further behind in the adaptation of new technology and methods. This lack of response is not unusual for a State-run operation. Government is unable to compete with private industry in anything it does. In order to do so it creates monopolies in whatever it takes on. That has been what has allowed the inefficient delivery of education to survive in this changing world. It enjoys subsidies, protective legislation, government-funding and a host of other advantages unlikely to be provided to upstarts challenging the system.

Stasis is not a permanent condition and education is not immune from that observation. Advances in technology have obsoleted the existing delivery system. Educational institutions are like blacksmiths at the advent of the automobile. It is only a matter of time, and probably a relatively short time, that education can survive in its current form.

Cost and Price

The cost and price of any product in a free market tends toward zero economic profit. Optimal pricing for maximizing profit or minimizing loss is to price where the marginal revenue from the next unit sold equals the marginal cost of producing it. Properly-run educational institutions follow this rule. (Actually many use a sophisticated form of predatory pricing — scholarships to price-discriminate tuition prices — to go beyond what is legal in commercial enterprises.) Within their protected sphere, colleges and universities act like businessmen, but without a profit motive.

freeThe cost of higher education in the internet era should approach zero. All knowledge necessary for most college degrees is available on line. MIT and other major universities make many of their courses available for free. They don’t grant credits for completing the courses but willingly supply the information. Why can’t someone piece together a collection of on-line courses and self-educate? Wouldn’t someone like that be worth more to a company than someone not exhibiting this kind of initiative and ingenuity? What makes four years, $200,000, lots of beer, parties, camaraderie, academic hand-holding and counseling and lots of useless courses more valuable than a self-starter?

The only thing missing and preventing someone from marketing such an idea is the validation issue. But that itself is an opportunity to surpass current educational institutions. Businessmen know that a college diploma validates little with respect to knowledge or learning. It only validates that someone could get into a college and hung around long enough to get to the end of the tortuous path put in front of him or her. The path include extraneous courses, biased professors, political correctness, four or five years of one’s life and the monies foregone by not beginning to work sooner.

If all the knowledge is available free and the beer and parties are not valued, why do colleges still exist? Arguments can be made that some fields require advance study and that these fields are more easily learned or only learned from mentors. I doubt whether anything must be learned only from mentors. If so, colleges are some modern-day reincarnation of medieval guilds. Higher-level research might necessitate on-site work, but this study is well beyond the undergraduate degree. Spoon-feeding helps, but it is no substitute for mastering a subject. Anyone who has taught, even those with PhDs, know that your subject is better understood after you have prepared presentations for others.

The only apparent reason most colleges exist is the validation issue. The diploma is a piece of paper that many students pay $200,000 to obtain. It signifies that you served an apprenticeship in hell and political correctness heaven. It does no more. It doesn’t prove you are qualified in your supposed area of expertise. Most businessmen find college graduates atrociously ill-trained, even ignorant. That is why billions of dollars are spent annually training new hires.

It is only this piece of parchment could be bypassed! It is all that stands between the continued existence of hundreds, no thousands of colleges. It is the only thing that stands between most professors who are educated beyond their level of competence and the dole. It is the only thing that takes some of the most beautiful and valuable land from becoming real estate owned by banks and recycled for better use. It is only that paper protection that keeps the industry from collapsing.

Aspiring entrepreneurs, focus on the validation problem. Accounting, law firms, medical practices, the financial industry and others have not trusted the collegiate stamp of approval for decades. They have independent certifications to validate fitness of applicants. Why can’t the same thing be done in other areas? These other areas are less specialized and should be easier to craft competency tests for.

If you can develop valid competence tests in various fields, you might become the next Uber. Business firms will beat down your doors if you are capable of identifying qualified employees. Students will be able to bypass all the negatives of college and gain employment more easily without all the costs. You can do to the education industry what Uber is doing to the monopoly taxi industries in spite of their government protections. And it will happen for the same reason — everyone benefits except overpaid, underworked professors.

Students can become educated virtually for free, pass a validated test and get a job. Motivated millennials will be forever grateful. Business firms will love you. Jobs and starting salaries are likely to increase because of better validation. People can begin their working careers better prepared and at younger ages.

Higher education will shrivel up and mostly die. Can there be a nobler calling for an aspiring entrepreneur?


 

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Pirate Jo
Pirate Jo

As much as I love bitching about the government, you can’t lay all the blame at the government’s feet when most of the problems with education stem from problems at home.

Simply put, there are too many broke-assed, stupid, and inept people having kids.

No school can provide a good education when kids come to class hungry and tired because their alcoholic parents were up late screaming at each other and couldn’t be bothered to get up and make breakfast the next morning. It doesn’t matter what the schools teach or how good the teachers are or how much funding the school receives if those kids come from unstable, chaotic homes.

There are too many people using school as a babysitter, and frankly if that’s your case then you have no business being a parent in the first place. If you’re too poor, too busy, too whatever, to take responsibility for what happens to your kids during the day, then you’re too poor, too busy, and too whatever to have kids. You should instead spend your time focusing on getting a better job and improving your situation.

Is that going to happen? Are all these irresponsible people going to suddenly wake up and realize they have no business having kids? Of course not! They’re probably too irresponsible to use birth control consistently.

The solution to the problem is to put birth control in the water and only give the cure to people who aren’t on public assistance, can balance a checkbook, and can read at a 12th grade level.

I’ll get to work on that right away.

Pirate Jo
Pirate Jo

And another thing! Sixteen-year-olds in fifth grade? It already costs the taxpayers somewhere around $100K to put one kid through K-12. How the bloomin’ hell is any tax base supposed to support sticking them in there for even longer than that? I can see it now, the biggest deadbeat parents being thrilled with the idea because it gets them even MORE years of daycare.

Ugh, just stop the planet already.

Desertrat
Desertrat

Problems in education? He spoke of forty years ago–1975. My mother was a Psych prof at UT-Austin; her parents taught in high school and in elementary school. They were aware of problems back in 1940.

Dumbing down? I learned the times tables to 12×12 in second grade in 1941. In 1992 in Las Vegas, NV, a 3rd grade teacher was on TV, proud of her students learning the times tables to 10×10.

1945 was the first year that Latin was no longer a required course in 7th grade in Austin.

All this ain’t new; it’s just worster.

Pirate Joe, we’re in the fourth generation of serious dumb-down. If the great-grand-parents are ignorant, their children and then grand-children suffer–and now the current generation has had the weinie. And, hey, on average, today’s school teachers themselves aren’t a whole helluva lot better…

Westcoaster
Westcoaster

One of my best friends from high school is now the Super of a large school district in the Midwest. I asked him what are his biggest challenges. He told me it was dealing with 5 different unions and the fact they keep changing “common core”.

Peaknic
Peaknic

The suggestion that someone develop competency tests may be great, but industry tried that in the 60’s & 70’s and they all got thrown out because they had a disparate impact on minorities, who generally performed more poorly on those tests. Even if you conducted robust validation tests proving that test scores were highly predictive of job performance, the fact that a protected class received a statistically significant lower average score made it illegal to use to screen applicants.

I studied this in graduate school (MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology) and quickly learned after graduating in the early 90’s that companies no longer touch these types of tools.

Williebee
Williebee

Pirate Jo, I think he meant that if there were one or two 16 year olds in the fifth grade it would show that the students weren’t just being run through the system but would be there till they were competent to move on.

jamesthewanderer

I was aware of a few kids who didn’t graduate and follow the normal progression of “grades” (six year olds start first grade, eighteen years olds finish high school) in the small town I grew up in. They were “socially promoted” , but at a slow rate, and generally got the message and switched off (to trade schools, which still existed back then) before they even tried to graduate. Limited them for life, I’m sure, but that was nearly forty years ago; we’ve “progressed” as a society since then, to our obvious detriment.
“Social promotion” was one of those ideas that never should have left the room it was hatched in – and if little Suzie or Johnny couldn’t read by sixth grade AT ALL, some other path was needed – but it wasn’t there. The local school boards couldn’t take the heat from all those parents DISTRAUGHT that Suzie or Johnny wouldn’t be getting a high school diploma – that was a reflection on THEM. It was sad, and traumatic to the kids too, but cheapening the high school diploma led to cheapening college diplomas – and no one ever seemed to understand that.
Now college graduates can barely do (or not do) things that high school graduates once could – with critical thinking high on the list. Just the way those who do the manipulating want it – stupid slaves are easier to control and exploit. Once the Crunch happens, numerous incapables will find out that they are, in fact, incapable – and either they starve or become capable, quickly. Either way, the weakness and stupidity that characterizes societal thinking and pressure will become evident, and perhaps we will LEARN from those mistakes.

Roberto Louderback

Students will be able to bypass all the negatives of college and gain employment more easily without all the costs. You can do to the education industry what Uber is doing to the monopoly taxi industries in spite of their government protections.

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