Category Archives: Education

A fine kettle of fish.

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Wage increases haven’t kept pace with inflation for at least a decade. Generally, American families earn less than they did in 1999. A host of factors lie behind this depressing trend. There is intensifying competition from overseas (globalization); there is the difficulty of workers adapting to technological changes that wipe out lower skill/lower wage jobs while creating higher skill/higher wage jobs; and there is a government that is managing the past more than helping create the future. Still, there are a couple of factors that capture the attention.

First, America has been suffering from slow economic growth for quite a while. Why have we suffered slow growth? One answer is that high energy costs exert a drag on the economy. Beginning with the oil shocks of the 1970s, energy costs rose until the 1990s. They dropped for most of that decade, but have returned to the post-1970s “normal” in this century. Energy costs work like a regressive tax: everybody drives, so everybody pays the same gas tax; high energy costs for employers drive them to hold down other costs, like wages, or to pass them on to consumers. Another answer is that American workers used to have an enormous education advantage over most foreign workers. Now other countries have moved forward, while Americans have remained stuck in neutral. This affects productivity in a competitive economy.

Second, what growth that has occurred has flowed toward those already at the top of the pyramid. Health care costs reduce real incomes. Either employers resist wage increases in order to provide health insurance or employees without work-provided health insurance have to pay their own costs. The long rise in health-care costs cut into the rise in pay for most people. It took a proportionately smaller share from the incomes of the well-off. They plowed the difference back into investments.

Are there any grounds for even a modest optimism? Yes. First, “fracking” has greatly increased the supply of cheaper energy in America. Second, the incessant talk about the importance of education for getting a decent job has led to an increase in the number of high-school and college graduates. In 2000, 29.1 percent of 25 to 29 year olds had a college BA; in 2008, 30.8 percent did; and in 2013, 33.6 percent did. Third, for reasons that are much debated, health-care costs have stopped rising for the last few years. This should allow pay to rise as well.

None of this means that we’re home free. The way forward is shrouded in fog. Short-term results haven’t been very satisfying. American voters clang back and forth between “Hope” and the “Tea Party.” The partisan “grid-lock” in Washington may be less of a cause of our troubles than a symptom of those troubles.[1]

This analysis raises a couple of questions.

First, how do we improve the educational preparation of American workers? Shove 50 percent or more of Americans through college? Create a trades-oriented alternative to college?

Second, how do we get health-care costs down? Western Europe and Japan spend two-thirds the share of GDP on health-care as does the US and get better results, so it can be done.

Third, where do we stand on the cheap energy versus the environment issue? Global warming argues for alternatives to burning carbon; jobs and economic growth argue for it.

Fourth, what is a government supposed to do in a highly complex society and economy? After the “London whale” and the Chrysler recalls, the “regulatory state” has a black eye. That’s hardly a reason to believe in the pure rationality of the market economy

[1] David Leonhardt, “The Great Wage Slowdown Of the 21st Century,” NYT, 7 October 2014.

 

 

College costs: the old eat the young.

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It is always worth asking whether a consumer is getting value for money. Is a college education today worth the higher price than that paid by earlier generations?

Everyone knows that inflation-adjusted college tuition has more than doubled since 1992. Except that it hasn’t. Everyone knows that it can cost $60,000 a year for college. Except that it hardly ever does.

The real price of college has to include the financial aid (other than loans) supplied to the student. This gives the net price. Since 1992, the net price for community college has fallen; the net price at a private four-year college has risen 22 percent; and the net price for a four-year public college has risen 60 percent. The average of the two falls into a range between a 40 percent and 50 percent increase in net tuition. This puts college tuition in the same ball-park as medical costs (35 percent) or day care (44 percent).

The “sticker shock” tuitions beloved of the media and the politicians only apply to people from affluent families who are not eligible for financial aid attending elite schools that can charge what the market will bear for a prestigious degree.

Taking lower costs and higher aid into account, the average price for a student attending a four-year public college was $3,120 a year in 2013; the average price for a student attending a four-year private college was $12,460.[1]

Why has the net cost of a four-year public college risen so much more than the cost of a four-year private college? In the United States, about eighty percent of college students attend public colleges. Between 1988 and 2013, nominal tuition at these institutions more than doubled. This has created a terrible problem of debt for parents and students when most incomes have been stagnant. However, the revenue earned by these colleges stayed flat. In 1988 colleges earned an average of $11,300 per student; in 2013 they earned an average of $11,500 per student. If colleges aren’t getting rich, then where did the additional tuition go? To tax-payers, that’s where.

Traditionally, public colleges were subsidized by state legislatures. In 1988, each student at a public college received an average of $8,600 a year to subsidize his/her studies. The student and his/her family kicked in the additional $2,700 a year. In 2013, each student at a public college received an average of $6,100 a year to subsidize his/her studies. The student and his/her family now have to kick in $5,400 a year. A four year BA went from costing the state $34,600 to costing $24,400. That same four year BA went from costing students and parents $10,800 to costing $20,800. People who got a cheap BA paid for by others, now want to pay lower taxes.

The Obama administration has the idea that introducing ratings for colleges will help “education consumers.” They want to consider factors like affordability, drop-out rates, and the earnings of graduates. Federal subsidies—“Jump, boy, jump” versus “Bad dog, no biscuit”—would reward colleges which score well on the standardized test.[2]   People push back, saying that there is too much difference among students to make a single standard meaningful. The economist Susan Dynarski has suggested that the “risk adjusted” rating system used for hospitals might offer a useful means of adapting any rating system.[3] Better still, restore the state aid.

[1] David Leonhardt, “How Government Exaggerates College’s Cost,” New York Times, 29 July 2014.

[2] I can foresee the criticism that this will lead colleges to “admit to the test” just as schools “teach to the test.”

[3] Susan Dynarski, “Where College Ratings Hit the Wall,” New York Times, 21 September 2014.

MyQ

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We’ve been testing “intelligence” for about a century. What does an IQ test “test”? It tests what is called “abstract intelligence,” basically solving logic problems. There is a correlation—not a cause-and-effect linkage—between high IQ scores and both good grades and good job performance. In contrast, many of the standardized tests (SAT, GRE, MCAT, LSAT, GMAT) that hold the keys to opportunity in life measure verbal and quantitative ability. Apparently the two types of tests measure different things because IQ scores have been rising steadily for decades, while measures like the SAT have stalled or even fallen. (Then there’s the third kind of test called “personal judgment” used by employers, teachers, and voters. I don’t see scholars doing much work on what I conjecture to be a key factor in individual success.)

Raw IQ scores rose steadily in all developed countries throughout the 20th Century and continue to do so today. Three points per decade is the normal increase. That means that my older son should have an IQ about 20 points higher than my father and about a 12 points higher than myself.[1] They are rising across all groups tested, rather than in just part of the population. The dumb are getting smart and the smart are getting smarterer.

It’s hard to tell why they are rising. Improved nutrition and health may play a role by allowing most children to develop more rapidly. IQ tests are usually given to captive school or draft age populations, so a fast first step in life might contribute to rising scores. Also, more education became available to the lower income groups in the course of the 20th Century. This could move the “left tail” of a standard distribution to the right. On the other end of the spectrum, smart kids increasingly hang with smart kids. A “social multiplier effect” may explain why the IQ scores of this group continue to rise when improved nutrition and education cannot be factors. There is an intriguing third possibility. Both computer games and popular television shows have become increasingly complex. The narratives in each art form stress complicated plots and lots of characters. Perhaps this fosters a constant analysis of abstract relationships.

Then there are Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. These aren’t discussed much, if at all, in the media. What one analysis of the scores since 1968 shows is that the Torrance scores for American children have been dropping since 1990.

While something is causing IQ to rise, it probably doesn’t have anything to do with what is going on in the classroom. Better nutrition, more years in school, watching “Lost,” and playing “Call of Duty” might be the most reasonable explanations. In contrast, the stagnation (at best) in the SATs and the decline in the Torrance Test scores might be related to what is happening in classrooms since they test things that schools claim to teach and foster.

There are implications for social policy. First, improving both childhood nutrition and education help poor children. That could get tangled up with questions about the quality of parenting supplied by poor people. FDA guidelines on nutrition and good advice on stimulating the intellectual development of children has been available for decades. Not everyone uses them. Second, schools and colleges might want to think about incorporating complex television series and electronic games into their tool-kit. If William Shakespeare were alive today, would he prefer to write “Kinky Boots” or “Breaking Bad”? Third, mixing higher IQ students with lower IQ students in the classroom may be good for the lower IQ students. It won’t be good for higher IQ students. I can hear the Republican outcry against Democrats’ “redistribution of grey cells” already. I might be part of it. (“Smarter than ever,” The Week, 16 September 2011, p. 11.)

[1] This may be an argument for having children as early in life as possible. It cuts down on the IQ gap between yourself and your children. Otherwise the little bastards will be just insufferable.

Value for Money in College Education

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A Pew Research Center report from 2011 made two interesting points. First,” less than half of members of the general public agrees [that students should pay for their own college education], with a majority saying either the federal or state government, private donors, or a combination of those should pick up the largest share of a student’s college tab.” Second, “nearly 60 percent of Americans say the U.S. higher education system is not providing students with a good value.” These attitudes put average Americans sharply at odds with college presidents and faculty, who feel themselves best by Yahoos.

It’s time for some plain speaking. First, college does cost more than most families care to afford. Second, most colleges don’t give good value for what they charge, at least not in educational terms. Third, it is the same general public that complains about low value for a high price that is the cause of these problems. An examination of the historical record makes this clear.

One part of the explanation comes from demography.  The Baby Boom (from 1946 to 1964 approximately) went through American society like a mouse through the rattlesnake my college room-mate used to keep.  In the Forties and Fifties a tsunami of students hit the schools.  In the Sixties and Seventies the same tsunami hit the colleges.  The result of massive demand was a huge increase in the size of colleges and college faculties.

Then the Baby Boom gave way to the Baby Bust.  This brought a decline in the number of 18 year-olds in 1982 and for years to come. The number of students no longer matched up with the size of colleges and faculties.  What to do?  In business, of course, lots of places would just have gone under, like nail or tanning salons. Supply would have returned to balance with demand.  Not in higher education however.  Colleges fought for survival. First of all, they molted into country-clubs attached to classrooms.  Sports facilities, luxury dorms, and improved food services became the hall-marks of a good college. Second, adult education and degree-completion programs multiplied. Third, they played to the American reverence for diplomas, if not for learning as an abstract concept.  Everyone emphasized the economic value of more education.  Everyone celebrated a liberal arts education for all as a form of democratization.  Graduate programs to confer credentials sprang up like mushrooms.

The end result was that not enough colleges were down-sized.  Instead, they passed the rising costs along to others: to parents (through tuition increases), to students (through larger student loan debt), and to taxpayers (through government aid to higher education).

A second part of the explanation is cultural.              On the one hand, we are living with the consequences of a regulatory society created to pursue well-intended, but ill-defined goals like “justice” and “well-being” for citizens.  The outcome of this has been the growth of a massive apparatus of administrative staff at every college.  If you compare a college phone directory of twenty years ago with one of today, you will be able to measure the scale of the growth of administrators, new offices, assistants, and secretaries.  These people largely respond to mandates imposed by the federal and state governments, and accrediting agencies.  The costs of those mandates, however, are carried by the colleges and passed on to the consumer.

On the other hand, we are living with the consequences of the “de-bourgeoisification” of the American middle class.  Being bourgeois used to mean valuing hard work, self-restraint, living on less than you earn in order to have savings and–in old age–to be able to leave “an estate” to one’s children to help them get started in life.  It did not mean being happy or “fulfilled.”  Even so, bourgeois used to have a positive association.  Since the 1960s being bourgeois has gone the way of fedoras and torpedo bras.  Increasingly, the cultural emphasis has been on individual fulfillment and happiness.  There isn’t much that is fulfilling or happy about hard work, so it is de-valued.

The average American home now has five books in it.  The average home also has a big screen TV and a huge range of channels on its cable package.  You can’t get literacy or analytical skills from reality shows or video games.

Furthermore, in 1950 about 40 percent of students never finished high-school.  They didn’t need much education to drive a truck or work a drill-press or dig a ditch.  THEN high school and college were for people willing to do the work and to respect authority in the form of unreasonable teachers and parents angry about report cards.  NOW the schools have shifted toward keeping kids in school regardless of the cost to the state of education.  The quality of education has suffered because it isn’t fashionable to do the work required for learning and almost impossible to coerce kids with threats of flunking out.  Parental authority also has declined.  (You try involuntarily institutionalizing somebody over the age of 14 in any state except Utah.)

The outcome of all this is that many students come to college without the intellectual or cultural or psychological capital that their predecessors brought.  They struggle–or don’t bother to–in the classes.  They require remedial course work and second chances.  The survival imperative driving many colleges leads to a dilution of course work and grading standards.  They need the tuition, so they need the students.

For many students, college is a rite of passage, not an education.  They get to live away from their parents for the first time.  They’re semi-adults on their way to being minor-league adults on their way to being full-scale adults on their way to being safely dead where nothing can go wrong now so they’re Winners!  (The movie “Trainspotting” may have been repellant, but it wasn’t wrong.) The country-club with classrooms environment reinforces this feeling.

Public attention has focused on the real-estate bubble and all the evidence of corporate misbehavior.  Much less noticed was the explosion in ill-considered consumer debt and use of home equity loans to finance consumption.  Basically, most people don’t save a ton of money to pay for their kids’ college education.  The attitudes reflected in the Pew survey are unrealistic on several grounds.  First, it would be one thing publically financing the higher education of some sort of elite.  In fact, most students in college are not part of some intellectual elite.  Second, the money just isn’t there.  The federal deficit is going to be cut through some combination of tax increases on most people and spending cuts for all.  How we would expand public aid to everyone seeking a college education in that environment is beyond me.  Certainly, Princeton could buy the moon if it was for sale. However, most colleges do not have large endowments to provide additional income.  Public colleges live off direct state aid and tuition.  Many private colleges are in the same leaky boat.  That means that the “someone” who will pay for college if parents and students don’t pay will be—parents and students in their capacity as taxpayers and tuition-payers.

Is there a solution to this problem? Sure. Shape up. Turn off the television. Get rid of the xBox. Take the kid to the library once a week. Ground the kid if the grade report isn’t good. Paint the house during your summer vacation or drive out to Gettysburg, but forget about going to Disney World or down the Shore. I hate having to quote Chris Christie, but “why are you mad at the first person who told you the truth?”

 

Straight talk on American Education.

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The cost of sending your kid to a university has gone up by 8 percent in the middle of the next-best-thing to “The Great Depression” that my folks lived through. President Obama—God bless his pointy little head—has offered a plan to help some of the worst off. His Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has been hard at work on a plan to replace the much-despised “No Child Left Behind” with “Well, Some Children Will Be Left Behind.” (At least it falls in the tradition of what American schools have been doing for two hundred years.) Asian countries have been gaining on American educational achievement like alligators fed on a mix of steroids and speed. Americans are desperate for better and more cost-effective schools.

I’ve taught at a little college for almost twenty years and at an Enormous State University for half a dozen years before that, so I’ve got a pretty good idea of what high-school graduates bring with them to college (aside from enormous bongs and that idiot dub-step music). I’ve got two boys aged twenty (graduated from a public school in the suburbs and attending a private college in the farther suburbs) and seventeen (who may graduate from an elite private school—unless he does one more thing to piss-off the headmaster), so I’ve got some idea of what kids are capable. Here’s my plan.

Close a bunch of the lesser universities and colleges, public and private. On the one hand, this will increase the competition among students to get in to colleges. There won’t be “safety schools.” There will just be clerking at Wawa or being the assistant manager for deep-fried products on the swing-shift at McDonald’s. You’ll end up looking like Jabba the Hutt and you’ll never get a member of the opposite sex to look at you. So, get good grades in high-school or Darwinism will take care of the rest. On the other hand, this will stop the facilities arms race that began in the Seventies. I spent six weeks in a Harvard dorm one summer a few years ago. No air-conditioning, buy your own fan; drizzle of lukewarm water from the shower, no matter how far you had run; took five minutes to get the badly-cut key to turn in the door lock; Army noodles with ketchup in the dining hall every night; did you want them with fish balls, pork balls, or tofu balls? Gym is crowded? Go for a run and do some push-ups. Library is crowded? Read your textbook in your room. Classroom is crowded? Get there early or stand at the back. Long line outside the professor’s office? Bring a book—or chat with the others about Darwin.

Fix the public schools. On the one hand, “Waiting for Superman” was right up to a point, but then confused the little bit—teachers’ unions are bad–with the larger whole of the problem—the schools are a mess. You have to be smart, committed, and know your subject to teach. Nothing more. Teach for America is right: smart kids who know a lot about their subject do better than ordinary teachers. Socrates didn’t have an Education degree. In fact, nobody had an Education degree before the end of the 19th century. Education schools didn’t exist. How did we ever manage to progress? On the other hand, stop using the schools as the vehicle for delivering useful public services. Self-esteem, psychological disorders, poor nutrition in the home, bullying, obesity, and sports-band-ceramics for that matter, are not central to the educational mission. Focus! (NB: That doesn’t mean some other agency can’t deliver those services.)

At the root of all our educational problems is the family. Turn off the “social media” (including the television). It turns kids’ brains to applesauce. Take your kids to the public library. Library is closed? This is worth burning buses over. Most of all, read to your kids. Nothing is more important. Except, maybe them seeing you read too.

Technology? Remember, Bill Gates didn’t have a computer in his house or school when he was growing up. Imagination and ambition come from somewhere else.

 

The End of the University as We Know It.

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A letter that the New York Times did not publish.

 

To the Editor,

Thank you for publishing the wonderfully stimulating and utterly wrong-headed essay by X    X.  Professor X writes from the perspective glimpsed from the balcony of the ivory tower and, as so often happens, his view is distorted.  (Try shooting a gun downhill sometime: one tends to aim too high and miss the target.)  My own perspective on the problems of American education–seen from closer to–or even under–ground level–is as follows.

First, the essential problem is to fix public education.  There is no reason so many people should be going to college after high school.  The reason they do so is because college has become two years of remedial high school and two years of post-industrial arts classes.  Schools are failing to prepare students for life in any of its forms, so college has become a form of educational Spackle.  This situation can be remedied.  The remedy would entail getting rid of schools of Education and teacher certification.  I have one son in a public school, generally bored out of his mind; I have another son in a boarding school, deeply engaged by all that his teachers place before him.  Many of the teachers in the public school are time-servers waiting on retirement.  None of the teachers in the boarding school have ever taken a class in an Education program.  Education courses are a waste of time which deprives their students of exposure to real knowledge in other disciplines.  Teach for America is the “dirty secret” to which Professor Taylor should attend.

It would also entail doing away with the system of funding public education through local property taxes.  This is a formula for disaster for any children attending public schools in depressed urban or rural areas.  Parents in upper middle class areas already load enough cultural advantages on their children.  The outbreak of swine flu among the students of a Catholic prep school in New York who had spent their Spring Break in Cancun is eloquent testimony to the inequalities of experience which parents can provide. Why make it much worse by relying on local property taxes as the basis for school funding?  States–or the federal government–should equalize per capita school spending.

Second, the follow-on problem is to fix post-secondary education at its various levels.  On the one hand, this would involve forcing a great many minor colleges into bankruptcy.  The Baby Boom led to the expansion of many institutions of American life as the mouse passed through the belly of the snake.  The result was an overbuilding of capacity in many areas.  While retirement homes and Kevorkiums are on the horizon as investment opportunities, colleges and universities are struggling to survive by recruiting from a shrunken pool of students.  The educational arms race has turned colleges toward creating a country club environment in order to attract students.  It also compels them to keep marginal students by supplying support services.  Support staffs at colleges and universities have grown far faster than have full-time faculty teaching substantive knowledge and intellectual skills.  If many colleges were driven out of existence, then the remainder could afford to become pickier about which students they admitted while reducing unnecessary and costly amenities.  The schools would be compelled to do their job properly so that high school graduates would have a better chance of finding work or getting in to a college.

On the other hand, there is much to be said for closing down many marginal graduate programs in the liberal arts.  Only a handful of elite schools–Columbia University among them–have any prospect of seeing the graduates of their Ph.D. programs find rewarding and useful employment.  Many other graduate programs exist to provide the professional certification needed for promotion in various bureaucracies (Education, Psychology, Social Work).  Between these heights lies a morass of graduate programs in the humanities and social sciences which exist for the convenience of the tenured faculty in minor institutions.  By running graduate programs these scholars get teaching assistants to grade the masses of semi-literate work generated by open-admissions policies, and they get students for graduate courses which are so much more interesting than is instructing freshmen on the differences between this and that, and that and which.

How are the interests of the republic advanced by any of this nonsense?

 

Major Uncertainty

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Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School, has offered a warning about the irrational exuberance surrounding current discussions of college majors.[1]  He urges people to look at higher education as an economic commodity.[2]  What is the best way for “education consumers” to spend tuition dollars?[3]  Currently (Fall 2013), public discourse[4] encourages parents and students to focus on “practical” majors that will mesh with the labor needs of American employers.  Colleges have responded by consulting the oracles about the likely paths to future prosperity—for themselves as much as for their customers.  (Generally this means the reports of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, rather than the more traditional sheep entrails.)   Any form of Business, Nursing and anything else related to health care, and majors centering on Leisure (voluntary as with Personal Training or involuntary as with Criminology) all are growth fields at colleges.[5]

Cappelli warns that “Today’s Jobs Aren’t Necessarily Tomorrow’s.”  For one thing, technology itself is an enormously disruptive force, both eliminating jobs in recently robust fields and creating jobs in unanticipated fields.  It isn’t possible to tell now what new technologies will exist in six years (the common time to a BA).  There just isn’t an app for that.

For another thing, predicting that some particular type of job is going to be in demand and paying high wages in the future merely guarantees a flood of candidates into preparation for that field today.  They will all emerge from the funnel at the same time.  In all likelihood there will be an excess of candidates, wages will fall, and many of them will not get jobs in the field for which they prepared and will have to adapt in search of some other job.

The tarantula on the angel food cake[6] here is that the currently favored degree-programs may leave students intellectually more disabled or inadaptable for the work that will emerge than will the now-disfavored liberal arts degrees.  Highly specialized knowledge is difficult to transfer to other fields.  (You try finding work doing something else if you’re a 59 year-old, whitemale with a Ph.D. in History.)   Highly-specialized fields that have to answer to accrediting agencies tend to run up the number of courses that they require.  This crowds out liberal arts courses that would enhance basic skills in analysis and communication.  As with any revolution, Thermidor is coming.  Oh, wait!  That’s a historical reference to patterns in human behavior.  Never mind.

[1] Peter Cappelli, “Why Focusing Too Narrowly in College Could Backfire, WSJ, 11 November 2013.

 

[2] But who are the “consumers”?  Are they the parents footing the bill or are they the children who actually choose a major, take the courses, and “possess” the BA or BS upon graduation?  There may be an analogy here to the tax-free status of health-care plans provided by many employers.

 

[3] The very idea of viewing it this way drives liberal arts faculty wild.  They see what they are offering in an entirely different light.

 

[4] You know, the same sort of discourse before Pearl Harboring Iraq in 2003 and selling mortgaged-backed securities before 2007.  “Old echo chambers never die, they just move on to new subjects.”  On the other hand, Russ Feingold is still a senator and John Paulson is still a billionaire.  From this I derive the lesson that thinking for yourself is not always punished, even in America.

 

[5] I haven’t run across programs for Cocktail Waitresses or Personal Escorts—yet.

 

[6] Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely (1940).  I forget the page number.