Category Archives: Economics of Education

RtG on Education

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1. The K-12 chapter is by Frederick M. Hess.

Conservatives should broaden the implications of their intuition in favor of choice and encourage more choices within school curricula. These choices would allow families to better meet the needs of their children–through more robust foreign-language instruction, for instance in math, or the ability of home-schooled students to participate in school sports or electives.

When I said at the rollout of Room to Grow that I found it timid and tentative, this is the sort of thing I had in mind. I would prefer a bolder approach that is more focused on making it possible for entrepreneurs to compete in the education field. I think you have to regard as harmful any Federal funding that supports public schools rather than enabling alternatives to gain a foothold.

I have not through what these bold reforms might look like. How about prizes for achieving results? Maybe for getting students from disadvantaged backgrounds up to grade level. Maybe for enabling high-caliber students to win contests in math, science, or writing? Maybe for getting decent educational outcomes at very low cost?

2. The higher-ed chapter is by Andrew P. Kelly.

Rather than trying to hammer an antiquated accreditation system into something well suited to innovative ideas, policymakers should instead develop a new, parallel pathway to the market. The could mean a new accreditation agency that is designed to certify innovative programs (as Senator Rubio, among others, has proposed), or it could mean devolving accreditation to a new set of actors (like state governments, as Senator Mike Lee has proposed).

I agree that this is the important problem to solve.

A Scientist Shunned

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Patrick Brennan reproduces a letter from a scientist pressured to resign from a climate skeptic group.

I had not expect[ed] such an enormous world-wide pressure put at me from a community that I have been close to all my active life. Colleagues are withdrawing their support, other colleagues are withdrawing from joint authorship etc.

I see no limit and end to what will happen. It is a situation that reminds me about the time of McCarthy. I would never have expecting anything similar in such an original peaceful community as meteorology. Apparently it has been transformed in recent years.

I do not know the full background. Perhaps there is a charitable interpretation. However, unless there are particulars that justify this instance, I am inclined to think that shunning of a former colleague for joining a climate skeptic group is a sign of intellectual weakness, not strength.

The list of speakers dis-invited or withdrawn from commencement addresses because of a purge mentality is also a source of concern. I wish that there were stronger voices on the left denouncing this phenomenon.

Rethinking Accreditation

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According to Lindsey Burke of Heritage,

Under DeSantis’ proposal, which mirrors the HERO Act introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, states would be able to empower any entity—universities, businesses, non-profit institutions, etc.—to credential individual courses. South Carolina, for instance, could allow Boeing to credential aeronautical engineering courses, and Texas could enable Texas Instruments to credential mathematics courses.

I imagine that the sticking point here is eligibility for financial aid, including student loans. If you have Federal money that you only want to go toward accredited courses, then the Federal government would seem to have a legitimate claim that it needs to control accreditation.

If the Federal accreditation process is captured by rent-seekers, I am not sure I see why states would not be captured, also. So I am inclined to look for a different solution to the problem.

The public policy rationale for accreditation is that we want government education subsidies to be spent on the merit good of education. The current accreditation policy is neither necessary nor sufficient for that. Today, an accredited university that funnels student activity fees into support for drunken bacchanals is supposedly providing the merit good of education, while a non-accredited course that helps someone get a job is not.

Today, we impose a nearly impossible burden of proof on alternative forms of education. I would propose changing the system to impose the burden of proof on those who would deny that funds are going toward a merit good. In other words, let students spend their education subsidies (or flexdollars) on any form of education they deem valid. If a student chooses a low-quality course, the one who is hurt the most is the student. If the student makes a ridiculous choice (like spending the money on drunken bacchanals and calling that “education”), then the student and the supplier of the improper service can both be prosecuted and fined. Maybe even some currently accredited institutions headed by passive college administrators could be prosecuted and fined.

Should Private School Parents Get a Tax Break?

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Andrew Samwick says yes. He argues that by reducing the cost of public schools,

sending children to private schools generates what economists call a “positive externality.”

His proposal:

…allow a federal (and possibly state) tax deduction for parents who send their children to private schools, in the amount of the per pupil expenditure in their local public schools.

I can imagine a few objections from supporters of public schools. They might argue that taking your child out of public school creates a negative externality, because public schools are presumed to be better for society. Also, they might argue that because a lot of the cost of public schools is fixed cost rather than variable cost, the average per pupil expenditure overstates the marginal savings from having one less student in the public school system.

I’d Connect These Data Points

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1. From Inside Higher Ed:

The Maryland Higher Education Commission is cracking down on institutions that provide distance education to students in the state. But the commission has a problem: It doesn’t know who those distance education providers are.

The commission last month fired off letters addressed to presidents and provosts of institutions that offer fully online programs (seen at the bottom of this article), asking them to self-report if they enroll students in Maryland.

“As of July 1, 2012, higher education institutions offering fully online education to Maryland residents must submit an application to register with the Maryland Higher Education Commission,” the letter reads. “A review of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System has revealed that in 2012 your institution offered fully online programs and enrolled Maryland residents. If any of your current students are Maryland residents and are enrolled in fully online programs, the aforementioned regulation applies to your institution.”

2. The Washington Post reports,

The University of Maryland wants to build an 11-story, $115 million luxury hotel and conference center across from its main entrance in College Park.

The connection I would make is that both stories indicate the priority that Maryland’s state higher education authorities place on education.

College Sports Spending

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Tamar Lewin reports,

Even as their spending on instruction, research and public service declined or stayed flat, most colleges and universities rapidly increased their spending on sports, according to a report being released Monday by the American Association of University Professors.

She reports that colleges contest this report.

“This comes from the American Association of University Professors, which has a vested interest in finding that too little money is going to faculty and too much to sports and administration,” Mr. Hartle [senior vice president of the American Council on Education] said. “If you just look at the percentage increases, without the base they’re working from, it’s hard to tell what it means.”

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

Even if the AAUP is talking its book, I think that they may be right. College spending on facilities in general, and athletic facilities in particular, is out of control. Consider this:

Our athletic facilities are among the best in Division III. In 2006, we acquired the former headquarters and practice facility of the Baltimore Ravens. The grounds are now home to Mustang Stadium, a 3,500-seat facility for the football, men’s and women’s soccer, field hockey and men’s and women’s lacrosse teams, and Owings Mills Gymnasium, a 38,000 square foot complex for the men’s and women’s basketball, and men’s and women’s volleyball teams. Caves Sports and Wellness Center is the primary training facility for more than 800 Mustang student-athletes.

That is from Stevenson University, a very low-tier institution located in a suburb northwest of Baltimore.

In general, this is one of my pet peeves. I also could cite Brandeis University–even though it was practically broke due to the Madoff scheme, it proceeded with a totally unnecessary rebuilding of its admissions office. Or I could cite Swarthmore college–I would love to get a measure of the square footage of facilities per student. I am sure that it is ridiculous. It was huge when I went there, and since then the facilities appear to me to have increased by more than the number of students.

A Case Against Charter Schools

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Several readers have pushed back on my support for charter schools. I admit that it is difficult to reconcile with my belief in the null hypothesis, which is that no educational intervention makes a real difference. I guess I would say that my support for charters is tentative and based more on sympathy for entrepreneurs than on hope to find an education “cure.”

Here is a post from a few months ago from the blog Education Realist.

As any Cato wonk knows, charters are killing private schools. Increasing charters increases public school spending. More charters will increase the number of kids under government oversight, give even more control to the states and ultimately the federal government. So why are choice people pro-charters? Charter schools purport to give choices but actually just drive up public education costs for the express benefit of a lucky few underrepresented minorities or suburban whites and Asians too cheap to send their kids to private school. As long as I’m ordering the world, choice folks, can’t you go back to pushing tax deductions for private schools? Then let Bill Gates pay tuition scholarships for URMs rather than fund meaningless and usually unsuccessful initiatives in his public school sandbox.

Thanks to a commenter for a generic pointer to the Education Realist blog.

I mostly disagree with the quoted paragraph.

1. I think of charter schools as having primarily a down-market appeal. Maybe I am falling for some public-relations stuff, but I don’t see them as competing with elite private schools. I don’t think they currently compete with elite public schools, for that matter.

2. The fact that charter schools are public schools poses problems for both the left and the right. For the right, they represent schools that are funded and regulated by government, even though they are not operated by government. To me, this is not such a big issue, since even with vouchers, or for that matter with tax deductions, government is going to claim a rationale for regulating schools.

For the left, I think that the problems are more acute. Membership in teachers’ unions drops. I think that the balance of power shifts away from government school boards and toward parents.

One scenario for charters is that they could suffer from what I called a “stifling embrace” by the government. That is, left-wing politicians could endorse charters heartily, with a strong dose of regulation to make sure that charters “serve the community,” meaning that they are forced to adopt all of the worst practices of public schools.

On the other hand, there is also a scenario in which charters achieve a sort of escape velocity, and the education system becomes more decentralized and diverse. That is the scenario I tried to paint in my earlier post.

Meanwhile, it does not seem that more purist libertarian education reforms are getting anywhere.

Thoughts on Charter Schools

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My latest essay, which is a bit unusual for me in that it promotes a national government policy.

It would provide grants to states to support the administrative apparatus needed to ensure that charter school operators are given both a fair opportunity to offer educational alternatives and timely audits to ensure that they meet their responsibilities to students and parents. The grants should be sufficient to cover much more than the cost of this administrative apparatus. That way, recalcitrant states will have a strong incentive to adopt best practices for approving and evaluating charter schools.

I am not entirely sure that this is a good idea. But living in charter-hostile Maryland, I think it would take something like this to get charters going here.

Karl Zinsmeister writes,

Twenty-five years ago, charter schools hadn’t even been dreamed up. Today they are mushrooming across the country. There are 6,500 charter schools operating in 42 states, with more than 600 new ones opening every year. Within a blink there will be 3 million American children attending these freshly invented institutions (and 5 million students in them by the end of this decade).

1. As I see it, the main advantage that charter schools have over public schools is fact that bad teachers will tend to be fired and bad charters schools will tend to be closed.

2. Charter schools may follow a Clayton Christensen “disruptive innovation” path. That is, at first they will cater to low-income consumers. However, as they prove themselves in that niche, they may rapidly move up-market. Right now, many affluent parents are very attached to their public schools. However, that is an equilibrium that could tip. If parents come to view charter-school children as having an advantage in, say, college preparation, they will exit the regular public school system with great haste.

3. Another reason that charters may take off quickly in states and school districts that allow them to compete is that good young teachers are likely to prefer working at charter schools. If this happens over the next five to ten years, parents will notice that it is getting difficult to find good public school teachers and easier to find good teachers at charters.

4. If there is a rapid move toward charter schools, I think that this exacerbates the problem of unfunded pensions for retired teachers. If public school enrollment levels off or declines, I believe that the share of the budget devoted to paying for pensions is bound to increase.

5. I suspect that, relative to public schools, on average charters undertake less left-wing indoctrination of students. This is possibly the main reason for conservatives and libertarians to get excited about charter schools.

6. The political opponents of charters have to prevent them from getting started. Where I live, the opponents have succeeded. But once charters become entrenched, getting rid of them is quite difficult. See NYC.

Better Education?

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1. Jay Mathews writes,

The dollars involved are astonishing, at least to me. Every English, math or science AP test at the three Stafford schools with a passing grade from independent College Board readers meant a $100 check for the student and another for the teacher. Checks totaling $90,800 went to students and $145,370 to teachers.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen. Mathews reports that this resulted in a big increase in AP tests taken and passed at the affected schools.

On the one hand, I find this plausible. These days, high school seniors are much less motivated about AP tests. I tell my students that when I was in high school, we were much less well behaved and less deferent to authority than today’s students. But it would never have occurred to us to slack off for an AP exam. I even remember a student who spent most of the year getting high still pulled it together for his AP tests.

I teach AP courses, and I have seen motivation trump ability in terms of scores. So if money motivates students to do well on the tests, then I can imagine a significant effect. Whether this means anything in terms of overall long-term learning is less clear, I suppose. And I am not sure why a $100 check for a student is any more motivating than the value of replacing a college credit. If it is, then parents who are paying for college tuition should offer their kids very large checks for passing AP courses.

2. John Cochrane and Russ Roberts discuss John’s Ph.D-level MOOC course on asset pricing. Cochrane says,

One thing I learned was there is a larger demand to watch the videos and take some quizzes than there is to do 15 hours a week of hard problem sets.

Later,

the MOOC experience is not just a complete substitute for taking a class. It is also a set of tools and materials that are the foundation for somebody else teaching class. Much the same way a textbook is.

Much later,

one thing this might do is to give us classes that are both more specialized in a topic and more specialized to the person. There could be–there are already 100 Introduction to Finance classes. And there is one out there that is exactly right for your interest and your level. So to some extent the MOOC is going to do that. The thing it’s not going to do, which I would do with you for a 1-on-1, is of course, I would not give a lecture. We would talk and it would be a lot more of me listening. In my other instruction life, I’m a flight instructor. Which is done one on one, and where assessing the student’s competence is really important. And where assessing the student’s misconceptions about how things work is really important. And that’s what you do when you are one-on-one and the guy needs to learn how to fly the plane. And by 1-on-1 sort of quizzing, I’ll pose a puzzle; you tell me the answer; I’ll go, is that really how it works? We really explore what you understand and what you misunderstand. That’s the way you teach 1-on-1 classes, and that’s the thing that’s hard to do on a MOOC. Would you really trust a pilot of your plane who said, I learned to fly on a MOOC and a simulator? He might be darned good. And he would certainly have run through all sorts of accident scenarios that the MOOC and the simulator did, but there might be a few remaining misconceptions about things that had gotten through the process that you might worry about.

The Case for More Aid to Community Colleges

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Richard Kahlenberg makes it.

According to research by Anthony Carnevale and Jeff Strohl of Georgetown University, rich students outnumber poor students by 14 to 1 at selective four-year colleges, but at community colleges, it is poor students who outnumber rich ones, by nearly 2 to 1. There is also considerable stratification within the two-year sector, such that the most racially isolated quartile of community colleges has student populations in which almost two-thirds are from underrepresented minority groups. Community colleges, like public schools, tend to reflect the economic and racial segregation of surrounding neighborhoods.

…Stunningly, over the past decade, inflation-adjusted spending at public research universities has increased roughly $4,200 per student, compared with just a $1 per student increase for community colleges.

Community colleges generally achieve poor outcomes, although individual students are exceptions. It is not clear to me that this is because those colleges lack resources. A lot of it could be the null hypothesis (that education interventions to not make a big difference at the margin). If that is true, then putting more resources into them is not the solution.