the distinction between purchases of what I’ll call “Snap-Back” goods and services and those that are “Gone Forever.” In the Snap-Back category are things that we couldn’t buy during the heaviest COVID lock-down period, but these purchases were simply delayed. There is good reason to think that as the economy begins to open up, purchases of these items might even be higher than normal due to pent-up demand. . .
“Gone Forever” goods and services, in contrast, are just like the term suggests: gone forever. Like me, you may have foregone several haircuts during shelter-in-place because you didn’t want to get (or give) coronavirus to your barber. But when it becomes safe to go back to the barber chair, you’ll still only get one haircut.
Pointer from Tyler Cowen, who seems unsure whether to agree with Wydick that higher education is a Snap-Back good.
I think that higher education is in a third category, which might be termed Covinnovation Goods. That is because the virus forces suppliers to innovate to deliver the goods, and some of the innovations will stick. When fear of the virus subsides, consumers will choose the best blend of pre-virus and virus-adapted practices.
I will say how higher education fits in the Covinnovation categorey. But first, let me use the example of Israeli dancing.
Pre-virus, the offerings consisted of regular sessions and workshops. At a typical regular session, there might be 40 dancers. You meet with the same people every week, with a session leader who might be dull as dishwater. The session leader makes sure to play mostly “top 40” dances, which are those that are currently popular, and nearly everyone will do those. The session leader will spice up the set with a few dances that were once popular, but many fewer dancers will do these, because not every dancer can remember them.
A workshop is held in a particular location once a year, usually over a long weekend. The typical number of dancers would be closer to 150. In addition to dancers from the area, the workshop will draw dedicated dancers from other parts of the country and even from abroad. The workshop will feature dance teachers and leaders who have outstanding energy and charisma. With many more hours of programming and a stronger group of dancers, there is much less reliance on the “top 40” and one sees many, many more once-popular dances and even obscure dances.
But it is a grueling experience. I’ve traveled to workshops in LA, and when they start an evening session at 10 PM, that means starting at 1 AM on my internal clock. When the session ends, at 3 or 4 in the morning LA time, you won’t find me in the photo known as the “survivor picture.”
The virus shut down both regular sessions and workshops. What has emerged instead is an international community of Zoom sessions. The best of these involve session leaders handing off programming to one another, so that no one leader is responsible for more than about half an hour. Some of the Zoom sessions go on for many hours (one went on for 24 consecutive hours), with leaders from many different countries participating. These leaders are tremendously creative and innovative. They briefly put the “spotlight” on each of us dancing in our homes, so that we get to see dancers all around the world. The result is that you get the spice of workshops and the variety of dancers, without the punishing schedule. What you lose, of course, is proximity to other dancers.
When live dancing resumes, I hope that we will see something that includes the benefits of Zoom dancing. We could have a computer screen on the wall, and that would allow the dull-as-dishwater local session leader to defer to one of the charismatic leaders, who would program the session remotely. We could glance at the screen and see dancers in other cities. We could have workshop dancing as well as “top 40” dancing.
Turning to higher education, I would guess that there are some college professors who have become “Zoom superstars.” That is, they have the charisma, creativity and energy to make remote learning work quite well. Meanwhile, most professors are even duller on screen than they are in person.
By the same token, I suspect that some students have really taken to online learning. They trudge into a lecture and wonder “where is the button to speed this up to 1.25x?”
Post-virus, college education could utilize more of the best of remote and in-person teaching. It will only be a “snap-back” good if the institutions succeed in suppressing Covinnovation.
Thankfully progress surges forward even in a time of virus . Innovation in the schooling credentials industry will not only be driven by the virus, but also by a new executive order striking a blow at the crony-capitalist industry’s chokehold on opportunity and roadblock to human flourishing.
President Trump signed his “Executive Order on Modernizing and Reforming the Assessment and Hiring of Federal Job Candidates” on June 26. The order states: “An agency may prescribe a minimum educational requirement for employment in the Federal competitive service only when a minimum educational qualification is legally required to perform the duties of the position in the State or locality where those duties are to be performed.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-modernizing-reforming-assessment-hiring-federal-job-candidates/
By focusing hiring on actual skills, the quality of the civil service should improve and talented people will find opportunity without the debt bondage exacted by credentials industry. A great step forward.
Of course it would be even better if it had opened up cronyism programs like the Presidential Fellows Program to non-traditional students, however, we must not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
Federal employment is second only to tenured teaching in providing the most remuneration for the least amount of work, and will always be highly desired. This executive order will thus amplify the effect of the virus and promote additional evolution of the broader market for human capital enhancement.
I wonder what actual effect this will have, especially if a Democrat wins the presidency in November. The heart of the Democratic Party is now in those credential-granting institutions.
But even if there is a Republican sweep, the order will have to be implemented, and I strongly suspect that the bureaucracy will come up with “findings” that degrees are actually required for just about everything.
I can’t help thinking of George Stigler’s famous A Sketch of the History of Truth in Teaching (which reads a little differently now, in the middle of the replication crisis).
You are right. Of course, agencies will resist change. And I can’t tell for sure, but it appears that the Outstanding Scholar Program, a crony hiring authority permitting senior executives to hire their friends’ children, is still in place, so the order may be entirely pointless. https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/2000/02/data-shows-decline-in-outstanding-scholar-hires/1679/ With the Administration trying to consolidate OPM into other agencies, I would not be surprised at all if the career people at OPM have sabotaged this effort out of spite.
I suspect the biggest change is going to be in many workers remaining remote and many companies not renewing leases for expensive downtown office space. By the time we’re done with this, organizations are going to have 1-2 years in running their organizations this way, and employees are going to have the same amount of time not having to commute. By the time the pandemic is really over, organizations will have adjusted, and the cost and inefficiency of expensive downtown office space and the pains of commuting will seem dumb.
Other advantages of remote working are less obvious. I have a kid about to move across the country. Without having to change jobs — the employer doesn’t care (and might not even have known). But the other big advantage is that this won’t hurt all that much in being able to come back and visit family — they’ll come and stay for some amount of time, work while we work, and socialize on weekends and evenings without having to burn through vacation time. Both of my kids have done leisure travel this way too — go somewhere and stay for 10 days, do tourism things on the weekends and before and after work. Take a little time off maybe, but nowhere close to a whole week. Once you have this kind of freedom, it’s pretty hard to give up.
Enjoyed the Israeli dancing story. Think you’re right about Higher Ed covinnation.
I would add that perhaps Dull Instructor gives some airtime to charismatic “Pure Lecture Zoom Star” and some to a variant I’d call “Produced/Edited Zoom Star.”
For example, look at Josh Angrist teaching econometrics on Marginal Revolution as “Master Joshaway.” The animations are what grabs attention.
Quite a bit of the innovation is likely to be by students and employers who devise other ways to signal quality. The higher education system was fairly broken before the pandemic, and it’s not clear to what extent we will want it back.
My impression was that the core of Tyler’s concerns about education is that the actual income generated per student is not uniform – international students pay many times more than local students, and once you pull out the fixed costs they are responsible for a large slice of the profits.
Bruce hasn’t addressed that concern at all, and along with the rising skepticism of Education you have a large number of (small?) pushes in the same direction.
I get the feeling that Trump’s decision on not requiring college for Federal jobs may be the Right’s first real attack in the culture wars.
Don’t get me wrong. Trump takes symbolic shots all the time, generates outrage on the left, and then uses that outrage to rile up his base. That’s his M.O.; he’s a wrestling “heel” turned politician.
But the heart of the intersectional left is higher education, and its power comes from the fact that teenagers see college as essential to a decent job*. Attacking that power source, right when it’s already reeling from the pandemic and from the loss of wealthy Chinese students (who actually pay the full tuition), is a much more substantive attack.
*The most politically-active students seem to be the ones who aren’t actually learning specific job skills. An engineering major teaches how to build things; a pharmacy major teaches how to affect the body with medicines; the grievance studies majors don’t promise a useful skill that I’m aware of (complaining doesn’t count).