"America’s radical break with tradition of valuing education"

[chrisrb]

[Excerpts]

One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education. And after World War II, public support, including the G.I. Bill and a huge expansion of public universities, helped large numbers of Americans to get college degrees.

But now ... a hard right turn against education, or at least against education that working Americans can afford.

... over the past 30 years, there has been a stunning disconnect between huge income gains at the top and the struggles of ordinary workers. You can make the case that the self-interest of America’s elite is best served by making sure that this disconnect continues, which means keeping taxes on high incomes low at all costs, never mind the consequences ...

And if underfunding public education leaves many children of the less affluent shut out from upward mobility, well, did you really believe that stuff about creating equality of opportunity?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/09/op...ngth.html?_r=1

[shadow1]

When I read an op-ed column, I like to learn something. I can put the politics aside and hope to be presented with a well written logical argument that teaches me something in the subject field. I am usually disappointed by Krugman's columns. It is sad that someone who won a Nobel prize doesn't bother to write well or is incapable of it. Krugman teaches me about straw man arguments, but does not teach me about economics.

A typical Krugman column talks about a problem that is well known, suggests that spending money will make it better and tells us how Republicans are scum. That is usually enough to get the NY Times readers to pile on about how Republicans are not only scum, but they are evil also.

Krugman wrote this column to take potshots at Romney. What is wrong with Romney's quote:
“Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And, hopefully, you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”

What Romney said is what I read over and over again in College Confidential. I have a daughter who is a senior in high school and that is the same conversation my wife and I had with her. Why shouldn't people who are spending real money for college consider the costs and the consequences of student loans in making a decision about which college to attend. Especially since there is little correlation in my experience between the cost of a particular college and the quality of the education you receive.

By the way, my daughter turned down admission to "prestigious colleges" with grants and will be attending the Honors College at a "lower tier" college in a place she wants to live that offers a major she'd like to try.

My wife and I are saving $20,000 a year and she will not be taking out any loans. I'm proud of her for considering cost and think she should be complimented, not pitied.

At a recent meeting we had at a "first tier college", there was discussion about the government forgiving student loan debt if Obama is elected to a second term.

Many families and students incur so much debt that it is difficult for them to pay it off after they graduate. I actually find it refreshing for a politician to suggest that they consider borrowing less money.

The other "evil" event that Krugman complains about is the closing of departments in engineering and computer science in certain colleges in Florida and Texas. Since we know that the New York Times will not give us the facts that underlie these closings, I would ask the CC readers to tell us the facts.

My knee jerk reaction is to oppose the closings of any STEM departments. However, those of us who don't have Nobel prizes in economics should recognize that the country is going broke. I suspect that if we look at the common data sets for the colleges in question, we will find that few students enroll in those departments and even fewer graduate. So the issue we might want to examine is whether there is a way to cut a college budget without eliminating departments. If you have to cut departments and majors, perhaps the discussion should be whether we should give priority to saving STEM and classic liberal arts majors.

[MiamiDAP]

Public support for k -12 simply does not work. The result: the highest cost per student and shamefully low level of education after graduation from ANY (including the best privates) HS in the USA, far below from reasonable average requirements of college. We can pour double of money currently spent with exactly the same reasults. Money is not the answer.....maybe we should learn from some underdeveloped countries that are way ahead in this area....

[emeraldkity4]

...maybe we should learn from some underdeveloped countries that are way ahead in this area....


Like attempting to educate the few instead of the many?

[JHS]

MiamiDAP, I think you have some facts wrong. I don't think you can demonstrate a "shamefully low level of education" after graduation from the "best privates", or the best publics for that matter. The average level of high school education in the U.S. is awful, but we do a perfectly good job of educating elites, who in turn populate a university system that is pretty darn good at the high end.

Also, which "underdeveloped countries" are way ahead in this area? And which countries, anywhere, with any degree of success, eschew public support for K-12? As many, many, many people have pointed out in recent years, the (developed) country that seems to produce the best results at the least cost, Finland, has 100% public funding starting before kindergarten, no private options, and very little by way of testing or enforced standards.

I certainly agree with you that more money is not necessarily the answer, but it is -- to use a technical term -- nuts to suggest that public funding of education does not work.

[starbright]

First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education

I love this guy generally but history of public education is not his forte. This patently false. Only Americans would think they started it. Oy.

[ucbalumnus]

Which engineering and CS departments are being closed? I remember reading that Texas wanted to end the physics major at schools that graduate too few (something like less than 5 per year) students in the major; this had potential impact at less selective state universities in Texas (not Austin or A&M).

It, however, understandable that such departments may have low student demand at less selective universities. A study at University of Oregon found that students who entered with SAT-M scores under 600 had very little chance of success majoring in math and physics. It would not be surprising if something similar applied to engineering and CS. But low student demand may make supporting a department a questionable action from a budget standpoint.

[kellybkk]

^^ I wish Krugman would take the time to do some decent research with respect to the impact of state/federal legislative mandates and teachers unions mandates and costs imposed on the schools. A simple look, within most districts, of students per administrator would show an increasing proportion of education $$ going to overhead (i.e., fewer and fewer students per administrator = high cost overhead). In our high school, for example, we pay for an administrator whose only job is to record community service hours from paperwork submitted by students. This person and the money to pay for him did not exist even 10 years ago. Ridiculous. The horror stories coming out of New York City about its inability to get rid of bad teachers are legend and no doubt repeated country-wide. The impact of a bad teacher reverberates for many, many years on many, many students. The unions won't hear of removing these teachers -- and that is why the rest of us, who live in the real world of pay for performance increasingly have no respect for the profession. Those costs, too, are passed on and are devastating.

[MiamiDAP]

emerald,
"Like attempting to educate the few instead of the many? "

-Like attempting to successfully prepare everybody for college, no matter if it is personal goal or not instead of NOT coming even close to this goal

[Lemaitre1]

"And it’s not just liberal-arts professors: among scientists, self-identified Democrats outnumber self-identified Republicans nine to one."

I found this statement to be particularly enlightening. Back in the sixties and seventies Liberal Arts professors and physical science professors tended to be divided with the latter tending to be overwhelmingly conservative and republican. What has changed?

The issue of teaching the Theory of Evolution focused on religious conservatives condemning the teaching that humans evolved from ape like animals and the attacks were confined to Anthropology professors. However, now in America, creation activists who insist on a literal interpretation of the bible are predominant. They believe that the Universe is only 6000 years old and that 4000 years ago there was a global flood that accounts for all the facts of Geology. They claim that the Earth was created before the Sun and the stars. They insist we can see galaxies billions of light years away because the speed of light was faster in the past and it did not take billions of years to get here. They are not just attacking Anthropology now but all Science, particularly Geology, Astronomy, Physics and Chemistry as enablers of the "pagan" religion of Evolution. When the Republican party rolled out the welcome mat for these young Earth creationists (YECs) they alienated the physical scientists who once supported the Republicans.

Climate Change is another issue were Republicans are calling the work of most Physicists, Geologists, Meteorologists and Mathematicians fraudulent and an evil conspiracy. It is not surprising that professors in these fields are abandoning the Republican Party.

[NewHope33]

"The other "evil" event that Krugman complains about is the closing of departments in engineering and computer science in certain colleges in Florida and Texas."

Close them all. We can get all the STEM types we need cheaper with H1B Visas. Locally educated science and math types? Just a high-cost drain on our society.

--------------------------------------------------------
See how easy it is to demagogue a group or topic? I decided several years ago that if Krugman had something USEFUL to say then he should just say it. His habit of conjuring strawmen isn't helping. The world has an unlimited variety of problems. Smart guys are supposed to help with SOLUTIONS.

[counsel]

It's doubtful that "valuing education" has been an American value since at least the last 30 years or so. The merit or value of an education should be to broaden one's mind and enable one to analyze and critique an issue in a rational way. One look at our political dialogue amongst the "best and brightest" shows that bombast, misrepresentation and posturing trumps well-reasoned argument, particularly since the Reagan years. As a society, almost everything is "for sale" and the profits go to those who can skillfully deliver persuasive talking points. The reasoned merits of an argument are less important than the timing and emotionally charged arguments that carry the day for the profiteers. The march to war in Iraq is a good example of that.

Americans treat teachers more poorly than almost any country in the world-by way of pay, reputation and classroom autonomy/control. As a society we discourage good minds from the teaching profession by ridiculing their work and underpaying them. In fact, many degreed Americans I have met resent teachers-I often hear the " they think they know everything" syndrome.

Having taught in Asian schools for 6 years and American schools for 6 years I am intimately familiar with the differences between the respective educational approaches. How many Americans even know what the concept of a "Home Eduation" is ? In my experience, very few. The notion of combining a home education with a school education to expand and supplement the educational process is a concept foreign to most Americans. We are losing to the rest of the world because, as a society, we are not sufficiently engaged with our children to direct their future and, because as a society, we look primarily to their future economic profitability as a measure of their success.

If America is to regain its place in the world, we need more Krugmans and more respect for education, more respect for educators and more respect for what is truthful and right rather than for what is profitable or politically advantageous.

[bluebayou]

Americans treat teachers more poorly than almost any country in the world-by way of pay...

Source, please?

In my district, we have plenty of teachers earning six figures. Starting pay is mid-$40's. The median income in the US is ~$50k. Thus, the question is how many countries start their teachers a notch below the national income, and have a pay scale that easily reaches 2x the national income?

[xiggi]

One way in which Americans have always been exceptional has been in our support for education. First we took the lead in universal primary education; then the “high school movement” made us the first nation to embrace widespread secondary education. And after World War II, public support, including the G.I. Bill and a huge expansion of public universities, helped large numbers of Americans to get college degrees.

But now one of our two major political parties has taken a hard right turn against education, or at least against education that working Americans can afford.

How can a remarkably intelligent person be so wrong when allowing his political bias to overshadow his intellect. I cut the quotation exactly where Krugman started to be the typical idiot who shows up on Sunday's talk shows.

For what it is worth, Americans have not always been exceptional in their support of education. In fact, they have been exceptionally poor when considering the resources the country has had at its disposal for most of its existence.

Another reality is that the political forces have all but decimated what COULD have been the envy of the world by abdicating the entire public system to a corrupt, inefficient, and inept leadership. In the past six or seven decades, we have simply responded to the need of the service providers as opposed to attend to the needs of the recipients.

Given the resources deployed to educate our youth, the current results are nothing short of disastrous. We spent like Luxemburg and settle for results that might make Turkey or Morocco sound the alarm bell. Of course, we have plenty of apologist that could explain why we are not THAT bad or, as it is often the case, revert to the usual denial. Decades ago, we were warned to were about to become a "Nation at risk" and we simply made the dire predictions truer than ever. Our system is a study in failure, racial and economic discrimation, and shows no signs of improving. Just as the unions that have been the major artisans of the debacle, the system is rotten at the core.

Obviously, political mercenaries such as Krugman, believes that more of the same would be a panacea. A message that is aiming at satisfying the ever-so important political organizations that are masquerading as trade unions.

As far as Krugman's attacks on issues of faith in the context of education is laughable. It is simply an excuse to attack. Could Krugman muster an unbiased opinion, he would realize that the record of faith-based institutions in education is remarkable; a success that can be attributed largerly to the strong belief in education of their constituency. The same constituency that make collosal efforts to send their children to a private (often catholic school) despite already paying their dues to the public system. Who is it who believes in education, Mrl. Krugman? Contrary to what zealots and ideologist advance, faith is not incompatible with education; inefficiency and corruption are.

And, as an occasional academic, it is obvious why Krugman would note that "And it’s not just liberal-arts professors: among scientists, self-identified Democrats outnumber self-identified Republicans nine to one." The same exact people who believe in a world where expenses are magically met by the largesse of a government and "Other People Money," a world without much accountability and regard to the ... people who do pay the final bills. There is indeed a crisis in the funding of higher education, but it has been created by those good academicians who have lived in a ivory tower world filled with benefits, tenure, sabbatical, and every way to make their entire career a sinecure.

Our problem is that we waited too long to realize that we simply cannot afford the cost of such a system of education. Krugman believes we can as long as the generations to come will continue to defer the bill in perpetuity.

[xiggi]

As many, many, many people have pointed out in recent years, the (developed) country that seems to produce the best results at the least cost, Finland, has 100% public funding starting before kindergarten, no private options, and very little by way of testing or enforced standards.

While many, many, many people might have discussed the results of Finland, I am afraid that there is a lot more than the elements you selected. The mention of 100 percent public funding and lack of private options represent a particularly misleading conclusion. Fwiw, most countries consider that all of its education system is public; they simply do not believe that government-ran schools should be the only service providers. Private schools are part of the public system of education.

Sources that discuss this are not hard to find.

PS Here's a hint: teachers. And another one: teachers' education and training.