From the Brookings Institution.
The full report can be downloaded here:
The author made no logical sense. The main thesis is that “education costs have soared…but learning has stagnated.” In other words, the lack of productivity is about much inputs (high education costs) yielding too little outputs (low learning). Note that the author here is talking about causality. But if you read his blog or the report carefully, he actually picked and chose his talking points with no logical sense. When he wants to criticize high education costs, he talked about college education costs. When he wants to criticize poor learning, he talked about k-12 education outcomes. How could it be possible any logical causality exists from high college education costs (later in the time line) to k-12 education outcomes (earlier in the time line)? Give me a break.
A possible legit argument/hypothesis would be more like something as follows: (hypothetically) high college education costs in STEM yields little tech innovations, as a result, GDP suffered over the past 20-30 years.
I agree - k-12 achievement should be related to k-12 spending, not college tuition.
Reputable economic research into college economic productivity looks at budget per full-time student measures rather than tuition price tags. The amount actually spent varies from the sticker price due to financial aid and endowments and so on.
Turns out that American colleges are a lot like the rest of our society. We lavish resources on a few elite schools, and there are a great number of lesser schools with a much lower level of resources. Surprisingly, the schools are equivalently productive for their level of economic resources available.
http://users.nber.org/feldstein_lecture_2016/feldsteinlecture_2016.html
I assume our spending on K-12 education is similarly skewed with some lucky few students getting much more than others, though I have no source to cite for that.
the issue with college is that more and more basket weaving majors are available (which is fine) but when you have a smaller % chance of paying off the loans with those majors because being a “barista” is not a career it is an issue. overall .I think colleges have hit a low point with silliness but…I am sure the STEM’s have remained relativity untouched by the weirdness.
Ya know, I’ve never actually heard of basket weaving as a major. Would someone like to point me to a college that offers that?
Also, there’s at least one prolific poster on here whose daughter worked as a batista for a bit before landing a dream career job. So can we stop with the denigrating?
Also, STEM is not a golden ticket and many grads do not find work related to their majors.
http://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2014/cb14-130.html
“the issue with college is that more and more basket weaving majors are available” – source?
Some folks believe education is its own reward, with value not well measured in a momentary snapshot.
Bio majors- not great employment prospects. Chem with no grad school- not great employment prospects. Math majors with an eye towards getting teaching certification- only good in regions which have a chronic shortage of math teachers (i have a sibling who teaches math in part of the country without a shortage- so math teachers face the same ups and downs as every other elementary ed teachers).
Don’t you guys ever get out of your own heads?
Don’t you remember the tech crash of 2001 when thousands of CS employees got downsized and there was nowhere to go? Don’t you remember the aerospace crash in the mid 1990’s when tens of thousands of engineers lost their jobs and there was nowhere to go? Aren’t any of you living through the oil crash of 2015/2016 when the top energy companies have cut back their hiring of petroleum engineers (which these kids were all told was a rock solid major) to almost nothing?
I’m fine with that as long as those students or their families are paying for it themselves. What bothers me is when students choose a major with poor financial prospects and then heavily depend upon subsidized student loans to pay for them.
Kudos to prof2dad (above).
I would add to the discussion in this thread that there are both “diploma effects” and “education or skills effects” on career opportunities. Sometimes one needs a diploma, perhaps with a major in a particular field, to qualify for a posted job. No such diploma==>ineligible. Sometimes one needs to have a proper education or skill set to qualify for a job or to advance in that job or career. That education and skill set may well include learning outside of school, including self-teaching, learning-on-the-job, or other relevant skills and experience (e.g., foreign language, international travel).
I know that when my son graduated from college with a degree in economics and interviewed at a major consulting firm his multi-hour interview included questions about his hobbies and broader interests as well as his EC’s in HIGH SCHOOL. Q. “What does being a high school debater do for you or for us?” A. “In debate we read an enormous amount of material from books, professional journals, news reports and other sources. I can read a complex academic research paper and write a summary of it in 30 minutes. And it will be very accurate.”
A person who is intellectually curious, has important technical, speaking, and writing skills, and is a hard worker has a leg up over people who just have good grades and completed the required courses.
Other societies do this in a somewhat different form.
While they may provide far less inequitable funding for colleges and allow for free/low tuition, there’s also the fact colleges are much more selective not only in terms of admissions, but also through much more aggressive tracking so only the top quarter to half of the society’s students are eligible to even compete for college admissions.
Everyone else is placed onto various vocational/apprenticeship tracks or expected to start working…sometimes as early as the end of middle school.
This factor is one reason it irks me that so many American posters ignorantly assume free college == open admissions as that’s far from the case with nearly every system I’ve known of which offers free/extremely nominal cost college tuition.
In fact, my impression is open admissions has only been practiced in the US and by Mainland China during the 10-year long Cultural Revolution. Everyone else including other Com bloc countries made university/college admissions exceedingly selective through highly selective admissions and aggressive K-12 tracking so only the academically top portion of their classes are even in the college applicant pool.
One illustration of this…how several Russian/Eastern European friends who were only qualified for higher vocational tracks* which would have lead them to career/educational paths considered lower than the academic university track in their societies of origin ended up excelling in and graduating from top 50 or better US colleges with flying colors mostly in STEM or STEM/non-STEM double majors.
- This includes highly competitive STEM-centered high schools meant to prepare students to enter and graduate from the Soviet/Russian armed forces equivalent of the Federal Service Academies. And unlike the FSAs here which are regarded as university level institutions, many other armed forces military academies tend to be regarded more akin to higher vocational schools, not equivalent to universities.
I agree there’s a logical fallacy here, but I think the author could have made the productivity argument just about k-12 education. Real per pupil k-12 spending has gone up quite a lot over the past 30 years. The productivity of the marginal spending seems low when measuring changes in 12th grade NAEP outcomes.
Real spending per pupil K-12 has gone up but NOT for classroom instruction of mainstream learners. You’ve got kids who are in regular elementary school classrooms who weren’t getting an education at all due to their learning needs, physical disabilities, inability to attend a regular school program.
You can’t look at “per pupil” without looking at the high costs of mainstreaming, providing special services, vans and para’s, one-on-one aides, OT/Speech as “pull outs” during the day and not done at the parent’s expense privately, etc. My own school district spends more on lawsuits over accomodations than on many aspects of the actual curriculum. Overall spending on instruction is flat even though the budgets are going through the roof. Plus paying the costs for kids who live in district but are going to private school when their needs cannot be met locally.
Not a major, but a course:
That sounds like a really cool course. I’ve more than once been in awe of hand-crafted baskets, just how beautiful and complicated they can be.
“My own school district spends more on lawsuits over accomodations than on many aspects of the actual curriculum.”
We have a local attorney who has become a multi-millionaire by suing only the school system. He has no other cases.
Tutu- like I said- costs and budgets for K-12 education may be going up, but it’s not because the districts are spending more on instruction.
No other clients? Reminds me of the lawyers who got rich working out settlements with the Catholic Church…
This is getting far afield from the original topic, but…
It’s actually pretty common for lawyers to specialize in one aspect of the law. (Real estate, wills/probate, liability, etc.) A lawyer who specializes in education law will be suing school districts just based on the choice of specialty.
Sadly, IDEA is a terribly underfunded mandate. The law says disabled students will get a free and appropriate public education, but when school budgets say otherwise it often winds up in the courts, which helps no one (except the lawyers).
@hebegebe, the amount of subsidized student loans that you can get as an undergrad is pretty limited (grad school is a different story).
I think Australia has different uni loan rates or forgiveness terms for different majors.
@zobroward: Go look at your local public flagship and tell me what percentage of the student body are in “practical” majors and what percentage are not.