Showing posts with label education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label education. Show all posts

Saturday, February 27, 2021

What Stops School Choice?

We should fund students instead of systems.

That is the ubiquitous and powerful tagline from Corey DeAngelis and the larger pro-school-choice movement. I wholeheartedly agree with it. 

I also strongly agree that the pandemic was a very fortuitous turning point in the long struggle to improve educational opportunities for all and especially underprivileged students. As one of my Big Five low-hanging fruits of public policy, this is an exciting development. Yet we are still a long way from here to there. 

Understanding what stops or prevents immediate realization of the eventual winning idea, that parents should be free to send their children to the schools of their choice, should help us understand what it will take to get there eventually and hopefully sooner and sooner. 

Here is my rough approximation of the obstacles including how much they account for the prevention:
  • FOOL & FOOM*  --  20%
  • Local Xenophobia  --  20%
  • Incumbent Interest Protecting Turf   --  60%
The first one is a shared concern of both progressives and conservatives. The second tends to be more the domain of conservatives--I'm thinking specifically of suburbanites. The last is much more in the domain of progressives. 

*Remember that FOOL (HT: Arnold Kling) and FOOM are Fear Of Others' Liberty and Fear Of Others' Mistakes. These are the only defensible position for the three causes I identify, and only on the surface are they defensible. IF we cannot trust others (other parents, etc.) to make good choices for their children's educational needs, then perhaps this is a justified obstacle. 

But if we cannot trust them for that, what can we trust them for? Feeding and sheltering those same children? Voting for the politicians that will run the school system that is instituted and operated by a government we can trust to do right by those parents and their kids? 

There is an awkward tension between placing blame upon parents for underperformance (disgraceful performance usually) of government schools while at the same time lacking trust that those same parents could or would possibly make good choices for the children in those government schools. Taking it one-step further, those who believe that the problems of government schools lie at home outside of the schools (e.g., lack of a stable home life, help with homework, etc.) should not advocate for greater and greater resources for the schools since they claim the problem isn't in the schools. If they are right, let's put those extra resources into improving things at the point of the problem.

Circling back to advancement of the school-choice cause during the past 12 months, I feel like progress is being made against all three areas of prevention. We can cure FOOL & FOOM by attacking them head on appealing to real-world examples and analogies along with asking those holding the concerns to put themselves in the shoes of those they are concerned with.

Local xenophobia takes a long time to cure. Appeals to morality only go so far. People have a natural, animalistic-like protection instinct for their children. The hypothetical Other disrupting the fragile world of one's child is a salient fear. Experience with counter cases is the best medicine, and it is a slow process.

Fighting incumbent power is like bankruptcy. It comes on slowly and then suddenly. I would like to think we are entering the sudden stage for many communities. Check out Corey's twitter feed for hope in this regard. As more successful examples emerge of funding the kid with a backpack rather than the building with the career administrators, it will be more difficult for the incumbent resistance to hold.




Tuesday, June 23, 2020

The Future of Education Post COVID-19

Tyler Cowen pointed to this “debate”, which I was a bit disappointed in for being too much an untethered discussion. Tyler’s portion I found more meaningful, but still it didn’t do much to advance my thinking.

Since they didn’t really have an objective topic, I guess I shouldn’t be too critical. But I find that a lot of the recent thinking on how things will change in the age of COVID-19 to be like this—not very deep, a combination of wish list and fear. My own view is an attempt at nuance between "most things will change very little" (we will snap back to prior norms) and "this epoch event has accelerated by multiple years that which was already underway" (e.g., teleworking just leapt forward at least 5 years along the prior trendline). To be clear I think holding both views is the best prediction--that is the nuance. Not a lot will change, but that which was already changing has been accelerated. 

Here are some of my thoughts regarding changes in education (both what was already happening and how they have accelerated) as well as the obstacles faced (incumbents and traditionalists don’t go down without a fight).

Elementary and High School

  • The major role of babysitting that school plays for many families has been shown to be replaceable. Schools aren’t as essential as previously imagined.
  • While the pandemic-induced schooling-from-home experience was miserable for most of us forced into it, schooling from home was already widely assumed to be awful. Now many are probably seeing arrangements other than traditional school as decent substitutes.
  • Much of what kids do in elementary school has little to no benefit for them. This is likely much more widely realized or at least considered as parents got a more up-close look at their kids “learning”.
  • For the kids trapped in poor schools, online and other arrangements now look like realistic improvements.
  • Teachers and schools that cannot provide good online options and flexibility have been considerably exposed.
  • For students old enough to not need babysitting and for those capable of learning outside of the regimented classroom (perhaps a large majority of students are in this latter category), questioning the necessity of a 7 to 8-hour daily routine is rising.
  • Unions and bureaucracies will be as formidable obstacles to change. However, they have a conundrum: teachers, administrators, and parents are afraid of the risk of infection. All of this pushes for alternative options to be explored, which drive experimentation toward alternatives that threaten the existing power structure.
  • Status quo bias/inertia are also obstacles. People tend to be very traditional when it comes to choices for their children. It is hard for them to wrap their heads around questioning the conventional wisdom narrative of school as we know it--especially government school.
Higher Education

For higher education I think we should solve for the equilibrium and use a typical university, the University of Oklahoma, as an example.

  • Although non-profits are insulated from market forces, they are still subject to the strength of the underlying economy on which they draw resources as well as the philosophical support of those in power. For universities those in power includes donors, alumni, legislators, employers of graduates, purchasers of research, and the public zeitgeist. So where are these headed? Saying that expectations will be to do more with less is a considerable understatement. Donor money and state funding will be much lower for a long time. However, desires/demands of universities will continue with smaller changes in overall goals. We will continue to virtue-signal about college-education being great hope for the future. So….
  • How does OU do more with less? By outsourcing what is not in their core competency. Why would we have students show up in a gigantic auditorium to watch a professor repeat a lecture he has given every semester for a decade plus? What is the value in having everyone in that room squinting at the board from the back rows and trying to avoid the inherent, multiple distractions? Can’t that be done online without the risk of infection? And once you realize that it can, it is just one more step to realize not each and every university need duplicate the tasks. Rather have grad students available to perform office hours and optional workshops. What is the point in offering the ~100th best programs in this, that, and the other? Partner with other universities for those services especially the undergrad basics. Specialize in only that where there is comparative advantage. For OU that might be areas like petroleum engineering, social networking, and football.
  • Social networking? Yes, with one of the biggest/best Greek life systems in all of higher ed, OU is among those that offer this feature. Even if the benefit is only perceived rather than real, perception matters to consumers. Drinking Gatorade doesn’t make you a better athlete.
  • And football? Yes, the football team is a source of revenue and marketing for the university. OU is great at it. And OU is in a much better position than most now that paying football players for their value contribution is rightfully (finally) trending to be the reality.
  • Thinking more of the general case, these trends lead to barbell effects: niche schools (elite quality where average is very much over) and enormous diploma-producing machines (economies of scale). While this is probably a trend within the realms of both undergraduate and advanced degree programs, it is more so a trend between these levels because . . .
  • The line between high school and undergraduate college will blur greatly while the line between undergraduate and graduate work will likely sharpen. This latter division will resemble the distinction that once existed between high school and major university such that grad school becomes the new, true higher education. 
  • Universities need to maintain their status (true in either the human capital model or the signaling model). To do so will require some exclusivity, which I think comes mostly at the entrance process to grad school--getting accepted to graduate programs becomes much more difficult. 
  • What happens to research? More rent-a-lab, rent-a-brain with corporate interests outsourcing to universities more than ever and universities renting away these resources. 
  • Obstacles? The same forces as above are at work against change here, and they are probably more powerful. But the stakes are higher and the willingness to experiment is probably higher too.
  • The major universities aren't going away, but they may be transforming so much that what emerges over the next ten years is vastly different from what we've known for so long. Imagine "going to" a major university, but not directly taking but a few classes there until upper-division-level work.
P.S., John Cochrane had two great posts recently on this topic (here and here).

Wednesday, January 22, 2020

A Radical Idea

I'm going to propose something that is completely crazy. . . Hear me out on this.

I think we should get the government completely out of the manufacturing and distribution of automobiles. We should fully and completely privatize autos.

I know, I know, this sounds crazy. But I truly think that the free market can best provide automobiles for people.

Oh, I hear your complaint, "But Steve, you're crazy. Many people cannot afford cars." As hard as might be to conceive, I believe the free market could do a much, much better job. I also think that we should give people the trust and respect and dignity by expecting that they can actually make the best choices for themselves and their families. 

It is my firm conviction that if we completely got the government out of the business of making and allocating cars, say over a five-year period, that we would get cars at a third the price if not better. After accounting for quality improvements and specialization of needs met, we might see prices effectively a tenth of what they are today.

Imagine a world where cars are not one size fits all. Imagine that we have various sized trucks and sport utility vehicles. Imagine we have sports cars and family cars; we have cars that are small and highly fuel-efficient. All this would be possible if we would let the free market help people figure out what is best for them. 

And yes I hear the objection: some people simply would not be able or be willing to get themselves an automobile. I hear the concern that some people won't make great choices in this regard. For those people we can come up with other solutions. But there is no reason to totally sacrifice all of our well-being just to try to address the very nuanced and isolated problems of particular cases.

For those people that simply can't or won't provide for their own automobile needs, we can provide a bus service; we can provide funds for taxi and ridesharing; we can help organize carpools.  We see the free market work so splendidly in so many other regards. We don't question its ability to provide for our needs in so many countless ways.

Just imagine if you will some alternate universe where we had a public school system. Imagine in this crazy world we decided that because some people won't make the best choices for their children and some people very truly cannot on their own come up with the resources to get their children's educational needs met, that we force everyone to pay for a government-run, public school system. Imagine how inefficient that would be. Imagine how large the cracks would be in that one-size-fits-all world.

Even if we allowed private school alternatives, we would still be mightily restraining the free market by forcing resources into this public school system. It would also be subject to powerful political influences that would shape the school in ways that were at best suboptimal and at worst abject failure. It is easy for us to see how having the government run education would not in any way address the needs of the most needy. It is easy to conceive of how there would be very large disparities in education between the Haves and the Have Nots that couldn't be rectified and corrected because the market process would be thwarted.

All I ask is that you think about this clearly and realize the same is true of automobiles.

P.S., Thanks to Don Boudreaux and Bryan Caplan for the inspiration.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Disease Diagnosis - 2019 New Year's Resolution fulfillment

With the unintentional help of Alex Tabarrok and Eric Helland, I fulfilled my annual New Year's Resolution to change my mind on something. Specifically, I changed my mind:
That the runaway cost increases in higher education over the past several decades were simply due to third-party funding (spending other-people's money by the education-industrial complex (Big Chalkboard)). It turns out there is a much more elegant, though less tribally satisfying, answer: the Baumol Effect (aka, Cost Disease).
If relative productivity doesn't rise in a sector for which demand is rising, prices in that sector must rise relative to the sectors for which productivity is rising. This elegant explanation applies to health spending as well. Here is Tabarrok on the prototypical example:
The Baumol effect is easy to explain but difficult to grasp. In 1826, when Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 was first played, it took four people 40 minutes to produce a performance. In 2010, it still took four people 40 minutes to produce a performance. Stated differently, in the nearly 200 years between 1826 and 2010, there was no growth in string quartet labor productivity. In 1826 it took 2.66 labor hours to produce one unit of output, and it took 2.66 labor hours to produce one unit of output in 2010.
Fortunately, most other sectors of the economy have experienced substantial growth in labor productivity since 1826. We can measure growth in labor productivity in the economy as a whole by looking at the growth in real wages. In 1826 the average hourly wage for a production worker was $1.14. In 2010 the average hourly wage for a production worker was $26.44, approximately 23 times higher in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. Growth in average labor productivity has a surprising implication: it makes the output of slow productivity-growth sectors (relatively) more expensive. In 1826, the average wage of $1.14 meant that the 2.66 hours needed to produce a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 had an opportunity cost of just $3.02. At a wage of $26.44, the 2.66 hours of labor in music production had an opportunity cost of $70.33. Thus, in 2010 it was 23 times (70.33/3.02) more expensive to produce a performance of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 than in 1826. In other words, one had to give up more other goods and services to produce a music performance in 2010 than one did in 1826. Why? Simply because in 2010, society was better at producing other goods and services than in 1826.
The 23 times increase in the relative price of the string quartet is the driving force of Baumol’s cost disease. The focus on relative prices tells us that the cost disease is misnamed. The cost disease is not a disease but a blessing. To be sure, it would be better if productivity increased in all industries, but that is just to say that more is better. There is nothing negative about productivity growth, even if it is unbalanced.
And this has very interesting implications. Tabarrok again:
  • The Baumol effect predicts that more spending will be accompanied by no increase in quality.
  • The Baumol effect predicts that the increase in the relative price of the low productivity sector will be fastest when the economy is booming. i.e. the cost “disease” will be at its worst when the economy is most healthy!
  • The Baumol effect cleanly resolves the mystery of higher prices accompanied by higher quantity demanded.
Note that this does not change my view that we have inappropriately encouraged too many people to go to college and we have pushed and pulled too many resources into that chasm. Other-people's money and wishful thinking are still in play (as this discussion with Bryan Caplan indicates). But it seems they are only contributing and potentially secondary factors.

See here for lots of brief blog posts. See here, here, and here for very good podcasts on the study.

Saturday, March 23, 2019

The Big Five - Choose Your Battles Wisely

Here is the low-hanging fruit of public policy. 90% solutions (improvements) on these issues are several orders of magnitude more important than 99% solutions on a thousand others. They are in no particular order (alphabetical):
  • Drug Prohibition (end it--allow adults to make their own choices)
  • Education (privatize it--give the government an ever-smaller role)
  • Immigration (open it up--allow people to freely move and freely interact with other people)
  • Taxation (simplify and redirect it--efficiently tax the use of resources not the creation of resources)
  • War (move away from it--make postures less bellicose and violence less of an option). 
Everything else at this point is details. They are interesting details, yes. For example, the recent interesting, generally important, but marginally insignificant issue of the legality of blackmail. [note: I side with Robin Hanson, but I am sympathetic to and willing to live with the counter case.]

How should you vote? I would suggest an equal weighting of these Big Five policy stances as the guiding framework. While this recommendation is a prescription to be a few/select-issue voter, that should be considered a feature not a bug. Similarly straight-party voting isn't necessarily morally or intellectually inferior to a strategy of "voting the person not the party". By what criteria is a candidate-by-candidate voter deciding? Why should they believe they are properly weighting the issues, correctly identifying the stance on the issues, and accurately evaluating each candidate's position and expected actions on the issues? Using a few benchmark issues as the litmus test keeps the focus properly on that which meaningfully matters and gives the best hope the rationally ignorant voter is making a good decision.

More importantly, how should you advocate (much more bang for the buck)? Let's say solutions are just as simple as awareness (I know it is not, but it is a useful analogy). Spend about 95% one's advocacy efforts roughly evenly on the Big Five: ending the drug war, privatizing education, opening immigration, reforming taxation, and reducing war. The remaining 5% goes for everything else. My own behavior has not adhered to this framework, but since I am just now formally defining this, I grant myself pardon. Will I follow this going forward? All I can do is try.

Saturday, January 19, 2019

'Oh, you left out a bunch of stuff' - 2018 New Year's Resolution fulfillment post

What better time to wake up from my no-blogging slumber than with the annual fulfillment of my perpetual New Year's resolution?

I used to strongly believe that “real-world” experience as a substitute for learning through formal study was over rated. There are two significant ways I have changed my mind. I now believe:

  1. Most learning done in school is learning in name alone. For the vast majority of people very little is truly understood and retained much less applied in life.
  2. Because of biases, failure to update/challenge conventional wisdom, poor feedback loops, and long cycles for knowledge updating, there is a chasm between the received wisdom and truth--what we could/should know but basically do not.

Bryan Caplan’s work as summarized in his book brought me around. This one has some irony. I probably shouldn’t be surprised that an esoteric, theoretical academic would be the one to set me free since my bias was built upon a disdain and rejection of those who (I still believe) unduly criticize and dismiss book/school learning and “theory”. I still highly value idealistic university education (at least in theory). I just now understand that experience in the world has much, much more value and applicability than I used to give it credit.

And it is not just that getting one's hands dirty learning by doing should be on equal footing. For most (see point #1 above) it is by far the primary way one should gain knowledge and wisdom and skills.

This change in view was for me a long time developing. As I remember it, the first major salvo came from Charles Murray when I read this piece. Caplan just pushed me from agnostic to full-blown evangelist.

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Highly Linkable - Pure Economics Edition

We continue catching up on links with three on economics. Every one of these contains a large degree of counter-conventional wisdom. Something for which I am a sucker.

First is John Cochrane being interviewed by Russ Roberts on Economic Growth and Changing the Policy Debate. I very much like the way Cochrane's perspective and approach to this topic is hopeful, straightforward, and wise.

And I could say the same about George Selgin's strong rebuttal to the conventional wisdom that the fed has been holding down interest rates.

Mike Munger challenges the assumptions many might make about how a free-market thinker would approach an issue of business interest versus a group that technically doesn't own an interest--I say "technically" and probably should say "by being robbed".

Wednesday, February 3, 2016

Highly Linkable

Let's begin with a few on immigration (I've been saving these; hence, the late dates on some):
Alex Tabarrok made the case for completely open borders in The Atlantic.
Bryan Caplan continues to fight the good fight. Here are some points he didn't have an opportunity to make at a workshop but did get to share with us, fortunately. And don't miss his speech at the Open Borders Meetup. 
Found this advice on idling cars in the cold helpful and attractively counterintuitive.

Let me take a moment to sing the praises of Comedy Central's "Drunk History". If you haven't watched it yet, start now before finishing this sentence . . . too late. I can think of three ways it is awesome:

  1. It is a better way to learn history than traditional approaches because you remember and enjoy it; therefore, you stick with it longer. In that sense learning is a lot like exercise--the best method is the one you will stick with and the one that will stick with you. 
  2. It tells stories that our traditional, state-driven history instruction won't tell. 
  3. While it is uproariously hilarious to listen to the various drunk narrators describing history, it is also a pretty insightful take on history in a meta sense. Namely, history is vague and uncertain. We should be careful not to be too confident that we've got it figured out precisely.
Tyler Cowen's interview with Chris Asness is extremely rewarding. A few of the money quotes:
"There’s no investment process so good that there’s not a fee high enough that can’t make it bad."
"High frequency trading [which he doesn't engage in] has made the world more just and fair, particularly for small investors."
"This is not Lake Wobegon. We can’t all beat the index. It’s actually a precise mathematical identity."
On superheros: "Even the most insane billionaire cannot afford a hundredth of what frigging Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne have. It’s infuriating. ... I’ve done well. I’m not the most insane out there. But if I wanted to go build a Batcave at my house, it would take approximately 600 times my wealth, and everyone would know about it."
Speaking of rewarding, George Will always delivers as he does here on Michael Bloomberg's potential entry into the presidential election.

And lastly, Scott Sumner on economists who lack an imagination. (I agree in all four cases, and there is no contradiction between that and my other strongly held views.)

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Highly Linkable - economics, et al. edition

The eagle has landed--at Jardins du Trocadéro?

We want to believe, Charles Murray included, that we can raise our children's IQ, but the case against it keeps growing.

BI has 9 more math facts people have a hard time accepting.

Speaking of mathematics, Steven Landsburg has two wonderful passages on the recent passing of math colossus Alexander Grothendieck (read here then here).

Speaking of passings, economics giant Gordon Tullock died earlier this month. Tyler Cowen had a nice, short tribute. Perhaps more than anyone, Tullock taught us that the correct comparison to market failure is government failure.

Leaving the somber topics, here is some good news. Be sure to check out the "Browse Data" tab at the top.

In more good news, the health/wealth benefits of self-driving cars have enormous promise. Not to be a Debbie Downer, but here is a predicted summary headline of the near future (the second sentence is the scary one) :
Family of four dies in fiery crash as self driving car refused to recognize and decelerate as it quickly approached a crowded intersection. Regulators question technology that saves over 30,000 lives per year. 
Continuing on a theme of counter-intuitive thinking (from one of my favorite counter-intuitive thinkers), the workers of Amazon (commendably) want foremen who push them hard.

I agree with Noah Smith that we need to rethink how economics is taught to MBAs (and so many others).

We could start with this simple, true, and so often misunderstood economic lesson from Scott Sumner.

This one on antidepressants is long, but interesting and thought provoking. (HT: Bryan Caplan)

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Highly linkable - on high-minded steriods

I want to go to there. And while we're at it, here too.

So let's talk about misled people doing selfish things. But perhaps it is not as bad as it seems.

Here is a different example of the same kind of high-minded nonsense as above. I particularly like the quote: "It’s time for the altruists to get over themselves. We cannot afford the price of their convictions."

The high-minded Fed controls interest rates, right? Wrong.

Just how bad are the effects of rent control--one of many forms of high-minded real estate planning? Maybe to the tune of about $1 billion dollars on a $3 billion neighborhood. Dr. Evil would be proud.

Lenin was a prohibitionist!?! Shocking . . . well, no; that makes sense. He was high-minded enough to want to help every aspect of Russian life.

Speaking of turn of the 20th century garbage, apparently my Spidey Sense was correct when it picked up on something rotten in Downton. The George Will piece quoted in the previous link deserves its own link. Still a good show; let's just not romanticize how hard life was for most everyone in prior generations.

Enough negative stuff, for the moment. Let's think about a cool new business idea. While we're at it, let's think about how fabulously wealthy cool new business ideas continue to make us.

Okay, moment's over. You know, college football isn't a business; hey, stop laughing! Like all NCAA sports, it is about pure amateurism.

Sticking with sports, I think I am being consistent when I believe both (1) that Oklahoma State's Marcus Smart was potentially justified in pushing a Texas Tech fan (if the fan had been injured and I was on a jury, I would be giving heavy consideration to a self-defense argument in favor of Smart) and (2) people in public (state-owned) spaces or attending official-state-functions have wide latitude to say nearly whatever they want in the act of cheering. The First Amendment doesn't have a carve-out exemption for your or my high-minded respectfulness or proper etiquette. You don't like cussing, hatefulness, and otherwise ugly slurs coming from the crowd? Quit funding sports arenas and sports teams with taxpayer money.

When it comes to sports and high-mindedness, you don't get any higher than the Olympics. And you'd have to be high not to see through the veil of virtue and right into the corruption, state run-amok wastefulness, and panglossian denial of oppression that is the Olympic gathering. I very much like the stories of so many of the athletes. I like the history of competition. I detest the desire to pretend there hasn't been and doesn't continue to be intense nationalism (an illogical and evil conception) at the heart of The Games. Don't get me wrong. I root for Team USA, but I also root for others. These sports aren't my sports, and some aren't even sports. These are interesting curiosities that viewing for just a few moments will satisfy my interest for four years at least. But if you're really into it, great! Just don't tell me we are obligated to root for our country. And don't tell me it is "us" versus "them". And PUH-LEASE don't tell me how great The Olympics are for world peace, the economy, or NBC ratings.

Saving the best for last, Megan McArdle busts the high-minded bubble of paint-by-numbers educational excellence cum success. "Let your kids fail!" is perhaps the best advice one can give a parent.