Dear Log,
«It is not immediately clear that distributing more graduation diplomas will make us rich, any more than telling the Royal Mint to print more ã10 notes would. According to Hesa (the Higher Education Statistics Agency) 57% of Greek 20-year-olds are at university and only 10% of Danish. Which is the wealthier country? You don't need a Greek degree in economics to answer that.»Richness aside, does sending people to college make them smarter? Does it make them more educated and informed instead of merely more schooled?
In my times of moderate cynicism, I sometimes think that most of the problems in US schools are because of US society's strange non-educational current expectations of them -- things like "everyone who's not actually retarded should be able to get a high-school diploma", "if you didn't go to college, you clearly aren't that bright", and "vocational education is for dumb people", to say nothing of the weird ideas about how high-school's highest mission is preparing people for college (which these days means cramming them with as many of those fetid AP classes as possible) -- instead of, say, making them well-rounded and capable people.
The problem of education-related productivity (and I'm sticking to that -- almost against my will -- to avoid having to try to quantify education-related intelligence) is that it depends on more factors than schooling alone. If you were out to find out what truly makes a difference you'd have to create a decision tree by taking into account all factors you consider potentially influencial and one by one focus on the ones that eliminate most entropy.
For instance, long studies -- however "useless" -- have one clear bonus on an economic indicator level: they reduce unemployment by that much.
So it's an overall tough call. 80% of France's kids get the Bac, which allows them to go on to university, and most of them do. That is frequently considered to be the reason why France's productivity per capita per hour (and not just per capita give that countries like the USA work almost 15 hours more per week than the french do) is so high. But it may also be related to totally different factors. As usual with economics, it's all a question of picking the factors that produce some sort of sense...
Re:Decision Tree
jordan on 2002-08-05T10:30:11
- For instance, long studies -- however "useless" -- have one clear bonus on an economic indicator level: they reduce unemployment by that much.
But, unemployment in and of itself, isn't a problem. It's lack the lack of productivity and the fact that those who are not gainfully employed have to be supported which causes the problems. Or, if they aren't supported, that causes other problems, but you see what I'm getting at.
Perhaps we should instead encourage one parent to stay home and raise children to lower unemployment. At least this seems to have the added social benefit of improving the lives of children and by extension improving the productivity of the next generation.
Re:Decision Tree
darobin on 2002-08-05T11:26:56
I'm not sure I completely follow you. If supporting unemployed people is a (cost) problem, and not supporting them is also a problem, then unemployment itself is a problem, however indirectly you may wish to put it.
I doubt that encouraging one parent to stay at home will help in any way. For one, it'll almost certainly lead to a social setback in that however which way the encouragement is made the majority of parents that stay home will be women. So we'd lose a few decades of painful social progress. Besides, you'd then have to simultaneously augment salaries in order for households to maintain their income so that we don't lose consumption. Up to date all such attempts have led to less consumption -> less work vicious circles. I may not have considered all the arguments that could lead you to suggest such an idea, and have to admit that the fact that in France it has only ever been proposed by the fascists biases me against it to boot.
Also there is no proof that having parents at home helps increase the productivity of their children. Most parents will pass on their own prejudice to their kids and generally provide a poorer worldview than even the worst university.
I think the problem is thus elsewhere. To return to the initial idea, if you want another argument in favour of long university -- irrespective of the net productivity results -- one thing that long studies provide is time for people to "fool around" and figure out what they really want to do, or at least get a much better idea than if they jumped straight into a job. That helps on many levels. People more or less liking what they do work better. It promotes the leisure society which a fair number of us would like to see replace the consumption society (a first step towards which was attempted by the previous French government by reducing the work week to 35h).
Re:Decision Tree
jordan on 2002-08-05T12:33:54
- I'm not sure I completely follow you. If supporting unemployed people is a (cost) problem, and not supporting them is also a problem, then unemployment itself is a problem, however indirectly you may wish to put it.
Supporting unemployed people is the same cost as supporting people in extended schooling, no?
- For one, it'll almost certainly lead to a social setback in that however which way the encouragement is made the majority of parents that stay home will be women. So we'd lose a few decades of painful social progress.
I don't consider it a social setback for women to perform child care. I consider it a very high calling, in fact. The fact that people consider it so demeaning explains a lot about how poorly our children are raised these days.
Of course, I have nothing against a family arranging to have the father to have primary child care responsibilities, if that's what they decide.
- Besides, you'd then have to simultaneously augment salaries in order for households to maintain their income so that we don't lose consumption. Up to date all such attempts have led to less consumption -> less work vicious circles.
I sometimes think that Western Society has constructed an illusion of wealth. We are all on a treadmill to consume more and more and more and if we don't? Collapse! We can't let that happen!! We must be good patriotic, responsible consumers and all work in Industry and have high debt loads to encourage us to work harder and consume more.
- Also there is no proof that having parents at home helps increase the productivity of their children. Most parents will pass on their own prejudice to their kids and generally provide a poorer worldview than even the worst university.
Actually, there is mounting proof that children who have lots of one-on-one interaction with an adult early in life do better in a number of ways.
In the US, it is becoming increasingly popular for children to be schooled at home by parents (pre University level, of course). These children do incredibly well, in general. They have very high test scores, dominate the spelling and other competitions (all out of proportion to their numbers as a percentage of children in school), and have proven to be well adjusted. This home-schooling would not be possible if one parent did not choose to stay in the home.
I am changing the subject, here as this has little to do with University education, but getting back to your point above, in my experience, Universities pass on a number of prejudices and poor worldviews also.
