A friend and I recently got into a discussion / argument recently over education reform. It all started when I scoffed at the fact that prospective grade school teachers who lacked a degree specifically in "education" needed to take an three extra semesters of education (get a Masters).

My argument was that if person A went to undergraduate school B, a respected, accredited American university and did reasonably well but majored in something than education, then that person should be not have to borrow more money just to attend another year and a half to two years of school to get the necessary qualifications to teach. The current requirements are in many ways, too burdensome. Not to rely on anecdotes, but, I have multiple friends who excelled in undergrad, got honors, wrote theses, etc. who wanted to become teachers but cannot (at least not immediately) because of the hoops and hurdles involved in entering the system. At least one will not become a teacher any time in the near future because of them. To be sure, I'm not in favor of a simple standardized test that tests nothing but your ability to take that test. But, I think that an alternative combination of a test and a shorter more affordable certificate program possibly coupled with an evaluation period or apprenticeship may be sufficient. (Teach For America aside)

Predictably, she countered with a legitimate point: we want to be producing "excellent" teachers and therefore we should make sure our teacher's are well-qualified. My counter-argument is the following: we should be producing average teachers. It is a classic pragmatism vs. idealism argument. The system, in my opinion (as most of this is), is right now contaminated with bad teachers. In an ideal world, I'd love to produce excellent teachers who care about their students, all the way from K to law school. But, needless to say, even at Columbia Law School, there are bad instructors/educators (to be differentiated from professor). Given that, and given that the problem is especially chronic and far more damaging to society in the grade school region, I think it is more important to loosen some hurdles to the profession, open the door a little more, and try to flood the system with more "average" teachers. Increase the competitiveness of the teacher profession by allowing more applicants. I'd rather have a large boat of students receiving their education from "average" teachers than a smaller group of students (inevitably, students who are privileged like y.t. in nicer school districts) receive their education from "excellent" teachers. Many perfectly average teachers are barred from the system for at least a year, often forever, by excessive hurdles.

Her response to my comment was that she agreed that we should increase demand for the profession--and that we shouldn't loosen standards but instead we should pay teachers more (what can I say, she is at the Teacher's College). She also said that we should pay teachers to teach in poorer school districts. It sounded like straight from the mouth of the democratic party, or something, because my reply was met with complete silence: Where is the ****ing money? We can't just throw money at a problem, like everything else, and expect it to go away. This is a theme that will be revisited.

The direction of the conversation then took a drastic turn when I made a controversial, shall I say, ballsy argument: Too many people are going to college.

"Keeping up with the Joneses," over-education, positional externality, whatever you want to call it, it is hardly an original argument and I haven't read nearly enough on it to make me any kind of authority. Nevertheless, I find the argument compelling and unconsidered in the debate on education reform (at all levels). The main economic argument behind this idea is that because too many people have BAs, many people need to get advanced degrees to be competitive for jobs that may not even require the skills and knowledge needed for any college degree. In economics, this is deemed inefficient--people are spending time in school getting an education which does not contribute to that person's ability to carry out their future job. And, that person could have spend some or all of the time spent in school working. But this "Keeping up with the Joneses" effect preserves and create a strong demand for a product (higher ed) that maybe should not be there.

Here is an essential article I refer to about many of the perversities in our education system: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/business/economy/09leonhardt.html

We talk about how many of the aspects of law school are broken, especially how it is prohibitively expensive. Many, if not all of the pressures of law school, the fears and anxieties, comes from debt incurred to attend school in the first place and debt left over from undergrad / life. But I'd argue that it all starts with a grade school / college system that is hopelessly broken in its financial structure, trapped in a cycle of rising access to credit to "illusory money" (anything that pays off tuition that doesn't exist in a bank account), increased demand, and rising tuition. ...

Some links: http://www.creditunions.com/article.aspx?articleid=3158 (comparative graph to housing / healthcare) http://www.wellsfargoadvantagefunds.com/wfweb/wf/college/costs/growing.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=no&sel=%2FDTF%College%2FCollege_Costs&BV_UseBVCookie=yes (2005-2023 projected) http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/press/cost06/trends_college_pricing_06.pdf

An important observation that will be discussed later: most of the "increased tuition" burden is from private schools, not public.

Like mortgages were in the first decade of this century, student-loan debt and the dramatic rise of college costs seems to be the elephant in the room that nobody seems to see. Or, continually turns a blind eye to. Or sees, ignores, and relies on current financial structures to sweep the problem under the rug. And, I think the problem starts because too many people are going to college. Let me first dispose of the notion that I don't think we should subsidize education for anyone. I think its absolutely important to make higher education accessible to people of all classes and I would favor a progressive pricing structure. But, there are two caveats to my belief that may come off the wrong way.

First, I'm truly undecided as to whether private schools should be subsidized. Private schools serve an important function but are more expensive and presumably, for most students there is a cheaper, less-expensive, public option that is beyond adequate. Much of the pricing problem of private education could be solved if we encouraged more enrollment in public schools, and I mean that for people of every class. If more people enrolled in public schools, the quality of the institution could increase. There are other benefits (and detriments) of incentivizing public enrollment that I won't get into any more. I do know that there are systems overseas that rely on public education more, are drastically cheaper, that have their own pros and cons.

Second, accessibility is important but many financial aid programs aren't fairly implemented. My undergrad school is a great example: many students who came from poor backgrounds had their education fully subsidized, but, one of my friends boyfriend had to drop out because his parents made in excess of $100,000 and thus could not qualify for financial aid and had to drop out. The structure of the rules that determine aid, in my opinion, are often simply unacceptable and don't actually make college more accessible except to the very poorest of the poor. In this situation, aid was overwhelmingly based on income and number of kids in college but was not as focused on other forms of debt incurred by the parents (mortgage). What compounded this problem was that this guy's parents lived in a metropolitan area where $100,000 wasn't worth that much. Parents who earn $75,000 could very well be better off. My issue, here, is that the bright line rules of financial aid don't often take into account these descrepancies and an individuals personal situation. Which is a significant problem for me, because, isn't the whole point of financial aid and increasing accessibility to consider one's personal situation (I realize a secondary goal is to increase socio-economic diversity of the incoming class). This is why I'm strongly opposed to “need blind” admissions. Why should a thing like personal circumstance not count in determining the price of school but count in determining access to the school? Is it too burdensome for financial aid offices to review applicants backgrounds as well? Frankly, I feel like offers of admission should be more like a market place, with, personalized offers to each candidate. In my opinion, a scholarship should be a synthesis of merit and need and should not be separate processes as they always are.

But, let me underscore the importance of some sort of financial subsidation program: As Dr. Moglen has said countless times in class, there are millions in the world who are smarter than us who will not get to sniff higher education. To sum, I have less of a problem with the idea of financial aid but more of a problem with the implementation of it, the how and where aspects of its distribution (which, I should mention, schools have a perverse incentive from US News to distribute).

The main problem I have with subsidation is that it doesn't do anything to solve the structural problem of higher ed. It is a temporary solution at best. Why are we are dealing with a structural issue by throwing more money at the problem. Sound familiar? In other words, subsidizing education and making education accessible for the poor is a good thing. And in the short term, it makes education more accessible. However, I believe that these policies make college less accessible for the lower 99%, strictly on a tuition basis. Which, in turn, exacerbates class differences that made college less accessible to begin with.

I think the perfect example example is law school. In 1980, tuition for UPenn was $6,000. By 1988, tuition broke $13,000. Today, its more than triple. I haven't done the research extensively and don't have numbers (which is somewhat irresponsible of me) but, I'd hypothesize that tuition and first year salaries run somewhat parallel. Because, lets be honest—people are only comfortable taking out a lot of debt if there is some promise of paying that debt off. And the prospective debt becomes more enticing and stomachable when salaries keep going up. I know, personally, if not for Columbia's employment stats and LRAP that I would not have taken on any debt whatsoever.

She did present a compelling counter-arguments to my rant. Education should not be strictly about economic needs and preparing people for jobs. There is a value in simply educating more people, for example, more educated voters.

First, the higher education system at many schools sucks. College professors are more focused on publishing their material. In around 50% of my classes not taught by TAs, my professors in college were worth the money and 25% of them had no business going near a classroom. I could write another post about how "good teachers" get weeded out of the academic system. Sometimes, I was better off reading a book. I also categorically reject that higher education creates more educated voters, or does so in any significan way.

Second, I agree, some people go to college and learn a ton. But, I think this argument is somewhat marred by the fact that we are the one's making it. By and large, we learn and were "enlightened." But for every one of us, there are countless others who went to an undergraduate school that doesn't have a lavish club in midtown New York and did not receive such enlightenment at all. Or, as the Leonhardt article points out, there are many undergraduate students who don't graduate half their students. A particularly on-point passage: "The United States does a good job enrolling teenagers in college, but only half of students who enroll end up with a bachelor’s degree. Among rich countries, only Italy is worse. That’s a big reason inequality has soared, and productivity growth has slowed."

Does this shock you? It shocked me, fairly predictably. Within my insulated place in the world, I reside in an insulated sliver of American education (both during undergrad, and now at a top law school). Neither I, nor most if any of the readers of this wiki go to these schools and its hard to fathom drop-out rates in excess of 50%. This fac formed the basis of one of my counter arguments to my friend. To put it rather brusquely: What good is it to incentivize college for people if people are not even finishing it? Not everyone is suited for college. Of course, there are other explanations for the drop-out rate which focus on the structure of higher education (the service) and not the individual attending it (consumer) that I think are not only correct but account for a substantial majority of the drop out rates. But given that the system is shown to be empirically broken, the question remains _Why should we, either through subsidization financially as taxpayers or full-tuition payers, or in other ways such as propaganda (e.g. high school guidance counselors forcing four year college down throats) relentlessly incentivize and encourage people to dive headfirst into a system that is broken when that person may not be prepared for the reality that awaits them?

People that drop-out of four year colleges (often to no fault of their own), are, in some ways analogous to people who walk away from their mortgages (and in many ways are radically different). And, these individuals form a substantial part of the problem: they create part of the "demand" for the product of higher education but never receive the final product. Thus, prospective drop-outs form a large contingent of the demand that creates the rise in tuition for 4-year college (re: because people "can" pay for it).

The article also presents one of the key aspects of the broken system: inadequate pre-college education. I cannot agree more. But its not just inadequate high school education, but an inadequate job of educating students with legitimate, non-college options (e.g. trade school) and a stigma carried by community colleges.

I think a large part of the solution is pushing community colleges, not for affordability reasons, but because for many it is the practical solution. For some, it is sufficient for their career goals. For others, it is simply more affordable. And for others, it is best suited for them and their capabilities. But to be honest, I'm at a loss. I do know that throwing money at the problem is not going to work and that we do not need to encourage students to leverage themselves more.

Should a 4-year degree be a prerequisite for law school? Could 2 years be sufficient?

I'm very interested in input, even if its slight. Please take apart and eviscerate my argument.

-- MatthewZorn - 07 Feb 2010