rethinking high school and college; William Henson wants to measure return on investment; Jerry Muller questions metrics; Austin Scholar on finding a creative niche
I am very happy that Jerry Muller learned to appreciate classic films. I would be overjoyed if he did it on his own dime. However, in FY2025 the federal government ran a $1.8 trillion deficit with federal outlays for higher education of $141.86 billion and tax expenditures (per CBO) of another $30 billion. On top of that, states spent something like another $130 billion in support. Not sure that "I learned to appreciate the arts" is sufficient justification for these outlays especially now that there are numerous high quality free online courses available: https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses#Film
Of course that alone isn't sufficient. But if we ignore the non-monetary benefits of college, we miss part of what people value and part of what they gain from it.
But we don’t subsidize things because individual people benefit from it, we subsidize things because there are positive externalities that the individual doesn’t capture and is therefore unwilling to pay for that are still worth paying for. Appreciating art and earning higher wages are something the individual can pay for without requiring money from others.
I am saying Muller having an appreciation for art has no significant positive externalities for others such that they should be subsidizing it.
I would further argue that almost all the benefits of college are accrued to the individual, but that isn't the argument here. The claim that college makes you better able to appreciate art, have a nicer life, enjoy sunsets more or whatever might be true, but that is not an argument for other people being forced to pay for you to get those benefits. Hard to measure benefits are not themselves sufficient reason to subsidize things.
We disagree on who accrues most of the benefits, not that this can be measured without immense subjectivity. I question whether the individual even gets the majority of the benefit, not that this is the argument here. But our disagreement on this point certainly contributes to our disagreement on the topic at hand.
I'm truly amazed how many followers of IMT seem to want to dictate what college should be and how they should do it. Maybe you are in that camp too, maybe not. I suspect you'll deny it but yet you'd be pleased if some changes you favor were forced on colleges. Just a hunch.
As I see it, colleges do many things. To varying degrees they provide vocational training, general education, remedial education, cultural opportunities and education, networking opportunities and employer signaling, entertainment of many types to the students and others, community outreach such as extension services and public radio, and of course research. Probably a few other things. I don't think government funds all of these things out of any belief that each and every service of colleges is good and needed. Instead, it is based on the whole. Some of those functions are seen as valuable and in need of support either direct to the college or to particular students. For this reason, saying one doesn't want taxpayer money going to cultural education seems based on a false premise of what a college is and how it works.
I am fine with zero tax payer money going to fund college education. Rather in favor of it, in fact. Then colleges can do whatever they want. However, if one accepts money from the government to do a thing one is making the government a customer and the government then has a say in whether they want to continue to pay for the service.
College doesn’t need to be a huge bundle of services, and in fact it would probably be better able to provide the core services if it stopped trying to do so much. If we are not forced to pay for what they do, then great they can try whatever they think will work. If we are funding them through tax dollars, again, what those tax dollars are funding and when they will stop funding is an open question.
Saying “we want to get public money but the public has no say in what that money goes to or what it buys” is not a reasonable argument.
That's why it is best to leave those choices to individuals. Once government steps into the picture, it ends up subsidizing everything, because subsidizing only some things requires government to differentiate what is beneficial, and it's Lawsuit City AZ.
Do you really want government making those choices?
The points that Muller makes could be refined by reference to Josef Pieper's theories of leisure and education. This is something that politicians and their minions often underrate because they want to steal more money from more people; so they want those people to work more and relax less.
I don't think though that the problem with current universities is that they are focused too much on teaching the joys of underwater basket weaving and not enough on teaching students to code dashboards to provide actionable insights to executives. Rather they purport to do both things, but do them both badly. They are institutions that create the equivalent of the dysfunctional toys from the 1970s Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special. They produce squirt guns that only shoot jelly and trains with square wheels. This should not be surprising because the Soviets did similar things using similar policies with similar efforts to override markets, with not dissimilar results.
State action that overrides the market coordination process will always produce these square wheel effects. Planning cannot successfully determine how much of education should be cultivation for leisure and morality and how much of it should be vocational. Arguing about the proportions can never surpass the effectiveness of the market process.
You've presented a false dichotomy between vocational training and education unrelated to careers.
I have a friend who got an undergraduate degree in music. In his early career he was a very successful researcher in acoustic engineering with many publications, both refereed journal articles and other types. His research diverged into data science and he soon moved to the private sector. His data science job put him in the executive office and he became CEO.
Getting a degree in music before graduate work in acoustics didn't make him a misfit toy, it helped make him an adaptable "toy". College can help a person in many ways including vocational training or cultural appreciation but more than anything else, adaptability is the goal of college. And this is exactly what capitalism needs.
There are some situations in which it works (as with your friend) and many others in which it does not. Your friend isn't complaining but he is outnumbered by many, many others who are behind on their payments.
Programs in Communications, Business, Criminal Justice, non-rigorous liberal arts, etc. are the square wheel factories. I also do not think that conventional undergrad is a bad introduction at all to professional school. Philosophy majors tend to be only accidentally useful in the workforce, but it's excellent preparation for law school.
While I appreciate Muller's argument, I find myself more attracted of Henson's position. Why? Because this leaky bucket called American Education consumes and wastes more "water" than the defense budget. Almost anything can be measured, so why not education results?
I cannot recommend the following texts too highly:
Moe, T. M. (2011). Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools. Brookings Institute Press.
Hanushek, E. A., & Lindseth, A. A. (2009). Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses. Princeton University Press.
if you would like insight into the K-12 Education-Industrial complex.
I'm sure there are similar analyses for higher Ed, but that is between consenting adults, unlike K-12. The Ed "system," like all of our "systems," is an outrage. We have seen the enemy and it is us.
The huge elephant in the room undiscussed by these education oriented folk is IQ. Half the folks have lower than median IQ, and almost all of those are not a fit for college, in order to learn better how to do Critical Thinking and gain more Fine Arts appreciation.
The SES poor folk are lousy? ok? as a proxy -- I'd guess 80% of the students in the 20% & 40% income quintiles are also below median IQ. For academic work, and evaluating education, explicit IQ is wrongly absent from the K-12 discussions. But at least vocational schools & work-ed programs are becoming more popular.
The Cult of Smart (Freddie deBoer) is correct that too much social improvement is assumed to be possible with better education. But most fails most of the time, tho for low SES folk, like Rob Henderson was raised in, more support before HS would be helpful.
Comparing high schools, or education programs, of students with high IQs to those with low IQs, will almost all show the high IQ students got a better education by any measure of increased knowledge or thinking. Yes, the lower avg IQs of Blacks means discussion of the truth about IQs & education becomes racist. The truth is more important than avoiding racism.
What we need is more honesty, and more tracked outcomes & support for low IQ, non-college bound students.
I'm interested in Alpha School type K-12 learning outcomes with low IQ folk, but not quite enough to go looking for more such articles.
A world in which every high school junior has taken a college course, is a world in which 50% of high school juniors have failed that college course--unless the course is deliberately dumbed down to a below high school level, or unless the students are pity passed (which occurs more often than people realize in real high school).
I could probably educate kids more cheaply than public schools if I was allowed to make them apply to the schools. I would select for intelligence, conscientiousness, and an intact family.
I am very happy that Jerry Muller learned to appreciate classic films. I would be overjoyed if he did it on his own dime. However, in FY2025 the federal government ran a $1.8 trillion deficit with federal outlays for higher education of $141.86 billion and tax expenditures (per CBO) of another $30 billion. On top of that, states spent something like another $130 billion in support. Not sure that "I learned to appreciate the arts" is sufficient justification for these outlays especially now that there are numerous high quality free online courses available: https://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses#Film
You aren't sure? Really?
Of course that alone isn't sufficient. But if we ignore the non-monetary benefits of college, we miss part of what people value and part of what they gain from it.
But we don’t subsidize things because individual people benefit from it, we subsidize things because there are positive externalities that the individual doesn’t capture and is therefore unwilling to pay for that are still worth paying for. Appreciating art and earning higher wages are something the individual can pay for without requiring money from others.
I'm not sure what you are saying. Are you saying there are no positive externalities from college?
I am saying Muller having an appreciation for art has no significant positive externalities for others such that they should be subsidizing it.
I would further argue that almost all the benefits of college are accrued to the individual, but that isn't the argument here. The claim that college makes you better able to appreciate art, have a nicer life, enjoy sunsets more or whatever might be true, but that is not an argument for other people being forced to pay for you to get those benefits. Hard to measure benefits are not themselves sufficient reason to subsidize things.
We disagree on who accrues most of the benefits, not that this can be measured without immense subjectivity. I question whether the individual even gets the majority of the benefit, not that this is the argument here. But our disagreement on this point certainly contributes to our disagreement on the topic at hand.
I'm truly amazed how many followers of IMT seem to want to dictate what college should be and how they should do it. Maybe you are in that camp too, maybe not. I suspect you'll deny it but yet you'd be pleased if some changes you favor were forced on colleges. Just a hunch.
As I see it, colleges do many things. To varying degrees they provide vocational training, general education, remedial education, cultural opportunities and education, networking opportunities and employer signaling, entertainment of many types to the students and others, community outreach such as extension services and public radio, and of course research. Probably a few other things. I don't think government funds all of these things out of any belief that each and every service of colleges is good and needed. Instead, it is based on the whole. Some of those functions are seen as valuable and in need of support either direct to the college or to particular students. For this reason, saying one doesn't want taxpayer money going to cultural education seems based on a false premise of what a college is and how it works.
I am fine with zero tax payer money going to fund college education. Rather in favor of it, in fact. Then colleges can do whatever they want. However, if one accepts money from the government to do a thing one is making the government a customer and the government then has a say in whether they want to continue to pay for the service.
College doesn’t need to be a huge bundle of services, and in fact it would probably be better able to provide the core services if it stopped trying to do so much. If we are not forced to pay for what they do, then great they can try whatever they think will work. If we are funding them through tax dollars, again, what those tax dollars are funding and when they will stop funding is an open question.
Saying “we want to get public money but the public has no say in what that money goes to or what it buys” is not a reasonable argument.
That's why it is best to leave those choices to individuals. Once government steps into the picture, it ends up subsidizing everything, because subsidizing only some things requires government to differentiate what is beneficial, and it's Lawsuit City AZ.
Do you really want government making those choices?
The points that Muller makes could be refined by reference to Josef Pieper's theories of leisure and education. This is something that politicians and their minions often underrate because they want to steal more money from more people; so they want those people to work more and relax less.
I don't think though that the problem with current universities is that they are focused too much on teaching the joys of underwater basket weaving and not enough on teaching students to code dashboards to provide actionable insights to executives. Rather they purport to do both things, but do them both badly. They are institutions that create the equivalent of the dysfunctional toys from the 1970s Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Christmas special. They produce squirt guns that only shoot jelly and trains with square wheels. This should not be surprising because the Soviets did similar things using similar policies with similar efforts to override markets, with not dissimilar results.
State action that overrides the market coordination process will always produce these square wheel effects. Planning cannot successfully determine how much of education should be cultivation for leisure and morality and how much of it should be vocational. Arguing about the proportions can never surpass the effectiveness of the market process.
You've presented a false dichotomy between vocational training and education unrelated to careers.
I have a friend who got an undergraduate degree in music. In his early career he was a very successful researcher in acoustic engineering with many publications, both refereed journal articles and other types. His research diverged into data science and he soon moved to the private sector. His data science job put him in the executive office and he became CEO.
Getting a degree in music before graduate work in acoustics didn't make him a misfit toy, it helped make him an adaptable "toy". College can help a person in many ways including vocational training or cultural appreciation but more than anything else, adaptability is the goal of college. And this is exactly what capitalism needs.
There are some situations in which it works (as with your friend) and many others in which it does not. Your friend isn't complaining but he is outnumbered by many, many others who are behind on their payments.
Programs in Communications, Business, Criminal Justice, non-rigorous liberal arts, etc. are the square wheel factories. I also do not think that conventional undergrad is a bad introduction at all to professional school. Philosophy majors tend to be only accidentally useful in the workforce, but it's excellent preparation for law school.
"Philosophy majors tend to be only accidentally useful in the workforce, but it's excellent preparation for law school."
But you repeat yourself :)
While I appreciate Muller's argument, I find myself more attracted of Henson's position. Why? Because this leaky bucket called American Education consumes and wastes more "water" than the defense budget. Almost anything can be measured, so why not education results?
Because measuring it would pull the rug out from under their claims of intangible benefits.
I cannot recommend the following texts too highly:
Moe, T. M. (2011). Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools. Brookings Institute Press.
Hanushek, E. A., & Lindseth, A. A. (2009). Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses. Princeton University Press.
if you would like insight into the K-12 Education-Industrial complex.
I'm sure there are similar analyses for higher Ed, but that is between consenting adults, unlike K-12. The Ed "system," like all of our "systems," is an outrage. We have seen the enemy and it is us.
The huge elephant in the room undiscussed by these education oriented folk is IQ. Half the folks have lower than median IQ, and almost all of those are not a fit for college, in order to learn better how to do Critical Thinking and gain more Fine Arts appreciation.
The SES poor folk are lousy? ok? as a proxy -- I'd guess 80% of the students in the 20% & 40% income quintiles are also below median IQ. For academic work, and evaluating education, explicit IQ is wrongly absent from the K-12 discussions. But at least vocational schools & work-ed programs are becoming more popular.
The Cult of Smart (Freddie deBoer) is correct that too much social improvement is assumed to be possible with better education. But most fails most of the time, tho for low SES folk, like Rob Henderson was raised in, more support before HS would be helpful.
Comparing high schools, or education programs, of students with high IQs to those with low IQs, will almost all show the high IQ students got a better education by any measure of increased knowledge or thinking. Yes, the lower avg IQs of Blacks means discussion of the truth about IQs & education becomes racist. The truth is more important than avoiding racism.
What we need is more honesty, and more tracked outcomes & support for low IQ, non-college bound students.
I'm interested in Alpha School type K-12 learning outcomes with low IQ folk, but not quite enough to go looking for more such articles.
A world in which every high school junior has taken a college course, is a world in which 50% of high school juniors have failed that college course--unless the course is deliberately dumbed down to a below high school level, or unless the students are pity passed (which occurs more often than people realize in real high school).
Come on, Vargas. Get serious.
I could probably educate kids more cheaply than public schools if I was allowed to make them apply to the schools. I would select for intelligence, conscientiousness, and an intact family.
That seems an odd statement. Public schools could also do it better and more cheaply if they were allowed to select based on that criteria.
That’s the point. Selection effects are powerful.
Right. Apologies. I missed the context of your comment. I had to go back and reread that part of AK's post.