If public education is all about helping employers in their hiring process, then it’s a really wasteful form of corporate welfare. So, I don’t really consider this as a good argument in favor of funding public higher education.
I think that fixing the education system will require unbundling the learning part and the signaling part. So, learning communities for the learning part, and comprehensive standardized exams for the signaling. Not sure how elaborate the exams need to be to match the signal quality of a college degree. I guess for people mostly looking to signal intelligence, conscientiousness or specific abilities or knowledge, the exams can be quite short and inexpensive as long as they’re challenging enough (something like the final exams of graduate level classes).
I think unbundling them seems like a good thing to strive for.
I guess the parts that I might still be worried about are:
I see below that you claim that more accountability is probably net-good for most students, in the sense that would help improve learning? I’m not sure that I fully agree with that. My experience in primary to upper education has been that there is a great many students who don’t seem that motivated to learn due to differing priorities, home situations, or preferences. I think improving education will need to find some way of addressing this beyond just accountability.
Do you envision students enrolling in this Improved Education program for free? Public schools right now have a distinct advantage because they receive a lot of funding from taxpayers.
I think the issue of, “Why can’t we just immediately get switch everyone to a decoupled situation where credentialing and education are separate?” is due to us being stuck in an inadequate equilibrium. Do you have plans to specifically tackle these inertia-related issues that can make mass-adoption difficult? (e.g until cheap credentialing services become widespread, why would signaling-conscious students decide to enroll in Improved Education instead of Normal Education?)
By “if public education is all about helping employers in their hiring process” I am only referring to the ~80% signaling. I mean to say that the government shouldn’t help companies select candidates, and definitely not in such a wasteful manner.
I agree that increasing human capital is a good goal (alongside creating the public good of an educated citizenry). It’s just that the government does this very very inefficiently. I discuss this in more details in The Case for Education
If public education is all about helping employers in their hiring process, then it’s a really wasteful form of corporate welfare. So, I don’t really consider this as a good argument in favor of funding public higher education.
I think that fixing the education system will require unbundling the learning part and the signaling part. So, learning communities for the learning part, and comprehensive standardized exams for the signaling. Not sure how elaborate the exams need to be to match the signal quality of a college degree. I guess for people mostly looking to signal intelligence, conscientiousness or specific abilities or knowledge, the exams can be quite short and inexpensive as long as they’re challenging enough (something like the final exams of graduate level classes).
Got it.
I think unbundling them seems like a good thing to strive for.
I guess the parts that I might still be worried about are:
I see below that you claim that more accountability is probably net-good for most students, in the sense that would help improve learning? I’m not sure that I fully agree with that. My experience in primary to upper education has been that there is a great many students who don’t seem that motivated to learn due to differing priorities, home situations, or preferences. I think improving education will need to find some way of addressing this beyond just accountability.
Do you envision students enrolling in this Improved Education program for free? Public schools right now have a distinct advantage because they receive a lot of funding from taxpayers.
I think the issue of, “Why can’t we just immediately get switch everyone to a decoupled situation where credentialing and education are separate?” is due to us being stuck in an inadequate equilibrium. Do you have plans to specifically tackle these inertia-related issues that can make mass-adoption difficult? (e.g until cheap credentialing services become widespread, why would signaling-conscious students decide to enroll in Improved Education instead of Normal Education?)
Any public education? Even Caplans 20% of useful education?
If public education is actually working at helping employers , then it is helping the economy and is therefore a pretty justifiable form of welfare.
So I am not clear whether you are saying public education is a bad idea or badly implemented.
By “if public education is all about helping employers in their hiring process” I am only referring to the ~80% signaling. I mean to say that the government shouldn’t help companies select candidates, and definitely not in such a wasteful manner.
I agree that increasing human capital is a good goal (alongside creating the public good of an educated citizenry). It’s just that the government does this very very inefficiently. I discuss this in more details in The Case for Education