To take a page from Robin Hanson: school isn’t about learning, it’s about teaching obedience, signaling (both for the parent vis-a-vis other adults and for the kids and colleges, employers, etc.) and babysitting. There are very few people who really care about their children’s education and it’s a serious collective action problem to put together a school to the sort of standard that would make a difference. It’s much easier to hire a tutor in a specific subject than create that school. Also, if that school existed, why would people believe its claims? There are many private schools that try to pass themselves off as a huge leg up for their students.
Well, even supposing school is more about signaling than about education, parents still care about signaling. Why don’t they spend their entire education budget on schools, and get even better signaling? Your point makes the existence of expensive tutors even more mysterious, because you can’t use a tutor to signal your kid’s aptitude (most tutors take any customer who will pay.)
Your point about a coordination problem seems to be separate, and that’s what I was wondering as well. Could there be a market failure here? But I wanted to first see if there were hypotheses that make this state of affairs rational from an economic point of view.
Also, if that school existed, why would people believe its claims? There are many private schools that try to pass themselves off as a huge leg up for their students.
You allude to a good point that hadn’t occurred to me—it’s probably substantially easier for a good tutor to signal usefulness than it is for a (possibly hypothetical) good school to signal usefulness.
I don’t know about that. There’s a significant dollar value, for a tutor, attached to having gone to an elite college or having high SAT scores. (I know this from experience.) Parents and tutoring services don’t usually examine further whether, say, a tutor with high SAT scores is necessarily better at helping students on the SAT.
In fact, Kaplan requires minimum SAT scores in its employees, but on average I think I’ve seen the statistic that the average student’s SAT score goes down slightly after taking a prep course like Kaplan. And yet, prep courses are still incredibly popular (and quite pricey) despite having been proven not to be useful! I don’t know why parents/students still use them—propitiatory magic?
But definitely, the tutoring market is not marked by great objectivity and performance-based pay.
I agree with most of what you say here, but have no personal exposure to the upper-crust ($500/hr) tutoring market which is where one sees the very considerable divergence between tutor salaries and teacher salaries that your top level post references.
I could imagine willingness pay for tutoring/teaching being more performance-based in the upper-crust market than in the markets that I’ve been exposed to. I could also imagine the upper-crust tutoring/teaching markets being pretty much the same as what I’ve been exposed to.
And yet, prep courses are still incredibly popular (and quite pricey) despite having been proven not to be useful! I don’t know why parents/students still use them—propitiatory magic?
One relevant factor would seem to be parents/students being misinformed. I would guess that another relevant factor is parents “showing that they care” in the Hansonian sense (making a sacrifice for their children without a view toward it being useful to their children).
To take a page from Robin Hanson: school isn’t about learning, it’s about teaching obedience, signaling (both for the parent vis-a-vis other adults and for the kids and colleges, employers, etc.) and babysitting. There are very few people who really care about their children’s education and it’s a serious collective action problem to put together a school to the sort of standard that would make a difference. It’s much easier to hire a tutor in a specific subject than create that school. Also, if that school existed, why would people believe its claims? There are many private schools that try to pass themselves off as a huge leg up for their students.
Well, even supposing school is more about signaling than about education, parents still care about signaling. Why don’t they spend their entire education budget on schools, and get even better signaling? Your point makes the existence of expensive tutors even more mysterious, because you can’t use a tutor to signal your kid’s aptitude (most tutors take any customer who will pay.)
Your point about a coordination problem seems to be separate, and that’s what I was wondering as well. Could there be a market failure here? But I wanted to first see if there were hypotheses that make this state of affairs rational from an economic point of view.
You allude to a good point that hadn’t occurred to me—it’s probably substantially easier for a good tutor to signal usefulness than it is for a (possibly hypothetical) good school to signal usefulness.
I don’t know about that. There’s a significant dollar value, for a tutor, attached to having gone to an elite college or having high SAT scores. (I know this from experience.) Parents and tutoring services don’t usually examine further whether, say, a tutor with high SAT scores is necessarily better at helping students on the SAT.
In fact, Kaplan requires minimum SAT scores in its employees, but on average I think I’ve seen the statistic that the average student’s SAT score goes down slightly after taking a prep course like Kaplan. And yet, prep courses are still incredibly popular (and quite pricey) despite having been proven not to be useful! I don’t know why parents/students still use them—propitiatory magic?
But definitely, the tutoring market is not marked by great objectivity and performance-based pay.
Where have you seen that? My own search of journal articles seems to suggest a positive effect, significant but smaller than the prep services claim.
I agree with most of what you say here, but have no personal exposure to the upper-crust ($500/hr) tutoring market which is where one sees the very considerable divergence between tutor salaries and teacher salaries that your top level post references.
I could imagine willingness pay for tutoring/teaching being more performance-based in the upper-crust market than in the markets that I’ve been exposed to. I could also imagine the upper-crust tutoring/teaching markets being pretty much the same as what I’ve been exposed to.
One relevant factor would seem to be parents/students being misinformed. I would guess that another relevant factor is parents “showing that they care” in the Hansonian sense (making a sacrifice for their children without a view toward it being useful to their children).