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Comment by natrius | Hacker News Reader

Universal access to education doesn't mean that the government needs to actually run the schools. It just means that funding needs to be provided for those who can't afford it on their own. Bonus points if you can get people to voluntarily subsidize the educations of those who can't afford it rather than forcibly taking the money.

Competition is a pretty powerful force when it comes to improving products, and it seems likely that the quality of education would improve if everyone wasn't forced to purchase an education bundled with their housing.

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Calling education a product is tricky. Do you mean degrees or other attainments, or do you mean the underlying learning? Because it's damn hard to separate the two, and private providers have a big incentive to half-ass the second, especially if they are targeting the mass market.

Education is even harder than health to privatize, because you are trying to target kids, not parents, but the parents will be making all the choices.

Public providers half-ass the underlying learning as well. The concept of "teaching to the test" didn't come from private schools. Whatever we choose to measure schools by will generally be what teachers and principals optimize for, whether public or private.

That's true, as well. But I think it would be worse under a voucher system. Private providers would be a lot quicker to race to the bottom of "teaching the test" if the voucher system included bonuses for good test performance.

A voucher system doesn't need bonuses. If a school improves its reputation in the eyes of the public, it will be able to charge more money. Allowing customer choice lets people take into account less concrete metrics of school performance instead of the government punishing and rewarding schools. If customers don't want schools that teach to the test, they'll actively observe other metrics to come to their decisions.

Customers who don't put in as much effort into picking schools will be no worse off than they are today. Schools already teach to the test, especially schools in poor areas that are trying to raise their test scores. However, a functioning market allows them to benefit from the choices their more responsible peers make. Fewer underperforming schools will survive.

What argument are you making that doesn't apply if you replace education, schools and vouchers with food, supermarkets and food stamps?

I bet people buy crappy foods (chips and soft-drinks) for the children when they use food stamps. So there is some similarity.

The difference? People have a fair idea as what good food is.

Also, education is vulnerable to getting derailed by optimization for tests. And the testing will most likely be controlled by the state. I would worry that big mass-market voucher schools will specialize in marketing, cutting costs, and gaming the state-run tests.

I'll bet you're right and the risk when allowing people to retain their freedom to make decisions is that they'll make ones with which you disagree.

But I'm less pessimistic than you about people's abilities to make good decisions especially when their children are involved. At least their motivations are better aligned than the government's with their children's interests. Teacher's unions?

If private providers half-ass the underlying learning, why do private schools consistently outperform public schools?

Well there is no good way to compare them by ranking. Here are the public school rankings:

http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/high-schools/2009/1...

But where are the private school rankings? They don't take the accountability tests which are mandatory public schools.

I'm curious where you are getting your facts from. Claiming that private schools consistently outperform public schools suggests you must have some strong facts. So let's see them please.

And while we wait for your facts, consider this. Current private schools don't have to deal with kids that have learning disabilities. Current private schools don't have to deal with as much diversity. Current private schools don't have to deal with underfunding. Current private schools have strong alumni networks. The private schools of today are not your average private school of a 100% private system.

1. Selective admissions

2. Self-selected applicant pool

3. Easier time removing disruptive students

In short, private schools have better students.

> In short, private schools have better students.

You overstate the admissions argument.

However, even if we accept it, you're concluding too much.

Public schools insist on letting bad students drag everyone else down with them. Private schools don't.

Neither one seems capable of reaching bad students. However, it's unclear why letting them ruin things for everyone else, as public schools do, is a good thing.

I think you would have to set the parameters very carefully.

In Australia, universities have been encouraged (or forced, depending on how you look at it) by budget cuts to offer courses to full fee paying students from overseas to supplement their revenue. This contrasts with the local Australian students whose courses are still highly subsidised by government funding (the subsidy has been decreasing as well though).

If a university is offering a course with an aim to maximize revenue, then it will naturally want to attract as many students as possible, in competition with other local universities and with overseas universities. Often that means lowering the entrance criteria for prospective students. Because the students are paying for the course, they expect to have their degree at the end of it, and this leads to significant pressure to lower the depth and difficulty of the material taught, as well as the grading criteria, to accommodate the weakest students.

I don't believe the actual teaching is poor, but the quality of education is lowered. I know professors who have had to take phone calls from overseas from parents demanding to have their children's grades altered, with a financial threat attached. Reputation is a key driver in students' choice of university, which adds a further incentive to placate the customer. I don't know if any of these anecdotes actually resulted in a "pay-for-grade" situation, but the normally assumed academic independence is certainly threatened.

Maybe education can be made to work well under a competitive market system, but in this situation I don't think it has, and I'm not smart enough to think of ways to fix this particular situation.

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