The Death Of Bundling In University Education? | Hacker News Reader

The Death Of Bundling In University Education?

cs.uni.edu

24 pointsbgray39 comments

The article makes a strong, unsupported assumption: that "subsidizing...the broad education of a well-informed citizenry" is a "public good". I'd be curious to hear some sort of justification for this.

In short, how do I (as a member of the public) benefit from a waiter with a degree in women's studies or some similar degree with little economic value?

I think the implied message is that an educated citizenry is better equipped to deal in the world than an uneducated citizenry. If you are uneducated, you're less likely to manage resources or more likely to become a victim (of unscrupulous individuals or businesses.) To that end, society should be providing for the public good by providing an education to the citizenry.

However, I don't see the education system as providing the kind of education that makes people "well-informed." I know plenty of people with a degree and not a lick of common sense who ... become victims in some way or another. (e.g. Why can't they identify a financial scam when one comes along?)

This kind of education should have happened long before postsecondary education is available to an individual. This way, he can decide for himself whether that university degree will actually do him any good in the future. Should the public provide university educations to everyone? If that's the measure by which individuals are allowed to participate in the economy by being employees, then I say yes. Corporations cannot be expected to educate any of their own employees because it's a drain on the balance sheet - The Market will not create educated individuals left to its own devices.

One should desire to be educated, informed and knowledgeable from early on in life. Too often, children are sent to school because parents need childcare, not because they value an education for their children. If children aren't encouraged to perform, then they don't. This goes for being educated as well as sports and the arts.

Corporations cannot be expected to educate any of their own employees because it's a drain on the balance sheet - The Market will not create educated individuals left to its own devices.

Corporations educate their employees all the time. My company does this. So does Walmart, McD's, Accenture, Infosys and Goldman Sachs (to name a few).

http://walmartstores.com/careers/7740.aspx

http://www.aboutmcdonalds.com/mcd/careers/hamburger_universi...

Of course companies educate their employees ... around the specific skills involved in working for their company. They, the companies, couldn't care less about the general education of their employees. It doesn't matter to them which insurance plan you pick or if you go to some investment guy that rips you off.

Just a guess, but I would suppose that in an information rich world, it pays for people to be intellectually satisfied even if they don't work in an "intellectual" field. A waiter with a theater degree may be more content, and therefore more effective/productive, than a waiter who wishes he could get a degree but can't.

In what way would the waiter be more effective/productive? Would the theater degree enable him to write down orders more accurately or bring food more quickly?

You seem pretty worried about the waiters, so here's a hypothetical direct benefit of educating them: Maybe the theater degree will offer the waiter more opportunities for self-fulfillment outside of work. Consequently he won't be consumed with bitterness and resentment of the people he waits on, perhaps people educated in some worthier endeavor he couldn't, or wouldn't, pursue. And he won't spit in your food.

Maybe the theater degree will offer the waiter more opportunities for self-fulfillment outside of work.

This is a private benefit, not a public one.

And he won't spit in your food.

So the primary purpose in giving people economically worthless education is to prevent them from committing crimes?

I consider lower crime rates a public good.

People that are unsatisfied with their lives are more likely to commit crimes. Depending on how much they think they have to lose, they may commit wildly irrational crimes as well.

Who said "primary purpose"? I was just trying to address your concerns about the college-educated waiters of the world.

So the primary purpose in giving people economically worthless education is to prevent them from committing crimes?

So it's economically worthless to decrease the number of criminals in society?

> > So the primary purpose in giving people economically worthless education is to prevent them from committing crimes?

>So it's economically worthless to decrease the number of criminals in society?

He didn't say that it was economically worthless to reduce the number of crimes. He asked if the primary purpose of economically useless education was crime prevention.

We haven't established that such education actually does reduce crime, but let's assume that it does. It still doesn't follow that we should do it as there may be other ways to reduce crime.

So, what are the good arguments for economically worthless education? We've got lots of folks who seem to think that it's a good thing, but they're not producing coherent arguments, just rage and non-sequitors.

As I'm sure you know Jefferson was one of the big proponents of a well-informed citizenry in order to maintain a functioning democracy.

At the end of the day the title of the degree doesn't matter. Whether its Women's Studies, Math, or Seafood Prep, it's more about learning to use analytical skills to look at problems. The idea being these skills are translatable.

I do like the idea of college. I do like the idea that you've spent four years thinking. I do sometimes feel college is waster on the young. If society functioned in a way such that you could work for 10 years and go back to college at age 30 I think people would derive much more value from it, even for degrees with no direct economic value.

The idea being these skills are translatable.

In that case, Math is always superior to Women's studies. Math is economically beneficial and also helps maintain a functioning democracy. Women's studies only does the latter.

Following this logic, the author is incorrect that the public goods are being unbundled from the private goods.

Well given the high numbers of math majors who go to work on finance one could argue that it's economically less beneficial. :-)

I'm sure you know Jefferson was one of the big proponents of a well-informed citizenry in order to maintain a functioning democracy.

Yes, Jefferson generally expressed the opinion that an educated citizenry is beneficial to a country, and I have often expressed agreement with that opinion. But it is important to note that Jefferson did not support making school attendance compulsory, nor did he think that education should be provided solely by state governments. Jefferson received more nonparental schooling than the other three presidents depicted on Mount Rushmore combined, first at home with a hired tutor in Tuckahoe, where Jefferson's father moved when Jefferson was two to be guardian for his wife's late cousin's son. At age nine Thomas Jefferson was placed as a boarding student in the one-room "Latin school" kept by the Reverend William Douglas, minister of St. James Parish. Thomas Jefferson's later letters reveal Jefferson didn't think Reverend Douglas really knew the subject matter very well.

Thomas Jefferson's studies with that teacher ended at the age of fourteen, when his father died. Thomas Jefferson then was sent to the five-student school kept by the Reverend James Maury, whose son was one of the other students in the school. Jefferson spent many hours walking in the woods or practicing the violin while studying there. Jefferson then again stopped attending school briefly before traveling to Williamsburg to attend the College of William and Mary.

William Small was Thomas Jefferson's favorite member of the college's seven-man faculty. Jefferson was remembered in later years by his classmates for his diligence in independently reading books until late at night. After two years, Jefferson completed his studies at William and Mary and then studied law by working with a Williamsburg lawyer from 1762 to 1766.

Jefferson, after retiring from his rather trouble-plagued presidency, spent years planning a system of publicly subsidized schools in Virginia. He wrote extensively to other planners of that project, and many of his letters from that period survive and have been reprinted. He was convinced from his extensive observations of society in America and in Europe that parental control was vital for schools:

"But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one step further and amend the bill so as to commit to the Governor and Council the management of all our farms, our mills, and merchants' stores." Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, Feb. 2, 1816, reprinted in Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1955), page 98 and in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1904), volume 14, pages 420-21.

In other words, it is as ridiculous to have governments, especially governments of broad territorial units, operate schools as it is to have governments operate grocery stores or farms. But of course socialist countries around the world have tried the experiment of governments running farms and stores, always with disastrous results, and almost every country in the world today has government-operated schools. Perhaps it is time to listen again to Jefferson's advice.

Jefferson was quite consistent on this point of preferring private operation of schools, however much those schools were publicly funded and open to all members of the public. In a state of the Union address during his second term as president, Jefferson noted:

"It [should not] be proposed to take ordinary branches [of education] out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal." Thomas Jefferson, sixth annual message to Congress (1806), reprinted in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1907), volume 14, page 384.

Jefferson most definitely supported public funding of schools, but made clear he opposed compulsory attendance.

"Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? . . . It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father. What is proposed here is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education gratis . . . Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, September 9, 1817, reprinted in Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1904) volume 17, page 423.

I think many would support private publicly-funded schools if private schools would adhere to being open to the general public. It's in the best interest of many (if not most) private schools to push out special needs students. They're expensive and generally don't help the "reputation" of the school.

We might be able to handle this by having private schools, but no school choice. That way private schools can't push students out -- if they live in your area, they're yours. Of course this destroys the free market dynamics, which many say is key.

There is just real incentive in education to not have to deal with special needs children in a way that stores and farms have no real analog (the closest analog is farms working with certain easy crops -- which is one reason we see so much corn and soy crops, in addition to subsidies).

The other thing that is interesting is you look at colleges, for-profit colleges seem to be almost universally reviled (especially relative to public and private-non-profit colleges). So far in the US private education of any peoples except the intellectual and/or economic elite has not yielded promising results.

Jefferson most definitely supported public funding of schools, but made clear he opposed compulsory attendance.

In the US today school attendence isn't compulsory. I think anyone could home school.

Your suggestion is one possible policy. Another possible policy is to allow ANY provider to refuse service to any subsidized customer, on the reasoning that the refusal of the provider to provide service is essentially a statement that that provider cannot help that customer. If some category of customers appear to be unattractive to most providers, but there is a positive externality from providing service to those customers, increase the subsidies for customers in that category until you reach an equilibrium price at which some providers are willing to meet those customers' needs.

I fear that creates an incentive to game the system. "This person is dislexic so we get the dislexic bonus", but they're really not, but parents work to get their child labeled as such so they can get into the top schools, and the top schools take this "not really dislexic" child, which they can interview or test to ensure they're perfectly capable students.

I think this would actually be a case where the stick works better. A school can't reject anybody. And if a student leaves your school with a complaint about service you are severely punished. Maybe funding cut by a percentage of the size of the student body per complaint.

If a private school is better than a public school at educating non-retarded children, then why shouldn't we allow it to do so?

Normal children will receive a better education than at public schools. Retarded children will continue to attend public schools and receive the same education.

I.e., some people get a better education, some continue to receive the same education. What's the harm?

The problem is you probably can't reasonably fund a school for disenfranchised segments of the population without resorting to massive busing. So you'd literally end up with a system where normal students get a decent, but probably not vastly superior eduction, and other students get no education at all.

This is why the current system is better that the one proposed. If you want to contribute to other people not getting an education, the govt shouldn't pay for it (hence private schools shouldn't be funded if they're going to select who they want to serve).

The other alternative is that funding is commensurate with things like family income. So rich kids aren't funded at all. Poor kids are funded at 5x their cost, or something like that. This works a little better as its slightly harder to game.

How does a private school teaching Student A prevent student B from getting the exact same education as before at the old public school?

Because of how funding works. It's similar to the reason why if you remove all healthy people off of insurance plans, you can no longer afford to cover the sick. I leave the rest as an exercise to the reader.

Huh? Insurance is about hedging against low probability, high cost events. I.e., 1 million people (each with a 5/1,000,000 chance of getting a medical condition costing $200k) pay $1, and in the future approximately 5 of them get sick and receive $200k.

If one could see the future and determine who will become sick (as in Robert Heinlein's "Life Line"), it would indeed destroy the insurance business model. But I can't see what this has to do with education - near as I can tell, education is not about hedging risk in any way remotely comparable to insurance.

It's not just hedging risk, but also subsidizing costs. Education is similiar in that you can't create a school for 100 different schools, each of 10 students across multiple grade levels within a single school district. And furthermore it's very cost ineffective when they share 75% of the infrastructure that other children would use.

So you have one school with 1,000 students that has all the finances to have a building, janitorial staff, gym, new textbooks, have music teachers, etc... The schools with 10 students can barely afford lease for a single room office -- much less one general purpose teacher.

The healthy subsidize the unhealthy. This is why for healthcare reform insurance is mandatory.

I'm not against private schools per se, but I am against the public funding them. The implicit goal of private schools is to oppress those not in them, as much as to educate those in them. It's an anti-public good to fund them. With that said I do think private schools are consistent with the goals of capitalism, part of which is exploit others as best possible.

What analytic skills do humanities (aka liberal arts) grads have? The gold standard in mathematical analysis is proof. In science, it's statistically sound empirical evidence.

In liberal arts, the analytical skills do not seem to be more sophistry than analysis. Persuasive writing and cherry-picking facts can carry a lot of weight. I can see why that is useful to a marketer or reporter (who doesn't need to be correct, as long as they are persuasive), but it's not a sound basis for "looking at problems".

Just witness the number of arts students who study a lot of "social" stuff, and end up believing that left-wing === virtuous. I'm far from a Republican, but that I can't say that's a sign of good analytical skills.

A broadly educated well-informed citizenry would insure that the phrases "president Palin" and "president Bachmann" would never occur in any context other than jokes.

In economics a public good is defined as a good that is both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. In other words, a public good is defined as a product or service where the following are True:

- An additional consumer of the product or service does not impact the ability of others to consume

- It is not possible to prevent someone from consuming the good

A good example of a public good is something like national defense.

A bad example of a public good is university education. University education meets neither of the criteria necessary in order to be classified as a public good.

I think that what the author means to say is that there are positive externalities that are associated with the provision of public universities.

While your conceptual waiter with a degree in women's studies is a dubious example of the benefits of education, there is some evidence available that suggests that the availability of education is, in the aggregate, strongly correlated with certain positive societal outcomes.

This is a bit outside of my areas of study, so I am not able to suggest specific readings. However, I can point you in the general direction of a couple of Google scholar search results:

- Education and Crime Reduction: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=education+and+crime

- Education and Macroeconomic Effects: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=education+and+...

Of course, there is also some evidence that strongly calls into question the general purpose of post-secondary education. Is post-secondary education beneficial in its own right or is post-secondary education simply another useful bullet point on a resume? Is it a signaling mechanism or is it a valuable addition to society?

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics) (Yes, I know that this is wikipedia, but it is a nice article.)

Edit: I clicked update too fast the first time. I nearly forgot to say. If the primary benefit of post-secondary education is that it provides a useful signal, then it stands to reason that there may be more cost-effective ways of achieving this end.

OK, this is interesting but as best I can tell he's talking about splitting profitable from unprofitable courses. But there is another way of drawing the line between the functions of modern unis. The offer is;

+ undergraduate education

+ postgraduate education (including research degrees)

+ scientific and engineering research

+ research and scholarship in the humanities

+ nationally televised sports (subset of US only)

+ We provide accommodation

+ A social experience for late teens / early twenties

+ We set and assess exams (could split again here)

+ We provide accreditation (our courses are worthwhile as we say they are; this is complex, though, and depends on course, jurisdiction, much more)

+ We provided a branded experience ("I went to M...")

Now it is unlikely that universities that offer much of this will ever split out the functions (Vince Cable suggested it in the UK and didn't get very far). What do you reckon on the chances of some nimble new entrants taking away some of this business from the incumbents?

[edited to try and get the list to work]

Well in the UK we had a huge number of recent new entrants to the market (polytechnics, fe colleges etc), whole sets of mergers. And the number of customers increased a lot, probably past the point where the returns are positive. London has recently seen a huge new market in student accomodation. Universities are providing branded courses overseas. Only the postgrad situation is arguably stagnent in terms of innovation.

Did anyone else think this was something completely different?

For those of us with a British education "bundling" in education means something very different...

Best demonstrated via video I think: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJ6lsa3V5SA (safe for work)

I found the authors mistake:

"But now that students and parents are paying the majority of the cost of the education [...]"

WTH? Every society which basically favours people with deep pockets instead of intelligent, gifted people (and don't let yourself be fooled by "scholarships") is heading for a huge failure.

Real scientific research, political progress and prosperity of the nation will suffer from it (which is exactly what you can observe in the US).

In a capitalist society, "people with deep pockets" is an approximation of "capable people".

So capitalist societies don't have inheritance?

In the U.S %69 of billionaires earned their wealth. The percentage of millionaires who earned their wealth is even higher. It's a commonly held misconception that most of the wealthy inherit their money.

Yes there are plenty of people who are capable, but not wealthy and vice versa. However, the OP didn't say "wealthy people == capable people". He said wealthy people are "...an approximation of "capable people"

Btw I'm not going to bother to include sources on my claim. If you want to validate it, the sources are easy to find.

I'm not going to bother proviin

First of all, I said "approximation". Second of all, genes and values are inherited as well.

Is that really the case though? There have been plenty of cases where the subsequent generations have let the wealth crumble (or at least pieces of it, like historic mansions, etc).

The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.

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