Much of the president’s speech last week was focused on education. In this post I’ll try to explain why I think that education is a red herring. At best it’s confused and at worst it’s politically motivated and counter-productive.
First, the United States is the fourth most educated country in the OECD. At 42% of the population with tertiary education, only Japan (45%), Israel (46%), and Canada (51%) are more educated.
Second, about 13% of the U. S. population (39 million) is foreign-born and a little more than half of that (21 million) are from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. Immigrants from those areas tend to have rather low levels of educational attainment. Excluding those individuals, we’re just about in Canada’s territory from the standpoint of educational attainment. Said another way, if the economic future of the United States depends on ever-greater proportions of the population having tertiary education and above, that policy is in direct contradiction to accepting large numbers of uneducated immigrants. You just can’t have it both ways.
Third, the unemployment rate of Canada, the OECD country we most resemble culturally and economically is 7.1%, roughly the same as ours (7.6%).
Fourth, pre-school education is virtually unrelated to later educational attainment. Universal pre-school education would be a middle class subsidy without clear long-term benefits.
Fifth, here are the state-by-state statistics on educational attainment and here are the state-by-state statistics on unemployment. There is no simple, straight line relationship between the two.
Sixth, 52.2% of Chicago’s children graduate from high school. That’s a higher percentage than many other comparable cities and significantly better than Los Angeles (42.2%), New York (38.9%), and Detroit (21.7%). How in the world do you plan to get kids to graduate from college who won’t stay in high school? Simply committing to the importance of tertiary education effectively writes off about half of city kids.
Finally, Germany has a much lower rate of tertiary education than does the United States and has a 5.4% rate of unemployment. If it were the case that tertiary education were a necessary condition for reducing unemployment, that would be impossible.
There is essentially no relationship between jobs and education. Look somewhere else.
This was an interesting and fair analysis of the relationship between education and jobs in this country.
Basically, a country’s healthy economic growth produces all levels of job opportunity for it’s people. We, however, have stagnate growth, with no new fresh ideas on the horizon. What we are growing, at an ever faster clip, are the roles of those dependent on government social programs, the poverty rate, part-time employment, government regulations (over 6000 more regs in the last 90 days), and a public despondency that ‘nothing will get better,’ anytime soon! Add to that the spector of greater divisiveness cultivated for political expediency, and we have a stalled country at odds with each other (women/men, black/white, rich/poor etc.) in working together to make it better — divided we fall, united we grow. That’s just not in the minds of politicos today.
One aspect of education Obama discussed and promised to keep discussing was the soaring cost of college education. Unfortunately, I think the specifics were really subsidies for higher education (reforming student loans to provide lower interest rates and capping payments as a percentage of salaries*, and jawboning states to increase funding), which might actually increase college costs. There was some vague finger-wagging that states and colleges need to do better in controlling costs, and something about funding on outcome basis that was not explicated.
* = Making a big deal about capping student loans to 10% of discretionary income underscores Dave’s point that the value of college education is being overstated.
PD, I think the president, like Presidents Bush and Clinton before him, genuinely believes the pap about education he’s doling out. That he also wants to subsidize a group that’s been among his most faithful supporters is just a happy accident.
Not surprising that this and recent President’s think education is the ticket. It appears to have worked for them and pretty much everyone they know.
1) We have more mobility than most countries. I wouldnt expect strict correlation between a state’s economy and its education system.
2) In terms of growth and innovation, our top schools matter the most.
3) Our secondary education problem is really a problem educating poor kids.
4) You are looking at UE/education linkages after a financial crisis. How does that linkage look when the economy was more functional?
5) We could do what Germany does, but are we willing to accept that much govt intervention?
6) A lot of the cost is consumer driven. You have a lot more kids, especially with all of the foreign kids now, competing for a limited number of elite and near-elite school spots.
7) I am disappointed that we still dont see more emphasis on vocational schooling. What we probably need most though, is an education system for adults so that those who lose jobs can quickly retrain.
Steve
Its nice to put a fairly analytical bow on the issue, but Jack Lew on the Sunday shows left no doubt what was really going on: politics. He basically stated, despite queries from his interviewers about the same old same old spending on education and infrastructure nostrums, that politically, no one could object to the spending.
Cool. With the statute of limitations run out on blaming GWB, just trot out tired old, but politically popular, spending programs you can use to lavish dollars on your voting constituency, blame a do nothing Republican House for dismal economic performance, and the students and country be damned. That’s our illustrious president.
This is a government and purchaser self inflicted wound. For example, we just took the daughter to see Vanderbilt. The freshman dorm was as nice as the hotel we stayed at. That costs money. Look at the education system accounting at all levels. Too many administrators, too early and too large pensions. Its collapsing as we speak. Yet the government is falling all over itself to provide low cost (read: taxpayer subsidized) loans to prop up the education costs………………..for votes.
Try this: arbitrarily reduce administrative budgets at all K-12 public institutions by 50%. (You will never notice anything negative; I guarantee.) Return to market college loan rates and quaint old notions that graduates should actually pay their accumulated debts instead of renounce them. Destigmatize the trades and trade schools. A $60K per year Vanderbilt BA is nice. But then you have to go to graduate school. Get rid of the useless politically correct teaching emphasis in K-12. It costs money and does no damned good. (If people want to waste their money on gender studies in college that’s their business.) I could go on…..
OK, I awoke from my dream now.
Return to market college loan rates and quaint old notions that graduates should actually pay their accumulated debts instead of renounce them.
Renounce them? What universe are you living in? Student loans cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.