Education is Exempted From Cost-Benefit Analysis

Most people grasp the idea of cost-benefit analysis. for instance, you wouldn't spend $100,000 on improvements to your home if it added only $10,000 to the selling price. And you wouldn't spend a million dollars on advertising your business if it only increased sales by $100,000.

However, when it comes to education, people seem to be living in a different universe. They are spending huge amounts of money and getting no benefit from it. If your local supermarket doubled your grocery bill so they could hire more people, but gave you the same amount of food at the same service level, would you continue to do business with them? Of course not. What if government forced you to pay that store even if you went elsewhere to shop? They would have no incentive to stop spending money for no benefit, would they?