The Bad Mechanics of Education

Imagine you have a car that can't go over 20 mph, leaks oil, lurches left at every corner. Your mechanic has been working on it for years. Nothing changes -- except that he tells you to pour more and more money into the car. At what point do you conclude that whatever that mechanic is doing is not going to get you a high performing automobile?

Education is getting like that. We continue to pour money into the same vehicle and the same mechanics on the assumption that the solution involves spending more on the same things that aren't producing the results we need. Richard Arum (NYU) and Josipa Roksa (UVA) wrote a book entitled Academically Adrift in which they documented that


"45 percent of students (do) not demonstrate any statistically significant improvement in Collegiate Learning Assessment [CLA] performance during the first two years of college. [Further study has indicated that 36 percent of students did not show any significant improvement over four years.]"

Why would this be? They also discovered that less than half of undergraduates had taken a single course the previous semester that required 20 pages of written work. A third had not taken a single course that required 40 pages of reading.  In other words, they discovered that colleges that demand little effort are getting little results. Are you surprised? More importantly does this lead to a (rational) conclusion that you ought to give the people running these institutions more of your money? The education business has simply become a scam that dupes those who are themselves too lazy or uneducated to inquire into whether they are really getting anything in return for their investment. It's time to hire new mechanics or get a new car.

Enabling Disability

Congress needs to get back to Econ 101 and reality. When you tax something, you will get less of it. When you subsidize it, you will get more of it. In 1984 Congress made it much easier to claim disability under Social Security. Having headaches, feeling depressed? You might be "disabled" and eligible to live off the working. Does anyone really think the workplace has gotten so much more dangerous that there are three times as many disabled now?

Our Math Challenged President

The President made the statement in support of his so-called Buffett Rule, that those "making more than $1 million each year should (not) pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle class family pays." Okay, but is this really true?  Maybe the President should check with the Congressional Budget Office.  Back when I learned math, 29.5% of your income was a larger larger share than 14.3%. In fact just about twice as much.  I'll bet Warren Buffett could help him with remedial math.