Scucca

What are you using to support that premise?

In terms of the human capital model, the US does have a successful PhD system that ensures a dominate role in research. In terms of the screening hypothesis, other countries have a higher proportion of youngsters investing in tertiary education. Further, the use of fees ensures controls over the ability of the individual to invest.

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Mach

Compared to what?
Are any publically taughts skills not questionable?

-Mach

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

Scucca

I think American is correct in that both human capital and the screening hypothesis applies. It would then be reasonable to suggest that the screening use of education cheapens its human capital role (e.g.expenditure in the US designed to maintain intergenerational divides, as the upper classes use education to effectively silver spoon their offspring)

Mach

I'm asking how he can judge them to be performing "poorly". Compared to what.

Regarding your comment, screening is paid for in opportunity cost even if you make a choice NOT to invest in screening. Screening may even by itself be worth investing in simply because of it's carrot approach to getting kids and parents more serious about their education. It may in fact me a primary factor IN developing human capital, and not be some opposition approach.

Business 101, you get what you measure. Measure nothing, you get nothing.

-Mach

Scucca

Screening, theoretically speaking, comes in 2 variations: the strong screening hypothesis where there is no human capital role for certification and the weak screening hypothesis where are some skills advancements. The problem is generated when we refer to its practical application. For it to work it is reliant on cost (i.e a low ability individual should remark "I will not go to university and pretend to be high ability as it is too costly to acquire the signal"). However, once we have class divides, those costs are virtually eliminated. It becomes "Stuff it, I will go to university and daddy will help pay for it". More and more education resources are destroyed by that process. The support of intergenerational divides, rather than a human capital role, dominates expenditure

Mach

Class divides are a function of freedom, not a function of a broken or flawed system. One must be free to fail, be free to waste money, and free to differentiate themslves on something as shallow as wealth, to have a free and prosperous culture. If you believe class divide is a problem, you ultimately believe in restricting individual choices ( a lot of them).

If you believe someone being free to waste their own money is the problem, then you have a problem with giving people freedom to make their own financial choices. This also has nothing to do with waste in the education system as an indicator the "system" isn't functioning.

Those rich/powerful kids that "waste" their money, in effect invest in the educational department that will turn around and invest into students that really will make good use of it. So 20/30 harvard law graduates will not really capitalize on that educational investment, the 10 who will benefited from the investment of those 20 however, in that department (hiring of better professors, etc.) Call this free-market education? educational entrepreneurship?

Waste alone is not an indicator of a broken system. All systems should have waste, so simply looking for waste is not a reliable way to identify a flaw in a system. If the waste is used as incentivization for progress, and as a feedback mechanism, it may be maximally efficient depending on the system.

Look at failed ventures in a capitalistic market. Was money wasted? Yes. Was that money wasted as part of a system that maximizes efficiency? Yes.

The problem many of us (me included) fall into is identifying the ideal system for yourself. It must function in a free society ideally, not for 5% of the population ideally. That means for all those fools, and lazy people, and greedy people, and failures, and good people. Add them all, and which system returns the most.

-Mach

Scucca

I don't see the artificial restriction of intergenerational mobility as a case of "individual choice". I certainly don't see the attack against merit as a celebration of human capital.

Their own? That isn't accurate. They're making choices for their sprogs such that education returns are harmed. I can understand it of course. Whilst it may be a rational course for them, it is to the detriment of us all as tertiary education fails to achieve its primary human capital aim.

It actually leads to reduction in education standards. Certification has to be fed, particularly with the high fees demanded by education establishment

We're not talking inefficiency here, we're talking of the destruction of potential.

Mach

How can you argue it is not?
When you write "mobility", you mean on a wealth (or power) scale.

If you restrict the means to earn wealth, or what that wealth can be used for (one or both are necssary to restrict mobility), then you restrict their choices, in a bad way (bad to efficient market).

If I make <X> number of euros, and I want to spend them on living in an exclusive neighborhood, with an exotic car, and send my children to the most expensive schools, they have been class divided by ME, through my wealth, through my choice. It is a natural phenomenon, that even the most rational of us feel the urge to do (but may not participate in). But that's less important than the fact that it is, an individual choice.

If you believe the only reason a student attends a very expensive school, be it early education or graduate-level, is purely for "educational efficiency", then your premise is incorrect. They do it for many reason, in part for class divide (choice), feeling important/different (really same class divide), because they perhaps didn't get to go themselves (emotional choice), because they believe that even though they may pay a huge premium on a very, very slight advantage in education, that it is still a good use of their wealth.

So, we're back to restricting their choice.

I don't see this alternative though that theoretically realizes more potential than the current system. Can you elaborate on what the difference in this proposed system is?

-Mach

Scucca

If wealth is used to promote inequality of opportunity then we certainly cannot refer to efficiency or individual choice. Instead, we have to refer to inefficiency (given the human capital role of education is cheapened) and class conflict (given we're referring to how inequalities reduce the opportunities of the individual to invest according to their innate ability)

Individual choice would be consistent with a regime where equality of opportunity is maintained, such that the individual is able to choose the option that is consistent with the maximisation of their welfare. That will then encourage efficiency, given it will ensure tertiary education is characterised by the able students who are able to maximise the returns from the investment.

They do it as it ensures higher chances of success, given the nature of inequality of opportunity. It ensures that meritocracy is a pipe dream, with certification providing a means to ensure the intergenerational continuation of divides. It certainly is not efficient for the education system to be cheapened in this way.

Any system that improves equality of opportunity will improve on the current system. I'd go for a coupling of comprehensive education (with the elimination of parent choice where possible) and a much more aggressive use of subsidies at the further education stage. This ironically increases individual choice, as investment is not limited by inequities in wealth and the consequences of class conflict.