The Relative Value of a College Education

Richard Cohen reacts to his perception that people today are too concerned with the economics of college, and shares his perception of the college education he received back in the 1960's,

I apply my own set of metrics to my college education. I met some wonderful people, particularly fellow students who were so much more sophisticated and worldly than I was. I had some great teachers, one of whom became a mentor and taught me how to suffer criticism. (I’m still suffering.) Whole worlds opened up to me — philosophy, which I never would have read had I not been forced to; the clotted verses of Chaucer; and, of course, the aforementioned anthropology, both cultural and physical. The latter had me going from desk to desk. Upon each was placed a human skull. I had to determine the sex, the race and the age.

I went five for five. This is not the kind of thing you’re likely to do on the job. I came of age when jobs were plentiful and college not exorbitantly expensive. I graduated with debt, but it was manageable, and I set off to do something I loved — journalism. I had tried my hand at it in college. I know things have changed and I do not dismiss today’s economic conditions. But I tell you this — college made me a happier person. I don’t know what that’s worth in dollars, but I know what it is worth to me: everything.

Whatever his intention, I do think that Cohen fails to give sufficient weight to today's economic conditions. Tuition costs have soared since the 1960's, and pursuing a graduate degree in journalism at an elite university is the sort of pursuit of a dream that is likely to leave you underemployed and struggling to pay off your student loans. Cohen writes that his decision to go to college wasn't about money, but it didn't need to be. But a few decades earlier the type of college experience Cohen describes was a luxury few could afford, and a few decades later it is again increasingly becoming a luxury. Cohen states that he might have become an insurance salesman had he not gone to college, and might have become more wealthy by virtue of that choice. He also could have returned to the insurance industry after college had his journalism career not panned out, as his debt load did not define his choices.

I recognize and value the four year college experience, the opportunity (if you choose to take it) to learn subjects to which you might not otherwise be exposed, to have your ideas challenged and tested, to learn a subject in depth. But the shift toward "But will my degree help me get a job that pays a decent wage," or "Might I not be a lot better off if I instead learn a trade, find work that does not require a degree, or find some other path toward a career," are not manifestations of a shallow rejection of those values in favor of economics. They're a reflection of the reality that it's not much fun to spend a large amount of money (not to mention opportunity costs) to get a degree that might not only be insufficient to help you get a job, but could also leave you with a huge amount of non-dischargeable debt yet without the means to pay it off.

If you want to help today's college students and you value the four year college experience, rather than suggesting that students are somehow wrong or shallow to consider the economics of a degree program, it would be helpful to instead focus on how we can improve the economics of college -- how we can shift the cost-benefit analysis back to where it was when Cohen was able to attend college on the cheap with a wide range of job opportunities upon graduation. If we find that we cannot move the economics of college back in that direction, while we can continue to value the four-year college degree, we should also recognize that we're talking about a luxury that fewer and fewer people will be able to enjoy.

Teach For America Protests Too Much....

By reputation, Teach For America has never been particularly good at dealing with its critics, internal and external. A former TFA corps member and manager describes its overall approach as follows:

Instead of engaging in real conversations with critics, and even supporters, about the weaknesses of Teach For America and where it falls short, Teach For America seemed to put a positive spin on everything. During my tenure on staff, we even got a national team, the communications team, whose job it was to get positive press out about Teach For America in our region and to help us quickly and swiftly address any negative stories, press or media. This inability and unwillingness to honestly address valid criticism made me start to see that Teach For America had turned into more of a public relations campaign than an organization truly committed to closing the achievement gap. Unfortunately, the organization seemed to care more about public perception of what the organization was doing than about what the organization was actually doing to improve education for low-income students throughout the United States.

We had a TFA representative stop by here a few years ago, and she refused to clarify TFA's reported policies that bar corps members from criticizing the organization. A corp member attempted to clarify the situation:

When I accepted TFA's offer, I do accurately recall a very lengthy contract we had to sign electronically. And I do remember being very disturbed by a section that dealt with public criticism. In the most PC way possible, the bottom line was that it was extremely frowned upon and consequences could arise. I whole-heartedly remember this part because as a young college grad with a free spirited, libertarian-esque personality, this was a red flag for me.

What I've learned so far in my time with TFA is that public criticism is against the core values. Also, the higher ups tell us public criticism hurts the organization as a whole, and hurts our mission of ultimately helping inner-city, high need students. It's all a guilt trip. And for the record, I have seen TFA corp members severely 'blacklisted'(though not expelled) for public and non-public criticism.

A person who was, at the time, a TFA corps member confirmed to me that TFA retaliates against corps members who publicly criticize the program. The attitude toward criticism seems to start at the top, as evidenced by an editorial authored by TFA founder, chair and former CEO Wendy Kopp, bluntly titled, Criticism toward Teach for America is misplaced. What first caught my eye was Kopp's claim about the subsequent employment history of TFA corps members:

In the 25 years since, Teach for America has enlisted more than 47,000 individuals to commit two years to teaching in some of America’s neediest schools. Long after they finish their commitment, 86 percent of Teach for America alumni still work full time in education or professions related to improving lives in our most marginalized communities. About 11,000 alumni are teachers; more than 800 are school leaders.

For 11,000 of 47,000 corps members to become teachers isn't bad at all. But what in the world does "education or professions related to improving lives in our most marginalized communities" mean? I tried to find out from the TFA website, dated September 8, 2014:

For America’s network of more than 37,000 alumni continue to work toward educational equity, with 86 percent working full-time in education or with low-income communities....

Today, 10,600 corps members are teaching in 50 urban and rural regions across the country, while more than 37,000 alumni work across sectors to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education.

The first statement makes it appear that there are 37,000 alumni. The second may mean that, for some reason, they were referring to their 37,000 alumni who don't work as teachers separately from the alumni who hold teaching positions. What the positions variably described as "professions related to improving lives in our most marginalized communities", "working... with low-income communities" and "work[ing] across sectors to ensure that all children have access to an excellent education" may be, we can only guess.

And then there's another statement, also from September 8, 2014,

Today, 86% of our alumni work in education and we’re continuously working to expand our partnerships with schools and the district to provide continued mentorship, networking opportunities, and professional development to support our alumni educators.

The claim that 86% of alumni "work in education" is very different, and much more clear, than the other nebulous statements. Meanwhile, back on July 2,

Teaching is the single most popular profession among our alumni, and we’re proud of our 11,000 alumni teachers and the work they do every day. We’re also proud of the 86% of our alumni whose work—inside and outside of education--continues to take on the systemic challenges of poverty and racism and directly or indirectly strengthens our public education system.

So when TFA says that its alumni "work in education" they mean work "inside and outside of education"? As for the 86% whose work "take[s] on the systemic challenges of poverty and racism and directly or indirectly strengthens our public education system", exactly what does that mean? Why do I keep hearing that same hollow number, without its being backed up by any actual data about the actual employment and careers of TFA alumni? Kopp herself writes, "64 percent of alumni now work full time in education and another 22 percent work in jobs that relate to improving education or quality of life in low-income communities." It's not a huge surprise that college graduates who gain several years of experience in the field of education end up employed in fields that relate to their experience, whatever their intent when they enrolled, but it would be very nice to have Kopp break down exactly what she means by "in education". As for the additional 22%, the fact that TFA is inconsistent and nebulous in its description of that group and its activities suggests that they're not being entirely honest. They should release their data and actual information about that work, such that the cloud is lifted.

Kopp acknowledges that some of the criticism of TFA constitutes "valuable feedback". Presumably that feedback includes criticism of TFA's history of low minority representation, inadequate training, the short tenure of corps members, and the like, issues that TFA has attempted to address. But Kopp's not writing her editorial to respond to her critics. By all appearances, she's trying to avoid responding to her critics, and as part of that effort she resorts to the spotlight fallacy:

But some of the criticism is based on misrepresentation and toxic rhetoric. Critics say, for example, that Teach for America “endangers students’ education.” Some characterize our teachers with phrases such as “Ivy League short-term student saviour” and allege that we are “an experiment in ‘resume-padding’ for ambitious young people.” One organization mounted a social media campaign to discourage students from applying.

Looking at Kopp's first example, I don't find it to include the sort of unfair attack she describes. The quote she attacks, in its full context, reads as follows,

Inadequate teacher training: TFA’s summer institute, the minimum training its corps members receive before becoming classroom teachers, lasts only a mere five weeks. Additionally, the practical classroom experience that TFA recruits receive during this training does not give an accurate representation of the everyday tasks of teaching. There already exists an inequality in the teacher quality and experience level between low-income and more affluent communities. TFA’s inadequate training perpetuates this inequality and endangers students’ education by giving them a poorly trained, unprepared instructor.

An honest response to that criticism would involve describing how the five week summer institute constitutes adequate teacher training and thus does not endanger students' education. The article to which Kopp linked is calm, reasoned and raises many valid points. What does it say about Kopp that her response is to pluck a quote out of context and use it to try to dismiss the substance of the author's criticism? Kopp herself implicitly admits that the five week program is problematic,

Most recently, in March, our co-CEOs Matt Kramer and Elisa Villanueva Beard launched two pilot programs: one to provide a year of upfront training for recruits, and the other to extend our professional development to teachers who remain in the classroom for a third, fourth and fifth year.

With 47,000 alumni, there would be no need for such a pilot program if in fact the organization didn't recognize the deficiencies in its model for training corps members and preparing them for the classroom.

The second criticism, that "Some characterize our teachers with phrases such as “'Ivy League short-term student saviour'", is also interesting, as the actual article accuses TFA of projecting that attitude in its sales pitches to college students:

Many assume the TFA promo of Ivy League Short-term Student Saviour, but not all.

Kopp advances the ungrounded idea that TFA recruits can “close the achievement gap” because they are the “best and brightest”– and that they can do so going into America’s toughest teaching situations in two-year stints. And after “closing the gap,” TFAers can fulfill the nation’s need for their “best and brightest” leadership in key educational roles, including those of district or state superintendent, or charter school/education company “founder.”

The author of the blog post later elaborates,

TFA works hard to promote the image of the “best and brightest” as successfully and altruistically “giving back” by offering their indispensable “talent” to rescue students from achievement gaps that are clearly the fault of those who attended “non-target” institutions in order to earn degrees in what TFA considers a non-profession for its lack of “results.”

However, based upon the above discussion threads, some more astute TFAers realize that Kopp’s promotions are little more than selfish, strategically-endorsed, well-funded fiction.

An honest response by Kopp would not involve accusing the author of making the statement, but by explaining how that's not a fair characterization of how TFA pitches itself to college students or how college students perceive its outreach. It might also acknowledge that the comments by prospective TFA corps members, to which the critic links, support the impression that many corps members see TFA as offering to help pave their path into highly paid careers. For example, from 2011,

So for those of you who are unaware, Teach for America and Goldman Sachs firmly cemented their partnership this year. Goldman will be offering (at least) 20 minorities in the incoming Teach for America class summer internships.

The Godlman Sachs announcement prominently features the TFA logo, and states,

Through this program, Goldman Sachs will offer up to twenty paid summer internships to eligible African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans who have also been accepted to the incoming Teach For America corps. The internship with Goldman Sachs takes place between the first and second years of teaching. At the end of the summer, qualified participants may receive an offer to join Goldman Sachs full-time at the conclusion of their Teach For America commitment.

While it's easy to see how that type of partnership could help recruit TFA corps members who were interested in using TFA as a stepping stone to a career in finance, it doesn't do much to undermine the impression many hold that many TFA corps members view their participation as a short-term exercise to build their résumés, not as part of a longer-term commitment to education.

The third quote is presented in a similarly dishonest manner. In context,

Several years ago, a TFA recruiter plastered the Fordham campus with flyers that said “Learn how joining TFA can help you gain admission to Stanford Business School.” The message of that flyer was: “use teaching in high-poverty areas as a stepping stone to a career in business.” It was not only disrespectful to every person who chooses to commit their life to the teaching profession, it effectively advocated using students in high-poverty areas as guinea pigs for an experiment in “resume-padding” for ambitious young people.

Once again, this is a comment about TFA's recruitment efforts, and the message TFA itself sends to prospective corps members. It would have been nice if Kopp had been able to deny that the incident occurred, particularly given her organization's umbrage over the idea that it markets itself as an opportunity for students to pad their résumés. Being unable to deny the incident, it would have been nice if Kopp had sought to set the record straight, and to clarify how despite the recruiter's message the organization takes great pains to in fact exclude students whose primary interest is in attending an elite graduate program, and strives to ensure that every corps member is fully equipped to manage a classroom from day one. Frankly, Kopp's attack on the messenger does little more than suggest that she cannot defend her own program.

As for the social media campaign? A Twitter hashtag, "#ResistTFA", from a small student-led organization. And do you know where you end up if you look up that organization to try to find out why it is asking that students resist TFA? Right back on the first page to which Kopp linked. That is, even with her out-of-context cherry-picking, two of Kopp's examples of supposedly unfair criticism were part of the same criticism. Let's take a quick look at the criticisms Kopp chose to disregard while painting her critic as unfair:

• Inadequate teacher training: TFA’s summer institute, the minimum training its corps members receive before becoming classroom teachers, lasts only a mere five weeks [and includes inadequate practical classroom experience]....

• Promotion of teacher turnover: TFA only requires a two-year commitment to teaching, and as a result, over 80% of corps members leave the classroom after four years [and the organization emphasizes producing "'leaders' rather than career educators"....

• Conflict with traditionally-trained career teachers: A further effect of the two-year commitment is that most TFA corps members will not teach long enough to be entitled to the higher salaries and benefits that come with increased experience [positioning them as a low-cost alternative to traditionally certified teachers]....

• Charter schools: TFA has been found to be a key player in the charter school expansion movement as many of these privately-run, publicly-funded schools are mainly staffed by TFA corps members.... however, charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools and offer little in terms of creative approaches to pedagogy....

• Standardized tests: TFA often claims to foster educational excellence because its teachers effectively boost their students scores on standardized tests [and in some cases that appears to be accurate].... However, we resist the notion that standardized tests are on the whole educationally beneficial....

• Degradation of the teaching profession: The more TFA recruits committed to teaching for only two years come to replace traditionally-certified educators, the more the teaching profession as a whole becomes a temporary job rather than a profession....

There's plenty there to which Kopp could respond, giving a substantive reply to the valid criticisms and explaining why TFA holds a different opinion on matters such as the importance and impact of high stakes standardized testing. What is she waiting for? Kopp claims, "It is crucial that we have an honest, open-minded conversation about what it will take to improve educational — and ultimately life — outcomes for kids", but it's her approach to TFA's critics, not the actual statements and positions of TFA's critics, that is preventing the discussion from proceeding.

Kopp argues,

In the communities where we’ve been providing teachers for 15 years or more, the impact of Teach for America is clear. Twelve years ago, D.C. students were scoring at the bottom compared with their peers in other large cities. Today, although there is still much to be done, schools in the nation’s capital are improving faster than any other urban district’s. This change is the result of the efforts of many people, but without Teach for America alumni, we’d lose much of the energy behind it.

The energy we might lose being a handful of TFA alumni who are working in the DC school system. Except, even assuming that the TFA alumni bring something special to the table, if TFA is recruiting people who are committed to education why should we assume that those people would not have ended up in education but for TFA? If TFA is taking the position that it attracts people who aren't inclined to go into education and then, through training and classroom experience, transforms them into people committed to the future of education in our society, perhaps that's a case they can make -- but as long as they choose to insist that they are trying to recruit students who are committed to education, not simply looking to build their résumés, they undermine any argument that they could make that their program is transformative.

Kopp asks the question,

Would the United States really be better off if thousands of outstanding and committed people did not apply to Teach for America?

But that's not the right question. TFA's critics don't seem bothered by the idea of a teacher corps that steps in to fill a void, providing classroom teachers where there would otherwise be a teacher shortage. TFA's critics appear to be bothered by the suggestion that any random Iy League graduate, following a five-week training course, is as good or better than a traditionally trained classroom teacher, and thus that TFA corps members should displace traditionally certified teachers in schools and districts where no teacher shortage exists.

Some corps members turn out to be great classroom teachers, while others have nothing but problems -- but one pretty constant criticism I hear from corps members and alumni is that they were out-of-their-depths during their first year of teaching. TFA appears to be belatedly responding to that problem with its pilot project for more complete teacher training, but it is fair for critics of TFA to point out that its teacher preparation program is often insufficient, and that wealthier school districts would not even consider employing TFA corps members in lieu of traditionally certified applicants for teacher positions.

It is also fair to point out that under Kopp's leadership, TFA came to be associated with attacks on the professionalism and competence of traditionally trained teachers as part of its desire for growth, and as part of its effort to maintain contracts to provide corps members to districts that didn't have or were no longer experiencing a teacher shortage. It is more than fair to point out that poor kids don't deserve schools that are inferior to those available in middle class communities, including competent teachers -- and that, whatever qualified candidates TFA brings into the inner cities, it is at best a band-aid solution and at worst an impediment to the hiring and retention of long-term, qualified classroom teachers.

Kopp closes by arguing,

This country is failing our kids, and the conversation we’re having is not helping. It’s not elevating the teaching profession. It isn’t changing kids’ lives or giving them the best chance to fulfill their potential. It’s undermining trust in the efforts of so many to improve education, and driving away what we need most: The energy and attention of every person willing to work for our children.

To me, that seems like a fair criticism of Kopp's own approach to the discussion. It doesn't appear to bother her at all that attacks on the teaching profession over recent decades, with associated efforts to reduce teacher compensation and benefits and to remove job protections, have decreased teacher satisfaction and have caused many teachers and prospective teachers to choose other career options. It only seems to bother her that people are criticizing TFA. Perhaps I'm wrong -- Kopp has been around for a long time. Perhaps she has made a statement in defense of career teachers, or in response to attacks on the teaching profession, that I haven't seen. Can anybody help me out?

Don't Confuse High Stakes Testing With High Expectations

Frank Bruni recently expressed concern, in the usual hackneyed terms, that kids these days are "coddled". Some sports give trophies for participation, or end games early when the difference in score reaches a defined threshold. A middle school near Boston is concerned that kids' feelings might get hurt if they find out that they weren't invited to parties. Some kids get stressed by tests. Bruni complains that "Many kids at all grade levels are Bubble-Wrapped in a culture that praises effort nearly as much as it does accomplishment." As anybody, including Bruni, should know, people like Bruni have been writing this sort of column for generations.

All of Bruni's complaints are to set a context for his criticism of people who object to the high stakes standardized testing model imposed upon the nation's schools. Bruni conflates high stakes standardized tests with "tougher instruction [that should] not be rejected simply because it makes children feel inadequate, and that the impulse to coddle kids not eclipse the imperative to challenge them." While Bruni insists, that Common Core is "a laudable set of guidelines that emphasize analytical thinking over rote memorization", even he admits that "n instances its implementation has been flawed, and its accompanying emphasis on testing certainly warrants debate." Yet here he is, calling those who want to engage in the debate paranoiacs and whiners.

Then there’s the outcry, equally reflective of the times, from adults who assert that kids aren’t enjoying school as much; feel a level of stress that they shouldn’t have to; are being judged too narrowly; and doubt their own mettle.

Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper? Aren’t certain fixed judgments inevitable? And isn’t mettle established through hard work?

I don't mind at all the notion that school should be challenging. But what Bruni is overlooking is how standardized testing has displaced a lot of traditional classroom teaching and learning, or that the insistence that children master skills at earlier ages is not necessarily consistent with the students' cognitive development. After pushing more and more traditional first grade material into kindergarten, we're now hearing proposals to raise the age for kindergarten enrollment. If you end up with a kindergarten full of kids who, under the former system, would largely have been in first grade, what are you actually accomplishing?

Here's something it shouldn't take very long to figure out: When you tell a teacher, "Your ranking as a teacher, your ability to keep your job and the amount you are paid depends on how your students do on a series of standardized tests," the odds are that the teacher is going to devote a great deal of effort and classroom time to improving student performance on the test. Bruni ridicules a parent's complaint that as a result of that sort of focus on testing, his eight year old's class was left with "no room for imagination or play". Does Bruni not understand that children can be challenged academically, yet be encouraged in their imagination? Does Bruni not understand that children need breaks in their lessons during the course of a school day? That children can learn from play activities? It would seem not.

Bruni references David Coleman, "noe of the principal architects of the Common Core" as asserting that he favors self-esteem, but wants to "redefine self-esteem as something achieved through hard work". It's not that self-esteem cannot be derived from hard work, but that's not really what Coleman is talking about. In the schoolyard, self esteem is on the whole negatively correlated with academic performance. Bruni's ridicule of parents who are concerned about their parents feelings is, in a sense, more relevant than Coleman's goal, because Bruni's approach does not involve somehow changing human nature. When Coleman talks about how students "will not enjoy every step of it" but "if it takes them somewhere big and real, they’ll discover a satisfaction that redeems the sweat", he seems to be talking about the end of a very long process. If you don't find a way to let kids learn on an incremental basis that their hard work will be rewarded, you're not going to create an effective learning environment for most kids.

Bruni also references Marc Tucker of the National Center on Education and the Economy, who has stated, "ile American parents are pulling their kids out of tests because the results make the kids feel bad, parents in other countries are looking at the results and asking themselves how they can help their children do better." But that's not the actual issue. Although certain factions of school reformers like to point to nations that obsess over test scores, holding them out as a model for the nation, it's very clear that we don't have the sort of culture that will cause us to follow the lead of South Korea, with kids leaving school to head over to private academies where they spend additional hours being prepped for tests, and we don't really want to follow the lead of nations that produce kids who are very good at taking tests but not much good at thinking outside the margins of a carefully darkened oval.

If you want good public schools, you don't need to do much. You need to make the profession of teaching sufficiently well respected and remunerated that you attract above average students into the profession, you want to make the task of classroom teaching rewarding, and you want parents who will reinforce the need for their kids to attend school, study and do their homework, behave in class, and achieve academically. When you do that you don't need to obsess over test stores - you can use standardized tests in their traditional manner, to assess individual and group performance with an eye toward improvement, and with no need for teachers to "teach to the test" because the goal is to obtain an accurate assessment as opposed to an artificially inflated score that reflects intensive teaching to the test at the expense of a rich classroom experience.

Ah, but high-stakes standardized testing is so much easier for school administrators and politicians, the ones who have positioned themselves to get prizes for "participation" - a large, steady paycheck with no consequences at all for the failure of schools, teachers or students. And it's so much easier to point to a computer-generated list of scores and pretend that you have objectively evaluated a teacher or school than it is to work hard.

The "Three Million Available Jobs" Canard

I recently heard a guy, apparently the former star of a reality TV show about 'dirty job', purport that there are three million jobs with good wages waiting to be filled, and that they remain open due to a mismatch between job applicant skills and the needs of the employer. He suggested that the root of the problem was that people are turning up their noses at the skilled trades, and thus aren't even considering jobs that could pay them $40,000 - $120,000 per year. Needless to say, something about that claim carried the odor of an equine byproduct.

As it turns out, the "three million jobs" figure is tossed around with some regularity, and it represents a snapshot of the job market at any given time, and does not capture the even larger number of jobs that become available and that are filled each month. It's a bit like looking at a photo of kids playing musical chairs and observing how many open chairs there are - the snapshot tells us how many jobs are available, but many of those jobs are recent vacancies and most of them will be filled. So as it turns out, about 2.5 million of those jobs aren't at all difficult to fill, and the suggestion is that in manufacturing "there are as many as 500,000 jobs that aren't being filled because employers say they can't find qualified workers". Note, we're still a long way from "jobs that could pay $40,000 - $120,000 per year."

When Sixty Minutes explored this shortage of workers, it found that wages were stagnant and manufacturers were unwilling to train workers - that is, they wanted to hire people who were going to be fully productive from day one. They looked specifically at a company called "Click Bond", that has had difficulty getting workers with sufficient skill to run its machines. An executive helped form a partnership with local community colleges to train workers, and "As part of the training program, [participating] manufacturers are willing to pay students for two-day a week internships." The big money at the end of that training?

At the end of the 16 weeks of training, Click Bond offered Ryan Vre Non and Jamie Pacheco full time jobs at $12 an hour with benefits.

So if you complete the training and internship, and perform at the top of your class, you have the chance to earn $12/hour? Not only is that number far short of the great salary the "dirty jobs' guy was touting, it's difficult to believe that somebody who was capable of completing that program at the top of his class could not have found another program that would have resulted in a better-paying job. And really, if you're advertising a job at $12/hour for somebody who already possesses the skill set to be productive with minimal to no training, you're not offering enough to entice that person away from their current job.

Taking a close look at wage data in manufacturing, the Boston Consulting Group recently found that less than one percent of the manufacturing workforce, in a handful of labor market areas, is affected by a skills gap. In its survey of employers, Manpower finds that, among U.S. employers having difficulty filling jobs, 54% report that the reason positions are difficult to fill is that workers are looking for more pay than is offered and 44% report that applicants lack experience.

But such reasons cast doubt on the idea of a skills mismatch, as it is not unreasonable to expect employers to pay the going rate for the skills they need, or to provide opportunities for workers to gain experience doing the jobs they need done. So the driver of current high rates of unemployment certainly does not seem to be the inadequate skills of the American workforce.

Seriously, if the message is "train yourself at your own expense" (or taxpayer expense), or even "train yourself at your own expense, but with the possibility of a part-time, paid internship", students are not going to clamor for those $12/hour opportunities.

In exchange for these math and computer programming skills, which for most people would most likely require some measure of secondary education, Click Bond is willing to pay newly hired employees $12 per hour. In Nevada, the average hourly wage covered by unemployment in 2011 was $20.13.

Pitts also talked with Klaus Kleinfeld, German-born CEO of Alcoa in Whitehall, Michigan. Alcoa employs 2,200 people working three shifts a day, seven days a week, producing parts to make jet engines 50 percent more fuel efficient.... The Alcoa plant currently has 27 job openings, but Kleinfeld says that Alcoa absolutely has no problem with a skills gap, but it sure would be a lot easier if people would “get an education.”...

While there may very well be 500,000 job openings in manufacturing facilities across the nation, these jobs require a specialized skill set that wasn’t required even a decade ago. Kleinfeld implied it, but Hutter made it perfectly clear – employers are not willing to pay to train employees anymore.

When you start looking for the more highly paid jobs where there is a "skills gap", the word "engineer" seems to come up a lot, but not so much "machine operator". If an experienced worker is worth $12/hour, we're not talking about a job with a meaningful career path.

Moving back to "dirty jobs", I personally have no problem with encouraging students to pursue jobs in the skilled trades. I respect that some people are concerned that when you start doing so in high school, you end up tracking students who are more likely to be poor or minority into trade-oriented 'tracks' rather than academic tracks, but the effort doesn't have to occur in high school. We, as a society, can simply accept that the skilled trades are important, can potentially pay as much or better than many white collar jobs, and that it's acceptable and in some cases optimal to pursue a career in the trades instead of seeking a college degree.

That said, some of the jobs we're talking about aren't just dirty, but are dangerous. A friend who owns a small factory described the toll on his body from his years of running industrial machines. He has severe degeneration of his back and knees - and he's the boss. Talk to some retired pipefitters about their aches and pains. Talk to some auto mechanics about the injuries they or their peers have suffered on the job.

We can't pretend either that everybody is capable of working those jobs, or even that some of the people who aren't applying for those jobs are declining the opportunity because they enjoy being unemployed. Somebody who has become unemployed after a couple of decades of working one job that wore out his body is not necessarily going to be capable of entering another job that carries a similar physical toll - even for $12/hour plus benefits. And for the theoretical job that starts at $40K and could pay $120K with an employer that purports itself to be willing to train, if they can't get enough applicants it's not because there's a shortage of skilled workers - it's because of what the prospective employer and his pitchmen aren't telling you - such as the level of physical danger, travel time and isolation.

Why Nerds Drop Out of School

Courtesy of David Brooks:

Surely, part of the situation is that many men simply do not want to put themselves in positions they find humiliating. A high school student doesn’t want to persist in a school where he feels looked down on.

Don't take it from me, take it from Brooks:

In every high school there are students who are culturally and intellectually superior but socially aggrieved. These high school culturati have wit and sophisticated musical tastes but find that all prestige goes to jocks, cheerleaders and preps who possess the emotional depth of a cocker spaniel. The nerds continue to believe that the self-reflective life is the only life worth living (despite all evidence to the contrary) while the cool, good-looking, vapid people look down upon them with easy disdain on those rare occasions they are compelled to acknowledge their existence.

Oh, I recognize that Brooks is arguing something else, the sort of thing Orwell argued in The Road to Wigan Pier,

The time was when I used to lament over quite imaginary pictures of lads of fourteen dragged protesting from their lessons and set to work at dismal jobs. It seemed to me dreadful that the doom of a 'job' should descend upon anyone at fourteen. Of course I know now that there is not one working-class boy in a thousand who does not pine for the day when he will leave school. He wants to be doing real work, not wasting his time on ridiculous rubbish like history and geography. To the working class, the notion of staying at school till you are nearly grown-up seems merely contemptible and unmanly. The idea of a great big boy of eighteen, who ought to be bringing a pound a week home to his parents, going to school in a ridiculous uniform and even being caned for not doing his lessons! Just fancy a working-class boy of eighteen allowing himself to be caned!

If anything, Orwell's essay highlights how little schools have changed, and how a willingness to participate in the academic side of high school has a lot less to do with young men "want[ing] to put themselves in positions they find humiliating" and a lot more to do with cultural expectation. It is actually true that a good number of kids who are academically inclined have memories of how much they hated high school, and a good number of kids who barely cracked a book have glorious memories of their social lives and athletic achievements. You can sense some of that resentment in Brooks' caricature of the popular kids and how they perceived kids like... him. But you have to grow up - sometimes "you gotta do what you gotta do."

The Return on Investment for Law, Business, and Medical School

My last post resulted from a search in which I was looking for general information about the cost of law, business and medical school, in response to what I found to be a dubious assertion from the AEI.

But it may surprise some readers to learn that the sizable rates of return for doctors appear to be less than for other professional degrees such as in business or law. Dentists and physician specialists have comparable rates of return, but primary care doctors have lower—albeit still impressive—rates of return. This is consistent with the general impression that primary care doctors are “underpaid” relative to specialists. Not surprisingly, there is a shortage of primary care doctors.

Frankly, given that the authors wrote a book on this subject, you would think that they would offer a bit more certitude than "appear to be" - the reason that readers would be surprised by the authors' assertion is that the authors "appear to be" wrong.

Upon re-examining the assertion and accompanying graph, and noting the lack of reference to sources or data beyond reference to the authors' recently published book, there didn't seen to be much of a point in tracking down the data. The authors reference "Hours-adjusted annualized internal rate of return on educational investment over a working lifetime", which I infer to mean that they divided cost of training by hours of training... although with medical school that raises the question of whether you should (or whether they did) include residency training along with medical school itself. The authors also speak of the rise in CEO pay, "rising from less than 60 times average U.S. worker compensation in 1940 to more than 100 times that average by 2004", making me wonder if the projections for the return on investment for law school are also predicated upon data that is now, to put it mildly, extremely dated and bearing little relevance to the present legal job market.

Here's the thing: when you break down the cost of getting a MBA (two years) or JD (three years) against a getting a MD (four years of medical school followed by a residency) to an hourly figure, you are intentionally distorting the cost-benefit analysis by pretending that the programs could be the same length. First, medical school is more expensive than business school or law school. Second, it's a longer program. Let's imagine an investment where you can contribute $X per year, with a rate of return that diminishes slightly with each additional year. You pick a fixed number of years, make your investment, and you're done. Your two year (business school) investment will provide a greater 'rate of return' than your four (or more) year (medical school) investment, but with a smaller contribution per year and a lower number of years of contribution, odds are you'll still look back in twenty or thirty years and think, "Wow, think how much better off I would be had I gone for that four+ year investment plan." A comparison of this type really only works if the cost of tuition is comparable and the length of the program is comparable: Once you have an MBA, you're done - you can't re-enroll for another two years in order to increase the size of your investment.

The authors' conclusions, although not atypical of the quality of AEI scholarship, verge on platitudinous:

It is well-known that much of the difference in healthcare spending between the United States and other nations can be attributed to the higher prices Americans pay for medical care. But the foregoing comparisons suggest that high prices for health labor in the United States might simply reflect higher returns to skilled labor across the board. After all, if we were “overpaying” doctors, we would expect to see a doctor surplus. Yet this is not what we observe. Paying doctors less would not benefit the country as a whole. That is, every dollar saved by consumers also would be one less dollar of income for doctors. Moreover, if doctors were paid much less, more people might get MBAs or law degrees instead. This would surely reduce health spending, but reasonable people might disagree on whether it would improve social welfare.

First the largest contributors to the cost of medical care are, from most costly to least costly, pharmaceutical costs, facilities costs and doctor salaries. If you are going to overlook the first two cost factors and suggest that we're simply looking at an American preference to give higher pay for skilled labor, you're not even trying to build a case. Physician salaries represent roughly 20% of medical costs. If we paid doctors nothing our nation's healthcare system would remain the most costly in the developed world. Medical schools routinely reject qualified applicants. We can easily expand our nation's pool of doctors by expanding medical schools, funding more residencies, and creating an easier path for foreign doctors to qualify to practice in the United States. The constraints we impose do lead to higher salaries for doctors, but through the distortion of the education and labor markets.

In terms of a "doctor surplus", there's in fact an artificial shortage of doctors in the U.S., driven in no small part by the AMA's successful obstruction of the expansion of medical schools, and also from immigration and accreditation policies that make the U.S. market unattractive to doctors in foreign nations who would otherwise be happy to practice in the U.S. Would lower salaries deter people from becoming doctors? Given that among nations in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), nations other than the U.S. have significantly more doctors per capita, that would not appear to be a valid concern.

The argument that "We don't get any real savings if we pay doctors less, because every dollar saved by a consumer 'would be one less dollar of income for doctors'" - why, then, are AEI's scholars in a constant tizzy about labor unions, taxes on the wealthy, teacher salaries, whether government workers are overpaid, the minimum wage... it all comes out in the wash, right? How about this: We can legislate market distortions and subsidies that increase lawyer salaries to the tune of $1 billion per year and, when people complain, respond, "Paying lawyers less would not benefit the country as a whole, because every dollar saved by consumers also would be one less dollar of income for lawyers." Sound good?

I'll go back to something I said a few weeks ago:

You want the public to subsidize medical schools and residencies, so that you graduate with a lower debt load and, after your initial medical education, have a more comfortable lifestyle? I'm listening - if we give you that, what are you offering in return? How about we reduce compensation for medical care to an amount more in line with the amounts paid by the rest of the world? Do we have a deal?

You know what else that proposal would do? Massively increase the "return on investment" for medical school under the model described above, even though doctor salaries would drop. Go figure.

Law School's a Great Deal If....

It's a couple of years old, but I just came across this one.... After advising law students about how they should get into the best law school they can and, if it's not one "sufficient brand equity to land the 'Big Law' position you want", to transfer after your first year to one that has sufficient brand equity ("work hard in your first year to earn top grades, and then transfer to a better school" - it's that easy, you know, which is why most law students have top grades and most top law schools are overflowing with transfer students after the first year - so you can get that BigLaw job.) The only type of legal job that makes sense to the author. Oh yes, and you should "have a passion for some aspect of law" because "there is never a guarantee of graduating with a high-paying job" and without passion the "tuition will never be worth it".

The author runs a company that coaches students on how to take the LSAT, so I think the biggest takeaway is that his advice "Do not take the LSAT until you are fully prepared.... Find a top class and experienced tutor, and take as many practice tests as you can" and the suggestion that even if you get into a crappy law school it's okay because you can study hard and transfer to a top school after your first year, were about protecting or promoting his business. The rest of the advice... sorry, there's no easy path to go from a school at which BigLaw does not recruit into a top law school, even if you're "committed to excelling during the admissions process". Around the same time the author was writing this piece, I received a letter from the dean of my law school (one where BigLaw recruits) suggesting that alums might might a special effort to hire graduates. You can be a great lawyer from a great law school, but if you start your career off the few tracks that lead to BigLaw jobs, odds are they're not going to let you back on.

But really, only about 13% of new law school graduates end up in permanent, BigLaw jobs upon graduating from law school. A small, additional number might join that track after completing judicial clerkships. If law school only makes economic sense if followed by a career in BigLaw, all that talk about transferring truly is about rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic - the lifeboats don't get any bigger. Worse, your reward is a career in BigLaw. (Oh, sure, some people love it. Others spend a career trying to figure out how to unshackle themselves from the golden handcuffs.)

The author's suggestion that passion can... I guess make up for the poor return on your investment if you don't get a job with a decent salary? For the most part, employers recognize student passion (real or feigned) for what it is - something that's not particularly related to the work they will be doing in their jobs. What if you have a passionate interest in, say, environmental law? Well, the best paying jobs are with the companies that are trying to avoid the application of environmental laws and regulations to their business activities. If you have the passion of a Dick Cheney, I say, "Go for it." If your passion is to "save the planet", you will find that there are lawyer jobs in public interest organizations. But for the most part they don't pay well. Oh yes, and they're full.

Where is passion likely to help? If you can develop true passion for, say, tax law, that can be an advantage if you can convey that passion to employers who are hiring entry level tax lawyers. That passion could matter if it's an area where few of your peers have strong interest and if you're actually capable of convincing an employer that your passion is real (because, as will shock you, a lot of job applicants will lie through their teeth about their passion and commitment to whatever it is the prospective employer wants). Good luck with that.

At the end, I'm left with the image of a pick-axe salesman in 1856, begging people to come to the California gold rush and assuring them how much better their odds are of finding the mother lode... if they buy enough supplies and the right pickaxe on their way to stake their claim.

Rich Kids are Doing Fine... And its News?

A few days ago, Sean Reardon shared an observation which he suggested may not surprise you, "the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families."

So let me see... kids who on the whole have the most educated parents, the most affluent homes and best home environments, safe neighborhoods, good schools, and ready access to additional resources if they start to flounder, do better on the whole than the kids who do not have those advantages? Let me guess - the next thing that may not surprise me is that kids who have the least educated parents, the poorest homes and home environments, unsafe neighborhoods, schools that struggle to maintain order and perhaps even to maintain their basic facilities, and who have trouble accessing additional resources even if their parents attempt to find and utilize those resources, bring up the bottom?

The author notes that this is a phenomenon associated with wealth, not gaps in racial achievement or a decline in school performance. He argues that school quality is a small part of the difference.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich....

The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

The author paints an idyllic picture of a typical wealthy family,

Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

I doubt, however, that the phenomenon is explained by the small percentage of wealthy families who employ tutors to prepare their children for kindergarten admission tests. Also, let's note, being tutored for a test can make you perform better on that test, and that can be particularly true of aptitude tests, but what you end up with is not evidence that one group is outperforming another by any measure other than the test. Instead, you end up with an invalid measure. We can talk of, "support[ing] working families so that they can read to their children more often", but in some of those wealthy families the reading is done by the nanny, and I suspect that modeling remains a significant factor - if the only books (real or virtual) you have in your home are the ones you read to your kids, that may indicate both motivation and the possibility that your kids will engage with books in a way you do not; if you have a home full of books and spend a lot of time reading, the odds go way up that your kids will follow your lead.

That said, we already know that giving children an enriched preschool environment can significantly improve a child's performance as they enter school. Despite the anti-Head Start demagoguery (that after the child starts school and you end the enrichment, you see a reversion to the mean over the next few years), we know how to boost a child's academic performance. As various experiments have shown, both in public school and charter school settings, kids from impoverished community perform better in school when they spend more hours in the classroom and receive tutoring. Shocking, isn't it?

Rich people care about education, they can vote with their feet if they don't like the performance of their child's preschool or public school, and they can and largely will avail themselves of resources when their kids struggle. They are also positioned to help their kids pursue their interests, whether academic, artistic or athletic. Basically, if you're wealthy you're much more likely to care about education. "But middle class families value education," you protest? Sure, but our society largely cares about education in the abstract. Education matters, but teachers get paid too much, kids don't really need art or music, and a B is good enough - particularly if you're good at sports.

Although anybody's best laid plans can gang aft agley, there's a difference between hoping your child goes to college and gets a degree, and expecting that your child to attend a top university and proceed to graduate school. It's easy to find public schools that bring kids in several weeks in advance of the start of school for sports, and put significant resources into sports equipment, facilities and coaching. It's easy to find schools where past sports victories are trumpeted, and sports trophies and banners prominently displayed. You rarely find the same sort of priority being placed on academics. Its not an either or - you can push both sports and academics - but our society's choices reflect its actual values.

Let's remember also, the lowest performing children of the wealthy tend to earn more money than the highest performing children from poor families. Wealth has advantages, and those advantages affect motivation and outcome.

Actually, It's Not So Easy to Teach Yourself New Tricks....

An afterthought on Thomas Friedman's column,

But, more than ever, our kids will have to “invent” a job. (Fortunately, in today’s world, that’s easier and cheaper than ever before.)

Well, quite clearly, college isn't cheaper than ever before. Quite the opposite. Even if, recognizing that your skills have become a bit rusty, you're inclined to go back.

I expect that Friedman is referencing the growing availability of online courses, free and paid, on a wide range of subjects. If you can put together an appropriate collection of such courses, you can approximate what you might learn in certain more expensive, formal educational programs. The first problem with that is curation - you generally won't know if a course is any good or how much you'll learn until you complete the course. The same is true to a degree with college courses, but the college has an incentive to curate the content and to try to ensure that courses are of reasonable quality. Similarly, colleges put together curricula to help students pick "majors" and "minors" and, ideally, take an appropriate set of courses to obtain an appropriate level of knowledge to justify being granted a degree. When you're putting together your own set of courses on the Internet, it can be difficult to know where that process begins and ends. If you are acting out of mere personal interest, sure, it's cheap and easy. If you're trying to teach yourself cutting edge job skills in your spare time, it's not easy and (assuming the material is available online) isn't necessarily cheap.

I have seen interesting programs that promise, somewhat convincingly, to take people from the beginner level to "competent and employable" in a block of time comparable to a college semester. For example, this program to teach Ruby on Rails. I think colleges should do a lot more to create and implement that type of program. But such a program is neither cheap nor easy. Sure, you can quit your job and with some decent guidance and luck in finding good resources, as well as a lot of motivation and sufficient aptitude, achieve reasonable mastery of Ruby on Rails in, say, twelve weeks. But... that's a luxury few people have.

Perhaps Friedman is thinking back to the days when he typed his columns and learned to use a word processor, but if we're serious about "inventing" jobs through a demonstration of skill sets and achievements not broadly shared by a larger pool of job applicants, for most workers I think things are getting harder. Not only are skills of that type increasingly complex, they become obsolete much more quickly than the important skills of the past. Picking the right skills to master, finding the time, finding the resources, and keeping current or moving on to the next thing? Easy? Come on.

Who Attends KIPP's Schools, and Why

Elliott Witney, a former leader of a KIPP charter school, claims,

Finally, I want to address your question of whether or not KIPP leaders send their children to KIPP. The answer is yes, absolutely, they do. But KIPP's mission is not educating the children of their leaders, but educating the children of their communities. KIPP's #1 Essential Question is, Are we serving the students that need us? With hundreds of families on waiting lists at KIPP schools across the country, the focus is on making progress toward that goal.

I have a few problems with that statement. First, KIPP uses the term "leader" pretty loosely, and it's not clear if the statement relates to categories of worker who would normally be regarded as teachers, school principals and school administrators. I would like to see Witney give his statement some meaning - break down "leaders" into meaningful categories, and tell us what percentage of them have children and, of those, what percentage of the children actually attend KIPP schools. Please note, I have no problem with KIPP teachers taking the position that I would expect most middle class parents to take - that KIPP schools follow a model and offer an experience that is inferior to that available to their children in their own, local schools - but to the extent that Witney is suggesting that KIPP teachers and administrators believe KIPP to be an appropriate or superior choice for their own children I would like him to substantiate his claim.

Second, doesn't KIPP take the position that children are children? That it's not a question of community or home environment, but what the school can offer any child from any background? If so, why cavil with a statement like, "KIPP's mission is not educating the children of their leaders"? What is different about the children of KIPP leaders? If there are significant differences between the children served by KIPP and the children of KIPP leaders, what are those differences and how do they play out in an educational environment? If there are no significant differences, why make the statement?

Similarly, when Witney speaks of KIPP Schools "educating the children of their communities", how is that relevant? Is he stating that the KIPP model is tailored to a certain type of community, and would be unnecessary or perhaps even harmful in other communities? If so, what are the elements of a community that make the KIPP approach appropriate or desirable, and what are the elements of a community in which KIPP would not bring anything to the table or would be inferior to the presently existing options?

What are the factors that, for a given child or community, translate into what Witney describes as a "need" for KIPP? The thing is, we know the answers, or at least what KIPP and its backers implicitly believe to be the answers , so why is it so difficult for them to state those answers out loud?

Yes, Yes, Becoming an M.D. Involves Traveling Down a Long, Expensive Road

Still, I would feel more sympathy for this guy if he hadn't forgotten to tell us his starting salary when he completed his residency and got his first gig at full pay.

First, I was 32 when I began training and I now had over $230,000 in debt. Had I invested my talents in other pursuits such as law school, I would not have built up this level of debt.

True, but you also might not have a job. So there you go.

Here's the thing: If your first job as a full-fledged M.D. pays, say, $250,000.00 per year,¹ you can live very comfortably while paying off your entire student debt load in five or six years. If you're already used to surviving on the "salary of $39,000" that you earned as a resident, even with that type of rapid pay-down it should be a very comfortable transition.

Also, as I did not start saving when I was younger, financially speaking, I have lost the past 10 years without the ability to save and invest to earn compounding interest.

You traded one type of investment for another, and ended up in a career that (I hope) you love. Do you have any regrets?

In addition, as physicians, though we make more money than many others, we are not reimbursed for many of the services that we provide.

That could mean a lot of things, but I suspect that he's saying that when you agree to accept insurance you're often going to end up being paid by a scheme other than straight fee-for-service, such as a D.R.G., and thus you may not (technically) be paid for the full scope of services you provide to a specific patient because you've agreed to accept a specific fee for any treatment that falls within the D.R.G. That's not the same thing as going unpaid, and obviously you think it's a good deal on the whole because you continue to accept insurance and continue to make a large salary. Most businesses could only look with envy upon such a definition of "not reimbursed".

I want to make it clear that this letter is not just another story about the difficulties of becoming a doctor and being successful in medicine. I do not want you to think I am complaining about how hard my life is and used to be. In fact, I love my job and there is no other field I would ever imagine myself doing.

In other words, on the whole you got a very good deal for your investment of time and money.

My true wish is to illustrate the sacrifices doctors do make because I feel we are not represented when laws are made. These sacrifices include a lack of quality family time....

That's going to vary with specialty. There are highly paid specialties with regular office hours, for those who choose that path. Some doctors choose to become administrators. Some choose lower-paid specialties that allow them to spend lots of time with their families. These are the choices we make.

Let's be clear here, other well-paid professions have the same or greater demands. The lawyers you complain about may be working 80 hours per week, and virtually all of them make less money than you did on your first day of full-fledged practice. Some accountants can barely come up for air during tax season.

Yes, it would be ideal if everybody could earn a massive paycheck without their work ever impinging upon family time, but if you look around you'll find that a great many people sacrifice family time for their jobs while collecting a pretty meager wage. Next time you stop by a 24-hour big box store, grocery store, pharmacy or gas station at midnight, ask yourself - how many people working at that store have families?

...our large student loan debt...

Large, but easily manageable. Many other graduates with high debt loads would find your position enviable - and with cause.

...the age at which we can practically start saving for retirement...

Median household income in Michigan is around $50K per year. Typical compensation for a gastroenterologist is about $330K per year. So in the space of six or seven years, you'll earn roughly the same amount as a pretty typical U.S. family will earn over a career, perhaps more. So tell me again, how hard it is to save for retirement.

...and the pressure we face with lawyers watching every move we make.

Sorry... I'll try to avert my eyes next time.

No, seriously, I recognize that nobody likes to be accused of malpractice, and acknowledge that doctors feel some pressure from the fact that they can be investigated and sued for malpractice if things go terribly wrong for one of their patients, but what does that have to do with the cost of a medical school education? Besides, bringing malpractice into the picture belies your prior argument that doctors "are not represented when laws are made" - states have for the most part bent over backwards to create legal environments in which it's exceptionally difficult and costly to pursue malpractice litigation, and where damages are artificially capped even when it's beyond dispute that a patient has suffered catastrophic injury from the most egregious malpractice. What more do you want?²

I'm not going to argue with you, that the cost of obtaining a medical degree is high, and that there are significant burdens on those who enter the medical field. You want the public to subsidize medical schools and residencies, so that you graduate with a lower debt load and, after your initial medical education, have a more comfortable lifestyle? I'm listening - if we give you that, what are you offering in return? How about we reduce compensation for medical care to an amount more in line with the amounts paid by the rest of the world? Do we have a deal?
----------------
1. That's on the low side for a gastroenterologist.

2. The implied answer is "absolute immunity". One of the things that "tort reform" advocates gloss over is that with low "pain and suffering" caps on malpractice verdicts, the big exposure is for economic damages - largely future medical care. One of the reasons our malpractice costs are higher than the costs in nations with comprehensive national health insurance is that a national health plan will cover much, sometimes all, of that future cost. I would happily take the trade.

Teaching and the Measure of Greatness

The other day I saw a brief interview with Michelle Rhee, in which she defended her stance on the apocryphal sign she claims to have seen in a school, "Teachers cannot make up for what parents and students will not do". If I believed the sign existed, I might point out that it's true. Rhee would be correct in arguing for nuance - teachers can't make up for everything that's missing at home, some parents and students are lazy, and teachers can only do so much, but problems outside of the school are not an excuse for not making the strongest effort possible to close the gap. But Rhee uses the sign (which, again, I'm not convinced that she actually saw) as a basis for a blunt attack on the teaching profession.

Rhee claims that she can attest to the power of great teachers because, on an apocryphal occasion when she visited a school, she talked to some teenagers who told her that their teacher for their first period class was wonderful. After... I guess it was roughly an hour-long visit to the school, after that class ended, she saw them walking out of the building after their first class. "Where do you think you're going," she asked. "Our first teacher is great, our second teacher isn't, so we're outta here," they replied.

Rhee argued that these kids weren't lazy - you might see them cutting class and think, "What a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who won't amount to anything", but Rhee assures us that they were sufficiently motivated to get to their first class so... I guess the rest is on the teachers.

But I couldn't help but wonder, why didn't Rhee ask the obvious follow-up questions? "What's great about your first period teacher?" Or, "What don't you like about your second period teacher." She simply assumed that the teacher for the first period class was a gifted, extraordinary educator, and the teacher for the second period class was not.

Back when I was in high school, if you were to hear a similar group of kids talk about how a teacher was "great", a follow-up question, "What makes him great," might result in the answer, "All we do is watch movies." Or, "We just talk the whole time." Or, "She lets us hang out in the back of the room and talk with our friends." I don't recall ever encountering a student who displayed the casual attitude toward attendance that Rhee describes indicating that a teacher is "great" because you work hard, learn a lot, have high expectations, no excuses accepted.... In my experience, that's going to inspire a different descriptor, "His class is hard."

In Rhee's anecdotes she seems to believe that kids will go to school for what kids of my era described as "hard" classes, and go home instead of staying for the classes they then described as "great". I don't think it's that kids have changed - I think the problem is that Rhee asked the wrong questions, and as a result drew the wrong conclusions.

I don't want to diminish Rhee's accomplishments with the D.C. schools, but at this point I continue to see her successes as largely administrative. For example, creating a new, efficient system for the distribution of textbooks. Yet she has refused to take any responsibility for the cheating scandals inspired by her high-stakes testing, for the accounting irregularities that had money magically disappearing and reappearing in the school budget, or for the successful lawsuit brought by teachers she defamed. In her view, is that living up to a standard of "No excuses" - ignore your mistakes so that you never have to talk about them, and you can't be accused of making excuses for yourself?

If so, alas, she continues to personify what is wrong with educational administration in this country - administrators, well-intentioned though they may be, engage in what amounts to wholesale experimentation on kids and who, after leaving or being forced out, blame everything that continues to be wrong on the size of the job they faced, or their successor.

The story of education reform goes pretty much like this: Every ten years we embrace educational reform. We throw a lot of money into the reform ideals. They fail. Lather, rinse, repeat. Rhee and the high-stakes test seem to be yet another entry in that recurring story line. The problem as I see it is that the high-stakes testing, the diminishment of teaching as a profession, and the wholesale effort to privatize schools, break teacher's unions, lower teacher pay and reduce their benefits is likely to have a profound, long-term negative impact on schools. Why be part of the problem?

Blue Collar Careers Aren't as Easy or Available as Some Assume

I recently had to replace our range, as the old one started to produce error messages and the "cheap" repair didn't resolve the problem. Due to the fact that the original owner of this house picked a downdraft, slide-in range, I went with the most recent model of the same range. My hope was that the new range could be installed in the same manner as the old - the ventilation unit itself that sits below the range hasn't been changed. Alas... the new range was wider than the old range (and we have granite countertops) and the amount of clearance beneath the range has been reduced. So... the vent has to be reconstructed to allow for a slightly different placement of the fan and to allow the power cord to clear the vent duct.

I initially called around to try to find a handyman to cut the granite about 1/2 inch so that the oven would slide into the opening. Of the ten or so contractors I called, less than half called back and only one was willing to do (or should I say, subcontract) the work. He didn't want to send the granite subcontractor along unless he came along and, although the granite contractor was willing to charge a $200 flat fee (I expect that was a marked up rate) he wanted to accompany the granite contractor and charge a fee for the trip out and an additional hourly fee. It became pretty clear during our conversation that it was a package deal - he was not going to send the granite guy out unless he got to tag along, and that his fees for supervising were apt to meet or exceed the fees of the guy doing the work.

I took care of the cut myself - I got a dry cut diamond blade for my circular saw, put on appropriate eye, ear and hand protection and a mask, and kicked up a lot of dust. If you're going to try this at home, don't. Or if you do, I suggest using a grinder with a 4" blade instead of a circular saw, for better control. Or maybe you'll be able to rent or borrow a wet saw. The biggest problem I faced was that the guide for the saw sat over the open space, so I had to keep the saw straight and even by holding it that way rather than simply resting the bottom of the saw on the countertop. A grinder would have allowed for greater visibility of the marked line, would have been easier to control (i.e. it's a lot lighter), and likely would have made for a cleaner cut. On the whole, I'll say "not bad for a first job", but not work I'm going to be showing off to my friends. Not that I would have pulled out the range to show off the cut had it turned out better, but you know what I mean. ;-)

I got the range installed and close to level without replacing the vent pipe, but the other day I decided to complete the job. So I pulled out the range, removed the fan, and then removed an aluminum plate the original installer had placed on the wall around the hole for the vent. What did I find? Basically, the original installer had taken a hammer and knocked away the drywall, initially opening the wall in front of a wall stud and drain pipe, and then opening up a large hole to the right of that opening where the vent was installed through the wall. He had pulled all of the insulation out of that space, and cut/hammered a somewhat irregular hole through the wood and brick to the outside. He then used a dryer vent on the outside of the house instead of a proper vent cover for the range. The only thing he did to "seal" his work was to install a caulk line around the dryer vent - which is a good thing, given that he only sank two screws out of the four that were supposed to hold the cover in place. Well, that explains the drafts we would sometimes feel coming out from under the range....

And then I came across this editorial, arguing that "we" dismiss blue collar professions, but that blue collar work can potentially provide better remuneration than a college degree. Let me state up front that I agree with the overall principle - that if you're a student who has significant aptitude and interest in learning a skilled trade, it's perfectly appropriate to consider a trade instead of college - or to not give college a second thought. But at the same time, the conceit of essays such as this tends to be that college is hard but that anybody can learn and perform a skilled trade. So first and foremost, it's important to note that a lot of people in the skilled trades have associates degrees and bachelor's degrees, or have completed training or certification programs. Many skilled trades are physically demanding, and some are quite dangerous. Also, particularly at the laborer level, there's a lot of competition for jobs, sometimes from people who are willing to work for less than minimum wage.

For all I know, the guy who "installed" the vent for my range was paid less than minimum wage, cash under the table. Or perhaps he was paid a hefty installation fee, and chose to shave a couple of hours off of the job by not finishing the job properly. Or perhaps he was paid a substantial hourly wage and took a long lunch. I have no way of knowing. But I will guarantee that the homeowner paid a premium price for the "work". Expanding the pool of available laborers is not a recipe for driving up both quality and wages. It seems more likely to drive wages down without actually creating new job opportunities. You know... like the situation the author is describing for college graduates.

And the math....

At a time when unemployment is at an all-time high and college tuition continues to climb, the old formula no longer upholds. Students emerge with their hard-earned degrees and the college loans to show for it, but for what returns? The majority do not land a six-figure banking job straight out of school. According to the Economic Policy Institute, wages for recent college graduates have not grown over the last decade, and actually dropped from 2007-11. In 2011, that average was just $16.81 per hour, a figure that barely makes a dent into student debt. The average wage for high school graduates is $9.45 per hour, a figure not much lower than that of a newly-minted university graduate, especially after you factor in tuition costs as well as the four years of being out of the workforce.

First, there was never an era in which the majority of college graduates would "land a six-figure banking job straight out of school". Second, $16.81 per hour is roughly $33,620 per year, and $9.45 is roughly $18,900 per year - and the college graduate likely also gets benefits such as paid vacation and health insurance. $9.45 is roughly 59% of $16.81. The author may not see the difference between those two figures as significant, but... I do.

Blue-collar professionals like electricians are enjoying 23% job growth this decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They earn on average $52,910 a year, almost $10 more per hour than recent college grads, and the top 10% earn at least $82,680. Welding, light truck driving and plumbing are just some of the blue-collar fields with similar earning potential, and the vocational training required is a fraction of the cost of a college degree.

First, the fact that the average career electrician makes 10% more than a newly minted college graduate does not make for a strong case that the college graduate was foolish to pursue the degree. Also, you need to consider that union electricians earn considerably more than non-union electricians, roughly $14,000 per year more, and we know which way that trend is going. Further, work as an electrician is physically demanding work. And let's just say, the top 10% of wage earners among college graduates earn a lot more than $82,680. On the whole, plumbers earn a bit less than electricians - and let's not forget that the category includes pipefitters and steamfitters. (Talk to some of those guys about their work-related injuries.) Light truck driving pays roughly $13 per hour, without much of a career path. The "master welders make lots of money" argument isn't particularly new, never mind that a master welder has to work many years to reach that level and will have considerable knowledge of metallurgy, and never mind that you're dealing with high temperatures and molten metal, potentially toxic fumes, potentially explosive materials, and are sometimes performing that work in dangerous locations or cramped spaces. It's "blue collar" so "anybody can do it", right?

If financial freedom is your ultimate endgame, then going into business for yourself can increase earnings exponentially, a message Rich Dad, Poor Dad has been peddling since the beginning of this millennium.

In other words, the author thinks its easy to start and market a business in the skilled trades, based upon the facile analysis of a guy who is really good at hawking books? Hey - the author of the editorial is a freelance writer. How's that exponential increase in earnings coming along?

But do these blue-collar jobs lead to fulfillment? It is certainly an argument I'm sympathetic to. We are told to do what we love; the money will assuredly follow.

I suspect that the author dropped a word or two, and intended to argue that she's concerned that blue collar jobs aren't fulfilling. Well, that's going to depend on the job and the individual performing the job. Also, there are plenty of white collar jobs that are nothing but a grind. If work could be presumed to be fulfilling, they would probably call it something else. Also, I'm not sure who is saying "Do what you love and the money will assuredly follow," but somebody needs to smack them upside the head with reality.

The author concludes,

In this tight job market, we cannot afford to ignore the reality that a college degree is becoming a luxury: one that no longer translates directly to success. It is time we shed our stigmas towards "menial" workers. The irony is that their salaries – and accompanying lifestyles – are anything but.

I'm not aware of any era in which a college degree has automatically translated into financial success, which appears to be the type of success the author is focused upon. Certainly there have been times in the past when college graduates had friendlier job markets and more predictable career paths. Yes, with the cost of college education and the changes of opportunity for college graduates, college (particularly at the tuition rates of private colleges) is increasingly a luxury. Those trends should neither be ignored or diminished, and somebody thinking about college truly should consider, "What else might I do with that time and money that could result in an acceptable career and income?" An approach that is far from novel? Get a job and work while completing your education, borrowing as little money as you possibly can on your path to a degree. If you click with your job, you may even find that you don't need the degree - and if you don't, you are preparing for a future in which you have better options - and work experience.

Technically speaking, we wouldn't shed our... let's say prejudices... against blue collar workers. Yes, some people do look down on blue collar work. I recall a conversation during law school when a classmate, who was moonlighting as a janitor, was instructed by another student that people shouldn't have to do "demeaning" work like being a janitor. (Janitors aren't all that important, you know, because floors and toilets can learn how to clean themselves.) Yes, let's respect that people who work hard for a living deserve respect for their effort, no matter what their job. To me, part of that is recognizing that some of the jobs that fall into the category of "blue collar" require a level of knowledge and sophistication that can meet or exceed that of a lot of jobs that require college degrees, while also requiring significant physical effort and presenting significant risk of injury. Yes, pretty much anybody could have pounded that hole in my kitchen wall, and hidden his lousy workmanship rather than completing the job properly, but that's not the ideal.

As for the conclusion that "[blue collar] salaries – and accompanying lifestyles – are anything but".... I suspect the author means to suggest that they're not insubstantial, as opposed to not menial. Yes, you can make a decent income in certain skilled trades, but those jobs are not immune to recessions, nor are they immune to anti-union efforts. I know a lot of college graduates, and a lot of people in the skilled trades. The former group has weathered the "great recession" without much visible impact. It's harder to find a job if you're unemployed, it's harder to find a new job if you want to change jobs, but on the whole they have kept their jobs and wages. The skilled tradespeople on the other hand... a builder who had to reinvent his business, bringing in significantly lower profits, when the new housing market collapsed in his area. A finish carpenter whose business collapsed, and who ended up losing his home to foreclosure (and he does really good work. A painting, tiling and drywalling team that can't earn a living wage, because they are consistently underbid for work by people who barely know how to hold a paintbrush. They would have done an immaculate job installing that vent, were they around at the time, but... it's not only private customers who want to pay the lowest bid. Try starting and maintaining a business in that environment.

All You Need to be Rich....

Is to be poor. A bit simplistic, perhaps?

Economists have long known about “Dutch disease,” which happens when a country becomes so dependent on exporting natural resources that its currency soars in value and, as a result, its domestic manufacturing gets crushed as cheap imports flood in and exports become too expensive. What the PISA team is revealing is a related disease: societies that get addicted to their natural resources seem to develop parents and young people who lose some of the instincts, habits and incentives for doing homework and honing skills....

Or as my Indian-American friend K. R. Sridhar, the founder of the Silicon Valley fuel-cell company Bloom Energy, likes to say, “When you don’t have resources, you become resourceful.”

That’s why the foreign countries with the most companies listed on the Nasdaq are Israel, China/Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, South Korea and Singapore — none of which can live off natural resources.

Wouldn't it be interesting if poor nations, instead of being poor, were... rich? And yet for some reason they're not.

It's pretty amazing to me that Friedman can hear somebody explain that countries like "Canada, Australia and Norway, also countries with high levels of natural resources, still score well on PISA, in large part... because all three countries have established deliberate policies of saving and investing these resource rents, and not just consuming them", and have that be his takeaway. If you look at nations hit by the resource curse, how often do you find a nation where everybody has a pretty good standard of living? How often do you find, on the other hand, a country with weak institutions of government, kleptocratic leadership, and a population that for the most part lives in conditions somewhere between dismal and squalid?

As is his wont, Friedman also disregards the inequality of opportunity in nations like India and China, the extent to which large numbers of people in those countries have been treated, in effect, as natural resources - cheap labor for international companies. He seems to have retreated into his fantasy world in which any population, no matter how poorly governed, impoverished, downtrodden and oppressed, could transform itself into another Singapore within the space of a few years.

What the PISA team is revealing is a related disease: societies that get addicted to their natural resources seem to develop parents and young people who lose some of the instincts, habits and incentives for doing homework and honing skills.

Say what? Let's turn to the list of nations Friedman singles out as being resource-rich but faring badly on PISA: Qatar, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Algeria, Bahrain, Iran and Syria. Exactly when was it that those nations had the emphasis on education - the "instincts, habits and incentives for doing homework and honing skills" - that Friedman would have us believe that they "lost" when they discovered their natural resources? Perhaps this reflects the fantasy thinking that led Friedman to believe that Iraq could be turned into a progressive democracy within a few years of a military invasion - the extent to which a nation's culture, history, governance, and the population's present education level factor into its chances of flourishing and producing a population of highly educated, innovative citizens.

Computers Can't Eliminate Poverty

I recently read a particularly cynical take on the effort to distribute computers to children in impoverished areas of the world:

What a child needs is to be sequestered from human contact with the latest technology. A third world educational initiative should be conducted in the manner of an experiment in developing the cognitive power of chimpanzees. Feel the techno-idiocy: it burns.

I remember this idea getting serious momentum years ago until it was pointed out to some of the philanthropists that the places they were planning to distribuite computing to didn't have electricity. Now they've figured out how to put solar panels in the things, so its let them eat laptops: the sequel.

In fairness to the cynic, the actual proposal literally involved "tak[ing] tablets and drop[ping] them out of helicopters", unaccompanied by "any adults or teaching resources" to "see if the tablets could be used to teach them to read without additional instruction", with allusions to the Coke bottle in "The Gods Must Be Crazy", an approach that does seem rather absurd.

Thomas Friedman's recent column on an initiative to distribute inexpensive tablet computers to children in India brought it to mind, sharing a second-hand account of a maid's reaction to learning of the program:

"'What can you do on it?’ she asked me. I said, ‘If your daughter goes to school, she can use it to download videos of class lessons,’ just like she had seen my son download physics lectures every week from M.I.T.’s [OpenCourseWare]. I said, ‘You have seen our son sitting at the computer listening to a teacher who is speaking. That teacher is actually in America.’ She just kept getting wider- and wider-eyed. Then she asked me will her kids be able to learn English on it. I said, ‘Yes, they will definitely be able to learn English,’ which is the passport for upward mobility here. I said, ‘It will be so cheap you will be able to buy one for your son and one for your daughter!'"

I think that a decent computer, along with an adequate source of power and access to content, can be a powerful learning tool. But let's be honest here. Even if we assume that they have access to quality instruction, most kids aren't going to spend hours staring at the screen of a notebook computer trying to learn math or English. We may be dealing with a particularly motivated population of students and parents, but even within that context there is going to be a lot of frustration and failure. Hardware is the easy part - creating and distributing quality, up-to-date, accessible software and content is costly and difficult. Even if you create it, absent strong motivation it's likely to be underutilized.

If a school district were to propose to Friedman that it was going to totally eliminate classroom instruction in favor of having kids buy notebooks, no verification of Internet access, lessons and content to be developed at some point in the future, I would hope he would be skeptical and critical. This type of technology distribution is much more of an "every little bit helps" approach than a magic bullet.

I would like to see India push forward and invest the necessary money in content, software and infrastructure to make distance learning a reality for every one of the nation's children. Even if we assume only 5% of kids will actually see a significant benefit, advancing academically at or above 'grade level' despite a lack of access to schools and teachers, or using the computer to push beyond what they can learn in class, that's a lot of kids. Although I agree that you can't eat computers, it is not likely that the kids who most need this type of program will have reasonable, equivalent access to educational opportunity.