I had a part completed post yesterday on the international scene. I put it aside in part because I have a tooth abscess and find concentration difficult, more because I found the scene depressing, requiring too much research to say something sensible.
Today instead, a brief continuation of the discussion that began on Sunday Essay – John Roskam and the value of an Arts degree. There Thomas wrote in a comment:
When studying my Arts degree (part of the double B.Education/B.Arts), there was quite a high number of mature age students. Not something ridiculous, like 50%. But certainly something around the 30% range.
Of this, I'd say half were people looking for a 'sea change' so to speak.
The other half were people WELL outside of the working age and were engaging in pure learning. Not for any other purpose than to learn more about the world.
This has to be the noblest form of education aside from learning to help others.
I agree with previous commenters that the Arts degree is largely misunderstood (and, to a degree, mismanaged by universities). It's obviously not reverse welfare. For the majority of people, it's a way to achieve an end - whether it's a teaching focus (as with me), a chance for existing workers to up-skill so to speak, or a chance just to learn. And that's to say nothing of the students who enter Arts degrees from high school (quite a number of students do it every year) because they just want to get into uni and don't know what they want to do and/or genuinely want to learn.
I'll finish with this: I believe it's quite short-sighted to wholesale criticise a degree, graduates, or the like without actually even ATTEMPTING to understand them (the degrees and the graduates) - and this is what comes through from Roskam's piece.
I thought that Thomas’s comments drew out a number of issues, including the variety in students and student needs. Arguably, the co-related concepts of educational for national efficiency, education for personal and national economic return, education for job purposes are swamping all other considerations. The idea that a key purpose of education is to help individuals live richer and more fulfilling lives, to pursue their own intellectual interests, to just enjoy doing or making things, to use their education for public purposes that may not provide an immediate cash return, has been lost sight of.
I think that’s a pity. It risks impoverishing our society, possibly leaving us with more economic wealth but with a diminished sprit.
35 comments:
And the vocationalising of education is largely stupid.
Who wants to predict where an industry will be in 17+ years. But this is what people want to do every time a child enters kindergarten.
This is not rational. I.e. it is ideology - the usual pernicious neo-liberal nonsense.
Jim
Some people may have lost sight of the broader purpose of education, but the issue is who should pay. It seems to me that issue is to what extent public monies should be used to enable people to enjoy such benefits.
You could equally say that the idea that a key purpose of work is to help individuals live richer and more fulfilling lives, to pursue their own interests, to just enjoy doing or making things, to use their energy and skills for public purposes that may not provide an immediate cash return, has been lost sight of.
No that isn't the issue Winton. It isn't even the major issue.
There is more to life than money. You seem to have lost sight of this.
Perhaps I could make my point clearer.
There are many things people can do to make their lives more fulfilling. Such activities often involve sacrifice of money income, but individuals make those choices all the time.
University education may provide non-monetary benefits to students but that does not establish a case for it to be subsidized to provide such benefits.
Well, no you haven't.
Why shouldn't people forgo money (in taxes) to fund education? And so benefit themselves and society in general.
Evan
Why should people forgo money by paying taxes to buy services if they can buy those services for themselves?
The only reason I can think of is that some people can't afford to buy the services. So the argument for public funding of university education is about improving economic opportunities for those people.
Surely you know about economies of scale Winton.
You seem unable to see beyond your individualist paradigm. We are fundamentally related. The question is how we want to relate.
No, it's not about economic opportunity. It is about all kinds of enrichment. Once again you can't seem to see beyond money.
I let this argument run, partly because I was working on another post.
Winton, do you believe that there should be no public support for education? If not, do you believe that the only justification for public support of education is the contribution to GDP? If not, what public support of education is justified, and in what form? How does this reconcile with your argument on emancipative values. ?
That's a very dry series of questions to winton, Jim.
I hope you maintain your usual even-handedness by asking Evan how many unicorns he would like :)
kvd
ps love your daughter's logo!
kvd, I have no interest in unicorns.
Money is made up - a series of rules we invent (ie. bookkeeping).
Within this game we make rules. Eg under certain conditions governments print money and banks make it up out of trust (advance loans on the basis of particularly kinds of promises and assurances).
This game has some strange values. E.g. that playing dress ups in front of a camera is more valuable than educating children.
We can, if we wish to save money, do it by cutting benefits to the poor or taxing the wealthy.
If you think this is about unicorns please show me where they are. Money is about trust and choice.
Evan it must really grate when you weekly or fortnightly accept your recompense for the (no doubt very valuable) work you do. What would you prefer to be paid in?
"Money is made up...etc" Leaving aside the accuracy or otherwise - what form of payment would ameliorate your obvious guilt?
Or are you happy to work for nothing, and hope that Woolies or Coles will just hand over your fair share for... nothing?
"Who wants to predict where an industry will be in 17+ years. But this is what people want to do every time a child enters kindergarten." - I think this is nonsense on stilts. Can you provide any data?
Evan, I'm getting a "world owes me a living because, you know, everyone is a special flower" vibe from you. But never mind that; what particular form of reimbursement would you be satisfied with? Fairy sprinkles; unicorn oats?
kvd
Hi kvd, seeing you are addressing my motivation I presume you aren't interested in addressing my argument.
(digs thru Evan's comments....)
Help me here Evan: what actually is "your argument"?
If you can articulate it without the "stupid" "pernicious" "paradigm" "ideology" words I promise I will politely address it, and not mention unicorns.
kvd
OK
In brief: Money is made up - a series of rules we invent (ie. bookkeeping).
Money is about trust and choice.
Thanks Evan.
If that is all you wish to state then I'm at a loss as to what you are actually so energised about, and why you felt Winton's quite mild statements of the obvious were worth disputing?
kvd
For in the multitude of middle-aged men who go about their vocations in a daily course determined for them much in the same way as the tie of their cravats, there is always a good number who once meant to shape their own deeds and alter the world a little. The story of their coming to be shapen after the average and fit to be packed by the gross, is hardly ever told even in their consciousness.....
Look it up.
kvd
Jim
I will try to answer your questions.
1. Do you believe that there should be no public support for education?
I am in favour of public support for students (parents) rather than subsidies for education provision.
I am open the possibility that provision of some education services involves unusually important positive externalities, but I have not seen evidence of externalities associated with particular courses of study at tertiary level. The external benefits at primary and junior secondary level are probably captured adequately by making education compulsory rather than public funding.
2. If not, do you believe that the only justification for public support of education is the contribution to GDP?
The contribution of education to GDP is irrelevant to the funding question in my view. The argument that the industry should get government assistance because it contributes to GDP is no more valid for the education industry than for the car industry.
3. If not, what public support of education is justified, and in what form?
As noted above, I think public support should be paid directly to students with education providers charging fees. Support should also be provided to young people who do not attend university to help them get a good start in life.
4. How does this reconcile with your argument on emancipative values?
Two considerations are relevant:
First, emancipative values include providing more widespread opportunities. That is why I am in favour of public support for students.
Second, emancipative values tend to be associated with education.
There is evidence that people are more likely to acquire emancipative values through education when there is a high proportion of educated people in the population. That could suggest the existence of a positive externality.
We need more research on these issues. It is possible that some courses of study tend to encourage entitlement values rather than enlightenment values. We don't really need to encourage more young people to think that the world owes them a living.
I am uncomfortable with the idea of governments trying to change values of the population through higher subsidies for particular courses. We are on safer ground giving the funds to the students and letting them decide.
There was some research on US college students doing economics. It was found that later in their course they were less inclined to be generous than before enrolling.
But it is a very small number in only one subject.
Evan
I have seen such data, based on games involving sharing. The problem seems to be that economics students believe that real people behave like "economic man" in the text books. Lawyers may have a somewhat similar problem.
Some economists have speculated that engineers and architects tend to planning as the answer to all problems.
I wonder whether people who study behavioural psychology are particularly prone to be manipulative in their relationships with other people.
The study of literature seems to encourage some people to believe that everything has a sub-text involving power relationships.
There seems to a lot of potential for negative externalities everywhere I look - when I go looking for them!
I'm glad that you liked the logo, kvd! My questions to Winton were deliberately dry. They were intended to draw out Winton's views, the underlying premises.
Winton has kindly responded. I will deal with his response in a second comment. Here I want to look at the chat between you and Evan.
I haven't read Middlemarch, Silas Marner is the only one of her books I read and then a long time ago. I did enjoy following the quote through and rereading about Eliot. I felt that I should read the piece for historical reasons. But you will need to explain the significance to our current debate.
The exchange between Winton and Evan ran on parallel tracks that were unlikely to meet because of their very different belief systems.
Evan's starting point was the silliness of vocationalising education in circumstances where no one could predict where an industry (or vocation) might be at the end of the process. He combined this with a sideswipe at neo-liberal nonsense.
It is probably clear that I agree with the vocational point.
Winton's response to me, not to Evan, contained two different points. The first was who should pay. The second was a rhetorical question that applied the words I used in the context of education to the world of work.I think Winton meant the question to be rhetorical, but phrased as he did I would say yes. And so what? How does it affect my point.
Evan's response to Winton was a values response. He challenged Winton on the grounds that there is more to life than money, the pure economic equation. Winton had, he suggested, lost sight of this.
Now it's quite clear from comments here as well as Winton's writings over at his place (http://wintonbates.blogspot.com.au/) that Winton is interested in far more than money. He believes in freedom and flourishing, what we might call the growth of the human spirit. As it happens, so does Evan, but their models are different both in objective and path.
Winton tried to clarify. His focus was on the economics, price and the willingness to pay. University education, he suggested may provide non-pecuniary benefits, but that does not provide a case for the subsidization of such benefits. As Evan was to say later, money again, or more precisely price.
As I write, Winton has provided a new comment! I will have to leave that. Staying focused, Evan asked why shouldn't people forgo money (taxes)to fund themselves and society in general?
Winton responds that the only reason he can think of is if people can't afford to buy the services. So the argument for public funding of university education is about improving economic opportunities for those people. Money again.
Evan tries to respond with economies of scale. Winton is an economist with a particular view. This is playing onto his home term. It also ignores the very particular question that Evan himself raised. If society in general believes that money should be spent on a particular activity, in this case education, for a whole variety of reasons, what's wrong with that. Must all Government decisions be pushed into a particular frame?
It was at this point that I asked my questions and then kvd introduced the concept of unicorns! Evan was perplexed!
This has become a very long comment. I will leave it here and then go back to Winton's answers in a little while.
Well, with equal force, but for quite different reasons, I think that both Evan's and Winton's views are nonsensical and unsupportable. And you were probably right to suppress my earlier post.
Re Middlemarch: I think it is refreshing (or should be) to ponder upon one's inconsequentiality - a word I carefully choose as riposte to Evan's "vocationalising" :)
kvd
kvd, quickly, which post are you talking about? I just deleted one of your posts from the spam folder, but it was a repeat of a much earlier post on a different topic where there was a repeat. I never suppress any post without an explanation.
Seems that Evan wants to live in a world without money. This is the socialist utopia built on public wealth and public choice (rationing), without private property. No need for money because without private property people have nothing to exchange. Help!
DG
You made me smile, DG. You can actually have money as a medium of exchange with very limited private property rights because its useful. But Evan does tend to objectify money as symbol for other things.
Winton, Evan, from my experience, Winton's point on the impact of profession (or power or social status)on views of the world s well taken. Diseconomies, Winton, are indeed everywhere!
Winton, just a follow up question to you. If we consider education as an industry, what elements of Government spend would you consider as an industry subsidy as compared to a Government purchase of services a la a provider-purchaser model?
I don't disagree with the usual definition of 'a store of value and medium of exchange' so far as it goes.
But I think we need to understand that money is trust - hence all the talk about moral hazard and not knowing how to price risk to do with the GFC. Put another way it is a kind of relationship in which it is expected that certain expectations and rules will be observed.
I certainly agree that our situation and upbringing affects how we see things.
And I absolutely agree that diseconomies are everywhere!
To my mind, Evan, money itself is just a mechanism, although its form may have particular effects. When we speak of love of money, we don't mean love of money as such. With the exception of Scrooge McDuck who loved the physical stuff, its a shorthand term for other things.
There can be loss of trust in money, try Zimbabwe, but are you referring to this type of loss of trust?
DG's comment @ 12.26 rephrases, politely, what I meant about Evan's dream of unicorns.
Winton's comment @ 4.51 is simply a restatement of the old saw "to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail".
But further on Winton's comments - and this is not an attack, more just seeking understanding - he says:
I am open [to] the possibility that provision of some education services involves unusually important positive externalities, but I have not seen evidence of externalities associated with particular courses of study at tertiary level.
- which I take to mean something like he's happy that brain surgeons are trained at (largely) public cost, but not so much the next significant novelist?
We are on safer ground giving the funds to the students and letting them decide.
- I cannot think of a more "useful use" of government than that it directs sufficient public funding for those courses which will feed back to the general benefit of "the public" - and for that, read myself. I have no wish to be operated upon, taught, or attended to, by a self-funded surgeon, teacher, or ambulance driver.
On that basis, Winton's comment is nonsense.
Evan @ 11.21: I get the impression that you know what you mean, but are finding it hard to articulate? I can relate to that :)
kvd
Jim - happy if you delete again.
Hi Jim, yes Zimbabwe is the kind of thing I mean.
I understand that covetousness is usually for the stuff money buys. And it gets mixed up with 'success': Why on earth would you ask business people about governing a country? (or how to run a charity.)
I do think form affects function (and this applies to money too).
Why on earth would you ask business people about governing a country? (or how to run a charity.)
In a past life, I was detailed off to provide some sort of 'functionality' to a local refuge. The 'board' consisted of those who could articulate (anything) plus myself.
At the fourth meeting I attended the entire time was taken up by the Treasurer's explanation as to why he had spent all the co-op funds on his drug habit; plus various other board members expressing their "support" of his difficult personal position (tears, hugs, etc.)
The co-op was defunded shortly thereafter - not at my suggestion, but I do confess very much to my relief. I do not know what happened to the people I interacted with - to my discredit.
Evan, I think I would answer your question by stating that both "a government" and "a charity" deserve at least the chance to succeed, and that involves the dross of ensuring they (both) at least hold true to their remit.
kvd
Well, yes. But I don't see how that addresses my comment.
Making money (however valuable) doesn't confer insight on other areas.
I'm still frustrated that I don't know what you said in that missing post, kvd.
Evan, I'm with kvd on the importance of having access to business skills when it comes to running a charity. I do have a problem with the concept that business people and especially senior business people are somehow equipped to run the country.
They have a role in parliament or on advisory bodies or in Government business enterprises. However, from experience they can be remarkably ill-equipped when it comes to the actual business of Government.
I ask you to consider the reverse possibility Jim.
That the skills of running a charity would be valuable to business. An anecdote: I think it was a Greenpeace activist who was asked about Ricardo Semler's Maverick. Her response: We've been holding committee meetings in corridors for ages!
I submit that most charities do far more with far less than most businesses. That most of them have better values and welcome a diversity of people and skills that businesses seem incapable of doing. (This doesn't apply to large corporatised charities who are often as awful as (other) large companies. I do think there are issues of scale involved; 'people are human in small groups' - from what I can tell from the papers Virgin and Flight Centre attempt to organise themselves in small units.)
Jim I think it only fair to restate that my last sentence above contained no suggestion whatsoever that "business people should run the country" - your words.
But on the other hand, I must say I smiled when reading your own last sentence - did you write for "Yes Minister"?
kvd
I submit that most charities do far more with far less than most businesses. - any actual evidence?
That most of them have better values and welcome a diversity of people and skills that businesses seem incapable of doing. - ditto
Much as I hate to admit it I'd back any MacDonalds outlet against any charity when it comes to efficiency or welcoming people of diverse skills.
You should get out of your intellectual bubble a bit more Evan. Maybe meet some real people.
kvd
Correction noted, kvd. No, but I could have! Not that I was asked, mind you. Too young!
There is a post, several posts, lurking in this and other related comment threads drawing together and extending elements of the discussion.
Evan, the skills gained in running a charity or membership based organisation can be valuable to running a business or at least to a business organisation. Look at the number of union activists who have gone on to successful business careers.
kvd, you may be on slippery ground in regard to MacDonalds. That's not a criticism of the big M. I note, however, that you have qualified your comment - efficiency and welcoming. One difficulty is that I'm not sure that you can actually compare M to a charity.
In any event, I'm not sure how useful this type of comparison is without qualification and definition.
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