If everyone was part of the same funding system, there would be *greater* political pressure to maintain its value. In any case, both school systems have had their funding grow in real terms (though most of the cash has been blown reducing class sizes).

Agency problems are not an issue, because parents who choose the nearest school or a random school are not likely to make any worse a choice than they do today; in fact due to the general upward movement in quality they are less likely to chance on a school that will leave their kids semi-literate and numerate - as many schools do now.

The public school lobby keeps going on about the socially divisive effects of private education, but fails to produce any evidence whatsoever. As I noted in response to an earlier argument along these lines, state aid to Catholic schools helped *reduce* social division between Catholics and Protestants. Indeed, the only evidence of division caused by private schools is the vicious campaign waged against them by the feral public sector teachers’ unions.

- the *variance* would be much, much greater as those with the means pitched in extra for their own kids.
- the massive segregation that would ensue between middle-class and poor kids would undermine political support for maintaining the vouchers’ value.
- and this is without taking in to account the agency problems when educating some kids (ie the parents’ decisions are made in their own, not the kids’, interests)
- nor does it take in to account the atomising effect on society of the lack of a common education (how many kids would have most of their education in the form of a local interpretation of the Bible or Koran under a true voucher system?). This is especially iportant in an immigrant society.

The late Fred Gruen once noted that a characteristic myth of the Left was that efficiency didn’t matter, while a characteristic myth of the Right is that distribution doesn’t matter. These musings of yours are a classic example.

Are you really going to write some Ayn Randian fairytale about a completely non-government education system? Will we have steel-biceped principals of principle?

I still fail to see how private schools can deliver any better outcomes than the current system which allows plenty of choice if you don’t like the local school.

As to whether supply has kept up with demand, the obvious marker is relative wage movements. Given Australia has increasing wage dispersion (like most other countries) then prima facie it doesn’t look like we’ve been churning out too many graduates.

But Fred’s right (as often) - the real inequalities of educational opportunity occur before tertiary level. Australian governments’ record in the last decade or so on this front has been just dreadful.

I think it would be fascinating to do a chapter on education for one of those what if? history books, in which the government never became involved in delivering education but instead funded students to go to private schools.

Even when I did an IT related degree back in the late eighties it was exactly the same situation: lots of graduates looking for the easy bucks and employers booming/busting and hiring/firing without a lot of discriminiation between job applicants. Most of the good employers will pick experience over the source of your degree any day (and will look at the places you previously worked as an indication of fitness). It just takes time to establish the kind of resume that will turn into a solid basis for employment. I’ve seen at least three shakeouts in that time (the worst one was the dot-com bust, but there were other ones related to technology shifts). I kept up mostly due to luck and continuing education.

It doesn’t help that the IT industry tends to favour youthful looks but hankers after experience. Some of us are lucky (still have all my hair and most of it isn’t gray, which helps).

When I was working in the finance industry in IT, most of the really successful careerists did as little programming/support work as possible and got sponsored to do a Masters degree in finance or business administration. IT (programming/admin work) is a long career to nowhere unless you can make the management jump or don’t care and just like to program (like me). There’s a lot of frustrated careerists in the industry all doing the same thing so the degree inflation cycle continues.

As an aside, after 11 years of living in Sydney and working in IT for the big end of town, I finally realised that my goals were so completely out of tune with theirs that we left the city altogether and I and my family are much happier. (i.e. for us, money isn’t everything and the whole “deferred happiness” paradigm that seems to drive much of modern life turned out to be deeply unsatisfying). As they say in the classics, your mileage may vary.

The only real advice I can give is (a) pick quality employers, don’t make your choices based just on the salary. (b) be prepared to learn everything and don’t tie yourself down to some hot technology (guaranteed way to unemployment).

However, while not directly relevant to your topic today, Cardak and Ryan also find that socio-economic disadvantages play a big part in determining ENTER scores. In lieu of university scholarships or the like, the authors recommend earlier intervention policies to target the social barriers during pre-primary, primary and secondary schooling in order to equalise education opportunities. I know that you agree there is a serious problem there, Andrew, but you are worried about ‘government failure’. This is understandable, given some past experience, but I don’t see government failure as a greater problem than market failure in education - not by a long stretch.

I am not worried about grads going to TAFE, it makes sense to get the education and training that you want or need wherever it is most conveniently available.

My suggestion is that Birrell is right in that there are not enough decent graduates. However, I only think he is correct because for many areas, the productivity of a fair chunk of the population that does a degree is basically zero, and it isn’t just computer science — its probably a fair chunk of areas that require any sort of brain power.

The main problem is that:
a) Universities are never going to set standards that cause the majority of students to fail, even in areas where you could reduce the left side of the distribution significantly.
b) The only solution to (a) is that some universities somehow market themselves as producing graduates are so much better than all of the others that they are selecting the right side of the distribution, which is never going to happen (since it would mean huge student culls like used to happen in the early 80s),
c) It might not even be possible to choose between the winners and losers in certain fields where a lot of basic knowledge is needed within the time of a normal degree.
d) It is almost impossible to tell who will be a winner and loser in many fields based on the type of entry requirements universities use (e.g., 18 years old; TER = 95. Will you become a good biologist?)
e) (d) is compounded because the high school system doesn’t differeniate who is likely to succeed at university (I seem to remember that r = around .3 for many courses), let alone who will actually be good at what their degree supposedly taught them.