At the risk of adding day 7 to the bloggish debate, I want to respond to Peter Whiteford’s comments at Andrew L’s blog. Whiteford says:
My reaction to Andrew N’s first post may seem casual, but it is where is the evidence that Australian public schooling is the sort of disaster that you seem to imply that it is. Are Australian intellectual elites all drawn from private school backgrounds? Does everyone who went to a public school get an inferior education? Does everyone who went to a private school get a superior education? What is the variation in educational achievement by type of school attended, and what other factors apart from type of school have influenced these outcomes? Evidence please.
Actually, I barely mentioned these conventional public-private debates – and not at all in the first post. As a classical liberal, I think there are inherent political and social problems with monopoly education, regardless of how well public schools teach the 3Rs. I was trying to bring out the philosophical differences between Andrew L and myself, which in fact did happen.
He’s happy with state indoctrination (though eventually conceding that public education doesn’t make much if any difference to civics); I’m not. A preference for live-and-let-live in a pluralistic society, rather than trying to get everyone to believe the same things, is one of the oldest ideas in liberalism, and still one worth arguing for in my view.
Consistent with this, surveys of why parents prefer private schools show that values-type issues are high on the list. This is not to say that government schools don’t incuclate values of some sort, but these aren’t necessarily the values parents want taught. We could hardly expect a single system to reflect the diversity of Australia, and it doesn’t.
I have never claimed that all private schools are good; and no advocate of markets is likely to make such a claim (and they should read and think some more if they do). The great systemic strength of markets is that they encourage innovation but also deal with the inevitable failures. The energy of market societies comes from people constantly trying new things, but their efficiency depends on putting aside the ideas that don’t, or don’t any longer, work as well as the alternatives.
A couple of years ago I gave a talk on school vouchers to a Liberal Party meeting. Afterwards, a woman came up to me and said that while she liked the idea of school choice, she was worried that some schools would close. But of course bad schools should close or (in my system) be taken over by people who can do a better job. In the public system, schools hardly ever close because they are bad, and that is one argument against such a system.
Consistent with this, on average private schools get better academic results than government schools, even after controlling for socioeconomic status, a very important influence on student performance. The average is good, but I would be very surprised if that average wasn’t concealing very substantial variations in school performance.
Peter Whiteford also says:
Meanwhile despite an education system in crisis for the past 30 years, Australia has been getting richer and more productive and we still come out towards the top of PISA rankings.
It’s true that compared to other countries we don’t look too bad, but there is an element of OECDitis in this – an assumption that other OECD countries should set the benchmark, when in reality that benchmark may be too high or too low for Australia. PISA showed a substantial tail of under-achievement, and the recent national literacy survey showed the same thing.
I find it a little odd that social democrats are so willing to still defend the institutional status quo in schooling, despite having accepted the benefits of markets in many other areas, and arguing that education is crucial to their social objectives. The public school system isn’t a total disaster, but it isn’t good enough.
Andrew Norton 
I have a few on comments on this:
1) I think the OECD benchmark is too low. The comparison should be with countries who are economic competitors with Australia. THese countries tend to be those that score highly on these tests. I don’t care how good or bad France is (at least from an Australian perspective), for example, but I do care how good or bad Singapore is.
2) TIMS is much better than the PISA
3) I agree with Peter Whiteford, a lot of “how bad” Australia is is hype. Australia is comparitively reasonable.
3) I think the problem is that the comparitive trend is down, especially in Maths and Science, and that is really problematic. That happens to be true across many Western countries (for non-obvious reasons). It isn’t true against East Asian countries.
4) Another problem is that we now have boy-that-cried-wolf syndrome, where people don’t believe there is a problem, even though there is. Its even more difficult because the problem is not homogenous across subjects — there are enough teachers in some subjects and not enough in others.
5) The above problems also affect universities. This is because undergraduate education is now worse for reason to do with both university specific stuff and also because the students coming in are worse. No-one cares about this, but they should, since it basically means young Australians need more and more education, which keeps people out of the workforce.
6) This is super problematic for post-graduate education in areas of Maths, Science and Engineering, because only a small percentage of people with these degrees go on and get higher degrees. Again, no-one careas about this, but again they should, because it means highly technical (and highly paid) jobs won’t be done by native Australians (not that I care — but the supply of immigrants won’t be limitless in the future given aging and similar education trends in other countries). It also means universities will have trouble getting decent employees in the future.
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How many democratic societies have the majority of their population educated in autonomous private schools? Maybe a shared public education experience helps provide the glue that binds liberal societies. Confining children to the company of their own faith together with regular religious indoctrination – that sure sounds like a recipe for tolerance and understanding! Letting a thousand flowers bloom sounds great in theory, but in practice there may be a few weeds in the garden.
We are fortunate in Australia that the the Catholic systemic schools are de facto government schools, with a student body and teaching staff virtually indistinguishable from the public system. This is largely a consequence of Commonwealth recurrent grants, which commenced in the late 60’s and enabled the Church to employ non-religious teachers to replace the diminishing numbers of nuns and priests. Since then there has been very little of the anti-Catholic bigotry and sectarianism that was commonplace in Australian society.
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Byron – Both the world’s most divided and most harmonious societies have predominantly public education systems. The public school lobby – and Andrew L initially – make arguments like this, but so far as I have seen it is a purely theoretical argument unsupported by any evidence. Compared to other Western countries, an unusually large proportion of the Australian population was educated in religious private schools, yet Australia also does very well on religious tolerance, with no evidence that people who went to these schools are less tolerant than those who did not. Indeed, the rise of state aid coincided with the decline of the Protestant-Catholic divide. This is probably partly due to state aid easing some Catholic grievances, perhaps as you say partly due to lay teachers in Catholic schools, though I think it is mostly due to longer-term trends.
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A minor quibble.
You then immediately go on to outline why private education is good and why over time all private schools are likely to be better than public schools. Public schools face (additional) barriers to exit that private don’t.
Peter also makes a very valuable point. Despite Australian education being of “poor quality” and “run down” (and all the other bad things we hear about the education system) the economy has done very well. This suggests to me that we don’t need to throw even more (taxpayer) dollars at education (from an economic pespective). Of course, we live in a society and not an economy, so we might want to improve other outcomes in the education system, but there is no evidence to support the notion that we should spend even more (public) money on education.
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Sinc – I don’t think I have contradicted myself. I’m talking about systemic effects which should show in averages (presuming parents care sufficiently about academic outcomes); the point being that existence of some private schools with poor results doesn’t show that the system is failng.
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Sinclair, I don’t think Andrew went on to claim that all private schools are likely to be better than public schools. But you raise an interesting point. In a market, poor performers can exist for periods of time, but eventually most will go out of business or be taken over. Everyone has been to a bad restaurant, bought (or heard of) a lemon car or *even* dealt with an incompetent tradesperson(!!!) The question is how long such operations continue. I think the comment made in the seminal QCMA trade practices decision encapsulates this issue very well – competition is a process, not a situation (and implicitly, should be evaluated and judged accordingly). In that context, I would still consider that the worst car produced in the world market in 1985 was better than the Trabant and that virtually any restaurant in Melbourne in 1985 was better than virtually all restauarnts (such as they were) in Moscow at that time. Extreme examples perhaps, but they do illustrate that markets are like a rising tide.
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“Meanwhile despite an education system in crisis for the past 30 years, Australia has been getting richer and more productive and we still come out towards the top of PISA rankings.”
But think how much better we could have done if we hadn’t been in crisis.
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Oh pleeeease, Sinclair. Its one thing for “sympathy lobby, touchy feely, warm inner glow Leftists” of the Michael Pussey/Eva Cox mentality to engage in this sort of glib, meaningless claptrap. But you? Have some self-respect man!
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Peter Whiteford and his ilk simply do not get it, no matter how many times they are told. There is only metric for “evidence” and that is demand. The fact that private school enrolments are rising at 20 times the rate of government schools says it all. The onus is on the statists to get their own houses in order. They can start by first acknolwedging the empirical realities.
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As Australia’s significant decline in PISA Reading tests over the six years so decidely attests, the awful Orwellian sibstitution of Cultural Studies for English Literature has been a disaster for school kids.
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Would that be the same Orwell who is often credited with being a founding figure in Cultural Studies? One recalls him writing (with enthusiasm and insight) about seaside postcards, cigarette cards and so on.
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My dear, there is a world of difference between the writings of Eton-educated George Orwell and the claims to be his heir by the CultiStudies set currently propelling Australian youth down the road to serfdom via illiteracy.
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Andrew / Rajat: how would this closure of bad schools work in practice? Where would the (already behind other students, obviously) students go? Where would the teachers go? Some school is always going to be ‘last’ in the league tables – will it be that one that is closed?
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Andrew, your new post is a little more provocative than the first and invites some further questions.
First, if you (like Conrad) are worried about recent trends in (rather than levels of) average literacy, maths, science etc., how come that Australia’s performance has been declining in relative terms in a period of exceptional growth in private schools?
Is the mushrooming of private schools (more correctly separatist schools) creating too much diversity of values at a time when governments seem to be trying to encourage more cultural cohesiveness and identity of values?
What is a “bad” public school? Do you mean a school with ‘bad teachers (after adjusting their performance for the proportion of disadvantaged kids or location)? If so, where is the evidence that nothing is currently being done to improve such “bad” public schools or even sometimes to close them down (as in Canberra)?
While competitive markets have much going for them when they work well, where is the evidence that the ‘competitive’ education system you advocate has worked anywhere in the world (given the obvious imperfections in such markets) and that any net benefits from competition would offset the diseconomies of scale from the fragmentation into lots of private schools?
Finally, whereas with the present system, it would be relatively easy to reduce inequality of education opportunity – e.g. by pouring more resources to public schools and seeking to attract better teachers – how would you do it under a fully privatised system given the problems of devising a suitable socio-economic formula?
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Russell, in my view, very few physical school premises would actually close down, given the high fixed and sunk costs of finding sufficient space, building classrooms, hiring teachers, etc. Rather, failing schools would typically be taken over by better managers. Think of the Wesfarmers acquisition of Coles: few Coles supermarkets are likely to actually close down. Most of the changes made by Wesfarmers will probably relate to operational and pricing decisions within each store. The main exceptions to school non-closures might be in some rural or remote areas, where the population is falling.
And with respect to being ‘last’ on the league table, this is what I mean by competition being a process rather than a situation: it may be that the poorest performing school each year is taken over; but is quite likely to be a different school in a different location each year.
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Rajat,
I think you are too optimistic. How many schools do you think would be willing to take over others that are essentially disasters? These are not businesses run by businessmen. They’re schools run by people who were once teachers.
On another note, at least for a lot of country towns, they’re simply isn’t any choice in schools, and I imagine not enough population to make private schools viable.
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On another note Rajat, publishing league tables means that almost no schools would be willing to take over other struggling ones — it would pull them down in the process.
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Rajat – might that mean that if you were a good teacher in a school anywhere near the bottom, you would be trying to get out of there before suffering the uncertainties of a takeover – the career penalties of being associated with a failed school would make staffing ‘difficult’ schools even harder.
If takeover doesn’t change the parents or pupils , all you could change would be the staff.
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When I susggested “pouring more resources into public schools” I should have added “on a selective basis, targeted at the more disadvantaged kids and schools”.
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Conrad, I think you are too pessimistic! True that schools are currently run largely by ex-teachers. That’s not always an optimal state of affairs and would be likely to change over time under a liberalised system. Remember that hospitals used to be run by doctors whereas now hospitals usually employ professional managers. And I would think that the information asymmetries in running hospitals staffed by health professions would be much greater than in running schools staffed by teachers – ie teachers are less likely to be able to ‘capture’ their managers than doctors. With more professional managers, I don’t see why Wasfarmer-type schools wouldn’t be willing to take over Coles-type schools – at the right price of course!
I think many country high school students (at least) already travel a bit, so I’m not sure if the problems are so dire. My partner, for example, grew up in the Kiewa Valley and went to a high school in Wodonga about 40 km away (where there were several other schools within a further 5-10 km radius). One could always start with major metro area high schools and go from there.
On league tables, I would think different campuses would be scored separately – as is currently the case for university course league tables (eg a course at Monash Clayton is listed separately to a similar course at Monash Caulfied).
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Russell, I think you might find that good teachers generally already do look to work in good schools, or at least schools that are well managed. Don’t we all want to work at a place that values our skills and where our colleagues are diligent and supportive? The threat of takeover would at least encourage poor teachers to leave, whereas now, public school teachers virtually cannot be sacked for poor performance. As for being associated with a ‘failed school’, I doubt this would arise in practice: would a Coles employee (even one in head office) be tarnished by the broader failure of the overall business? What about a lending manager at Bank of Melbourne or Challenge Bank (both of which were taken over by Westpac)?
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Rajat – Schools are much smaller than the businesses you cite – I think the staff of failed schools would have their reputations tarnished. In the business world the targets of takeovers aren’t always failures, are they?
My experience in the public sector is opposite what you say – yes, the better staff have the desire and confidence to leave poorly managed or resourced departments, but nothing ever moves the hopeless cases – maybe the remedy is just to deal with the hopeless cases in schools.
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Russell, the same would go for schools – takeovers don’t necessarily occur due to ‘failure’ (though they can and do) – they just mean that the stakeholders believe the school could be run better by someone else.
I am not sure what you are saying about the public sector. Don’t you think that the risk of being fired would cause some hopeless staff to leave of their own volition?
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Oh, so any school ( or any business?) could launch a takeover of any other school if it thought it was in its interests ? Schools are incorporated as businesses? Who owns them?
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“Don’t you think that the risk of being fired would cause some hopeless staff to leave of their own volition?” No, they have nowhere else to go – they’re obviously hopeless.
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“The threat of takeover would at least encourage poor teachers to leave”
And whom would you replace them with?
“I think you might find that good teachers generally already do look to work in good schools, or at least schools that are well managed. Don’t we all want to work at a place that values our skills and where our colleagues are diligent and supportive”
Actually, I think the correlation would be pretty weak, and mainly caused by people avoiding bad schools, especially given that, excluding some of the private schools, the pay is all the same, and you simply can’t work in enough places to somehow “sample” managment. One of the reasons I’m too lazy to move from where I work, for example, is because I can get to where I work easily, and the other places that are convenient are equally as bad.
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Russell – I’m not the author of the model, but the point is that ‘stakeholders’ (being some mix of parents, teachers, the government or shareholders) could decide to change the management of a school if they thought it would be beneficial.
At least liberalisation allows for the possibility of sacking bad teachers/principals – surely that’s got to be better than not being able to sack them??
Conrad – if teachers leave (or are sacked) then you find more/better teachers. You may need to pay them more, which may necessitate higher fees if better teachers are of sufficient importance to the stakeholders. The same goes for the issue of sampling management -people have eyes and ears and mouths and they will sort it out. That’s how markets work.
Both of you – next time you think of a problem, perhaps give some consideration to how the problem is dealt with in a regular market for a regular commodity before stressing out.
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Markets have quite a few victims : HIH, Westpoint etc etc so I’m not convinced a market based solution to the problems in schools will offer kids any rosier future. Focussing on providing better teachers and resources seems a more direct approach to the problems.
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“I think you are too optimistic. How many schools do you think would be willing to take over others that are essentially disasters? These are not businesses run by businessmen. They’re schools run by people who were once teachers.”
I don’t think you need to take them over. A lot can be done simply by changing the management: removing people who just aren’t up to it, replacing them with people who know the job and want to get good results.
That’s another way of thinking about the Wesfarmers buyout of Coles: the staff, the stock, the stores will mostly be the same, but the management will be new, and they will find (hopefully) new and better ways to get the best out of those staff, stock and stores.
Also, this idea is inherent in Andrew N’s model: by giving teachers/headmasters an incentive to move to poorer-performing schools, we should be able to improve their performance.
“On another note, at least for a lot of country towns, they’re simply isn’t any choice in schools, and I imagine not enough population to make private schools viable.”
A lack of choice in country areas is no reason for denying people choice in areas where it is viable, such as in the cities. Also, who’s to say that choice that doesn’t exist under existing arrangements won’t come about under new arrangements?
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“On another note Rajat, publishing league tables means that almost no schools would be willing to take over other struggling ones — it would pull them down in the process.”
League tables should give managers and administrators an idea of where to devote resources – such as good managers, headmasters and teachers. They give a good idea of where resources can best be used.
Sure, there will always be one school at the bottom. But by allocating resources to where they’re most needed, the overall quality of education should improve – which is what we want, isn’t it?
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Rajat, I’m not stressed out. I just work in the university sector, so I’m aware of how bad management can be, and in fact almost inevitably is (I’m sure many monkey’s could do a better job than some of the people working in the university system). That’s why I’m pessimistic. I think its a cultural problem with no obvious solution.
For example, Jeremy thinks league tables work. But that wasn’t the experience of universities. It just led to peverse outcomes and peverse goals. My university, for example, is desperate to get into the top 500 of the SJTI (I’ve no idea why). It makes also sorts of weird (and costly) decisions because of this. League tables in this case are a hinderance, not a benefit.
Similary, the idea that you can just keep paying teachers more when the bad ones leave is incorrect — a large proportion of people simply won’t pay. Thats why there are crappy schools. Otherwise there would be more private schools. Also, because some areas are in shortage, you need to attract more people into the profession versus simply move the problem to some other school when you get their teachers. But this is almost impossible. For things like mathematics and science, you are talking about paying tens of thousands of dollars more than what people are paid now. This would have to be done for years such that people thought it was a good long term career.
Another example is from Jeremy, who thinks you can simply change management. Where do you intend to get the better managers from? Where are you going to get the money to pay them more, so better managers want to work in schools?
Clearly, if I had infinite resources, all these things might be good investments (or they might not — perhaps other methods have better efficacy, like having higher salaries for teachers). But there are not infinite resources and never will because some people are poor, and others prefer big houses and cars to paying for their children’s education.
These are really complex problems. I’ve no doubt some market solutions would be helpful, i
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Sorry, the last sentence seems to have got killed. It should read
“I’ve no doubt some market solutions would be helpful, but I’m just not convinced that any simple suggestions are going to have a big effect”.
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TomN – those same touchy feely types have over-run the forward trenches; I’m getting with the program. 🙂 I’m going to have a lot of fun with that expression.
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Don’t feel bad Sinclair. John Hewson, of all people, said the same thing in last week’s Bulletin, and Julie Bishop said it almost as soon she got elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party.
It is funny, I must admit, seeing all these traumatised conservatives repeat the banalities of Left sociologists.
While you are getting with the program repeat after me:
“Uranium, leave it in the ground!”
“The workers united, will never be defeated!”
“No fees!”
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… and not forgetting that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment!
Howabout a “Make trade fair” lapel badge?
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“For example, Jeremy thinks league tables work. But that wasn’t the experience of universities. It just led to peverse outcomes and peverse goals. My university, for example, is desperate to get into the top 500 of the SJTI (I’ve no idea why). It makes also sorts of weird (and costly) decisions because of this. League tables in this case are a hinderance, not a benefit.”
It’s not the league table’s fault that the people in charge of setting an institution’s course don’t know what they’re doing. The league table is simply an indicator of where an institution stands: it’s not responsible for policy arising from the uncomfortable truths that it tells.
“Another example is from Jeremy, who thinks you can simply change management. Where do you intend to get the better managers from? Where are you going to get the money to pay them more, so better managers want to work in schools? ”
I’m assuming that better managers exist: otherwise all schools would be more or less equally appalling. As for where the money would come from, quite obviously in the case of public schools it would have to come from the public, most likely via the government. Once again, I think that is the beauty of Andrew N’s plan: to ensure that schools in the more disadvantaged areas are given more resources (ie money) so as to address the problems that they face – one of which is probably poor or uninspired leadership.
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Ahh John Hewson. His greenist cred would be a tad more convincing weren’t he selling green-friendly light bulbs. In economics we call that rent-seeking.
But, no. Right now I’ll stick with we live in a society not an economy – especially in the education debate.
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“The league table is simply an indicator of where an institution stands: it’s not responsible for policy arising from the uncomfortable truths that it tells. ”
What truth are you talking about? These numbers are not the bible, nor good science. You need to read about content validity. Most of these tables are junk (like the THES) or measure things of approximately zero use to the average undergraduate. However, the fact of the matter is that people can and do pay a lot of attention to them, and the change of behavior it causes I would argue has not been beneficial.
“I’m assuming that better managers exist”.
May I ask where? Many managers of universities get payed extremely large amounts, but still manage to do an extremely poor job (IMHO). I assume school managers get paid even less than them, and hence even worse. In addition, many would argue that the extra “managment” that has come in the last decade or so with universities has actually reduced performance, not helped it. Thats because most managers think micro-managment works in education, which is a hopeless strategy, because it doesn’t.
“As for where the money would come from, quite obviously in the case of public schools it would have to come from the public, most likely via the government.”
What’s the oppurtunity cost here? Let’s say you pay 200K extra for a real manager, versus a monkey that pretends to be. WIth that you could have paid 20 teachers 10K extra. At a ratio of 25:1, thats better teachers for 500 students. Which would you prefer?
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“His greenist cred would be a tad more convincing weren’t he selling green-friendly light bulbs”
Sinclair, are you saying that anybody who sells a product is insincere about the benefits of that product if they are personally benefiting from the sale?
So all car salesmen and real estate agents are liars? Not just some, but all of them.
It’s also something your students might take account of when they hear you spruiking about the courses that you teach.
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Conrad, I’m not saying that liberalisation would solve all the problems overnight. But it would be a move in the right direction. Even giving existing principals the right to hire and fire staff would be a big step. Allowing principals to set staff remuneration on a basis other than years in the job would be another big step. These are really simple basic things that do not happen in the public school system. And at the moment, parents get very little information about school performance (except, ironically, year 12 league tables) and are told by the government and unions that all public schools are great. Remember the massive productivity gains unleashed when China first allowed farmers to sell their surplus crops on the market – a simple reform but what benefits it brought. The public school system is in a not dissimilar state to Chinese farming in the early 1970s.
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“What truth are you talking about? These numbers are not the bible, nor good science.”
The sort of truth that says, if your car’s speedo tells you that your car is doing sixty clicks, then your car is doing sixty clicks.
The league tables measure ‘something’. Whether that information is useful or relevant I don’t know: I would have thought that any CEO worth their pay would have worked out what was important. If they can’t do this, then, again, it’s not the fault of the league tables.
“‘I’m assuming that better managers exist’.
May I ask where?”
The answer is implied in the rest of my answer, which you unfortunately snipped away. They exist in the schools that are doing well – not to mention in the countless businesses that manage to satisfy their customers, please their staff and make a profit to boot.
“What’s the oppurtunity cost here? Let’s say you pay 200K extra for a real manager, versus a monkey that pretends to be. WIth that you could have paid 20 teachers 10K extra. At a ratio of 25:1, thats better teachers for 500 students. Which would you prefer?”
That’s a question for the administrators, and it depends on whether you need more teachers or more administrators. It’s not rocket science: thousands of businesses and public sector organisation make these sort of decisions every day, with greater and lesser degrees of success – it gets done.
This is the third response I’ve made to your queries. Every time, you come back with some minor point, the root of which appears to me to be a ‘we can’t do this, it won’t work’ mindset.
‘The league tables that we use are no good’
‘How will we make it work in rural areas?’
‘Where will the managers come from?’
‘Where will the money come from?’
‘Where will the teachers come from?’
‘How will you manage the opportunity cost?’
All of these matters are matters of administration, which, as I said, successful businesses solve every day. They are second order issues, applying to every undertaking ever devised – including the present public education system – and will be solved once we have adopted a course of action.
Remember the Normandy landings? There were literally a million questions of the type that you are asking here, many of which were genuinely difficult. How did the people in charge respond? They plotted the course, and let their subordinates work out the answers. And guess what – the plan worked! The subordinates used their ingenuity and resources to answer every single question asked of them.
Don’t worry to much about the details at this point. We can work them out in good time. For now, let’s debate the merits or otherwise of the course of action that Andrew N. has proposed.
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No. I’m saying that people who rely on government coersion to sell expensive products that have cheap (but soon to be illegal) substitutes are rent-seekers.
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I see. So a cancer surgeon is a rent seeker, because of government regulations that keep out cheap quacks who try to sell miracle cures to people with cancer.
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Jeremy, I think you’d fit in fine as an administrator. However, if you worked in the education system I doubt you’d ever say things like this:
“I would have thought that any CEO worth their pay would have worked out what was important”
In addition, I think what you have failed to get here is that education isn’t a competitive market for most areas, and probably never could be in Aus (science, engineering, anything else expensive). Given this, you also might consider the affect of rules across all univerisites, rather than just individual ones. In this case, whilst league tables might be of overall benefit for an individual organization (they’re good marketing — people are certainly willing to spend vast sums to get higher on the rankings), they are not neccesarily beneficial as a whole — most organizations spend vast sums of money competing for (essentially fixed) funding, and this competition causes wasted resources across the sector (i.e., overall productivity is lost).
Similarly, simply pointing out good managers exist, isn’t pointing out where or how you’d find them. I imagine in your managment driven solution, you would need to replace _thousands_ of mediocre managers. Given the current employment situation, I still find it hard to imagine where you would get (or pay for them). This isn’t a trivial admistration matter at all, its at the heart of your argument, that somehow all of these people could be found and paid for. Are you just going to find them in the general workforce that already pays tens of thousands of dollars more for good managers?
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No. A cancer surgeon who campaigns to keep out competitors is a rent-seeker.
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Rajat,
I agree that some liberalisation is the right move — I think it will help the middle->top schools a lot. Alternatively, I don’t think it does much for the bottom end of the schools distribution, since these schools will never have enough money to be competitive in terms of getting good staff and so on. One can imagine in a more liberal market, this end of the distribution will actually be punished, since they will have their staff taken. Thus thinking of solutions for this end of the market is much more challenging — especially given that there are shortages of teachers in some areas, which means the only real solution is to work out how to get more into the profession. Unless average wages go up because more cash gets into the system (which I think it would in a more liberal market) then I’m not sure how this problem can get solved. I’m also not sure how much more money would need to go into the system to actually help this problem significantly. Even if a more liberal market gets more money into the system, it might not be nearly enough to address the discrpenancies between pay for teachers and other professions.
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The alternative cancer treatment provider is a competitor to the surgeon.
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If you say so.
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Hey Spiro
You have that counter argument to free labor markets yet. We’re still waiting , fella.
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Spiros — the effect of strict doctor licencing is that fees are higher and quality largely unchanged. It’s not a good thing. You don’t need 10 years schooling to prescribe anti-biotics.
Strict licencing is promoted by people who gain from it (rent seekers), and some clueless people with good intentions. That’s nice. You can have all the good intentions you like. Unfortunately, poor people can’t eat good intentions.
Speaking of licencing… perhaps we need to introduce licencing into the economics profession. The consequence of bad economic advice is much more dangerous that the consequence of a bad doctor.
Of course, people are far too stupid to make their own decisions about which economists to listen to… ergo they can only listen to economists licenced with the Australian Society for the Protection of Economic Consumers (ASPEC).
Thankfully, Sinclair & I are the only approved economists (and even then Sinclair is not approved to talk about the war).
We’re not rent-seeking you understand. Just concerned about the poor idiots… opps, I mean consumers. 🙂
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