…what they’re really saying is “let’s accept everything I believe as a given, and ignore anything you bring to the table”.

Laura Gilbert’s plea for a “realistic conversation” bout 21st century education (in the MinnPost) is a case study:

Problem #1: America needs post-secondary degrees. According to policymakers, America’s future depends on our ability to increase the percent of Americans with quality post-secondary credentials from the current 39% to 60% in the next decade.

Well, it’s an interesting theory.

Now, seventy years ago a high school diploma was a big deal; during World War II, the average GI had an eighth grade education, and something under a third of Americans went to school through 12th grade.  The percentage of college diplomas was in the single digits; a college sheepskin pretty well meant you were officer or management material.

“But Mitch, the challenge back then – at least the economic one – was different; it was met by brick-and-mortar-and-steel industries that built things.  Our current economy is about information”.

I know –  my day job is in IT.  I get that.

But it’s Economics 101; as the supply of something increases relative to the demand, the value will drop.  In the sixty years after World War II, as it became expected that everyone should get a high school diploma and that college was the preferred post-secondary track, the value of the diploma decreased.  Same with higher education; the BA in English or History or Business Administration  that used to guarantee a job as a teacher or a salesman or a management trainee or an administrator or something, because it was proof that you packed some sort of intellectual gear, now doesn’t guarantee a job selling shoes at Thom McAn, because the supply of English/History/Business degrees is so out of whack with the demand for jobs for generalists.   And the supply of specialists – marketing majors, registered nurses,  aerospace engineers, physical therapists and what have you – is dependant on the need for the specialty.

We’ll come back to that.

Unless we do so, our ability to compete in a global knowledge economy could be severely compromised as early as 2020.  Statistics support this claim.

Ms. Gilbert doesn’t favor us with those statistics, but “Education is good” doesn’t seem like an especially arguable premise.

But what does “Education” mean? Does it mean “learning how to learn, and developing the intellectual,l social, cultural and technical tools to be not only a valuable worker, but a capable member of society?  One who can not only do a job, but contribute to the growth of the society, the culture, the economy and the human race?”  Or does it mean “owner of a suitably punched ticket?”

Because the latter – that’s not education.  That’s schooling.

And confusing the two is the road to ruin.

Remember – seventy years ago a high school dipoloma meant that one had a degree of education, as well as schooling.  And as the supply of diplomas rose, its value dropped – and, in the past thirty years or so, so has its content.  College freshmen today are phenomenally likely to need remedial help in writing, math, and history, as the public school system becomes less an educational system and more of  a rote process.

What Ms. Gilbert seems to be calling for is a similar devaluation of the college degree.

Problem #2: Higher education needs funding. Ironically, historic cuts in state higher ed funding threaten quality and, in some cases, survival of public colleges and universities: 50% of funding cut in Pennsylvania, $500 million in California, $400 million in Minnesota, the list goes on.

Which is – I’ll be charitable – a lazy view. There is phenomenal amount of money in higher education.  Again with the economics 101; as the supply of money available to spend on a fixed amount of a good or service – say, a seat at a college – increases, the price rises.  The price of a college education has zoomed far ahead of inflation – but in perfect sync with the amount of  private and especially public money available to pay for the goods and services.  People are talking about a higher education bubble, as the costs involved in supporting the system far outstrip the system’s ability to pay for it at its current inflated level.

But Ms. Gilbert seems to be pushing the imperative to support the status quo – the devaluation of education by the subsidy of mass schooling, damn the cost both in terms of up-front “tuition” costs as well as the rot that comes from the inflation.

This month, students across America took to the streets to protest higher ed budget cuts. Without state funds, students fear access to education will be limited to the economically-advantaged. Without students, universities fear mass layoffs and an immeasurable loss of talent as professors abandon the classroom. And without graduates, corporations wonder where they will find skilled workers. History and statistics support these claims.

History and statistics support these claims – if they are viewed with blinders to filter out all but the stated issue.

The fact is, if corporations are willing to pay for a skill, someone will step up to supply it.  America has been turning out a dearth of engineers and scientists for decades – so a generation of Indian and Chinese technocrats have made “The Indian Engineer” a new stereotype.  We produce a surfeit of registered nurses – so we are importing RNs from the Philippines and Mexico.  We produce a shortage of science and math teachers – so states are adopting alternative teacher licensure to make use of surplus math and science talent from other fields.

The market finds a way to get what it needs.

And decades of subsidy of education have supplied, to be blunt, a huge surplus of things the market doesn’t need; people with schooling, but not enough education to either get hired as a specialist or to find a niche as a generalist.  Macalester College turns out waves of anthropology majors that will never track a lost tribe; the U of M turns out psychology majors that will spend years working in call centers; Jamestown College in Jamestown, ND gave a BA in English to a guy that had to figure out a way to squeedge that into a gig in IT – something that was no part of his schooling (but was, fortunately, part of his – my – formal and informal education, thank God).

If corporations need educated workers to order to remain competitive in the near future, and if policymakers want more educated workers in order for America to hold (or regain) our global rank as a highly-educated economic force, then cuts to education must be stopped, right? Well, maybe; particularly at proposed reduction levels.

Actually, I’ll propose – modestly, and again – that we not only disconnect the idea of “education” and “schooling”, but the idea that throwing money into the huge education pool does anything but bid up the cost of those goods and services.   After decades of performing brain surgery with hammers, Ms. Gilbert is proposing we use a bigger hammer.

But, maybe there is a third consideration…

Problem #3: There does not appear to be a central conversation about higher education across all parties; an objective, future-looking dialogue that starts with where we are, and moves toward where we need to be. How else can rational decisions be made about where to cut and where to reinvent so we can still achieve the long-term vision for America? Passionate, brilliant, forward-thinking pundits exist in each camp. Imagine if these renaissance thinkers came together to celebrate higher education’s remarkable past while designing and championing the future.

You want a conversation about higher education?  OK.  Here’s some ideas I want to see at the table:

1. Stop confusing “improving education” with “counting the number of diplomas issued. Our colleges are cranking out BAs with wild abandon.  They’re just not the BAs that the market needs.   Let market forces decide what kind of “education” people get.  We have more Women’s Studies, psychology, majors than the market can possibly absorb, but it is incredibly difficult to find American tool and die makers, electrical engineers, and – oddly enough – competent English teachers.  And no – I’m not discounting the value of a humanities degree; I’m the English major, remember?  There is a value to pure education for its own sake – but there is little reason to subsidize it just to buff up the nation’s degree count.
2. Stop confusing “education” with “schooling”.  Thirty years ago, America fretted over “Why Johnny Can’t Read”.  Johnny went to Normandale, is now 45, and he’s a manager at Target, and his kids are thinking about applying to get into Metro State, and they don’t know what the Bill of Rights or a dangling participle or molecular valences are, because their public high schools are so dumbed down that there was never any reason to know any of those things. Americans have diplomas and degrees coming out their ears; too many of them are still not educated, and given the state of our public education system, it’s only going to get worse.
3. The Planned Economy didn’t work for the USSR; why would education be any different?  Coming up with an artificial output goal for, say, the number of degrees – call it a “Five Year Plan”, maybe – makes no more sense than setting arbitrary figures for the amount of cabbage did.
4. Make the high school diploma worth something again: I advocate voucherizing the whole mess.
5. Stop stigmatizing the non-college track: I have a BA.  I’m glad I do.  But too often when I talk education, especially with teachers and former professional students, talk of students going to technical or vocational school, or anything but the four-year Bachelor’s Degree track, is treated as a defeat.  It’s just not true; there are plenty of people in this world who are happier fixing things, programming things, buildling things than they’d be sitting at a desk, or in a classroom, or operating in the abstract.  It’s not a defeat; treating it like it is devalues something of great value.
6. Stop leaving half the students on the table: It’s politically incorrect to say it, but it’s a fact; boys and girls – eventually, men and women – are different.   Girls develop verbal and social skills very early; boys, on the other hand, develop better three-dimensional visualization skills.  Those skills carry forward in life; girls – women – traditionally tend to gravitate toward careers and skills involving communications and socialization (education, social work, even management) while boys stereotypically gravitate toward more tangible things, from auto mechanics to aeronautical engineering.  But over the past thirty years, elementary and secondary education has become feminized, meaning that being a boy has become devalued.  And that devaluation is moving upward into the college years now; soon,l women will make up 60% of all degrees, and it’s not slowing down at all.  Does Ms. Gilbert think culling half the population from “Education” is a good idea?
7. Let’s learn from the recent past. Government made it a goal to make sure Americans were jammed into houses; the government poured money, in the form of credit, into the housing market.  The market, predictably, responded by taking the money, in the form of higher prices and “values”.  The government kept inflating the bubble until it became unsustainable; it exploded, and we’re still picking shrapnel out of our asses.  Would it have been better to slowly withdraw some of the artificial subsidy and let it deflate slowly?  Check your latest appraisal and get back to me before you demand taxpayers keep pumping money into the education bubble just for the sake of a nebulous goal that, as we discussed above, may not solve the problem it’s supposedly aimed at.

So let’s talk.