Ken Nelson

College has been oversold. It has been oversold to students who end up dropping out or graduating with degrees that don’t help them very much in the job market. It also has been oversold to the taxpayers, who foot the bill for these subsidies.

Alex Tabarrok
College has been oversold
Marginal Revolution

My son, although just 14, seems fairly clear on what he wants to do as a grownup. He wants to run a small manufacturing concern that builds custom firearms and designs and builds firearms enhancement products (like better triggers).  To do this he will need to know machining, welding, CNC programming, plastic injection molding, as well as math and spreadsheet/analysis skills.  He will also need to design brochures, write business documents, magazine articles, negotiate and build relationships with vendors, customers, and employees, and know how to interpret a balance sheet/income statement.

There is no “college” degree for this.  So is it better for me to drop $40K (or more) on some college degree, or $10K getting training in these fields, and $30K on machinery to start the business, while arranging mentors on some of the business specific things?

Note that paying $40K for an extended adolescence, or letting him borrow for the same, isn’t part of the plan.

My family homeschools. This year we’ve decided to try something called a Thomas Jefferson Education (http://www.tjed.org/). 

TJED follows these keys:

7 Keys of Great Teaching
There are seven principles of successful education. When they are applied, learning occurs for any learning style or interests. When they are ignored or rejected, the quantity and quality of education decreases.
keyinkeyhole2

    Classics, Not Textbooks
    Mentors, Not Professors
    Inspire, Not Require
    Structure Time, Not Content
    Simplicity, Not Complexity
    Quality, Not Conformity
    You, Not Them

I can tell you that my son is not digging the “classic” Uncle Tom’s Cabin… but decoding 18th century slave jargon must build something – character perhaps?

We’ve only been doing it about a week now, other than a short prep period, so the results are a bit early to decipher.  It has its plusses, a bit more social interaction than they’ve had in the past couple years, for instance.

And it’s cool that my son built a sextant and computed our latitude.

One drawback is that they meet on Thursdays. And I’d forgotten how “used” I’ve gotten to not having to factor our family schedule around pretty much anybody else.

I’ll update periodically on our experience with TJED.

Since Rick Perry is starting to do well, you can expect plenty of attacks on him and Texas.  I’m sure he has his foibles, but Texas… it really doesn’t. At least not compared to most states.

Take education.

Paul Krugman and the Economist recently both poopoohed Texas education results. Texas ranks low in per pupil spending and about 47th in ACT/SAT test results.

John Debyshire and blogger Iowahawk point out that actually Texas does a lot better…

White students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8, above average in 8.

So they spend less and get GREAT results.  What’s not to like?  Nothing, except that apparently, they spend less and are run by Republicans?

Krugman is a long time fool. So if he says something, ignore it, or choose the opposite. 

I used to read the Economist and I wondered if the errors they made in things I know a lot about (tech, military) might also be happen in other areas.  In this case, education analysis/statistics, it sure seems wrong.   I suspect this is because most journalists (but not all) understand grammar but very few understand statistics or any of that “hard” stuff from school.

Journalism would improve if it was handled by mathematicians like Derbyshire. Or by anybody smart enough to get through a hard science college curriculum.

Check out this 8th grade finals test from 1930’s West Virginia:

The math is relatively simple, but I really like the requirement to think, write and put together coherent responses.   I also like that this test would not be auto graded on a machine.   And what is this?  The family can do something the school can’t?  Amazing, revolutionary thinking – for now, not then.

Who wouldn’t want to hire someone who passed this test?  Who wouldn’t feel comfortable that they knew enough to vote?

It seems that we spend about a 1000 times more and get a lot less these days.

I may just give my homeschooled kids this test and see how they fare.

Via Ace

http://nplusonemag.com/bad-education   (read in spite of the unfortunate blog sub-title).

N+1 magazine has an article by Malcom Harris that compares (unfavorably) the state of education finance with the housing bubble. At the heart of it… as you would expect, government.

The result is over $800 billion in outstanding student debt, over 30 percent of it securitized, and the federal government directly or indirectly on the hook for almost all of it.

He points out that 40% of students taking on the debt default with in 10 years. Also, alas, the colleges aren’t investing their sales to make their industry provide a better product. Nope. Instead they hire administrators – a startling number of them. By 2014 there will be more administrative staff than instructors at American colleges.

College need not cost this much. And the government certainly shouldn’t continue to foul this market like it does the energy, automotive, and housing markets. But they won’t resist, so it isn’t unrealistic to expect that colleges and college debt will be one of the next bursting bubbles.

In practice it seems clear to me that $50K a year for college is a bad investment that should only be done by those with $50K to burn.  This calculus is done today by people who really plan to borrow, burn the money, and then burn the creditor (me via the govenrment). I want that to end. 

My kids will probably go to college, but only on scholarship if it is an expensive school, and if on my nickel to a reasonably priced school that does not require them to take on any debt.

As a side note… the economic value of most college degrees is nil over just being home schooled to a high level. So in many ways college is a two way bad deal… you pay a lot and don’t get much for it, and you pay a lot for what you could do much cheaper in alternative ways.

I’ll send my kids, at a reasonable price, mainly so they can find a decent spouse and have a bit of fun before adulthood sets in. But they will go to a place where the economics and return on investment are in their favor.  What I would have wasted on an expensive, wasteful school, I’ll save to help them move out of my basement and to overcome the economic disaster their friends grandparents gave them.

Here are the costs for Utah college tuition for 2011-12 school year:

They will raise tuition 7% to 11.8%.

But I wonder… are they providing 7% better schools?

Certainly not.

I’d like to see our College Regents cut tuition not raise it.  And I’d like to see them quit belly aching about state cuts and INSTEAD think about how to run schools that are 7% BETTER and 7% CHEAPER.

You know… like I run my business.  You know… how I, and tens of thousands of other Utah enterprises, respond to tough times.

Sir Ken Robinson, on “Do Schools Kill Creativity”.

Do they?  They didn’t kill mine.  I do believe, however, especially in their modern versions, that they kill dreams and creativity by the minute.

Related

As to education… yes, I’m irritated about the money I’m wasting on public education.

But really irks me, much more than the money, is the dreams it crushes. Not just of kids. But of teachers. Of parents. It’s ugly.  I love to teach, and I’d love to be a teacher, but NO WAY in our system. NO WAY.

If anybody wonders why I home school, or why I pay for children of my employees to go to a “new paradigm” private school, see the 2nd video.

It happens in the 21st century that some of the nicest, most dedicated people you could ever hope to know have chosen to instruct their kids at home: unable any more to trust the public schools with getting the job done.

Bill Murchison
Townhall

My wife and I are dedicated and nice. And we certainly don’t trust the public schools to “get the job done”.

Well, we are mostly nice. Until you cross us…

Trenton, Michigan has a problem… they have a $26 million dollar budget but need to cut $3 million from it due to cuts in state assistance.

Here is the first 4 or their budget cut ideas:

• Ask the teacher’s union for a pay decrease
• Eliminate all bus service.
• Make athletics fully pay to play.
• Pay to play or reasonable rate and maybe a percent of a cost per program.
• Eliminate middle school sports as travel, make them all intramural and have high school students or parents volunteer to coach teams.

I’ve checked a twice now and I didn’t see administrative cuts on the list. Principals, Superintendents, IT staff, so forth. 

And much of the list is just ways to raise more money.  Or they drop, drastically, service, without prioritizing what is important.

So, no, I’m not impressed.

What would I do?

I’d sell the schools to private owners who contracted to provide free schooling to my residents.  I’d include a generous lease on all current facilities. The lease would encourage micro-schools owned by teachers that shared the facilities. And I’d let anybody open a school in town, thus keeping what I, the tax payer, pay open to severe competition. And I’d let parents choose where their kids went.  I’d also pay folks who chose home schooling 1/2 the going rate for per student spending.

Oh… and I’d fire all the teachers and let them rehire with the private schools the  best they could.  Thus I’d avoid a pension crisis in the future.

And I’d sit back and watch education, real education, bloom in Trenton, MI. 

Big change,sure,  but big problems call for that don’t they?

The Tribune isn’t hiring Dutton Peabody types any longer are they?

In a few short years my son will be at college. Probably at a Utah school.

This piece in the Salt Lake Tribune makes me wonder if it will be worth attending by the time he is old enough.

The University regents raised tuition 7% to 9% (what was inflation this year?).  Utah tuitions have doubled in the last decade (what was inflation in the last decade?).

Now I know how education bureaucrats work – they always want to raise spending and tuition.  They aren’t surprising. They are disturbingly predictable.

What irks me most about the piece is the compliant nature of the journalist. And his use of a news article to state his own opinion.

The obvious questions were not asked. “Why didn’t you cut spending?”  Or “Would it save money to hold your meetings in cold Salt Lake, instead of expensive travel to sunny St. George? 

I don’t understand becoming a journalist to just repeat back what bureaucrats yap at you. Why wake up in the morning and rush off to do that?

You would have been better off giving him the cash to invest and sending him to the Caribbean or Vegas for several weeks every year where he could have indulged his sexual appetites and legally smoked ganja. Financially you would have both been ahead. So too would we.

On college for many parents and kids…

Red but dumb.

One of the reasons I’m not particularly enthusiastic about our nation’s prospects is what I see here in Utah, which is nominally a “red” “tea party” state.  Yet… they plan to increase education funding, largely due to teachers union power.

Public education in Utah already wastes too much money and provides very little return for the MASSIVE increase in spending over the last decade.  It needs a CUT, not an increase.

Wisconsin, a formerly Blue state, farther along the bankruptcy path is smarter about this than Utah.  Who would have thought that liberal cheese heads fresh back from a Feingold rally would aim right at a public union’s kill zone?

Public sector employees play a large political role in both states.  But I suspect an important difference is that Utah families are larger.  A large number of Utah residents get a great deal educating 4 or 6 kids at other people’s expense. More spending on education costs them nothing (that they can measure) and eases their angst about foisting their ill behaved kids off on other people all day.

As an aside, my kids have been in private school or home school all their education, except for a 2 week experiment my son did at a local middle school that didn’t end well.

Governor Ken would handle education funding differently.  I’d put a much higher burden on parents, and call that a GOOD thing, since they would now care about school quality and efficiency.  

But I’d never get elected because in SPITE of their Tea Party protestations… Utahans love a handout just as much as some Easterner in New York.

So, Utah, home of a vigorous Tea Party, banisher of Bennett, as socially conservative as you can get, yet under the thrall of public sector unions, is another reason why I’m pretty discouraged about our chances as a nation.

If we can’t do it right here, where can it work?

Harvard Costs, ASU graduation rates

Just because Utah votes “Red” doesn’t mean its politicians are any smarter, or less bought by public sector unions, than other states.   I’d submit that given the chance they would run just as rampant. They are under somewhat tighter control by the state Constitution, but where they are permitted they run amok.

One place where Utah matches other state stupidity is education. We WASTE a lot of money on education at all levels.

The University of Utah ranks high on the wasteometer:

The University of Utah does in fact get the lion’s share of resources in Utah – spending over $50,000 per FTE. Embarrassingly, their 6 year graduation rate is 51 percent. They make Arizona State – a university lampooned by everyone including SNL and the Daily Show – look like Harvard AND a bargain.

FTE is “Full Time Enrollee”.  $50K per student is a lot of scratch. And tuition isn’t that much, so I, the taxpayer am footing the bill for it. 

Note that Nevada spends $19K per FTE at UNLV.   So Utah is WELL above what is normal or necessary.

I’m sitting at my desk and I’m watching a neighbor boy walk off to school. It is about 29 degrees this morning. He has no coat on.  Why?  Not because he prefers it cold. But because his school provides no place for him to stash it. No locker.  Rather that truck a coat around all day, he dresses for inside the school on the outside walk.

One of my biggest complaints about our public schools is that they are run as huge bureaucracies operating for the benefit of teachers and administrators more than for the students.  Lockers give administrators a headache. So the schools have none.

But they do have kids arriving very cold.

I can tell you one school that operates with the kids as the focus… The Nelson Home School.

Amount of time typical Tulane graduate spends testing alarm clocks.

A Tulane graduate from 2005 has lost her job due to being late, she claims, because of a glitch in the iPhone calendar app.

If you had warned me about the glitch, I could have at least picked up a $5, battery-operated alarm clock that would have saved my job,” she wrote in an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs posted on the Huffington Post.

I test apps before I depend on them. For instance, before I ever used the Android’s alarm, I set it to go off through the day. This saved me from a bad volume setting. Now, they didn’t cover this at Utah State. Computers were as big as houses when I went there. How could they?   But I did have an alarm clock, and I did TEST it before using it.  You ALWAYS test alarm clocks before using them. Anything you depend on should be verified. Life 101.

Related… why 5 years later, is a Tulane graduate tending tables?  What degree?  Tulane, btw, costs $50K a year to attend.

Similar… was the reporter a Tulane graduate?  She didn’t ask questions that seemed pretty obvious to me. Like “Did you test it?”, “Why are you waitressing?”, “What was your degree?”.

The graduate in question, btw, did not answer questions about if the tardiness was a habit. Which means “yep”.

I know, I know, I’m being unreasonable on the school. But I just couldn’t resist. I hope she doesn’t have too much school debt for what, by any reasonable view, was an economically fruitless time spent in college.