“The lights are going out all over America—literally.” So begins Paul Krugman’s latest NY Times column, in which he laments the crumbling of America’s foundations. The proximate cause of this decline, according to Krugman, is insufficient government spending on infrastructure and education. But the root cause is rhetoric: How did we get to this point? [...]
Tags: education, infrastructure, Krugman, public finance
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There’s a lot of money in education. According to an article a friend posted on Twitter yesterday, Philadelphia spends $400,000 per classroom of 25 students per year. Other cities are similarly lavish. In spite of this spending, urban public schools are usually terrible. There is no simple solution to this problem (read Bill Easterly — [...]
Tags: Easterly, education, industrial organization, law firms, mutual monitoring, partnerships
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Grade inflation is a problem for several reasons. First, as GPAs increasingly get compressed into the 3s, the amount of information they contain within a given number of decimal points decreases. Second, the problem is exacerbated by the tendency for different academic departments to exhibit different rates of grade inflation. Third, negative externalities are clearly [...]
Tags: education, GPA, grade inflation, NCAA basketball, RPI
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The privatization of education is near the top of my policy wishlist. While I’d prefer radical privatization, I think that’s essentially impossible any time soon; but vouchers seem to be gaining support. Here is my proposal for putting them over the top. We bribe people. My plan is to bribe the educational establishment (teachers and [...]
Tags: education, privatization, public choice, vouchers
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