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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: How does education help all of us? Reply to Sykora
Message-ID: <602@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 23-Apr-85 14:50:48 EST
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Posted: Tue Apr 23 14:50:48 1985
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> From Michael Sykora: 
> It is certainly true that education benefits us all.  But what about the
> net benefits?  Education isn't free.  I'm afraid "there is no doubt
> about it" is not a convincing argument.  How about some facts to back that
> up?
 
I am glad that you concede the economic benefits of improved
education.  Public Education was a "radical" idea when it was firmly
supported and placed into law by our nation's Founders.
However I do not think you realize the point of Dennison's study
of the impact of improved education. The point was that investments
in improved education provided more economic growth per dollar than
investments in physical capital.  Again, I would like to point out
that this is a very commonsense proposition.  One could invest enormous
sums of money in the capital needed to make candles or one could
develop the incandescent bulb and produce many times the light of
ordinary candles for the small price of a mass produced light bulb.
While Edison had his problems with schoolteachers I doubt even his
inventive talents would have gotten very far without the ability to read
and write.
> 
> As Sowell pointed out in his "Ethnic America," education was not the key
> to success for a great many immigrants who came here in the past two
> centuries.  In fact, it was only after they had achieved a moderate
> level of success, that their children were able to obtain education
> at the college level.
> 
 
Since I haven't read this book I am not in a position to comment.
However merely counting "education at the college level" would
obviously exclude not only ethnic immigrants but the vast majority
of Americans (including very many inventors like Edison and others)
from being counted among the "educated".  Would immigrants children
have learned English or American culture as quickly as they did
without their immersion into the diversity of students in public schools?
I think that it is *extremely* doubtful.
 
> Furthermore, by interfering in the market for education, the government
> has created distortions.  The result of these distortions is that it
> is now more difficult to succeed without "credentials."
 
Two points here: One, is that it is probably more fair to judge people
on the basis of "credentials" which everybody has the opportunity to
obtain than on the basis of credentials, such as college education,
graduate professional degrees, and so forth which in the past were limited
primarily to the wealthy.
                 Two, is that the problem of  credentials and success
is due to corporations own hiring policies and the increasing centralization
of the economy.  Libertarian myths notwithstanding, the fact is that very
few people in this country are independent entrepreneurs or even independent
professionals today.  The vast majority of Americans are either wage or
salary employees for somebody else.  If Libertarians wish to critique
bureaucracy (which I believe is at the heart of many of their complaints)
they will not find much solace in the modern corporate economy.  With
every merger and giant conglomerate swallowed whole by an even bigger
gargantuan conglomerate the economy moves towards more centralization and
bureacratization: independently of anything the government does.
As impersonal corporate bureaucracy grows, so grows the use of credentials.
                  tim sevener   whuxl!orb