With respect to minimum wage. The point about automation is well made.
A typical entry level job is at a fast food restaurant. Robotics to automatically run the its component jobs are available. With progress in AI and robotics, we will soon lose the French fry center, grill center, burger build table, etc. , jobs to smart robotics. Any increase in minimum wages will only accelerate this.
A huge loss from this is that even though these jobs may not be very fun or financially rewarding, even at low pay those who work them build soft skills. It is the lack of requisite soft skills that employers say is the biggest challenge in bringing on new workers. At a minimum, Mc-jobs make entry level workers more employable in better jobs...
Nov 7, 2022·edited Nov 7, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
I think we actually agree on the underlying issue - some educational expenses are out of reach for capable people who lack resources - but disagree on a view of the underlying reasons, which actually connect more to grade inflation and “undeserved promotion”.
Today Caltech and and MIT are Institutes. Stanford and Princeton are Universities. Bowdoin is a college, along with Claremont Mcakenna, and the group basically hasn’t changed much over a century. Let’s call them “Old School”.
However, sometime after the 40’s and 50’s, “Normal Schools, Teachers Colleges, provincial Theological Seminaries, Business Schools and Secretarial Institutes” suddenly started becoming universities. (I quote Paul Fussel’s “Class”, more in a moment). Let’s call them “Nouveau School.”
A simple Old School four-year college which might teach accounting, education, logistics, computer programming, nursing, agriculture, or marketing or at a reasonable cost became a Nouveau School University which taught accounting or marketing at an exorbitant cost. And somehow the agricultural school had to have a Nationally recognized Football Team to boot.
[Internet is fascinating - here’s a little known fact:
“Accounting can be a very challenging major and takes four years of serious commitment to complete. With difficult classes, intense curriculums, and very little free time, many international students find that accounting may not be right for them and decide to leave the field.”
I suppose physics, anthropology, economics, philosophy, organic chemistry, and architecture are completely out of the question.]
When what was essentially an Old School trade school which taught education in 1930 became a Nouveau School university in the 1980’s where an education degree costs $200,000, well I’d have to say it’s probably not a good idea to make that free.
There are really probably only a handful of Old School elite Institutes, Colleges and Universities in the US after all the name inflation of the 80’s and 90’s. The rest are still just teaching trades, which could be free, as long as they did away with sports and entertainment costs and focused on academics.
As to Black / White - I think the grotesque educational “name inflation” we have is a pretty scandalous fraud perpetrated on all communities which may not be aware of real distinctions in intellectual achievement at these institutions, and which play entirely on issues of class insecurity. I had to explain once to a mystified colleague from Europe why there were four times as many Universities (80) in Tennessee - my home state - than in the Netherlands (20), when The Netherlands has 3x the population - was the state of Tennessee as a whole really a surprise intellectual heir to the ancient Greek “Academeia” in culture and praxis?
I’m not a big fan of the pseudoscientific idea of race; I think it’s much more rigorous, realistic and actionable to look at economic situations for different groups. Those situations are measurable and can be focused on to improve opportunity and achievement.
Having written all this I have no issue with helping all economically disadvantaged groups secure free post-secondary education and better income opportunities through schools with an excellent focus on core disciplines and trades, and in some cases then go on to advanced degrees, also “free.”
The chance of that happening today, where the cultural and class prestige of schools is marketed quite fraudulently to the economically disadvantaged is zero.
[Sorry for the long reply. Interestingly when I was at Caltech I shared the same last name with an African-American student in my student house. Some interesting crossovers in private messages occurred.]
The hopelessly nasty (yet bearing kernels of truth) book “Class” by Paul Fussell, in the chapter “Life of the Mind”, lays bare the systemic frauds of US higher education “perpetrated on the proles”, and the unspoken knowledge of economic elites in the US of what constitutes an acceptable school.
It’s a cycle. To be a powerhouse inflated-appellation “university” with a powerhouse Football team and so on, you have to have powerhouse money. To have powerhouse money you have to have non-selective admissions and high tuition. To maintain the student base, once you have lowered admissions standards you must inflate grades so nobody fails out (heaven forbid) or gets pissed off. Ever escalating cycle.
An ordinary state agricultural school, Texas A&M (Agricultural and Mechanical) went through the classical progression through Normal School, avoided Teacher’s College, became a state College, then suddenly in 1973 became a “University”, as though a Sorbonne or Oxford sprang from the Prairie soil like Athena fully armed from the head of Zeus. (Compare to Middle Tennessee State University which hit 100% of stages from Normal, Teacher’s School, Teacher’s College then suddenly a University with an admirable Concrete Industry Management Program).
After a storied history, Texas A&M Prairie View now claims “[...] fields 18 intercollegiate sports team, commonly known by their "Prairie View A&M Panthers" nickname.” On their Wikipedia page.
San Fran State in-state is $6K, non-state $18K
Texas A&M tuition in-state is $11K, non-state $27K
Ohio State in-state is $12K, non-state is $35K
Smith is $58K
Vanderbilt $58K
I’d say San Francisco State is still a “Normal School” and while high cost compared to Holland, is modest... Texas A&M, Ohio State have equivalent education but double the cost. Football schools. Smith is a college, Vanderbilt a University. Four-year selective. Elite education and elite cost. I’d vote for San Fran state to be free, perhaps Smith... in the middle the tuition seems to be paying for something besides education.
Others make this same argument, but I think that grade inflation has relatively little to do with the rising cost of college. To ensure that the cycle you describe operates consistently and efficiently, each part must play its designated role. If one part fails to perform its function, the cycle stops working. But this first requires each part knows what it is supposed to do. On this score, I strongly doubt any college administration tells the professoriate to consciously keep grades high. No professor has ever told me that he or she was encouraged to inflate grades. Surely someone somewhere would have revealed this by now. This seems like an obvious limitation to the theory.
I can offer more prosaic reasons for grade inflation.
First, it’s easy to simply give a paper an A and be done with it. No one will complain or ask why. But to give a paper a C requires that you read it carefully and give reasons for the lower grade. That’s hard work. Relatively few instructors want to devote that extra time and effort to doing something which provides them little benefit and could entail some blowback. Conversely, permissively handing out high grades can preemptively deter any pressure mounted on instructors by the student or the students’ parents or the athletic department. It’s the path of least resistance.
Second, engaging in grade inflation benefits the instructor. Colleges have long relied on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) to assess the effectiveness of classroom instruction. Students have an opportunity to rate the teacher. Because a monetary award is sometimes given to instructors who receive high marks on the SET, there is an incentive to give students high grades and a disincentive to award low grades. Instructors who are easy graders routinely get better reviews than those who insist on grading the old-fashioned way. There is little debate about that.
Third, strict grading is out of step these days. Many instructors now see their mission not as challenging students and developing their skills, but as building up their self-esteem and helping them graduate. Nothing advances this latter cause than handing out good grades like candy during Halloween.
Fourth, due to the racial achievement gap and the desire to avoid controversy, instructors are loath to award low grades to students from unrepresented groups. No one wants to be tarred with the label “racially insensitive” or “racially biased,” or “culturally unaware.” As we have seen, gaining such a reputation can be a professional kiss of death.
There are the main reasons for grade inflation. The takeaway point is they operate independent of any concerns about tuition.
I also disagree with your point that “To have powerhouse money you have to have non-selective admissions and high tuition.” I think it’s the opposite. Academic reputations are won and lost based on selectivity. The greater selectivity you practice in admissions, the greater your reputation and academic ranking, which in turn helps boost your revenues.
Admission to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, other elite universities are so sought after largely because they are so selective. What social-climbing parents want to send their kids to a school that practices open admission? Does any upper-class family really want to send their sons and daughters to a school where they will hobnob with the kids of elementary school teachers, farmers, police officers, and secretaries? These very affluent families have invested too much in their scion to have them sit in classes with the masses. They are willing to write big checks because their sons and daughters mingle with future presidents, CEOs, and other privileged youth with very bright futures. To make it even more enticing, they will receive a diploma from a school that reflects well on them as parents.
“Operation Varsity Blues” demonstrated how far some parents are willing to go to get their kids in the “right” school. The University of Southern California was too selective for these kids to get in based on their own merit. These parents could have saved a lot of money, not to mention jail time, by sending their kids to another less selective school where they could have received an equally good education. But education wasn’t what they wanted; it was status.
Finally, you write “To maintain the student base, once you have lowered admissions standards you must inflate grades so nobody fails out.” In fact, some students do fail out. It’s a common occurrence. And if what you say is correct, then why would professors inflate the grades of students who are already doing well academically? Even if strict grading were applied, a drop from an A to an A- or a B+ will not prevent these students from graduating. Grade inflation would apply only to students in danger of failing (i.e., those on the low end of the academic scale).
Nov 6, 2022·edited Dec 17, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
In case you're not already aware it isn't just conservatives & right-wingers that hate Critical Race Theory. There are liberals & left-wingers who also hate Critical Race Theory.
One consideration that would add to understanding the labor market and the minimum wage is whether there is significant leakage to this system--namely the undocumented labor force, especially over the last few years. We can assume that labor laws will forestall employers paying an unlawfuly present labor force off the books. Maybe, maybe not. Since an unlawflly present labor force is more compliant and less likely to stick up for labor rights (my research), they will displace the legal workforce or depress wages. This had been part of the analysis in decades past. Is it still relevant?
Well, I disagree with half this article. Evidence is clear that realistic minimum wage laws remediate gross income inequality at the lower ranges of income. Here’s an example paper : http://www.clairemontialoux.com/files/DM2020.pdf
“… Wages in market economies reflect each worker’s productivity.” - except of course for CEO’s and others at the top of the wage scale who often receive compensation startlingly out of proportion to their “productivity”, and so frequently that it’s not even remarkable anymore.
“To make matters worse, free college tuition could potentially drive up costs.” - the university system in Holland has many schools which are essentially free ( around €1900 a year) and it hasn’t caused a financial meltdown overall.
“ Within a couple of years, the recipients of reparations might find themselves back where they started, if not worse off.” - I don’t get shocked often, but the lines leading to this statement read strangely. It’s as though the case was being made that you shouldn’t give poor people money due them because they were too stupid to be prudent. A hard condescension of the first water.
Thanks for your comments. Please allow me to respond.
I don’t doubt that there’s evidence that “minimum wage laws remediate gross income inequality at the lower ranges of income.” When examining a phenomenon as large and complex as the minimum wage, there are bound to be conflicting interpretations. That is the nature of scholarly inquiry. People disagree. But given how long the traditional wisdom on the minimum wage has been in place, the burden of evidence should fall on those who seek to overturn it. A contrary study here or there is not going to do the trick.
You mention “realistic minimum wage laws.” Could you please explain what makes a minimum wage law “realistic”? What is the difference between a realistic and an unrealistic minimum wage law?
As to wages in market economies, you write “except of course for CEO’s and others at the top of the wage scale who often receive compensation startlingly out of proportion to their “productivity”, and so frequently that it’s not even remarkable anymore.”
Yes, I’m sure some people at the top rungs of the income ladder are overpaid. I’m equally sure some other high flyers are worth every penny. But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the people on the lowest rung—i.e., wage earners. They are the ones hurt by minimum wage laws.
You note that “the university system in Holland has many schools which are essentially free (around €1900 a year) and it hasn’t caused a financial meltdown overall.”
Let me ask, how large are universities in The Netherlands? What is the average enrollment? Do they offer degrees in esoteric subjects? What do universities in The Netherlands provide beyond an education? Do they offer fancy dorms? Do they have elaborate student centers? Do they run expensive sports programs? How much do college presidents in the Netherlands earn? How much do professors earn? How much do administrators earn? What is the ratio between administrators and professors? The answer to these and other questions might explain why college education in The Netherlands is much cheaper than that in the United States.
Concerning my comments on reparations, you write that “It’s as though the case was being made that you shouldn’t give poor people money due them because they were too stupid to be prudent.”
I don’t say one should not provide money to poor people. I instead say that the record of poor people receiving sudden financial windfalls is not a good one. Could you please provide evidence to the contrary? By the way, I do not call people stupid just because they are poor or because they are not financially prudent. Being inexperienced with money is not synonymous with being unintelligent.
Well, lots of comments, so I’ll respond to just one; Dutch Schools. Take University of Amsterdam (sounds like the beginning of a Cheech and Chong movie). Around 30,000 students, housing for 3,000 foreign students through the university; some sort of sports program for Olympic-class athletes. Indeed they have esoteric classes such as “Western Esotericism” which can lead to a degree in the subject (!). They also have crushing subjects in Quantum gravity and the like, it’s not a bad school.
I didn’t have time to narrow down salaries but average for a Dean in NL is €130K. I suspect the president would make around €250K. Tuition is sound €1,900 annual.
By contrast my old school Caltech had campus student housing for around 800 undergraduates, no organized sports but plenty of Nobel Prize-winning faculty, notoriously difficult curriculum (“Big Bang Theory” and “Real Genius” are unnervingly accurate). Any esoteric courses could paid for by Caltech and be taken anywhere in greater LA for free (UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, Claremont Colleges, Occidental, ArtCenter and CalArts - there were legendary classes in female pop stars (think Cher) for example.) Tuition and housing runs around $70K annually today. I think I ended up paying around $2000 a year when I went via scholarships, and got out with two degrees and completely exhausted psyche.
I think what point you were trying to make is that universities would become bloated messes with scandalous perks if they had federal funding underwriting most of their costs. I just disagree.
Caltech has enormous federal underwriting and a larger endowment than any other school in the US, and is hideously expensive to boot, but I would hardly call it bloated and perk-laden. University of Amsterdam has almost entirely federal Dutch support, gigantic student population, essentially zero tuition, and also has a distinctive lack of bloat and perks.
There are bad schools that don’t deserve to be called universities or colleges. Those with rigor and focus could be free to students who can complete a serious course of study there. That’s what I saw in Europe.
Nov 6, 2022·edited Nov 6, 2022Liked by Free Black Thought
No, my point is not that universities would become “bloated messes with scandalous perks if they had federal funding underwriting most of their costs.” My point is that “free college tuition could potentially drive up costs.” I go on to write that “Freeing colleges and universities from these fiscal restraints could encourage them to spend even more freely.” If this were to occur, taxpayers would pay for this extra spending, as would those who enroll in college. And for various reasons, black people could be hit harder by this than other groups.
The figures you provide about Dutch higher education help clarify matters. According to one source, the average president in The Netherlands earns about $106,000 a year, and the highest is paid about $160,000.
Let’s contrast this with the United States. Many college presidents earn salaries in excess of a $1 million a year (Some college deans earn more than that). Even college presidents in the United States who are compensated less well still far outpace their Dutch counterparts. Focusing on the salaries of U.S. college presidents, one economist writes that he fails to see a “positive correlation between university excellence, recent financial success, and/or school size on the one hand and pay on the other.”
Sports is another difference between higher education the United States and in The Netherlands. In the United States, college sports teams cost taxpayers lots of money with little in return. For example, few college football programs are money makers. The NCAA reports that of the 65 autonomy schools in Division I—i.e., those allowed to establish their own rules regarding student scholarships, recruitment, and staffing— only 25 had a positive net generated revenue in 2019. There is no equivalent in The Netherlands.
The top five highest paid college football coaches for the 2021 season were Nick Saban of Alabama at $9.1 million, Ed Orgeron of LSU at $8.7 million, Dabo Swinney of Clemson at $8.3 million, Jim Harbaugh of Michigan at $7.8 million, and Dan Mullen, Florida at $7.6 million. In most states, the highest paid employee is a football coach.
The cost of college has been rising at least twice the rate of inflation. This rise continued even when students were attending classes using Zoom.
I take your point: Caltech is likely not bloated. But it is an outlier. It is not representative of most American universities. Caltech’s endowment is over $4 billion, it has no Division I sports teams, and has a total enrollment of approximately 2,300 students. And of these students, around 17 are black.
I end where I began: “free college tuition could potentially drive up costs,” and black people could potentially shoulder a greater relative burden.
With respect to minimum wage. The point about automation is well made.
A typical entry level job is at a fast food restaurant. Robotics to automatically run the its component jobs are available. With progress in AI and robotics, we will soon lose the French fry center, grill center, burger build table, etc. , jobs to smart robotics. Any increase in minimum wages will only accelerate this.
A huge loss from this is that even though these jobs may not be very fun or financially rewarding, even at low pay those who work them build soft skills. It is the lack of requisite soft skills that employers say is the biggest challenge in bringing on new workers. At a minimum, Mc-jobs make entry level workers more employable in better jobs...
This is so good. Loury-esque! Thank you!!
Although I don’t belong in that esteemed category, I greatly appreciate your kind words.
I think we actually agree on the underlying issue - some educational expenses are out of reach for capable people who lack resources - but disagree on a view of the underlying reasons, which actually connect more to grade inflation and “undeserved promotion”.
Today Caltech and and MIT are Institutes. Stanford and Princeton are Universities. Bowdoin is a college, along with Claremont Mcakenna, and the group basically hasn’t changed much over a century. Let’s call them “Old School”.
However, sometime after the 40’s and 50’s, “Normal Schools, Teachers Colleges, provincial Theological Seminaries, Business Schools and Secretarial Institutes” suddenly started becoming universities. (I quote Paul Fussel’s “Class”, more in a moment). Let’s call them “Nouveau School.”
A simple Old School four-year college which might teach accounting, education, logistics, computer programming, nursing, agriculture, or marketing or at a reasonable cost became a Nouveau School University which taught accounting or marketing at an exorbitant cost. And somehow the agricultural school had to have a Nationally recognized Football Team to boot.
[Internet is fascinating - here’s a little known fact:
“Accounting can be a very challenging major and takes four years of serious commitment to complete. With difficult classes, intense curriculums, and very little free time, many international students find that accounting may not be right for them and decide to leave the field.”
https://www.internationalstudent.com/study-accounting/is-accounting-right-for-you/
I suppose physics, anthropology, economics, philosophy, organic chemistry, and architecture are completely out of the question.]
When what was essentially an Old School trade school which taught education in 1930 became a Nouveau School university in the 1980’s where an education degree costs $200,000, well I’d have to say it’s probably not a good idea to make that free.
There are really probably only a handful of Old School elite Institutes, Colleges and Universities in the US after all the name inflation of the 80’s and 90’s. The rest are still just teaching trades, which could be free, as long as they did away with sports and entertainment costs and focused on academics.
As to Black / White - I think the grotesque educational “name inflation” we have is a pretty scandalous fraud perpetrated on all communities which may not be aware of real distinctions in intellectual achievement at these institutions, and which play entirely on issues of class insecurity. I had to explain once to a mystified colleague from Europe why there were four times as many Universities (80) in Tennessee - my home state - than in the Netherlands (20), when The Netherlands has 3x the population - was the state of Tennessee as a whole really a surprise intellectual heir to the ancient Greek “Academeia” in culture and praxis?
I’m not a big fan of the pseudoscientific idea of race; I think it’s much more rigorous, realistic and actionable to look at economic situations for different groups. Those situations are measurable and can be focused on to improve opportunity and achievement.
Having written all this I have no issue with helping all economically disadvantaged groups secure free post-secondary education and better income opportunities through schools with an excellent focus on core disciplines and trades, and in some cases then go on to advanced degrees, also “free.”
The chance of that happening today, where the cultural and class prestige of schools is marketed quite fraudulently to the economically disadvantaged is zero.
[Sorry for the long reply. Interestingly when I was at Caltech I shared the same last name with an African-American student in my student house. Some interesting crossovers in private messages occurred.]
The hopelessly nasty (yet bearing kernels of truth) book “Class” by Paul Fussell, in the chapter “Life of the Mind”, lays bare the systemic frauds of US higher education “perpetrated on the proles”, and the unspoken knowledge of economic elites in the US of what constitutes an acceptable school.
Yes, we do agree: educational costs are skyrocketing beyond the reach of many Americans.
Ominously, costs are continuing to increase.
I also agree that colleges and universities do many students and their parents a great disservice.
While I oppose grade inflation, I don’t see the connection with tuition inflation.
It’s a cycle. To be a powerhouse inflated-appellation “university” with a powerhouse Football team and so on, you have to have powerhouse money. To have powerhouse money you have to have non-selective admissions and high tuition. To maintain the student base, once you have lowered admissions standards you must inflate grades so nobody fails out (heaven forbid) or gets pissed off. Ever escalating cycle.
An ordinary state agricultural school, Texas A&M (Agricultural and Mechanical) went through the classical progression through Normal School, avoided Teacher’s College, became a state College, then suddenly in 1973 became a “University”, as though a Sorbonne or Oxford sprang from the Prairie soil like Athena fully armed from the head of Zeus. (Compare to Middle Tennessee State University which hit 100% of stages from Normal, Teacher’s School, Teacher’s College then suddenly a University with an admirable Concrete Industry Management Program).
After a storied history, Texas A&M Prairie View now claims “[...] fields 18 intercollegiate sports team, commonly known by their "Prairie View A&M Panthers" nickname.” On their Wikipedia page.
San Fran State in-state is $6K, non-state $18K
Texas A&M tuition in-state is $11K, non-state $27K
Ohio State in-state is $12K, non-state is $35K
Smith is $58K
Vanderbilt $58K
I’d say San Francisco State is still a “Normal School” and while high cost compared to Holland, is modest... Texas A&M, Ohio State have equivalent education but double the cost. Football schools. Smith is a college, Vanderbilt a University. Four-year selective. Elite education and elite cost. I’d vote for San Fran state to be free, perhaps Smith... in the middle the tuition seems to be paying for something besides education.
Others make this same argument, but I think that grade inflation has relatively little to do with the rising cost of college. To ensure that the cycle you describe operates consistently and efficiently, each part must play its designated role. If one part fails to perform its function, the cycle stops working. But this first requires each part knows what it is supposed to do. On this score, I strongly doubt any college administration tells the professoriate to consciously keep grades high. No professor has ever told me that he or she was encouraged to inflate grades. Surely someone somewhere would have revealed this by now. This seems like an obvious limitation to the theory.
I can offer more prosaic reasons for grade inflation.
First, it’s easy to simply give a paper an A and be done with it. No one will complain or ask why. But to give a paper a C requires that you read it carefully and give reasons for the lower grade. That’s hard work. Relatively few instructors want to devote that extra time and effort to doing something which provides them little benefit and could entail some blowback. Conversely, permissively handing out high grades can preemptively deter any pressure mounted on instructors by the student or the students’ parents or the athletic department. It’s the path of least resistance.
Second, engaging in grade inflation benefits the instructor. Colleges have long relied on Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) to assess the effectiveness of classroom instruction. Students have an opportunity to rate the teacher. Because a monetary award is sometimes given to instructors who receive high marks on the SET, there is an incentive to give students high grades and a disincentive to award low grades. Instructors who are easy graders routinely get better reviews than those who insist on grading the old-fashioned way. There is little debate about that.
Third, strict grading is out of step these days. Many instructors now see their mission not as challenging students and developing their skills, but as building up their self-esteem and helping them graduate. Nothing advances this latter cause than handing out good grades like candy during Halloween.
Fourth, due to the racial achievement gap and the desire to avoid controversy, instructors are loath to award low grades to students from unrepresented groups. No one wants to be tarred with the label “racially insensitive” or “racially biased,” or “culturally unaware.” As we have seen, gaining such a reputation can be a professional kiss of death.
There are the main reasons for grade inflation. The takeaway point is they operate independent of any concerns about tuition.
I also disagree with your point that “To have powerhouse money you have to have non-selective admissions and high tuition.” I think it’s the opposite. Academic reputations are won and lost based on selectivity. The greater selectivity you practice in admissions, the greater your reputation and academic ranking, which in turn helps boost your revenues.
Admission to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, other elite universities are so sought after largely because they are so selective. What social-climbing parents want to send their kids to a school that practices open admission? Does any upper-class family really want to send their sons and daughters to a school where they will hobnob with the kids of elementary school teachers, farmers, police officers, and secretaries? These very affluent families have invested too much in their scion to have them sit in classes with the masses. They are willing to write big checks because their sons and daughters mingle with future presidents, CEOs, and other privileged youth with very bright futures. To make it even more enticing, they will receive a diploma from a school that reflects well on them as parents.
“Operation Varsity Blues” demonstrated how far some parents are willing to go to get their kids in the “right” school. The University of Southern California was too selective for these kids to get in based on their own merit. These parents could have saved a lot of money, not to mention jail time, by sending their kids to another less selective school where they could have received an equally good education. But education wasn’t what they wanted; it was status.
Finally, you write “To maintain the student base, once you have lowered admissions standards you must inflate grades so nobody fails out.” In fact, some students do fail out. It’s a common occurrence. And if what you say is correct, then why would professors inflate the grades of students who are already doing well academically? Even if strict grading were applied, a drop from an A to an A- or a B+ will not prevent these students from graduating. Grade inflation would apply only to students in danger of failing (i.e., those on the low end of the academic scale).
Check out and share this extremely informative website right away: whataretheylearning.com
In case you're not already aware it isn't just conservatives & right-wingers that hate Critical Race Theory. There are liberals & left-wingers who also hate Critical Race Theory.
Yes, I agree with you.
Why not mandatory accounting/finance in the schools? That could have been done since Sputnik. What would that have done in 60 years.
Don't hear that from the Left or the Right.
I agree. Financial literacy should be part of secondary school education.
Excellent article!
Thank you very much.
One consideration that would add to understanding the labor market and the minimum wage is whether there is significant leakage to this system--namely the undocumented labor force, especially over the last few years. We can assume that labor laws will forestall employers paying an unlawfuly present labor force off the books. Maybe, maybe not. Since an unlawflly present labor force is more compliant and less likely to stick up for labor rights (my research), they will displace the legal workforce or depress wages. This had been part of the analysis in decades past. Is it still relevant?
Another *great* article, M. Creswell! I agree with RW (as well as "Alien.."). TYTY.
Thank you for the compliment.
Well, I disagree with half this article. Evidence is clear that realistic minimum wage laws remediate gross income inequality at the lower ranges of income. Here’s an example paper : http://www.clairemontialoux.com/files/DM2020.pdf
“… Wages in market economies reflect each worker’s productivity.” - except of course for CEO’s and others at the top of the wage scale who often receive compensation startlingly out of proportion to their “productivity”, and so frequently that it’s not even remarkable anymore.
“To make matters worse, free college tuition could potentially drive up costs.” - the university system in Holland has many schools which are essentially free ( around €1900 a year) and it hasn’t caused a financial meltdown overall.
“ Within a couple of years, the recipients of reparations might find themselves back where they started, if not worse off.” - I don’t get shocked often, but the lines leading to this statement read strangely. It’s as though the case was being made that you shouldn’t give poor people money due them because they were too stupid to be prudent. A hard condescension of the first water.
Thanks for your comments. Please allow me to respond.
I don’t doubt that there’s evidence that “minimum wage laws remediate gross income inequality at the lower ranges of income.” When examining a phenomenon as large and complex as the minimum wage, there are bound to be conflicting interpretations. That is the nature of scholarly inquiry. People disagree. But given how long the traditional wisdom on the minimum wage has been in place, the burden of evidence should fall on those who seek to overturn it. A contrary study here or there is not going to do the trick.
You mention “realistic minimum wage laws.” Could you please explain what makes a minimum wage law “realistic”? What is the difference between a realistic and an unrealistic minimum wage law?
As to wages in market economies, you write “except of course for CEO’s and others at the top of the wage scale who often receive compensation startlingly out of proportion to their “productivity”, and so frequently that it’s not even remarkable anymore.”
Yes, I’m sure some people at the top rungs of the income ladder are overpaid. I’m equally sure some other high flyers are worth every penny. But I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about the people on the lowest rung—i.e., wage earners. They are the ones hurt by minimum wage laws.
You note that “the university system in Holland has many schools which are essentially free (around €1900 a year) and it hasn’t caused a financial meltdown overall.”
Let me ask, how large are universities in The Netherlands? What is the average enrollment? Do they offer degrees in esoteric subjects? What do universities in The Netherlands provide beyond an education? Do they offer fancy dorms? Do they have elaborate student centers? Do they run expensive sports programs? How much do college presidents in the Netherlands earn? How much do professors earn? How much do administrators earn? What is the ratio between administrators and professors? The answer to these and other questions might explain why college education in The Netherlands is much cheaper than that in the United States.
Concerning my comments on reparations, you write that “It’s as though the case was being made that you shouldn’t give poor people money due them because they were too stupid to be prudent.”
I don’t say one should not provide money to poor people. I instead say that the record of poor people receiving sudden financial windfalls is not a good one. Could you please provide evidence to the contrary? By the way, I do not call people stupid just because they are poor or because they are not financially prudent. Being inexperienced with money is not synonymous with being unintelligent.
Thank you for reading.
Well, lots of comments, so I’ll respond to just one; Dutch Schools. Take University of Amsterdam (sounds like the beginning of a Cheech and Chong movie). Around 30,000 students, housing for 3,000 foreign students through the university; some sort of sports program for Olympic-class athletes. Indeed they have esoteric classes such as “Western Esotericism” which can lead to a degree in the subject (!). They also have crushing subjects in Quantum gravity and the like, it’s not a bad school.
I didn’t have time to narrow down salaries but average for a Dean in NL is €130K. I suspect the president would make around €250K. Tuition is sound €1,900 annual.
By contrast my old school Caltech had campus student housing for around 800 undergraduates, no organized sports but plenty of Nobel Prize-winning faculty, notoriously difficult curriculum (“Big Bang Theory” and “Real Genius” are unnervingly accurate). Any esoteric courses could paid for by Caltech and be taken anywhere in greater LA for free (UCLA, USC, Pepperdine, Claremont Colleges, Occidental, ArtCenter and CalArts - there were legendary classes in female pop stars (think Cher) for example.) Tuition and housing runs around $70K annually today. I think I ended up paying around $2000 a year when I went via scholarships, and got out with two degrees and completely exhausted psyche.
I think what point you were trying to make is that universities would become bloated messes with scandalous perks if they had federal funding underwriting most of their costs. I just disagree.
Caltech has enormous federal underwriting and a larger endowment than any other school in the US, and is hideously expensive to boot, but I would hardly call it bloated and perk-laden. University of Amsterdam has almost entirely federal Dutch support, gigantic student population, essentially zero tuition, and also has a distinctive lack of bloat and perks.
There are bad schools that don’t deserve to be called universities or colleges. Those with rigor and focus could be free to students who can complete a serious course of study there. That’s what I saw in Europe.
No, my point is not that universities would become “bloated messes with scandalous perks if they had federal funding underwriting most of their costs.” My point is that “free college tuition could potentially drive up costs.” I go on to write that “Freeing colleges and universities from these fiscal restraints could encourage them to spend even more freely.” If this were to occur, taxpayers would pay for this extra spending, as would those who enroll in college. And for various reasons, black people could be hit harder by this than other groups.
The figures you provide about Dutch higher education help clarify matters. According to one source, the average president in The Netherlands earns about $106,000 a year, and the highest is paid about $160,000.
Let’s contrast this with the United States. Many college presidents earn salaries in excess of a $1 million a year (Some college deans earn more than that). Even college presidents in the United States who are compensated less well still far outpace their Dutch counterparts. Focusing on the salaries of U.S. college presidents, one economist writes that he fails to see a “positive correlation between university excellence, recent financial success, and/or school size on the one hand and pay on the other.”
Sports is another difference between higher education the United States and in The Netherlands. In the United States, college sports teams cost taxpayers lots of money with little in return. For example, few college football programs are money makers. The NCAA reports that of the 65 autonomy schools in Division I—i.e., those allowed to establish their own rules regarding student scholarships, recruitment, and staffing— only 25 had a positive net generated revenue in 2019. There is no equivalent in The Netherlands.
The top five highest paid college football coaches for the 2021 season were Nick Saban of Alabama at $9.1 million, Ed Orgeron of LSU at $8.7 million, Dabo Swinney of Clemson at $8.3 million, Jim Harbaugh of Michigan at $7.8 million, and Dan Mullen, Florida at $7.6 million. In most states, the highest paid employee is a football coach.
The cost of college has been rising at least twice the rate of inflation. This rise continued even when students were attending classes using Zoom.
I take your point: Caltech is likely not bloated. But it is an outlier. It is not representative of most American universities. Caltech’s endowment is over $4 billion, it has no Division I sports teams, and has a total enrollment of approximately 2,300 students. And of these students, around 17 are black.
I end where I began: “free college tuition could potentially drive up costs,” and black people could potentially shoulder a greater relative burden.
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