I am grateful to Randy Cassingham's blog for pointing me at this article from Rock Mountain News. http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2007/nov/27/carro...ds-cost-what-are-we/

It seems that the USA spends more on education per capita than does any other industrialised nation but, according to a survey carried out by Richard Vedder, a professor of economics at Ohio University, relative to other sectors of the economy, universities are becoming less efficient, less productive, and, consequently, more costly.

It does seem strange that so much more expenditure is producing lesser results and I wonder whether the many of our group who work in the field would agree and, if so, what might be the reason.

But before commenting, please look at the article and if nothing else read the first sentence ante-penultimate paragraph of the first section, which just has to be one of the finest quotes of 2007.

Beijing Jiaotong University publishes a ranking of the top 500 universities in the world. In the top 20 there are two British universities (take a wild guess) and one Japanese (Tokyo). The other 17 spots are occupied by American universities. Of the top 50, 36 are American.

Seems like a pretty good ROI to me.

Number 26 in the world, not too bad for my alma mater.

Mine came in at number 3.

Mine came in at 92 and 11th of the British ones. I was a bit surprised at some of the Universities from the UK that came higher.

On the original topic I believe that the effect of the money spent on education is seriously undermined (in the UK, can't speak for the US) by the Government's education policies.

For some time now the buzzword in FE has been "embedding". I teach English but that's no longer good enough. Now they like it to be taught as part of a vocational package - English for Plumbers, English with ICT, English with Car Maintenance.

I am simultaneously amused, saddened and depressed by a series of Government sponsored advertisements currently running on TV suggesting that parents shouldn't push their children into an academic route when there are vocational routes available.

I'm amused because this smacks of designing a policy without reference to the real world and then trying to persuade an antagonistic public that the policy fits their needs.

I'm saddened because it's another step in the relentless devaluing of academic achievement that has now been in progress for some years. Far from vocational courses being an available route they are fast becoming the only route.

I'm depressed because it doesn't look as if things are going to get better any time soon.

The instructions to colleges and the changes to the funding mechanisms mean that our paymaster is now effectively local industry which calls the shots on what courses we can and can't run because it is our response to its needs that determine the money that comes our way.

Courses that do not have the immediate and direct aim of placing someone in a job at the completion of the course are becoming increasingly difficult to get off the ground.

And my degrees come weigh in at #s 17 & 18.

I don't know this Dr. Vedder (though I do see that his university comes in at #61), but I do know that the Secretary of Education, Dr. Spellman, has been addressing the need for education to improve in dramatic ways. I heard her original report debated, by academics on both sides. The goals the commission cited were:

quote:

Against this backdrop, we have adopted an ambitious set of goals that spell out what our Commission expects from American higher education, which we define as broadly and richly as possible to include all public and private education that is available after high school, from trade schools, online professional-training institutions and technical colleges to community colleges, traditional four-year colleges and universities, and graduate and professional programs.
• We want a world-class higher-education system that creates new knowledge, contributes to economic prosperity and global competitiveness, and empowers citizens;
• We want a system that is accessible to all Americans, throughout their lives;
• We want postsecondary institutions to provide high-quality instruction while improving their efficiency in order to be more affordable to the students, taxpayers, and donors who sustain them;
• We want a higher-education system that gives Americans the workplace skills they need to adapt to a rapidly changing economy;
• We want postsecondary institutions to adapt to a world altered by technology, changing demographics and globalization, in which the higher-education landscape includes new providers and new paradigms, from for-profit universities to distance learning.

Then here are their comments regarding funding, which seem to address Vedder's concerns:

quote:

The Commission notes with concern the seemingly inexorable increase in college costs, which have outpaced inflation for the past two decades and have made affordability an ever-growing worry for students, families, and policymakers. Too many students are either discouraged from attending college by rising costs, or take on worrisome debt burdens in order to do so. While students bear the immediate brunt of tuition increases, affordability is also a crucial policy dilemma for those who are asked to fund higher education, notably federal and state taxpayers. Even as institutional costs go up, state subsidies are decreasing and public concern about affordability may eventually contribute to an erosion of confidence in higher education. In our view, affordability is directly affected by a financing system that provides limited incentives for colleges and universities to take aggressive steps to improve institutional efficiency and productivity.
To improve affordability, we propose a focused program of cost-cutting and productivity improvements in U.S. postsecondary institutions. Higher education institutions should improve institutional cost management through the development of new performance benchmarks, while also lowering per-student educational costs by reducing barriers for transfer students. State and federal policymakers must do their part as well, by supporting the spread of technology that can lower costs, encouraging more high school-based provision of college courses, and working to relieve the regulatory burden on colleges and universities.

After that section they talk about the confusing and duplicative financial aid system. Amen! Filling out those forms is a lot worse than doing one's own taxes.

My point is, the expensive education system in America has been addressed and widely discussed. I believe Dr. Vedder is wrong when he says it hasn't been.

The Times Educational Supplement published a similar list at the end of last year, although I didn't keep my copy of the paper. It is paraphrased here http://college-reviews.suite101.com/article.cfm/best_universities_in_the_world and there are some differences that may be significant. The full article made the point that the endowments to the world's top university, Harvard, exceeded by a comfortable margin the sum total of all the endowments to all of the UK's universities combined. So, although the return might be good, the investment itself is huge.

I see nobody commented on Vedder's statement

I was surprised to see in that Japanese list that the OU was ranked down in the 300s.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Richard English,

quote:

I see nobody commented on Vedder's statement

Can he back this up with data or is he just drawing from personal experience?

quote:

I see nobody commented on Vedder's statement

Did you read my post, Richard? I read the article and commented on it, with:

quote:

My point is, the expensive education system in America has been addressed and widely discussed. I believe Dr. Vedder is wrong when he says it hasn't been.

In fact, much of what Vedder complained about is being discussed, as can be seen if you read Spellman's Commission report that I posted.

I suspect that this is Vedder's opinion, which has obviously been jaded.

Do we have problems with education in the U.S.? Absolutely. But we all know it, and hopefully there will be some improvements made. A very big improvement, as I said above, must be to simplify financial aid to higher education. It's a mess now and creates much anxiety. When I was getting my hair done, my hairdresser was asking me how to fill out the forms (since I am an educator), how to get the most money, etc. It shouldn't be that way. BTW, I note that wasn't one of Vedder's complaints.

My comments addressed this quote: "Why is spending so much on health care considered a national scandal by many commentators but the outsized spending on higher education is not?" This is surely discussed across the nation.

The Spellman Commission report addressed some of Vedder's other claims. Bob's post is helpful in answering Vedder's complaint about lacking performance measures. The worldwide recognition of our universities surely is a performance objective. It is difficult to measure performance objectives in education because of all the variables. Are great writers successful because of their talent or because of the opportunities and ideas presented in school? For some the latter definitely has had a positive influence; for others, they'd have been great anyway. The same goes for great CEOs, great scientists, and, yes, even great politicians. It's not the linear relationship you see with business productivity, and Vedder is short-sighted if he thinks it is.

The comment about teaching being the only profession, outside of prostitution, where there has been "absolutely no productivity advance in the 2,400 years since Socrates taught the youth of Athens" is of course ludicrous. Society has learned a great deal since that time, and our formal education system has been one of the reasons for that, though not the only one, of course. That's the problem with measuring productivity in education; there are so many other variables.

quote:

The comment about teaching being the only profession, outside of prostitution, where there has been "absolutely no productivity advance in the 2,400 years since Socrates taught the youth of Athens" is of course ludicrous.

Vedder was commenting on productivity advance, not on learning levels. I agree it's not always easy to measure productivity in such things as education - but it can be measured and Vedder claims that there has been no increase in productivity, not in standards.

There's been no productivity advance in string quartets, either. I think this is common to most occupations that are based on highly-skilled human labor. Are economists are more productive than they were 50 years ago?

If productivity is a measure of what is produced compared to the effort spent producing it then I'd say there has been a considerable increase. Just ask any teacher about class sizes.

Of course it says nothing about the quality of what is produced, only the quantity.

I suppose what Vedder is claiming is that there has not been a increase in numbers of graduates commensurate with the increase in costs. For example, if costs have increased by 100% in real terms, have there been double the number of graduates?

You will understand that I am not expressing an opinion either way as to the accuracy of Vedder's claim - I leave that to the experts in the field - my main reason for posting the link was that quote in the ante-penultimate paragraph - which I thought was gorgeous - whether or not it was true.

I can only think by "productivity" he meant measureable outcomes. Those are possible in education (as I cited above), but they'd not be what he'd think they are, I am sure of that. He sounds to me like one who is biased toward educators (perhaps he didn't get tenure someplace) and therefore has a personal vendetta against educators. On the other hand, I read papers like his all the time; his take on education is nothing new, and I found his article rather mundane.

quote:

Originally posted by Richard English:
the USA spends more on education per capita than does any other industrialised nation ...
universities are becoming less efficient, less productive, and, consequently, more costly.
...
more expenditure is producing lesser results."

Three points:

1. "the USA spends more on education" You read the article inaccurately. It says, "... spends more on higher education ...," not on "education".

Whatever could be wrong with that? I'm not surprised to find that our a higher percentage of our youth attend university.

2. "USA ... is becoming less efficient, less productive, and, consequently, more costly."
That's no surprise. It's precisely what you'd expect from the law of diminishing returns. (That is: a wise spending of the first dollars is on whatever gives the most "bang for the buck"; hence the productivity of additional dollars, even if significant, will be less.)

3. "so much more expenditure is producing lesser results." If you mean we're becoming less educated, that's not what the article says. It says only that the extra dollars produce less extra education.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: shufitz,

Indeed, I should have made it clear that it was higher education that was being referred to. But I think my other comments were a fair precis.

I guess it makes sense that the country with so many worldwide recognized universities would spend the most on education.

There's also the question of population. The USA has the most universities in the world's top 100 - 31 of them. Britain is next with 13 and then Australia with 12. But if population is taken into account then the order is different. Australia is top with 0.597 per person; then Switzerland with 0.534 and Singapore with 0.452. The UK weighs in at 0.215 (9th in the world) and the USA at 0.105 (13th).

If expenditure is considered, then Australia is still top, with 0.268 per $14.1 billion of GDP, the UK 10th with 0.086 per $14.1 billion of GDP and the USA 15th with 0.037 per $14.1 billion of GDP. (SOURCE FOR ALL THE PRECEDING): The Times, 2005)

Interestingly, if one looks at education spending as a percentage of total government expenditure, none of the "top" countries score well. The USA is 38th with 17.1% and the UK 76th with a mere 11.5%. The Yemen is top with 32.8%, followed by Thailand with 28.3% (SOURCE: United Nations Human Development Programme)

And, of course, you could first rate the top 100 universities by their enrollment size. When I was at university, we were tied with the then-Soviet Union for number of Nobel laureates. (Actually, the latter had one more, but he had been a subject of the Tsar.)

quote:

But if population is taken into account then the order is different. Australia is top with 0.597 per person; then Switzerland with 0.534 and Singapore with 0.452. The UK weighs in at 0.215 (9th in the world) and the USA at 0.105 (13th).

Per person? I think you mean per million.

It depends how you cut up the population, and whether you are comparing small populations to large ones. If you compare the EU (495 million) to the US (301 million), the US has 17 of the top 20 universities and the EU has two. Or you could compare California (37.7 million) to the UK (60.4 million): California has 10 schools in the top 50, the UK has five. Massachusetts (6.4 million) fares particularly well under this scheme.

                             EU         USA     UK      CA      MA

Population (in 100 millions) 4.95       3.01    0.608   0.377   0.064

Schools in top 5             1	        4       1       2       2

# of top five schools        0.20       1.33    1.64    5.31    31.25
per 100 million inhabitants

Schools in top 20            2          17      2       6       2

# of Top 20 schools          0.40       5.65    3.29    15.92   31.25
per 100 million inhabitants

Schools in top 50            9          37      5       10      2

# of Top 50 schools          1.82       12.29   8.22    26.53   31.25
 per 100 million inhabitants

(using the Chinese rankings, which I consider less biased than either the THES or the US News and World Report rankings)

I agree it's not per capita but that is strangely what seems to be what is quoted by Nationmaster. The entry reads:

Education Statistics > Universities > Top 100 (per capita) (most recent) by country
#1 Australia: 0.597 per capita

I agree that this is wrong and Nationmaster have misplaced a decimal point. I did check further and the supporting explanation does make it clear that it is per million. I simply copied and pasted without double-checking.

I don't know as though I would generally trust Chinese statistics against those of The Times; Communist regimes are not noted for their unbiased reporting, whereas The Times has been a highly respected journal whose history goes back to 1785. I accept that the Beijing report seems to be very comprehensive but I don't know as though that proves that it is unbiased. I can't comment on the US News and World Report rankings as I've not seen them.

And, as with any statistics, it is possible to use them to prove just about anything. The EU (according to the Chinese ranking) has a mere two universities in its 495 million population. How much better is England, which has two of the top-ranking universities has a population of only just over 50 million!

Obviously this is a nonsensical comparison - but it shows just how easy it is to manipulate statistics by careful selection and manipulation of data.

quote:

I don't know as though I would generally trust Chinese statistics against those of The Times

I should have been more clear. I would expect the Times to be biased in favor of the UK, and US News to be biased in favor of the US, and the Chinese to be biased in favor of China, displaying no particular bias for or against either the US or the UK.

I think that is a valid point - but I would remark that The Times has been held in high esteem for the fairness of its reporting and its surveys for many years.