The Two Nations in Education

How come if the US education system is so poor, asks Robert Samuelson, that the economy is so good? How do you answer the following riddle:

Why do Americans do so badly on international educational comparisons and yet support an advanced economy?

I know. The answer to the riddle is simple: Democrats and Republicans. Democrats are the cause of the lousy school system, and Republicans are the cause of the advanced economy. But let us allow Samuelson to suggest a more nuanced explanation.

The short answer is that the US has two systems for the education of the American people.

In trying to explain the riddle, let me offer a distinction between the U.S. school system and the American learning system.

The school system is the formal system of schools and colleges. What some of us call the “education blob.”

The American learning system is more complex. It's mostly post-high school and, aside from traditional colleges and universities, includes the following: community colleges; for-profit institutes and colleges; adult extension courses; online and computer-based courses; formal and informal job training; self-help books.

Exhibit A in the learning system is the for-profit University of Phoenix founded in 1976.

Now it has about 300,000 students (half taking online courses and half attending classes in 163 U.S. locations). The average starting age: 34.

Samuelson reckons that “the American learning system” is effective for two main reasons. As he puts it:

• First, it provides second chances.
  
• Second, it's job-oriented.
  

What we Americans need to think about is how to transfer the successful features of the American leaning system over to the US school system. Problem is that the US school system costs a ton of money and it doesn’t deliver too much to the bottom line.

(No I don’t mean eevil capitalist profits. I mean outcomes, as in educated, productive people.)

My own view is, first, that there is a lot of value in getting basic literacy and numeracy, but that parents understand that so deeply that we don’t need the government enforcing it.

Second, I think that most teenagers should be out in the job market. And it wouldn’t hurt if they were experiencing some mild-to-moderate exploitation. Because that is what will get them off their duffs and into some job-oriented learning.

Third, I’m inclined to support some sort of government-backed second-chance operation. As bureaucratic and unionized as community colleges have become, they do perform an important function. Probably it’s a function that would be better performed by a private-sector, government-subsidized operation.

As for the current US schools sector. You tell me: What’s the point?