Where does the money come from? I presume this (plus some administrative overhead cost) gets tacked onto tuition, I think it probably won’t be popular with students. Also, from the college profs I know, the current level of feedback and student-ratings is ALREADY fairly disruptive to the ability to hold high standards in curriculum, and this would seem to make it a lot worse.
Students are the consumers of the product schools are selling.
This is incorrect. Future employers are the primary consumers of both the credentials and the knowledge/abilities imparted to the students. Taxpayers and students (in rather differing ratio based on type of college) are the main purchasers.
This would be an interesting idea if combined with income-share agreements (where a student gives a % of future income rather than (or in addition to a lower) fixed price for school). Allow the students to allocate some amount of their loan repayment or income-withholding, long after graduation, to teachers or departments they feel were most beneficial to them.
As I mentioned, I envisioned a very small fee—perhaps $5/class. It’s hard to imagine students thinking twice about this. I wanted to aim for around 5% of the income a typical community college teacher might make per class.
Given that this is an additional bonus rather than a threat of disciplinary action, it seems hard for teachers to argue that it would be disruptive. What’s disruptive about getting $150 or so that you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten?
Future employers are the primary consumers of both the credentials and the knowledge/abilities imparted to the students. Taxpayers and students (in rather differing ratio based on type of college) are the main purchasers.
That’s a nifty distinction, but I’d word it differently.
Students are the producers of trained employees. They consume educational services and capital (lab space and equipment, for example) in order to transform themselves into a professional. That transformation is the production of a professional out of the “raw material” of a student. The employer then consumes their professional services.
A close analogy is that a steel refinery (i.e. the student) is a primary consumer of ore (i.e. education), even though the steel itself still needs to be manufactured into a useful product (i.e. workplace productivity). Unless you’d consider people who buy cars the “primary consumers” of iron ore, I don’t think it makes sense to consider businesses the “primary consumers” of educational services.
However, I think the issue you’re getting at is important. For an efficient economy, you’d want producers to have a responsibility to create a product that consumers want to buy. We’d want consumers to have a loud, clear voice in guiding producers to make a useful product. Although we do have decent incentives for students—you can’t get rid of student loan debt by declaring bankruptcy, for example—they still seem to make a lot of bad decisions. We have a habit of bequeathing 18 year olds with a “small loan” of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a lot of the time they pour it into a product that nobody wants to buy.
This would be an interesting idea if combined with income-share agreements
These do exist. My vague memory from hearing about them on a podcast a couple years ago is that they’re a bad choice if you’re able to attract loans to fund your education, for reasons that I don’t understand. It seems like a great idea to me in theory.
In practice, it seems like you have to do a lot of enforcement, and it might be more complicated for the student to figure out as well. There’s a lot of capital sloshing around, so I wouldn’t expect it to be too hard for a strong student who wants to pursue a lucrative career to have much trouble funding their education.
I also like your idea of students being able to allocate money to a department, rather than to a specific teacher.
Where does the money come from? I presume this (plus some administrative overhead cost) gets tacked onto tuition, I think it probably won’t be popular with students. Also, from the college profs I know, the current level of feedback and student-ratings is ALREADY fairly disruptive to the ability to hold high standards in curriculum, and this would seem to make it a lot worse.
This is incorrect. Future employers are the primary consumers of both the credentials and the knowledge/abilities imparted to the students. Taxpayers and students (in rather differing ratio based on type of college) are the main purchasers.
This would be an interesting idea if combined with income-share agreements (where a student gives a % of future income rather than (or in addition to a lower) fixed price for school). Allow the students to allocate some amount of their loan repayment or income-withholding, long after graduation, to teachers or departments they feel were most beneficial to them.
As I mentioned, I envisioned a very small fee—perhaps $5/class. It’s hard to imagine students thinking twice about this. I wanted to aim for around 5% of the income a typical community college teacher might make per class.
Given that this is an additional bonus rather than a threat of disciplinary action, it seems hard for teachers to argue that it would be disruptive. What’s disruptive about getting $150 or so that you otherwise wouldn’t have gotten?
That’s a nifty distinction, but I’d word it differently.
Students are the producers of trained employees. They consume educational services and capital (lab space and equipment, for example) in order to transform themselves into a professional. That transformation is the production of a professional out of the “raw material” of a student. The employer then consumes their professional services.
A close analogy is that a steel refinery (i.e. the student) is a primary consumer of ore (i.e. education), even though the steel itself still needs to be manufactured into a useful product (i.e. workplace productivity). Unless you’d consider people who buy cars the “primary consumers” of iron ore, I don’t think it makes sense to consider businesses the “primary consumers” of educational services.
However, I think the issue you’re getting at is important. For an efficient economy, you’d want producers to have a responsibility to create a product that consumers want to buy. We’d want consumers to have a loud, clear voice in guiding producers to make a useful product. Although we do have decent incentives for students—you can’t get rid of student loan debt by declaring bankruptcy, for example—they still seem to make a lot of bad decisions. We have a habit of bequeathing 18 year olds with a “small loan” of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a lot of the time they pour it into a product that nobody wants to buy.
These do exist. My vague memory from hearing about them on a podcast a couple years ago is that they’re a bad choice if you’re able to attract loans to fund your education, for reasons that I don’t understand. It seems like a great idea to me in theory.
In practice, it seems like you have to do a lot of enforcement, and it might be more complicated for the student to figure out as well. There’s a lot of capital sloshing around, so I wouldn’t expect it to be too hard for a strong student who wants to pursue a lucrative career to have much trouble funding their education.
I also like your idea of students being able to allocate money to a department, rather than to a specific teacher.
Oh, in that case, maybe it’d be simpler if students just started tipping their professors. Solve for the equilibrium.
Simpler, but then a “tip” could appear to be a bribe. This way, students aren’t credibly able to promise a payment in exchange for a grade.