The Future of Education
July 27th 2010 12:42
The Great Recession, from which we’re emerging only slowly, is likely to have long term effects on society that will be a challenge to future governments. While the federal government is wrestling with macroeconomics, individuals are confronted with microeconomic and behavioral economic decisions – in simplest terms, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” The choice of a career is arguably the most important economic decision a person makes in a lifetime. In part it determines emotional well-being through job satisfaction, but it’s also a choice made early in life that may never be undone. Middle class and upper middle class careers require years of job training that are so time consuming and expensive that only a small number of people can afford a mid-life career change, and in most cases that involves a shift to something that offers a shorter training period and lower income in return for greater job satisfaction. Alternately, a mid-life career change may be the result of changes in the economy, and then the shift is almost always a slip downward in both income and satisfaction.
Career choices are traditionally made on the basis of many factors, but one of them has been the distinction between security and success. Some forms of employment have offered a high level of job security, but at the price of limited income. Other occupations offer extremely high incomes, power and prestige, but with the odds against achieving the desired goal. A major league baseball player may make tens of millions a year, but a player stuck in the minor leagues may be stuck at close to the poverty level, and people who have pursued a career in professional baseball and never even gotten a professional contract may wind up employed in unskilled occupations. At a more mundane level students may prepare for careers in the more lucrative professions such as medicine and law, only to find they can’t gain acceptance to a medical school, but have a pre-med degree of limited value, and a pile of student loans, or a law school degree at a time when nobody is hiring. The alternative has been to train for professions offering less income and prestige, but with greater promise of job security notably teaching and nursing. (There’s a qualification to that since right now it’s extremely difficult to get admission to a nursing school because of faculty shortages, so that every year tens of thousands of qualified applicants are being turned away – but the general notion that these occupations offer security at the price of financial success remains applicable.) Teaching particularly offered tenure and excellent benefits, with the understanding that the salary would be relatively low. It was part of an implied contract between the individual and society.
The Great Recession has invalidated the contract. Cities and states, faced with declining tax receipts and the need to balance budgets, have been laying off teachers, police and firefighters. While the need for an adequately staffed police force and fire department may seem more acute, it seems worthwhile to focus on teaching because the training period for this job is the longest, most expensive, and most likely to be personally financed. A police officer may need no more than the equivalent of a junior college degree, while a teacher will commonly be required to have a Master’s degree either in education or a subject field.
At this point, the career choice becomes significant. As careers in education become less secure, tenure harder to achieve, and pressure grows to make the school year longer, the number of people choosing to enter the field is likely to decline. If the educational demands of a job in the classroom, an MEd, are roughly equivalent to those needed for the boardroom, an MBA, it’s hard to justify going into teaching. Beyond that, a few decades ago, teaching was one of the few professions that was considered an appropriate job for a woman. As occupational opportunities for women have expanded, there is no longer the guaranteed talent pool available. Medicine, once exclusively a male profession, with women restricted to ob-gyn and pediatrics, has become roughly evenly balanced by gender. More women are breaking through the corporate glass ceiling or finding jobs in politics. While we’re still far from gender equality, the career choices for women have been greatly expanded.
Breaking the implied contract now means it may never be possible to put it back. Laying off teachers is almost certain to lead to a shortage of qualified teachers in just a few years. Right now, government has the upper hand, and can make demands of teachers and their unions for reduced benefits, lower salaries and less job security, and a lot of people are applauding because it offers the chance to get rid of “bad” teachers, those whose students don’t make sufficient progress in standardized tests. It’s less clear what will happen when the laws of supply and demand take over, when fewer college students select education as their major, and schools have to compete for with investment banking firms to recruit talented college graduates. So far there’s no sign of a plan B.
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