After the American Century
For
decades, the United States had a Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare, and while these are no longer joined administratively,
politicians all too often seem to think that these three things belong
together. They do not.
Education
is part of the fundamental infrastructure a nation needs for the
economy to work. Nineteenth-century manufacturers understood this, and
supported compulsory education beyond primary school. They did so
because numeracy and literary are essential for an industrial economy.
And when the US Congress created the Homestead Act of 1862, which sold
land very cheaply to settlers willing to take a chance and go West, they
also passed a law that gave some of the proceeds from selling that land
for the purpose of creating universities. Today, some of these
land-grant institutions are among the best in the world. These
nineteenth century politicians understood that to develop the economy,
the citizens had to be educated.
In
both the United States and Denmark recent studies have underlined the
centrality of education and research to a strong economy. A US report
warns that in the last decade the nation has not kept pace with others
in science and technology education. A Danish study shows that people
with higher educations rapidly pay so much in taxes that within just two
years society has gotten back its investment in them - this in a
society where there is no tuition and the state therefore knows with
some precision just how much it costs to educate each student. Even
humanities students, whom politicians often disparage as pursuing
useless knowledge, turn out to repay the cost of their education after
working for just two years, almost as quickly as the scientists and
doctors, who, of course, cost more to train.
Education
is the heart of tomorrow's infrastructure. It has the power to
transform people's lives, to assist people who otherwise might be
helpless to make vital contributions. A blind person with a good
education can work and contribute to society in many ways. I went to
college with a blind man who now is a judge in the United States.
Without an education, he would likely have been a lifelong recipient of
welfare.
Welfare
rescues people in need. Welfare may help a child to greater success
later in life or help a struggling parent who later becomes
self-sufficient again. But welfare is not, on the whole, an activity
that can or should be justified because it is profitable. Education is
another matter. A good educational system will make society more
entrepreneurial, richer, more agile, more adaptable, or in short, more
able to meet the challenges of the future.
Unhappily,
politicians keep forgetting this fact. The response to the world
economic crisis of 2008-2009 in all too many places was to cut back on
education. In 2010 California imposed severe cutbacks on its schools and
universities, which already had had their spending slashed in earlier
years. A state which was once a model for others, with a powerful
educational sector driving economic growth, seems to have lost its way.
In many schools 30% of the staff have been fired, libraries closed, and
class sizes increased by 25 percent or more. At universities, required
courses are not always available, and some students will not graduate on
time because they literally cannot get into a course they need. And
those who do get registered may not get a seat, as the classrooms often
are not large enough to hold the expanded sections.
The
failure to fund education adequately is hurting the Californian economy
both short- and long-term. When people do not graduate on time, they to
not repay the cost of their education as quickly. And when fewer people
get an education at all and more people get a compromised education, the
economy will be hurt for the entire lifetime of that generation. For a
state, this is not just stupid, but self-destructive. In Denmark,
national and local authorities have slashed budgets, closed schools, and
created a high unemployment rate among newly trained teachers. The
actual number of teachers has declined by 8% in primary school, which is
a sign of very real political stupidity. At universities, there is
almost no hiring, and those retired are often not replaced. A generation
is being thrown away, or rather being driven away.
For people with skills are mobile. A survey
found that half of all Danish workers find the idea of taking their
skills elsewhere in Europe attractive. In the United States, people have
always been quick to pull up stakes and try their luck in another part
of the country. In 2008 135,000 more people left California than moved
in, a trend that is accelerating. Often those who leave are among the
most talented, such as a student who gets a scholarship, or the newly
graduated student. The young often vote with their feet. The old
fashioned kind of infrastructure like roads and bridges stays put. But a
world-class scientist can be lured away, and an unemployed PhD will not
usually linger where no one wants her, and a newly trained teacher or
nurse who cannot get a job may go abroad. Thousands od the best trained Greeks and Spaniards are leaving for work elsewhere, and quite possibly they will never come back.
If
education is infrastructure, it is mobile infrastructure. A society
that cuts education will lose not only the skills of (and the higher
taxes that would have been paid by) those it never trained - it will
also lose some of the best new people it has most recently trained. Imagine
that one country invests millions in a new highly mobile bridge, but
then decides not to use it. Instead, another country imports this mobile
bridge without paying anything for it, puts it into use and immediately
begins to profit from the tolls (income taxes), and from the improved efficiency in transport that the bridge provides. Education is that kind of
infrastructure. Denmark and California (and many others) have built and
abandoned the infrastructure of tomorrow.
