Full disclosure: I’m a beneficiary of the public school system, and doing quite well under it. I think being a professor one day would be marvelous, and, God willing, the day may come when I’m thankful for the tenure system. But today I’m going to try to look at it from a colder economic perspective.
The saga of Amy Bishop, for those of y0u who may not have heard about it, is a peculiar tale. Evidently, this Professor Bishop was not selected for tenure, and as a result killed three of her employees.
Now, there is no one to blame except Dr. Bishop for her actions. And the authorities have taken her out of society, as is right. But her case, tragic as it is, allows us to take a look at the economic structures of teaching.
All services are provided on the basis of exchange. In this case, the service being provided is teaching. The student wants to learn, and educators want to make a living by teaching students. And so what happens, as in every other sort of business, is that money is exchanged. The student pays the teacher.
Now, with the exception of private tutors, the student usually does not pay the teacher directly. Institutions known as schools exist which act as a go-between for the students and teachers, collecting money and organizing the entire process of exchange.
In the open market for teaching, quality is assured by the competitive nature of the industry. Students seek out the best teachers, and only want to spend their money paying for the best teaching they can buy. For this reason, teachers who are better at providing the teaching being sought are able to charge more, and teachers not quite as good must charge less. And teachers who are altogether bad must leave the business because their reputation will cause students to quit taking their courses. Even in schools where students do not pay teachers directly this principle must generally hold true, because a school which is unable to provide quality teachers at a competitive price must go out of business.
All is well. And then the government steps in to provide education. Note that this post is not primarily aimed at arguing against government involvement in colleges, but mostly aimed at looking closely at some of the practices in government education and how they affect quality of teaching.
So the government begins providing schools, and now institutions are running more or less independently of the profit motive. Initially, this may seem to be a good thing. Freed from profit motive, teachers are now able to concentrate on teaching well instead of trying to please their payers.
But with the profit motive removed, there suddenly exists a disconnect between teaching quality and profit, because government institutions are not profit-based. Now, all sorts of devices are used to try to produce quality teaching in the absence of direct accountability to consumers for profits. One of these is tenure, which is designed to allow instructors who have a good track record to feel secure in their jobs.
The tenure process is based on a vote by one’s fellow-professors, and basically makes one impossible to fire without a vote by pretty much all of one’s fellow-profs. What this means is that, in many cases, a sort of ensured position can be gained based on one’s past track record and ability to maintain allegiances with fellow professors, rather than on one’s ability to draw paying students.
The tenure system then becomes a Mecca, not only for genuine excellent teachers who want job security (and who doesn’t want job security?), but also for comparatively lazy people who don’t want to be subject to the constraints of the real world.
Amy Bishop was one such person. She was a Harvard student, so it’s a safe bet she was intelligent. But she had an extreme lack of the social skills necessary for a teacher.
Three times her students passed around petitions to get her fired, because her teaching style consisted of reading from the text book and constantly avoiding eye contact. She was also had a nasty sarcasm. Once, in a restaurant, she was enraged to find out that the last booster seat had just been given away to the customer, and then demanded the booster seat, viciously punching her the unsuspecting customer in the head while shouting “I am Doctor Amy Bishop.” In 1986 she shot her brother and forced someone to drive her away at gunpoint.
Nevertheless, the Federal Government considered this woman fit to teach. Now, I could be wrong on this, but I’d be willing to bet that a private institution would have considered a woman like her a financial risk they would be unwilling to take on. After all, if they wanted someone to simply read a textbook, they would hire someone cheaper, like a college student.
I could have taught a class by reading the textbook. I could teach any subject that way, for only a fraction of what a professor would demand. Her services wouldn’t command more than $14.00 per hour at most on the free market. I’d do her work for $10. And I’d throw in eye contact and some explanations from time to time for free.
The only reason she managed to stay a professor that long was because public educators are not subject to the full purifying force of the market.
Say anything you like against the capitalistic free market, but it is socialistic education that kept this psychotic woman in a position to abuse her title in restaurants, subject countless poor chem students to an expensive class that did them no more good than buying a textbook would, and ultimately kill three of her colleagues when she wasn’t granted even greater institutional power.
I think she instinctively knew what she owed to socialistic thinking. Maybe that’s why she was a socialist.
an economic perspective on amy bishop
Full disclosure: I’m a beneficiary of the public school system, and doing quite well under it. I think being a professor one day would be marvelous, and, God willing, the day may come when I’m thankful for the tenure system. But today I’m going to try to look at it from a colder economic perspective.
The saga of Amy Bishop, for those of y0u who may not have heard about it, is a peculiar tale. Evidently, this Professor Bishop was not selected for tenure, and as a result killed three of her employees.
Now, there is no one to blame except Dr. Bishop for her actions. And the authorities have taken her out of society, as is right. But her case, tragic as it is, allows us to take a look at the economic structures of teaching.
All services are provided on the basis of exchange. In this case, the service being provided is teaching. The student wants to learn, and educators want to make a living by teaching students. And so what happens, as in every other sort of business, is that money is exchanged. The student pays the teacher.
Now, with the exception of private tutors, the student usually does not pay the teacher directly. Institutions known as schools exist which act as a go-between for the students and teachers, collecting money and organizing the entire process of exchange.
In the open market for teaching, quality is assured by the competitive nature of the industry. Students seek out the best teachers, and only want to spend their money paying for the best teaching they can buy. For this reason, teachers who are better at providing the teaching being sought are able to charge more, and teachers not quite as good must charge less. And teachers who are altogether bad must leave the business because their reputation will cause students to quit taking their courses. Even in schools where students do not pay teachers directly this principle must generally hold true, because a school which is unable to provide quality teachers at a competitive price must go out of business.
All is well. And then the government steps in to provide education. Note that this post is not primarily aimed at arguing against government involvement in colleges, but mostly aimed at looking closely at some of the practices in government education and how they affect quality of teaching.
So the government begins providing schools, and now institutions are running more or less independently of the profit motive. Initially, this may seem to be a good thing. Freed from profit motive, teachers are now able to concentrate on teaching well instead of trying to please their payers.
But with the profit motive removed, there suddenly exists a disconnect between teaching quality and profit, because government institutions are not profit-based. Now, all sorts of devices are used to try to produce quality teaching in the absence of direct accountability to consumers for profits. One of these is tenure, which is designed to allow instructors who have a good track record to feel secure in their jobs.
The tenure process is based on a vote by one’s fellow-professors, and basically makes one impossible to fire without a vote by pretty much all of one’s fellow-profs. What this means is that, in many cases, a sort of ensured position can be gained based on one’s past track record and ability to maintain allegiances with fellow professors, rather than on one’s ability to draw paying students.
The tenure system then becomes a Mecca, not only for genuine excellent teachers who want job security (and who doesn’t want job security?), but also for comparatively lazy people who don’t want to be subject to the constraints of the real world.
Amy Bishop was one such person. She was a Harvard student, so it’s a safe bet she was intelligent. But she had an extreme lack of the social skills necessary for a teacher.
Three times her students passed around petitions to get her fired, because her teaching style consisted of reading from the text book and constantly avoiding eye contact. She was also had a nasty sarcasm. Once, in a restaurant, she was enraged to find out that the last booster seat had just been given away to the customer, and then demanded the booster seat, viciously punching her the unsuspecting customer in the head while shouting “I am Doctor Amy Bishop.” In 1986 she shot her brother and forced someone to drive her away at gunpoint.
Nevertheless, the Federal Government considered this woman fit to teach. Now, I could be wrong on this, but I’d be willing to bet that a private institution would have considered a woman like her a financial risk they would be unwilling to take on. After all, if they wanted someone to simply read a textbook, they would hire someone cheaper, like a college student.
I could have taught a class by reading the textbook. I could teach any subject that way, for only a fraction of what a professor would demand. Her services wouldn’t command more than $14.00 per hour at most on the free market. I’d do her work for $10. And I’d throw in eye contact and some explanations from time to time for free.
The only reason she managed to stay a professor that long was because public educators are not subject to the full purifying force of the market.
Say anything you like against the capitalistic free market, but it is socialistic education that kept this psychotic woman in a position to abuse her title in restaurants, subject countless poor chem students to an expensive class that did them no more good than buying a textbook would, and ultimately kill three of her colleagues when she wasn’t granted even greater institutional power.
I think she instinctively knew what she owed to socialistic thinking. Maybe that’s why she was a socialist.
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