I was just looking at the David McWilliams website, and noticed that he had an article from January 25th that focuses on early childhood education:
"Wanted: A New Vision for Education"The main point that struck me was the comment "... what is the point in spending vast amounts of money on fourth level if we have whole sections of society that have no hope of getting there?"
In a similar vein, in relation to investing in third level (vis a vis pre-school), Cameron and Heckman (1998) suggest that policies designed to induce college attendance and college graduation may attract individuals that are substantially less able.
The McWilliams comment is something that myself and Liam have actually discussed recently, after I voiced some concerns about focusing on PhD students, when its obvious that they have successfully navigated through under-graduate education and are a very privileged group in society (and the economy). Sure, there's a risk that there won't be a financial pay-off at the end for them, but they're clever individuals and should appreciate that risk. I'd imagine that some of them don't care about the risk because, in theory anyway, these individuals get to pursue their interests for 3-4 years (and should be grateful for that).
The counter-argument (which Liam fleshed out) is that there are very high social consequences if the state doesn't encourage and support the best and most motivated people in the country to move the economy forward to a research-driven platform. If this doesn't happen, then employment prospects throughout the country will be much lower in the future. Spending on fourth level is very expensive, but it will have real and tangible benefits for the entire economy.
There are some who would argue that the government's emphasis should be mostly (or even exclusively) on early childhood education. Otherwise investment in higher education (at the expense of investment in early childhood education) engenders inequality in society, through the provision of state-support for a highly selected sample. This is a very important debate and should be argued amongst as wide an audience as possible. There are some rebuttals that can be made to the counter-argument.
In line with the comment by Cameron and Heckman (1998), some candidates for third level are less academically proficient, and this could very well be due to their lower levels of early childhood support. I suggest that lower levels of investment in household cultural capital and lower levels of accumulated household wealth are potential factors behind lower levels of early childhood support: Household Characteristics of Higher Education Participants (Ryan, 2007).
Given that there are some third-level candidates who are ill-prepared due to relative disadvantage, shouldn't there be a support mechanism for these candidates? Where is the equity in condemning these individuals and focusing on toddlers in pre-school? So it can be argued that any emphasis on the importance of early childhood education should be accompanied by an appreciation that ill-prepared candidates for third level may need educational support upon entry to higher education. Again, see Ryan (2007). Thankfully, Access programmes have been rolled out in Ireland this decade and are currently being evaluated. The role that Access-type programmes have to play is something that I think is missing from the Cameron and Heckman paper (1998).
We can see in the above paragraph how inequity may arise from having an exclusive focus on investment in early childhood education. However, there is still a need to consider how investment in higher education can lead to inequality. Inequality could be reduced if the government made students borrow to cover the costs of their higher education (with caveats that the loans are interest free, that re-payments only begin after annual income reaches a certain level and that monthly re-payments are capped at a small percentage of monthly income).
The funds that are freed up from the implementation of a higher education loan system could be directed toward early childhood education. One has to wonder how any advocate of the "free fees" system could argue against this proposition, while maintaining the intention of reducing inequality in society. The arguments about a culture of debt-aversion are quite misguided as debt-financing is the key to how a lot of people break through cycles of poverty. If people are willing to take out a mortgage on bricks and mortar, why not take out a loan (with amazingly beneficial conditions) to pay for higher education? (A means-tested grants system could still exist to support students with parents on lower incomes).
Getting back to the discussion on investment in fourth level, it is salient to ask: "what makes fourth level different from third level?". Firstly, if students make successful progress through third level, they subsequently compete (on merit) for scholarship funding to finance their research degree. Other students may have large amounts of family resources and simply use this to finance their research degree. Would it be fair to extend a higher education loan system to fourth level? Possibly not, as research (by Colm and others) indicates that the returns to fourth level education are not as high as those to a taught masters.
Yet we know that research (in certain science and technology areas) is essential if we are to have innovation, knowledge economy entrepreneurship, the associated employment opportunities and the spillover that stimulates the multiplier effect in the circular flow. Everyone in the income and wealth distributions is marginally better off if we have virtual full employment. So we have an aggregate interest in making sure that conditions are as optimally beneficial as possible throughout the circular flow of income. That's why spending vast amounts of money on fourth level is important - so that we can make sure there are plenty of employment opportunities, both now and in 20 years time, when today's recipients of early childhood interventions will be grateful that we invested in their future employment prospects.
So to sum up, I've tried to argue that there is no black and white argument (sic) when we come to discuss the relative merits of investing in early childhood interventions or Fourth Level Ireland. Furthermore, I strongly argue that investment in Fourth Level Ireland holds promise for us all, from the recipient of today's early childhood intervention to the fifty something who'll retire in two decades and need a pension for a lot longer than his/her parents ever did. The question remains as to exactly how much money (and where) we should be spending on Fourth Level Ireland, but thats a very difficult question to answer. As I don't want to extend this post any longer, I'll leave that for another day's work... or perhaps we could have a comment or two on it.
The counter-argument (which Liam fleshed out) is that there are very high social consequences if the state doesn't encourage and support the best and most motivated people in the country to move the economy forward to a research-driven platform. If this doesn't happen, then employment prospects throughout the country will be much lower in the future. Spending on fourth level is very expensive, but it will have real and tangible benefits for the entire economy.
There are some who would argue that the government's emphasis should be mostly (or even exclusively) on early childhood education. Otherwise investment in higher education (at the expense of investment in early childhood education) engenders inequality in society, through the provision of state-support for a highly selected sample. This is a very important debate and should be argued amongst as wide an audience as possible. There are some rebuttals that can be made to the counter-argument.
In line with the comment by Cameron and Heckman (1998), some candidates for third level are less academically proficient, and this could very well be due to their lower levels of early childhood support. I suggest that lower levels of investment in household cultural capital and lower levels of accumulated household wealth are potential factors behind lower levels of early childhood support: Household Characteristics of Higher Education Participants (Ryan, 2007).
Given that there are some third-level candidates who are ill-prepared due to relative disadvantage, shouldn't there be a support mechanism for these candidates? Where is the equity in condemning these individuals and focusing on toddlers in pre-school? So it can be argued that any emphasis on the importance of early childhood education should be accompanied by an appreciation that ill-prepared candidates for third level may need educational support upon entry to higher education. Again, see Ryan (2007). Thankfully, Access programmes have been rolled out in Ireland this decade and are currently being evaluated. The role that Access-type programmes have to play is something that I think is missing from the Cameron and Heckman paper (1998).
We can see in the above paragraph how inequity may arise from having an exclusive focus on investment in early childhood education. However, there is still a need to consider how investment in higher education can lead to inequality. Inequality could be reduced if the government made students borrow to cover the costs of their higher education (with caveats that the loans are interest free, that re-payments only begin after annual income reaches a certain level and that monthly re-payments are capped at a small percentage of monthly income).
The funds that are freed up from the implementation of a higher education loan system could be directed toward early childhood education. One has to wonder how any advocate of the "free fees" system could argue against this proposition, while maintaining the intention of reducing inequality in society. The arguments about a culture of debt-aversion are quite misguided as debt-financing is the key to how a lot of people break through cycles of poverty. If people are willing to take out a mortgage on bricks and mortar, why not take out a loan (with amazingly beneficial conditions) to pay for higher education? (A means-tested grants system could still exist to support students with parents on lower incomes).
Getting back to the discussion on investment in fourth level, it is salient to ask: "what makes fourth level different from third level?". Firstly, if students make successful progress through third level, they subsequently compete (on merit) for scholarship funding to finance their research degree. Other students may have large amounts of family resources and simply use this to finance their research degree. Would it be fair to extend a higher education loan system to fourth level? Possibly not, as research (by Colm and others) indicates that the returns to fourth level education are not as high as those to a taught masters.
Yet we know that research (in certain science and technology areas) is essential if we are to have innovation, knowledge economy entrepreneurship, the associated employment opportunities and the spillover that stimulates the multiplier effect in the circular flow. Everyone in the income and wealth distributions is marginally better off if we have virtual full employment. So we have an aggregate interest in making sure that conditions are as optimally beneficial as possible throughout the circular flow of income. That's why spending vast amounts of money on fourth level is important - so that we can make sure there are plenty of employment opportunities, both now and in 20 years time, when today's recipients of early childhood interventions will be grateful that we invested in their future employment prospects.
So to sum up, I've tried to argue that there is no black and white argument (sic) when we come to discuss the relative merits of investing in early childhood interventions or Fourth Level Ireland. Furthermore, I strongly argue that investment in Fourth Level Ireland holds promise for us all, from the recipient of today's early childhood intervention to the fifty something who'll retire in two decades and need a pension for a lot longer than his/her parents ever did. The question remains as to exactly how much money (and where) we should be spending on Fourth Level Ireland, but thats a very difficult question to answer. As I don't want to extend this post any longer, I'll leave that for another day's work... or perhaps we could have a comment or two on it.
2 comments:
interesting. i think income-multipliers etc., would need a lot more working out to include here. At the moment, we are embarking on a policy of huge incentivisation of people to do PhD's and go in to research. this is not being done for equity reasons or to improve the lives of the Phd people (nor would it make sense to do it for this reason). the belief is that by having a big group of phd's in strategic areas, the country will be able to attrach FDI in high-value industries and become a centre for some of these, thus perhaps attracting researchers and product developers from abroad to live and work here. As Martin said, it is hoped by this that we will keep employment throughout the economy moving and wages high. I think we need to look outside human capital investment literatures to evaluate this. What do things like the Multinational Location literature etc., say about such a strategy?
another area that would be worth looking at is technology transfer. will having more PhD's in the economy allow more tech transfer? Phelps gave a talk at the IEA last year attributing Irish Economic growth to the transfer of technology from the US. Perhaps, doubling the number of Phd's will allow Ireland to repeat this process again.
Post a Comment