Category: Education

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: Krugman’s response falls into the trap of imagining a past world I sarcastically call the Golden Era of College Accessibility. He is certainly not the only one who has bought into this narrative. Figures all over the left especially have piled on to the idea that there was a… Continue reading Policy Shop: Recalling a False Golden Age of College Accessibility

Freddie has a good post today about the nature of students and education. The main point is that students resist education, and that’s just generally the case. We talk about students as if they are eager to learn or something and that only obstruction or other kinds of impediments stand in their way. It’s a… Continue reading On student fetishism

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: What’s so bizarre about the education focus is that there is a totally dominant strategy for fixing our distributive woes: change our institutions so that the national income is more evenly distributed. This would make dramatic dents in inequality, poverty, and social mobility right now. There is no need… Continue reading Policy Shop: College Isn’t the Answer to Inequality

New post at Policy Shop. Excerpt: The debates about free higher education are fertile ground for the operation of the zero illusion. Mike Konczal, for instance, has long been pushing the idea that free public higher education is a goal worth striving for because a free public option would drive down tuition in other institutions… Continue reading Policy Shop: Free Higher Education and the Zero Illusion

Yglesias blogged about a study that found giving a poor kid a computer has no impact one way or another on their educational outcomes. Yglesias concludes from this null finding: I think this is an important finding because it helps shed some light on the socioeconomic disparities in educational outcomes. We know that kids from… Continue reading Giving a kid a computer is not the same as cash transfers