"The Fiscal Cliff" Really???

[kandrathe]

1) You aren't really spending more on education. It's barely tracked GDP, and that includes a hefty slice of pure inflation.

Why should education spending increase with GDP? Why should it not be measured as per capita spending adjusted for inflation? Better would be per pupil spending at various levels. Like other labor intensive endeavors, it suffers here greatly from the rapidly inflating costs of employee benefits -- and is then exacerbated with unsustainable government sponsored pension plans. If the GDP per capita increases, it would be better for everyone if the costs per capita remained more constant. We can assume that there may be some slight need for more highly educated people, but really the bulk of the $800 billion in costs ($7743 per) are going to the 60 million K-12 and college students. (source) If production is more efficient, does education cost more?

And the demand for education in production, shown in the skill premium, is going up and up. Or, put another way, the penalty for having uneducated people is increasing.

This is true, but it could also be better served by aligning peoples vocational training with their interests and skills. In the US, far too many people feel that a bachelors, and then graduate degree is a requirement. We have skewed our federal funding that way as well, resulting in way too many people failing -- while also wasting their time, and our money whereas if they had other vocational training options, many would be happier and better off.

2) You have had a large migration from much less literate societies, which will continue to drag down literacy rates. If almost 1/20 people is an undocumented migrant, that's going to tank your literacy figures in the first generation, and put increasing pressure on the 2nd. This wasn't true in the 1960s.

True. We need immigration, so it's an expense we should better plan for. It helps defray costs to cluster like language peoples in the same areas.

Regardless, I cannot conceive of a possible world where backsliding in literacy figures would lead to calls for *less* education funding. The programs necessary to boost literacy rates and K-12 education are not mysterious or esoteric. They do not suffer from the problems you describe with higher education management. Just build more damn schools, hire qualified teachers, pay them well, and make sure they're supplied with the necessary materials. I have no doubt there are serious administrative challenges, but in the end, it's not rocket science, at least up until high school.

I'm not calling for less education, just lower costs. We've increased costs per pupil, but not the results as measured by SAT/ACT or other standardized tests. Just like military spending, more doesn't necessarily mean its spent wisely in the nation's interest. More often, it pads the pockets of a special interest.