The Apple of Education

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, six years after the first iPod, the world was in awe of such technological genius and innovation. Customers flocked to their nearest Apple store in droves for a product so clearly superior than anything else available. Ironically enough, Microsoft and Blackberry already had smartphones on the market, but it was Apple that was rewarded for (following their iPod success) investing in prestige, raising their prices and aggressive marketing. In “Untapped Potential,” Andrew P. Kelly makes the same claim about schools, which proved “investing in prestige, raising their prices and aggressively recruiting students,” shielded them from theorized market forces that would punish the worst schools and reward the best.

Kelly foregrounds his solutions to higher ed accountability with two historical pillars of the institution: Federally detached regulation and the channeling of funds to students rather than schools. Although I take opposition to the several recommendations Kelly proposes to fix the ineffective government regulatory triad, I’ll focus mainly on the second pillar for sake of a realistic scope.

But first, if I may, my thoughts on his triad fixes. His idea for state-approved accreditors seems like it would present numerous problems, depending on the perversion of the state. Private ISAs that, for a man so dedicated to reducing unintended consequences across the board, opens up a Pandora’s Box of inevitably predatory and dangerous practices. But I must admit, his call to shift from rating default rates to rating loan repayment rates seems sound. It’s unfortunate, then, that Kelly thinks potentially well-performing schools won’t receive full aid until they can show it, while in the interim they’ll be able to raise private funds to compensate for the lacking aid. I have to question Kelly’s perception of reality here, and in general wonder if he’s aware of what many of his proposed policy changes could actually mean. He seems to think all students are treated equal, ignoring factors outside the exclusive attainment of a degree. His policies would lead to decreased funds at schools serving already underprivileged and disadvantaged students, where equal funds wouldn’t be available unless performance is on par with schools serving predominately advantaged individuals.

I digress.

Kelly’s recognition of schools providing aid to students instead of the institution is indicative of what Labaree contends to be the Social Mobility function of education. Putting the money in the individual’s hands allows for a self-serving educational system revolving around the private goods of one’s own self. Kelly includes Goldrick-Rab’s argument for free 13th and 14th grades of education, a philosophy that fits within Labaree’s framework for Democratic Equality—providing a more equal education to all for the sake of the public good. Education as a private or public good come at odds with each other in policy making, and understandably so in a politically polarized nation. Given the opportunity to provide virtually free higher education to all (as detailed by Jordan Weissmann in the Atlantic) at the cost of eliminating financial aid to for-profits and private schools, legislators are reluctant to jump on this train, exposing just how hegemonic a competitive and unequitable education system is.

Kelly attempts to dismantle a free system of higher ed where federal monies stream directly to schools, fearing this won’t provide any incentives for schools to provide quality education and won’t allow for innovation. He argues that in an time that neccessitates “dynamism and diversity” in the classroom, this centralized funding model won’t afford any. What’s striking is his prior understanding of education as an “experience good,” making it tricky to place a value on—yet here, he finds it perfectly acceptable to evaluate free schooling as lacking incentives or room to innovate, while the result would undoubtedly funnel hoards of new students into classrooms, which would, at the very least, enhance the “diversity” of the experience, and most logically the “dynamism.”

It is clear Kelly fears education heading towards a Democratic Equality leaning ideology, and predicates his arguments on biased speculation. At best he is able to make intelligent guesses, but rarely are they founded in firm research. He even says of the federal report cards on colleges that, while it could be good if done right, it’s probably too elaborate for the Department of Education to do correctly and should thus not attempt to—what exactly is he basing this assumption on?

While he acknowledges the errors of an education system that has advantaged schools that have cheated the market investing in themselves, raising their prices and aggressively recruiting students, his proposed policies don’t seem to get at the root of this problem. And perhaps there is a lesson to be learned of the tech giant that thrived from the same principle. While Apple remains popular today, Google is now the leader in mobile phone technology, after they entered the market with an affordable alternative and are now seeking to saddle the vast, vast majority of people with their technology. Bizarrely enough, Google has found treating their products as a public good to be tremendously beneficial to themselves and the world at large.