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The Future of Higher
Education and Lifelong
Learning
J. Bradford DeLong
U.C. Berkeley
,
NBER
, and WCEG
http://bradford-delong.com
brad.delong@gmail.com
@delong
2017-05-27
.pages:
https://www.icloud.com/pages/03URgLnTOy7BZ-
FIR9S23Dh8w
.html:
http://www.bradford-delong.com/2017/05/the-future-of-
education-and-lifelong-learning-delong-opening-draft.html
1643 words
I. Panel
A. Science Center B
Seth Lloyd, MIT: Moderator
Brad DeLong, U.C. Berkeley
Ivonne Garcia, Kenyon
Noel Michele Holbrook, Harvard
William Sakas, CUNY
Carol Steiker
, Harvard
I
I
.
DeLong Opening (Long)
In the spring of our freshman year, then-young economics
professor Richard Freeman came to Ec 10 to tell us that
going to Harvard would not make us rich.
He was wrong.
Up until 1980 America was winning, and Richard Freeman
expected it to keep on winning, the race between education
and technology: Thus there were ample numbers of people
to take the increasing number of jobs requiring formal
education for fi rst class performance. Thus the amount the
market paid you extra for taking a college requiring rather
than a high school requiring job was modest: 30
%
or so--
not enough to make up for the income you would've
earned, had you taken the tuition you would not have spent
1
and the extra wages you would have made from working,
and put them into some reasonable investment.
But after 1980 America began to lose the race between
education and technology.
The expansion of American higher education slowed
massively. Higher education for native-born males simply
froze in its tracks. As a result, in the world in which we
have worked for the past 35 years employers have been
betting up the relative price of college graduates: Rather
than making 30
%
more than our counterparts who went
straight into the job market after high school did, we have
on average received double.
The freezing and of the relative numbers of native born
American males taking advantage of hire education as
demand, supply, and heterogeneity components.
On the demand-side, states withdrew tuition subsidies.
Public college ceased to be free. Those whose parents were
not rich worried about their student loans: what if they
didn't succeed and fi nish and could not get one of those
high paying jobs? How were they going to pay back their
loans? Americans almost surely over worry about this. But
people are who they are, and not who economic theory
dictates they should rationally be.
2
On the supply side, states stopped building campuses.
Getting the courses you wanted and needed at public
universities became iffy: fi ve or six years rather than four.
And on the heterogeneity side, our colleges are designed
for those who take to print literacy and to Arabic
mathematics like ducks to water--if you do not have that, or
are not trained to have that, learning the way we are taught
to teach becomes much more diffi cult. We economists see
this every semester, as even Ec 10 requires great facility in
reading, in arithmetic, in algebra, and in algebraic
geometry. The extra slice of the population that we would
have been sending to higher education in a better
counterfactual world in which America had not lost the race
between education and technology would have been less
well prepared and less suited to benefi t.
What is the balance between these supply, demand, and
heterogeneity considerations? That, we say, is a research
problem.
How important is all this? I would say that about 1/3 of the
problem is with America that have developed over the past
35 years--1/3 of the ways in which I see America today
falling far short of what I confi dently helped America
would be by now--are due to our losing the race between
education and technology.
3
Let me make one fi nal point: Over the past generation,
Harvard has not helped. We had 1600 in our class. Last
week's graduating class was essentially the same size.
Worldwide, between fi ve and ten times as many people are
well-qualifi ed to join my niece as freshmen this fall. In our
class there were perhaps four times as many people well-
qualifi ed to attend as Harvard admitted. Today there are
between twenty and forty. Yet Presidents Bok, Pusey, and
Rudenstine seemed to have little interest in helping
America and the world in the race between education and
technology. Contrast that with the University of California,
which, under Chancellor and President Clark Kerr and
California Governor Pat Brown, set in motion the plan to
clone itself across the state and increase enrollment tenfold.
If you are thinking about giving money to help America
win this race with education and technology, I would not
recommend Harvard. U.C. Berkeley, Columbia, and MIT
for moving people whose parents' were in the bottom
quintile into the top 1
%
. And for overall bottom fi fth to top
fi fth mobility? CUNY. U.T.-Pan American. TCI. SUNY
Stonybrook. Pace. and Cal State-LA. That is what Yagan,
Turner, Saez, Friedman, and Chetty say
…
<
http://
www.equality-of-opportunity.org/papers/
coll_mrc_paper.pdf
>.
4
I
II
.
DeLong Opening
Up until 1980
,
America was winning the race between
education and technology
. Higher education was expanding
at breakneck speed
. Thus the amount the market paid you
extra was modest: 30
%
—
not enough to make up for the
income you earned
and
the tuition you
did
not have spen
d
if you went straight to work after high school. Going to
college was then about lifestyle and
bildung
rather than
about wealth. Going to college—even Harvard—was not
going to make you rich.
But
since
1980 America
has lost
the race between
education and technology.
The expansion of higher
education largely stopped. And supply and demand and
market equilibrium mean that we four-year college
graduates have earned and still earn not 30
%
more, but
twice our counterparts who went straight into employment
after high school. Going to Harvard—going to college—
has made many of us rich, and has made not going to
college be a much larger negative for our peers than was
imagined a generation ago.
The market taketh away.
The market also giveth.
Blessed be the name of the market economy.
5
On the demand-side, states withdrew tuition subsidies
, and
p
ublic college ceased to be free. Americans
worr
ied
about
taking out student loans, and people on the margin did not
go
.
On the supply side, states stopped building campuses
,
restricting access via formal rationing or rationing-by-
hassle.
O
n the heterogeneity side, our colleges
work if you
take to
print literacy and to Arabic mathematics like ducks
take
to
water.
Not everyone has a brain well tuned to receive the
station we are taught to teach. And fewer have the proper
pre-college prep equivalent of Bose speakers to amplify the
signal received.
How important is all this?
I would say that about 1/3 of the problem
s
with America
that have developed over the past 35 years
—
1/3 of the
ways in which I see America today falling far short of what
I confi dently
hoped
America would be by now
—
are due to
our losing the race between education and technology.
And as we have lost this race, Harvard has not helped, at
least on the educational as opposed to the research side.
Harvard has had
about
1600 in
its graduating class for 45
years now
. Worldwide, between fi ve and ten times as many
6
people are well-qualifi ed to join my niece as freshmen this
fall.
O
ur class
consisted of
perhaps
one fourth of the
people
very
well-qualifi ed to
take advantage of
Harvard. Today
’s
class is between one-
twent
ieth
and
one-fortieth
.
Yet
administratively
there
seemed to
be ver
little interest in
expansion to
help America and the world
win
the race
between education and technology. Contrast that with the
University of California, which
clone
d
itself
tenfold
across
the state
in the past two generations
.
Contrast Harvard with
CUNY
,
U.T.-Pan American
,
TCI
,
SUNY Stonybrook
,
Pace
,
and Cal State-LA. T
hose are
what Yagan, Turner, Saez,
Friedman, and Chetty say
move mountains to boost
education and upward mobility
<
http://www.equality-of-
opportunity.org/papers/coll_mrc_paper.pdf
>
.
Last month I was on a panel at CUNY, where I could with a
very good heart urge those in the audience who were
among the great and good of Manhattan to give to CUNY
—which has been a great university for boosting education
and upward mobility since Harvard and Yale had hard
Jewish quotas.
And let me stop there…
7
I
V
.
Notes…
•
W
hy does the university
as we know it
continue? The
MOOC thing
…
•
G
oal
-
directed
training vs. habits of
learning—
instructional
differences
•
Clark Kerr and
the
free
—that is, the zero cost to students
—
university
…
•
Pusey, Bok, Rudenstine vs. Kerr
…
•
NMH: “
A really great lecture is really great
! I
t
’
s just that
there are not that many of them
…”
•
Students need to do a better job of listening
…
•
How do you train somebody to listen?
•
P
resence, cyberpresence, absence
…
•
“All that is solid melts into air…”—“all established
orders and estates are steamed away…”
Are
we
really
seeing the end of racism
—
or simply a redefi nition
of
who is us?
•
Honors programs
,
free tuition
, and public universities…
•
Andrew Cuomo: One of a long list of politicians eager to
gain credit for mandating that others do good but
expensive things will himself doing nothing to provide
resources to actually get them done…
•
A good university should m
aximize acceptance
and
minimize rejection
letters...
•
Brad DeLong decided to become an Economics rather
than a History professor when he learned that people
applying for Assistant Professors in Economics and
8
Social Studies were 26 and had one half-written paper,
while people applying for Assistant Professors in History
and Social Studies were 40 and had two well-reviewed
books. He is still puzzled to hear himself referred to as
“
the weblogger
”
rather than
“
the Berkeley economic
historian
”…
•
Important things that I have learned
since college
...
•
Important skills I have
acquired since college
...
•
Harry Frankfurt:
On Bullshit—the article, written as a
p
hilosophy of language
paper
9
