Quote:Of course people would still want to get into education, has privatizing college made professors harder to find? 

 

You cite evolution as an example so I'll explore this specific topic more. There's plenty of other theory's and variations of evolution what's wrong with creating a system where parents can choose? For example creationist would seek out creation schools, evolutionist would seek out evolutionary schools, why is that bad, neither of them are settled sciences. Let's say down the road to stay consistent the theory of creationism becomes so discredited the schools that continue to teach it would close because few if any parents are going to support sending their child to an institution teaching discredited curriculum. Just like if a school was teach faulty mathematics or using frustrating techniques like common core parents would chose schools teaching solid fundamentals and using better techniques. You seem to place more trust in government to dictate what should be taught and how it should be taught. I'd argue teacher AND parents would be better off in a system designed to give both parties more power, instead the alternative is state ran schools that are failing at historic levels, the system is broken.

 

Where's the robots coming from? Innovation can mean using technology like tablets or better computers. Imagine publishing industry competing to make the best presented and understandable curriculum for students to use. No one is talking about replacing teachers with robots, that's a straw man argument. 

 

It all comes down to shifting from an enviroment built on state funding which provides no incentive to improve the methods used, to a system that demands improvement.

 

College professors aren't tied to the whims of parents.  They also have tenure, which means they're guaranteed wages.  Nobody will want to be a teacher if their job security is tied to what parents want.  You state that costs would be cut, which means wages would be even lower, because most of a school's funding goes to paying wages of teachers.  Which would drive desire to teach to rock bottom.  

 

What's wrong with creating a system where parents choose?  

Let's look no further than the middle east today to examine it.  My wife is doing her thesis on a similar issue.   In the middle east you have a phenomenon known as Holocaust Denial.  People who say that the holocaust is nothing but a myth.  That's because the education system over there doesn't teach it.  And for obvious reasons.  They don't want jewish people to seem sympathetic.  So they don't teach the holocaust in schools over there, and it's going to stay that way for a long time.  Given school choice, holocaust deniers themselves are going to choose schools that also deny the holocaust.

 

Heck, look no further than the United States.  The Tea party wanted to remove references from the founding fathers being slave owners.  It's not okay to remove these things just because it interferes with your beliefs.  Imagine the majority of schools glossing over things like slavery in order to conform to their beliefs.


Is it okay to leave out the fact that our founding fathers owned slaves?  Is it okay to say the Holocaust never happened?  Ignoring these things will only lead to history repeating itself.


Where are Robots coming from?  How else are you going to drive down costs?  You've got a couple of options:


-Tablets.  Sorry, but this increases costs, and one of the reasons that schools don't have these is because of lack of funding, not lack of innovation.

 

-Better Computers.  Again, this increases costs.  It doesn't decrease it.  


These things cost money.technology can make the costs of educating these customers very cheap

So how does this make it 'very cheap' for anyone?  The fact is schools would love to have better computers.  What they can't do however is afford them.  The only way it could make it cheaper is by having teachers have EVEN MORE students than they have now.  Which is problematic because class sizes are already too large.

 

There's plenty of incentive to improve methods. Do you think schools just say "You know what, we don't need new computers!  These work fine."  No, they don't.  They ask for funding for new computers, and then get denied it.  Which means that costs would be higher for these 'good schools' and lower for the 'for profit schools' that put all their money into marketing as I stated earlier would be the low cost options for those who don't have the money to send their kids to the best schools.  And of course you have enough parents that don't care about their kids education as it is, that will keep those places in business.  And marketing will make them look far better than they are.  Which is exactly how it is for for-profit colleges.


Money is not the only incentive.

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