Thread by @biblioracle

I'm happy to see an article that nibbles at the notion that education is a market where people necessarily act rationally, but why not take the whole step and just recognize there will never be a wholly rational (consumer) market for education? nytimes.com/2019/06/03/ups…

Or rather, recognize that the rationale for this market is housed not in economic theory, but sociology and @tressiemcphd's #LowerEd. The programs highlighted in the article are an example of a market that "makes our collective insecurity more profitable."

That schools explicitly or implicitly promising access to "dream" careers like the Academy of Art university can get people to take on gigantic loan debt isn't a problem of irrational markets. It's a consequence of human behavior in all its complicated glory.

I honestly don't know how someone can write this paragraph and not draw the logical conclusion about the limits of viewing people making individual decisions about education as "markets" simply doesn't work.

Spots in veterinary medicine programs are relatively scarce, but lots of people want to become vets so going to an expensive spots like Ross is necessary to fulfill that dream. These people get jobs in the field. There's no oversupply of vets, but some do come out with big debt.

With veterinary medicine, we arguably need to expand supply of state-level public programs. With MFA's there's never been a rational tie between the degree and improved economic prospects. This was true from their inception. These are two different phenomena.

The idea that we're going to economics our way to a more rational education marketplace for graduate school (or undergrad for that matter) is fantasy. We know this. Why are our leading education pundits not admitting what we know to be true?

Here's IHE's coverage of the same data. Notice the mention of USC's school of social work which was championed by the institution as a "cash cow." (Turns out it isn't anymore, or maybe wasn't.) That's the rationale behind these programs. insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/0…

Human beings are little bundles of desire and education is sold as one of the ways to fulfill those desires. Desire makes us do "irrational" things, so maybe we should not try to plan our education systems so much around perfect, rational markets. How do we not know this yet?

My choice to go get an MFA was not based in an economic rationale. I wanted to write. I had no delusions that a degree would improve my employment prospects. I anticipated the opposite, in fact.

I pursued my MFA in a way that would prevent me from going into debt (savings + assistantship + knowing I could move back home post school when I was effectively broke) but the underlying desire would've overrode all that had circumstances been different.

I know plenty of people who have gone to high cost MFA programs knowing they would be saddled with debt for the rest of their lives, but they desired the experience and access to a dream so badly it wouldn't have mattered. Judge all you want, but that's not strictly, "irrational"

I'm an advocate for greater scrutiny on predatory programs promising outcomes they can't deliver, but a lot of these high debt programs don't promise anything other than a couple years of pursuing one's passion. Are we going to stamp out human nature to prevent it?

One of the most prestigious MFA programs in the world (Columbia) stocked with amazing faculty and incredible students will almost certainly saddle graduates with big debt while also being in very expensive NYC. Should they be required to fund all students? If so, bye bye program.

Wrote a blog post trying to enhance the thinking I started with this thread. Those thoughts are still developing, but I think it's clear we need to take some additional angles of attack to better understand these phenomena. insidehighered.com/blogs/just-vis…