5 ms·

There are 5 M inhabitants in Finland. How much do they spend in their education system? Does it scale to a country of, say, 50 M inhabitants?

RyanMcGreal 17y ago
Why wouldn't it? The per-taxpayer cost ratio would remain the same.
- yellowbkpk 17y ago
  As the bureaucracy got bigger, wouldn't it cost more? More levels of management, more paperwork, more time spent on oversight. I don't think the cost/size relationship in any government is linear.
  - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
    Good point. Still, a system an order of magnitude bigger might be only ten percent more expensive per student.
  - hugh3 17y ago
    But education isn't handled at the Federal level in the US (and to the extent that it is, it damn well shouldn't be).
    - yellowbkpk 17y ago
      It's handled at the state level. According to [0], Finland has roughly 600,000 students in what we might call K-12 and according to [1] almost all of our states each have at least as many students individually and most have more than double. (Not sure what my point was, but it was interesting to find the data :)) [0] http://www.stat.fi/til/opiskt/2007/opiskt_2007_2008-01-25_tie_001_en.html http://www.stat.fi/til/opiskt/2007/opiskt_2007_2008-01-25_ti... (Basic comprehensive school education, compulsory education school) [1] http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-26.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-26.pdf (adding elementary and high school columns together for K-12)
      - pchristensen 17y ago
        Colorado, the 22nd most populous state, has 5M people. Only 9 states have ~10M or more people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_states_by_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_states_by_population
      - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
        Unrelated aside: I enjoyed the zero-based index for your references. :)
LargeWu 17y ago
I don't see how it wouldn't. It's not like if you have 10 times as many students then you'll build a school 10 times as big. You'll instead build 10 times as many schools, all operating more or less independently at roughly the same scale as each other. There might be an additional layer of administration or two, which may cause some inefficiencies in certain areas that may be offset by economies of scale in others.
- anamax 17y ago
  > I don't see how it wouldn't. Let's see if we can think of some reasons. > There might be an additional layer of administration or two, which may cause some inefficiencies in certain areas that may be offset by economies of scale in others. How do we know that the two "may" s cancel each other out. Moving organization-wide decision-making one level further away from the base often has an effect. Let's put Finland's 5 million in context. Ohio is just over 11M and Los Angeles County is just under 10M.
  - LargeWu 17y ago
    You're right that I don't know that the two would cancel each other out. But even if there is some non-zero effect at work, when you spread it out over all taxpayers, any additional costs/savings are probably trivial. The main factor at work here seems to be that education is highly valued in Finnish culture, as opposed to the US, where for a large segment of the population, it is not a priority. You can scale processes, but you can't scale culture.
    - anamax 17y ago
      > But even if there is some non-zero effect at work, when you spread it out over all taxpayers, any additional costs/savings are probably trivial. I seriously doubt that. Large organizations are qualitatively different from small ones.
- sesqu 17y ago
  Actually, Finland has been shutting down small schools in favor of less bigger ones for a while now, for administrative and financial reasons. So I guess you build three schools three times as big, or something.
Glide 17y ago
At the top it says they were behind South Korea in a test score. And South Korea is around 50 million... But South Korea's system is basically studying 24/7. Two very different systems with great results. Then again South Korea's culture values education highly as well.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

Why wouldn't it? The per-taxpayer cost ratio would remain the same.

yellowbkpk 17y ago
As the bureaucracy got bigger, wouldn't it cost more? More levels of management, more paperwork, more time spent on oversight. I don't think the cost/size relationship in any government is linear.
- RyanMcGreal 17y ago
  Good point. Still, a system an order of magnitude bigger might be only ten percent more expensive per student.
- hugh3 17y ago
  But education isn't handled at the Federal level in the US (and to the extent that it is, it damn well shouldn't be).
  - yellowbkpk 17y ago
    It's handled at the state level. According to [0], Finland has roughly 600,000 students in what we might call K-12 and according to [1] almost all of our states each have at least as many students individually and most have more than double. (Not sure what my point was, but it was interesting to find the data :)) [0] http://www.stat.fi/til/opiskt/2007/opiskt_2007_2008-01-25_tie_001_en.html http://www.stat.fi/til/opiskt/2007/opiskt_2007_2008-01-25_ti... (Basic comprehensive school education, compulsory education school) [1] http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-26.pdf http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-26.pdf (adding elementary and high school columns together for K-12)
    - pchristensen 17y ago
      Colorado, the 22nd most populous state, has 5M people. Only 9 states have ~10M or more people. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_states_by_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_states_by_population
    - RyanMcGreal 17y ago
      Unrelated aside: I enjoyed the zero-based index for your references. :)

LargeWu 17y ago

I don't see how it wouldn't. It's not like if you have 10 times as many students then you'll build a school 10 times as big. You'll instead build 10 times as many schools, all operating more or less independently at roughly the same scale as each other. There might be an additional layer of administration or two, which may cause some inefficiencies in certain areas that may be offset by economies of scale in others.

anamax 17y ago
> I don't see how it wouldn't. Let's see if we can think of some reasons. > There might be an additional layer of administration or two, which may cause some inefficiencies in certain areas that may be offset by economies of scale in others. How do we know that the two "may" s cancel each other out. Moving organization-wide decision-making one level further away from the base often has an effect. Let's put Finland's 5 million in context. Ohio is just over 11M and Los Angeles County is just under 10M.
- LargeWu 17y ago
  You're right that I don't know that the two would cancel each other out. But even if there is some non-zero effect at work, when you spread it out over all taxpayers, any additional costs/savings are probably trivial. The main factor at work here seems to be that education is highly valued in Finnish culture, as opposed to the US, where for a large segment of the population, it is not a priority. You can scale processes, but you can't scale culture.
  - anamax 17y ago
    > But even if there is some non-zero effect at work, when you spread it out over all taxpayers, any additional costs/savings are probably trivial. I seriously doubt that. Large organizations are qualitatively different from small ones.
sesqu 17y ago
Actually, Finland has been shutting down small schools in favor of less bigger ones for a while now, for administrative and financial reasons. So I guess you build three schools three times as big, or something.

Glide 17y ago

At the top it says they were behind South Korea in a test score. And South Korea is around 50 million... But South Korea's system is basically studying 24/7. Two very different systems with great results. Then again South Korea's culture values education highly as well.