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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 m

by 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.

by LargeWu 17y ago

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.