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This is one of the cool things I think about capitalist systems. Whenever there is some kind of vacuum huge amounts of capital always flows to it. If the federa

This is one of the cool things I think about capitalist systems. Whenever there is some kind of vacuum huge amounts of capital always flows to it. If the federal government had some smarter bureaucrats they would use this mechanism as a gauge and focus their energies on the sectors that are being heavily invested, e.g. education, because that means state services are not meeting certain demands. But more often than not they do the exact opposite. Instead of bringing more innovative thinking to state run schools by stealing some of the good ideas from for profit educational institutions they just cling to their old ways and try to strangle the for profits. This is just backwards because the value state run schools provide to their students is always more than any for profit school can provide but with money being cut back and teachers being let go at state schools the students have nowhere else to go but to greedy for profit institutions.

Locke1689 16y ago
I think you're only partially correct here. What we can see through the success of for-profit schools is that people are interested for-profit education. This does not mean that they are interested in education in general--the draw may lie in the promise of higher incomes after graduation. Now, the question is, what do for-profit institutions do better than non-profit institutions? The first is enrollment numbers. For-profit schools enroll many times the number of students that non-profit schools do. The problem with this is assuming that all students are created equal. That is, is educating 500 good students worse than educating 10,000 bad students? Even more concerning, is educating 500 students well worse than educating 10,000 students poorly? If you watch the special you will learn that it is projected that as many as 50% of for-profit students who take student loans will default on those loans. This suggests to me that, regardless of the cause, the for-profit institutions are not educating the students adequately. In this case it seems that this is not a strength of capitalism--the for-profit institutions are not making money by providing a useful service, they are essentially making money by playing snake-oil salesmen. To my eyes, the only other thing that for-profit institutions are better at than non-profit institutions is enrolling low income students. I think this leads back to your claim that capitalism identifies vacuums in the market. I think the vacuum here is one created by marketing--free money. The for-profit institutions work by promising education, which they say lead to higher income jobs. However, we can see from the statistics that there's no direct proof of that. In fact, the crippling student loans may place students in an even worse financial situation. While educating low income students is certainly an area that we could improve upon, I don't see for-profit institutions as having any revolutionary way of solving this problem. In essence, I think we see the situation two different ways. I understand you as seeing it as elucidating the weaknesses in traditional higher education (which I can't completely disagree with), but I also see it as direct exploitation of the undereducated due to weak governmental regulation. For-profit institutions signal a demand for what was promised but I don't see a solution anywhere in sight, including inside the for-profit universities. Right now, it's simply exploitation.
- greenlblue 16y ago
  I did watch the video and a few things I noticed that the for-profit institutions are better at where faster turnaround time on developing new curriculum, better non-standard class schedules and better management of online classes to provide as much flexibility for the students as possible. The state institutions are incredibly bad at all of those things. The online thing is just beyond me. All you need to do is setup a tiny server farm, hire some web developers to setup some course management software and you're ready to go. The curriculum problems I also don't understand but I think it's because there are way too many bureaucratic layers to get any new kind of curriculum change approved so people don't even bother.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    the for-profit institutions are better at where faster turnaround time on developing new curriculum, better non-standard class schedules and better management of online classes to provide as much flexibility for the students as possible. The state institutions are incredibly bad at all of those things. The online thing is just beyond me. All you need to do is setup a tiny server farm, hire some web developers to setup some course management software and you're ready to go. I think an important issue here is that the for-profits have good numbers in these areas, but not necessarily good results. It's important to note that we can't objectively say that these things are better from an education standpoint, only from a monetary standpoint. Perhaps traditional institutions are more inflexible (don't offer online courses, etc.), but maybe that isn't an effective teaching method.
tokenadult 16y ago
If the federal government had some smarter bureaucrats they would use this mechanism as a gauge and focus their energies on the sectors that are being heavily invested, e.g. education, because that means state services are not meeting certain demands. Governments don't tend to do that sort of thing because there are incentives for government officials to distort their priorities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory A focused interest group (for example, operators of government-funded schools) can corrupt even a democratically elected legislature to protect its interests through legislation. And this is exactly what has happened with provision of schooling services in most parts of the world, even in countries that mostly have comparatively free and fair politics and largely free-enterprise economic systems. Education (schooling) is deemed so important that it must have substantial public subsidy (that is a reasonable proposition) and "therefore" it must be in the hands of a protected oligopoly. The flaw in policy is assuming that that which has general value to the public must be provided by a limited set of providers who enjoy exclusive subsidies. "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985)
njharman 16y ago
> gauge and focus their energies on the sectors that are being heavily invested Such as subprime mortgages? The continued belief in the myth of freemarkets and continued worship of obviously broken capitalism is as outstanding to me as the continued belief that Sadam Hussein had WMDs.
- greenlblue 16y ago
  Wow dude. It's great how you connected an economic system with its own merits and demerits with political beliefs, shady wall street practices, weapons, and unjustified war. Have you looked into working for fox news?

Locke1689 16y ago

I think you're only partially correct here. What we can see through the success of for-profit schools is that people are interested for-profit education. This does not mean that they are interested in education in general--the draw may lie in the promise of higher incomes after graduation. Now, the question is, what do for-profit institutions do better than non-profit institutions? The first is enrollment numbers. For-profit schools enroll many times the number of students that non-profit schools do. The problem with this is assuming that all students are created equal. That is, is educating 500 good students worse than educating 10,000 bad students? Even more concerning, is educating 500 students well worse than educating 10,000 students poorly? If you watch the special you will learn that it is projected that as many as 50% of for-profit students who take student loans will default on those loans. This suggests to me that, regardless of the cause, the for-profit institutions are not educating the students adequately. In this case it seems that this is not a strength of capitalism--the for-profit institutions are not making money by providing a useful service, they are essentially making money by playing snake-oil salesmen. To my eyes, the only other thing that for-profit institutions are better at than non-profit institutions is enrolling low income students. I think this leads back to your claim that capitalism identifies vacuums in the market. I think the vacuum here is one created by marketing--free money. The for-profit institutions work by promising education, which they say lead to higher income jobs. However, we can see from the statistics that there's no direct proof of that. In fact, the crippling student loans may place students in an even worse financial situation. While educating low income students is certainly an area that we could improve upon, I don't see for-profit institutions as having any revolutionary way of solving this problem. In essence, I think we see the situation two different ways. I understand you as seeing it as elucidating the weaknesses in traditional higher education (which I can't completely disagree with), but I also see it as direct exploitation of the undereducated due to weak governmental regulation. For-profit institutions signal a demand for what was promised but I don't see a solution anywhere in sight, including inside the for-profit universities. Right now, it's simply exploitation.

greenlblue 16y ago
I did watch the video and a few things I noticed that the for-profit institutions are better at where faster turnaround time on developing new curriculum, better non-standard class schedules and better management of online classes to provide as much flexibility for the students as possible. The state institutions are incredibly bad at all of those things. The online thing is just beyond me. All you need to do is setup a tiny server farm, hire some web developers to setup some course management software and you're ready to go. The curriculum problems I also don't understand but I think it's because there are way too many bureaucratic layers to get any new kind of curriculum change approved so people don't even bother.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  the for-profit institutions are better at where faster turnaround time on developing new curriculum, better non-standard class schedules and better management of online classes to provide as much flexibility for the students as possible. The state institutions are incredibly bad at all of those things. The online thing is just beyond me. All you need to do is setup a tiny server farm, hire some web developers to setup some course management software and you're ready to go. I think an important issue here is that the for-profits have good numbers in these areas, but not necessarily good results. It's important to note that we can't objectively say that these things are better from an education standpoint, only from a monetary standpoint. Perhaps traditional institutions are more inflexible (don't offer online courses, etc.), but maybe that isn't an effective teaching method.

tokenadult 16y ago

If the federal government had some smarter bureaucrats they would use this mechanism as a gauge and focus their energies on the sectors that are being heavily invested, e.g. education, because that means state services are not meeting certain demands. Governments don't tend to do that sort of thing because there are incentives for government officials to distort their priorities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice_theory A focused interest group (for example, operators of government-funded schools) can corrupt even a democratically elected legislature to protect its interests through legislation. And this is exactly what has happened with provision of schooling services in most parts of the world, even in countries that mostly have comparatively free and fair politics and largely free-enterprise economic systems. Education (schooling) is deemed so important that it must have substantial public subsidy (that is a reasonable proposition) and "therefore" it must be in the hands of a protected oligopoly. The flaw in policy is assuming that that which has general value to the public must be provided by a limited set of providers who enjoy exclusive subsidies. "The education system is a formalised, bureaucratic organisational structure and, like any bureaucratic organisational structure, it strives for maximum autonomy from external pressures as its cardinal principle of survival. While ostensibly devoted to the education of children, teachers, school administrators and local education officers must nevertheless regard parents acting on behalf of children as a force to be kept at bay because parental pressures in effect threaten the autonomy of the educational system. . . . I would hold that the stupefying conservatism of the educational system and its utter disdain of non-professional opinion is such that nothing less than a radical shake-up of the financing mechanism will do much to promote parental power." -- Mark Blaug, "Education Vouchers--It All Depends on What You Mean," in Economics of Privatization, J. Le Grand & R. Robinson, ed. (1985)

njharman 16y ago

> gauge and focus their energies on the sectors that are being heavily invested Such as subprime mortgages? The continued belief in the myth of freemarkets and continued worship of obviously broken capitalism is as outstanding to me as the continued belief that Sadam Hussein had WMDs.

greenlblue 16y ago
Wow dude. It's great how you connected an economic system with its own merits and demerits with political beliefs, shady wall street practices, weapons, and unjustified war. Have you looked into working for fox news?