There are so many problems with the modern education system that even those who honestly want to improve it often make a mistake of noticing one or two problems and thinking that fixing those problems will improve the system. Two commonly mentioned problems are tenure and labor unions. They are problems—but eliminating them will not fix the system. There might be some improvement in some schools, but in other schools the deterioration will be even faster, as school administrators will feel more free to abuse their power. Tenure and labor unions provide some checks—although not effective or efficient checks—on the administration of educational institutions. More changes beyond just fixing the problems with tenure and labor unions are needed.
As I worked for more than twenty years in state universities, I use them as examples. However, the problems are similar in public schools and in so-called private universities, as they are not completely private institutions and belong to the same university system as state universities.
Not all classes at universities are taught by instructors who have tenure. Instructors who have non-tenure-track positions are the most dependent on the heads of departments who can decide whom they hire for these positions, and can at any time decide not to renew their contracts. Introductory finance classes are commonly taught by such instructors at Illinois State University (ISU), where I currently work. If these instructors were doing a good job, most finance students would at least have good basic knowledge of finance. However, that is not the case.
Recently, during two semesters, I tested the basic finance, math, accounting, and economics knowledge of my students during the first class. These students were required to pass the introductory finance class before taking my class. About 40 percent to 50 percent of students could not correctly estimate how much money they have in their bank account today if they deposited $1,000 two years ago in a bank at a 10 percent interest rate. Many people can answer this question correctly without taking any university finance classes.
Moreover, during these tests, only one student correctly solved a basic finance problem normally covered in introductory finance classes—to estimate the net present value for a very simple project. However, most of the students correctly answered the question about economics. I do not know if that was because economics was taught better at ISU or students picked up that knowledge from other sources, but this showed that students were willing to make the effort to answer questions correctly when they knew the answers. I did mention these results after the first testing in one of the faculty meetings, but that did not result in any attempt to improve student learning.
During our last department meeting, the head of the department allowed significant time to discuss some simple uses of artificial intelligence in classes. One untenured instructor shared that she allows students to use ChatGPT during her exams. She thinks that this is okay, as she includes questions asking which specific example was covered in her class that she expects ChatGPT not to know. However, that just means that students who want the perfect score on her exams need to know what is not useful at all for learning (which specific example was covered in the class) and do not need to understand finance topics. The head of the department did not express any concerns about such testing of students, suggesting that such practice is not only acceptable but worth sharing with other faculty. This is one of the reasons why after taking at least one finance class, so many students cannot do even simple calculations in finance.
Overall, the quality of teaching by untenured instructors is not better than that of tenured professors when administration cares about other things than the quality of education. Untenured instructors are under more pressure than tenured professors to comply with administration wishes.
Labor unions are also often pointed out as the reason for poor quality of education. There are many problems with modern labor unions in the United States. (For a discussion of the main problems see Labor Unions and Labor Laws in the United States: The Prussian Model.) However, the modern labor unions can better be described as a consequence of the modern education system than the reason for poor quality of education. The United States adopted the Prussian education system that we use now, including its university system, during the second half of the 19th century. The “experts” educated in this system fundamentally changed U.S. labor laws, including labor union laws, during the first half of the 20th century, moving away from the principle of voluntary relationships between people and leading to many union problems we have these days.
Many universities are not unionized or only recently unionized, but they still do not provide good education—even the top universities do not prepare good teachers for schools. ISU, where I work, got unionized only recently, and the union is still working on signing the first contract with ISU as I am writing this article. However, I wrote a number of articles about problems at ISU that all existed before unionization (for example, “Is American Education a Fraud?”, “How Some Universities Are Destroying Education: Increasing Opportunities for Students to Take Classes in Any Order”, “Incentives for Choosing Faculty in State Universities: How Some State Universities Are Destroying Themselves”, and “Transparency at State Universities”).
The main problem in education is that, since the end of the 19th century, the education industry in the United States became a government-controlled industry. We adopted the Prussian education model. (For a description of the Prussian education system, see: “Why Are American Taxpayers Forced to Subsidize and Support the Prussian Education System?”, “The Inherent Flaws of the Prussian Education System”, and “What Has Happened to Our Great Universities?”) The essential feature of free markets—free competition, without government telling people how to run their businesses and granting favors to some competitors—disappeared from this industry.
Government control of industries distorts incentives. Serving customers is not the primary focus of such industries. It is not even clear who are the customers of government-controlled education institutions: students, their parents, donors, taxpayers, politicians, or bureaucrats? As the goals of such institutions are not clear and they do not face free-market discipline, it is easy for school administrators to focus shortsightedly on serving themselves.
The problems with the education industry are not as well understood by most people as they should be, as this industry controls a lot of information and provides misinformation, making themselves look better than they deserve. (See “Education and Misinformation. Why Do Lies Often Win?” for a discussion of this phenomenon.)
The founders of the United States added the separation of state and religion to our Constitution as some rulers were abusing religion to subjugate people. The creation and rule of Prussia was one good example of such abuse of religion. These days, some rulers (politicians and bureaucrats) in a similar way abuse education to subjugate people, destroying education and science.
The original goal of the Prussian education system, which we adopted about one hundred years after the creation of the United States, was to create obedient servants for the state. The founders could not expect this and take steps to prevent this abuse of education like they did for religion. Thus, we need to add a separation of state and education to our Constitution now if we want to stop the abuse of education. Fixing just one or two problems (e.g., tenure and modern labor unions) in a fundamentally dysfunctional system will not fix the system.
