How hateful rhetoric connects to real-world violence |
- How governments should make use of real-time data from online job portals
- New York’s ideas for zoning reform offer many paths to tackling the housing crisis
- Can President Biden and the Democrats get out of the hole?
- Paying for the malaria vaccine: Will Africa take responsibility?
- Corporatized education and State sovereignty
- Responses to reader questions about my report “Student loan forgiveness is regressive”
- Teaching controversial issues when democracy is under attack
| How governments should make use of real-time data from online job portals Posted: 31 Jan 2022 12:54 PM PST By Stefanie Brodmann, Alicia Marguerie, Cornelius von Lenthe The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant turmoil in labor markets: Unemployment reached all-time highs, the type of skills demanded shifted, and digitalization of tasks accelerated. In crafting policy responses, governments have traditionally relied on time-intensive, backward-looking labor market information. During change, looking back will not cut it. Governments need to support workers to remain competitive and shift toward proactive policies that enhance employment possibilities for unemployed and vulnerable workers. In support of this vision, many public employment agencies are faced with the challenge of developing new approaches, including designing the content and delivery of effective reskilling programs. Here are three reasons why governments should make use of real-time information from online job vacancy portals to support this task. 1. Identify skill shortages, as already done in some dynamic economies. Even before the pandemic, several dynamic economies relied on real-time labor market information from online sources for labor market monitoring. For example, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K., as well as regional governments in the U.S. and Canada, systematically collect, disseminate, and use information from online job postings for workforce planning and development. Real-time labor market information is also used by governments to directly identify and address skills shortages. In Malaysia, online job vacancy data supports the development of a critical occupations list, for example, to develop higher education courses that meet industry demand. It is an input to one of their migration programs, with preference given to returning migrants whose occupations are included on the list. 2. Implement more effective training and matching of jobseekers. Effective training that results in job placements needs to be demand-led. By using labor market data drawn from firm surveys and data on new hiring by employers (when such administrative data is available), governments can quickly refocus training programs on the occupations and skills being demanded by local firms, for example, logistical services such as warehouse workers. Greece recently piloted the design of training programs informed by multiple sources of labor market data. 3. Complement rather than replace existing sources of labor market information. Traditionally, administrative and survey data have been used to track and assess the demand for labor. Employer surveys, for example, provide an outlook on employers' hiring expectations and offer more granularity on occupations. Such data, however, may be costly to collect and oftentimes done on an ad-hoc basis, for example by social partners or the Stepping up Skills Surveys. Labor Force Surveys (LFS), on the other hand, have the advantage of being nationally representative and collected regularly. These surveys can be used to construct and analyze yearly changes in employment levels by sector or industry, but these trends are imprecise and reflect a mix of job creation and job destruction. The Jobs Gateway in South Eastern Europe for example was developed to enable such labor market monitoring. The new kid on the block in terms of labor market data comes from online job vacancy portals. These data capture the content of employers' job postings, either on private or public portals (the latter usually run by the Public Employment Services). The advantages of using such data are that they are readily available, thus providing near real-time information on employer demand and therefore less costly to gather than surveys. They usually contain a detailed list of the technical and soft skills demanded by employers as well as other information related to education and experience requirements. In one example, Burning Glass solutions provides job market data to private companies and educational institutions. In another example, the O*NET database (U.S. Department of Labor), provides a database of occupations (with their characteristics) across the U.S. economy. The partnership between LinkedIn and the World Bank is another example that uses public career information to derive analysis on sectoral and skills trends, as well as talent migration across countries. With the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, the availability of readily available labor market information has become even more relevant. Data on vacancies makes it possible to visualize labor market reactions to the pandemic-related crisis, but it requires having data ahead of the event to be monitored. Collecting and analyzing such data is an upfront investment, as it also requires careful cleaning of the information, but with potentially high returns. One team of researchers has started collecting information on vacancies from online job portals in Kosovo since 2019 and in Albania, North Macedonia, and Serbia since May 2020. Figure 1 shows the example of how the labor market in Kosovo was affected by the economic consequences of the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown up until August 2020. Postings on job portals severely dropped from March to May 2020, up to a 20 percent decrease compared to the same period in 2019. Longer-time series can be used to monitor the impact of the COVID-19 crisis by sectors as well as their recovery. Monitoring industry-specific trends is particularly informative and allows for a thinner analysis. Figure 1. Evolution of online postings on public and private portals in Kosovo, 2019 and 2020
Source: World Bank, "Monitoring Real-Time Labor Market Trends Through Online Job Vacancies, Kosovo." Text analysis of job descriptions is a powerful tool to analyze the demand for skills and identify precisely the needs in sectors, which keep changing structurally, such as the IT industry, and can be used to inform the design of training programs, including active labor market programs (ALMPs) offered by public employment services or training programs offered by private providers (Figure 2). Figure 2. Frequency of skills in demand for human health and social work activities, based on job descriptions on private portals
Source: World Bank, "Monitoring Real-Time Labor Market Trends Through Online Job Vacancies, Kosovo." These examples from the Western Balkans are illustrative of the potential power of real-time data from online job portals. These new initiatives can indeed provide researchers and policymakers with information that can be used to monitor both the impact of crises on the labor market and detect promising paths during the recovery. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| New York’s ideas for zoning reform offer many paths to tackling the housing crisis Posted: 31 Jan 2022 10:46 AM PST By Noah Kazis The stars seem to be aligning for zoning reform in New York. In the last few weeks, two of the state's leading politicians—moderate Governor Kathy Hochul and progressive standard-bearer Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—have both staked out strong positions supporting land use reform. And after decades of legislative inactivity, there are suddenly multiple zoning reform bills in Albany, the state capital. This year could finally see New York grapple with its deeply entrenched and profoundly exclusionary zoning. But how? With five separate proposals on the table, policymakers and advocates must think about the right legislative path (or better yet, paths) forward. It's worth understanding the differences between these strategies. Exclusionary zoning isn't just one problem, but rather an overlapping set of policies and practices that call for an overlapping set of responses. New York has a long history of exclusionary zoningOverly restrictive zoning imposes a slew of distinct harms. It reduces the supply and drives up the cost of housing, hurting not only individual households looking for a place to live, but also the economy as a whole. It gives people fewer choices over where to live and in what kind of home, often particularly affecting older Americans and people with disabilities. It can harm the environment, pushing people from living in climate-friendly apartments or near transit and into longer car commutes and sprawl. And restrictive zoning fuels racial and economic segregation, serving as the mechanism for exclusion and "opportunity hoarding" by wealthy, white communities. New York, specifically, has allowed local governments to use and abuse their zoning powers, leading to problems across each of these dimensions. By some measures, the suburban counties around New York City may have the worst exclusionary zoning in the nation. Between 2010 and 2018, Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, and Putnam counties each granted fewer building permits per capita than any suburban county in the famously "NIMBY" San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California, and fewer than any but one in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Northern Virginia. Demand is high—New York City has been a "superstar city" with a booming economy, at least pre-Covid—but it's illegal to build homes for all the people who want to work there. The results are sky-high housing costs that keep going up and, for many, crippling rent burdens. New York's land use system is badly broken, with the costs disproportionately borne by low-income people and people of color. The New York region has the second-highest level of segregation between Black and white residents in the country, and the third-highest level of segregation between Latino or Hispanic and white residents as well as between Asian American and white residents. Meanwhile, downstate New York has a best-in-nation regional rail system, but transit-oriented development is illegal near most of its train stations. For decades, New York has done almost nothing to rein in these abuses of the zoning power. Whereas states such as California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon, and even Utah have tried (with mixed success) to ensure that zoning does not impede regional growth and equity, New York abandoned any effort to do so in the early 1970s, in the face of suburban opposition to racial integration. The state's highest court has repeatedly urged the legislature to end exclusionary zoning, but over and over again, it declined the invitation—perhaps until now. Albany is awash in proposals for land use reformAfter decades of inaction on exclusionary zoning, all of a sudden, things have changed, with support for zoning reform in both the legislature and the governor's office. Three important zoning reform bills are now under consideration in Albany, each adopting a different strategy for rethinking land use:
In her State of the State agenda, Governor Hochul endorsed a proposal closely resembling the ADU legalization bill described above. She also proposed two additional land use reforms:
Overlapping problems demand overlapping solutionsEach of these proposals, if passed, would be important—and many even could prove transformative. But their effects would not be identical; each takes on different aspects of the state's land use problem. Accessory dwelling units, for example, are a terrific way of "gently" adding supply to the regional housing stock, with unobtrusive second units easily integrated into the existing built environment. And they're favored as a way of allowing extended families to live together and seniors to age in place. But ADUs aren't well suited to providing deeply affordable units; they're often owned by individual homeowners uninterested in participating in a complex subsidy scheme, and as single units, don't allow for cross-subsidization. And ADUs aren't dense enough to constitute transit-oriented development. Transit-oriented development and "anti-snob" zoning proposals would enable new multifamily construction in some of New York's suburbs. But exactly which suburbs, and at exactly which locations, will differ. There are many locations with good transit, exclusionary zoning, and little affordable housing—but there are also low- or moderate-income communities that could still stand to build new housing near their transit stations, as well as exclusionary communities where affordable housing would be valuable even without a train station. And of all the options on the table, only raising the floor area ratio cap is likely to cause any change in Manhattan—a location where zoning is hardly restrictive, but where the environmental (and perhaps economic) impacts of new housing are greatest. The other proposals are more focused on lower-density and suburban parts of the region. Policymakers assessing the relative merits of each strategy must also consider which strategies offer more or less discretion for local governments, which are more easily enforced over time, and which are more politically feasible. Of course, these proposals aren't mutually exclusive— they make each other stronger, and all move in the same direction. Policymakers should embrace a mix-and-match approach to zoning reformNo one reform will solve the myriad problems with New York's land use system. (And, needless to say, land use reform will not alone solve all the problems with New York's housing system.) The best path forward is to move on multiple fronts, using some tools to allow for more density broadly and then targeting additional interventions for particular places (like near transit) and for particular developments (like affordable housing). Understanding the different and complementary roles each potential intervention plays is the key to building a new land use system for New York. But the best bill is the one that passes—which itself is not a simple task. The time is now for advocates and lawmakers to capture this new energy for zoning reform in New York and build a winning coalition in Albany. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Can President Biden and the Democrats get out of the hole? Posted: 31 Jan 2022 10:39 AM PST By William A. Galston IntroductionAs President Biden begins his second year in office and the battle for control of Congress in 2022 heats up, Democrats find themselves in a deep hole. Early in Biden's administration, 55% of Americans approved of his performance; today, his job approval has fallen to 42%. Polls conducted during the past three weeks show Democrats trailing Republicans by an average of 4 percentage points in the aggregate vote for the House of Representatives.[1] This disadvantage in the "generic" House vote is even more significant than it appears. Because Democratic votes are distributed less efficiently among congressional districts than are Republican votes, Democrats need an edge of at least 2.5 percentage points to retain control. In 2016, a Republican advantage of just 1 percentage point translated into a 47-seat House majority. In 2012, a 1-point Democratic popular vote advantage left Republicans with a 33-seat majority. By contrast, it took a massive 8.6 percentage popular vote victory to give Democrats a comparable 36-seat majority in 2018. Contrary to early expectations, the redistricting process after the 2020 Census is likely to leave the House's existing partisan tilt about where it is now. But the parties have pursued different strategies. While Republicans have focused on making their seats safer, Democrats have sought to increase the number of districts where they have a reasonable chance of winning. This strategy will increase Democratic gains when the popular vote balance is favorable to them, but at the cost of increasing their losses when the vote turns against them. In these circumstances, the Republicans' current 4-point edge in the generic House vote would likely produce a massive seat swing in their direction. There is a strong relationship between President Biden's public standing and Democrats' prospects in the forthcoming midterm elections. A recent study found that in this era of polarized and nationalized politics, a president's job approval does more to influence midterms than does any other factor. Another analysis shows that Biden's low job approval in swing states is weakening Democratic candidates for the Senate. Unless Biden can move his approval from the low to the high-40s, Democrats have virtually no chance of retaining their House majority or of continuing to control the Senate. How has President Biden handled key issues?Voters have downgraded their evaluation of the president's performance across the board, but his losses on two key issues that were key to his campaign—dealing with the pandemic and bringing the country together—have been especially steep.
Which voters have changed their minds about President Biden?To understand what it would take for President Biden to improve his public standing, let's examine which voters have moved from approval to disapproval, and why. A recently released report from the Pew Research Center offers some answers. In early 2021, when public approval for President Biden was at its peak, support among Independent voters who said they "lean" toward the Democrats stood at 88%, nearly as high as among voters who identify as Democrats (95%), and differences between strong and not-strong Democrats were insignificant. Since then, the gap between these groups has widened significantly. While the president's ratings among Democrats have declined by 19 percentage points (from 95% to 76%), they have declined by 32 percentage points among "Leaners," and a 22-point gap has opened between those who say they are "strong" and "not strong" Democrats. Data provided by Pew show a strong correlation between these shifts and ideological differences among Democratic support groups. Simply put, strong Democrats, a group dominated by liberals, continue to approve of the president's performance much more than do not-strong Democrats and Democratic leaners, who have strong majorities of moderate and conservative voters. Liberals make up 56% of strong Democrats, compared to just 40% of not-strong Democrats and 36% of Independents who lean toward the Democrats. Other survey data supports Pew's findings. For example, compare two polls conducted by the Economist and YouGov, the first in mid-March of 2021, the second in the third week of January 2022. Among all voters, President Biden's job approval has declined by 15 points. But it has declined by 21 points among Independents and 22 points among moderates. A Gallup survey, which examined the impact of partisanship but not ideology, found that the decline in Biden's personal ratings was driven mainly by shifts among Independents. A key reason for these shifts—moderates and Independents now view President Biden as less moderate and more liberal than they did at the beginning of his administration. When asked to place Biden on the ideological spectrum from very liberal to very conservative, here's what they said:
During this period, moreover, the share of these voters who saw Biden as very liberal rose by 6 percentage points among both moderates and liberals. ConclusionWhile President Biden has suffered reverses across the board, he has lost more ground among voters in the center of the electorate than on the left. If he is to regain support among moderates and Independents, he must work harder to overcome their objections to the way he has positioned himself during his first year in office—including their perception that he has governed farther to the left than they expected when they voted for him in 2020. [1] Source: author's calculation based on polls conducted January 12-26, 2022. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Paying for the malaria vaccine: Will Africa take responsibility? Posted: 31 Jan 2022 08:12 AM PST By Dr. Olusoji Adeyi
Opportunity and dependencyTwelve decades after Ronald Ross won the Nobel Prize for his foundational work on understanding malaria transmission, the World Health Organization recently recommended widespread use of the new RTS,S malaria vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions with moderate to high transmission of P. falciparum, a deadly form of the malaria parasite. RTS,S achieves up to 40 percent reduction in malaria episodes—an important feat in absolute terms because more than 260,000 African children under the age of five die from malaria annually. The landscape of fighting malaria in Africa has four dimensions. First is the human toll in the form of preventable illness, disability, and death—this dimension prompts commitments to action. Second is the political dimension, via multiple statements of commitment to curbing malaria and achieving Universal Health Coverage. Without financing, though, political statements are mere platitudes. Indeed, financing, the third dimension, reflects the continent's enduring dependency on external financiers. For example, a recent estimate showed that, in low-income countries, development assistance for health (DAH) provided about 70 percent of total immunization spending in 2017. In 31 African countries, DAH provided more than 50 percent of total immunization spending that year. The dependency of most malaria-endemic African countries on external financiers belies the political declarations of commitment. The fourth dimension, technology, has two main categories. One is prevention by killing or keeping at bay the vector—the Anopheles mosquito—through indoor residual spraying (IRS) and insecticide-treated nets (ITNs), as well as preventive treatment with medicines. The other is case management through diagnosis and treatment with medicines. The new malaria vaccine strengthens the suite of technologies, all of which remain important.
The easy wrong versus the challenging rightThere are two main options for financing the next phase of malaria control and elimination in Africa. One is continued dependency on external financing, including for the new vaccine—from development banks, foundations, and grant financiers like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (for ITNs and medicines) and Gavi (potentially for the malaria vaccine). Indeed, Gavi, has announced its decision to commit $155.7 million to finance malaria vaccine introduction, procurement, and delivery for Gavi-eligible countries in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022-2025. While such externally-driven mechanisms might have short-term merit in some cases, the strategic reality is that they have enduring pernicious effects on Africa. They unwittingly deepen and prolong the dependency of Africa on solutions designed outside the continent, dampen incentives for Africa to develop its own institutions, shift the loci of accountability from African leaders and capital cities to politicians and unelected influencers outside the continent, and absolve African leaders of their responsibilities. They also leave the continent vulnerable to the vagaries of geopolitics during crises, as evidenced by the extreme inequity of access to COVID-19 vaccines despite abundant supplies in the Global North. For these reasons, the path laid by Gavi, while familiar and easy, is also wrong because of its long-term implications for prolonging Africa's dependency on the Global North. It is time for a strategic rethink. The alternative and prudent path is to approach the vaccine as an opportunity for African countries to finally take financial responsibility for the continent's fight against malaria. Accomplishing such a tall task requires three key steps. First is that African countries lead and own the continent's plan of attack against malaria based on the technical expertise and political legitimacy of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). Second is that financing should primarily come from the domestic budgets of African countries. The burden of malaria in Africa is mostly predictable, and thus amenable to multi-year public expenditure frameworks. African countries would finance those domestic budgets first from their own general revenues, supplemented by prudently managed domestic and international borrowing that is on budget and within their control. Third, African countries would seek time-limited external grant financing to complement domestic budgets. They, not Gavi or any other entity outside the continent, would set the terms of engagement and execution for all malaria programs and technologies in Africa, including the vaccines. External financing would add to, but not substitute for, domestic financing from public budgets. External technical assistance would support African programs without setting or dominating the agenda from outside. That new path, though wise, would be challenging. It would upend the status quo of dependency and cause discomfort within and outside the continent. Yet, the case for this strategic change is compelling. Malaria afflicts most households on the continent. It has none of the stigma associated with sexually transmitted diseases, hence governments have no need to fear that their bold action would offend any religious or social constituency. The mosquito vector that transmits malaria is known and visible to the naked eye, so there is little mystery about what brings the disease to the people. If Africa cannot or will not take financial responsibility for a scourge as old, as pernicious, and as visible as malaria, what does independence really mean? This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Corporatized education and State sovereignty Posted: 31 Jan 2022 07:03 AM PST By David Lundie, Andrej Zwitter, Dipayan Ghosh It should strike most as a worrying trend that many portions of developed economies are increasingly becoming cannibalized by the technology sector; in particular, the concern may be that as many technology firms further pursue aggressive capitalization into new areas of economic potential unlocked by ongoing advancements in the technological base underlying the global economy (e.g., with ever-increasing capacities in data storage, computing, and connectivity), there emerges a corresponding economic imperative to absorb talented individuals into the firm itself and train them with the technical tools the firm believes are necessary for individuals to succeed at the firm and thus society—and necessary for the firm itself to compete in free market circumstances. At issue here is the tension that the corporatization of education, particularly in the digital sector, entails that the burden of responsibility for preparing talent for the technical challenges of work appears to be fundamentally shifting. It is not necessarily enough to achieve high academic performance at university and apply that academic success to secure a coveted position in the technology industry. Instead, it is most critical to know the needs of the firm in question, attempt to telegraph the nature of assessments to affirm good performance therein, and expect to learn the bulk of what is needed to succeed on the job. Even where research and training are 'outsourced' to the university sector, metrics of quality are increasingly judged by graduate employment in high status firms, so that once again, the lines between the corporate research lab and the academic freedom of the civic university begin to blur. Industries possess, of course, an inherent profit motive. The question is whether and how its path to achieving said profits interfaces with public interests. The industry segment comprised of large internet platform companies generates profit through a business model through which it first gathers as much personal data on individuals in the consumer market in question to the end of behaviorally profiling them; develops and employs sophisticated but opaque machine learning algorithms that serve to target ads, curates content and profile data subjects; and pursues aggressive platform growth, often through economically exploitative means so as to keep users engaged to their platforms and no others. These practices have been strongly linked in recent times to the range of negative externalities facilitated by the firms in question: election interference and the disinformation problem, the spread of misinformation and hateful conduct online, the onset of algorithmic bias, systemic incitement to violence. These have all been linked to the digital corporate's invasion of consumer privacy, non-transparent use of personal data, and breach of market competition standards. At least in this explicit sense then, corporate interests and public—and democratic—interests do not perfectly align. The question that then arises is, whether the corporate sector's absorption of education functions is fundamentally good or not. Furthermore, what impact does this misalignment have on the regional and international efforts of standardization of education policies? Education, Technology and State SovereigntyWhen leaders of state and technology met to discuss the future of education in the world economic Forum in Davos, in January 2020, they agreed that the education sector is ripe for an overhaul. The schools of the future would require new models of education fit for the 4th Industrial Revolution. This model would have to rely on the important position of companies in the digital innovation space to fill a gap left behind by public schools and universities. Since its inception in the industrial and democratic revolutions of the 19th century, education has always been one of the foremost prerogatives of state sovereignty. Education determines the interpretation of history, the position of elites, and the intellectual prowess of a state. The only limit to the sovereignty of the state in the field of education is the principle of academic freedom composed of the freedom of inquiry and the freedom to teach or communicate ideas and facts. However, when political ideology aligns with the ideas of academia, they can mutually reinforce each other. At no other time has this been more tangible than during the Soviet-U.S. space race to the moon. In this sense, Big Tech’s increasing involvement in the educational sector can be interpreted as an incursion into the innermost sanctum of a state's sovereignty and the infusion of private sector values into the public space. This is particularly true in education in the field of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) where technology companies represent the cutting edge and arguably know better what skills and expertise might be necessary and useful for their future employees. The differences between universities and the research labs of the private sector begin to blur, with new research ideas that inform the Tech industry coming equally from publicly funded grants to university research labs and the private labs of industry. Shifting education from state to private companies potentially shifts a key area of sovereign autonomy away from states. Education, however, is more than professional training—following democratic reforms in the UK in 1867, the Liberal politician Robert Lowe famously remarked that "we must educate our masters," and social efficiency was the first goal John Dewey identified in his profoundly influential Democracy and Education in 1916. As such, the educational autonomy of the state corresponds in many ways to Thomas Hobbes' concept of what constitutes the sovereign, namely the embodiment of the collective interest of stakeholders. Increasingly, however, this is true also for private companies. While the state is representing its citizen and holds its foremost duties to its citizen, a company represents the interests of its shareholders and is primarily responsible towards them. What happens then, if private companies take on governance functions in the education sector formerly held to be the sovereign prerogative of the state? International, Regional, and National Standardization EffortsTo marshal these competing State and industry imperatives, international organizations increasingly play a role in reifying and standardizing education policies across the world. It is the incursion of technological algorithms, themselves the proprietary secrets of private providers, which represents an oft-neglected corporate intrusion into States' sovereignty over education. From international rankings such as PISA, to large educational conglomerates such as Pearson Educational, which operates qualification systems across nations, including Edexcel in the UK, the English Language Arts testing system in the USA, and Realidades in the Spanish-speaking world, to name a few, such institutions play important gate-keeping roles in selecting which students can go to university and access high status professions. Ostensibly, the recognition by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development of a growing need for 'global competencies' in education recognizes the challenges to civic education posed by these changes. The competency-based approach focuses on knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes including intercultural interactions and sustainable development. The influence of behavioral psychology on this competence approach, however, limits opportunities for divergent thinking. In this way, the new measure is in keeping with the workforce-preparation focus of the existing OECD PISA ranking measures for literacy and numeracy. These trends did not begin with the coronavirus pandemic, but the pandemic certainly has accelerated the influence of corporate actors in the education space further down the curriculum. Different approaches to the sourcing of digital learning platforms for schools across the jurisdictions of the UK are illustrative. While the Scottish government has taken a centralized approach to educational planning for some years, education in England follows a more neoliberal model, with quasi-markets of multi-academy trusts increasingly competing to recruit schools and students. When schools shifted suddenly to online learning during the COVID 19 pandemic in March 2020, schools in Scotland made use of a national learning platform, GLOW, which lent a common character to the new, ostensibly temporary third space, one which was mediated by digital technologies, but in ways consonant with the management of schooling in more normal times. England's response, in contrast, was to task one of the existing multi-academy trusts with the creation of a new digital platform, Oak National Academy, creating a new entity with its own values in design, which further complicated the relationship between schools and their students during the digital learning period. Shortcomings in education are increasingly interpreted as shortcomings in access to technology. Toward a More Constructive Realignment of Public and Corporate ValuesAttention needs to be paid to these misalignments of purpose, which should not become a power struggle between state and corporate interests over the control of educational institutions. In addition to selecting and nurturing talent for their own workforce, the technology sector is interested in the capitalization of new fields of civic life, and the harvesting and influencing of data on patterns of behavior. Additionally, there is a perception management function to technology corporations sponsoring educational initiatives through philanthropy and partnerships. In each of these four areas, there may be a need for attentiveness and democratic oversight. In setting out the reasons for State involvement in public education, however, similar imperatives can be identified, suggesting there may be space for collaborative alignment. While corporations are concerned with workforce training, States also have an interest in attracting corporate investment based on an educated population. The capitalization of education by the technology sector has parallels to the capitalization of public schooling in providing a taxpaying and compliant citizenry in the 19th century—a half century before Lowe's concern with educating new democratic masters, the British had sponsored the schooling of an administrative class of colonial subjects through the East India Company's General Committee on Public Instruction (see David Lundie's forthcoming book, School Leadership: Between Community and the State, London: Palgrave Macmillan). In exercising democratic oversight over education in an age of technological datafication of the human learning process, the educational philosopher Gert Biesta provides a vocabulary of three purposes of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification. On qualification, States may wish to give particular attention to whether the skillsets demanded by technology employers generate significant externalities for the civic sector, either by undermining or manipulating consumer and electoral autonomy, or by threatening the availability of meaningful employment for its citizens. In this regard, States may not be charging the technology sector enough for the public educational goods they are appropriating, or the externalities they impose on the public good. Both the State and the technological sectors also need to attend to the kind of society they are preparing young people for; this cannot merely be a concern with a narrow and prescriptive vision, but a preparation for becoming an autonomous subject, capable of exercising a right to an open future. Subjectification requires a new attentiveness to the meanings of civic identity, digital identity, and learner identity. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Responses to reader questions about my report “Student loan forgiveness is regressive” Posted: 31 Jan 2022 05:55 AM PST By Adam Looney My recent piece, "Student loan forgiveness is regressive whether measured by income, education or wealth: Why only targeted debt relief policies can reduce injustices in student loans," prompted several questions. Here are my answers to some of them. You say that to consider student loans without considering the value of the education, the human capital, is like measuring a home-owning family's wealth by counting only its mortgage and not the value of its house. But a homeowner can sell a house for cash quickly. One can't sell one's college education for cash similarly or pledge it for a loan. Is the comparison meaningful?The objective of measuring wealth is to compare the relative economic wellbeing of different households. Who is better off and who is worse off? True, one way having assets can make you better off is that you get to spend it—pulling cash out of your bank account, or selling stocks or your home. But the reason people own houses isn't only that they can sell them in the future; it's because they get to live in them—and derive a daily stream of value from having a safe place to sleep and enjoy life. Likewise, the reason stocks and bonds have value is that they provide the owner with a stream of income in the form of dividends or interest payments. The same is true of educational investments. People invest in a college, graduate, or professional degree because it helps them earn more, avoid unemployment, and enjoy a higher quality of life. For young Americans aged 25-34, the increase in pay a college graduate earns compared to someone without a degree is at an all-time high (as I discuss more below). Indeed, the value of postsecondary degrees in the labor market is a key reason why Americans line up at good-quality colleges. Harvard collects roughly $1.9 billion each year in tuition, mostly from high-income families. Those parents could have passed along that money to their kids, but instead, they bought something many times more valuable. While you can't sell your degree, that doesn't make it worthless. Social Security recipients can't sell their benefits, nor can beneficiaries of defined-benefit pension plans. But a worker with a $20,000 annual pension or Social Security payment is vastly better off than the apparently "wealthier" worker with $20,000 in a 401k. So when it comes to assessing who benefits from student debt cancelation, the right concept of wealth to use is the lifetime economic resources of the borrower—not just what assets they can to sell but how much income the assets produce over time. And well-educated borrowers earn a lot of income from their degrees. Your calculations rely on the typical or the average borrower, but doesn't it matter what the degree is in? Some degrees have much higher pay off in the job market than others. And, is the return on college education in the form of higher wages so certain?There is a lot of variation in the outcomes of students and student loan borrowers based on where they went to school, their family background, the programs they studied, the jobs they pursue after college, whether they can find work at all, and other factors. I took that into account in my analysis by grouping individuals based not only by race and educational attainment, but also by income: some college students (or high school graduates or professional degree recipients) have lower-than-average-income careers, and some higher. As a result, some individuals are assumed to have gotten very little from their college careers (other than debt), but others gained a lot. (Indeed, the highest income high school graduates earn more than some of the lowest-earning better-educated groups.) But, on average, most individuals with a college or graduate degree earn much more than individuals without a college degree. College graduates are high in the income and wealth distribution, and so are student loan borrowers. Is the fundamental problem that college simply costs too much, and we should bring it down so students don't have to borrow so much?Making college more affordable would help. But an important part of the increase in debt isn't just the cost of college, but the fact that many more lower income students and nontraditional students are attending college without the same resources as "traditional" students. Moreover, this increase in attendance disproportionately occurred at lower-quality colleges that don't provide the same increase in earnings. That means that more students would have borrowed, even absent the increase in tuition, and more would have struggled with repayment even if their balances were lower. And the same is true at graduate programs. Addressing the fundamental problem requires a combination of making college and graduate school cost less, increasing aid for lower-income students, and improving the quality of undergraduate and graduate programs to make sure students and taxpayers get their money's worth. Can't we as a nation afford free college, just as K-12 education is free because of its benefits to society?I prefer to frame this question as "What do we as a nation want to pay for?" rather than "What can we afford?" Even the most progressive policymakers define "free college" as undergraduate tuition and fees at public universities. Because this definition excludes graduate and professional degrees, tuition and fees at nonprofit and for-profit schools, and expenses for room and board and other living expenses, it does not cover the vast majority of the costs of postsecondary education and more than half of all student debt. One reason for the limited scope is that most of the benefits of postsecondary education aren't public benefits to society at large, but private benefits to the student in the form of higher income and quality of life. You are very focused on the well-off who will benefit from loan forgiveness—the doctors and lawyers. But if across-the-board loan forgiveness is the cleanest and most politically possible way to relieve the stress on low- and middle-income borrowers struggling under the weight of their student loans, can you see the merit of this argument?Yes, I'm very focused on well-off Americans disproportionately benefiting from federal policies. Inequality in income and wealth has surged over time (especially across educational lines). Federal tax and spending policies have contributed to this inequity, for example, by cutting taxes on high-income groups. When it comes to student loans, the budget and distributional implications are enormous. Widespread student loan forgiveness would rank among the largest transfer programs in American history. Forgiving all student debt would be a transfer larger than the amounts the nation has spent over the past 20 years on unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, or food stamps. And in contrast to those programs, which serve deeply poor families, beneficiaries of student debt forgiveness would be higher income, better educated, and whiter than beneficiaries of just about all other programs designed to reduce economic hardship and promote economic opportunity. For all other significant spending programs, we enhance their efficacy by targeting the aid to those who need it. There is no doubt the Department of Education could do the same for student loan forgiveness. They know your family income and assets from your aid application, they know whether you borrowed to get an undergraduate degree or for an Ivy League law school, they know whether you struggled with your loan since leaving school, and they know (or could know) how much you earn in the labor market after graduation. It doesn't need to be any harder to target debt relief to those in need than it is to implement widespread forgiveness. Is it true that the really rich don't have student loans because they didn't need to borrow to pay their tuition? Or that financial aid is only for low-income students, so that only low-income students have student loans?There is no income or asset test for federal student loans—any student is eligible. In fact, loans can only be used for tuition, fees, and living expenses that are not covered by grant aid, which means that higher-income students attending more expensive schools get to borrow more. And graduate students can borrow the full cost of attendance. The result of universal loan eligibility and the fact that students from high-income families are more likely to go to college or graduate school means that students from high-income families borrow more in student loans than other groups. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), 91 percent of Black medical school students graduate with student debt, and those borrowers owe a median amount of $230,000. In contrast, 71 percent of white graduates borrow and owe $200,000. Doesn't that mean that forgiving student debt is progressive and closes racial wealth gaps?No, forgiving student debt of doctors is regressive and increases racial wealth gaps. According to the AAMC, white or Asian medical school graduates owe 8 times the total amount of student debt as do Black medical graduates because white and Asian Americans are more than three times as likely as Black Americans to go to medical school. While Black medical students owe more than their white peers, the major source of inequity in medical school debt (like student debt more generally) is who gets to enroll in the first place; according to the Digest of Education Statistics, while 82 percent of new doctors in 2018 were white or Asian, only 6 percent were Black, and 8 percent Hispanic.
While doctors owe huge amounts of student debt (a median of around $200,000 each), that doesn't mean they need a taxpayer-financed bailout. Doctors are the highest paid profession in the U.S. and in every single U.S. state. More than a quarter of all doctors are in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, and more than 50 percent of doctors are in the top 2 percent. In 2017, the average income of physicians was $343,000; even in the lowest paid specialty (primary care), physicians earn $243,400. Over the course of their careers, the average physician will earn $9.6 million. Not only are doctors high income after medical school, but they mostly grew up in higher-income households. As the figure below illustrates, 26 percent of all medical school graduates were born to parents in the top 5 percent of the income distribution and 30 percent were born into parents in the 81st to 95th percentiles. The fact that there are so many rich kids in medical school means that students in the top 5 percent of the income distribution represent 14 percent of all borrowers and 18 percent of all medical school student debt. Doctors who grew up in the top 5 percent of the income distribution and who are virtually assured to remain in the top 5 percent as adults owe 40 percent more student debt than all medical school students who grew up in the bottom 40 percent of the population. Surely there are Americans in deeper financial need and who are more deserving of support from taxpayers.
Today's students aren't getting the same return on their college as previous generations, so isn't it wrong to assume that they'll have the same boost to lifetime earnings as older Americans did?The economic benefit to a college degree has, in fact, never been larger. The figure below shows the median annual earnings of Americans aged 25 to 34 by the highest degree attained from 1961 to 2020 (adjusted for inflation). The annual earnings of well-educated Americans—those with a doctoral or professional degree, a master's degree, or a bachelor's degree—have never been higher. Likewise, the earnings gap between college-educated individuals and those with only a high school diploma has never been larger.
And the prospects for future gains for better-educated young Americans remain strong. The following chart shows the median annual earnings by age for individuals with and without a college degree in the 1990s compared to the 2010s (roughly before and after the increase in student debt). There has been almost no increase in the typical earnings of Americans without a college degree over this time period (at every age, Americans with "No Degree" earn about the same today as they did in the 1990s). But the typical earnings of college-educated Americans have increased substantially at every age, relative to both the 1990s and 2000s. And the typical earnings of better-educated individuals grows quickly each year after they leave school. Looking at the data on the economic outcomes of Americans, the group that needs the help aren't the nation's doctors, lawyers, graduate-degree holders, and better-off college graduates—it's those who haven't completed a degree or never had the chance to go to college in the first place.
The Brookings Institution is financed through the support of a diverse array of foundations, corporations, governments, individuals, as well as an endowment. A list of donors can be found in our annual reports published online here. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions in this report are solely those of its author(s) and are not influenced by any donation. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Teaching controversial issues when democracy is under attack Posted: 31 Jan 2022 04:00 AM PST By Judith L. Pace, Eric Soto-Shed, Elizabeth Yeager Washington A new poll released by the Harvard Kennedy School reports that 52% of young Americans believe our democracy is "in trouble" or "failing." Conflicts over many issues, such as election outcomes, climate change, and police violence against people of color seem intractable. Political divisions have erupted in education as well. Public discourse in school board meetings on critical race theory, transgender students' rights, mask and vaccine mandates, and pandemic-related restrictions has become vitriolic. Attacks on critical race theory have driven bans on teaching about systemic racism, sexism, and other politically charged topics. In this climate, discussion of controversial issues in classrooms seems more fraught than ever, and teachers are understandably fearful to engage. But exploring political questions from multiple perspectives is a cornerstone of democratic education. It cultivates civic reasoning and discourse, which embody the skills, understandings, and habits required of democratic citizens. Furthermore, research shows that discussion of issues in an open classroom climate generates increased political knowledge, interest, and engagement. Classrooms are typically the only space where young people learn to exchange perspectives with peers from diverse backgrounds, identify credible sources, and weigh evidence to inform their thinking. As one of the authors (Pace) writes in her new book intended for use in teacher preparation and professional development, we know a lot about how to successfully explore controversial issues in classroom settings. In fact, a well-developed set of practices has been advocated by and for educators around the world. We are former K-12 teachers who are now teacher educators, and we understand that teachers, especially now, are keen to avoid risks that may accompany frank discussions of volatile issues in the classroom. These risks could include loss of classroom control, recriminations from administrators, and attacks from parents and community members, among others. However, controversy often enters the classroom whether or not we plan for it. How are teachers to effectively address controversy during these intensely polarized times? This research-based tool that Pace developed represents an approach to teaching controversial issues known as "contained risk-taking." It encourages teaching controversy through inquiry and discussion while proactively addressing risks. This framework for reflective practice consists of eight elements: 1) Cultivate a supportive environmentTeachers first get to know their students and create a classroom culture of trust and respect. They spend time learning about their students' identities and ideas, building group cohesion, and promoting collaborative learning. Their classes collectively establish and practice norms such as active listening, respectful dissent, sensitivity toward others, and evaluation of knowledge sources. These classroom practices are always helpful but are especially critical when charged topics are to be addressed. 2) Select authentic issuesTeachers select issues relevant to their subject matter and make judgments about which are open versus settled. Scholars explain that open issues generate critical examination of multiple perspectives underpinned by legitimate sources of knowledge. Teachers frame questions that generate inquiry and discussion on these perspectives. They start the school year with issues that are less contentious and gradually build to politically and emotionally charged issues. Empirically settled issues—for example, the reality of climate change—need to be studied but not framed as debatable questions. 3) Prepare thoroughlyMindful lesson planning is essential. Opening up discussions on controversial issues without preparation on the part of teachers (and students) can lead to the reinforcement of uninformed opinions and potential harm. Teachers broaden and deepen their content knowledge on the issues they address to develop a robust purpose, rationale, and goals for lessons. They create developmentally appropriate curriculum based on knowing their students and school communities well. 4) Choose resources and pedagogiesTeachers select rich resources to stimulate thinking and provide entry points to discussion. They choose pedagogical approaches, such as structured discussion activities, that allow many voices to be heard and that align with the discussion issues and students' identities. If the issue is highly charged and students from specific communities are directly implicated, then we recommend pedagogies aimed at surfacing, understanding, and analyzing different perspectives. If the issue is not highly charged and student identities are not implicated, then we recommend pedagogies such as role play or deliberation – as long as it doesn't set up a "false equivalence" that normalizes what are plainly ill-informed or offensive viewpoints. 5) Think through teacher stance and rolesTeachers reflect on their own positions, the roles they adopt during discussion, and whether, when, and how to disclose their views. The ultimate purpose is for students to critically examine and discuss different perspectives, develop well-informed views, and understand that additional knowledge may prompt them to change their minds. Teachers take up roles to advance that purpose; for example, if students are stuck in groupthink, they may play devil's advocate to introduce a competing perspective. Alternatively, if a student is expressing an important minority perspective, they may take up the role of ally. Scholars have deliberated on the question of teachers disclosing their own views. In the current political climate, disclosure is not advisable unless there is a clear and compelling purpose and potential consequences are considered. 6) Guide discussionTeachers use questioning, discussion formats, and protocols to guide discussions. They facilitate exchanges among students rather than defaulting to teacher-student recitation-style interactions. Structured Academic Controversy (SAC) is a highly effective approach to deliberation. But as we note earlier, if issues are highly charged, implicate student identities, or set up false equivalences, we advise carefully facilitated, exploratory conversations instead of deliberations. 7) Communicate proactivelyTeachers transparently communicate their curricular rationales to parents and administrators in advance. They make clear that the goal is not for students to take a particular stance on an issue, but rather to understand multiple perspectives and form their own views. They let students know the controversial issues they will be studying. If stakeholders understand teachers' thinking behind their curriculum and practice, and lines of communication are open, they are far less likely to feel threatened and criticize them. 8) Addressing emotionsTeachers balance affective and intellectual engagement. They provide a space to process emotions, use de-escalation techniques when needed, and get students to think metacognitively about emotionally entrenched perspectives and social divisions. Teachers anticipate and acknowledge feelings of discomfort that may be part of the learning process, and they are careful not to demonize or alienate students. A real-world example of teaching controversial issuesAn example of the reflective practice framework comes from Pace's cross-national research. In Northern Ireland (NI), a student-teacher she interviewed, Margaret, described her approach to the political controversy over who should quality for government compensation as a victim of violence during the Troubles—a period of violent conflict that rocked the country for decades during the 20th century. Margaret chose this question because it was debated by the two main political parties in the NI government: the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), with roots in the Protestant community and loyalty to Britain; and Sinn Fein, the left-wing party that emerged from the Catholic community and wanted to join the Republic of Ireland. She decided to conduct a deliberation (SAC) after learning it was preferable to debate because it made students take up competing perspectives instead of trying to win a competitive argument. Margaret prepared by researching the controversy within the Northern Irish Assembly and curating a packet of sources, including proposed legislation and excerpts from a question-and-answer session in which politicians argued over how to define a victim. She gave students a class period to examine the sources and prepare arguments for the deliberation, which took place the following session. For homework, she assigned students to find additional sources that expanded or supported their arguments. Although the issue was not as emotionally charged for young people, she understood it was difficult for students at her Catholic school to argue on behalf of the DUP. Margaret listened as students expressed their feelings, and she assured the pupils that, while they didn't have to believe these arguments, it was important to understand them as a source of ongoing division in Northern Ireland. This is just one example of how the contained risk-taking framework can be applied to many different types of issues and topics. It can also be used for situations in which teachers face unexpected controversy in their classrooms. Schools play a crucial role in strengthening democracy through education, and school leadership also has a role in helping to support teachers when addressing these challenging questions. The framework for teaching controversial issues and related resources offer a sorely needed pathway for educators striving to fulfill their democratic mission while coping with the risks of teaching in our politically polarized reality. To learn more about the contained risk-taking framework and the research that underpins it, read Pace's new book, "Hard Questions: Learning to Teach Controversial Issues," or visit: https://teachingcontroversies.com/. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
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