Sunday, September 24, 2006
Markets In Education
Here is a nice essay by Stephen Miller on education, where he argues that formal education can provide people with better heuristics (mental shortcuts that reduce the cost of understanding new information), but only if "market feedback" mechanisms are in place to ensure that "inefficient heuristics" are discouraged.
Of course, I don't agree with everything Miller says. For one, I think his argument concerning the unimportance of education's "external" benefits is pretty loose. But, overall, i think the paper presents a well articulated argument for introducing more competition to the educational system.
As an aside, I am still new to the subject of bounded rationality, but if you're interested in the subject, I recommend this textbook. It gets technical in parts, but I don't think it's too demanding. Just checking out the introduction is well worth your time. If anyone else has recomendations for papersor books on the subject of bounded rationality, please share 'em.
Of course, I don't agree with everything Miller says. For one, I think his argument concerning the unimportance of education's "external" benefits is pretty loose. But, overall, i think the paper presents a well articulated argument for introducing more competition to the educational system.
As an aside, I am still new to the subject of bounded rationality, but if you're interested in the subject, I recommend this textbook. It gets technical in parts, but I don't think it's too demanding. Just checking out the introduction is well worth your time. If anyone else has recomendations for papersor books on the subject of bounded rationality, please share 'em.
