The academy and asymmetric information.

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  • 06/12/2018

    Paul Romer on the Unrivaled Joy of Scholarship (Ep. 55)

    Great interview with Paul Romer over at Conversations with Tyler. Romer won the Nobel prize for economics this year, and has had a wonderfully varied career (academic; founder of a software company that produces computer assisted learning material (Aplia); and time at the World bank. There are some earlier statements by him about education  on my web page.

    What caught my eye in this interview was:

    “We should always remember that the education business is one of the ones that has the biggest problems with asymmetric information. A young person who pays somebody to educate them is very dependent on the decisions that the educator makes about “Study this, go in this direction.”

    ……

    “I think that the problem in higher ed is that the institutional incentives don’t provide the kind of training that would maximize the opportunities for the students or, for that matter, maximize outcomes for the nation.”

    Indeed:  in many ways, the situation is even worse than in medicine.