Listened to another great podcast from EconTalk at the gym tonight. Russ Roberts interviewed Tyler Cowen about Tyler’s new book, “The Great Stagnation”.
The major theme that stuck out was one of Cowen’s three potential causes of our current economic stagnation, namely the difficulty in educating the marginal student. In the 1950s when college enrollments in the US shot up, it wasn’t that hard to educate the marginal student. Because college enrollments were so much lower, there were plenty of talented potential students who could be easily educated.
However, now that college enrollments are fairly high, the marginal student has changed. How difficult would it be for me to turn my C students into A students? Much harder than turning my C students from high school graduates who are not attending college to C students in college. One challenge in education may be that we've actually done a good job finding potentially talented students and gotten them into college, so it's now harder to find that hidden talent, or to get contemporary high school students with no plans for college into college.
This is a spin on education I hadn’t really thought about, and it makes sense that it would be more difficult to improve the educational experience of the marginal student today than 60 years ago. In a way, it means that we did a good job in the mid-20th century, but it certainly implies that additional gains from education will be tougher to come by in the future. As usual, more food for thought from econtalk.
