I think the title says it all. The left is up in arms against Snyder because of his "totalitarian" attacks against unions, public schools, and corporate income taxes. Since the left is pissed, my initial reaction is that Snyder must be doing a great job. Goverment is taking over the public schools! So what's really happening here, is Rick Snyder getting backlash because he is a totalitarian dictator that is trying to rule the lives of the citizens of Michigan, or is he really just getting backlash from those that have been getting a free ride off the system and hate to feel the pressures of reality crushing down on them? (I'm leaning toward the latter.)
I live in Michigan, but I've been totally isolated from most local news. Honestly, whatever he does for the state of Michigan can't possibly be worse than the condition Jennifer Granholm left the state in business-wise. I would bet that Snyder is about as corrupt as anyone else though.
"Education should not be about profit."
Actually it should.
The left is so completely idiotic on these issues it's almost depressing that people could be so stupid. I mean to them freedom is the government telling you what schools have to teach, freedom to them is the government mandating education and that kids go to a school with a specific curriculum, and freedom to them is telling others that they have to pay for something they don't want.
I am not a fan of rachel maddow. I also don't agree with the socialist argument that running schools for profit will be worse than the government schools. But then I would not want to send my children to a school run by lockheed martin or GE. In the uk they are turning some schools in to academies, which kind of acknowledges the problems with the current government education. But at the same time continues with public funding of education. In south africa they have private schools that are run for a profit and are reasonably priced and they are good schools. I am not too sure on the ownership of the schools and I have been unable to find information. But based on what I know they could be owned by specific individuals and not investors or international organisations. The socialists would use the argument that schools run for profit is bad by trying to associate it with wall street, like investors would start to move in and make the schools even worse than they are, if that is even possible. But to think that, you must not understand how most of the problems are from the lack of price mechanism. One of the main factors that I would use is to say that the parents will value the education more if they have to pay $1000 a year for it. They will make sure their child gets their money worth by expecting results from the child.
Even within the current government school system, if they just allowed schools more independence to change the syllabus and teach what subjects and what content, that would be a big improvement. The idea that the syllabus should be centralised across such a large region is ludicrous, why would you want to teach everyone in the country exactly the same thing.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10161371
http://www.milnertonhigh.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=61&Itemid=80
Without its government guarantee of contracts and funding, Lockheed Martin might actually make something besides weapons. Would you want to go to a school run by IBM or Intel or Apple or some biomedical firm?
Compared to american government schools with metal detectors and nationalised syllabus I would consider anything. But in reality schools run by big corporations will not by run by those corporations, they might be owned by them and they might reap the profits. But there won't be lockhead teachers on the pay roll. They will probably outsource the whole thing a few times before it gets to the teachers being out sourced. I would not say there is anything specifically wrong with that model and to be honest I have never seen it in practice within a school. Because government has always had such control over them. I also doubt that such organisations would have an interest in schools because there would not be that much money to be made. Blackstone made £600 million off old age homes. I am not sure if there was a free market in education if there would be that sort of money in it. Maybe if you owned 10000 of them and you had a government enabled monopoly.
They would still have the problem of centralised syllabus, even if intel ran a school, if they had to adhere to the same regulations and syllabus they would still have problems. They would just not have the problems due to lack of price mechanism. But then if there was a centralised syllabus there would be no competition anyway.
If you look at south africa schools they have gone down in quality since 1994. Because the africans were restricted from a good education and historic reasons. They are not as educated as the white south africas. The national syllabus in south africa has been dumb-down so that the africans can get a high school education. This would not be a problem for the private schools if there was no centralised syllabus.
@Jack
I think you have it all wrong. There would be plenty of money in it, although it would be a long-term investment to be sure.
There is definitely a business to be had in education within a completely free market. If you do basic numbers, 1000 pupils at X amount per year, minus teacher costs and other costs. It is possible to make money. But for companies making billions or millions every quarter, getting into schools would be more hassle than it is worth. But there would most likely develop multiple organisations that specialize in building and running of schools that would be for profit and would compete with different a syllabus. That would compete with schools set up and run by private individuals or groups of individuals. The main difference would be that schools could fail if they did not perform and they would be replaced with better performing schools, that is the price mechanism at work, regardless of who owned it. But I would still think twice about sending my children (not that i have any) to a GE school.
Still you're looking at it all wrong. A school developed by some technology firm or medical firm would be set up to educate its students in the cutting edge of their field. This in itself would be immensely valuable.
Schools run by such corporations in such a way as you have described sounds great, but i doubt they would be cheap. It would be great if we ever reached a point where such a high level of education would be available for the majority of the people at a reasonable price. But i think that is quite a long way a way and if we want to convince socialists to move to a better education they will only see the worst when thinking of corporate run education. I mean think about how anti-capitalist most socialists are and then think about adding corporate run education in to that mindset. haha.
That is why I say that ending centralised syllabus is the first step, once that is in place then you can start to convert the schools to private ownership. Most likely from people involved in the school or people within the area that have an interest in that school. That is a much more effective way to sell privatisation of schools to socialists.
Yes it would be expensive, but there would be ways around that. For example, a contract to work for the company for a set number of years after graduation, etc. Obviously no one would sign up for a school whose contract stipulated that anything the student ever produced for life belonged to that company so that would really be out of the question.
Not to mention that in a competitve market prices would fall over time.
But if there was a free market in education intel schools would be for a specific market and they would not cater for the general population, the general population would be catered for by organisations that specifically run schools and individuals that set up and run schools etc. To say that these international organisations are going to run all the schools is unrealistic.
Why wouldn't they cater to the general population? That makes no sense.
So what are you saying exactly ?
That corporations like intel and GSK if given a free market in education would start to run schools on a massive scale? They would along side their chip design and manufacture business, start to get in to teaching children about english, history, geography and sport activities etc? Seems very unlikely to me. A specialized intel school where they teach you how to become chip designers from a very young age sounds likely. What I mean by general population is that it would not become the average school of the population. We can't all be chip designers or bio chemists. But that is why decentralizing the syllabus is the first step.
Right, there would be no "average school". There would be a variety of schools available that parents would choose based on the abilities and desires of their children. In that way an Intel school would be in the general school/education market. Things such as geography, english, etc. are not really things that need to be taught in a rigorous setting as they are things that people will learn in pursuit of their other goals. If they become more interested in, say, political philosophy there are many resources available for people to learn those things on their own. Would their be a school for political philosophy available? Maybe, but it wouldn't be in high demand and would probably be based wholly online.
But i think there would be average schools and they would have a larger subject scope and then there would be specialised schools that would be more focused. Based on the small amount of free market schools that I have seen, even though they were regulated and had semi controlled syllabus. I did notice that the average (meaning a larger percentage of the total amount of schools within a specific region) school would be less specialised.