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The "lemon effect" in teacher education
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Last weekend, I attended the meeting of the National Academy of Education. I used to be a Spencer fellow there, so the Academy keeps inviting me back. Among other things, participants have discussed the unfortunate confluence of circumstances that affect teacher education programs. With strong nudges from the Federal Government, most states created a wide variety of alternative licensure programs. These programs usually let people start teaching right away, with just a few courses taken the summer before, or at the same time as full time teaching. These programs are not regulated as rigorously as university-based undergraduate or post-baccalaureate programs, and tend to be cheaper than traditional programs. In response, colleges reduce the number of courses, offer more off-campus and on-line programs, and generally try to make their offerings easier, shorter, and cheaper. This is just to compete with alternative programs, with out-of-state commercial providers, and with each other.
Quite independently of this, all states are going to reduce their subsidies to higher education. They would have done it already, but the Federal stimulus moneys and rules prevent them from doing so just yet. But even before the crisis, states were consistently cutting subsidies to their colleges. Because teacher education has been the cash cow for many universities, there is an increasing pressure for teacher education to increase enrollments. That often means lowering requirements and standards.
We face what economists call the “lemon effect.” Basically, it means that when customers don’t know how likely a product to be a lemon, firms that produce lemons win, and quality providers cannot compete and leave the market. The state and federal governments genuinely believe that competition is going to increase quality of teacher preparation. But the reality is that increased competition actually reduces the quality of the programs, because in the absence of clear indicators of quality, all players are competing to lower the standards.
This is not just theory. Look at Russia. It had a decent system during the Soviet times. But in mid-90-s, the state has dramatically reduced its support, and at the same time allowed “thousand flowers bloom,” that is, deregulated the off-campus commercial offerings. As a result, Russian universities were forced into a brutal competition with each other, and offered thousands of very low quality programs. Tens of thousands of Russians virtually bought their degrees, with minimal effort. As a result, the Russian Federation has the highest number of college graduates in the world (which Obama is foolishly proclaimed to be an American goal), and a very sick higher education system. This is something we need to worry about – in teacher education and in higher education in general.
