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The Education Cartel
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Craft Guilds of the Middle Ages regulated how many hours per day can their members work, and what technologies they can use. In education, the Carnegie system dictates to students how many hours of sit time they need to put in to attain education. What if someone is a highly motivated and efficient learner? Too bad, because she or he will have to do the same time at the desk. This creates a perverse incentive for students to not be efficient and self-directed learners. It is often assumed that the quality of education heavily depends on quality of teaching. This is a myth, really. The effort and inventiveness of the learner is much more important than that of the teacher.
Although there is a fair amount of competition in higher education, and some competition in the K-12 systems, both are essentially cartels. A cartel is an agreement among producers to coordinate prices and production. While colleges do not often coordinate tuition rates, they have established the credit hour system to ensure high prices. This establishes an unfair competition for those capable of self-teaching.
The Carnegie unit for high school and the credit hour for colleges came into being because arbitrary comprehensive exams were discredited. But this was a hundred years ago, when no sophisticated assessment existed. Now we know so much more about reliable and valid assessment. There is no reason why someone could not teach oneself everything that a high school and college require, and pass qualifying exams. There is no reason for colleges to tie credentials to the sit time anymore. There is also no reason for schools and colleges claim the monopoly for education credentials.
In a truly competitive education economy, high schools and colleges would have to prove that services they provide make them a more attractive option than self-teaching. They would also be forced to break up their whole sale teaching in favor of more specialized services.
