On 6/13/06, John Wager <john.wager1@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John McCreery wrote:
> In this connection, allow me to recommend Robert Kuttner (1996) > Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets. Chicago: > University of Chicago Press. > > Kuttner builds a strong case for distinguishing between markets based > on the urgency of need and the buyer's ability to make rational > choices. . . .
What does he say about "education" as a product? It's a paradox: When one shops for "education," one is shopping for something which, BY DEFINITION, one is not qualified to shop for. Of course one can look for "markers" of education, or markers of a good producer of education, by looking at rankings of colleges, but it is precisely because one does not know something that one is shopping for someone to teach them what they don't know.
Predictably (he is, after all, a liberal economist and currently editor of American Prospect) Kuttner puts education in the category of public goods that should be a matter of right and protected from market forces.
Cheers,
John
-- John McCreery The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
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