Discussing Innovation with Alex Tabarrok

Arnold,

So what you are saying is that young professors need to hurry up and get tenure before the winner-take-all market for professors hits higher ed.

Note to self: get tenure!

Bring it on. It will probably put me out of a job, but it will be good for students. It's horrible that people have to go tens of thousands of dollars into debt just to get the sheepskin so that employers will look at their resumes. We need a new model, urgently.

Really interesting and thought provoking. Who would have thought that higher learning would become like American Idol so soon. But that's not all bad. When it became impossible for (most) musicians to make a living, did that stop them? Not at all.

I don't understand why this is a video chat. Aren't you both basically in the same town?

I think that he believes schools are more important and can do more than they really can.

I have an MS in Finance. I was recently hired for a job that a person with a high school diploma could do--except everybody doing the job also has a degree in finance or accounting. I've been in school with the employer for a week and have 2 more weeks of training. None of the training is related to anything I went to school for since high school. The skill requirements for the job are the ability to read, to solve simple problems, to do simple math, and to follow complex rules/processes. The three weeks of training are to teach us the rules and processes. Sure having a degree in finance means I have the qualifying skills but so does being an average to above average high school grad. There is sheepskin effect going on here for sure.